Can a founders son be interviewed legitimately ?? Interesting read! check it out

I am not sure if we can believe the fact that a founders son can be interviewed legitimately for a position in the founded company ? Well! ya, might be. What i fail to understand is what are they trying to prove to the world? That they are honest businessmen, by setting up an interview panel and getting their son interviewed by them ! give me a break...


It was in early 2006 that Rishad Premji first got an inkling that his life was about to change. Rishad, who was fresh out of Harvard Business School, received an interview call asking him to appear before the governance committee of Wipro. For the 31-year-old, the timing was a bit sudden, he was barely a few months into his job at strategy consultants Bain & Company’s London office.

So far, his father Azim Premji, one of India’s richest men, had resisted all attempts at bringing his family into the company. Wipro was a professionally managed company and Mr Premji did not want any talk of nepotism tarring that reputation.

Rishad had to face up to three industry stalwarts: Ashok Ganguly, a former chairman of HLL, N Vaghul, non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank and PM Sinha, a former CEO of Pepsico’s South Asia operations. As independent directors on the board of Wipro, one of the India’s best-known software firms, the three gentlemen had an onerous duty to perform. They had to see if Rishad, the son of the man who controlled more than 80% stake in the company, was fit enough to join his dad’s company.

Several months later, on June 5 this year, Wipro’s communications office put out a terse two-line press release that simply stated that Rishad “will be joining Wipro at a level commensurate with his background and experience”. Since then, the company has blocked all attempts to discuss the issue. Even a request for his photograph was found inappropriate by the company. That the Premji family zealously guards its privacy is evident from Rishad’s response to an email from ET: “Thank you for your email and interest. I am sorry, but I will not be able to talk to you. I am really excited about the prospects of joining Wipro....” All that a senior Wipro employee and Mr Premji’s direct reportee is willing to say is that “Rishad is a good addition to the company”.

Despite the obvious reluctance inside Wipro to share the specifics of Rishad’s unobtrusive entry into the company, there’s one simple reason why the story is significant: it signals a marked change in the way family-owned businesses in the country deal with generational transitions. By no means is it the only such example. Yet many promoters, even those with professional boards, still approach the task of inducting a sibling or a family member into a publicly listed company, with considerable diffidence.

In contrast, the transparent manner in which the Wipro board, consisting of six independent directors and chairman Mr Premji, has dealt with the issue does stand out. So far, the fact that the Wipro board had stepped in to put in place a process to manage Rishad’s entry into the company has remained under wraps. It has therefore given rise to constant rumours, which started ever since Vivek Paul, Wipro’s last CEO, quit in June 2005. It had been widely speculated then that Rishad would join Wipro soon.

The speculation refused to die down when Mr Premji did not look for another CEO. Instead he chose to run Wipro like a federation with presidents in charge of each business division. Wipro, which has all along refuted claims that Mr Premji’s successor will be one of his sons, kept the news of Rishad’s entry tightly under wraps.

Only Mr Premji’s direct reports who include people like CFO Suresh Senapathy and HR head Pratik Kumar knew about it. According to some Wipro insiders, the company was forced to release a statement earlier this month because the news had already leaked out. Later that day, in a telecon with journalists, Mr Kumar insisted that this wasn’t a succession plan and that Rishad was joining Wipro as an employee.

None of this would have happened if Mr Premji had his way. The patriarch apparently had agonised over the enormous conflict in his mind about inducting a family member into the company. Perhaps the fact that he had packed his board with some of the finest names in the business in the end helped.


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