Azim Hashim Premji (born July 24, 1945) is the Chairman & CEO of Wipro Technologies, which today is one of the largest software companies in India. It has its headquarters in the Indian Silicon City Bangalore. He was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 by Forbes. His wealth today is estimated at 58,451 crores INR which places him as the fourth richest Indian; behind DLF Chairman Kushal Pal Singh and ahead of Sterlite Chairman [Anil Agarwal].

Early Life

He did his schooling at St. Mary's School I.C.S.E. at Mazagaon, Mumbai. Premji was just finishing his undergraduate engineering studies at Stanford University in 1966 when his father passed away.He had to come back to [India] to handle the family's fledgling vegetable oil business. Premji started off with a simple vision: to build an organization on a foundation of Values. Premji eventually sought - and received - permission to study arts courses by correspondence to complete the requirements for his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering.

Wipro Technologies

Today, Wipro, a company that hydrogenated cooking fats and consumer products, expanded into computer software under Premji and from a 2 million USD company, is now ranked among the top 100 technology companies globally with annual revenues approaching 2.5 billion USD in 2007. Wipro is ranked among the top 100 technology companies in the world and its BPO arm is the largest outsourcing company in India.

Awards and Accolades

In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He was also adjudged the Business Man of the Year 2000 by Business India and is featured in the Business Weeks all-time top 30 entrepreneurs of the world in 2007. He is a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India.

Family

• Wife: Yasmeen Premji
• Sons: Rishad Premji married to Aditi Premji; Tariq Premji

Azim Premji Foundation

The Azim Premji Foundation says it "Aims at making a tangible impact on identified social issues by working in active partnership with the Government and other related sections of the society". The Foundation was set up with financial resources contributed by Azim Premji. Programmes of the Azim Premji Foundation focus on "creating effective and scalable models that significantly improve the quality of learning in the school and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the management of the school". Azim Premji Foundation says it "dedicates itself to the cause of Universalization of Elementary Education in India". The organisation has over the years been instrumental in improving the quality of general education, specially in rural schools.

Citing a technology initiative, the Foundation reported: "Think of a single PC with three display terminals, three keyboards and three 'mouses', which can be simultaneously used as if they are three independent computers". This innovative idea from the Azim Premji Foundation is being deployed in the computer aided learning centre at the Byatarayanapura Higher Primary School in Bangalore South District and in another school.

Five new titles of educational CDs for Indian schools have also been produced earlier in 2005. They are: Friendly Animals and Journey on the Clouds (English), Swatantra Divas, Fun with Chinchoo in Mathematics and Khel-Mel (Hindi), released in February 2005. This makes the total number of master titles available at 70.

There are now 68 titles in Karnataka, 42 for Andhra Pradesh, 35 for Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, 18 for Urdu medium schools, six for Orissa, 14 for Gujarat, 3 for Punjab and 1 for Kerala.

This Foundation is also involved in computer-based assessment in Andhra Pradesh (50,000 students took part in early 2005), a learning guarantee programme, and a policy planning unit in Karnataka.