Azim Premji, at 75, would have been India's second richest man but he gave up a lot

• Premji is one of the world’s most generous billionaires and has also opened his heart and purse strings as India fights the Covid-19 pandemic.
• His charitable initiative — Azim Premji Foundation and Wipro — the IT major he founded — set aside ₹1125 crore to fight the pandemic. This is the biggest donation made by any billionaire in India so far.
• Here’s a look at Azim Premji’s salary over the years and net worth shows the Wipro founder is India’s most generous billionaire

Wipro founder, Azim Premji, whose net worth stands at $6.6 billion, turns 75 today. Premji is one of the world’s most generous billionaires and has opened his heart and purse strings as India fights the Covid-19 pandemic. His charitable initiative — Azim Premji Foundation and Wipro — the IT major he founded — set aside ₹1125 crore to fight the pandemic. This is the biggest donation made by any billionaire in India so far. Azim Premji donated as much as $16 billion of his wealth last year, and that affected the collective wealth number of 102 Indian billionaires.

Premji would have been the second richest man in India after Mukesh Ambani had he not donated 75% of his wealth to charity.

According to Forbes, the wealth of all billionaires in India shrunk by 23% to $313 billion from $406 billion last year. A part of this happened because Premji’s wealth decreased from $22.6 billion in 2019 to $6.1 billion.

A look at Indian tech magnate’s salary, net worth and philanthropic activities

He is one of the pioneers of the multi-billion dollar Indian IT industry. He spearheaded Wipro for 53 years after his return from Stanford University in 1966, at the age of 21.

He transformed a small hydrogenated cooking fat firm into a $8.5 billion global IT powerhouse. All this while, he led the transformation of his non-IT arm Wipro Enterprises into a global FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), infrastructure engineering and medical devices leader with a revenue of $2 billion in 2018-19.

Premji dropped out of Stanford University to handle the business after his father’s death. However, he did return to Stanford 34 years later, to complete his graduation in electrical engineering.