Shiv Nadar, founder of the $6.2-billion IT firm HCL, intends to set aside at least 20 per cent of his family’s wealth for education.
“I had said earlier that we will set aside 10 per cent of my net worth towards philanthropy, but the way it’s going it looks like 20 per cent and that adds up to approximately Rs 5,000 crore. We have spent Rs 2,000 crore so far,” the billionaire philanthropist said.
That leaves Rs 3,000 crore to be spent in a five-year time frame till 2018, he said in an interview to
Shiv Nadar, who has set up an eponymous university in Uttar Pradesh and Shiv Nadar schools in the national capital region, apart from the SSN College of Engineering near Chennai, on current estimates, has a net worth of approximately $5.6 billion.
Given the large capital costs of each of his projects, willy-nilly his Shiv Nadar Foundation will need to spend more, necessitating a larger contribution of his personal wealth.
For instance, the two schools in the NCR have cost Rs 80-100 crore each to set up. His foundation intends setting up 25 schools across India by 2020. Chennai is next, he says, with SSN College of Engineering among the top 20 in India now.