Azim Premji

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

“Our business model is primarily that of consulting, engineering, system integration, and managed services.”

“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.”

“We run courses for government school teachers on Sundays. These teachers pay for their own food and stay; the kind of commitment you find in these people is remarkable.”

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

“There's a reasonable amount of traction in college education, particularly engineering, because quite a lot of that is privatized, so there is an incentive to set up new colleges of reasonably high quality.”

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

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

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

“In any software work, you have IT consultancy competence required to build the systems.”

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

“This whole issue of Hindu-Muslim in India is completely overhyped.”

“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.”

“My dad told me he wanted me to join in the business, but nothing was firm. He was quite young when he died, so we hadn't talked about it in depth.”

“Talent is in short supply everywhere. At Wipro, we are training nonengineers to be engineers.”

“There are 600 districts in India. Every district in India has a teacher-training institute.”

“Interestingly, many Indian companies where there's a father-and-son combination are being run as joint CEO organizations because the father has not given up running the company and the son is actively involved in running the company, and there is division of responsibilities.”

“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.”

“A girl child who is even a little bit educated is more conscious of family planning, health care and, in turn, her children's own education.”

“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.”