He was an undergrad student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, USA but couldn't complete his degree due to the sudden demise of his father, he was called upon to handle the family business. In, 1966, after his father's death, when he was just 21, Azim Premji joined Wipro, his father's vegetable oil business.

In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India. He was also adjudged the Business Man of the Year 2000 by Business India. He is a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India.

Wipro

Wipro, a company that initially dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and consumer products, expanded into computer software under Premji and from a 1.5 million USD company, is now ranked among the top 100 technology companies globally with turnover exceeding 2.3 billion USD. Wipro is world largest independent R&D Service provider.

Premji's Asia and Global ranking

In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He was also among the 50 richest people in the world from 2001 to 2003 according to Forbes. According to a 2003 BBC report, he is "regarded as an Indian Bill Gates". In April 2004, he was rated among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. His assets include 84% holding in Wipro Technologies (the remaining belonging to the cofounder of Wipro). In January 2006, he was the 10 richest man in the world.

In 2005, Premji was awarded the Padma Bhushan.

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

Azim Premji Foundation

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. It believes that "Education is the vital element in the development and progress of our nation".

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."

Learning Curve is a newsletter from the Azim Premji Foundation. The aim behind this Foundation's involvement in schools isn't merely to promote Information Technology education, but rather to improve 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. Cost of installation and maintenance is lower because of a single CPU (central processing unit). Total cost of ownership -- including power consumption, UPS capacity and battery backup -- is reported to be "substantially lower" compared to regular personal computers.

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