A 73-year-old billionaire may have just made the single largest donation to charity in Indian history.
Azim Premji is the chairman of Wipro Ltd., the fourth-largest IT service company in the country. Though the company started by his father in 1945 had humble beginnings as a small vegetable oil manufacturer, Wipro is now worth billions.
Premji himself is ranked as the second-richest man in India, according to Bloomberg, but he has created more of a name for himself through his giving—an astonishing philanthropic legacy.
Earlier this week, Premji announced that he would be giving $7.5 billion to the Azim Premji Foundation. Since launching the education-focused charity in 2001, this contribution brings Premji’s total donation amount to a whopping $21 billion.
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His donations are particularly noteworthy due to recent reports that India’s wealthiest citizens (anyone with a net worth over $55 million) are donating less money to charity than they did five years ago.
Premji, on the other hand, was responsible for 80% of the nation’s “large” private donations (donations of $1.4 million or more) in 2018, according to CNN.
Furthermore, he was the first Indian citizen to sign The Giving Pledge, a campaign which was launched by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet in order to encourage the world’s richest people to donate at least half of their wealth to charity.
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The Premji Foundation says that they plan on using their founder’s latest donation to launch a new university in northern India and more than triple certain branches of their education workforce.
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