Azim Hashim Premji

Azim Premji was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 as per Forbes. Born on July 24, 1945, Azim Hashim Premji was studying Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA when due to the sudden demise of his father, he was called upon to handle the family business. Azim Premji took the reins of family business in 1966 at the age of 21.

Azim Premji

Started as a vegetable oil trading company in 1947 from the old mill founded by Azim Premji's father. He repositioned it and transformed Wipro into a consumer goods valued at $2 million. In 1977, when IBM was asked to leave India, Wipro entered the information technology sector. In 1980 Wipro moved into software development and started developing customized software packages for their hardware customers. His wealth in 2009 was estimated at US$5.7 billion which places him as the fifth richest Indian. As on today Wipro has employee strength of approximately 1 lac.