Reversal of fortunes

Reach of Indian-born philanthropists extends beyond US to native land

Vinod and Gail Sahney of Concord at the American India Foundation gala this month in Cambridge. (Bill Brett for The Boston Globe)

Earlier this month, in a ballroom in the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge decorated with calla lilies and glittering fabric, hundreds of Indian-born immigrants in tuxedos and saris paid $500 a seat to listen to the plight of rickshaw drivers in the land of their birth.

Most of the attendees now live in Greater Boston, and they ate Bombay chops and chocolate samosas, drank cabernet and chardonnay. They bid thousands of dollars in a silent auction for prizes that included a night at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, private dance lessons, and a designer dress. And by the end of the night, they had raised about $275,000 to help rickshaw drivers buy their own vehicles.

The American India Foundation, which hosted the second annual gala, is buoyed by the wave of Indians who came to the United States to seek education and often stayed to make a lot of money. A host of India-based philanthropies have sprung up around Boston, including the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which feeds nearly 1 million schoolchildren in India and opened its US office in Stoneham less than two years ago. In September, Akshaya Patra raised $750,000 at its annual fund-raiser.

Two years ago, the Prashant H. Fadia Foundation in Bur lington and the Deshpande Foundation in Stoneham donated $500,000 to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, allowing the museum to triple its gallery space for Indian art. And the Desai Family Foundation, also in Burlington, has donated large amounts of money to causes here and in India.

"As people become financially successful, there is a desire to give back, both in the United States and in India," said Raj Sharma, a private wealth adviser and senior vice president at Merrill Lynch and a cochair of the American India Foundation fund-raiser. "India is a land of a million causes. It's got great riches. It's got great glamour. It's also got grinding poverty."

Many Indians who moved to the United States in the last few decades came here to study, and got into American universities by ranking at the top of their classes and already leading in their professional fields, Sharma said. Now, those Indians have made money in their careers and want to give back, he said.

Of American residents born outside the country, Indian-born immigrants are both the most highly educated have the highest median household income of any national group. A 2003 Merrill Lynch study, done at the tail end of the dot-com boom, found that one in nine Indian-born immigrants to the United States were millionaires.

"I can introduce you to 50 people who have taken companies public and made a lot of money," said Vinod Sahney of Concord, a senior vice president at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, as he looked around the room at the American India Foundation fund-raiser, where the dress code was black tie and Indian formal.

Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, one of the area's best-known Indian entrepreneurs, is one of the forces driving the burgeoning new philanthropies. Deshpande - a serial entrepreneur who founded Cascade Communications Corp., sold for $3.7 billion in 1997 - created the Deshpande Foundation, which gives grants to groups, including many that work in India, with innovative projects.

Deshpande also brought Akshaya Patra to America, giving the foundation free office space, after he was impressed by the group's work in India. "He saw this as an opportunity to transform India by scaling up and replicating this model," said Madhu Shridar, the group's president and CEO.

Akshaya Patra is the world's largest nongovernmental organization that provides a midday meal to children. The group, which started in 2000 as a pilot project in five schools in Bangalore, feeds children at school to encourage them to continue their education.

"Organizations like these are coming up because there is a whole new level of passion for philanthropy among South Asian people who are here," said Geetha Ramamurthy, a senior vice president at Venus Capital Management Inc. "That awareness is rising. They're responding to the call and the need."

While much of the money raised is sent back to India, local philanthropies are also supporting Indian art in the United States. In the past few years, these gifts have allowed the Peabody Essex Museum to multiply its gallery space devoted to Indian art and also supported the publishing of two recent books on Indian art and furniture, as well as Indian programming and exhibits at the museum.

"It's been tremendous," said Susan Bean, the museum's curator of South Asian and Korean art. "These US-based Indian philanthropic foundations have begun just in recent years to support projects at American art museums, mostly for the support of the display of Indian art."

Prashant H. Fadia, president and CEO of Abacus Software Group in Burlington, died in 2005, at the age of 52. His wife, Saluni, is now director of the foundation named after him.

Not only are more Indian-Americans donating to charitable causes, but the group of those considered large donors is growing, Ramamurthy said. At the American India Foundation fund-raiser, 10 couples designated as cochairs donated at least $7,500 apiece.

One of those couples was Al Kapoor, founder and president of the Boston investment firm Millennium Ventures Group, and his wife, Alisa Taylor. Kapoor, who lives in Weston, was born in India and studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, formerly Bombay.

"Basically, they gave me a world-class education for very little," he said. "You feel like you've got a great opportunity."

Kapoor agreed to become a cochair of the fund-raiser this year after Sharma sold him on the organization. As a businessman, Kapoor liked that the American India Foundation encouraged the projects it supported to become self-sufficient.

"We always wanted to give some money to causes in India," he said. "We didn't really quite know how to have that access."

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.