Ashish Dhawan and Amit Chandra make a compelling case for strengthening domestic philanthropy in India. Their voices carry weight because they have helped shape the evolution of strategic philanthropy in the country. Through their own generous giving and sustained advocacy, they have demonstrated how philanthropy can strengthen systems and catalyse innovation. Their vision of an Atmanirbhar philanthropy ecosystem is therefore both timely and important. As India pursues its ambition of becoming Viksit Bharat by 2047, domestic philanthropy matters more than ever.
Their argument also points to an important dimension that deserves to be highlighted. The value of domestic philanthropy extends well beyond additional capital for development. It also carries the agency to shape India’s priorities, a deep understanding of local realities, and the long-term commitment needed to build institutions and systems that endure.
As India’s aspirations grow, so does the scale of the challenge before it. Building Viksit Bharat requires investments on an unprecedented scale. India spends approximately INR 27 lakh crore annually on the social sector, with government accounting for nearly 95% of that investment. Even so, the country faces an estimated annual Sustainable Development Goal financing gap of INR 16 lakh crore, equivalent to 60% of the entire social sector spend, or more than 11 times the total domestic philanthropic capital. These figures underscore that meeting India’s development ambitions will not only require more capital, but also a more strategic deployment of public, philanthropic, and commercial capital.
While commercial capital is abundant, much of it cannot flow towards development priorities because it is held and managed by institutions such as banks, insurance companies, and pension funds, which have fiduciary duties towards their depositors, policyholders, and investors. These institutions cannot assume levels of risk that many development investments require, creating a risk-return mismatch. This is where philanthropy has a distinctive role to play. It can act as a risk-return equaliser, enabling larger pools of commercial capital to participate in India’s development.
This means domestic philanthropy must look beyond funding interventions and embrace its role as a provider of catalytic capital. It, we believe, is where the next chapter of Indian philanthropy begins, one defined not by the amount of capital deployed, but by its ability to unlock far greater resources and deliver impact far beyond its own value.
This approach is, of course, not a silver bullet. Many development challenges require to be entirely grant funded and have no room to accommodate return-seeking capital. Where interventions generate substantial social value but lack a viable revenue model, such as school meal programmes, grant capital remains the appropriate instrument. At the other end of the spectrum, where markets are functioning effectively, such as utility-scale renewable energy, philanthropic capital should not substitute for commercial investment, as doing so risks crowding out commercial capital that is already willing and able to participate. The greatest value of catalytic philanthropy lies between these two extremes, where viable markets can emerge, but uncertainties or limited track record deter commercial capital participation. In such situations, philanthropy can demonstrate viable models and help create the conditions for a functioning market to emerge – one that can ultimately attract private investors at scale.
India has successfully applied this principle before through public finance. Public capital has long been used to crowd in commercial investment in infrastructure projects through mechanisms such as Viability Gap Funding (VGF), which provides catalytic support to projects that deliver public value but may not initially meet commercial return thresholds. Governments would not deploy public resources in this manner unless reducing risk to unlock private capital was an effective strategy. For example, under the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP), several road projects generated revenues that were insufficient to attract investment on purely commercial terms. Early government support through mechanisms such as VGF helped bridge the gap, accelerating the development of a market that has since attracted significant commercial investment. The same approach can guide the role of domestic philanthropy in sectors that will define India’s journey towards Viksit Bharat. In climate-resilient agriculture, achieving India’s ambitions for food security, rural livelihoods, and climate resilience will require widespread adoption of modern technologies and farming practices. By funding demonstration models and cultivating grassroots champions who drive long-term ownership and scale locally grounded solutions, philanthropy can create the confidence and evidence needed for commercial capital to participate at scale.
This vision aligns closely with the evolution of Indian philanthropy that Dhawan and Chandra describe. As they note, India’s next generation of philanthropists, particularly first-generation entrepreneurs and family businesses, can redefine philanthropy by bringing the same entrepreneurial energy and risk-taking mindset that built successful businesses to solving the country’s public challenges. In doing so, philanthropy can sit alongside government and commercial capital from the outset, becoming a co-creator in shaping and accelerating India’s development agenda, building markets where they do not yet exist, and strengthening systems that will serve the country for decades.
India has demonstrated a strong appetite for innovation in the use of philanthropic capital, from pioneering impact bonds to establishing the Social Stock Exchange. It is now time for domestic philanthropy to participate more actively in catalytic financing mechanisms, including credit enhancement and concessional returns. By doing so, India has the opportunity to become a global leader in catalytic philanthropy, demonstrating how domestic philanthropic capital can unlock larger pools of investment for national development.
If India’s philanthropic capital can combine the ambition of entrepreneurship with the patience of nation-building and the discipline of catalytic finance, it can offer the world a new and Atmannirbhar model of development. The legacy of this generation’s philanthropists will therefore lie in how thoughtfully it deploys its capital, and whether philanthropy remains an end-in-itself or becomes the spark that mobilises the far larger pools of finance that Viksit Bharat demands.
