Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd has bagged a contract worth $1 billion over eight years from Singapore-based food processing company Olam Group, ending a nearly six-year lull of mega deals for the country’s fourth-largest information technology (IT) services firm.
As part of a broader engagement, Wipro will also acquire Mindsprint, Olam’s IT arm, for $375 million in an all-cash deal, the company said in a release to the stock exchanges on Monday.
Following the announcement, Wipro’s shares opened 3.6% higher at ₹198.4 on the BSE in a largely weak market.
The Bengaluru-based IT services company will manage the food processing company’s end‑to‑end IT transformation services. Olam has committed to spending at least $800 million over eight years in modernising its IT systems with an option to spend more than $1 billion in total.
Mindsprint ended last year with $136 million in revenue and the acquisition is expected to close by June, subject to regulatory approvals. The company has about 3,200 people and specialises in providing IT services to food and agri-business companies with its proprietary IP-driven solutions.
Starting FY27, Wipro would make $136 million from the Mindsprint acquisition and $100 million a year in the following years. Most of Mindsprint’s business comes from parent Olam, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
“We will now aim to bid for more deals in the agri-business industry as we have access to Mindsprint’s IP,” said a person with knowledge of the matter on condition of anonymity.
Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to Olam Group and Mindsprint on this transaction.
This translates to 1.3% of Wipro’s FY25 revenue in the first year and 1% for the rest of the seven years. It ended last year with $10.51 billion in revenue, down 2.7% on a yearly basis.
The deal also comes at a time when Wipro is staring at the possibility of a third straight year of revenue decline amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment due to the west asia war.
Wipro reported $7.83 billion in revenue for the first nine months of FY26 and needs 1.86% sequential growth in the January-March period to match last year’s revenue. This would mark its strongest fourth quarter in four years.
In January, the company’s management expected fourth-quarter revenue of $2.64-$2.69 billion, which implies a full-year revenue decline at the lower end of the range.
At least one expert said this deal was similar to those structured in the past, where large IT services companies would acquire smaller firms and then bag big-ticket IT servicing contracts from them.
“This is a classic ‘acquire captive and get contract’ deal and it is reminiscent of the past when such contracts were common. Mindsprint brings deep agri-domain IP including Farmsprint, Procuresprint & Tradesprint platforms to Wipro,” said Sushovon Nayak, lead IT analyst at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities.
Wipro is not new to such deals. In September 2018, the company won its largest IT outsourcing contract, valued at $1.6 billion over 10 years from Alight Solutions LLC, which is the former benefits administration and human-resources outsourcing business of Aon Plc. As part of the deal stitched under chief exceutive Abidali Neemuchwala, Wipro had acquired Alight’s IT arm.
Significantly, its last mega deal was also structured like the current one. In December 2020, Wipro clinched an IT transformation contract with German food wholesaler, Metro AG. This guaranteed Wipro $700 million for the first five years, with an option to extend the deal up to four additional years with potential revenue of up to $1 billion.
Other IT outsourcers have also bagged such deals in the past.
TCS acquired Citigroup Global Services in 2008 for $505 million. It also won an IT outsourcing contract worth $2.5 billion from the financial institution over nine years. In the same year, WNS acquired Aviva’s offshore captive for around $228 million, backed by an IT deal worth $1 billion over eight years.
Wipro’s management said the deal would increase its footprint in the food and agri-business industry.
“Wipro’s strategic engagement with Olam Group is an important step in expanding our farm-to-fork capabilities and scaling the impact of Wipro Intelligence™ across the food and agri-business industry,” said Srini Pallia, chief executive officer of Wipro, as part of the company’s release.
This is the company’s second such acquisition in less than a year. In August last year, the company acquired Harman Digital Transformation Services (DTS), the software services and engineering arm of the Connecticut-based audio product manufacturer, for $375 million.
The Olam deal is also Wipro’s second big-ticket deal in a little more than a year’s time. In March last year, the company won a 10-year contract valued at $650 million, with UK-based insurance company, Phoenix Group.
The deal comes at a time when large IT services companies have picked up pace in bagging mega deals after a lull in the last two fiscal years.
In FY26, Indian IT services companies, including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, and Infosys Ltd, collectively won five mega deals. In FY25, Coforge was the lone IT services company to bag a mega deal worth $1.56 billion from Texas-based travel tech firm, Sabre.