Wipro to provide a suite of services to ICICI Bank for seven years through a business transfer agreement with Vara lnfotech
IT company Wipro has bagged a seven-year contract worth $300m (£245.3m) to provide a comprehensive suite of services to ICICI Bank, an Indian private sector bank.
Currently, Vara lnfotech is providing the services to ICICI Bank.
Wipro, under an agreement, will take in nearly 3,800 employees of Vara lnfotech in addition to its existing contracts, facilities and assets. This will be through a business transfer agreement for an all cash consideration of INR3.21bn (£36m).
The IT major will start offering the services to ICICI Bank from next month.
The company, in a statement, said: “This engagement will further strengthen our endeavor to provide differentiated technology and digital capabilities to the financial services industry.”
The IT firm offers innovative banking solutions through the Wipro HOLMES platform
Wipro claims to have a significant footprint as an IT services provider in the banking and financial services sector across the world. The company is said to offer innovative solutions to banks by utilising its artificial intelligence (AI) platform Wipro HOLMES.
In May 2019, the Indian IT services provider joined forces with R3, an enterprise blockchain software firm, to develop a blockchain-based solution prototype to power digital currency in Thailand.
The blockchain-based solution prototype has been developed for a consortium, which includes Bank of Thailand and eight commercial banks in the Asian country. The solution will enable use of digital currency for making interbank settlements.
Recently, ICICI Bank said that it had deployed industrial robotic arms for digitising operations at its currency chests in 12 Indian cities. The robotic arms will help the bank sort more than six million notes every working day and 1.8 billion annually.
Deployment of the robotic arms at currency chests is said to follow a series of technology-led innovative services that have been recently launched by the bank. Included in these are software robotics, which have been introduced to power banking operations, and also the bank’s implementation of blockchain to facilitate cross-border remittances.
ICICI Bank, which has operations across 15 countries, provides banking services, insurance, asset management and securities brokerage services among others.