Azim Hashim Premji

Azim Hashim Premji

He is an Indian business tycoon and philanthropist who is the chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leaders in the software industry. According to Forbes, he is currently the third wealthiest Indian, and the 41st richest in the world, with a personal wealth of $15.9 billion in 2012.In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He has twice been listed among the 100 most influential people by TIME Magazine, once in 2004 and more recently in 2011. Premji owns 79 percent of Wipro and also owns a private equity fund, PremjiInvest, which manages his $1 billion personal portfolio.

His Began:

He completed his schooling from St. Mary’s School, Mumbai and at the age of 21, attended Stanford University, California, to complete his studies in electrical engineering. However, he could not further his studies and had to return to take over the family business after the sudden death of his father in 1966.

After his joining in his father’s company, Western India Products ( he later renamed it to Wipro Technologies and Wipro Corporation) and started expanding it to developing light bulbs with general electric, baby care products and shampoos, powders and other consumer products. In 1975, it began manufacturing hydraulic cylinders and truck tippers. In 1980 the company entered into IT sector and under a special license from Sentinel, it started developing computer hardware, software and related items. Wipro’s has won PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMM level 5 certification and has remained among the world’s top 100 IT companies. It is also one of the world’s largest BPO companies and employs over 22,000.

 Awards and Recognition:

Business Week named him as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs for making Wipro one of the world’s fastest developing companies.

In 2000, he received an honorary doctorate from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

In 2004, Time Magazine kept him among its 100 most influential people in the world.
In 2005, he was honored with Padma Bhushan.

In 2008, on 58th Convocation Ceremony of the University, Aligarh Muslim University honored him with a Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.).

In 2009, Wesleyan University in Middletown awarded him with an honorary doctorate for his philanthropic work.

Philanthropic Work:

Azim Premji has chiefly contributed to establish Azim Premji Foundation and has donated $2 billion worth shares.

According to Azim Premji Foundation, it “Aims at making a tangible impact on identified social issues by working in active partnership with the Government and other related sectors of society” and Programmers offered are mainly for “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 “dedicates itself to the cause of Universalization of Elementary Education in India”. It has successfully improved the quality of general education, mainly in rural schools.
Forbes magazine named him the Bill Gates of India for his Charity work.

Net Worth:

Head of tech titan Wipro started the Azim Premji Foundation in 2001, with an initial endowment of Wipro shares worth $125 million. Last year(2010), in keeping with his avowed intent of giving away a chunk of his fortune, he donated shares worth $2 billion, to a trust that will go to the foundation to help public schools in India’s heartland by training teachers and improving curriculum.

** The vision he had about the education, shows the opened mind characteristic in his personality, and such a person with a lot of knowledge, knew how to run businesses and came up with different new ideas that made him one of the most famous men in India.