Azim Premji

Azim Hashim Premji was born on July 24, 1945, in Bombay (now Mumbai), into a prosperous Gujarati Muslim family. His father, Mohamed Hashem Premji, known as M.H. Premji, had founded Western India Vegetable Products Limited in 1945—a company that made cooking oils and soaps under the brand Sunflower Vanaspati. The family belonged to the Ismaili Khoja community, and young Azim grew up in privilege but also discipline, shaped by his father's exacting standards and strong ethics.

Premji attended St. Mary's School in Mumbai and later the prestigious Lawrence School in Lovedale, Tamil Nadu, where he was known as a quiet, methodical student. In 1963, he enrolled at Stanford University to study electrical engineering. He was in his final year when tragedy struck: his father died suddenly of a heart attack in 1966. At just 21, Premji made the wrenching decision to leave Stanford—six months short of his degree—and return to India to take over the family business. He would later complete a Bachelor of Science in Engineering through correspondence from Stanford in 1999, finally closing that chapter three decades later.

When Premji returned to India in 1966, Western India Vegetable Products was a regional cooking oil manufacturer with revenues around $2 million and fewer than 350 employees. The company's future was uncertain; some board members doubted whether a 21-year-old could lead it. Premji spent his first years mastering operations, modernizing production, and diversifying into soaps, toiletries, and hydraulic cylinders. He worked long hours, learned by doing, and developed a reputation for personal austerity and attention to detail.

The pivotal moment came in the late 1970s. When IBM exited India in 1977 after the government imposed strict equity rules on foreign firms, Premji saw an opening. He steered the company into IT hardware, manufacturing minicomputers under technology partnerships. In 1982, the company officially changed its name to Wipro (a contraction of Western India Products). Through the 1980s, Wipro built computers, printers, and networking equipment, positioning itself as an Indian technology player during the license-raj era.

The liberalization of India's economy in 1991 unlocked Wipro's global potential. Premji bet heavily on software services and IT consulting, targeting international clients who needed offshore programming talent. Wipro became one of the early giants of India's IT boom, alongside Infosys and TCS. Under Premji's leadership, the company adopted rigorous quality standards—Wipro was among the first in the world to achieve SEI CMM Level 5 certification—and expanded into financial services, healthcare IT, cloud computing, and consulting. By the 2000s, Wipro employed more than 150,000 people and served clients across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Premji himself became a billionaire many times over, yet continued to live modestly, fly economy class on many trips, and famously avoid ostentation.

In 2001, Premji established the Azim Premji Foundation, initially as a modest effort to support primary education in Karnataka's rural districts. The foundation's early work involved direct school improvement programs, teacher training, and curriculum development. What began as a pilot quickly grew. Premji saw that India's public education system—serving over 200 million children, the majority from poor and marginalized families—suffered from underinvestment, poorly trained teachers, crumbling infrastructure, and bureaucratic inertia. Private philanthropy, he believed, could help fix systemic problems if it worked alongside government rather than displacing it.

In 2010, Premji made his first transformative pledge: he transferred 213 million Wipro shares, then worth about $2 billion, to the foundation's endowment. The move signaled that his commitment was permanent and institutional, not fleeting charity. He announced he would give away at least half his wealth during his lifetime—one of the first Indian billionaires to take the Giving Pledge, initiated by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

In 2013, Premji transferred an additional tranche of shares worth roughly $2.3 billion. Then, in March 2019, he made his largest donation yet: 34% of Wipro's shares, valued at $7.5 billion, bringing his total philanthropic commitment to about $21 billion. The foundation's endowment became one of the largest in the world, generating annual income to fund education programs at scale and in perpetuity. Premji retained only a small portion of his Wipro stake, deliberately choosing to redistribute wealth rather than accumulate dynastic fortune.

The Azim Premji Foundation operates across more than 50 districts in seven Indian states: Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. Its mission is to contribute to quality and equity in India's public schooling system, especially for children from economically and socially disadvantaged communities. The foundation's programs focus on teacher professional development, curriculum and pedagogy reform, school leadership training, and research into what works in low-resource settings.

In 2010, Premji established Azim Premji University in Bangalore, a not-for-profit university dedicated to education, development, and public service. The university offers undergraduate and postgraduate programs in education, public policy, law, and development, and has trained thousands of teachers, school leaders, and development professionals. It also houses research centers focused on learning outcomes, governance, and equity in education.

Beyond education, the foundation expanded into health and nutrition, supporting district health systems, community health workers, and maternal and child nutrition programs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation mobilized resources to support migrant workers, provide food relief, and strengthen public health infrastructure in underserved areas. Premji's approach has been patient, evidence-driven, and deeply collaborative with state governments, emphasizing sustainability and systemic change over quick wins.

Premji has received numerous honors for his business leadership and philanthropy. The Indian government awarded him the Padma Bhushan in 2005 and the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honor, in 2011. In 2013, he received one of France's highest distinctions, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor), for his contribution to developing the IT industry in India and his philanthropic work.

Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. He has been recognized by Forbes, Fortune, and other publications as one of Asia's most powerful and respected business leaders. In 2019, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by Carnegie Mellon University in recognition of his global impact on technology and education. Premji has consistently appeared on lists of the world's greatest philanthropists, often ranking alongside Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and other major donors in terms of total giving relative to wealth.

Azim Premji's legacy is dual and intertwined: he built one of India's most enduring technology companies and then redirected the wealth it created toward India's most vulnerable children. In doing so, he set a powerful example for India's new generation of billionaires, showing that fortunes built in a developing economy carry a moral obligation to reduce inequality and expand opportunity.

Premji retired as Wipro's executive chairman in 2019, handing operational leadership to his son Rishad and a professional management team. But his philanthropy continues to accelerate. The Azim Premji Foundation now works directly with over 350,000 teachers and indirectly reaches millions of students. Azim Premji University has become a leading institution for educators and development practitioners, embedding a culture of research, equity, and public service.

Premji's life story—from a young man called home from Stanford to rescue a cooking oil company, to a technology titan, to one of history's most generous philanthropists—illustrates a particular model of success: patient capital, long-term thinking, ethical rigor, and the conviction that private wealth should serve public purpose. He rarely gives speeches, avoids the limelight, and continues to live simply. His legacy is not in words but in institutions: a company that created hundreds of thousands of jobs, a foundation that is reshaping millions of lives, and a university training the next generation to do the same.