This Entrepreneur Donated Rs 110 Crore to Shirdi Saibaba

K.V. Ramani, the co founder of nasscom, that represents and sets the tone for public policy for the Indian software industry is also a successful entrepreneur who founded Chennai-based Future Software and co-founded Hughes Software in Delhi. This man is just not an entrepreneur who runs behind money but he is also a well known philanthropist. His philanthropic activities can inspire many entrepreneurs to follow this path; reports rediff.com.

Ramani was recently in news for one such activity where he built and donated Sai Ashram for Rs 110 crore and handed it over to Sri Saibaba Sansthan. This Ashram will formally be inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee on November 16. Apart from this, Ramani also extends his services by donating 80 percent of his total earnings to the Shirdi Sai Trust.

Being a devotee of Shiridi Sai Baba
Ramani became a diehard devotee of Shiridi Sai Baba 35 years ago, when he was 27 year old. He was never a spiritual person and nor was he a devotee of Sai Baba.

Once one of his dearest family member fell sick and it was a disease that doctors could not diagnose and cure. He and his family were shattered, that was when they were asked to worship Shiridi Sai Baba and Ramani was asked to visit the temple in Mylapore. He decided to visit the temple every Thursday since then but he did not have to wait as the miracle happened the same night when the sick person started showing signs of recovery. The next day when the doctors arrived to check the status of that person they were surprised as he was completely cured.

Donating income and being spiritual
“I was not spiritual then; a young unmarried man of 27. Now, I am 62. There was no rationale working then. When my prayers were answered, I decided to fulfill the promise. For me, it was like visiting a temple after writing an exam well,” says Ramani.

He completely accepts the fact that he has turned spiritual and only after being a devotee of Shiridi Sai that he was able to differentiate between religion and spirituality. He always wanted to visit the Shiridi temple but was not able to do so though he planned many trips with Dewang Mehta (of Nasscom) but could not make it happens not when you planned but when Baba wants. After starting the Sai Ashram project he has been regularly visiting the temple to be blessed and to be rejuvenated.

Taking the philanthropic path
Ramani started his philanthropic venture in his house in Chennai in 1996 where he set aside a certain sum of money for building Sai temples, to help the poor in education, food and healthcare and also for Sai Prachaar. He also says that he does not accept or take money as donation and completely does it from his own money.

He says, “Baba, you gave me too much money, I don't need this much”. After selling two of his companies in 2004, which benefited the company, employees and himself, he decided to keep just 20 percent of it and to give away the 80 percent of it to Sai Baba.

As spoken to rediff he says, “I gave Rs 110 crore now. If you add what I have given all these years, it is much more than that. What we are spending every year is from the interest I get from the corpus I have invested. This Rs 110 crore comes from the interest of the corpus of the last 5-6 years.”

Reason to donate 110 crores
Ramani did not have any plans to build anything rather than just using the funds for some good purpose. When he spoke to the PRO of Shirdi Sansthan, he realized that the major problem that the ashram faced was accommodation.

Elderly people sat on the roads and women fed their babies in the open as they could not get a roof under their head. After taking a closer look at the statistics he found out that 30-40,000 devotees came to Shirdi every day. During weekends, it was a lakh and during festival times, it was 3-4 lakhs and the accommodation available with the Sansthan was less than 10,000. It was after hearing and seeing all this he decided to take up the project. 

He also clearly says that it would be completely owned, maintained and managed by the Sansthan, and nobody has rights over it after handing over the keys.

"What I do for the Shirdi Sai Trust is not materialistic; it is spiritual". He also says, “The entrepreneur in me creates institutions which can provide employment, which can create and showcase technological products to the world. We didn't build a services company; we built a technology product company. We focused primarily on the telecom sector and had branches in the UK, Germany, in the US, Japan, Korea and China.”