India software tycoon donates $2.8b to education charity
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NEW DELHI (AFP) - Indian software tycoon Azim Premji said on Saturday that he has given US$2.3 billion (S$2.8 billion) to an education charity he controls, reportedly the biggest charitable donation in the country's recent history.
It is his second major recent donation after giving almost US$2 billion to the charity in 2010, and came shortly after he joined the Giving Pledge club set up by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffet.
In Saturday's donation, the chairman of software firm Wipro transferred shares worth US$2.3 billion from the company to a trust which controls the education charity Azim Premji Foundation, a company statement said.
The billionaire, who inherited a cooking oil company and transformed it into India's third-biggest outsourcing services firm, said the trust will use the funds to scale up the foundation's activities "significantly".
