Bengaluru: It’s a rare milestone when a legendary leader and the company he helped transform into a global IT powerhouse reach the same landmark together. As Azim Premji celebrates his 80th birthday on Thursday, Wipro too is gearing up to mark its 80th anniversary this December—a unique convergence of legacy, leadership, and philanthropy. Premji once dreamt of a career at the World Bank after graduating from Stanford, but the sudden passing of his father, Mohamedhusain Hasham Premji, compelled him to return to India, cut short his education, and take charge of the family business—eventually becoming Wipro’s managing director in 1968 and leading the company until his retirement as chairman in 2019. Billionaires embracing frugality and humility have become commonplace, but Premji placed integrity above all else—a value he imbibed from his father—and firmly believed in leading by example. At Wipro’s Mumbai office, he often chose to walk up fourteen floors instead of taking the elevator—a habit formed during his time at Stanford. For Premji, climbing stairs became his own version of the Harvard Step Test.Stanford CallingAs a student at Stanford, Premji took up a part-time job on campus. He worked night shifts in the cafeteria, cleaning dustbins and plates. “Because one required a supplementation of the exchange my father was able to send me. It was an interesting experience because it gave me, for the first time, the dignity of labour. I never worked before…,” he was quoted in The Story of Wipro: A Journey from 1945. It’s an authoritative book published by Wipro, chronicling the company’s evolution from a family-run manufacturing business to a global IT services firm. He found unexpected perks in his modest night shift as a telephone operator—minimal calls, a light workload, and just enough quiet time to study. “It wasn’t too intense—the phone would barely ring ten to 12 times a night since only urgent and emergency calls could go through. So, if you had girlfriends calling up, you had to monitor those calls and cut them. The load was not heavy, and the salary was very little too. But you could study during that time. It was a luxury to be able to catch up with work,” he was quoted in Wipro’s official chronicle.Early DaysGrowing up in Mumbai, Premji loved playing sports, splitting his time between cricket fields and tennis courts at the Willingdon Club. When he returned to India, Premji took many calculated risks and set ambitious goals that captured the true spirit of entrepreneurship. One notable sceptic was a Wipro shareholder who predicted Premji would run Western India Vegetable Products into the ground. “But for me at that point, the statement was a challenge. I made up my mind to prove him wrong, and with each passing day, my resolve strengthened,” he said in The Story of Wipro.It was a journey between two worlds. From the progressive campuses of California to the dusty, remote town of Amalner in Maharashtra, Premji navigated stark contrasts. The harsh summers made the transition even more difficult—temperatures often soared to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, power cuts were constant, and air conditioners were a luxury he couldn’t afford. Undeterred, he set ambitious goals, benchmarking Western India Vegetable Products against industry giant Hindustan Unilever—a bold and unheard-of move in the 1960s.Until the late 1970s, Premji focused on leading Wipro’s vanaspati (vegetable ghee) business and reinvented its flagship consumer brand, Sunflower. For the first time, he enlisted the services of advertising agency Hindustan Thompson Associates. Premji’s quiet charm and conviction won them over, and the first Sunflower advertisement was rolled out in 1977. For Premji, the consumer business was “more fun”—building the Santoor and Sunflower brands. “We got an offer for Santoor from Unilever, which we turned down. When our market cap peaked (in 2000), I went back to Keki Dadiseth (former Chairman of Hindustan Unilever) and said I want to buy Unilever. And we were something like 70% of the value of Unilever globally—$65 billion here, and Unilever’s market cap was $70 billion or $80 billion,” he was quoted as saying in Wipro’s chronicle.Putting Wipro on the Global IT MapGovt policy was a key reason for Premji’s diversification beyond the vanaspati business, paving the way for Wipro’s transformation. The IT business was a planned diversification. Asked to meet impossible conditions in 1977, many MNCs—including IBM—shut down operations in India. Public sector units held a strong presence; Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL), for example, was established in 1967. Ashok Narasimhan, a former Tata executive, began drafting the business plan for Wipro’s new venture. IISc played a crucial role in launching Wipro’s minicomputers in 1981. Premji incubated Wipro’s electronics project at IISc, and by 1980, Narasimhan and Premji persuaded Sridhar Mitta of ECIL to build the team from scratch. Wipro Infotech’s first independent office was established on Dickenson Road. “This really was the birth of our IT business—what is now the globally successful business by which Wipro is most known across the world. So, it would be quite accurate to say that the Wipro IT business was born in IISc,” said Premji during IISc’s convocation ceremony in 2019, as quoted on Connect IISc’s website.The breakthrough sale of Wipro’s first minicomputer Series 86 began in 1982 during a meeting with United Breweries promoter Vittal Mallya and his son Vijay Mallya. After lengthy discussions, Vijay Mallya requested two additional computers and planned to finalise the deal on a flight to New Delhi. The Rs 25 million deal marked a significant milestone for Wipro.Sun Microsystems was one of Wipro’s top customers at the time, and its former president Ashok Soota built that relationship from the ground up. Wipro established a service centre called Orbit 1, marking its first venture into offshore services. “Wipro set up Orbit 1, an R&D centre to support Sun. It was the first time ever that Sun allowed support services to operate away from its own premises. It was pretty easy …(because), Wipro was a company we knew and trusted,” Scott McNealy, cofounder of Sun, was quoted in the Story of Wipro. The initial and later bets paid off handsomely. By 2003-04, Wipro’s IT business crossed $1 billion, and by 2011 it grew into a $7 billion enterprise.Wipro’s joint venture with GE Healthcare drives cutting-edge medical equipment innovation. Back then, Chuck Pieper of GE Medical Systems said, “I had to find a team (in India) that could give us 80% of the functionality of Japan at 50% of its cost,” he was quoted in The Story of Wipro. After vetting 10 businesses, he shortlisted two: Wipro and another company in the national capital.On the occasion of the GE team’s visit to Bengaluru, Wipro leaders discovered that the rival Delhi team made a strong impression. Premji, a longtime observer of GE, intervened by writing to Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of GE, emphasising the importance of integrity at Wipro. Within hours, the GE team confirmed their visit. “We chose Wipro for a variety of reasons, but mainly because Pieper fell in love with Premji, with his quiet charm and engineering capability,” said Welch, quoted in the Wipro chronicle. “Premji was a perfect partner.”Giving It BackPremji is regarded as one of India’s foremost philanthropists. In 2009-10, Premji transferred 9% of Wipro shares to a trust supporting his philanthropic entities at the Azim Premji Foundation. In 2010, Premji said, “I decided to give away most of my wealth to the foundation. My family got behind it fully. We have never been a greedy family,” he wrote in The Story of Wipro. In 2019, the total value of the philanthropic endowment corpus was $21 billion, including 67% economic ownership of Wipro. Premji’s “giving back” mission embodies the very spirit of Wipro—rooted in purpose, responsibility, and service.
