There was nobody to run the business, so I had to leave Stanford without completing my degree: Azim Premji

Born in Mumbai in 1945 into a Gujarati Muslim family, Azim Hashim Premji had, in his younger years, aspired to a career in public service. The son of businessman Muhammed Hashim Premji, his future seemed set, a degree from a foreign university and, to start with, a cushy job at either the United Nations or the World Bank. Mid-way into his engineering degree at California’s Stanford University, Premji received terrible news: his father, only 51, had suffered a heart attack and had passed away. This led to him taking charge of his father’s business, Western India Vegetable Products, founded the year Azim was born, which manufactured a brand of cooking oil named Sunflower Vanaspati and a laundry soap called 787, a by-product of the oil manufacture, ending his dreams of a career in public service. “So there was nobody to run the business and I had to leave Stanford without completing my degree.”