Great man - Prove it by deeds not just by publicity!

He gave away $21 billion. He kept $12 billion. And that tells you everything you need to know about what success really means. The phone rang at 3 AM California time. Azim Premji was sleeping in his Stanford dorm when his world shattered. His father was dead. Heart attack. No warning. No goodbye. At 21, most college students worry about midterms and weekend plans. Azim suddenly had to worry about hundreds of families back in India whose livelihoods depended on a cooking oil company he'd never run. He didn't hesitate. He packed his engineering textbooks into boxes. Said goodbye to Silicon Valley dreams. And flew home to take over Western Indian Vegetable Products Limited — a small company that made cooking oil and laundry soap. That was it. Cooking oil and soap. While his Stanford classmates headed to tech startups and innovation labs, Azim was learning about hydrogenated fats and soap formulas in a modest factory. Not exactly the American dream. But he'd learned something from his mother that most people never learn at all. She was a doctor who never practiced medicine conventionally. Instead, she spent fifty years running a charity hospital for children with polio and cerebral palsy. No government funding. No corporate sponsors. Just her relentless commitment to children the world had forgotten. Young Azim watched her fight for those kids year after year. It planted something deep inside him — a question about what life was actually for. For now, though, he had a business to save. And save it he did. Within years, he'd expanded into hair care, baby products, hydraulic cylinders. In 1977, he renamed the company Wipro. Still, it was just another Indian manufacturing company among thousands. Then everything changed. In 1977, the Indian government expelled IBM from the country. Most business leaders panicked. Without the computer giant, India's technological future looked bleak. Azim saw something completely different. He saw the opportunity of a lifetime. If IBM was gone, someone had to fill that vacuum. Why not him? He made a bet that seemed insane. He pivoted his entire cooking oil company into computers and software. He partnered with American tech firms. He hired India's best engineers. He invested everything in training. People thought he'd lost his mind. He hadn't. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Wipro exploded. They built custom software for American corporations. They became one of India's first global tech exporters. Giants like GE and IBM ironically became clients. By 1999, Azim Premji was one of the richest men on Earth. Forbes called him India's richest person. Business Week named him one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. His net worth soared into the stratosphere as global tech stocks boomed. He had everything money could buy. But every morning, he drove through India's streets and saw something that broke his heart. Millions of children sitting in crumbling government schools. Teachers who'd never been properly trained. Kids in rural villages who couldn't read by age ten. An entire generation being abandoned while India's tech sector celebrated. He remembered his mother. Those fifty years she spent fighting for forgotten children. In 2001, he made a decision that stunned the business world. He founded the Azim Premji Foundation. Not to build elite private schools for wealthy families. But to transform India's entire public education system from the ground up. His teams went into the poorest districts imaginable. Places where teachers earned almost nothing and had zero training. Where schools had no books, no supplies, sometimes no roofs. They didn't replace the system. They strengthened it. One teacher at a time. The Foundation established 263 Teacher Learning Centers across India. They trained government school teachers. They provided resources. They worked within the broken system to heal it. But Azim wasn't finished. In 2010, he did something unprecedented in Indian business history. He signed Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' Giving Pledge — promising to donate most of his wealth during his lifetime. Most people sign pledges and forget them. Azim backed his up with action that rewrote the rules. First, he donated 8.7% of Wipro stock. Worth $2 billion. Then 12% more. Then 18% more. In 2019, he donated another 34% of the company. Today, 67% of Wipro — the company he saved, built, and transformed — belongs to his Foundation. He gave away most of his own company. His total philanthropic commitment: over $21 billion. The largest private donation in Indian history. He kept roughly $12 billion. He gave away almost twice that amount. The impact has been staggering. The Foundation now operates in eight Indian states. It has reached over 350,000 government schools. It has trained hundreds of thousands of teachers. More than 8 million children have benefited from its programs. He built Azim Premji University — not to create corporate executives, but to train the next generation of social workers, teachers, and development professionals who'll continue the work. During COVID, he donated another $140 million for relief efforts. He supports over 1,150 nonprofits across India. And through it all, he's remained remarkably humble. Despite billions in the bank, he flies economy class. Drives a modest car. Avoids luxury and spectacle. He once said that creating islands of excellence while abandoning the majority defeats the entire purpose. The man who started with a cooking oil company has now touched more children's lives than perhaps any individual in modern Indian history. Not through grand gestures or photo opportunities. But by walking into the most forgotten classrooms in the most forgotten villages and asking one simple question: How can we make this better? That question, asked persistently for 25 years, has now reached millions of children who might never have learned to read. The 21-year-old who abandoned Stanford to save a family business became the man who gave away most of his fortune to save a generation. That's not just success.