Azim Premji sixth richest tech titan in Forbes list

Azim Premji, an Indian businessman and Chairman of one of the largest software companies in India, Wipro Technologies (Bangalore), who was rated as the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 by Forbes, has once again managed to find a place in the world’s ten richest tech titans list.

With a net worth of $13.3 billion, he has been ranked sixth, ahead of Google founders Sergey Brin ($12.9 billion) and Larry Page ($12.8 billion), eBay founder Pierre Omidyar ($10.1 billion) and founder of German business software major SAP Hasso Plattner ($6.4 billion).

The software giant, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has remained the world’s richest man for 12 consecutive years, again tops the list of richest tech titans with a net worth of $50 billion.

“None of the actual robots featured in this year's E-gang (our annual roundup of tech innovators) are likely to become billionaires, but some of the inventors-cum-entrepreneurs behind the next generation of robotic assistants might.” The magazine quoted on its website.

Besides Premji and Gates, IT titans enlisted in the magazine include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at second position with net worth of $22 billion; Dell founder Michael Dell at third position with a net worth of $17.1 billion; Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at fourth rank with $16 billion and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at fifth position with net worth of $13.6 billion.

The world's ten richest IT billionaires have a collective net worth of $174.2 billion, or more than the gross domestic product of Israel.

Apart from this, Premji, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2005, is also among the select few tech titans on the list who remains actively involved in the day-to-day operations of their firms.

Three of the 10, Plattner, Paul Allen and Pierre Omidyar, are not even actively involved in the companies they founded, while Gates has also expressed his intentions to move away from the corporate world, Forbes quoted.

At the same time, those tech titans who remain involved in their companies, often pursued second lives outside the office, the magazine said. For example, Larry Ellison Oracle CEO does not even maintain an office at Oracle’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

Azim Premji, a Stanford graduate and a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee for Information Technology in India, is still India’s second-richest man after steel magnate LN Mittal.