Wipro, on Tuesday, announced the appointment of billionaire Azim Premji’s elder son Rishad Premji to its board effective May 1, 2015. Presently, Mr. Rishad is the Chief Strategy Officer and driving the merger and acquisitions functions of the company.
He joined Wipro in 2007, and was the person behind the setting up of Wipro Ventures, a VC fund. With a corpus of $100 million, the fund is aimed at investing in start-ups in the field of mobility, automation and machine-to-machine communications.
CEO T. K. Kurien said, “We have always messaged the fact that there is going to be shareholder interest being taken care of by getting somebody on the board, and Rishad has really filled that role. As far as his role is concerned, nothing has changed. It continues the way it is.”
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Mr. Rishad Premji will continue to run strategy and mergers and acquisitions for the company. He would also be responsible for overseeing technology office, investor and government relations and Wipro ventures, the IT major said in a statement.
Mr. Azim Premji would continue to be the Executive Chairman of the company, Wipro clarified.
Harvard Business School alumnus, Mr. Rishad Premji is on the Board of Wipro Enterprises Ltd., the unlisted entity of Wipro, and also on the Board of Wipro-GE, a joint venture between Wipro and General Electric in healthcare.
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Prior to joining Wipro, he worked with Bain & Co for two years across multiple industries, including consumer products, automobiles, telecom and insurance. He also worked for four years with GE Capital in the U.S. across several businesses throughout the insurance and consumer lending space, and is a graduate of GE’s Financial Management Programme. “It is an absolute privilege and honour to be invited to the board of Wipro, a company built over the past 70 years on the bedrock of uncompromising integrity and the hard work of thousands of Wiproites,” said Mr. Rishad Premji.