Premji gifts his trust stock worth Rs 8,846 crore

In the country’s largest ever contribution to philanthropy, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji has announced the transfer of 213 million equity shares valued at around approximately Rs 8,846 crore to an irrevocable trust that will finance social and not-for-profit initiatives undertaken by the Azim Premji Foundation. With this, Premji’s holding (including entities controlled by him) in the company slides from 79.36 per cent to about 68.42 per cent.

The transfer will be effected by December 7. The trust will fund, among other things, the proposed Azim Premji University that aims to improve the standard of elementary education in the country. Premji’s donation to the foundation catapults him into the leagues of John D Rockefeller and Henry Ford.

“We believe that good education is crucial to building a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. We want to contribute significantly towards improvement of education in India, and through that towards building a better society,” Premji said in a statement.

Since its inception in 2001, the Azim Premji Foundation, in close partnership with various state governments, has been working towards improving the quality of education. So far, it has worked with over 25,000 schools involving 2.5 million children, according to a release by the foundation.

Recently, the foundation received approval from the Karnataka government to set up the Azim Premji University in the state. To be located in Bangalore, the university hopes to be operational in 2011. It will offer multidisciplinary courses, including education policy, teaching and learning, education psychology, leadership & management and educational technology, among others.

The foundation has identified about 75 acres on Sarjapur Road on the outskirts of the city, about 15 km from the Wipro headquarters.

Though a detailed investment plan is yet to be finalised, the foundation expects to invest about Rs 250 crore every year on managing the university.

“All our efforts, including the university that we are setting up, are focused on the underprivileged and disadvantaged sections of our society. Our experience of the past 10 years has motivated us to significantly scale up our initiatives, across multiple relevant dimensions,” added Premji.

The foundation has also decided to establish resource centres at state and district level across the country, which will work as an extended arm of the university. Dileep Ranjekar, co-CEO of the Foundation, said about 50 resource centres will be set up in the country over the next five years. Besides, it also intends to plan accreditation centres to promote education standards.

Recently, Anurag Behar, who earlier headed Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, was appointed co-CEO of the foundation. The company has also appointed K R Lakshminarayana, the CSO of the company, to the trust as chief endowment officer.