Billionaire Gautam Adani Pledges 7 7 Billion To Charity
The funds will be managed and dispersed by the family’s Adani Foundation and will go towards causes such as healthcare and education in rural areas of India. In a press statement, Adani touts his own family foundation’s ability to handle a philanthropic project this massive: “Our experience in large project planning and execution and the learnings from the work done by the Adani Foundation will help us uniquely accelerate these programs.” Philanthropy among the billionaire set has become pretty trendy in the West, but Adani is something of a pioneer in the field in his native country – according to the recently released 2021 India Philanthropy Report, the country’s ultra-wealthy as a whole donated just .5 percent of their wealth to charity last year. Wipro founder and chairman Azim Premji is another billionaire in India with an interest in philanthropy, and he’s also quoted in the press release on Adani’s philanthropic spirit: “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.” Adani has been in the Billionaire’s Club since 2008, but aggressive expansion in the fields of energy, media, and transport in the last couple years has seen his fortune grow substantially, to a current net worth of $108 billion, enough to overtake Mukesh Ambani as the richest person in Asia. Adani has reportedly stated his ambition to eventually become the world’s largest green energy producer, intending to invest as much as $70 billion in green energy projects in India and around the world.