Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani are currently the richest persons in India and they have been leading the list of richest Indians for the past few years. However if you go back almost a decade, you’ll be able to see Wipro’s former chairperson Azim Premji among the top two richest Indians. Premji has been in the list of richest Indian people for more than two decades now. He has also been among the most generous people that Indians have ever seen. As per EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2023, Azim Premji and family donated more than Rs 1774 crore last year. Azim Premji took the lead of Wipro, one of the leading IT firms in India with a market cap of over Rs 278000 crore, when he was just 21 years old. While Azim Premji is one of the most celebrated Indian industrialists, not many know about his son Rishad Premji, who is now spearheading the company.
After taking the company to new heights for around 53 years, Azim Premji handed over the reins of the multinational company to his son Rishad Premji. Currently staying in Bangalore with his wife and two kids, Rishad Premji took a massive pay cut that nearly halved his annual earnings from the previous year. The Wipro Chairman took a compensation of less than 8 crore ($951,353) in the financial year 2022-23. Rishad reportedly opted for a voluntary pay cut in the view of the negative performance at Wipro’s IT services business. During the Covid-19 pandemic in the year 2019-20, Rishad opted for a 31% pay cut.
Azim Premji’s son Rishad Premji is now the Executive Chairman of Wipro Limited which has more than 250,000 employees in six continents. Rishad joined Wipro in 2007 and worked in several roles before becoming Executive Chairman in 2019. With An MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in economics from Wesleyan University in the US, Rishad Premji served as a Chairman of NASSCOM for the financial year 2018-19.
Rishad is on the boards of Wipro Enterprises Limited (a leading player in FMCG and infrastructure engineering), Wipro-GE (a joint healthcare venture between Wipro and General Electric) and the Azim Premji Foundation (one of the largest not-for-profit initiatives in India). The Foundation, which is focused on improving public school education, works with more than 350,000 government schools across seven states in India.
