Learner, Home-maker, Corporate Executive, Student
“Today is the happiest day of our life. On Buddha’s Birth anniversary (May 7th, 2020), and with the blessings of our parents, our family has decided to share 50% of our net worth with the society. This will be used to help the most vulnerable – this is a very broad definition, and we have decided to help the children, and the voiceless animals (whose suffering is closely linked to the health of our planet). We have been supporting these causes for the last few years through our two foundations. We will now give this away formally in the next 3-12 months through special purpose vehicles to enable collaboration with other organisations and multiply the impact.
Why are we doing it?
Two reasons – We have been hugely lucky, there is no false humility here. Secondly, we strongly believe that the current model of capitalism is faulty (and it will need to change) – it allocates rewards unfairly. We know of several people who are smarter than us, work harder than us, but have been less privileged. The only question is why only 50% and why not 75%? This is to ensure that the family feels secure – the entire family supports this decision with a sense of deep gratitude. It is our wish that the family decides to increase the % to share at a subsequent stage of our lives.
Why make it public?
We agonised over this for a long time. We were inspired and encouraged to do this by Venkat Krishnan (IWT). Spoke to a few more wonderful people including Govind Iyer (Egon Zehnder) who have been on this journey. And concluded that it is a good idea to make it public. We believe this will open new doors, and we are doing this to seek help from our network, and to offer our help and reflections to all of you.
The non-profit sector can benefit tremendously from the flow of talent & ideas from the corporate sector. We will actively connect with our network and seek help in the form of their expertise, and their network.
We also offer our help and reflections to our friends, colleagues and beyond in case they wish to explore the journey of giving. If you so wish, we promise to find the time to connect.
Stay Healthy & contented”
– Parag, Deepshikha, Amol and Anusha