AI Man of India

Decades ago, the former Wipro chief led India's IT boom. Will he also usher in the AI revolution?

- Pushpita Dey

Last year, Azim Premji was hardly optimistic when he was asked if India could lead the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, even though he saw AI’s disruptive potential. During a media interaction, he said that while there would be huge disruptions driven by AI, it was too early to say if India would lead the race. “It’s too early. At this moment there are no leadership positions,” he said.

Within a year, Premji became one of the largest investors in AI in India and the world. Premji Invest, Azim Premji’s family-owned investment firm, that manages over $10bn for the tech mogul, has investments in at least 20 AI firms. A $50 mn investment announcement in Paris-based AI start-up Poolside.ai recently made headlines.

Azim Premji was born in 1945, two years before Independence, in Bombay (now Mumbai). A Stanford alumnus, Premji was one of the leaders of India’s information technology boom in the 1990s. He led Wipro for 53 years before giving up chairmanship in 2019. Now 79 years old, will Premji pave India’s path to AI glory too?

A Billion-Dollar Bet

Wipro has decided to invest $1bn in advancing AI capabilities over the next three years. It has also launched Wipro ai360, a comprehensive AI - first innovation ecosystem that is supposed to build on Wipro’s investment. Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, the company’s industrial engineering arm, is said to be betting on AI and is planning to accelerate its automation business.