How Azim Premji Turned Cooking Oil Into a Technology Empire

In 1966, Azim Premji left Stanford University to take over his family's vegetable oil business after his father's sudden death. What followed was one of the most remarkable corporate reinventions in Indian history. Premji did not simply grow the company. He reimagined it entirely, steering Wipro from sunflower oil and soaps into computers, software, and eventually global IT services, all while building a reputation for ethical leadership that remains rare in any industry.

The Boy Who Had No Choice

Hasham Premji built Western India Vegetable Products Ltd into a reliable, modest business. It made cooking oil. It was steady, it was respected, and it was enough. Then in 1966, Hasham died of a sudden heart attack, and everything changed overnight.

His son Azim was 21 years old and studying electrical engineering at Stanford University in California. He came home. There was no dramatic announcement, no press conference. He simply got on a plane, returned to Bombay, and walked into his father’s office. The company had around 700 employees depending on it. Azim Premji became their chairman before he had even finished his degree.

Most people in that position would have held on tightly to what already worked. The oil was selling. The soaps were doing fine. But Premji looked at India and saw something that others were still squinting to find.

Reading India Before India Knew What It Was Becoming

The early 1980s were a turning point for India’s relationship with technology. The government had been deeply suspicious of foreign tech companies. When IBM was asked to leave India in 1977 because it refused to dilute its equity stake as required by FERA regulations, it left an enormous vacuum in the market. Computers were needed. The country had no dominant local player to fill that gap.

Premji saw it clearly. India was going to need homegrown technology solutions, and fast. In 1981, he made the decision that would define everything. Wipro shifted its focus and began manufacturing minicomputers under a license from an American company called Sentinel Computers. This was not a reckless gamble. It was a calculated read of national policy, market timing, and industrial need all at once.

What made Premji different from other businessmen of his era was that he never abandoned discipline for ambition. He kept the consumer goods division running. Wipro still made Santoor soap, sunflower oil, and hydraulic cylinders. He did not blow up the foundation to build the new structure. He built the new structure on top of the foundation, brick by brick.

The Ethic That Built the Empire

There is a story that circulates among former Wipro employees about Premji’s early years running the company. He was known to personally review expense claims. Not because he was petty, but because he believed that the character of a company is revealed in its smallest transactions. If a manager inflated a travel bill, that was a signal about how that manager would handle a client’s trust, a vendor’s contract, or a team member’s career.

This obsession with integrity shaped Wipro’s culture from the inside out. At a time when Indian business was often defined by connections, favors, and opaque dealings, Premji was running a company where the rules applied to everyone including him.

Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys and a contemporary of Premji’s in building India’s IT sector, once described Premji’s ethical standards as a benchmark that the entire industry quietly looked up to. That reputation became a business asset. Global clients trusted Wipro in ways that are difficult to manufacture through marketing alone.

The Software Bet That Changed Everything

By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Premji had already seen that hardware would eventually become commoditized. The real value was going to live in software and services. Wipro shifted again, this time into software development and IT services, positioning itself to serve international clients who were looking for skilled, English-speaking engineers at competitive rates.

The timing aligned perfectly with the explosion of Y2K remediation contracts in the late 1990s. Global companies were scrambling to fix software before the year 2000, and Indian IT firms were ready. Wipro was among the best prepared. The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000, making Premji one of the wealthiest people in Asia almost overnight.

According to a report by NASSCOM, India’s IT industry grew from roughly $150 million in export revenue in 1991 to over $100 billion by 2012. Wipro was one of the three companies most responsible for building that trajectory, alongside Infosys and TCS. What had started as a cooking oil company in Maharashtra was now competing with the largest technology service providers in the world.

The Man Who Gave It All Away

Perhaps the most unexpected chapter in Premji’s story is not about the money he made, but about the money he gave away. In 2019, Premji donated shares worth approximately $7.5 billion to his philanthropic foundation, bringing his total lifetime giving to over $21 billion. This made him the most generous individual in Indian history and one of the most philanthropic people alive anywhere on the planet.

The Azim Premji Foundation focuses on public education in rural India, working with government schools across multiple states. Premji has spoken publicly about the fact that he does not believe inherited wealth serves society well. He signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, becoming one of the first Indians to do so.

His son Rishad Premji now leads Wipro as Executive Chairman. The handover was quiet and methodical, exactly the way Azim Premji did everything.

A Legacy Written in Two Languages

Azim Premji’s story is written in two very different languages. One is the language of business strategy, market timing, regulatory awareness, and financial discipline. The other is the language of character, of a man who never seemed interested in being celebrated, who flew economy class long after he could afford a private jet, and who believed that how you treat a junior employee on a Tuesday afternoon matters more than what you say in an annual report.

India’s technology sector owes a great deal to the structural bets made in the 1980s and 1990s. But the quieter debt is cultural. Premji showed that an Indian company could operate at global scale without abandoning its values. That proof mattered enormously to an industry that was just learning to believe in itself.

Quick Comparison Table

Curious Indian: Fast Facts

• Azim Premji left Stanford University in 1966 without completing his degree. He returned decades later to receive an honorary doctorate from the same institution.
• Wipro’s original full name was Western India Vegetable Products Limited.
• Premji was known for flying economy class on domestic flights even after becoming a billionaire, a habit that surprised many corporate visitors.
• The Azim Premji Foundation has directly impacted education in over 50 districts across India through work in government school systems.
• Wipro was one of the first Indian companies to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000.
• Premji has donated a larger percentage of his personal wealth than almost any other billionaire in Indian history.
• Santoor soap, one of India’s most recognizable soap brands, was a Wipro product before the consumer goods division was eventually separated.

Conclusion

Azim Premji did not set out to build a technology giant. He set out to save his father’s company on a Tuesday in 1966, when he was young enough to make every mistake and wise enough to make very few of them.

What followed over the next five decades was not a straight line. It was a series of intelligent pivots made at exactly the right moments, reading India’s policy environment, its talent base, its relationship with the global economy, and its hunger for credible homegrown institutions. Premji gave the country one.

The cooking oil did not disappear overnight. The soaps and the hydraulic cylinders kept the company alive while the technology bets were being placed. That patience, that refusal to destroy the old before the new was ready, is perhaps the most underappreciated part of the Wipro story.

What Premji ultimately built was not just a company. He built a proof of concept for ethical Indian capitalism at a moment when that proof was desperately needed. The industry that grew around him, and partly because of him, is now one of India’s most significant contributions to the global economy.

His philanthropy is the final chapter in a career that was never really about accumulation. It was always about building something that would last beyond him.

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FAQ

How did Azim Premji take over Wipro?

Azim Premji took over his family business, Western India Vegetable Products Limited, in 1966 after the sudden death of his father Hasham Premji. He was 21 years old and studying at Stanford University at the time. He left his studies and returned to India to lead the company.

Why did Wipro shift from cooking oil to technology?

Premji recognized that India’s technology market had a significant gap after IBM exited the country in 1977. He saw an opportunity to build a domestic technology company at a time when demand for computers and software was growing rapidly. The pivot was a strategic business decision based on reading India’s industrial and policy environment.

When did Wipro become a technology company?

Wipro began its shift into technology in 1981 when it started manufacturing minicomputers. The company deepened its focus on software and IT services through the 1990s and became globally recognized after its listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000.

What is Azim Premji’s connection to philanthropy?

Premji founded the Azim Premji Foundation, which focuses on improving public education in rural India. He has donated over $21 billion of his personal wealth to this cause, making him the most generous individual donor in Indian history. He also signed the Giving Pledge initiated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Is Wipro still connected to its original consumer goods business?

Wipro did maintain its consumer goods division for many decades alongside its technology operations. Products like Santoor soap originated from this division. The consumer goods business was eventually restructured as the technology arm became the company’s dominant identity and revenue source.

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