The Hindu : Business : Premji in billionaires list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2004

Business

Business

Premji in billionaires list

LONDON, NOV. 16. Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji, has made it to the Financial Times' list of world's top 25 billionaires who have done most to bring about significant social, cultural and political changes in the way people live.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates headed the list followed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Premji, with an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion, has been ranked 11th and is the only Indian in the list of top rich men.

The 59-year-old entrepreneur, considered by some as `India's Bill Gates,' by winning in the global IT market has done much to change the structure of international business and ultimately affect people's lives, the paper said.

The suave, soft-spoken billionaire `does business straight, eyeball to eyeball,' Jack Welch, former Chief Executive of GE, commented about Mr. Premji in the report.

The rise of Indian IT services is personified by Wipro and its chairman and the if the anti-offshoring protestors wanted to find a bogeyman in him they would have to look elsewhere, it said.

Mr. Premji, chairman of India's largest technology company by market capitalisation, does more work on education in poor rural areas, giving $5 million a year, and works closely with the charitable foundation of Mr. Gates.

Mr. Gates, with an estimated worth of $46.6 billion, and Mr. Murdoch was followed by George Soros, the founder of Soros Fund Management.

Interestingly, the list finds names like Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister who owns Mediaset, Italy's largest commercial television network, and Thaksin Shinawatra, Prime Minister of Thailand and founder of Shinawatra Computer and Communications Group.

— PTI

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