I was reading the first chapter of the Bangalore TIGER, The book by author Steve Hamm examines the rise of India as a destabilizing force in the $650 billion worldwide tech services industry. He focuses on Wipro Ltd., one of the most successful of the Indian upstarts from Bangalore, and on its remarkable leader, Azim Premji.

Excerpt from the book:

When Premji took over his father's business it was anything but global. It had about 350 employees, mostly in and around Bombay, and just $3 million in revenues. The company was publicly traded, and not long after Premji assumed control he faced shareholders for the first time at the annual meeting. Premji, who was self-conscious about his age, had grown a mustache in an effort to add some gravitas. But restless investors weren't impressed. One stood up to complain about the stock's lousy performance and demanded that Premji sell the company. ``'There's no way a twit like you can run it,''' Premji recalls him saying. ``More than anything else, that made me determined to prove him wrong,'' says Premji.

It was time for a crash course in capitalism. Premji had never taken a business class, nor had his father taught him anything about running the company. So he visited a professor at a leading management school in Bombay and asked him to recommend some textbooks. He bought a pile of them, and over the next year he stayed up late into the night reading every one. From his readings he learned business basics and systematically built a company based on modern principles and practices. Those early years taught him the necessity of continuous improvement. ``You were constantly questing for excellence,'' he says.

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Prashanth Rai