Wipro seems totally unfazed by the growing reaction in the west to business process outsourcing to India and feels confident of coming out on top.

Vivek Paul, Wipro vice chairman and head of Wipro Technologies, who spoke up on the issue before it publicly boiled over, says ultimately things will work their way out.

"This is no different from the manufacturing globalisation two decades ago. Eventually what's going to happen is inevitable.

"Globalisation of services will happen, companies like Wipro will do well. It is up to us to figure out how we get the right message out to the press there (the west) so that they focus more on the implication and what to do with it rather than whether it is good or bad or not."

For the right outcome, he said, lobbying will be necessary on Capitol Hill and Nasscom is handling that well.

But most crucially, Paul is confident that "the chances of US government regulation blocking our industry are slim."

He is also upbeat on the issue of H1B visas whose annual quota is currently slated to go down sharply later this year.

"The expectation is that there will be a bump up (from the current low figure for next year). I think you will see some number higher than that. But frankly, with only 24 per cent of our workforce not working in India, that liability is reasonably low."

His confidence stems from the fact that if customers found there weren't enough H1B visas available, a lot of them who are taking it easy by having more on-site population, may actually be pushed towards more offshoring, "which is better for us."

His cardinal logic is, "The US industry needs their H1B visas to go up. It is not just our need, it is also the need of our customers, US companies."

BPO means a lot for Wipro right now. Volumes in IT services are going up but that's about it.

On the other hand, "BPO is a growth area for us. We are seeing a lot of interest and have been able to do both service line expansion in terms of new service lines that we've offered as well as a very healthy cross penetration of business process to our existing IT customer base. But it is too early to call successes.

"New accounts keep coming in. We continue to see a healthy trend both in terms of adding new services as well as penetrating existing accounts and gaining new accounts."

For Wipro, which is also a technology company, "in terms of aggregate technology spending, 2003 will be a very challenging year. The good news is that a company like Wipro is sheltered because we are taking over existing spends. But everything is about how to make things more productive. The current killer application is optimisation."