Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji, launches $1B PE fund focussed on India

Wipro chairman Azim Premji, among the richest Indians, is casting his net wider. Known as an astute investor who picked stocks in his personal capacity across an array of undervalued but promising companies, Mr Premji is now launching a private equity fund with an investible corpus of at least $1 billion. The fund, PremjiInvest, is expected to be sector-agnostic. And if insiders are to be believed, it may even shun pure-play IT services companies.

As a first step, Mr Premji named Sudip Banerjee, who till recently was president of the enterprise solutions business, as director on the advisory board of PremjiInvest. This is probably the biggest private equity play by a domestic corporate honcho.

However, there are India-origin funds that are bigger—ICICI Ventures, for instance. With about 80% stake in Wipro, Mr Premji’s wealth in terms of market capitalisation is pegged at around Rs 68,000 crore. And the 61-year-old promoter is believed to be taking home well over Rs 500 crore in dividends and salary annually.

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