Azim Premji Biography

Born: July 24, 1945

Azim Premji is the Chairman of Wipro, one of the largest software companies in India. Its headquarters are in Bengaluru, the Indian Silicon City.

Azim Premji was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 by Forbes.

His wealth in 2006 was estimated at US$14.8 Billion which places him as the fifth richest Indian. Azim H. Premji was born to M.H. Hasham Premji.

His grandfather was the rice king of Burma. His father had declined an invitation from M.A.Jinnah to go to Pakistan. Premji attended St. Mary`s School I.C.S.E. in Mazagaon, Mumbai.

He was just finishing his undergraduate engineering studies at Stanford University in 1966 when his father passed away.

He immediately returned to India where he took over the family`s fledgling vegetable oil business, Western Indian Vegetable Products Limited (now called Wipro). Premji started off with a simple vision: to build an organization on a foundation of values.

During the 80s, Azim Premji altered the company which produced soap and cooking oil in global player in IT services. He preserved the acronym: Wipro. Azim Premji holds 84% of the company listed in Bombay and New York. According to Forbes, he is the 36th richest man in the world with a fortune estimated at $ 16.8 billion. Azim Premji is nicknamed the “Indian Bill Gates”. 

The company employs 80,000 people around the world, including 15,000 outside the territory of India and counts among its clients Sony, Alcatel, Nokia, Siemens or Cisco. 

In forty years, Azim Premji has transformed a company that realized a turnover of $ 2 million in food and cosmetics’ sales in a giant in software ($ 1.1 billion of turnover). The company was certified CMM5, the highest level of maturity in software quality. 

Wipro is organized around five business segments: industrial, retail, healthcare, energy, and telecommunications. It bought the integrator Portuguese Enabler, specializing in the distribution. In France, Wipro has a strong position in insurance and banking. 

Azim Premji has created his Foundation and he has co-chaired the annual meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos in 2010. 

He eventually received permission to take correspondence art courses to complete the requirements for his bachelor`s degree in Electrical Engineering. Premji has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs of All Time for his vision and leadership that has been responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world`s fastest growing companies.

Premji is the only Indian to make it to the list. In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

He was also declared the Businessman of the Year 2000 by Business India and is featured in the Business Weeks all-time top 30 entrepreneurs of the world in 2007.

He is a member of the Prime Minister`s Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India.

As of October 6, 2007, he is the 5th richest Indian, with a net worth of $13.6 billion. Azim Premji Foundation was set up with financial resources contributed by Azim Premji.

Programmes of the Azim Premji Foundation focus on creating effective and scalable models that significantly improve the quality of learning in the school and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the management of the school.

This Foundation is also involved in computer-based assessment in Andhra Pradesh (50,000 students took part in early 2005), a learning guarantee programme, and a policy planning unit in Karnataka.