Wipro chairman Azim Premji quietly donate more to philanthropic causes

Bengaluru: Information technology (IT) czar Azim Hashim Premji commits more of his wealth to philanthropic causes.

The Wipro’s billionaire founder has quietly increasde his donations by 33% in 2018 for a charitable trust, Mint reported on Wednesday.

72-year-old Premji is the second richest Indian in Forbes billionaires’ list 2018 and was ranked 58th on the overall list with a net worth of $18.8 billion.

With this latest philanthropic initiative by Premji, corpus of funds has gone up to some Rs 78,000 crore more than 63% of Premji’s wealth as estimated by Forbes.

According to three people directly familiar with his plans, Premji’s intent to give away almost all his personal wealth towards philanthropy.

“In essence, the move to merge family office with endowment only means one thing—that he wants to ensure more funding for philanthropy and give away substantially more to charity,” one of the people said, requesting anonymity.

A spokesperson for Azim Premji Foundation confirmed the increased allocation in an email reply.

“The total value of transfer to endowment, including beneficial interest in Wipro and other investment assets, is approximately $12 billion,” he said.

Earlier in 2016, he was felicated by the Indian Merchant Chamber of Commerce.

“Driven by my own instinctive understanding and beliefs and influenced by many ideals of trusteeship, I have irrevocably donated about 39 per cent of the wealth of Wipro to the Azim Premji Foundation. I would like to donate much more to this foundation and I will do that in the course of rest of my life,” he had said after receiving the lifetime achievement award.

“The success of Wipro has made me a very wealthy person. I have never felt the need for such wealth, nor any thrill at being wealthy. I have always felt intuitively that such large wealth cannot be the privy of any one person or family,” he said.