Gautam Adani among 3 Indian billionaires on Forbes Asia 'Heroes of Philanthropy' list

Singapore, December 6

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Indian billionaires Gautam Adani, Shiv Nadar, and Ashok Soota, as well as Malaysian-Indian businessman Brahmal Vasudevan and his lawyer wife Shanthi Kandiah, were named in the 16th edition of Forbes Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list released on Tuesday.

The unranked list “highlights leading altruists in the Asia-Pacific region who demonstrated a strong personal commitment to philanthropic causes,” Forbes said in a press release.

Adani was listed for having pledged Rs 60,000 crore when he turned 60 in June this year. The pledge makes him one of India’s most generous philanthropists, the press release said.

The money will address health care, education, and skill development and will be channelled through the family’s Adani Foundation, which was founded in 1996.

Self-made billionaire and philanthropist Shiv Nadar counts among the top donors in India, having channelled close to USD 1 billion of his wealth over a few decades to various social causes through the eponymous Shiv Nadar Foundation.

This year he donated Rs 11,600 crore to the foundation he established in 1994, intending to create an equitable, merit-based society by empowering individuals through education.

Tech tycoon Ashok Soota has pledged Rs 600 crore to the medical research trust he founded in April 2021 for the study of ageing and neurological illnesses.

He started SKAN — Scientific Knowledge for Ageing and Neurological ailments — with a Rs 200 crore outlay, which he has since tripled.

He plans to release the money over the next ten years.

Malaysian-Indian Brahmal Vasudevan, founder and CEO of Kuala Lumpur-based private equity firm Creador, and his lawyer wife, Shanthi Kandiah, support local communities in Malaysia and India through the Creador Foundation, a non-profit they co-founded in 2018.

In May this year, they pledged to donate 50 million Malaysian Ringgit (USD 11 million) to help build a teaching hospital at the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Kampar campus in Perak state.