Azim Hashim Premji (born 24 July 1945) is an Indian businessman and philanthropist, who was the chairman of Wipro Limited.

[5][6] He was responsible for guiding Wipro through four decades of diversification and growth, to finally emerge as one of the global leaders in the software industry.

[17] In December 2024, Premji was ranked 19th on the Forbes list of India’s 100 richest tycoons, with a net worth of $32.2 billion.

[22] In 1945, Muhammed Hashim Premji incorporated Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd, based at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra.

[23] In 1966, on the news of his father's death, the then 21-year-old Azim Premji returned home from Stanford University, where he was studying engineering, to take charge of Wipro.

[24] The company, which was called Western Indian Vegetable Products at the time, dealt in hydrogenated oil manufacturing but Azim Premji later diversified the company to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders.

In the 1980s, the young entrepreneur, recognising the importance of the emerging IT field, took advantage of the vacuum left behind by the expulsion of IBM from India, changed the company name to Wipro and entered the high-technology sector by manufacturing minicomputers in technological collaboration with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation.

[52] In 2022, legal proceedings were initiated by a court in Bengaluru against Azim Premji for alleged corruption.