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Azim Premji receives AIMA lifetime achievement award – Times Now

Azim Premji receives AIMA lifetime achievement award& 

New Delhi: Wipro Limited founder Azim Premji received the AIMA Life Time Achievement Award for Management on Saturday. All India Management Association (AIMA), the apex body for Management in the country, celebrates its Foundation Day on 21st February every year. 

Receiving the award, Premji said, “Thank you very much for bestowing this honor on me. The recognition is well and truly because of the tireless dedication of thousands of my colleagues and my partners both at Wipro and the Foundation. So, I share this honor with all of them. Thank you once again and I wish all of you all the best.”

“Philanthropy or contribution to society must come from within and it cannot be mandated from outside. Individual/personal philanthropy must be separate from a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility, said Premji.

AIMA Foundation Day also coincides with the National Management Day which is celebrated by the AIMA network of 66 Local Management Associations (LMAs) all over the country. AIMA’s 65th Foundation Day & 15th National Management Day is being held digitally this year on February 20. The theme for this year’s Foundation Day and National Management Day is ‘Transformation for Continuity’

On this occasion, AIMA Awards of Excellence are presented to distinguished professionals. These awards have been presented to leading corporates, scientists, bureaucrats and academicians in the past.

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This year, AIMA JRD Tata Award for Corporate Leadership was conferred on Sanjiv Mehta, Chairman & Managing Director, Hindustan Unilever Limited. AIMA Public Service Excellence Award was conferred on Randeep Guleria, Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

The other awards presented on the occasion were AIMA Dr Ram Tarneja Award for Best Article in Indian Management and AIMA Dr. J S Juneja Award for Creativity and Innovation in Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises.

This year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered the inaugural address. She said, “As Indian business leaders are moving forward the government also needs to step up in time and bring transformational changes to meet aspirations of people post pandemic.”

Worth noting here is that 21-year-old Azim Premji returned to India in 1966 after his father’s sudden demise, to take charge of his business. Premji diversified the company to hydraulics, soaps and lighting. He spotted the IT opportunity in the late 70s and 80s, and forayed into making computers after IBM exited India. Western Indian Vegetable Products Limited became Wipro, with a focus on software and technology. A $2 million hydrogenated cooking fat business today earns revenue of over $8 Billion from IT services, while Wipro Enterprises has revenues of close to $2 billion.