Besides being a successful entrepreneur, Azim Premji is also a benevolent philanthropist. He founded the Azim Premji Foundation in 2001 with an aim to ensure education of universal quality to the needy. It operates across various states including Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. The foundation mainly focuses on elementary education in rural areas.
In 2010, Premji pledged to donate two billion US dollars towards school education in India.
He has also established the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. It focuses on effective programmes of learning, research, and development in fields like health, nutrition, livelihood etc.
The first Indian to sign up for The Giving Pledge, Premji has donated 39 per cent of his personal wealth to charity so far. His motto is that those who are privileged to have wealth should contribute to create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.
For his charitable work, the Forbes magazine named him ‘the Bill Gates of India’. In 2009, the Wesleyan University in Middletown, US awarded Premji an honorary doctorate for his outstanding philanthropic work.