As the chairman of Wipro Limited, Azim Premji is an Indian businessman, investor, engineer, and philanthropist. The founding chairman and non-executive member of the board is Premji. He is referred to as the Czar of the Indian IT Industry informally. He was in charge of directing Wipro through four decades of diversification and expansion, ultimately helping it to become one of the world leaders in the software sector. He was selected by Asia Week as one of the top 20 men in the globe in 2010. In 2004 and more recently in 2011, Time magazine twice included him on its list of the 100 most influential people. He has long been included in lists of The 500 Most Influential Muslims. He is also the Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University’s Chancellor. He is among the wealthiest persons in India, with a Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimate of his net worth at $24.1 billion. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2013, pledging to donate at least half of his wealth. Premji began by giving the $2.2 billion Azim Premji Foundation, which supported education in India. The Edel Give Hurun India Philanthropy List for 2020 put him at the top. After giving away a significant sum of money to charity in 2019, he fell from the second to the seventeenth spot on the Forbes India Rich List.
Azim Premji Bio/Wiki
Birth Name | Azim Premji |
Nick Name | Azim Premji |
Age | 78 years (As of 2023) |
Religion | Muslim |
Sun Sign/Zodiac Sign | Leo |
Birth Place | Mumbai, India |
Date of Birth | 24 July 1945 |
Nationality | Indian |
Hobbies | Reading Books |
Family |
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Mother's Name | NA |
Father's Name | |
Brother | None |
Sister | None |
Girlfriends/Affairs |
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Affairs/Girlfriends | NA |
Marital Status, Wife and Children |
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Wife/Spouse | |
Marital Status | Married |
Children | Rishad and Tariq. |
Education |
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School | St. Mary's School, Mumbai |
College/University | Stanford University |
Profession | Businessman, Investor, Engineer, and Philanthropist |
Height, Weight, and Figure Measurements |
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Height (Approx.) | 157cm |
Weight (Approx.) | 65 kgs |
Extra Ordinary Features |
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Race / Ethnicity | Indian |
Hair Color | White |
Eye Color | Black |
S*xual Orientation | Straight |
Favourite Things |
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Favourite Food | Hyderabadi |
Favourite Book | Mahabharata |
Favourite Colors | Grey |
Favourite Sport | Cricket |
Controversies | None |
Early life
Premji’s father established Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd. in the year of his birth, which created vanaspati, a popular hydrogenated shortening. After colonial India was divided into primarily Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan three years later, the Premji family, who were Muslims, made the decision to stay in India. Premji’s father passed away unexpectedly in 1966, a few months before he was set to finish his engineering degree at Stanford University. He postponed receiving his diploma and instead went back to India to take over the family firm. He then started to diversify the company by getting into consumer goods including soap, shoes, and lightbulbs as well as hydraulic cylinders. When the Indian government asked IBM to leave the country in 1979, Premji renamed the business Wipro and started to guide it toward the computer industry. In the 1980s, Wipro formed a number of fruitful international alliances to aid in the development of computer hardware for the Indian market. But it was software development that brought in the big bucks for the company. Premji gained a reputation for selecting the best candidates and giving them unmatched training. He also profited from India’s enormous pool of educated software professionals who were ready to work for significantly less money than their American counterparts. Wipro focused on creating specialised software for export, mostly to the US.
Azim Premji Education
Premji graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Yasmeen Premji is his wife. Rishad and Tariq, the couple’s two children, were born. Currently, Wipro’s IT division’s chief strategy officer is Rishad Premji.
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Professional Career
Muhammed Hashim Premji established Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd in 1945. The company is headquartered in Amalner, a tiny village in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district. It used to produce laundry soap with the brand name 787 as well as frying oil under the Sunflower Vanaspati label as a byproduct. After learning of his father’s passing in 1966, Azim Premji, who was 21 at the time and attending Stanford University to study engineering, went home to take over Wipro. Western India Vegetable Products, as the business was then known, manufactured hydrogenated oils. However, Azim Premji later expanded the company’s product line to include baking fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. Wipro’s worth soared in the late 1990s as a result of significant increases in technology stocks, and Premji rose to become one of the richest businessmen in the world—a title he held well into the 21st century. However, more than only external factors inflating the business’s worth contributed to the success of the company and its chairman. At a period when most fortunes in India were founded on ownership of land and factories used to produce things for home consumption, Premji had bravely broken with tradition by developing Wipro into an information technology behemoth with a solid footing in overseas markets. Premji successfully finished his Stanford degree through online learning in 1999. The young businessman changed the company’s name to Wipro and entered the high-technology industry by producing minicomputers in a technological partnership with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation in the 1980s. Recognizing the significance of the developing IT field, the young entrepreneur capitalised on the void left behind by IBM’s expulsion from India. Premji then turned his attention intently away from soaps and onto the software. Premji was credited with making Wipro one of the fastest-growing corporations in the world, earning him a spot on Business Week’s list of the “Greatest Entrepreneurs.” He received an honorary doctorate from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in 2000. The National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, presented Azim Premji with the Lakshya Business Visionary award in 2006. He received an honorary degree in 2009 from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, in recognition of his exceptional philanthropic activities. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from Mysore University. He received the Padma Bhushan award from the Indian government in 2005 for his remarkable contributions to trade and business. He received the Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian honour bestowed by the Indian government, in 2011. He was placed ninth on India Today magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful Indians in 2017 in April. Premji received the highest French civilian honour, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour), from the French government in 2018. Premji was listed as one of the “Heroes of Philanthropy list of 30 altruists” in the Asia-Pacific area by Forbes magazine in December 2019. Premji was ranked among the top philanthropists outside of the US by Forbes in 2019.
Donation
He established the nonprofit Azim Premji Foundation in 2001. He promised to donate $2 billion to India’s school system in December 2010. To accomplish this, 213 million equity shares of Wipro Ltd. owned by a couple of his controlled corporations were transferred to the Azim Premji Trust. The largest donation of its sort has ever been made to India. Premji promised an extra 34% of his Wipro stock to the foundation in March 2019. With this distribution, his endowment to the foundation will equal US$21 billion, at a current value of almost US$7.5 billion. The National Centre for Biological Sciences, the Institute for Stem Cell Science, and the Azim Premji Foundation worked together in May 2020 to strengthen the testing infrastructure to address the coronavirus pandemic. The organisation has issued a warning against bogus donation requests in emails that purport to be from the charity. According to Premji, having money “did not delight” him. He became the first Indian to join the Warren Buffett and Bill Gates-led Giving Pledge, which calls on the richest individuals to pledge to donate the majority of their money to charitable organisations. After Richard Branson and David Sainsbury, he is the third non-American to join this group. I firmly believe that those of us who are fortunate enough to be wealthy should make large contributions to try and improve the lives of the millions of people who are significantly less fortunate. He claimed to have donated more than 25% of his personal wealth to charities as of April 2013. He donated a further 18% of his Wipro investment in July 2015, bringing his overall donation to date to 39 per cent. His lifetime donations total more than US$21 billion. He was the first Indian to sign the Giving Pledge. Azim Premji rose to prominence as India’s leading philanthropist in April 2019.
India Philanthropy List by EdelGive
Hurun India and EdelGive issued a list of “India’s most charitable” people on November 10, 2020, with Azim Premji at the top. He increased his donation by 17 times, from $4.53 billion in FY19 to 79.04 billion in the current fiscal year. His donations are primarily used for education. By giving 9,713 crores ($1.33 billion) in FY21, he kept his job.
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3 Leadership Lessons From Azim Premji
Now that you know all about Azim Premji’s net worth and how he achieved success; let’s take a look at some of the lessons we can learn from him:
Be Smart
The 69-year-old philanthropist believes change is inevitable. And so he advises everyone to develop their early warning system, which sets the alarm and prepares one for the changes ahead.
Know Your Strength
While it is important to know one’s weaknesses, it is equally important to know one’s strengths.
Stick To Your Values
He believes that one’s value system forms the core of the business. Premji has time and again emphasised the need to stick to values because he firmly believes that business success eventually but inevitably follows.
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Azim Premji Net Worth
Azim Premji’s net worth is estimated to be $26 billion as of 2023. Azim Premji owns some houses, cars, and stocks, but Azim Premji has not publicly disclosed all of his assets.
Estimated Net Worth in 2023 (Approx) | $26 billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2022 (Approx) | $24.1 billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2021 (Approx) | $17.5 billion |
Estimated Net Worth in 2020 (Approx) | $6.1 billion |
Annual Salary | >$10 billion |
Assets |
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Houses | |
Cars | |
Jets | NA |
FAQs
How much is the net worth of Azim Premji? $26 billion Who was Azim Premji’s wife? Yasmeen Premji What was Azim Premji’s age? 78 What was the name of Azim Premji’s firm? Wipro