Indian tycoon gives $2bn to educational charity

ONE OF India’s richest men has given $2 billion to a charity providing education for underprivileged children in rural areas …

ONE OF India’s richest men has given $2 billion to a charity providing education for underprivileged children in rural areas across the country.

Azem Premji, the chairman of India’s third-largest software services exporter, Wipro, said he would be irrevocably transferring shares worth 88.46 billion rupees to the Azem Premji Foundation, which he founded in 2001.

The Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, welcomed the pledge, saying it would send out a positive signal. “I welcome it. It’s a very good decision. I congratulate [him],” Mr Mukherjee told reporters.

Premji (65), is India’s third and the world’s 28th richest man, with a net personal worth of $19.8 billion according to estimates by Forbes magazine.

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His donation is one of a series of recent high-profile gifts to charities or educational institutions, many by successful entrepreneurs from India’s booming information technology sector.

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, and Warren Buffett, the stocks and shares multibillionaire, recently urged the Asian ultra-wealthy to give more and said they would hold a philanthropy drive in India similar to a recent exercise in China.

According to a recent report by Bain, a global consulting firm, around $7.8 billion was given in India in 2009, amounting to 0.6 per cent of India’s GDP. Though this compares favourably with other developing nations such as Brazil and China, it lags far behind rates in the developed world.

Recent major donors include Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of the hugely successful software company Infosys, who gave $5.6 million to the Yale University India initiative and Naryana Murthy who recently gave $5.1 million to Harvard University and its publishing arm for a series on Indian literary heritage.

"Good education is crucial to building a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society . . All our efforts, including the university that we are setting up, are focused on the underprivileged and disadvantaged sections of our society," Premji, a Shia Muslim who was born in Pakistan, said in a press statement. – ( Guardianservice)