Azim's son may head service line

Wipro Chairman Azim Premji's eldest son Rishad Premji is likely to head a new service line in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment of Wipro Technologies.

Rishad will complete a year at Wipro as an ordinary employee. The BFSI space contributes nearly 25 per cent to Wipro Technologies' $4.3 billion topline, according to sources.

Rishad will complete a year at Wipro as an ordinary employee. The BFSI space contributes nearly 25 per cent to Wipro Technologies' $4.3 billion topline, according to sources.

"A new segment is being carved, details of which will be out shortly," added the source, indicating that this would be tagged as a special project.

During June 2007, Wipro announced that it inducted Rishad as an employee of Wipro and not as a successor to Azim Premji. Rishad graduated from Wesleyan University in the US and has worked with GE before getting himself a management degree from Harvard.

Later he joined Bain & Co, a global consultancy firm. Rishad, 31, is expected to be inducted in the Wipro board in near future.

Meanwhile, the company has effected changes in the senior management of its IT business. It has elevated Girish Paranjpe, the BFSI segment head, and Suresh Vaswani, president, Wipro Infotech, to the position of joint chief executive officers.

Both Paranjpe and Vaswani have also been inducted into the Wipro board along with Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapathy. Premji also announced the appointment of Sudip Banerjee, currently president of the enterprise business solutions, as director on the advisory board of PremjiInvest (PI).

Chairman Azim Premji said, "We are transitioning our leadership by adding a pair of joint CEOs who together give twice the leverage to seize opportunities in the IT, research and development and BPO services sectors."