Azim Premji, The World’s Third-Largest Donor To Coronavirus Relief
Indian-born billionaire, Azim Premji is an engineer, businessman and philanthropist.
He was born in 1945 to Muhammed Hashim Premji (who everyone referred to as the ‘Rice King of Burma’). His father established the Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd that has become the $7 billion company known to the world as Wipro.
Muhammed Hashim Premji died when his son, Azim Premji was only 21 years old. At that time, Azim was studying Electrical Engineering at Stanford University but had to rush back home to take control of his father’s company.
In 1966 when Azim Premji took over the business, the company produced only hydrogenated cooking fats. He expanded the company’s product line to include hydraulic cylinders, soaps, baby toiletries and lighting products. He then changed the name to Wipro in 1977.
Azim saw a business opportunity in the Indian IT space when International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) left the country. He diversified Wipro into an IT business, starting with the manufacturing of microcomputers under a technology-sharing agreement with US-based Sentinel Computers. They soon started to offer software solutions.
He further diversified into the manufacturing of lamps, powders, oil-based natural ingredients, medical and diagnostic equipment, and IT hardware products such as printers and scanners in the early 90s.
Under his leadership, Wipro’s revenue grew from around $2 million in the late 1960s to around $8.4 billion in 2019, with IT contributing around 75% of total revenue. In 2019, Azim Premji stepped down from his position as company chairman and his son, Rishad took over his position. His other son, Tariq is a non-executive director at the company.
Azim Premji has been fiercely involved in philanthropy. He founded his non-profit organisation, Azim Premji Foundation in 2001. He has personally donated about $21 billion dollars over the course of 19 years to the foundation.
The foundation that primarily focuses on improving elementary education has stretched out its activities to provide funds for coronavirus. Since the coronavirus outbreak, the foundation has reached over 7.8 million people in over 26 states in India, providing them with food, dry rations and hygiene items.
According to a report from Forbes, Premji is the world’s third-largest donor to coronavirus relief, coming in after Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey and Microsoft founder and his wife, Bill and Melinda Gates. As of May 2020, the billionaire had donated a total of $132 million to coronavirus relief.
The Azim Premji Foundation also collaborated with the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR) and the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) to enable free COVID-19 testing to people from disadvantaged and marginalized communities.
For most of his life, Azim Prejim has been dedicated to touching lives and helping people maintain a better standard of living. With his donations to the fight against Coronavirus, he has once again affected millions of lives positively and left a mark in the world.
Writer: Mofijesusewa Samuel
Designer: Kume Akpubi
