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Azim Premji: DQ IT Man of The Year 1999

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Long

before the family-controlled business opened up to professional

advice, a 21-year-old drop-out from the Stanford University, took

over a fledgling cooking oil company after the untimely demise of

his father. And with him came professional managers in the business.

From a Rs 7 crore cooking oil company in 1966, Wipro today is a

Rs 2,000 crore giant, which commands a market capitalization of

over Rs 20,000 crore. Meet DATAQUEST IT Man of the Year 1999–54-year-old

Azim Hasham Premji, Chairman, Wipro Corp.

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From

a cooking oil company  to an IT giant, it has been  a

long way on divergent roads for Premji. He is an entrepreneur who

is in the area of technology. As Premji said in the course of a

lecture, “I am not a technologist, but an entrepreneur in the area

of technology. As an entrepreneur, however, I have had a ring side

view of the vast, exciting changes that have swept across the face

of information technology.” He may not be a technologist or a technocrat

per se, but Premji is a strategist and one of the best businessmen

that India has seen. He is a person who lends his vision and strategies

to not just one line of business, but to multiple lines. And this

is what has made him what he is today. Today, Wipro and Azim Premji

are synonyms and role models for the new generation entrepreneurs.

Not as the maverick family-controlled businessman, but as the strategist

and the copybook entrepreneur who never took defeat in his stride.

And

Thus Spake Premji...

On

management style




We believe in empowering our employees so that they grow

the organization and grow with the organization. Every employee

is empowered and accountable. What is accountable is the profitability

of the decisions and actions.

On personal

contribution to Wipro




I would like to consider my contribution to Wipro as recruiting

the best talent right from the early stages of Wipro; and

in nurturing a value-based, high integrity, professionally

managed company.

On Wipro’s

key contribution to 



the country



Wipro has shown that in India we can be a successful

global company; be totally transparent in our business dealings

and working within the precincts of the law.

On world

business leaders



I admire business leaders who have built up their

companies by applying innovative solutions and delighting

customers with products and services they did not even dream

about.

On the

single most critical element in the success of Indian IT industry




Most decidedly, the skilled and talented base of Indian engineers
and professionals, especially in software. Traditionally,

Indians have a mathematical bent of mind. Our educational

systems for higher studies is superior in its standard of

teaching than most of the other countries and the sheer number

of students who pass out such institutions in India is sizable.

These graduates form the base for the requirement of software

professionals.

Premji  began his career by taking

over Western India Vegetable Products after the death of his father.

He was a few months shy of his bachelor’s degree in engineering

at Stanford. He might have stayed on in the US, hoping to land a

job in the World Bank. But destiny didn’t allow him that and he

plunged head-on into a business of which he had no knowledge–the

cooking oil trade. He defied all business logic at that time and

instead of wooing and cajoling the bureaucrats who controlled industrial

production, Premji decided to focus on consumers eliminating middlemen.

“In the last 52 years, we have built a very successful corporation.

However, people and organizations live for the future. We believe

that it is the customer who really has the choice to grant us the

future,” says Premji, speaking about the way Wipro has grown to

be what it is today.

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His philosophy for the future is very

clear. Integrity and the customer are of paramount importance and

will continue to remain so. “In the future, what will remain unchanged

is the need of the customer for an organization with a human face.

An organization that offers a variety of expert, innovative and

value-for-money products and services that touch the essential to

intelligent aspects of human life. An organization that delivers

these values on a strong foundation of integrity,” he says. And

this is what has driven the company towards its goal–applying thought,

day after day.

Premji, like many industrialists of

his time, did venture into different lines of business–from soaps

to hydraulic fluid, lighting, baby powder and finance. During the

late seventies, at a time when multinational companies like IBM

were leaving India, Premji,  true to his style, did not think

twice before jumping on to the IT bandwagon. Today, he is the richest

Indian. And he took a route which others dreaded–to get into branded

software products. He burnt his fingers in the process and it took

him nearly a decade to get into what is today considered the bedrock

of his and the company's earnings–software services. But it was

the consumer care business that gave him financial strength and

facilitated further diversification of the company into IT and healthcare

technology services. “The consistent excellent profitability of

the consumer care business enabled the company to invest in new

businesses,” says Premji.

More

about Premji

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