When there is news about Gautam Adani these days, it’s usually about his business deals, latest acquisitions, or how much his wealth has grown.
However, there is some deviation from the usual ahead of his birthday on Friday.
To mark his 60th birthday, Asia’s richest person Gautam Adani and his family have pledged to donate Rs 60,000 crore ($7.7 billion) to several social causes. The donation will be used for health care, education, and skill development, Adani told Bloomberg in an interview on Thursday.
The donation will be managed by the Adani Foundation.
“This is one the largest transfers made to a foundation in the Indian corporate history,” he said, adding that this commitment also honors the birth centenary year of his father, Shantilal Adani.
“We will invite three expert committees in coming months to formalize strategy and decide the allocation of funds in these three areas,” he said. The committees will have members from the Adani family in supporting roles, he added.
With this, Adani joins global billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett who have committed large parts of their wealth to philanthropy. With a net worth of almost $92 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Adani has added a little more than $15 billion to his wealth this year -- the biggest gainer globally, the index shows.
However, this is not the first time the billionaire has been in the news for such causes.
In FY21, Adani was eighth on the list of India’s top philanthropists with a donation of Rs 130 crore towards disaster relief.
In March 2020, Adani announced a Rs 100 crore contribution by his group's philanthropy arm to the Prime Minister's Fund to fight the coronavirus outbreak, joining Tata Group, Reliance Industries, and other corporates who came forward to make contributions to fight the unprecedented crisis.
In 2018, On his birthday, Adani Foundation organized a blood donation drive all across India. The event marked the collection of 8,500 units of blood that were donated to the Red Cross Society.
