Jinnah wanted THIS Muslim man to be first Finance Minister of Pakistan, he refused, his son is on Forbes list of billionaires

When India was partitioned in 1947 and a new country for Muslims was carved out amid violence and bloodshed, the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, offered a cabinet berth to fellow Gujarati Muslim, Muhammed Hashem. However, the businessman who had founded a vegetable oil company known as Western India Products Ltd, rejected his offer. Despite being a Muslim, he decided to remain in India and pursue his business interests. This patriotic Muslim was the father of Azim Premji, who is currently worth $11.9 billion and has found his place in the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. Western India Products Ltd ultimately became Wipro, the IT service giant. 

(Hashem Premji and his wife)

Journalist Dinesh C Sharma has written in his book that Jinnah offered Mohamed Hasham Premji to make him the first Finance Minister of Pakistan. However, the 'Rice King of Burma, as he was called, Premji moved to Bombay with his family to start trading and eventually founded Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd. Sharma writes his book, "The company was established by Mohamed Hasham Premji in 1945. He was a leading rice merchant and commission agent in Bombay. When Mohammed Ali Jinnah set up the planning committee of the Muslim League (on the lines of the national planning committee of the Indian National Congress) in September 1944, he invited Hasham Premji to be a part of it."

(Azim Premji, owner, Wipro Ltd)

Azim Premji left his course at Stanford University unfinished and returned to India after his father died in 1966. The 21-year-old man helmed his business of the vegetable oil company and gradually steered it towards the tech industry. He renamed the company as Wipro Products Limited in 1977 and abbreviated it to Wipro Limited in 1982.

Having emerged as one of India's Big Six IT services companies, Wipro provides information technology, consulting and business process services. The Bangalore-based firm provides services in cloud computing, computer security, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, robotics, data analytics, and other technologies.  The Azim Premji-owned company had 234,054 employees from 146 nationalities in March 2024. It had 26 offices in India and 58 offices in overseas cities.