Wipro snaps up Appirio cloud services for $500 million; acquisition expected to be completed in December

Wipro has acquired Appirio, a US-based company which helps organisations migrate software applications to the cloud, for $500 million (Rs 3,325 crore), continuing a streak of acquisitions by the Indian IT company spending over $1.1 billion so far this year.

Appirio is based in Indianapolis and counts Salesforce, General Atlantic Partners and Sequoia as investors. This is the biggest acquisition by Wipro after Infocrossing, bought for $600 million in 2007. Appirio was founded by Chris Barbin, Mike O’Brien, Glenn Weistein and Narinder Singh in 2006 and had revenue of $200 million in 2015.
Appirio has an offshore base in Jaipur, where the majority of its 1,250 workforce is located.

Wipro also gets access through Topcoder, Appirio’s crowdsourcing marketplace, to over 1 million designers, developers and data scientists around the world.

“Wipro’s acquisition of Appirio will create one of the world’s largest cloud transformation practices, a game changer in today’s as-a-service and digital economy,” Wipro said in a statement.

Wipro will consolidate its cloud applications practices of Salesforce and Workday under the Appiriobrand. Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio, will head the business. Wipro expects the deal to be closed by December. The Wipro’s stock closed up 0.19 per cent at Rs 495.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday.