India’s Top Philanthropists 2024: Shiv Nadar and Mukesh Ambani Lead Hurun Philanthropy List
India is a young country, and substantial wealth has been created in the last two decades. For instance, from that perspective, the philanthropic numbers are pretty inspiring. The threshold to enter India’s top 10 philanthropists has doubled — from ₹83 crores five years ago to about ₹154 crores now.
Additionally, the number of individuals donating over ₹100 crores has increased to 18, up from 9 in 2019. Now this number is quite impressive. We published this on one of the list videos, as well as the Chinese philanthropist.
There, the number of individuals who donated more than 14 million US dollars and above was roughly 100 crores, about 25. Now India is 18, China is 25. Now, China has twice as many US dollar billionaires and five times India’s GDP.
So, if you put things in perspective in India, the hypothesis is that if India were to reach the Chinese level of GDP or wealth creation, the philanthropy story would be much more inspiring. And there are some clear-cut instances: one a century ago through Mr. Jamshed D. Tata, and another as recent as two weeks ago through Mr. Abhishek Lodha, who, as we read in the media, committed almost 18 percent of Macro-tech’s shares to philanthropy. The belief is that, as India moves toward becoming a developed economy, it will become one of the world’s role models in philanthropy.
Key Statistics from the Philanthropy List
Let’s also look at some of the data in the philanthropy list this year. We found about 30 individuals who donated more than ₹50 crores, a 125 percent increase compared to five years ago. Sixteen individuals contributed more than ₹20 crores, up from roughly 25 five years ago.
The youngest in the list is Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha through the Rain Matter Foundation. We have two women in the top ten as well, Rohini Nilekani and Sushmita Bakshi of Mindfree.
Professional Managers Leading the Way
Another inspiring aspect that has been highlighted every year is the professionalism of the managers. They continue to allocate significant private donations to philanthropy, and this is increasing as well. To give you some numbers, Prashant Prakash and Amitra Prakash have cumulatively donated about ₹25 crores in the last two years. Amit Chandra and Archana Chandra have cumulatively donated about ₹63 crores in the previous three years.
AM Nayak has donated about ₹347 crores over the last two to three years. Cumulatively, all these donations, if you add in the previous three years, amount to about 435 crores from professional managers, which is the new breed of allocators in India.
Growing Philanthropy Landscape
Some other statistics: when we started the list in 2019, the number of individuals we could find who met the threshold of five crores was about 100. Now it’s 203. Now, to reach the top 15 list in 2019, it was 15 rupees; now it’s 25 crores. That’s an increasing number as well.
At this point, it’s also essential to discuss the causes and how they have evolved. Education and healthcare continue to be the most favored areas for Indian philanthropists. Still, for the first time, a new number three emerges in terms of the number of philanthropists interested in a particular cause: the environment and sustainability, where actions like climate change take center stage.