Born: 24 July, 1945
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Chairman of Wipro
Net Worth: US $15.9 Billion (2012)
Children: Rishad, Tariq
Achievement:
(1) He was twice been listed among the 100 influential people by time magazine.
(2) According to Forbes, he is currently the third wealthiest Indian ad 41st richest i the world.
(3) In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asia week.
(4) The government of India nontenured him with the title of Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce.
Success Story: Azim Hashim Premji, an Indian businessman and chairman of Wipro Limited, was born in 1945, July 24, in Mumbai, India, to a Gujarati Muslim family. He is the son of M. H. Premji who had established Western India Products that would manufacture hydrogenated vegetable fats and oil, hair care soaps, and ethnic ingredient based toiletries.
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. Azim was studying electrical engineering from Stanford University when due to sudden demise of his father, he was called upon to handle the family business. Azim took over the reins of family business in 1966 at the age of 21.
At the first annual general meeting of company attended by Azim, a shareholder publicly advised him to sell his shareholding and give it to a more mature management. Then Azim determined to make Wipro a success story.
Wipro dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and later diversified to bakery fats, baby toiletries, hair care soaps, lighting products and hydraulic cylinders. Thereafter Azim made a focused to software field.
- Premji has been recognized by business week as one of the greatest entrepreneur for being responsible for wipro emerging as one of the fastest growing companies.
- In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of higher education.
- In 2006, Azim was awarded Lakshya Business visionary by national institute of industrial engineering, Mumbai.
- He was awarded a doctor of literature, an honorary degree from Aligarh Muslim University on 18 June 2008.
In 1980, the company interned into IT sector and under a special licence from Sentinel, it started developing computer hardware, software and related items.
It is also one of the world’s largest BPO companies and employs over 22,000 employees. Wipro has won PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMM level 5 certification.
Today, Wipro technologies is the largest independent R&D services provider in the world.
