Made in India - Part 3: The world's subsidiary.. Father of outsourcing pushes India into the 21st century

By MARCUS GEE , Globe & Mail, Canada

On Aug. 11, 1966, Azim Premji got the phone call that would change his life. The 20-year-old was studying for summer exams at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., just two terms short of graduation. It was his mother on the line. His father, M.H. Premji, had died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of just 51.

Summoned home, he discovered himself in charge of the family business, a small vegetable oil concern called Western India Vegetable Products, Wipro for short. He found its methods primitive at best.

One of its lines was making cakes and shortening from peanut oil. Its buyers would test a farmer's peanuts by biting them to gauge how much oil they might yield, then make the farmer an offer. Mr. Premji, then just 20, had a better idea. Why not ask the farmer for a sample of his peanuts, weigh them to gauge their oil content, then strike a deal.

That simple step to upgrade methods and measure results laid the foundation for what Mr. Premji calls the Wipro Way. A cerebral, fastidious man who often seems more college professor than tycoon, he has built a $5-billion (U.S.) information-technology outsourcing company on a cult of continuous self-improvement.

In the process, he has helped invent an industry that is launching India into the 21st century. Once, when people imagined India, they pictured rajahs and beggars. Today, the icon of the new India is the bright young techie in his office cubicle in Bangalore.

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