Shiv Nadar promises to donate 10% of his wealth

For a few months now, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett have been wining and dining with the world’s richest, gently persuading over 40 US billionaires to pledge at least half of their wealth to fix the world’s ills. But no one from India has yet been able to match that generosity. Very few have even shown an inclination to do so.

At least one Indian billionaire has taken a first step and is now daring others of his ilk to start making a meaningful contribution to society. Technology czar Shiv Nadar has committed to put aside well over 10% of his wealth for philanthropic ventures. These ventures, under the Shiv Nadar Foundation, span building and running free schools, a proposed university and a museum of art.

Mr Nadar’s personal wealth, based only on his shareholding in listed companies, including HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems, is pegged at about Rs 15,000 crore. In the next five years, his philanthropic educational projects will entail an expenditure of Rs 4,000 crore. He sold a 2.5% equity in HCL Technologies this June and pumped the entire Rs 585 crore proceeds into his philanthropic efforts.

The 65-year-old chairman of HCL Technologies and co-founder of the HCL group, now spends about 40% of his time on social ventures. “I want to focus on education and do

it myself,” he said in a 70-minute interview at his Noida office, complete with the national flag, family pictures, art works and the Padma Bhushan citation he received in 2008 for his contribution to the IT industry. His daughter Roshni, he says, has also chosen social entrepreneurship and is not interested in running the group businesses.

He expressed disappointment at the poor level of philanthropy that has so far been seen from India’s richest.

“What can I say... When it comes to giving, there aren’t many people who will happily give away even 1% (of their wealth),” he said.

Mr Nadar has been influenced by the deep philanthropic resolve of the Gates co

uple and Buffett, the world’s richest people, both of whom have pledged their entire wealth for charity. “My wife and I spent a whole evening with them (Bill and Melinda) and we talked about this,” he says. “When Buffett dies, there will only be a stone. It shows a very different aspect of life, about people and how they care.”

Mr Nadar, however, is working on a philanthropic model that is different from the Gates foundation. “I think I can build an institution, which is very unlike the Gates’ foundation, which is totally project-driven,” he says. The Gates foundation will serve specific purposes and shut within 20 years of the death of either of them. “I have built education as a focus—in education you have to build sustaining institutions (that can go on for a longer time),” he explains.

Fifteen years ago, Mr Nadar started his education venture via SSN College of Engineering, named after his father, and followed this up with three more SSN institutions—SSN School of Management & Computer Applications, SSN School of Advanced Software engineering in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, US, and SSN research centre. Now, the focus is on completely free residential schools, a proposed Shiv Nadar University, and a Museum of Art named after Mr Nadar’s wife.

The first of the schools, called VidyaGyan, spread over a 20-acre campus, came up in Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh, about a year ago. The Foundation has c

ompleted land acquisition for the second one at Sitapur (close to Lucknow) and two more will come up in the state. The proposed university will come up at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, with facilitie

s to cater to at least 8,000 students in multiple disciplines, from arts to engineering. He has chosen the state as this is where HCL started.

The VidyaGyan Schools, from class six to 12, propose to pick up the best of students

from rural and remote areas in Uttar Pradesh. The selection of students who come from families with annual income of under Rs 1 lakh a year is done from the class 5 results shared by the UP government under an agreement with the Shiv Nadar Foundation.

Eventually, 5,000 students a year will study in the schools and the funding will come from the Foundation’s resources. On the other hand, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art planned

in Delhi will house Mr Nadar’s personal art collection of over 300 paintings. These include works of modern artists from India and the sub-continent like SH Raza, MF Hussain, Tyeb Mehta, Manjit Bawa and Satish Gujral.

If you get to thinking of sharing wealth with people who need it and the

purposes that need it, you have a very different sense of satisfaction,” he concludes.

First-generation entrepreneurs from the technology space have been driving their philanthropy agenda through focused initiatives. Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s foundati

on focuses on improving the quality of primary education in the country while the Infosys Foundation works on rural development and social rehabilitation.

In April, Infosys Technologies chief mentor NR Narayana Murthy and his family donated $5.2 million to Harvard University and Harvard University Press to establish a new publica

tion series called The Murty Classical Library of India. Early this year, 70-year-old Vineet Nayyar, managing director of IT services firm Tech Mahindra, donated a third of his shares in the company worth over Rs 30 crore to Essel Social Welfare Foundation, a Delhi-based charitable organisation.

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