A. Lakshman Rao is the former chief operating officer of Wipro Technologies. Rao joined Wipro's Information Technology business as a founder member in 1980 and contributed significantly towards building a R&D team. From 1993 to 1996, he worked as Vice President (Technical) at Wipro Systems and played an important role in building competence in Client/Server and Object technologies. During this period, he was instrumental in building a number of business practices from scratch. Testing services, business intelligence, data warehousing and e-Enabling are some of them. As group vice president and chief technology officer of Wipro from 1996 to 1999, he implemented ISO 9000 compliant quality processes across the Software Divisions of Infotech Group. He has also driven the SEI CMM initiative enabling Wipro to become the first SEI CMM Level 5 Software Services Company in the world. In Oct 2000, Rao took over the leadership of Telecom and Internetworking Solutions Division and steered the business through multifold growth to its present prominent position.