Top 50 Azim Premji Quotes

You cannot underestimate the value of luck in success in life. And I’ve really learned to appreciate that.

Wipro Arabia is a joint venture company with Dar Al Riyadh, a well-diversified group in Saudi Arabia.

I think the most important reason for our success is that very early in our quest into globalisation, we invested in people – and we have done that consistently and particularly in the service business.

Wipro is one of the fastest growing companies regionally and globally, and I am personally very excited with our journey in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I have never had the need or thrill for being wealthy.

What we are doing is we are putting in significant training into the people we have currently to upgrade their skill resources, upgrade the presentation resources, and upgrade what we expect from them in terms of not business as usual.

Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other.

Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education.

I strongly believe that those of us who are privileged to have wealth should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.

The responsibility of philanthropy rests with us. The wealthier we are, the more powerful we get. We cannot put the entire onus on the government.

People are realistic enough to appreciate what the market values of different people are.

We get first-rate faculty members from the leading engineering and science institutes to train our people.

You need a commitment which is long term and a commitment to leadership, because that’s the only way you build excellence.

I feel that business leaders with their ability to create businesses, with their ability to scale, need to play an important role in social service.

The Indian community in Canada has integrated much better than the Indian community in United States. They’ve become really Canadian at the same time as keeping all their Indian characters and customs and social groups.

The important thing about outsourcing or global sourcing is that it becomes a very powerful tool to leverage talent, improve productivity and reduce work cycles.

The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.

I can speak English. I can speak Hindi. I can understand one or two other languages.

You cannot have a society where you spend more than you earn. I mean, it’s just fundamentally not viable in the long run.

Being in the consumer business helps us groom talent in areas like marketing, finance and logistics. We can benchmark our outsourcing business to our consumer business and its best practices.

When you are under pressure, you make the bold steps faster; you don’t make the bold steps slower.

We understand how to build and manage businesses that involve technology, engineering, and people at a large scale on a global platform.

You can do clean business in India.

The importance of this success of Wipro has become manifold more, because it’s the success of Wipro that enables the possibility of making a difference to some of the most disadvantaged people in the world.

The success of Wipro has made me a wealthy person.

Our experience is that it is not terribly difficult to do business in China. But the issue is, how much stability do you have in terms of what you negotiate up front and when you’ve got your feet and your investments on the ground.

The principal challenge we face is to go up the value- and domain-skill chain and build a strong consultancy front end and, also, to globalize our leadership much more.

Saudi Arabia has proved to be the growth engine for Wipro.

When I took over the family business, it had already been a publicly traded company for 20 years. During one of the first annual meetings I attended, one shareholder stood up and advised me and everyone in attendance that I should resign.

Over these years, I have irrevocably transferred a significant part of the shareholding in Wipro, amounting to 39% of the shares of Wipro, to a trust.

Certain product lines are more suited to be manufactured in proximity with the customer, while others are more suitable to be manufactured in India.

What is excellence? It is about going a little beyond what we expect from ourselves. Part of the need for excellence is imposed on us externally by our customers. Our competition keeps us on our toes, especially when it is global in nature.

Frankly, I don’t know how many companies there are, globally, which are truly global.

Technical people tend to be more ‘techie,’ and management people are more ‘managerial.’

This whole issue of Hindu–Muslim in India is completely overhyped.

How can you contribute towards building the Indian society and the Indian nation? No better way than to upgrade the quality of young people in school, particularly the schools which are run by the state government in the villages.

The public/private partnerships are taking various forms in India. It is individuals who are socially oriented are setting up schools. They’re setting up colleges. They’re setting up universities. They’re setting up primary-education schools in the villages, particularly the villages their original families came from.

Excellence is a great starting point for any new organisation but also an unending journey.

People are beginning to realize that education is power, that education is money, that education is an opportunity.

Customers are now driven by trying to optimize value.

Ecology and economy are becoming inextricably entwined, and the world is becoming more conscious of this fact.

You cannot get into business for the fashion of it.

Private sector cannot substitute the role of the government in primary education.

You have students in America, in Britain, who do not want to be engineers. Perhaps it is the workload, I studied engineering, and I know what a grind it is.

The U.K. and the U.S. are quite similar in that they have high-productivity, English-speaking workforces who don’t mind working long hours. Working in those countries is not a problem.

The test of our social commitment and humanity is how we treat the most powerless of our fellow citizens, the respect we accord to our fellow human beings. That is what reveals our true culture.

With the attention I got on my wealth, I thought I would have become a source of resentment, but it is just the other way around – it just generates that much more ambition in many people.

If there are differences of views or divergence of ideas, they can be resolved through discussion and dialogue.

The old boys’ club of closed tennis court relationships is on the way out.

I was studying at Stanford University with two quarters left to go before receiving an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Then, I got the telephone call from my mother. I had no choice. I went home, and I jumped into the company feet first, right from day one. There was no time to grieve my father.