Billionaire philanthropist and industrial magnate Gautam Adani and his family have pledged to donate 600 billion Indian rupees ($7.7 billion) to a range of social causes in India, including health care and “skill development.”
Adani is the chairman of the multinational conglomerate Adani Group and currently has a net worth of nearly $93 billion. According to Bloomberg, he is Asia’s richest person.
In a press release Thursday, Adani said he was making the pledge this year to mark the 100th anniversary of his father’ birth and his own 60th birthday. The funding will be administered by the Adani Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Adani Group. The foundation focuses on social programs, including health and nutrition, and has had an impact on over 2,000 villages across more than a dozen states in India, according to its website.
The funding will help the foundation “utilize the potential of India’s demographic advantage” by prioritizing social issues such as education, health care, and workforce training, especially in rural regions of the country, according to the press release.
“At a very fundamental level, programs related to all these three areas should be seen holistically and they collectively form the drivers to build an equitable and future-ready India,” Adani said. “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.”
About the author
Stephanie Beasley@Steph_Beasley
Stephanie Beasley is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global philanthropy with a focus on regulations and policy. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Oberlin College and has a background in Latin American studies. She previously covered transportation security at POLITICO.
