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