The IT boom has created many giants in the business and some of them have a humble disposition
THE explosion of information technology in the past two decades in India has created a few men of such enormous wealth that the fabled Nizam of Hyderabad of days of yore may look no more than a lord attendant in the country of these new self-made billionaires.
One such person is Azim Premji. At 59, he has the visage of a reticent professor with shock of white hair, but his short sleeves signal a hands-on approach; a good listener with wide-open eyes focused on the interlocutor. He is an a intensely private person. No Rolls Royce rider, he could be the man seated next to you in economy or business class or abreast at a traffic signal in a nondescript car. In his corporate culture, no one travels first class.
His headquarters in Bangalore, India, is a symphony in stone, slate, manicured greens and pools of reflective water; no nonsense architectural frills. The assemblage of buildings appear user-friendly and practical. The ambiance is that of a university campus and this is what it actually is: a seat of learning.
As he walked me out, he opened a door. A class for school teachers was in progress. For Mr Premji, child education and teacher refreshers are the key to his vision for India in the 21st century. Educating the child for Mr Premji is not a pastime but a passion. Not for him the silly banalities of wealth or a broadcast on how he became a world leader in information technology; nor does he pretend to be a guru on politics or a pundit on futurology. To keep up with his status as a workaholic in his chosen field of technology, he has to be a workaholic. But his vision is for an even playing field for every child.
I asked him if he would like to develop Pakistan as a partner in this global enterprise. Yes, he replied. The Middle East is a huge market waiting to be tapped in which he could consider involving us. “But not via Dubai, which is against the spirit of our relationship. We must allow things to normalize,” he says.
Mr Premji’s big break came in the late ‘70s when IBM decided to quit India. This was no great loss: IBM was selling outdated computers and software at monopoly prices. This giant was convinced that they would soon be welcomed back by a penitent India; but in stepped Mr Premji who developed computer hardware partly with help from a small US company. He gathered around him the best people he could find to develop a team to build inexpensive indigenous computers and provide the necessary software.
Having stolen the fire of this technology, the western world became Mr Premji’s oyster, because the costs of operating this new technology in India was just a fraction of the costs in the West. This I think is a historical feat because never before has an advanced technology been raided by a poor Third World country and made into its own. The communication revolution capped this feat. Today, if a New Yorker calls the New York phone directory to enquire a number in New York itself, the answer will come within seconds from an operator in Bangalore. This phenomenon extends to banking amounts, medical prescriptions and many other services known as ‘outsourcing’.
Azim Premji is a Khoja Muslim. His high cheekbone features suggest that his ancestors were not of Indian origin. I asked him how he had acquired a Hindu surname to which he replied that his family must have converted way back in time and retained the business surname by which they were known.
The family was in the cooking oil business and was affluent enough to send him to Stanford University in California. Compelled to return home without a degree at the age of 21 on the death of his father, he assumed charge of the family business in 1966. He got his electrical engineering degree from Stanford in 1999.
His strong ethnical code is a family inheritance. It is in this context that he regards his wealth not as a family heirloom, but as a trust.
The Azim Premji Foundation is India’s largest child-centric developer in multiple local languages. In the current year his CD programmes plan to reach out to two million children and 30,000 teaches in 10,000 schools. An observer estimates that his funding in child-centric programmes is in the reach of about a hundred million dollars. Yet another observer remarked that he was a miser when it came to donating to the popular sort of charity that he does not believe in.
“Keeping the faith,” says Premji, is one of the most important lessons he has learnt in life. “We ran the marathon, but kept winning the 400-meter race in the process. And we did that by keeping the faith,” says he in a letter to his stakeholders. The marathon being the rigorous competition that the older IT business demands and the 400-meter dash being at the cutting edge of innovation in a business, which is all brain and no brawn.
In a business that can turn like quicksilver from gold to bras in no time, if the synergy of faith and innovation is lacking, his company must continue to be the arrowhead of change in the IT services field. The key is to create IT value for customers in a multi-cultural context.
Regarding Indo-Pakistan relations, he considers trade and tourism will drive the Kashmir issue to a lower level of significance. He means to imply that in the context of normalization, it will be easier for India to reach accommodation on prickly issues. Indeed, this very thought was also echoed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, who I also met in Bangalore.
If Azeem Premji sees competition to India in the IT field — and there are at least two other major Indian players — it could be from Pakistan. “It is the same people with the same level of skills. All they need is development.”
The US will continue to be the prime market in the foreseeable future for IT products. His young recruits culled from India’s famous IT institutions have to undergo a rigorous customer orientation and a multi-cultural grounding at the WIPRO university. These colts start at 3.50 lac Pakistani rupees per annum.
Any person of Azim Premji’s importance inevitably attracts the attention of those who believe in violence and clad themselves in all types of severe security arrangements. Not so for low-profile Azim Premji. I could not see single person with a weapon on his premises. Indeed, he rejects security as an infringement on his freedom. But, I am inclined to think otherwise; such wistfulness is the mark of a believer.
The IT boom has created many giants in the business and some of them have a humble disposition 
