Cooking oil in Amalner, a short name in 1982.

The name Wipro is a contraction. English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated on 29 December 1945 in Amalner by M. H. Hasham Premji as Western India Vegetable Products Limited, a maker of cooking oils. A Press Trust of India report carried by Onmanorama on 2 May 2017 gives the same original name and places Amalner in Maharashtra.

The family business passed to the next generation in 1966. English Wikipedia says that Azim Premji, Hasham Premji’s son, took over as chairman that year. The company then changed its name in two steps, according to the same article: to Wipro Products Limited in 1977, and to Wipro Limited in 1982. English Wikipedia describes the final name as a syllabic abbreviation of the original, taking the opening letters of Western India and Products.

The name travelled a long way from vegetable oil. The 2017 Press Trust of India report says the company entered the information technology industry in 1981. English Wikipedia records that it set up the subsidiaries Wipro Infotech and Wipro Systems in the 1980s, that its software work began in 1984 with a spreadsheet and word-processing suite, and that it moved to offshore software development in 1990. By the middle of the 1990s, the article says, the company was making personal computers, peripherals and medical diagnostic equipment under the Wipro name.

The company later separated its two worlds. English Wikipedia says that in 2012 Wipro demerged its non-IT businesses, including consumer care, lighting, furniture, hydraulics, water treatment and medical diagnostics, into a new private company named Wipro Enterprises, and that it closed its hardware division in 2013. It set up the design and mobility business Wipro Digital in 2014 and the investment arm Wipro Ventures in 2015. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru.

A sunflower in 1998, dots in 2017.

For almost two decades the company’s logo was a flower. The Press Trust of India reported on 2 May 2017, in a story carried by Onmanorama, that Wipro had revamped its logo after almost twenty years, and that the new mark replaced the multicoloured sunflower introduced in 1998. The sunflower had served a company that by then sold both technology services and consumer goods under the same name.

The replacement was announced the same day. Deccan Herald reported on 2 May 2017 that Wipro had unveiled a new brand identity that included a new logo and a rearticulation of the Spirit of Wipro, the company’s statement of its four core values. Chairman Azim Premji said the brand identity was a visual expression of what the company did and meant for its clients, energised by its values, and that the rearticulated values connected and resonated with the new identity.

The company explained the new mark in some detail, as Deccan Herald reported it. The logo is made of dots, which Wipro said represent the way it “connects the dots” for its clients, integrating technology and domain expertise and applying insights across industries. The individual elements, the company said, stand for ideas, insights, technologies, industries and geographies, while the expanding pattern symbolises a boundless Wipro.

The same report gave a reading for the larger shapes. Wipro said the four circles in the logo represent the Wipro values, employees, clients and partners, and communities. It also gave a reason for the colour of the name: the blue of the wordmark, the company said, creates a sense of reliability and authority. Chief executive Abidali Z. Neemuchwala said the refresh signalled closer engagement with clients and reflected the diversity and aspirations of the company’s employees.

Indian groups and their marks.

Company identities in Asia often grow out of a single founder group or family holding, and the corporate mark has to cover businesses as varied as refining, retail, telecoms and software. The name tends to stay fixed while the symbol beside it is redrawn as the group changes shape, so one logo can sit above many trading names at once.

For app-first businesses the logo and the app icon are frequently the same object. A mark that must read at the size of a fingertip on a crowded phone screen is drawn as a simple, closed shape in one strong colour, and the full wordmark is reserved for larger formats such as signage, delivery bags and helmets.

Campaign naming built on calendar dates, in which a day and month repeated as numbers become the name of a sales event, is a recurring pattern in regional e-commerce. The date itself works as a brand asset that can be printed, counted down and repeated each year.

Mergers and new holding structures are a common trigger for redesign. A combined group may add a new parent name above existing consumer brands, or redraw a symbol to signal a shift from a single service to a wider platform, while keeping familiar colours so that customers still recognise the product.

Values written into the logo.

The 2017 identity was presented as a statement of values as much as a new picture. The Press Trust of India report quoted the company as saying the new brand identity marked its emergence as a digital transformation partner to clients, delivering at global scale with increasingly localised capabilities. Deccan Herald reported that the company also said the identity mirrored two attributes its clients cited: an integrated perspective across industries, technologies and geographies, and an ability to deliver innovation in ways relevant to them.

The launch had a social-media side. The Press Trust of India story reproduced a post from the company’s own account on 2 May 2017 announcing “our new brand” under the hashtags #BeTheNew and #IAmWipro.

The shift from sunflower to dots tracks the company’s own history. The sunflower arrived in 1998, when, as English Wikipedia describes it, Wipro still made computers and medical equipment alongside its software work and its consumer businesses. By 2017 the consumer and other non-IT businesses had been placed in the separate private company Wipro Enterprises, and the listed company’s new logo was explained entirely in terms of clients, technology and values.

The name has stayed fixed through all of this. Wipro Limited has carried the same short name since 1982, and the 2017 change kept it while replacing the symbol beside it. The four values of the Spirit of Wipro, as Deccan Herald reported, were restated at the same moment, so that the new logo and the rearticulated values were launched as one package.

For a design guide, Wipro shows how a company can turn a mark into a diagram of its values, with each circle given a meaning, while keeping a name coined from a cooking-oil business. Compare Reliance, another Indian group brand, and Mahindra, an Indian group that founded its own technology business. For this guide we use blue, navy and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Wipro’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.