In a turnaround from the usual practice of foreign companies buying out their Indian partners, local manufacturer Wipro is to buy out Acer, the Taiwan PC giant, from their Wipro Acer Ltd joint-venture.
Wipro Acer, which assembles both Wipro own-brand products, and Acer PCs, made a profit for the first time in the last financial year, and increased turnover from less than $15m in 1997/98 to more than $70m in 98/99. Suresh Vaswani, chief executive of Wipro Acer Ltd who will head the PC business at Wipro Infotech when it absorbs the joint venture, said profit figures were not available.
Although no price has yet been agreed, it is expected to reflect the growing business as well as the value of the main asset, the computer assembly plant in Bangalore. Wipro will continue to make PCs but will also introduce servers to its existing desktop line. Notebook computers are likely to follow soon, according to Vaswani.
Acer will set up a wholly-owned subsidiary and has named Arun Sinha from Acer Computer International, Singapore, as managing director of its India operations. The subsidiary will be based at Bangalore.
