Ludhiana-born Mittal pledges ₹7,000 crore to set up tech varsity SATYA BHARTI VARSITY IS LIKELY TO COME UP IN PUNJAB OR HARYANA
NEW DELHI: Billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal has pledged 10% of his family’s wealth, amounting to ₹7,000 crore, to the Bharti Foundation, a large part of which will be used to set up the Satya Bharti University, which seeks to offer free science and technology education to the poor.
“We aim to focus on education in our philanthropic ventures, though from time to time we may look at other initiatives like Nyaya Bharti (aid for undertrials) and Satya Bharti Abhiyan (sanitation drive) but on a smaller scale,” Mittal said. Mittal, 60, is the latest among India’s top billionaires to dedicate a part of his wealth to philanthropic causes.
NEW DELHI: Billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal has pledged 10% of his family’s wealth, amounting to ₹7,000 crore, to the Bharti Foundation, a large part of which will be used to set up the Satya Bharti University, which seeks to offer free science and technology education to the poor.
“We aim to focus on education in our philanthropic ventures, though from time to time we may look at other initiatives like Nyaya Bharti (aid for undertrials) and Satya Bharti Abhiyan (sanitation drive) but on a smaller scale,” Mittal said in an interview on Thursday.
Mittal, 60, is the latest among India’s top billionaires to dedicate a substantial part of his wealth to philanthropic causes. On November 19, Infosys Ltd chairman Nandan Nilekani and wife Rohini pledged at least half their wealth to charity, the fourth among Indians to sign up for the Giving Pledge initiative of Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. chairman Warren Buffett.
“Two big giving announcements in a week shows that Indian philanthropy is moving beyond capital and is getting more catalytic,” says Deval Sanghavi, co-founder of Dasra, a strategic philanthropy advisory.
The Satya Bharti University, to be set up in north India with a capacity to enrol 10,000 students, hopes to attract academics from across the world.
“We are looking for about 100 acres somewhere close to Delhi or Chandigarh for it is tough to attract talented academics if campuses are set in extreme rural settings,” Mittal said. It will provide free education to children from underprivileged and economically weaker sections of society.
Bharti Foundation, which has been running the Satya Bharti School programme as a publicprivate partnership for a decade, works in the field of improving primary and secondary school education. The Satya Bharti School programme will also get a part of the ₹7,000-crore corpus but Mittal declined to give the exact breakup.