To mark Adani's 60th birthday, family pledges Rs 60K cr to charities

In one of the biggest donations by a business family in India, the family of Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani on Thursday committed to donating Rs 60,000 crore (around $7.7 billion) to various charities related to health care, education, and skill development.

The commitment has been made to mark Gautam Adani’s 60th birthday on Friday as well as the birth centenary year of his father Shantilal Adani. The corpus will be administered by the Adani Foundation.

“At a very fundamental level, [programmes] related to all these three areas should be seen holistically and they collectively form the drivers to build an equitable and future-ready India. Our experience in large project planning and execution and learnings from the work done by the Adani Foundation will help us uniquely accelerate these programmes,” Adani said.

Azim Premji, chairman of Azim Premji Foundation and founder-chairman of software major Wipro, said: “Gautam Adani and his family’s commitment towards philanthropy should set an example that we can all try to live Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of trusteeship of wealth at the peak of our business success and need not wait for our sunset years.”

Premji said India’s challenges and possibilities demand that “we work together as one, cutting across all divides of wealth, region, religion, caste, and more”. 

One of India’s top philanthropists, he donated Rs 9,700 crore to charities in the financial year 2020-21 (FY21), according to a report by Hurun published last November.

The family of Shiv Nadar, founder and chairman emeritus of HCL Technologies, was the second-biggest donor, with Rs 1,263 crore donated to charities, while the Ambani family donated Rs 500 crore in FY21, according to the Hurun report.

Globally, Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata is the biggest donor, with the estimated current valuation of donations pegged at $102 billion, followed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at $74.6 billion, according to the Hurun report for 2021. Tata Trusts, which owns a 67 per cent stake in Tata Sons, runs the charity initiatives of the Tata group in India.

In a statement, the Adani group said the Adani Foundation had gained a rich experience in working with communities focused on integrated development efforts across the three areas. “In addition to being the 100th birth anniversary of my inspiring father, this year also happens to be the year of my 60th birthday and therefore the family decided to contribute Rs 60,000 crore towards charitable activities related to healthcare, education, and skill development, especially in the rural regions of our nation,” Adani said.