From 'Western Indian Vegetable Products', a small company dealing
with cooking oil, it was rechristened WIPRO, the company it
is now, with revenues crossing over $430 million. It is today
undoubtedly one of India's leading technology companies. And,
believe it or not, the cooking oil company remains to this day,
serving the average urban Indian.
Azim Hasham Premji, due to his father's untimely death, had
to rush to India, giving up his engineering course in the University
of Stanford, USA. He was barely 23 when he took over the operations
of Wipro.
Today, after nearly 25 years, he is an infotech billionaire,
in the true sense of the word, whom India can boast of. Is there
a formula for his global success? Well its simply this - "A
family controlled company which prospered in a protected economy".
Reacting to international competition, he says, "It raises product
quality and expands the market".
He has been an innovator long before he entered the world of
computers. Premji's first task on returning home from Stanford
was to modernise their vegetable oil processing unit. Now, Wipro
is beginning to concentrate on what Premji calls its "domain
skills." The domains which Wipro is concentrating for export
especially to the U.S. are: health care, telecommunications,
enterprise resource planning and data communications.
Although Premji is worth $51 billion, he doesn't flaunt his
wealth. He travels economy class and stays in value-for-money
hotels. Extremely unassuming, he actually climbs seven floors
everyday to reach his office in Du Parc Trinity. And startlingly,
he is the richest Indian, beating Sycamore's Gururaj Deshpande.
7:57:16 AM 
From 'Western Indian Vegetable Products', a small company dealing
with cooking oil, it was rechristened WIPRO, the company it
is now, with revenues crossing over $430 million. It is today
undoubtedly one of India's leading technology companies. And,
believe it or not, the cooking oil company remains to this day,
serving the average urban Indian.
