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Manoj Bhargava, richest Indian in US commits 90% earnings to charity
- arrowgunz 14y agoRespect.
- est 14y agoHow is this tech or startup related?
- dangrossman 14y agoSubmissions need not be tech or startup related -- http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- eevilspock 14y agoOn-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Seems off-topic to me.
- nicholassmith 14y agoSeems on-topic to me. See how subjective life is? It concerns someone who is a founder, personal wealth and its relation to society. That's pretty interesting to a group of people.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rms 14y agoIn the sense that general business stuff overlaps with startups.
- elchief 14y agoThe article actually says he says he will give 90 pct of his money away. This is not the same as having done so.
- redcan 14y agoHopefully not a clever scheme to avoid inheritance tax... Doubt if India has inheritance tax.
- koala0 14y agohm, a little bit about the charity part : http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bhargava-the-mystery-monk-making-billions-with-5-hour-energy/3/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bh...
- rockyj 14y agoRespect. But the Indian media is a huge circlejerk. If a scientist / businessman makes it big, they will try and find an Indian connections (e.g. his parents lived in India / he visited India and that changed everything). The Indian ecosystem itself is crushingly bureaucratic for any entrepreneur to survive. We are at 132 here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index even below our neighbours. The same guy who struggles in India, migrates abroad, does well and back home he is celebrated. Search the web and you will see a hundred examples of this.
- wilfra 14y agoHe is giving the money to his own charity. With this guys track record, I wouldn't chalk this up to anything more than a clever tax-avoidance strategy. http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bhargava-the-mystery-monk-making-billions-with-5-hour-energy/3/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bh... Bhargava claims to have given away $1 billion in 2009, with a letter to FORBES from his attorney, David Lieberman of the Michigan firm Seyburn Kahn, to back him up. Tax returns of Bhargava’s U.S. charity, the Rural India Supporting Trust, suggest a different narrative. Virtually the entire donation was in the form of a 45% stake in the privately held Living Essentials. Only a few million dollars was in cash. Rural India then sold that 45% stake to Nevada 5, a private for-profit company. In exchange, Rural India got a note worth $623.6 million. Bhargava’s accountant Paul Edwards of Plante Moran says his client is not a beneficial owner in Nevada 5—but another one of his associates says it is a vehicle for Bhargava’s philanthropy and affiliated with Innovation Ventures, the parent company of Living Essentials. This kind of deal raises questions, says Roger Colinvaux, professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and an expert on tax and philanthropy. “If it were a private foundation, it would be prohibited from selling to a company related to a major donor.” Rural India itself appears not to be giving much away. It lists total grants paid out in 2010 of just $4 million off a total asset base that by the end of that year had been stepped up to just over $1 billion. Bhargava can get away with this because he set up Rural India as something called a supporting organization, or a group that financially supports other charities. Unlike a traditional private foundation, a supporting organization has no mandated 5% minimum outlay, pays no excise taxes on investment income and has fewer self-dealing restrictions. Bhargava is not doing anything illegal here, just exploiting a loophole in the tax code many other big philanthropists have used as well.
- comatose_kid 14y agoHarsh and cynical comments in this thread. I'm waiting to hear how much you've committed to give away once you've made your first million (never mind billion).
- Evbn 14y agoDo you think Manoj's first million went to charity, or invested in his businesses and self?