Indian billionaire and chairman of Wipro will give 34 percent of his shares of the company valued at US$ 7.5 billion to support philanthropic activities. His foundation ‘Azim Premji Foundation’ released a statement on Wednesday to break the news.
“With this action, the total value of the philanthropic endowment corpus contributed by Mr. Premji is $21 billion, which includes 67% of economic ownership of Wipro.”
The Azim Premji Foundation works to support education and nonprofits serving underprivileged and marginalized Indians through multi year financial grants. The foundations setup the Azim Premji University to educate and conduct research programs.
The foundation currently employees 1600 people, and with the addition of funds they will scale up, and employ thrice. The university will expand to 5,000 students with over 400 faculty members in Bengaluru and the foundation intends to set up another university in northern India.
Azim Premji who is 73 years now is India’s second richest man and ranks 51 in Bloomberg’s list of global billionaires.