Azim Hasham Premji

A shareholder rose at Premji's first annual general meeting and told him, in public, to sell his stake to more mature management. He was 21, home from Stanford on the telegram announcing his father's death, and the owner of about 90 percent of a roughly $2 million cooking-oil company; he did not argue, and went back to work.¹ That company is now Wipro Limited, a Bangalore-headquartered global IT services, consulting, and outsourcing company with annual revenue in the range of $10 billion to $11 billion, and Premji is its founder chairman and Chairman Emeritus. Wipro is counted among India's largest IT firms, alongside TCS, Infosys, and HCL. Premji led it for more than five decades before stepping back as Executive Chairman in 2019. He is also founder chairman of the Azim Premji Foundation, through which he has become one of the world's largest individual donors.²

Background

Premji was born on July 24, 1945, in Mumbai, then Bombay. His father, Muhammed Hashim Premji, was a prominent trader known as the "Rice King of Burma" for his role in the Burma rice trade of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1945 the father incorporated Western India Vegetable Products Ltd. in Amalner, Maharashtra, producing cooking oil under the "Sunflower Vanaspati" name and soap under the "787" name.

Premji's mother was a physician who spent roughly 50 years running a charitable hospital for children with polio and cerebral palsy in Bombay. Premji has cited her work, framed through Gandhi's concept of wealth as "trusteeship," as the origin of his philanthropic outlook. He was schooled at St. Mary's School in Mumbai and studied electrical engineering at Stanford University in the early 1960s. He left in 1966 three credits short of the degree and returned to complete it in 1999 at age 54, having said he was tired of being called a college dropout.¹

Getting started

In 1966 Premji's father died suddenly; a telegram reached him at Stanford, and he flew home at 21 to take over the roughly $2 million cooking-oil company, of which he owned about 90 percent. At the first annual general meeting, a shareholder publicly told him to sell his stake to more mature management. Premji did not argue and went back to work.¹ Early on he moved to Amalner for a full summer to fix a recurring heat-driven drop in factory productivity; the plant reportedly had no summer dip afterward.

He diversified the base business into soaps, hydraulic cylinders, lighting, bakery fats, and toiletries, but saw a ceiling in commodity manufacturing. In 1977 the Morarji Desai government, using FERA, forced foreign firms to dilute majority Indian ownership or exit, and IBM chose to leave India, opening a vacuum in the computing market. Premji has said somebody had to fill it and that it promised service income and an annuity base. On June 7, 1977, he renamed the company Wipro Products Limited, a deliberate declaration of the pivot.² In 1981 Wipro built India's first minicomputer, based on the Intel 8086, out of an embedded team at the Indian Institute of Science's Digital Systems Lab in Bangalore. The first Wipro IT office, on Dickenson Road in Bangalore, is considered the genesis of the IT business.

What he built

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Wipro scaled into custom offshore software development, exporting mainly to the United States on the strength of India's lower-cost engineering talent. Today Wipro is listed on the NYSE and BSE, with revenue in the $10 billion to $11 billion range and a market capitalization in the tens of billions of dollars.³ The company took no external venture funding; it grew from the family business Premji inherited, financed by reinvested cash flow.

Premji's building extended to philanthropy at company-founding scale. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2013 and has transferred an estimated $21 billion to $29 billion in Wipro equity, roughly two-thirds of the company's shares by one account, to the Azim Premji Foundation, making him India's most generous philanthropist by cumulative giving.²

How he operates

Premji repeatedly identified categories where an incumbent's exit or an unmet need created room to move, then built organizational capability toward the opportunity rather than starting from existing expertise. His entry into IT after IBM's exit is the clearest instance.

He paired that instinct with personal austerity used as management discipline. Premji flew economy class as stated company policy, drove a Ford Escort for nine years, and kept no personal security detail.³ He has said too many rich people and executives lose touch with reality, and, given a presidential suite as a commencement speaker, reportedly asked why such a big room had been booked for him.¹

Premji also restructured hiring around long, values-first interviews, some lasting up to 12 hours, probing family and character rather than credentials. He adopted this after interviewing Narayana Murthy for a job and turning him down; Murthy went on to co-found Infosys, later Wipro's chief rival, and Premji has called the rejection his biggest professional mistake.¹

Where things stand

Premji is Chairman Emeritus of Wipro, with day-to-day executive leadership passed years earlier to his son Rishad Premji, the Executive Chairman. He continues to run the Azim Premji Foundation and Azim Premji University, both focused on India's public education. He is regularly ranked among India's wealthiest individuals, with net worth estimates in the low teens of billions of dollars in some years and family estimates ranging higher; the figures vary by source and year.³

Key facts

• Took control of a $2 million family cooking-oil business at 21 after his father's sudden death, over shareholder objection.
• Pivoted the same company from vegetable oil and soap into computing and IT services in 1977, after IBM was forced to exit India.
• Rejected Narayana Murthy in a job interview; Murthy went on to co-found rival Infosys, and Premji later called it his biggest professional regret.
• Left Stanford three credits short of graduating in 1966 and completed the degree in 1999, at age 54.
• Has given an estimated $21 billion to $29 billion in Wipro shares to his foundation, among the largest personal philanthropic transfers in history.
• Flew economy class as company policy and drove a Ford Escort for nine years while running a multi-billion-dollar company.