3. EARLY LIFE…
Premji was born in Bombay, India in
a Gujarati Muslim family. His father was a
noted businessman and was known as Rice
King of Burma. Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
founder of Pakistan, invited his father
Muhammed Hashim Premji to come to
Pakistan, he turned down the request and
chose to remain in India.
4. EDUCATION
Premji has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical
Engineering degree from Stanford University.
5. COMPANY AND CAREER
Premji renamed the company Wipro in 1977,
and in 1979, when the Indian government
asked IBM to leave the country, he began to
steer the company toward the computer
business. Wipro established a number of
successful international partnerships in the
1980s to help it build computer hardware for
sale in India. It was software development,
however, that made the firm so lucrative.
6. Premji built a reputation for
hiring the best people and
providing them with
unparalleled training, and
he took advantage of
India’s large pool of well-
educated software
developers who were
willing to work for much
less money than their
American counterparts.
Wipro concentrated on
developing custom
software for export,
primarily to the United
States.
7. AZIM PREMJI FOUNDATION
In 2001, he founded Azim Premji Foundation, a non-
profit organization.
In December 2010, he pledged to donate US$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. In March 2019, Premji pledged an
additional 34% of Wipro stock held by him to the
foundation. At a current value of about US$7.5 billion,
this allocation will bring the total endowment from him
to the foundation to US$21 billion.
8. In May 2020, the Azim Premji Foundation
collaborated with the National Centre for Biological
Sciences, and the Institute for Stem Cell Science and
Regenerative Medicine for augmenting testing
infrastructure to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
The foundation has warned against scam
emails which claim to be from the foundation and
falsely request donations.
