Chairman Azim Premji led by example, and for WiproNSE 0.54 % employees, he was a professional who backed his staff to take the decisions that would go on to make the IT services provider what it is today.
In fact, Premji credited the thousands of Wipro employees who had shaped and built a successful, ethical and socially-responsible organisation in the letter announcing his retirement.
The company may have faced obstacles, but Premji trusted his colleagues and backed them as long as they had done enough homework.
“The first thing is his intensity. He has a never-say-die attitude. I have never seen anything like that,” said Dilip Ranjekar, CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, who has worked with Premji for over 43 years. “The second thing is his professionalism. He is a proprietor, yet extremely professional. He ran the organisation on merit and facts.”
Ranjekar added: “The other thing is his extremely middle-class values. There is no flashiness, no flaunting. He knows that what he does or doesn’t do affects the organisation. He always ran a tight ship at Wipro.”
Wipro created the largest number of executives who went on to become successful managers across the IT industry. “The freedom he gave helped us to become better decision makers,” says a former CEO, who had worked in Wipro.
KK Natarajan, the chairman of MindtreeNSE 0.73 %, who was a Wipro campus hire in 1981, said Premji’s rigour and attention to detail was a great lesson that he applied in his journey as a manager. “He also gave space to his people. There is nothing you cannot disagree with Mr Premji. You can disagree with him in a public forum, and once a decision is taken, he doesn’t carry anything into a future interaction,” Natarajan, who quit Wipro to help cofound Mindtree, said.
Premji also inspired him to be more philanthropic, Natarajan said, which meant not just writing a cheque, but addressing the most difficult problems, such as primary education, and delivering results.
“What stands out about Azim Premji is that he is a very humane person. He never asked us to do anything which we would ever be ashamed of,” said Sudip Banerjee, Independent Director of LTI, who spent nearly 25 years with the company and last served as president of its enterprise solutions business. “It was a real privilege to work with him when the IT services industry started taking off from India. I always admired his sense of integrity and fairness.”
Banerjee recalled how Premji had once driven him half-way home and had hailed a cab for the rest of his journey. “I said, do not embarrass me anymore.”
“Azim Premji’s extraordinary leadership of Wipro for over 50 years, his pioneering role in the global IT industry, and his unique contribution by demonstrating that businesses can be successful while being committed to integrity, have made him a legend,” Abidali Z Neemuchwala, CEO of Wipro, wrote in a letter. He said, one of the “greatest privileges of my life has been to work with Azim Premji.”
