Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji’s fund Premji Invest may invest $50-$70 million in Australian graphic design platform Canva, according to sources familiar with the development.
This is part of Canva’s recent secondary market sale, where shares worth $1.6 billion changed hands between existing and new shareholders, at a valuation of $26 billion. Premji Invest may pick up shares tendered by employees in the sale.
“$50-$70 million at a valuation of $26 billion for a company that will IPO in two years is a good deal. This is also a bet on the booming creator ecosystem, where Canva has an edge,” one of the sources cited above said.
A second person familiar with the fund’s thinking said it is increasingly looking at technology bets in the US, as it looks to capitalise on the generative artificial intelligence (AI) boom, and comes weeks after it invested in an American AI firm Hippocratic AI.
Early Life and Education
Premji was born in Bombay, India in an Khoja Ismaili Muslim, Shia Islam family from Gujarat. His father was a noted businessman and was known as Rice King of Burma. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, invited his father Muhammed Hashim Premji to come to Pakistan, he turned down the request and chose to remain in India.
Premji has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Stanford University.[20] He is married to Yasmeen Premji. The couple have two children, Rishad and Tariq. Rishad Premji is currently the Chairman of the IT business, Wipro.
Career
In 1945, Muhammed Hashim Premji incorporated Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd, based at Amalner, a small town in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. It used to manufacture cooking oil under the brand name Sunflower Vanaspati, and a laundry soap called 787, a byproduct of oil manufacture. In 1966, on the news of his father’s death, the then 21-year-old Azim Premji returned home from Stanford University, where he was studying engineering, to take charge of Wipro.The company, which was called Western Indian Vegetable Products at the time, dealt in hydrogenated oil manufacturing but Azim Premji later diversified the company to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hydraulic cylinders. In the 1980s, the young entrepreneur, recognising the importance of the emerging IT field, took advantage of the vacuum left behind by the expulsion of IBM from India, changed the company name to Wipro and entered the high-technology sector by manufacturing minicomputers in technological collaboration with an American company Sentinel Computer Corporation. Thereafter, Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software.
Recognition
- Premji has been recognised by Business Week as one of the “Greatest Entrepreneurs” for being responsible for Wipro emerging as one of the world’s fastest-growing companies.
- In 2000, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. In 2006, Azim Premji was awarded Lakshya Business Visionary by National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.
- In 2005, the Government of India honoured him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce.
- In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut for his outstanding philanthropic work. In 2015, Mysore University conferred an honorary doctorate on him.
- In 2011, he has been awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award by the Government of India.
- In April 2017, India Today magazine ranked him 9th in India’s 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.
- In 2018, Premji was conferred with Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) – the highest French civilian distinction by the French Government.
- In December 2019, Premji was cited by Forbes magazine as one of the “Heroes of Philanthropy list of 30 altruists” in the Asia-Pacific region.
- In 2019, Forbes put Premji in the list of the world’s most generous philanthropists outside of the US.
Hippocratic AI
Last month, Premji Invest co-led Hippocratic AI’s $53 million Series A round, with investors such as General Catalyst, Memorial Hermann Health System and SV Angel. Hippocratic AI is building specialised voice-enabled generative AI agents for healthcare that communicates with patients and collects patient information, conducts follow-ups, executes tasks that involve clinical procedures.
“In the world of AI, we have shied away from applications that are building thin layers on top of large model providers. We’ve observed a ‘gap to the LLM app’ — building specialized vertical applications is exceptionally difficult. Data selection, data curation, model selection, task-specific training/RLHF, and elimination of hallucination are some examples of prominent issues that every entrepreneur needs to solve,” the fund said in a Medium post while talking about the Hippocratic investment.
Premji invest and canva
Premji Invest is one of India’s largest single investor funds. It has assets under management (AUM) of $14.3 billion, with investments in India and the US. It invests across asset class- private equity, venture capital, public markets, liquid, and fund of funds. Some of its startup bets in India include Lenskart, Firstcry, Purplle and The Sleep Company. It is also an investor in US-based pharma firm Moderna.
India is one of the fastest growing markets for Canva and the company will continue investing heavily in this region, co-founder and COO Clifford Obrecht said in October 2023, adding that the country also has one of the largest creator communities on Facebook. He was speaking at the launch of Canva’s end-to-end AI enabled offerings under ‘Magic Studio’.
Canva recently acquired Affinity’s creative software suite, pitting itself directly against design software giant Adobe. Affinity Designer, Photo and Publishers have features like Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign software.
