Not hanging up shoes in a hurry: Azim Premji

Wipro founder and chairman Azim Premji said on Friday that he was 'not hanging up his shoes in a hurry'.

He was speaking to the doyens of Indian IT industry and entrepreneurs in New Delhi after receiving the Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award 2009. "This Lifetime Achievement Award doesn't mean the end of my innings!" he said.

His advice to the entrepreneurs was to "build your organisation that is grounded on values and practice these values on a 'no exception basis'. Integrity is the biggest value and you either espouse this value or don't. Let there be no shades of grey while following your company values."

He said that his biggest learning in business came not from success, but from failures. "Learning from these failures gave me the courage to take bold decisions." He strongly advocated induction of diversity in senior leadership team.

Premji, who has led Wipro since he was only 21, added that the biggest asset of an entrepreneur is listening to his people at all levels -- peers, superiors and juniors.

Answering a question from the audience, Premji said that the real role model for schoolchildren should not be 'the Azim Premjis or Narayana Murthys', but the teachers who teach the schoolchildren. That is the real gap and concern in primary education, he said.

For this reason, the Azim Premji Foundation is working with government schools in rural areas. A University to right skill the teachers is on the anvil.

Kiran Karnik, chairman of the government-appointed board of Satyam, also received the Dataquest IT Person of the Year 2009 award for steering the fraud-hit Satyam early this year.

Speaking on the occasion, Karnik called for more self regulation by industry, rotation of statutory auditors, and a framework for appointment of 'truly' independent directors to protect interests of the small shareholders.

Asked if following these suggestions would see the end of similar frauds in the corporate sector in the country, Karnik said that even though a fraud of this scale may not surface in the foreseeable future, there were several skeletons lurking in the cupboards of the Indian companies.

Karnik praised role of the government in taking a series of actions that led to protection of the image of the Indian IT services industry. He also singled out the role played by the motivated workforce at Satyam in focusing on the customers during this crisis, which led to most customers staying on with the company.

Others who were honoured at the Dataquest awards function include: