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Wipro

Wipro – India’s One Of The Largest Multinational Conglomerates Founded During The British Period.

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Wipro, founded in 1945, is one of the largest employers in India. It is a multinational company that was featured in Forbes Global 2000 list as well as Fortune India 500 list. It has more than 230,000 employees and has customers around the globe. Only one year after establishing the company, it was taken public in 1946 and was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. Azim Premji, an Indian businessman, and engineer is the main brain behind the company. The current CEO of the company is Thierry Delaporte.

About Wipro

Wipro, though started out as a company for manufacturing vegetable and refined oil, has expanded to many other sectors in the last seven decades. It has launched health care, personal care, lightning products, etc, and offers services such as consulting and outsourcing. Wipro has also been a recipient of many prestigious awards and honors. In 2010, Wipro was given the Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Award for India. After a couple of years, it also ranked 2nd in the list of Global 500 Green companies by Newsweek. Subsidiaries of Wipro are Appirio, Topcoder, Capco, and Designit.

Wipro
Image source: www.financialexpress.com

Founding Days

Mohamed Premji incorporated Wipro in Alamner, India as Western Inia Products. Later, the company’s name was abbreviated to Wipro. The company initially became a manufacturer of various kinds of cooking and edible oil under the trade names of Kisan, Camel, and Sunflower. The company was slowly growing and it was in 1966 that Mohamed Premji passed away giving the reigns to his son, Azim Premji. He became the Chairman of the company only at the age of 21. It was under Azim Premji’s leadership and guidance that took Wipro into the IT industry, for what it is famous today. It was during the 1970s that Company gradually started finding opportunities in the IT and computing industry. So, in 1977 the company’s name was changed from Western India Vegetables Products Limited to Wipro Products Limited.

After the IT industry, Wipro also expanded its product line by introducing beauty products, hydraulic cylinders, and industrial cylinders. In 1989, the company started a partnership with General Electric for expanding into the healthcare sector by manufacturing diagnostic and imaging products. The company also launched its fluid power division and toiletries product line for babies. In 1995, the company also set up an overseas design center for international clients. By the end of the decade, the company acquired Wipro Acer and introduced new products like Wipro SuperGenius personal computers. The company also started offering internet services in India after starting a joint venture with a Dutch company. In 2000, Company got listed on New York Stock Exchange.

Expansion and Success

The next decade started with a huge success as Wipro became the first software company in India to be ISO 14001 certified. Wipro started a new product line of CFL under the brand name Wipro Smartlite. The company also partnered with Intel for i-Siksha. Wipro also started acquiring several companies starting with cMango Inc in 2006, Oki Techno Centre Singapore Pte Ltd (OTCS) in 2007, and establishing an R&D partnership with Nokia Siemens Network.

In 2008, the company entered into the clean energy business and acquired the global oil and gas division of SAIC. Some of the other companies that Wipro acquired in the following years are Promax Applications Group, Appirio, Rational Interaction, Capco, etc. Recently, Company has also partnered with IBM software systems to launch its 5G solutions. It also expanded its business to Bangladesh a few years ago and extensively invested in the European market.

About Azim Premji

Azim Premji is the founder chairman of Wipro who took responsibility for the business after his father passed away. He was born in a Gujarati Muslim family in Bombay. Azim Premji completed his graduation from Standford University and returned back to India immediately and started working for the company. In 2005, he received Padma Bhushan for his contribution to trade and commerce.

Naver Corporation

Naver Corporation – A South Korean Multinational Conglomerate Offering The Topmost Search Portal In The Country.

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Born in 1999, Naver Corporation is a South Korean company that started offering search services at the beginning of the 21st century. Naver’s headquarters is based in Seongnam, South Korea. The company is known for pioneering in user-generated content in its early days and it has several other services (encyclopedia, cafe, blog, etc). It also has several subsidiaries that include Line, Snow, Camp Mobile, Naver Labs, etc. The company is also trying to evolve its technology platform and hence closely cooperating with tech startups. Naver was also recognized by Forbes as one of the most innovative companies in the world and was also featured in Fortune magazine.

About Naver Corporation

NAVER is the top search portal in South Korea and the company’s other subsidiaries and affiliates offer services like digital comic platforms, messenger, social media platforms, metaverse platforms, etc. Naver has also expanded to the international markets in the last two decades. It has offices in Japan, the USA, France, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Taiwan. There are nearly 3,000 employees in the company and its current CEO is Choi Soo Yeon. Naver was originally founded by Lee Hae Jin under the name of Naver Comm. It has made several acquisitions in the past decade and merged with many companies to expand its territory.

Naver Corporation
Image source: www.korea.net

History

In June 1999, Lee Hae Jin established Naver Comm. and its main product was the search engine, Naver. Since Naver was a search portal the company decided to roll out a similar search engine for the children and hence named it Junior Naver. After a year, the company merged with Hangame Communications Inc, Search Solutions, Oneque, and several other companies. In August 2000, Naver decided to roll out its comprehensive search product that allowed users to get a variety of search results from a single query on a single page. And the search results were organized by types like blogs, products, images, etc. In the same year, the company also established Hangame Japan.

Entering a new decade, the company changed its name to NHN (Next Human Network) Corporation. But the two divisions of the company, Naver and Hangame continued operating under their original brand names. In 2002, Naver became a public company and also launched a new service, Naver Knowledge iN. It also began a donation service called Happy Bean. It was in 2003 that the company merged all of its Japanese subsidiaries into NHN Japan and after a few years launched Naver Japan to start its search engine in the country. Eventually, the company also expanded to the USA and opened the American game service, ijji but sold it away shortly.

In 2008, it was for the first time that the company’s name was featured in Forbes magazine and after a year the CEO of NHN was also featured in Forbes’ Asia’s Fab 50 list. In the next few years, Naver focuses on strengthening the social media business as it acquired a Japanese blog platform, Livedoor, and also launched Line, a messaging application. In 2013, NHN was split into two divisions, Naver Corporation and NHN Entertainment and in the same year, Naver became the first company to operate its own data center. By the end of 2015, the company’s global revenue started exceeding rapidly especially because of the global affiliate services.

Global Expansion

As the company’s annual revenue started exceeding 4 trillion won, many of its affiliates also started filing IPO and going public. The number of subsidiaries of the company also started increasing and some of the new ones include Snow, Naver Labs, and Naver Webtoon. In 2021, Naver acquired Wattpad for $600 million. Line Corporation, the biggest subsidiary of Naver merged with Yahoo Japan in 2021. Naver’s current focus is to start competing with the biggest tech giants of the world like Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.

About the Founder

Famous as the founder of Naver Corporation, Lee Hae-jin is a 54-year old billionaire. He is one of the top twenty richest people in South Korea and his business venture started while he was already working for Samsung in the late 1990s. Lee went to Seoul National University followed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Cadence Design Systems

Cadence Design Systems – The Leading Computational Software Experts.

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Integrates circuits are the most valuable invention of humankind. These ICs have reduced the size of a computer and have helped scientists bring PCs into being and available for every individual. The companies that are developing those ICs and computational software are major contributors to the development of IT, Cadence Designs Systems being one of them.
Cadence Design Systems is an American multinational company, known for its work in designing ICs, systems on chips (SoCs), and printed circuit boards. Apart from that, the company also develops computational software. Known as one of the world’s most innovative companies, Cadence has been there for about 33 years serving its clients with its software, hardware, and IP design services.

About The Company

Cadence Design Systems is a company that thrives on innovation and client satisfaction. It has been serving its clients for the past 33 years and has brought many new technologies to ease out the burden for its clients. From software to hardware and IP design, Cadence has covered it all for its global clients. Apart from designing and developing chips and boards, the company has developed systems for a wide range of clients covering consumers, hyperscale computing, 5G communication, automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health.
Cadence is a public company, having its headquarters based in San Jose, California, United States. The company is home to about 8900 employees and has won six awards in a row for being one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Cadence Design Systems
Image source: undo.io

Founding Cadence Design Systems

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. was founded in 1988 but has a history beyond 1988 as it is a result of the merger of two already established companies of that time, Solomon Design Automation (SDA) and ECAD. ECAD came into being in 1982, and James Solomon founded SDA in 1983. ECAD was doing exceptionally well and made sales worth $24 million in 1987. In 1988, ECAD and SDA agreed on a merger, where ECAD acquired SDA for a stock swap of $72 million, forming Cadence Design Systems, an electronic design automation (EDA) company. Joseph Costello, the founder of SDA became the first CEO of the newly founded company.
From the beginning of Cadence Design Systems, it started to expand by acquiring other companies, Gateway Design Automation being the first company that it acquired in 1989. The same year, it also established one of its subsidiaries in Tokyo, Japan. In the next few years, the company made acquisitions like Valid Logic (1991), Comdisco Systems (1993), Cooper & Chyan Technology (1997), Bell Labs Design Automation (1998), Quickturn Design Systems (1998), and OrCAD Systems (1999).
In 1997, Costello left his position as CEO in Cadence. The company established a new subsidiary named Tality Corporation in 2000 and made revenues worth $1.43 billion in 2001. In the next ten years, the company made some more important acquisitions, including IBM‘s DFT tools & group (2002), Celestry Design (2003), Verplex (2003), Neolinear (2004), Verisity (2005), Praesagus (2006), Invarium (2007), Chip Estimate (2008), and Denali Software (2010), etc.
The company started with ECAD’s 197 employees and SDA’s 161 employees, but by 2011, the number of employees for Cadence reached 4900. The company also made revenues worth $1.1 billion in the same year. In 2019, the company was ranked 45 in PEOPLE magazine’s Companies that Care and #5 on the Best Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Companies list by Investor’s Business Daily.
The product range by Cadence includes software, hardware, intellectual properties (IP) used to design chips, systems and printed circuit boards, etc. It produces the products under Custom IC technologies, Digital Implementation & Sign-off Technologies, Verification technologies, Intellectual Property, PCB & Packaging technologies, System Analysis categories.

The CEO

Lip-Bu Tan is the current CEO at Cadence Design Systems. He is an American executive and entrepreneur, having Malaysian roots. He was born on 12 November 1959 in Malaysia and grew up in Singapore. Lip-Bu Tan completed his BSc degree in physics from Nanyang University. Later, he moved to the US to earn an M.S. degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by an MBA from the University of San Francisco.
Before joining Cadence as the CEO, he has worked in many well-known companies like EDS. He also founded his venture capital firm named Walden in 1987. Apart from handling his unicorn company, Tan then joined the board of Cadence in 2004. In 2008, he was appointed as the interim co-CEO at Cadence, and the next year, he was named the president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems.

Mitsubishi Corporation

Mitsubishi Corporation – Story of the Largest Trading Company in Japan Providing a Variety of Services.

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Mitsubishi Corporation is the largest multinational Japanese trading company and also a member of the Mitsubishi Group. The company, Mitsubishi Corporation has ten different business segments to date and approximately employs 86,000 people worldwide. The main services provided by the company are energy, metal, food, consumer goods, financial services, construction, chemical, and machinery. Mitsubishi’s current headquarters are based in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan and it has a subsidiary, Lawson Inc which is a chain of convenience store franchises. So, let’s have a look at the history of the company and its predecessor.

History of Mitsubishi Corporation

The foundation of the Mitsubishi Corporation originally dates back to the time when Yataro Iwasaki founded Mitsubishi Group and eventually expanded the business. Yataro Iwasaki didn’t originally build the company but his responsibilities in the Tosa clan’s trading operation eventually made him the head of the business. The story of Mitsubishi dates back to the time when Iwasaki was employed by the Tosa clan and got his posting in Nagasaki. After he started working in the trading sector of Tsukumo Shokai, the company’s name was changed to Mitsukawa Shokai followed by Mitsubishi Shokai. In the early 1870s, the company’s name again changed to Mitsubishi Steamship Company which received government sponsorship to start a mail service between Yokohama and Shanghai.

Iwasaki, after working for a few years in the company, started to lead it in the late 1800s. His main goal was to diversify the business and thus entered the insurance, mining, and shipbuilding sector. In 1885, the unfortunate event of Iwasaki’s death took place and the responsibility of the company fell on the shoulders of Yanosuke Iwasaki, his successor. The new leader wanted to focus more on the coal and mining business and thus decided to merge the shipbuilding business with Nippon Yusen Kaisha, a rival company. In 1918, the international trading business of Mitsubishi formed another company, Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha. Mitsubishi played a very active role during World War II as the company’s heavy industry sector was responsible for producing ships, aircraft, and heavy machinery.

Mitsubishi Corporation
Image source: www.etcapital.com

Dissolution of the Company

After the end of World War II, the Allied Occupation of Japan wanted the dissolution of all existing zaibatsu (large conglomerates who had significant dominating power in the Japanese economic market). Mitsubishi was one of those zaibatsu and though the company showed resistance initially, the rules were eventually implemented. The dissolution eventually took place in 1947 and Mitsubishi Shoji got rebranded into 100 different companies. But, after three years the re-consolidation was possible and Mitsubishi once again coalesced into three companies. This merger was finally completed in 1954 and it represents the present-day Mitsubishi Corporation. The company eventually listed itself in Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Stock Exchange. By 1960, Mitsubishi had over fifty international offices and also established a US subsidiary, Mitsubishi International Corporation.

Two subsidiaries of Mitsubishi Corporation along with Mitsubishi Corporation became very prominent in Japan during the post-war scenario. Those two subsidiaries are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Motor Company. In the late 1960s, Mitsubishi became the largest general trading company in Japan and eventually stepped out to acquire a lot of international companies and together formed Mitsubishi Group. Last year, a company called Berkshire Hathaway acquired 5 percent stock in Mitsubishi Corporation along with a few other Japanese trading houses.

About Mitsubishi Group

The history of Mitsubishi Group and Mitsubishi Corporation dates back to the same time as Yataro Iwasaki is the founder of both of these businesses. Dissolution of the company followed by re-consolidation has kept the brand name of Mitsubishi intact and one of the best in its sector. Mitsubishi Corporation is one of the four companies under the Mitsubishi Group. The other three being MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi Electric, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. MUFG Bank became the largest bank in Japan after it merged with the Bank of Tokyo and UFJ Holdings. The business of Mitsubishi Group is massive as there are more than these four main companies under the shadow of Mitsubishi Group.

About the Founder

Iwasaki Yataro was one of the most successful industrialists and financiers of Japan. Iwasaki’s exposure to modernization and scope in the industry was possible when he became an employee of the Tosa clan. Seeing his contributions in diversifying the business of Mitsubishi, he was contracted by the Japanese government during World War II to send supplies. Iwasaki’s demise was due to stomach cancer in 1885.

Siemens

Siemens – Story of the Largest European Industrial Manufacturing Company.

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Siemens AG is a German-based publicly traded company based in Munich. The company was founded more than 170 years ago when Germany was still famous as the Kingdom of Prussia. Werner von Siemens is the founder of the company who incorporated the business in late 1847 along with Johann Georg Halske. Siemens today represents a wide range of products and services and its principal divisions are industry, energy, healthcare, and infrastructure, and cities. The products of the Company are very diverse ranging from developing enterprise software to railway vehicles. The company is a multinational company that provides its service globally and currently employs 293,000 people. Currently, the CEO of the company is Roland Busch and its headquarters is based in Munich.

The Initial Journey of Siemens

Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske co-founded Siemens & Halske in October 1847. Their business evolved around an invention that used a needle instead of morse code to point the sequence of alphabets. The company was then known as Telegraph-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske and they opened their first long-distance telegraph line in 1848. This construction took place in Europe and covered a total length of 500km. Starting in 1850, the company started expanding its business in London and also developed long-distance telegraph lines in Russia. In 1867, Company successfully completed its Indo-European telegraph line from London to Calcutta. Werner retired from the company in 1890 and left the company’s responsibility to his brother and sons. After a couple of years, Company received a huge contract for the construction of the Hobart electric tramway in Australia.

Siemens
Image source: www.jobriya.in

Siemens During Nazi Germany

In the 20th century, several activities of the company Siemens & Halske were merged with Schuckert & Co Nuremberg and the company’s name changed to Siemens-Schuckert. After the merger, Siemens-Schuckert became the seventh-largest company in Germany in terms of the number of employees. In 1932, another merger took place between Siemens and the other two companies which formed the present-day Siemens AG. Since Siemens was a German company, it didn’t have a good reputation in how it treated the laborers in the extermination camps. The company had a plant in Auschwitz and the company was known for supplying electrical parts to these Nazi camps.

Expansion of the Company

From the 1950s, the company started manufacturing computers, semiconductors, pacemakers, and washing machines. In 1980, the company rolled out its first digital telephone exchange and also started acquiring several companies. Some of these companies include Plessey, a UK defense and technology company, three solar module plants from ARCO, Nixdorf Computer AG, Industrial Systems Division of Texas Instruments, and many more. The company also started a joint venture with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which enhanced the business in the American market. In the late 1990s, Company opened its subsidiary, Siemens Financial Services for managing financial risks in the company. In 1998, the company made a big acquisition of $1.5 billion when it bought Westinghouse Power Generation and became a pioneer in the power generation market.

Company in Digital Era

In the 21st era, Company expanded its services and also started joint ventures with several companies. The company acquired the rail division of Invensys followed by LMS International NV in the same year. Nokia and Siemens started a joint venture and started Nokia Siemens Network but in 2013 the partnership came to an end when Nokia proposed a buy-out and acquired the entire Nokia Siemens Network. The same year, Company landed a huge deal with a middle east company called Saudi Aramco for manufacturing power plant components. The company also acquired the gas turbine and compressor energy business of Rolls Royce in 2014. Recently, Siemens Energy became an independent company and is not a part of SiemensAG anymore. The company is currently making efforts to expand its Healthline division and is planning to buy Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 billion.

About the Founder

Werner von Siemens, famous as the founder of SiemensAG was an electrical engineer and an industrialist by profession. His contribution in the field was so immense that his name was taken for the unit of electrical conductance. He completed his education at Prussian Military Academy’s School of Artillery and Engineering. After returning from the war, he devoured himself towards technology and soon invented the telegraph as the replacement of the morse code. He died on 6th December 1982.