Wipro company

Azim Hashim Premji

(born 24 July 1945) is an Indian business tycoon, investor and philanthropist, who is the chairman
of Wipro Limited, informally known as the Czar of the Indian IT Industry. He was responsible for
guiding Wipro through four decades of diversification and growth to finally emerge as one of the
global leaders in the Software Industry. In 2010, 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 73% percent of Wipro and
also owns a private equity fund, PremjiInvest, which manages his $2 billion worth of personal
portfolio. In 2013 he gave away 25 per cent of his personal wealth to charity and has also pledged
to give away the rest of 25% in the next 5 years

Career
In 1945, Muhammed Hashim Premji incorporated Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd, based
at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. It used to manufacture cooking
oil under the brand name Sunflower Vanaspati, and a laundry soap called 787, a byproduct of oil
manufacture.In 1966, on the news of his father's death, the then 21-year-old Azim Premji returned
home from Stanford University, where he was studying engineering, to take charge of Wipro. The
company, which was called Western Indian Vegetable Products at the time, dealt in hydrogenated
oil manufacturing but Azim Premji later diversified the company to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient
based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. In the
1980s, the young entrepreneur, recognising the importance of the emerging IT field, took
advantage of the vacuum left behind by the expulsion of IBM from India, changed the company
name to Wipro and entered the high-technology sector by manufacturing minicomputers under
technological collaboration with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation.
Thereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software.

Personal life
Azim was born in Bombay India in a Nizari Ismaili Shia Muslim family with origins from Kutch
in Gujarat His father was a noted businessman and was known as Rice King of Burma. After
partition, when Jinnah invited his father Muhammed Hashem Premji to come to Pakistan, he
turned down the request and chose to remain in India. Premji has a Bachelor of Science in
Electrical Engineering degree (equivalent to a Bachelor of Engineering degree) from Stanford
University, USA. He is married to Yasmeen. The couple have two children, Rishad and Tariq.
Rishad is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of IT Business, Wipro.

Recognition
Premji has been recognised by Business Week as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs for being
responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world's fastest growing companies.
In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
In 2006, Azim Premji was awarded Lakshya Business Visionary by National Institute of Industrial
Engineering, Mumbai.] In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University
in Middletown, Connecticut for his outstanding philanthropic work. In 2015, Mysore University
conferred an honorary doctorate on him.
In 2005, the Government of India honoured him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his
outstanding work in trade and commerce.
In 2011, he has been awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by the
Government of India. In 2013, he received the ET Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2015, University of Mysore conferred the honorary doctorate to Azim Premji. Listen to the
citation read out at the 95th convocation held on 17 April 2015

Philanthropy
Azim Premji Foundation And University
In 2001, he founded Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit organisation, with a vision to
significantly contribute to achieving quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable,
humane and sustainable society. The works in the area of elementary education to pilot and
develop 'proofs of concept' that have a potential for systemic change in India's 1.3 million
government-run schools. A specific focus is on working in rural areas where the majority of these
schools exist. This choice to work with elementary education (Class I to VIII) in rural
government-run is a response to evidence of educational attainment in India.
The non-profit organisation set up by Premji in 2001 currently functions across Karnataka,
Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh,
in close partnership with various state governments. The foundation has worked largely in rural
areas, to help contribute to the improvement of quality and equity of school education.
In December 2010, he pledged to donate $2 billion for improving school education in India. This
has been done by transferring 213 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd, held by a few entities
controlled by him, to the Azim Premji Trust. This donation is the largest of its kind in India.
The Azim Premji University was established under an act of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly
to run programmes to develop education and development professionals, offer alternative models
for educational change and also invest in educational research to continuously stretch the
boundaries of educational thinking.