Azim Premji by Sundeep Khanna and Varun Sood ; Published by Harper Business ; Pages 225; Price Rs.699/- ****************************** The day was 13 March 2019. An Indian business legend had chosen to warm the hearts of millions across the country by an act of munificence that was unparalleled and unequalled . Azim Premji announced that he would gift shares worth Rs.52,750 crore or $ 7.5 billion to his philanthropic foundation, whose corpus now totalled Rs 1,45,000 crore or about $ 21 billion and included the 67 per cent of shares held by the founding family. By this single act he had moved into the ranks of the world’s biggest donors. Forbes magazine ranked Premji’s donation as the world’s biggest for the year 2019. The book under review “Azim Premji: The Man Beyond the Billions”, is perhaps the first authoritative biography of the great man and brings out how Premji is a philanthropist at heart and a businessman by choice – a man who wanted to give away his billions but realised quite early that he would first have to earn them. The biography portrays Premji’s life while recounting his professional and charitable work . The volume is brought out by Sundeep Khanna and Varun Sood—two renowned contributors to financial journalism. They have conducted extensive interviews with several Wipro executives---both past and present-- who were close to Premji. They have roped in Premji’s competitors, analysts, family friends and other associates. They began in earnest to probe into the life of the man who fiercely guarded his privacy as also of his closely knit family, viz., his wife Yasmeen and sons Rishad and Tariq. The 75-year-old business magnate does not at all live up to our conception of the structure of a billionaire. He turns out far different from a stereotype---nibbling chocolates any time of night or day. He indulges in the luxury of street food be it Mumbai,Singapore and New York. He has acquired characteristics of a Charles Dickens character from Christmas Carol—the prince of parsimony-- Uncle Scrooge—of the business world. Totally unlike Scrooge he donated 75 per cent of his wealth to charity. This amounts to about $21 billion which he donated to the Azim Premji Foundation, which is a non-profit organisation focused on education. This catapulted him into one of the top philanthropists of the world. From battling to save his family’s debt-ridden fledging oil company in Amalner to establishing a bonafide conglomerate with more than $10 billion in revenue, the book reveals the half-a-century adventurous sojourn of Premji. Taking over his family business of vegetable oils at a young age after the passing of his father, he built one of India's most successful software companies and a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate. As of 2019, he was the tenth richest person in India with an estimated net worth of $7.2 billion. In the beginning, he had but little grasp of the IT industry, but over the years his company became part of the triumvirate of IT start-ups (Infosys, Wipro, TCS) that put India on the global software services map. It is a matter of pride that Wipro was the first Indian IT company to be listed on the NYSE. What makes Premji click was adumbrated towards the end of 1971 by him as he wrote down the principles — integrity, respect for people and customer centricity — which were his articles of faith by which he would do business. The company is a firm adherent to these values. Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman of Infosys, described Premji succinctly, “He is an unusual man.” Truly so. He doesn’t travel first class. He believes in buying “Made in India” products. Premji gets into the nitty-gritty of every tiny issue. He carries his famous yellow pad in which he takes meticulous notes. His respect for resources defines his frugality. When he goes around switching off the lights and fans after everyone has left or insists that both sides of a sheet of paper must be used for photocopying, or when he insists on paying from his pocket for the personal calls he made at work, he sets a precedent for all to follow. Major personal milestones, including his wedding as well as that of his son Rishad, have been low-key affairs with barely 100 guests invited on each occasion. The book also takes into account the many wrong steps the company took, and how it ran into rough weather after it took many wrong decisions. Yet, the one facet that has overshadowed even his business achievements is his altruism. His commitment to the Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit focused on education, totals around $21 billion, making him one of the world's top philanthropists. Premji inherited his generosity from his mother Dr. Gulbanoo Premji, co-founder of the Society for Rehabilitation of Crippled Children, Mumbai. When Covid-19 knocked on the doors of the country, the Wipro conglomerate donated Rs1,125 crore, the largest amount by an Indian company, besides distributing millions of meals and hospital beds. The twin decisions in 2019 of giving a substantial portion of his wealth to philanthropy and stepping down as Chairman of Wipro were part of Azim’s manifest destiny. It was the ultimate act of kindness by a man who had once been labelled selfish for refusing to dilute his family’s stake in the business to below 80 per cent. To be able to give over $21 billion to philanthropy, one first needs to make that kind of money. His abnormally high stake in the company he had built allowed him to do just that. The book recounts the poignant story of the exit of two CEOs Shri.Paranjape and Shri.Vaswani. They were the heart and lungs of Wipro. Even as they were waiting outside the boardroom Premji announced the appointment of Kurien as the new CEO. At a lecture to Stanford business school students, Premji’s lecture in Stanford affords a clue to his celebrated successes and failures in his career: “It is impossible to generate a few good ideas without a lot of bad ideas. Failure should be forgiven and forgotten completely.” Anecdote---One The book is bursting with absorbing anecdotes such as the one in which his friend and business leader Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw narrates how he disguised himself with a hat and a fake moustache when he wanted to buy some artwork. His reasoning: “The moment they know I’m Azim Premji, they’ll charge me too much.” Anecdote Two "For a billionaire, Premji has a unique relationship with cars. He treats them as no more than a necessary tool whose brand is unimportant. But virtually everyone we spoke with had a story about Premji and his cars. They all boil down to the same thing - he hates spending on them. When he was buying a secondhand car from one of his colleagues he haggled till the last 10% of the price ultimately giving in only because it was for a loved one in the family." P.P.Ramachandran. 22/11/2020.