Wipro, the country’s third largest software company, on Thursday announced that its founder Azim H. Premji will retire as executive chairman and managing director of the company on July 30.

Premji (73), who led the company for 53 years, will however continue as a non-executive director on the board. He will be conferred the title of founder chairman.

Premji’s eldest son Rishad will become the new executive chairman.

The board of directors also announced that chief executive officer and executive director Abidali Z. Neemuchwala will be re-designated as CEO and managing director.

The new appointments are subject to shareholders’ approval.

“It has been a long and satisfying journey for me. As I look into the future, I plan to devote more time to focus on our philanthropic activities. I have great confidence and trust in Rishad’s leadership to steer Wipro in its next phase of growth as we move forward,” Azim Premji said in a statement.

Rishad Premji Telegraph picture

Earlier this month, Premji was declared as the second richest person in India with an estimated net worth of $21.5 billion.

Azim Premji, who transformed a small hydrogenated cooking fat company into a Rs 12,395-crore infotech giant, will stay on as chairman of Wipro Enterprises Limited and continue to chair the board of Wipro-GE Healthcare.

Rishad Premji’s elevation comes eight years after he joined the company. He has been a member of the Wipro board since May 2015. He is also a member of the strategy committee and the administrative and shareholders/investors’ grievance committee of Wipro.

Rishad Premji served as the Chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) in 2018-19. He is also on the boards of the Azim Premji Foundation and Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiative.

Before joining Wipro in 2007, Rishad Premji had worked with Bain & Company in London, as well as GE Capital in the US. He is a business graduate from Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University.

Azim Premji was instrumental in turning Wipro from a cooking oil and laundry soap maker into a software company in the early eighties. His father, Muhammed Hashim Premji, had established Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd, at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra.

In 1966, the 21-year-old Azim Premji was forced to return from Stanford University where he was studying engineering to take over the reins of the company after his father’s sudden death.

Premji was one of the first entrepreneurs in India to grab the opportunity to enter the infotech space to fill the vacuum after the Morarji Desai-led government expelled IBM from India. Initially, Wipro made computers and other peripherals but soon gravitated towards software production under the guidance of industry doyen Ashok Soota.