Azim Premji

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Azim Premji
Azim Premji, Chairman & CEO of Wipro Technologies
Born	July 24, 1945 (1945-07-24) (age 64) Bombay, British India
Residence	Bangalore, India
Alma mater	Stanford University (dropped out in 1966, completed in 1999)[1]
Net worth	▼ $5.7 billion USD[2]
Religious beliefs	Islam
Spouse(s)	Yasmeen Premji
Children	Rishad & Tariq [2]

Azim Premji (Gujarati: અઝીમ પ્રેમજી) (born July 24, 1945), is an Indian engineer and businessman. He is the Chairman of Wipro, one of the largest software companies in India. Azim Premji was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 as per Forbes^[3]. His wealth in 2006 was estimated at US$14.8 Billion^[4] which places him as the fifth richest Indian.

[edit] Personal life

Premji was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, to a Gujarati Muslim family. His father M. H. Premji owned the Western India Vegetable Product Company (which later became Wipro Ltd.) which made hydrogenated vegetable oils and fats. While he completed his initial education at St. Mary's School, Mumbai, Premji was forced to leave his studies in electrical engineering from Stanford University, California, USA at the age of 21 to take over the family business when his father suddenly died in 1966.

Premji is married to Yasmeen, the couple have two children, Rishad and Tariq. Rishad is married to Aditi.

Premji is known for his modesty and frugality in spite of his wealth. He drives a Toyota Corolla and flies economy class, prefers to stay in company guest houses rather than luxury hotels and even served food on paper plates at a lunch honouring his son's wedding. ^[5]

[edit] Honours and Awards

Premji has been recognized by Business Week as one of the Greatest Entrepreneurs of All Time^[6] for his vision and leadership that has been responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world’s fastest growing companies.

In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

He was also declared the Businessman of the Year 2000 by Business India^{[citation needed]}

He is featured in the Business Weeks all-time top 30 entrepreneurs of the world in 2007^{[citation needed]}.

He is a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, he was honoured by the Government of India with a Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in India.

As on October 6, 2007, he was the 5th richest Indian, with a net worth of $13.6 billion^[7].

He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.), an honorary degree , from the Aligarh Muslim University on the 18th of June, 2008 on the occasion of 58th Convocation Ceremony of the University.

[edit] Azim Premji Foundation

The Azim Premji Foundation says it "Aims at making a tangible impact on identified social issues by working in active partnership with the Government and other related sectors of society". The Foundation was set up with financial resources contributed by Azim Premji.

Programmes of the Azim Premji Foundation focus on "creating effective and scalable models that significantly improve the quality of learning in the school and ensure satisfactory ownership by the community in the management of the school". Azim Premji Foundation says it "dedicates itself to the cause of Universalization of Elementary Education in India"^{[citation needed]}. The organisation has over the years been instrumental in improving the quality of general education, particularly in rural schools^{[citation needed]}.

Citing a technology initiative, the Foundation reported: "Think of a single PC with three display terminals, three keyboards and three 'mouses', which can be simultaneously used as if they are three independent computers"^{[citation needed]}.

Five new titles of educational CDs for Indian schools were produced earlier in 2005. They are:

• Friendly Animals and Journey on the Clouds (English)
• Swatantra Divas
• Fun with Chinchoo in Mathematics
• Khel-Mel (Hindi), released in February 2005.

With these, the total number of master titles available is 70^{[citation needed]}.

There are now 68 titles in Karnataka, 42 for Andhra Pradesh, 35 for Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, 18 for Urdu medium schools, six for Orissa, 14 for Gujarat, 3 for Punjab and 1 for Kerala.

This Foundation is also involved in computer-based assessment in Andhra Pradesh (50,000 students took part in early 2005), a learning guarantee programme, and a policy planning unit in Karnataka.

kris gopalakrishnan

Kris Gopalakrishnan
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This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2008)(Find sources: Kris Gopalakrishnan – news, books, scholar)
Senapathy "Kris" Gopalakrishnan
Born
1956Trivandrum, India
Occupation
President & Chief Executive Officer of Infosys
Salary
$100,000 USD (Infosys)[1]
Net worth
▲ $1.2 billion USD (2007)[2]
Kris Gopalakrishnan is an Indian industrialist, software engineer and one of the 7 founders of Infosys Technologies, a global consulting and IT services company based in India.
[edit] Early days
Kris obtained M.Sc. (Physics) in 1977 and M. Tech. (Computer Science) in 1979, both from IIT, Madras. He started his career with Patni Computer Systems (PCS), Mumbai as a Software Engineer in 1979 and quickly rose to become an Assistant Project Manager by 1981. His seminal contribution during his stint at PCS was the development of a distributed process control system for controlling the LD converters at Rourkela Steel Plant.
[edit] Career at Infosys
In 1981, Kris, along with N. R. Narayana Murthy and five others, founded Infosys Technologies Limited. The initial years of his responsibility at Infosys included management of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the US. During 1987-1994 he headed the technical operations of KSA/Infosys (a joint venture between Infosys and KSA at Atlanta, USA) as Vice President (Technical).
On June 22, 2007, Kris took over from Nandan Nilekani as the CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Limited. Kris previously served as Chief Operating Officer (since April 2002), and as the President and Joint Managing Director (since August 2006). His responsibilities included Customer Services, Technology, Investments and Acquisitions.
Kris is currently the Chairman of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (IIITM), Kerala, and Vice Chairman of the Board for Information Technology Education Standards (BITES) set up by the Government of Karnataka. Kris is the Vice Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industries(CII) Southern Regional Council. He is also a member of ACM, IEEE and IEEE Computer Society.

steve balmer

Steve Ballmer
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Steve Ballmer

Born
March 24, 1956 (1956-03-24) (age 53)Detroit, Michigan
Residence
United States
Alma mater
Harvard College
Occupation
CEO, Microsoft
Salary
$1,350,834[1]
Net worth
▼ $11 billion USD (2009)
Religious beliefs
Judaism
Spouse(s)
Connie Snyder
Children
3
WebsiteStaff Bio at microsoft.com
Steven Anthony Ballmer (born Detroit, Michigan March 24, 1956) is an American businessman who has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000.[2] Ballmer is the second person after Roberto Goizueta to become a billionaire in U.S. dollars based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. In Forbes 2008 World's Richest People ranking, Ballmer was ranked the 43rd richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $11 billion.[3]
//
[edit] Family
Ballmer was born in Detroit of Jewish heritage.[4] On October 4, 2007, Ballmer was awarded honorary citizenship of Lausen, Switzerland. His father had worked in Belgium as a manager at Ford Motor Co in the 1960s.[2] In 1990 Ballmer married Connie Snyder, who was on Microsoft's PR team at the Waggener Group in the '80s. They have three children. Ballmer's maternal grandparents lived in Pinsk, Belarus.[5]
[edit] Career

This section requires expansion.
[edit] Pre-Microsoft & Life History
Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956, to a Swiss father and a Jewish-American mother whose family came from the Eastern European city of Pinsk (today in Belarus). It has been reported[who?] that Ballmer belongs to Mensa and has an IQ of over 135. He grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a high school, and now sits on its board of directors. In 1977, he graduated from Harvard University [6] with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who would later become CEO of General Electric.[7] In 1980, he dropped out from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.[8]
[edit] Microsoft career
Ballmer joined Microsoft on June 11, 1980[9] and became Microsoft's 24th employee, the first business manager hired by Gates.[citation needed] He was initially offered a salary of $50,000 as well as a percentage of ownership of the company. When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8 percent of the company. He has headed several divisions within Microsoft including "Operating Systems Development", "Operations", and "Sales and Support." In January 2000, he was officially named chief executive officer.[2] As CEO Ballmer handled company finances, however Gates still retained control of the "technological vision." In 2003, Ballmer sold 8.3% of his shareholdings, leaving him with a 4% stake in the company.[10] The same year, Ballmer replaced Microsoft's employee stock options program.
In 2009, and for the first time ever, he made the opening keynote at CES, since Bill Gates left Microsoft.
[edit] Compensation
While CEO of Microsoft in 2007, Steven A. Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,279,821, which included a base salary of $620,000, and a cash bonus of $650,000.[11] In 2008, he earned a total compensation of $1,350,834, which included a base salary of $640,833, a cash bonus of $700,000, no stock or options, and other compensation of $10,001.[12]
[edit] Viral videos
Ballmer is known for his very enthusiastic and over-the-top behavior. Footage featuring Ballmer's flamboyant stage appearances at Microsoft events have been widely circulated on the Internet, becoming viral videos. The most famous of these is commonly titled "Steve Ballmer going crazy."[13] This video features Ballmer after being introduced at a Microsoft employee convention. Another video, captured at a developers' conference, features a sweat soaked Ballmer repeatedly chanting the word "developers". [14]
[edit] On competition
[edit] Bill Gates
The Wall Street Journal has reported that there was tension surrounding the 2000 transition of authority from Bill Gates and Ballmer. Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues, according to an individual present at the time. After the exchange, Ballmer seemed "remorseful," the person said.
Once Gates leaves, "I'm not going to need him for anything. That's the principle," Ballmer said. "Use him, yes, need him, no."[15]
[edit] Free and open source software
He has referred to the free Linux operating system as a "[…] cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."[16] Ballmer used the notion of "viral" licensing terms to express his concern over the fact that the GNU General Public License (GPL) license employed by such software requires that all derivative software be under the GPL or a compatible license.
[edit] Lucovsky/Google
In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became highly enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky was about to leave Microsoft for Google, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office.
[edit] Apple
Speaking at a conference in NYC, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticised Apple's pricing, saying; 'Now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction [against Apple],' Ballmer said. 'The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.'[17]
[edit] Sports

Steve Ballmer taking a seat at the KeyArena to watch the Seattle SuperSonics
On March 6, 2008 Seattle's Mayor announced that a local ownership group involving Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a "game changing" commitment to invest $150 million in cash toward a $300 million renovation of Key Arena and are ready to purchase the Seattle SuperSonics in order to keep them in the City of Seattle. [18] Ballmer would join fellow Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen (owner of the Portland Trail Blazers) as an NBA owner.
[edit] Media portrayals
Bad Boy Ballmer: The Man Who Rules Microsoft (2002), Fredric Alan Maxwell, ISBN 0-06-621014-3 (unauthorized biography)
The 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley features Ballmer as a major character; he is played by actor John DiMaggio.