How India Inc’s top names like Azim Premji, Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra and others are driving philan

By Naren Karunakaran, ET Bureau | 2 Oct, 2014, 03.37AM IST

The first Tata benefaction— the JN Tata Endowment — in higher education was in 1892. One of the many who drew on this particular benefaction was the late president KR Narayanan, a Tata scholar, who hailed from a poor Dalit family.

Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of the group, believes India is still feudal in its mindset and that much of the inequity in society can be attributed to the debilitating caste system. Dalit issues, therefore, were integral to his giving. And now, his successor, Cyrus Mistry, too is experimenting with innovative platforms to drive Dalit entrepreneurship.

The duo is part of a distinguished cohort of Indian philanthropists— that also includes Adi Godrej of the Godrej Group, Anu Aga of Thermax and Farhad Forbes of the Forbes Marshal Group—attempting to comprehend, unravel and act on complex issues of Dalit empowerment.

It can be witnessed, to varying degrees, in some of their companies in the form of skills delivery, or supplier diversity, and also, of late, in their never-talked about personal giving.

Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of the group, believes India is still feudal in its mindset and that much of the inequity in society can be attributed to the debilitating caste system.

When the fledgling Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DICCI) was struggling to hold a convention and trade fair a couple of years ago in Mumbai, it was Adi Godrej who helped stage it.

His forebear Ardeshir Godrej’s first donation, in 1926, was for a Dalit cause.

When DICCI was a small, ragtag bunch of entrepreneurs from Pune, some even reluctant to come out of the closet as Dalits, Anu Aga, and her daughter Meher Pudumjee, with their personal resources, helped them showcase the community.

More than anything else, it was a face-the-world and a confidence-building exercise for DICCI.

Farhad Forbes, who witnessed the black empowerment movement in the US as a student, is one of the most ardent advocates of Dalits, both within his companies and outside. He has institutionalised a successful skills programme for Dalits and the underprivileged.

The heft and visibility that this small group of business leaders has offered to affirmative action in the private sector is much more than what money can achieve. Their giving to the Dalit cause, despite the raised eyebrows of peers, is understated, and transformational.

The Science of Giving

Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan is seeking to unravel the mysteries of the human brain by combining medical research and computing. For this, he has committed Rs 225 crore over 10 years by seeding the Centre for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, who has been chaperoning a 1,400-bed cancer hospital, is now keen on research in cancer care, with a focus on new drug-delivery mechanisms.

NRI philanthropist Romesh Wadhwani has also been endeavoring to improve the research ecosystem in India through funding of centres of innovation. He is supporting research in biosensors and cancer cell motility at IIT, Mumbai, and cardiac and neural research at the Institute for Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine. The focus is on low-cost solutions with high global impact.

Mavens in Collective Giving

Giving away portions of your wealth and spending time on the causes you cherish is a good thing. Better still is drawing on your considerable sphere of inf luence and channelling the combined energy into a single or multiple causes. This set of philanthropists is doing, learning and setting the ground rules for collectivism.

It’s not a trifling thing.

Ashish Dhawan, venture capitalist-turned-philanthropist, along with a bevy of co-founders he roped in over a long period, has raised enough to build a modern campus and launch the maiden academic session in August this year of Ashoka University, India’s first liberal-arts university.

Ramadorai, post his tenure at Tata Consultancy Services, has trudged this path, raising over Rs 85 crore to build a paediatric hospital in Mumbai, set to be the country’s largest. Rajashree Birla of the Aditya Birla Group has, over the years, raised over $14 million for polio eradication alone. Nimesh Sumati and Rajesh Kacholia, both Mumbai businessmen, have catalysed Caring Friends—an eclectic, informal and expanding giving group of people who fraternise, raise and channel over Rs 25 crore each year into high-impact NGOs.

Inspiring, marshalling and sustaining the power of a collective towards a common goal can indeed lead to phenomenal outcomes.

New Approaches

Anand Mahindra is a co-founder of Naandi-Danone, a partnership with the French multinational that pioneered the social business model in Bangladesh as propounded by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. The partnership now provides water to three million customers in rural India. Piramal seeded the pay-per-use Sarvajal model, which is driven by local entrepreneurs and is focused on delivering water (8.87 billion litres so far) to the underserved.

The duo is focused on market-based solutions to social challenges.

Infosys co-founder NS Raghavan likes to be in the shadows, pursuing catalytic phi lanthropy that leads to high- impact engagements through his Samhita Social Venture platforms.

NSR’s network , today, covers over 20,000 NGOs and about 200 social enterprises. Ronnie Screwvala and Zarina Mehta of Swades Foundation believe in a 360 degree approach to rural development, which encompasses education, nutrition and healthcare, water and livelihoods. They are looking at deploying over Rs 700 crore in the next five years to reach a million people.

Amit Chandra of Bain Capital, a philanthropy evangelist, has been working on various issues with NGOs for over a decade. He now realises he won’t go too far without building capacities—leadership, organisational, human capital—as a pre-requisite.

Their ability to deliver programmes effectively has to be addressed first and now all his philanthropic money goes for capacity building.

The Heavy-Lifters

While India has had a long tradition in giving, this band of philanthropists, with their unconventional approaches, the weight of their reputation, their ability to think big and think differently, and back it with large tranches of their wealth, has triggered an Indian resurgence in giving. Their relentless work in chipping away at old mindsets and ossified structures in government, the private sector and civil society, especially in the field of education, has caught the imagination of an entire generation of givers who look upon them as the new patriarchs of giving.

Premji’s proclivity in building capacities of stakeholders in education is a slow, yet transformational long-term play. The younger duo, Mittal and Nadar, as in business, are looking for faster scale, reach and impact of the schools they promote and sustain. Murthy, among various other causes, roots for institutions of higher education in India and in the US.

Entering Uncharted Waters

They are beginning to engage in areas where very few philanthropists have ventured into: governance and human rights, which, by its very nature, are political. Many wouldn’t want to be here for fear of retribution. Philanthropists George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are pushing the envelope in this arena, globally, with a view to create an open, just, transparent society, and hold governments to account.

Rohini Nilekani has just about begun her journey in governance by supporting think-tanks and institutions focused on democratic reforms, and also exploring independent media. Mohandas Pai, former Infosys director, is working on strengthening democracy at the grassroots through the B.PAC (Bangalore Political Action Committee). And Luis Miranda, former private equity heavyweight, is gingerly trying to sustain conversations on human rights

Ref: The Economic Times