Azim Premji on Public-Infrastructure Bets

TIME reported that the foundation's educational programs have so far helped over eight million children, and that it also plays an advocacy role on education policy — including helping to shape national curriculum. That dual operating-plus-advocacy posture makes it an institutional actor, not just a charity.

Among recent initiatives cited by TIME: a third campus for Azim Premji University with programs aligned to the foundation's mission (public health, education, sustainability), a scholarship programme for college-bound girls, and over 480 child-care centres for children aged six months to three years — extending the foundation's reach from school age down to early childhood.

Premji is the chancellor of Azim Premji University in Bangalore, an institution founded in 2010 that offers programs in education and related human-development domains. The university is the academic-institutional arm of his education thesis, training the practitioners his foundation deploys in the field.