Azim Premji:  DQ IT Man of The Year 1999

Premji

has always believed in hard work and that too, towards a purpose.

Hard work–90 hour workweeks–has made him constantly set new goals

and not only strive for it but also achieve it. He is a man who

has always believed in the continuous process of learning. He searches

for opportunities and grabs them as and when he sees them. For Premji,

it is the power of the mind that is the ultimate wealth, more than

material or capital resources. He hired a man from a truck-making

company and another from a refrigeration company at a time when

he ventured into the computer industry, he sought managers who did

not know computers.

His dreams, visions and imagination

have worked wonders. As he said during one of his lectures, “Accept

the certainty of uncertainty. Things no longer appear in a linear,

predictable manner. Use your imagination. Innovation comes from

it. I do not mean incremental improvement, which is possible through

logical thinking, but generating radically different ideas. This

needs an inventive spirit and the courage to move out of the comfort

zone.” None can dispute this man, for he speaks from his experiences.

With no preparation, he took on a daunting task some three decades

ago. He nurtured and diversified the company, which has grown to

what it is today. Premji had no hand-holding, no peers or extraordinary

ability or resources to look up to. He has achieved success only

through his perseverance, hard work, ideas and vision.

Premji has an uncanny ability to pick

up the right talent, a clinical drive for quality and thrift for

frills. The richest Indian does not have a parking space reserved

for himself at work, drives a Ford Escort, wears Zodiac shirts and

travels by economy class. “We are not a five-star organization.

We are a three-star organization in terms of living style. It is

not the way we travel. It is not the way we spend. It is an important

part of our culture. We have to run tight shifts. We cannot run

tight shifts with a five-star culture,” said Premji in an interview.

He has set an example by leading the way. As Ashok Soota, who headed

his software business for 15 years and quit in August this year

to start his own venture, says, “Premji is unostentatious, he has

no ego. He is a simple man. He has no desire to splurge in any way

and is very cost-conscious both in the company and in his own personal

way.”

Quality has been a way of life. He

has always been a quality-conscious man and has made it imperative

for the organization. With the multiple SEI-CMM Level 5 ratings

and the Six Sigma quality initiative, he is propelling Wipro towards

a defect-free company. He is on a mission to create an orientation

towards high human resources in the system, management of performance,

objective setting and a focus on quality. “In the very first operating

year of Six Sigma, we have achieved a saving of Rs 4.4 crore in

1998-99. This is expected to grow to Rs 15.5 crore in 1999-2000,

while retaining the investments in quality at Rs 3 crore. Today,

most of our critical business processes are around Three Sigma.

By March 2000, we will achieve Four Sigma and by December 2002,

we target Six Sigma in most of our key business processes. We will

judge our progress in this journey by the measure of customer satisfaction,”

says Premji–his views on quality, customers and integrity.

He has an unqualified strength in his

ability to measure the pulse of both customers as well as employees.

“He meets different groups of employees both in informal as well

as formal settings. There is a sacrifice involved in it. If there

is a group gathering for an informal dinner, he would like to meet

them and interact with them,” says Soota.



Despite holding on to 75% of Wipro’s shares, Premji’s style of functioning
is slightly different. Each employee is empowered and accountable.

The head of each business unit is empowered to make decisions and

take actions. “What is accountable is the profitability of such

decisions and actions,” says Premji. Employees gather formally to

discuss the company’s business plans and chart out its future. They

are free to ask questions. “Nothing is sacred,” says Soota. As Premji

points out, “The key to Wipro’s performance is its people and its

continuous pursuit of quality.”

However, there is a perception that

the stock option plan deployed is in pale contrast to what has been

offered in the IT industry. More so, when it is seen that Premji

himself holds 75% of the shares, which leaves little stock to play.

“It is an erroneous perception. Wipro was one of the earliest companies

to give stock options and it has also the shadow stock option plan.

It had a lot of focus on it. Moreover, Wipro has always been a good

paymaster. Comparisons do get made, especially with Infosys. But

this has more precedence recently when stocks have appreciated,”

says Soota, justifying Wipro’s current stock option scheme.

There has been a lot of pressure on

diluting his stocks and spinning off his less-profitable businesses.

Financial analysts have said that if Premji wants to make the company

global, there is no choice but to spin-off its IT business into

another entity and dilute his stocks in it. But Premji in his classic

style has deferred from it. Soota agrees with Premji’s line of approach.

“You should see it from the angle that you do not dilute it for

the sake of diluting. If the company is growing and expansion plans

are taken care of, there is no need for dilution. It is again to

the credit of the management and the style in which it is functioning.

It has been able to grow profitably and hence, they did not have

to go out to tap the capital markets,” he says.

Premji’s style has always been of re-structuring

and re-inventing the business. From tie-ups and alliances, from

products to services, even to the extent of making one of his CEOs

sit in the Silicon Valley, Premji has always gone against logic.

He has relied on his gut instincts with a focus on nurturing a value-based,

high integrity, professionally-managed company. Wipro has embarked

on a brand-building exercise, again under the guidance of Premji.

It saw the launch of a new identity with a vibrant Rainbow Flower

and a positioning statement–Applying Thought. “We saw a tremendous

impact on leveraging our strengths across our multiple businesses

of IT, consumer care, lighting and healthcare technology services,

and presenting ourselves as a single personality which had a unified

face across the corporation. Because we need a common visual face

to convey what we stand for, an identity clearly to communicate

what we deliver, we went in for the Rainbow Flower identity. Our

future is charted by our core values–human values, integrity, innovative

solutions and value for money. These values manifest themselves

through our new corporate identity and a unique symbol,” says Premji

about the new logo and the brand-building exercise. This clearly

reflects the visionary that he is, keeping in mind the challenges

and the significant changes that are going to happen in the new

millennium.

Wipro and Premji have come a long way

from the days when he innovated marketing of hydrogenated cooking

fat in flexible individual packs and expanded the distribution system

to cover rural markets across India. Today, it is known as the infotech

giant, IT being the most high profile of its businesses. In 1998-99,

IT alone contributed 75% to Wipro’s turnover. Consumer care and

lighting business had a share of 21%, with the others contributing

4%. Wipro GE Medical Systems, a JV between Wipro and GE Medical

Systems set up in 1990, had a turnover of Rs 269 crore.

Azim Premji has been the soul behind

the success of shifting, restructuring and reinventing the company

with the customer as the focus point. “After considering our fundamentals,

we have single-mindedly changed our focus from the organization

to the customer,” says Premji.

Premji has always set standards for

himself and has always believed in achieving goals he has set for

the organization. A businessman with a difference, who has a remarkable

understanding of the strategy and adds value to his chief executives

by helping them put in strategies for the future. A man who places

tremendous emphasis on development of people and strongly believes

that the success of Wipro is largely due to its people. There are

no family members working for the group and Premji has made it clear

that his sons, Tariq and Rishad, will have to earn a place in the

company. A man who is a stickler when it comes to hard work, and

doesn’t mind rolling up his sleeves to finish off the task at hand.

A man who lays emphasis on fitness, by going for a morning jog and

if he is not able to fit that in, to climb the stairs to his office.

A man who keeps himself updated on the latest management literature.





An icon of modern day India, Premji galvanized the country’s economy
with his perseverance, hard work, ideas and visions. The global

man with an Indian heart, Premji has reshaped his destiny and charted

a new course by leading by example. He has done all this by transforming

Western India Vegetable Products Ltd from its days at Amalner in

Jalgaon district in Maharashtra into Wipro Corp in the Silicon Valley

of India. We can count ourselves lucky that Premji chose to return

home from the US to set an example and redefine the word ‘business’.

Rajesh

Menon



in Bangalore