Click to play videoAmalner: Companies are known to make shareholders a part of their growth story.
Wipro started as a cupboard-manufacturing unit to then go on to become the software giant that it is today. However, the surprise element is that a large number of residents in Amalner, a small hamlet in Maharashtra, are a part of that growth story.
Amalner could be any other little town in India with it's own small-town gossip, with it's very basic yet more dependable mode of transportation and lanes and homes that are more than 250 years old, something that demand a historical antique value in itself.
However, now added to it is also has a set of millionaires who thank Wipro for their current status.
Arvind Ramchandra and his wife Kapila’s chance discovery of the value of sheets of paper his father had left behind in their name turned around their debt-infested lives forever.
"We were truly going through difficult times and a friend of mine told me that I was a rich man. I couldn't believe my ears. Then a broker explained me the true value," says farmer Arvind Ramchandra.
Wipro managed to rope in many such poor villagers as shareholders and helped them reap profits. The process started with just 17,000 shares that Wipro issued to the public at 100 rupees each in 1947. In 1971, the company issued one bonus share for every three share held.
In 1981, it was a one for one offer and this history of bonus shares kept on moving with time.
"Today, of the one lakh families here at least 7,000 to 8,000 own Wipro shares to the tune of thousands, 2 lakhs and even 5 lakh shares. As and when they need money, they demand it and sell it,” says Satish T. Khanderia of Share Khan Associate in Amalner.
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