Gautam Adani was named in the 16th edition of Forbes Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list. (File)
Singapore:
Indian billionaires Gautam Adani, Shiv Nadar, and Ashok Soota as well as Malaysian-Indian businessman Brahmal Vasudevan and his lawyer wife Shanti Kandia have been named in the 16th edition of Forbes Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list released today.
The “Unranked List” highlights leading philanthropists in the Asia-Pacific region who demonstrated a strong personal commitment to philanthropic causes, Forbes said in a press release.
Gautam Adani was listed to give Rs 60,000 crore (US$7.7 billion) when he turns 60 in June this year. The pledge makes him one of India’s most generous philanthropists, the press release said.
The money will address healthcare, education and skill development and will be channeled through the family’s Adani Foundation, which was set up in 1996.
Every year, the Foundation helps around 3.7 million people across India.
Self-made billionaire and philanthropist Shiv Nadar is counted among the top philanthropists in India, channeling close to USD 1 billion of his wealth in a few decades to various social causes through the Shiv Nadar Foundation.
This year he donated Rs 11,600 crore (US$142 million) to the foundation, established in 1994 with the intention of creating an equitable, merit-based society by empowering individuals through education.
Nadar, co-founder of HCL Technologies, has helped set up educational institutions like schools and universities through the foundation, which also promotes arts and culture. He resigned from executive roles in the IT services company in 2021.
Tech tycoon Ashok Soota has pledged Rs 600 crore (USD 75 million) to a medical research trust set up in April 2021 to study aging and neurological diseases.
He started SKAN- Scientific Knowledge for Aging and Neurological diseases with an outlay of Rs 200 crore, which he has tripled.
“There are only two types of people [medical] Forbes Asia quoted Soota as saying, “There are people doing drug discovery, and people doing research in national and state-level institutions who are hungry for money.” He plans to issue money. in the next ten years.
Soota, who received his funding from a majority stake in Bangalore-based software services firm Happiest Minds Technologies, says that SCAN is already working with the Center for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science and the National Institute of Forestry for research related to Parkinson’s disease. Is. Mental health and neuroscience for research on stroke.
In June 2021, SKAN awarded a grant of Rs 20 crore to SUTA’s alma mater Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee for funding joint research projects, building a laboratory and sponsoring a professorship and three faculty fellowships.
Malaysian-Indian Brahmal Vasudevan, founder and CEO of Kuala Lumpur-based private equity firm Creator, and his lawyer wife, Shanti Kandiah, support local communities in Malaysia and India through the Creator Foundation, a nonprofit they founded in 2018. co-founded.
In May this year, he pledged to donate 50 million Malaysian ringgit (US$11 million) to help build a teaching hospital at the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Camper campus in Perak state.
“We are delighted that this has inspired others to join the cause and it looks like the project is now fully funded,” Vasudevan told Forbes Asia.
Also in May, the couple donated 25 million pounds (US$30 million) to Imperial College London – one of the largest gifts in its history – for pioneering technologies to help transform the aviation industry into zero. To form the Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable Aviation. pollution.
“We realized that creating this institute could one day make a meaningful impact on studying ways to reduce pollution to zero,” says Vasudevan, who earned his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the college in 1990.
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