BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, November 13:

IT major Wipro’s Azim Premji donated INR220 daily, or INR 79.04 billion in a year and emerged as the most generous Indian in 2020.

Premji pipped HCL Technologies’ Shiv Nadar, who had earlier topped the list collated by Hurun Report India and Edelgive Foundation, by a wide margin. Nadar’s donations stood at INR 7.95 billion for FY20 as against INR8.26 billion in the year-ago period. Premji had donated INR 4.26 billion in the previous fiscal.

Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries retained the third spot among the list of givers by donating INR4.58 billion as against INR4.02 billion a year ago, it said.

The raging pandemic had the corporate honchos repurposing their donations to fight the COVID infections, and the top giver on this turned out to be Tata Sons with a INR15-billion commitment, followed by Premji at INR11.25 billion, and Ambani at INR5.10 billion.

A bulk of the corporate commitments seemed to be given to the PM-CARES Fund, with Reliance Industries committing INR5 billion, and Aditya Birla Group donating INR4 billion, the report said. It can be noted that Tatas’ commitment also includes a INR5 crore donation to the fund newly created by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

Premji’s generosity pulled the total donations up by 175 per cent to INR120.5 billion in FY20, the list said.

Azim Premji Endowment Fund owns 13.6 per cent of the promoter’s shareholding in Wipro and has the right to receive all money earned from promoter shares, the report said.

The number of individuals who have donated more than INR100 million increased marginally to 78 from the year-ago period’s 72, the report said.

With a donation of INR27 million, Amit Chandra and Archana Chandra of ATE Chandra Foundation are the first and only professional managers to ever enter the list.

The list has three of Infosys’ co-founders with Nandan Nilekani (INR1.59 billion), S Gopalkrishnan (INR500 million) and S D Shibulal (INR32 million).

The list of 109 individuals who have donated over INR50 million has seven women, led by Rohini Nilekani with INR470 million.

Education is the highest beneficiary sector with 90 philanthropists, led by Premji and Nadar, together donating INR93.24 billion, the report said. Healthcare came second with 84 donors and was followed by disaster relief and rehabilitation with 41 donors.

Mumbai, the financial capital, led by donor count at 36, followed by New Delhi at 20 and Bengaluru at 10.

E-commerce firm Flipkart’s co-founder Binny Bansal was the youngest donor at 37 with a commitment of INR53 million and the average age of the donors on the list was 66 years, it said.