Azim Premji Trust to sell 1.4% Wipro stake; net Rs1,500 cr
13 Mar 2012
The Azim Premji Trust, founded by the eponymous chairman of information company Wipro Ltd, said today it would sell 35 million shares that it holds in Wipro – a 1.4-per cent stake in the company – to fund the activities of Azim Premji Foundation, which runs a private university in Bangalore.
The shares are valued at Rs1,530 crore.
In a regulatory notification, the trust said the amount raised through the sale of shares would be used to scale up the foundation's activities to improve the quality of school education.
Premji had in December 2010 transferred 213 million or 8.7 per cent of Wipro shares, then worth Rs8,846 crore, to his trust. He still holds 78 per cent of the Wipro's equity stock.
"The foundation is scaling up its field programmes by establishing district and state-level institutions focused on capacity building of existing functionaries in the education and development sector," the trust said in a statement.
The endowment will use a part of the fund to scale up the university's programmes focused on research and teaching in education.