Last month, Premji transferred 213 million Wipro shares, equal to an 8.7% stake and valued at `8,846 crore, to the endowment trust that will fund all philanthropic activities, mostly in elementary education. It�s not just the money that is making the difference, but also the foundation�s strategy of intelligent and direct intervention.

First, the foundation doesn�t just give grants to other NGOs and expect them to do the job. It is implementing projects on its own � its current staff of 350 will grow to 5,000 in 20 states in five years, making it one of the biggest social sector organisations.

Second, in a country where 220 million children go to school, the foundation decided that setting up more schools was not the best solution.

Instead, the foundation decided to funnel its resources to train an army of education experts who could then train thousands of government teachers and officials who are already engaged with these students.

Third, Premji chose a high-flying corporate executive to head the foundation, not someone from an NGO background. Anurag Behar, 41, was one of the rising stars at Wipro. Many believe that Premji had marked out this electrical engineer from Regional Engineering College, Trichy, as �potential Wipro CEO material�. In his last job, Behar was heading Wipro�s infrastructure solutions business � he grew it from $30 million to $300 million in four years. He left that to become the co-CEO of the foundation.