Dec 28

Dec 28 Philanthropic Giving by Indian Millionaires in USA Total Less Than $1 Billion

Amar Bose teaching at MIT. Photo MIT News.

December 28, 2022

Americans are the most philanthropic people in the World. This is in large part due to a long-established tradition of grateful immigrants giving back to a society where they found financial and other success. In 2021, American foundations, set up by individuals and families, and corporations donated roughly $160 billion to philanthropic causes. An additional $327 billion was donated by individuals, with about a quarter going to religious causes or organizations.

Indian founders of medium and large companies in America have earned a total of more than $55 billion, according to a 2021 estimate by this publication. This is mainly in the form of stakes owned or sold in more than 100 medium and large companies they founded or co-founded.

Also, the annual salaries, bonuses and stock options received by thousands of Indian American senior managers and chief executives – including CEOs at Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Adobe, Micron Technologies, and several other large and mid-sized companies – exceed several million dollars, as is disclosed in the annual proxy filings if the companies are public.

Overall, there are more than five million Indians living in America, with nearly half of them holding post-graduate degrees. Most of them achieve substantial financial success as executives, engineers, doctors, scientists, academics, other professional jobs and as owners of motels, convenience stores and other small businesses.

Yet, so far, wealthy Indians have given back very little to America and to fellow Americans who have been far less fortunate – one in seven Americans live in poverty, one in ten do not finish high school and every day 34 million Americans, including nine million children, do not get enough food to eat.

Since 1965, after thousands of Indians began migrating to the U.S. each year, contributions of $5 million or more by Indians to U.S. philanthropies total less than $1 billion, according to an estimate by this publication; excluding roughly $2 billion donated by the late Amar Bose. A 2018 Indiaspora study estimated that, since 2000, donations of $1 million or more by Indians to U.S. academic institutions totaled around $1.2 billion.

Visitors from India and other countries to the U.S. admire the contributions made by American philanthropists which is evident in major cities. For instance, in New York, the Lehman, Bloomberg and Lauder collections of art at the Metropolitan Museum. Also at the museum, The Kronos Collection of paintings from India’s Rajput Courts (Rajasthani and Pahari) of northern India, number nearly 100 and are a promised gift from the family collection of Steven M. Kossak, a curator in the museum’s Asian Art. In Boston, there are the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute and other hospitals and medical facilities affiliated with Harvard University.

However, visitors to the Silicon Valley in California see no similar major acts of philanthropy by wealthy Indians. Three of the four Indians on the 2022 Forbes list of 400 richest Americans have earned their wealth in the valley, with net worth ranging from $4.7 billion to $6.4 billion. In addition, there are dozens of other Indians who have become billionaires by founding and selling technology - and other businesses in the U.S.

Major American business founders and CEOs like Bill Gates, 67, of Microsoft, net worth $104 billion; Jeff Bezos, 58, of Amazon, net worth $109 billion; and Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett, 92, net worth $106 billion, plan to donate most of their wealth to philanthropy. They believe, as the late President John F. Kennedy said, “For of those to whom much is given much is required.”

In the case of successful Indians in America, there is another reason to be philanthropic. Half of Indians in America say they have faced problems due to their skin color, according to a 2021 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As recent immigrants, Indians would create goodwill among fellow Americans by demonstrating that they are giving back to a society that helped them quickly accumulate wealth. This would counter an image of what, otherwise, places Indians as continuing the low level of philanthropic giving and, consequently, appear to be more focused on accumulating wealth for access to its trappings - mega mansions and luxury cars.

Here are some Indian Americans who have made sizeable contributions to philanthropies in the U.S. in recent years. The list is far from complete. Perhaps these acts will inspire other successful Indian Americans to donate to philanthropies in the U.S. - as well as in India.

Amar Bose

The late Amar Bose, the largest Indian American donor to philanthropy in the U.S. In 2011, he donated - without any publicity - a majority of the shares in Bose Corp., a company he founded, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The donation was estimated to be worth more than $2 billion.

Bose held numerous patents in acoustics, electronics and other fields, invented noise-cancelling headphones, the wave radio and an innovative suspension system for cars. He earned a bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. from MIT, all in electrical engineering. He then taught at MIT for 45 years. Bose passed away in 2013 at the age of 83.

Kiran and Pallavi Patel

Kiran and Pallavi Patel donated $80 million to the Nova Southeastern University in Florida; in 2017 and 2018. In addition, they contributed $150 million in real estate and facilities. The university renamed some of its medical facilities after the Patels, including the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine.

In 1992, Kiran Patel, a cardiac surgeon, founded Well Care HMO, which became Florida’s largest provider of healthcare services to patients on Medicaid, the government program for the poor; by 2002 it had 450,000 members in Florida, New York and Connecticut. Pallavi Patel is a pediatrician.

Kiran Patel, 73-years-old, was born in Zambia, Africa. He studied medicine at Gujarat University, India and completed his residency in New Jersey in 1980.

Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon

Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon donated $100 million to New York University’s school of engineering; renamed the Tandon School, in 2015. Chandrika, 68-years-old, a Grammy award nominated musician, runs Tandon Capital Associates and Soul Chants Music; Ranjan, 70, was founder of hedge fund Libra advisors; both are based in New York. They have also endowed the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professorship in Psychology at Yale University.

Chandrika is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and Madras Christian College, Chennai, India. Ranjan earned a degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institure of Technology, Kanpur, 1972, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

In early 2000, in the midst of a very intensive business career with all the trappings of success, Chandrika was tormented by life’s bigger questions – “What is enough?” “Why am I here?” “What is success really?” “What makes me happy?” she writes on her site.

Vijay and Ram Shriram, from left. 2014 Photo: Stanford Medicine News Center

Kavitark (Ram) Shriram and his wife, Vidjealatchoumy (Vijay) Shriram provided $57 million in support for the new Shriram Center for Bioengineering & Chemical Engineering at Stanford University in 2014. They also endowed the departmental chair in the Department of Bioengineering by donating an additional $4 million.

Parents of two Stanford graduates, the Shrirams earlier endowed the Shriram Family Professorship in Science Education and the Shriram Family Fellowship in Science Education at the university. Ram Shriram, 65-years-old, is the founder and managing partner of Sherpalo Ventures, a Menlo Park, California investment fund. He has been a member of Stanford’s Board of Trustees. Ram earned a degree in math from Loyola College, Chennai, India.

Monte and Usha Ahuja

Monte and Usha Ahuja more than $10 million to University Hospitals, Cleveland, Ohio; 2021 in honor of their two daughters. Earlier in 2006, the couple donated $30 million to help fund the setup of the UH Ahuja Medical Center in suburban Cleveland.

In 1975, Monte founded Transtar Industries a Cleveland based distributor of transmission and drive-line related parts to the motor vehicle repair industry. Usha taught math at a college for twenty years. Both grew up in India. Monte, 76-years-old, came to the U.S. in 1969 to study at Ohio State University; he earned a M.S. in mechanical engineering the next year.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway. In 2005, set up the Jain Foundation, whose mission is to cure muscular dystrophies caused by dysferlin protein deficiency, which afflicts his son. So far, the Seattle-based foundation has invested more than $35 million dollars in research, drug development and patient support and education, without any publicity. Jain keeps a very low public profile, largely avoiding the media.

Jain earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, 1972; MBA from the Harvard Business School, 1978.

Jaishree and Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande, from left.Photo MIT News

Gururaj “Desh” and Jaishree Deshpande

Gururaj “Desh” and Jaishree Deshpande $20 million to set up the Deshpande Center For Technical Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002. The center helps MIT students and faculty commercialize breakthrough technologies and inventions; it has spun out 48 companies.

A serial entrepreneur Desh, 72-years-old, co-founded several computer networking companies: including Coral Networks, sold for $15 million to SynOptics, 1993; Cascade Communications sold to Ascend Communications for $3.7 billion in 1997. In 1998, Desh co-founded Sycamore Networks, which at the height of the Internet bubble in 2000 was valued at $45 billion, putting Desh on the Forbes list of 400 Richest Americans; by 2013, when it was sold, it had collapsed to a value of $66 million.

Desh holds a B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT), Madras, an M.E. from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and a Ph.D. from Queens University in Canada. The Deshpandes’ established the Gopalkrishnan Deshpande Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIT Madras.

Romesh Wadhwani

The Wadhwani Charitable Foundation, set up by Romesh Wadhwani, disbursed around $20 million to philanthropic causes in the U.S., India, Africa and elsewhere, from 2011 to 2020, according to its annual filings published by ProPublica.

A serial entrepreneur, Wadhwani, 75-years-old, is founder and Chairman of Symphony Technology Group, which is based in Palo Alto, California. He is on the 2022 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. He earned an MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Anu and Satya Nadella, from left. Photo: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Satya and Anu Nadella

Anu and Satya Nadella committed $15 million to the Seattle Children’s Hospital system in 2021. Their son, Zain, was born in 1997 with cerebral palsy and received life-saving care at Seattle Children’s. He still requires specialized, around-the-clock care. The funds will help advance precision medicine neurosciences and youth mental health care.

Satya, 54-years-old, has been the Chief Executive of Microsoft since 2014. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology, India; a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (UWM), 1990; and an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1996.

In 2021, Anu and Satya Nadella also donated $2 million to create the Fund for Diversity in Tech Education at UWM. The gift will help support pre-college engineering and other programs.

Growing up in Hyderabad, India, Satya’s early ambition was to be a professional cricketer.

Raj and Kamla Gupta

Raj and Kamla Gupta’s Ujala (beacon) Foundation have contributed nearly $15 million – in collaboration with the Haas family - to institutions in the United States and India: including Johns Hopkins, Drexel and Cornell Universities, the Philadelphia Zoo and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Guptas donated $1 million to Cornell to set up the Phool Prakash and Rukmini Sahai Fellowship in Bio-medical engineering for students from India.

From 1999 to 2009, Rajiv (Raj) L. Gupta, 77-years-old, was Chairman and CEO of Rohm and Haas, a Philadelphia based specialty chemicals company; he joined the company in 1971. Both Raj and Kamla Gupta grew up in India. Gupta earned a master's in operations research and information engineering from Cornell, 1969.

Ankur Gopal

Ankur Gopal’s Interapt, offers free data analytics training programs in Kentucky, in collaboration with Ernst and Young. Goal to “create 10,000 technology jobs” in Kentucky. Gopal, 47 years old, also set up a foundation to raise funds to support the programs. Interapt is a mobile and web application development firm based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gopal says he learned empathy from his mother: “My mother helped thousands of patients, most of whom would not be seen by other doctors since they could not pay. She also ran a free clinic for thousands.”

Niraj and Jill Shah

Niraj and Jill Shah donated $5 million to Cornell University’s Computer Science department, in 2021. Niraj, 48-years-old, earned a degree from the Cornell CS department in 1995. He is co-founder of Boston-based Wayfair, an online furniture and home goods retailer.

The Shah Family Foundation is working on several programs in the Boston area, especially for school students and teenagers: enabling students to earn upto 30 college credits prior to graduating from high school; teaming up with local restaurants, it has provided five million meals; and resources to tackle mental health issues for teachers and eduators.

Niraj notes on the Shah Family Foundation site, that If he could wave a magic wand “I would erase poverty.”

Raj and Anna Asava, from left. Photo North Texas Food Bank

Raj and Aradhana (Anna) Asava

Raj and Aradhana (Anna) Asava, pledged $1 million to food banks run by Feeding America, 2020. Earlier in 2017, the Asavas launched the HungerMitao (wipe out hunger) campaign, donating $100,000 to a food bank in Dallas, Texas, where they are based.

The first job Raj got in 1974, when he moved to the U.S. was as a dishwasher at a hospital, he told Voyage Dallas. In 2010, he retired as the Chief Strategy Officer for Perot Systems, based in a suburb of Dallas, which was bought by Dell Computers.

Sumir Chadha

Sumir Chadha helped fund the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India at Princeton University, 2018; named in honor of Chadha’s grandfather.

Chadha, 51-years-old, earned a BSE in computer science at Princeton, 1993. He is the co-founder of WestBridge Capital Partners, a San Mateo, California, investment firm focused on India.

Deepak and Neera Raj

Deepak and Neera Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies at Columbia University, New York, established 2015. The Center supports research projects, conferences, publications, and events.The amount donated is not disclosed.

Deepak Raj, 68-years-old, is also the co-founder of Indian American Impact Fund, a political lobbying group. He is the founder of the New Jersey-based private investment firm Raj Associates with investments in real estate and public and private securities.

A chartered financial analyst, Deepak graduated from IIT Kanpur with a BTech in electrical engineering and earned an MBA from Northeastern University, Boston.

Amit and Deepali Preeti Sinha

Amit Sinha and Deepali Preeti Sinha set up a presidential fellowship for international graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) at MIT, 2021. The number of students funded each year as well as the total amount of the gift were not disclosed.

Amit Sinha, is Chief Executive of DigiCert, an online security firm based in Lehi, Utah. Sinha earned an MS and PhD, 2001, in EECS from MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology.

Jessica and Hemant Taneja, from left. Photo: Spectrum, MIT.

Hemant and Jessica Taneja

Hemant and Jessica Taneja established the Shiv and Santosh Taneja Innovation Alcove, at MIT.nano, the center for nanoscience and nanotechnology on the MIT campus, 2018. The alcove is named after Hemant Taneja’s parents. The amount of the donation was not disclosed.

Hemant Taneja, 47-years-old, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is the CEO of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm. He earned five degrees, all from MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai donated $1 million to Give Directly in 2020, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The San Francisco Bay area charity planned to deliver $1,000 in cash to families - mostly single mothers - enrolled in a government nutrition assistance program.

In 2015, Pichai, 50-years-old, took over as the CEO of Google. In 2019, he was also appointed as the CEO of the parent company Alphabet.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kharagpur, 1993. While at IIT, he learned computer programming on his own, including in the now obsolete Fortran language. On the campus, he met Anjali, a fellow student and his future wife. Pichai earned a Master of Science degree in materials science and engineering from Stanford University, 1995; and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 2002. Flying to the U.S. to study at Stanford was Pichai’s first airplane flight.

Aneel Bhusri

Aneel Bhusri donated $1 million to Give2SF, a San Francisco charity, in 2020, to help small businesses in the city impacted by COVID-19. Bhusri, 56-years-old, is co-founder and co-CEO of Workday, a software firm based in Pleasanton, California. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Brown University and an MBA from Stanford.

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