This is our 16th edition of the annual list that highlights the region’s top philanthropists who have demonstrated a strong personal commitment to causes such as education and the environment. The list is kept to a select group of 15, with nine new entrants on this year’s list. Previous honorees are considered if they have made recent significant contributions that justify a relisting. One example is Ronnie and Gerald Chan. The Hong Kong billionaire siblings in October gifted $100 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish a new school for design. This comes on the heels of last year’s $175 million donation to the University of Massachusetts.

A new generation of philanthropists is emerging across Asia-Pacific as well. Canva’s cofounders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht in Australia pledged last year the majority of their shares in their $26 billion (valuation) graphic design platform to support charitable initiatives. As climate change continues to be a major issue of concern worldwide, Hong Kong-based private equity billionaire Jean Salata and his wife Melanie gifted $200 million in June to establish a climate and sustainability institute at Harvard University.

Elsewhere, global crises such as the war in Ukraine prompted tycoons like Japan’s Hiroshi Mikitani, the founder of e-commerce giant Rakuten, to donate to humanitarian aid. And on his birthday in June, India’s richest person, Gautam Adani, pledged a whopping $7.7 billion to programs related to healthcare, education and skill development.

The unranked list highlights individual altruists in the Asia-Pacific region who are donating from their own fortunes, and giving personal time and attention to their select causes. We do not include corporate philanthropy except for privately held companies where the individual is a majority owner.

Edited by Rana Wehbe Watson

Research and reporting: Jonathan Burgos, Gloria Haraito, John Kang, Danielle Keeton-Olsen, Ramakrishnan Narayanan, Phisanu Phromchanya, Anuradha Raghunathan, James Simms, Jessica Tan and Catherine Wang.

Illustrations by Masao Yamazaki for Forbes Asia

^India

GAUTAM ADANI

Chairman, Adani Group

^{Age: 60}

Gautam Adani, India's richest person, pledged 600 billion rupees ($7.7 billion) when he turned 60 in June, making him one of India’s most generous philanthropists. The money will address healthcare, education and skill development. “At a very fundamental level, programs related to all these three areas should be seen holistically and they collectively form the drivers to build an equitable and future-ready India,” Adani said when announcing the pledge. The money will be channeled through the family’s Adani Foundation, whose activities are broken into nine types of aid, including for the three funded by the June donation.

The Adani Foundation, founded in 1996, has been spearheaded since the start by his wife Priti Adani, who is the chairperson. It annually helps nearly 3.7 million people across India.

^Australia

MELANIE PERKINS

CEO, Canva

^{Age: 35}

CLIFF OBRECHT

Chief operating officer, Canva

^{Age: 36}

Within a few months of their graphic design firm’s $40 billion valuation off a $200 million funding raise in 2021, Canva cofounders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht joined other philanthropic billionaires in signing the Giving Pledge, promising to donate the vast majority of their fortune in their lifetime. The couple gave most of their Canva shares (30% of their total 31% stake) to do good through the company’s charitable arm, Canva Foundation, calling the decision “not just a massive opportunity, but an important responsibility.”

So far, Canva has provided Covid-19 support in India and humanitarian response funds in Ukraine, and contributed to a $10 million project in Malawi that gives money directly to people living in extreme poverty. The company also donates access to its premium platform to over 250,000 nonprofits, and has launched Canva for Education initiative, a free service designed for K-12 students and teachers worldwide. The ten-year-old graphic design platform said in October that over 100 million people use its software tools every month, though investors recently cut the firm’s valuation to $26 billion amid a broader tech market rout.

^{Hong Kong}

JEAN SALATA

Chairman, EQT Asia

^{Age: 56}

MELANIE SALATA

Trustee, Salata Family Foundation

^{Age: 56}

Jean Salata, chairman of Hong Kong-based private equity firm EQT Asia, and his wife Melanie donated $200 million in June to establish the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. “Climate change is the defining issue of our generation, the defining challenge for our children and our children’s children,” Salata says by email.

While the Salatas have previously given to other schools, including $5 million last year to help build the Salata Technology and Innovation Center at Cathedral Prep-Villa Maria in the U.S. where Jean went to high school, it is their first time to back a climate action program. The institute will coordinate research at the university, provide grants, assist course development and link students with alumni in the field. “I am optimistic that humankind, collectively, can make a difference. It is not going to be easy. We are not going to be able to do it alone. No single nation can do it alone. It is a global challenge,” says Salata.

A citizen of Chile, Salata moved to Hong Kong in 1989 and joined Baring Private Equity Asia (BPEA) in 1997, before leading a management buyout of Baring. In October, Stockholm-listed EQT completed its $7.5 billion acquisition of BPEA and formed BPEA EQT.

^Australia

GEOFFREY CUMMING

Founder, Karori Capital

Geoffrey Cumming made philanthropic history this year with a A$250 million ($168 million) gift to the University of Melbourne—among the largest single donations in Australia. The money will help fund a pandemic therapeutic research center, to be named after Cumming, within the university’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. “This new global medical research center is conceived as a long-term initiative to provide greater protection for global society against future pandemics,” he was quoted as saying in a university press release. “It will attract top researchers and scientists from Australia and around the world, on long-term contracts, in a collaborative medical research effort which is designed to enhance global resiliency.”

Cumming’s wealth comes from the oil and gas industry, where he held leadership roles at Asamera Oil, Gardiner Oil & Gas and Western Oil Sands—all based in Canada—as well as investment firms Emerald Capital and Karori Capital that he founded. A Canadian and New Zealand dual citizen, he previously donated $100 million toward a medical research center at the University of Calgary, and created and funded the Ryman Prize, which awards work that has advanced the quality of life for older people.

^India

SHIV NADAR

Cofounder, HCL

^{Age: 77}

Self-made billionaire and philanthropist Shiv Nadar counts among the top donors in India, having channeled $1.1 billion of his wealth over a few decades to various social causes through the eponymous Shiv Nadar Foundation. This year he donated 11.6 billion rupees ($142 million) to the foundation, which he established in 1994 with the goal of creating an equitable, merit-based society by empowering individuals through education. The foundation says it practices “creative philanthropy,” an approach that focuses on long-term impact for generations to come.

Nadar, who cofounded HCL Technologies (he stepped down from executive roles at the IT services company in 2021), has helped set up educational institutions such as schools and universities via the foundation, which also promotes art and culture. The foundation’s trustees include his wife Kiran Nadar, daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra and son-in-law Shikhar Malhotra.

^{Hong Kong}

LI KA-SHING

Senior advisor, CK Hutchison Holdings

^{Age: 94}

Over the past 12 months, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has donated over HK$1 billion ($128 million) to various initiatives in mainland China, Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world through the eponymous Li Ka Shing Foundation. This includes HK$150 million to fund research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine and over HK$70 million to fight Covid-19. The foundation has sought to ease pressure on Hong Kong’s public health system by supporting private hospitals in treating non-Covid patients and funding the purchase of protective materials for elderly homes and meals for the underprivileged.

In recent years, its donations have also helped local businesses impacted by political protests that hit Hong Kong in 2019 and subsequently during the pandemic. According to the foundation, since 1980 it has provided more than HK$30 billion in grants to initiatives including education, medical services and anti-poverty programs, with about 80% of the projects focusing on mainland China and Hong Kong.

^{Hong Kong}

RONNIE CHAN

Chairman, Hang Lung Group

^{Age: 73}

GERALD CHAN

Cofounder, Morningside Group

^{Age: 71}

The Chan family continued its generosity to U.S. universities in March when its Morningside Foundation donated $100 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to establish the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. Launched in September, it will oversee design-focused academic and research programs across MIT, with an emphasis on collaboration between its School of Engineering and School of Architecture and Planning. MIT says the funds will be used for fellowships, faculty chairs and other programs.

“Design is a disciplined way of practicing creativity, and design education is a complement to traditional STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] education,” said Gerald Chan (pictured, right), cofounder of investment firm Morningside Group and a non-executive director of Hong Kong property group Hang Lung, in a MIT press release. He noted that design education gives science and engineering students the tools to innovate, adding, “MIT is the perfect home for melding design education with STEM.”

MIT is just the latest beneficiary of the Chan family's donations to American universities. In September 2021, its foundation donated $175 million to the University of Massachusetts’ medical school, the largest-ever gift to the university. In 2014, the foundation pledged $350 million to Harvard University, Gerald’s alma mater. At the time, it was the largest donation in the university’s 386-year history.

^India

ASHOK SOOTA

Executive chairman, Happiest Minds Technologies

^{Age: 80}

Tech tycoon Ashok Soota has pledged 6 billion rupees ($75 million) to a medical research trust he founded in April 2021 to study aging and neurological illnesses. He started SKAN—which stands for scientific knowledge for ageing and neurological ailments—with a 2 billion rupee outlay, which he has since tripled, and bought land near Bangalore for its headquarters. “There are only two kinds of people doing [medical] research in India,” Soota says by phone. “One is the people doing drug discovery and the other is the people doing research in national and state-level institutions, which are starved for funds.” He plans to release the money over the next ten years.

Soota, who gets his wealth from a majority stake in Bangalore-based software services firm Happiest Minds Technologies, says SKAN is already working with the Centre for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science for research relating to Parkinson’s disease, and with the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences for research on strokes. In June 2021, SKAN gave a 200 million rupee grant to Soota’s alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, for funding joint research projects, creating a lab and sponsoring a professorship and three faculty fellowships.

^Australia

LINDSAY FOX

Founder, Linfox

^{Age: 85}

PAULA FOX

Director, Fox Family Foundation

^{Age: 83}

Australian trucking magnate Lindsay Fox and his wife Paula in April pledged A$100 million ($67 million) to help build Australia’s largest gallery for contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Named The Fox: NGV Contemporary, the gallery will offer over 13,000 square meters of display space, laboratories for art conservation and a rooftop terrace with a view of Melbourne’s skyline when it opens in 2028. The gift coincided with the billionaire’s 85th birthday and marks the largest donation (by amount) to an Australian art museum by a living donor.

The couple has supported NGV for almost two decades, contributing to the acquisition of works by both international and indigenous artists. Paula, a NGV Foundation board member, said in April that the family hopes their donation will inspire others to support the program and its aim to make the arts accessible to the wider community.

In June, a A$152 million center to detect and treat skin cancers at Melbourne's Alfred hospital was named the Paula Fox Melanoma and Cancer Centre. Paula, a melanoma survivor, and her husband led private donations to the center that is expected to treat 300 patients across 25 clinic rooms a day when it opens in 2024.

^Thailand

JOON WANAVIT

Founder, Hatari Electric

^{Age: 85}

In July, Joon Wanavit, the founder of Hatari Electric, one of Thailand’s leading fan manufacturers, and his family donated 900 million baht ($24 million) to Ramathibodi Foundation, which raises funds for Ramathibodi Hospital and its public healthcare services. Of the total, 160 million baht was earmarked for the hospital’s nursing school, 300 million baht for a medical learning center, and 440 million baht for a new hospital building and medical innovation center.

According to a Thai news report, the low-profile entrepreneur was quoted as saying at the time, “My children have their own careers and money. I want to donate this money back to general public patients.” Joon started with a small fan repair shop before moving into contract manufacturing for Japanese brands and eventually launching Hatari Electric’s own top-selling brand of fans. The privately held company posted 6.3 billion baht in revenue last year.

^Malaysia

BRAHMAL VASUDEVAN

Founder and CEO, Creador

^{Age: 54}

SHANTHI KANDIAH

Founder, SK Chambers

^{Age: 53}

Brahmal Vasudevan, founder and CEO of Kuala Lumpur-based private equity firm Creador, and his lawyer wife, Shanthi Kandiah, support local communities in Malaysia and India through the Creador Foundation, a nonprofit they cofounded in 2018. In May this year, they pledged to donate 50 million ringgit ($11 million) to help build a teaching hospital at the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Kampar campus in Perak state. The couple stepped in to help bridge a funding gap on learning that UTAR had only raised half the amount needed to build the nonprofit facility which, once completed in 2023, will also provide affordable healthcare. “We are delighted that this has spurred others to join this cause and it appears the project is now fully funded,” Vasudevan says by email.

Also in May, the couple donated £25 million ($30 million) to Imperial College London—one of the largest gifts in its history—to create the eponymous Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable Aviation to pioneer technologies to help the aviation industry transition to zero pollution. “We felt that the creation of this institute could hopefully make a meaningful impact on studying ways of reducing, if not achieving, zero pollution one day,” says Vasudevan, who earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the college in 1990.

^{South Korea}

MICHAEL KIM

Cofounder, MBK Partners

^{Age: 59}

Private equity billionaire Michael Kim pledged $10 million in September to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he has been a board trustee since 2017. The donation will be used to renovate the Met’s Oscar L. and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art, where a gallery will be named after Kim and his wife Park Kyung-ah. The couple supports the arts “to add some beauty to the world,” Kim says by email.

An avid art collector, Kim curates the artwork at MBK Partners, one of the biggest buyout firms in Asia (by AUM). He also sits on the board of Carnegie Hall. His other philanthropic passion is education. The MBK Scholarship Foundation has awarded education grants to over 175 financially needy students since its launch in 2007, Kim says. This is the second consecutive year Kim appears on the list; in August 2021 he gave $25.5 million to the Seoul government for a new public library in the South Korean capital.

^Japan

HIROSHI MIKITANI

Founder and CEO, Rakuten Group

^{Age: 57}

In February, Mikitani tweeted the announcement of a ¥1 billion ($7.2 million) gift to Ukraine to deal with the humanitarian fallout of Russia’s invasion earlier that month. In a letter to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky released at the same time, Mikitani wrote, “When I saw your courageous resistance against this unprovoked attack…I thought about what I could do for Ukraine in Japan and decided to donate.” Moreover, at the start of the conflict, the $7.4 billion e-commerce and telecom giant (market cap) allowed Ukrainians to use Rakuten’s messaging app Viber—installed on 97% of smartphones in the country—to call any landline or mobile for free. A Rakuten online donation site for Ukraine started in February has raised nearly ¥1.3 billion from over 70,000 contributors to support aid efforts. In May, Mikitani hosted Ukrainian pop superstar Tina Karol for a charity music event in Tokyo to help raise money for the country. The billionaire first met Zelensky during a visit to Ukraine three years ago to discuss expanding Rakuten’s presence there.

^Singapore

JOHN LIM

Cofounder, ARA Asset Management

^{Age: 66}

ANDY LIM

Group CEO, JL Family Office

^{Age: 37}

In 2008, billionaire John Lim, cofounder of ARA Asset Management (recently acquired by ESR Cayman), tasked his elder son Andy (pictured) with setting up a philanthropic body named after his school-teacher father. The Lim Hoon Foundation provides scholarships to so-called sandwich students—driven but disadvantaged youths in Singapore who don’t qualify for most of the country’s grades-based financial support. To date, it has granted over 1,600 bursaries totaling about S$1 million ($727,000) to students from primary school to pre-university levels.

The foundation is a longstanding donor to Singapore Management University, to which it contributed S$3 million in April to set up the JLFO-LHF Scholarship. Every year, about 12 students will receive a four-year scholarship, valued at S$40,000. Some 50 former and present SMU students have received scholarships from the foundation over the past decade. “You see them grow from where they were in an earlier point in life, it's quite inspiring,” Andy says in an interview at his office. “They moved up the social ladder, and it's important for the younger kids who are just coming in through the first year, second year, third year to [have] these role models.”

^Japan

REIKO FUKUTAKE

Executive director, Rei Foundation

Reiko Fukutake, wife of Japanese education tycoon Soichiro Fukutake, the former CEO of Benesse Holdings, founded and funded the Auckland-based Rei Foundation, which aims to foster “physical, social, spiritual and emotional” wellbeing in communities globally. In the year ended March 2021, it had about NZ$35 million ($21.6 million) in assets and provided nearly NZ$570,000 in grants. This year, as part of an ongoing collaboration with the foundation, Cambodian photographer Kim Hak exhibited in Tokyo his documentation of everyday objects meaningful to survivors of the war in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime, who later settled in Japan. It also announced two scholarships of NZ$25,000 annually, including tuition, for up to three years to groups underrepresented in higher education at University of Otago’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

In Malawi, the foundation has supported a decade-long project to document the nation’s folktale storytelling and folk songs. From 2019 to 2021, it worked with the Doc Edge Film Festival to finance short documentaries for children and teenagers in New Zealand and overseas. The NZ$20,000 grants to filmmakers covered subjects including a teenage-girl band, a transgender teen on the autism spectrum, rising sea levels, and endangered seahorses in Cambodia.