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The Wipro Board has approved the reappointment of Azim Premji as a non-executive, non-independent director of the multi-crore tech company, and his son Rishad Premji as a whole-time director, who will be designated as executive chairman. The two executives will serve their reinstalled roles for a five-year period, from 31 July 2024 to 30 July 2029.
“The Seventy Eighth Annual General Meeting of Wipro Limited will be held on Thursday, 18 July 2024 ... to consider the appointment of a director in place of Mr Azim H Premji who retires by rotation and being eligible, offers himself for reappointment ... and re-appointment of Mr Rishad A Premji as a whole-time director of the company,” the filing stated, according to NDTV.
This comes after Azim Premji, who has a staggering net worth of $11.8 billion (Rs 98621 crore) gifted both Rishad and his other son, Tariq, Rs 1 crore shares worth about Rs 500 crore each, in January. With this, the shares, which amount to 0.20 per cent of the share capital of Wipro, added 0.10 per cent to each of the sons’ holding in the company, The Economic Times reports.
Despite this, Rishad withheld his commission for the second year in a row, due to the negative incremental consolidated net profit for the year. With him taking a pay cut of 20 per cent, his total compensation for FY 2024 came down to $769,456 (Rs 6.41 crore ) from last year’s $951,353 (Rs 7.9 crore), and his salary decreased to $692,641 (Rs 5.7 crore) from last year’s $861,000 (Rs 7.1 crore), according to MoneyControl.
Now with the reappointment, the board has approved a remuneration range of Rs 5 crore to Rs 12 crore for Rishad Premji in the new cycle, which is 11 to 33 per cent higher than the pay in the previous five-year cycle, NDTV reports. Here’s everything you need to know about the current and future Wipro Executive Chairman.
Meet Wipro Executive Chairman Rishad Premji, Azim Premji’s son, who owns shares worth over Rs 500 Crore and runs the Rs 258077 Crore market cap tech company
Born on 9 January 1977, Rishad Premji is the older son of Azim Premji and philanthropist Yasmine Premji. After attending Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, he received a B.A. in Economics from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2014, he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, according to the Wipro official website.
Before joining Wipro as a business manager in 2007, Rishad worked for two years with Bain & Company in London, working on assignments across Consumer Products, Automobiles, Telecom and Insurance. He was also associated with GE Capital in the US, contributing to several businesses across the Insurance and Consumer Lending space. He also served as the Chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), an Indian non-governmental trade association and advocacy group that primarily serves the Indian technology industry, from 2018-2019. He was appointed as the Chief Strategy Officer at Wipro in 2011 and then promoted to Chairman in 2019.
In 2005, Rishad married his childhood friend Aditi, with whom he has a daughter Rhea and a son Rohaan. The 47-year-old billionaire lives with his family in Epsilon, Bengaluru’s most exclusive gated community, which is also home to other wealthy businessmen like Byju's co-founder Byju Raveendran and Varun Berry, Managing Director of Britannia.
While Rishad earned a total compensation of Rs 6.41 crore due to his pay cut in the 2024 financial quarter, this remuneration stands to increase in the next cycle, according to NDTV. The net worth of the Premji family, one of the richest in India, is $19.2 billion (Rs 160473 crore), Forbes reports.
