Wipro’s Chairman Azim Premji has quietly increased his philanthropic initiatives by a 33%, Mint reported on Wednesday.
With this, the corpus of funds under the family’s endowment trusts has gone up to Rs78,000 more than 63% of the 72-year-old Premji’s wealth as estimated by Forbes magazine. The magazine’s World’s Billionaires List ranks Premji as India’s second richest individual with a wealth of $19 billion.
In June 2017, Premji's pay package saw a huge 63% fall at $1,21,853 (about Rs 79 lakh) last fiscal, with no commission being paid during the year.
Premji's package included $66,464 in salary and allowances and $41,742 (others) and $13,647 in long-term compensation (deferred benefit - company's contribution to the Provident Fund and Pension Fund), totalling to $121,853 for the year 2016-17, as per documents with the US SEC.
It added that all other executives received variable pay under a quarterly performance linked scheme, based on key parameters of individual or combined performance of the business unit, division or segment or the company as a whole.
Earlier that year, he was felicated by the Indian Merchant Chamber of Commerce. "Driven by my own instinctive understanding and beliefs and influenced by many ideals of trusteeship, I have irrevocably donated about 39 per cent of the wealth of Wipro to the Azim Premji Foundation. I would like to donate much more to this foundation and I will do that in the course of rest of my life," he had said after receiving the award.
"The success of Wipro has made me a very wealthy person. I have never felt the need for such wealth, nor any thrill at being wealthy. I have always felt intuitively that such large wealth cannot be the privy of any one person or family," he said. Azim Premji Foundation is present across the diverse aspects of education sector, from running or supporting schools to influencing policy, Premji said, adding that its personnel have played a role in the overhaul of the upcoming education policy.
