Not hanging up shoes in a hurry: Azim Premji

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Wipro founder Azim Premji has said that ‘he is not hanging up his shoes in a hurry’ while speaking to the doyens of Indian IT industry and entrepreneurs here after receiving the 'Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award 2009'. “This Lifetime Achievement Award doesn't mean the end of my innings!” he said.

His advice to the entrepreneurs was to “build your organization that is grounded on values and practice these values on a ‘no exception basis’.”

He added: “Integrity is the biggest value and you either espouse this value or don’t. Let there be no shades of grey while following your company values.”

Premji said that his biggest learning in business came not from success, but from failures. “Learning from these failures gave me the courage to take bold decisions.” He strongly advocated induction of diversity in senior leadership team.

Premji, who has led Wipro since he was only 21, added that the biggest asset of an entrepreneur is listening to his people at all levels - peers, superiors and juniors.

Answering a question from the audience, Premji said that the real role model for schoolchildren would not be “the Azim Premjis or Narayana Murthys”, but the teachers who teach the schoolchildren. That is the real gap and concern in primary education, he said.

For this reason, the Azim Premji Foundation is working with government schools in rural areas. A university to right skill the teachers is on the anvil.