How This Tiger Got Its Roar

IT WAS THE KIND OF CALL THAT makes a young man grow up fast. On Aug. 11, 1966, Azim H. Premji was a senior at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., studying for finals after summer school. When the phone rang, his mother was on the line from India with devastating news: His father, M.H. Premji, had died of a heart attack at the age of 51. The younger Premji quickly booked a flight and left for the funeral, expecting to be back at Stanford in time for the fall semester. Instead, his father's death marked a fateful change of direction for the 21-year-old. Rather than pursuing his dream of bringing aid to the developing world as a policymaker at the World Bank, he found himself thrust into the nitty-gritty details of saving a failing company in a backwater economy.

Fortunately, entrepreneurship runs in his blood. Premji's grandfather was founder of one of the largest rice-trading companies in India. Then, in 1945, M.H. Premji launched a cooking oil company called Western India Vegetable Products. But when the young Azim Premji arrived home he found the operation in shambles. And to his dismay, he discovered that his father had selected him to run it, a duty he felt he couldn't shirk. ``It's like being thrown into a swimming pool,'' says Premji, who finally got his Stanford degree six years ago. ``To avoid drowning, you learn to swim quickly.''

Read more on Businessweek