Billionaire Nikhil Kamath believes capitalism will only work if inequality is addressed, and that starts with altruism from those at the top of the wealth pyramid.
Kamath, who co-founded Bangalore-based online brokerage Zerodha with his older brother, Nithin Kamath, acted on this belief this spring when he signed the Giving Pledge—joining 240 ultra-wealthy individuals and couples worldwide in a promise to give away most of his wealth to philanthropy during his lifetime.
At age 36, Kamath—with a net worth of just over US$1 billion, according to Forbes—became the youngest to sign the pledge, which was created by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffet in 2010.
He came to the pledge early in part because of work he has done already with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, including renovating buildings and upgrading the educational quality of about 200 government-run middle schools in South India about two years ago.
Kamath also worked with the foundation on malnutrition in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and they are currently working together to develop government high schools in Karnataka, in southwest India. “I quite like the work they’re doing,” Kamath says, noting that he has met with Gates one or two times of year.
But one reason to sign the pledge now, Kamath says, is simply that it’s easier for him to make a commitment at an early age to give away his wealth. He’s not married and doesn’t have children—and doesn’t expect that to change.
“There is a natural redistribution of wealth in society when one doesn’t have kids. This is a choice I made for myself some time ago,” Kamath says. “Morally, you do much better as a person, from a societal standpoint.”
In his pledge letter, Kamath said its “mission of creating a more equitable society aligns with my values and aspirations.” One way he is seeking to fulfill this mission is through education, which Kamath views as a “democratizing factor” in most societies.
“To have quality education available equally to a wider strata of our ecosystem, will organically bridge that gap,” he says.
One unusual way he’s doing this is through a series of YouTube shows of dinner conversations with other successful entrepreneurs on topics such as the metaverse or e-commerce that can extend for more than two hours. The discussions, which have been with fellow billionaires, are chatty and fun to listen in on, but are meant to show how smart, successful people have gotten to where they are and how they think about things.
“We teach young people about what they need to learn I think in a manner better than colleges do,” Kamath says.
That Kamath has different ideas about what works in education makes sense. He dropped out of school after 10th grade and began trading stocks at age 17. Since then he’s been involved in the markets. In 2010, he and his brother, who had been a franchisee at a big brokerage firm, among other things, started Zerodha, a name taken from the words “zero” and “rodha”—Sanskrit for “barriers.”
In one of the YouTube conversations, Nithin recalled sending an email when they began the firm that said, “If we can get to 10,000 customers, we’ll be alright.” Today, the brokerage has more than 1 million customers, according to its website.
For Kamath, exactly what he will address through his philanthropy, and how, remains a work in progress. It’s “early days,” he says. One pursuit will be supporting the energy transition away from fossil fuels, a theme he’s addressing now through investing in construction and development enterprises that are seeking to reduce carbon emissions in building.
About one-third of the carbon released into the atmosphere comes from construction, Kamath says, so “we are trying to invest in companies which can change the way we look at real estate.”
Another investing theme that could translate into philanthropy as well is the need to provide more and better services to seniors, who will continue to make up a growing percentage of society as the birth rate declines globally.
“That’s going to be the biggest problem in the world 20 to 30 years from now,” Kamath says. “Building stuff around that is a priority.”
For guidance as he approaches philanthropy, Kamath can turn to fellow Indian-based philanthropists who preceded him in joining the Giving Pledge.
Azim Premji is an IT pioneer who signed in 2013; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the executive chair and founder of the biotech firm Biocon Ltd., who signed in 2015; Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini signed in 2017; and Anil Agarwal, founder and chair of the natural resources company Vedanta Resources, signed in 2021. Two of these pledgers (Kamath didn’t say which ones) live in his apartment building, and he regularly stays in touch with the group.
Kamath is also a founding member of GivingPi, a network of philanthropic families in India. Another inspiration for him will continue to be Gates.
“He is a lot more focused on the problem than the symptoms, and I feel like many people get that wrong,” Kamath says. “The symptoms are the easiest thing to solve and they generally boost morale, but they often don’t go a long way toward fixing the disease.”
