It was indeed a pleasure to go through the 13 December 2013 edition of Forbes Magazine ,Indian edition where the year’s winners for Philanthropy awards are profiled. Godrej Foundation, The Bajaj Family ,Amit Chandra ,Archana Raghuram , Narayana Health of Dr Devishetty , Romesh Wadhwani ,Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan , Anu Aga, Rohini and Nandan Nilekani are all there in the list.
What struck me this time is the new emerging fields and the process accompanying the same in the selection, management and metrics of the various initiatives by the award winners . Also, the scaling up of the scope and reach of the endeavor . For example , look at Dr Devishetty’s attempt to open a hospital chain at Cayman Islands , a location generally known as a tax haven for the wealthy to park money . Amit Chandra bringing his business networks to his philanthropic work or Archana and her team bringing engineering and problem solving abilities to the table ,or Romesh Wadhwani’s efforts in job creation are all path breaking efforts in Result oriented Philanthropy. The idea of philanthropic capital by Nandan Nilekani and operationalized by Rohini or the efforts in building sustainability in philanthropic models by the Godrej Foundation are also worth mentioning.
Indian Philanthropy has come of age and is ready to scale new heights. The future definitely looks promising.