In his early 20s, Romesh Wadhwani arrived in the United States with just a few dollars in his pocket. With a bachelor\u2019s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, he entered Carnegie Mellon\u2019s graduate programs with the entrepreneurial bent of so many Indian-born students studying in American colleges and universities.<\/p>\n
Now, the billionaire Wadhwani is channeling his wealth toward helping South Asian students with company-building aspirations like himself.<\/p>\n
The 2012 Forbes 400, which ranks the wealthiest people in the nation, has its fair share of of entrepreneurs who hail from India and came to the U.S. with very little. Among them are the $1.5 billion mind behind 5-hour Energy, Manoj Bhargava, as well as technology pioneers-turned-venture-capitalists Vinod Khosla (net worth: $1.4 billion) and Ram Shriram (net worth: $1.6 billion). The wealthiest of them all, Wadhwani (net worth $1.9 billion), understands India\u2019s potential for entrepreneurial winners. In fact, he\u2019s betting on it.<\/p>\n
The founder and chairman of the Wadhwani Foundation, Wadhwani made his fortune creating business software firms. He has devoted the majority of his fortune to create jobs and foster entrepreneurial talent in the world\u2019s second most populous nation. Wadhwani, who recently signed the Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Giving Pledge, says he\u2019s committed to hand over 80% of his wealth to his foundation out of an \u201dobligation to give back\u201d to his birth nation. As of June, his foundation had more than $100 million in assets, according to Wadhwani.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started the foundation, right from the beginning it was clear that we were not just going to give $10,000 here and $50,000 here and let 10,000 flowers bloom,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had the opportunity to grow companies at scale. It\u2019s not just important to apply money, but to apply effort and money, and we began by picking a few initiatives each of which could achieve significance of scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among those initiatives are goals such as training entrepreneurs, building research centers, creating opportunities for the disabled, affecting joint India-U.S. policy and offering career-based training programs, part of the foundation\u2019s five-pronged approach all focused on improving the economic outlook and employment situations of India and other developing nations. According to a report from India\u2019s Ministry of Labour & Employment for last year, the unemployment rate for the country was estimated to be 3.8%, while labor force participation rate\u2013the ratio of of the working-age population who are working or are unemployed and looking for jobs\u2013was 52.9%. The most recent figures for the U.S. in August placed the nation\u2019s unemployment rate at 8.1% and the participation rate at 63.5%.<\/p>\n
While India\u2019s reported unemployment rate is much lower than the United State\u2019s figure, Wadhwani says that India still has a \u201cjobs crisis.\u201d He points to the high number of unskilled workers without college or even high school degrees that can\u2019t find work because of their educational backgrounds. Among one of the biggest focuses of the Wadhwani Foundation, he says, is the development of a network of community and skills colleges in conjunction with India\u2019s Ministry of Human Resource Development.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver 10 million high school students from 10th, 11th and 12th grade drop out of high school every year and several million drop out of first or second years of college programs,\u201d Wadhwani says. \u201cMost end up becoming contract laborers earning a few dollars a day and live truly horrible lives often in the slums of India\u2026 It\u2019s a big opportunity for our foundation to help create a skills development initiative\u2026 to focus on skills and careers education rather than college.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Wadhwani Foundation is focused on developing individuals for certain occupations, its founder also hopes to create jobs as well. It\u2019s established biotechnology and cardiac research centers in Mumbai and Bangalore with the intent, says Wadhwani, of fashioning India into a viable place for R&D.<\/p>\n
In that same vein, the foundation\u2019s longest-running initiative, the National Entrepreneurship Network, is centered on the idea of job creation through the promotion of entrepreneurship within South Asian schools. Founded in 2003, NEN has now exists on 600 campuses and involves some 1,200 faculty members with the goal of helping young minds find ways to establish companies. Wadhwani estimates 15,000 to 25,000 jobs have been created already through the network and hopes that figure can rise to 100,000 in the next five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people think of India, and they think it\u2019s so entrepreneurial,\u201d says NEN cofounder Laura Parkin, pointing to successful Indian-born entrepreneurs. \u201dBut just like everything else in India, that\u2019s true and false at the same time. There\u2019s [self-employment]\u2026 but what you didn\u2019t have is that opportunity driven entrepreneurship that we see here and take for granted here, where an educated middle class person decides to walk away from a job and start something.\u201d<\/p>\n
About two-thirds of new jobs come from newly started companies, says Parkin. \u201cIf you\u2019re missing that class of people, you\u2019re missing a lot of economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wadhwani is exactly the type of person Parkin is referring to. From his days as a Carnegie Mellon grad student, whose first stateside entrepreneurial endeavor was a dormitory canteen peddling junk food, to the founder and CEO of $2.5 billion (revenues) private equity technology group Symphony Technology, Wadhwani is the archetype of the minds that Indian universities need to find and foster within the country\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
\u201cRomesh doesn\u2019t change his personality when he\u2019s going from business to philanthropy,\u201d says Parkin. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t become the hands-off person that gives money away and feels good about it. He\u2019s passionate and goal-focused.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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