Premji's son Rishad moves up ladder, named strategy chief

BANGALORE: It’s son-rise at the country’s third-largest tech firm, Wipro Technologies. Despite chairman Azim Premji’s constant denials that his elder son Rishad is in line for the top job at the company and will eventually succeed him, Rishad Premji, 34, has been quietly and quickly climbing the corporate ladder. Wednesday’s announcement that Premji Jr has been appointed chief strategy officer (CSO) for IT services elevates him into the senior management echelon at Wipro with immediate effect.
The new profile takes Harvard-educated Rishad into Wipro’s 32-strong management team, which includes joint CEOs, vertical business units heads, service lines heads, geography heads and function heads.
Prior to this, he was general manager, treasury and investor relations, at the company. He joined Wipro in June 2007 as a business manager and spent a couple of years helping the M&A team.
Rishad Premji had a stint with a global consultancy in Europe before joining Wipro. Having graduated from Wesleyan University in the US, Rishad worked briefly with General Electric before getting himself a management degree from Harvard and joining the consulting firm Bain & Co in London.
K R Lakshminarayana (LAN) has been heading strategy and mergers and acquisition initiatives of the company. With the reshuffle, the portfolio is cut into two: the strategy (IT services) part will be headed by Rishad while Sridhar Srinivasan, currently general manager (M&A), will be the interim head of M&A. “We are looking for a new leader for M&A, mostly internally,’’ said Saurabh Govil, senior vice-president, Wipro Technologies.
LAN will move into a new role in the Azim Premji Foundation as chief endowment officer, mostly focusing on funds and financials, from January 2011. “The next four months will be a transition period,’’ added Govil.