Wipro Foundation

Wipro Foundation is the Corporate Social Responsibility entity of Wipro Limited. It has run social initiatives for over two decades, working across education, primary healthcare, ecology, disaster response, and cities and public spaces. It states its purpose as building a more humane, inclusive, equitable and sustainable society. Rather than delivering programmes alone, it works largely through partnerships with registered non-profit organisations that hold domain expertise and an established presence in the communities they serve. Its stated selection criteria for partners include statutory compliance such as 80G and 12A registration, at least three years of field experience, a committed team, familiarity with the local context, and a project design that leaves the community with a sustainable model once the funding ends.

Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Major Areas of Work

• Education: Enabling systemic education reform and improving access to schooling for underserved children, including children with disabilities.

• Primary Healthcare: Supporting the delivery of quality primary healthcare services in communities near Wipro locations.

• Ecology: Engaging communities on ecological sustainability, urban ecology and water in Indian cities.

• Disaster Response: Facilitating long-term rehabilitation and community resilience after natural disasters, rather than short-term relief alone.

• Cities and Public Spaces: Working on the shared urban environment and the public spaces that city residents depend on.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• Wipro earthian: A sustainability education programme for schools and colleges that has completed 15 years, with an annual awards cycle recognising student and institutional work.

• Urban Waters: A programme bringing together stakeholders from water-stressed Indian cities, currently running in Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.

• Wipro STEM Program: A teacher development programme working with more than 1,500 STEM teachers and District Science Coordinators.

• Samuhik Pahal: A journal of collective action launched in May 2020, serving as a platform for organisations working in education.

• Wipro Cares: The employee volunteering arm, through which staff contribute directly to community and ecological projects.

Wipro earthian is the Foundation's longest-running flagship in sustainability education. It combines a school and college engagement programme with an annual awards cycle, and has sustained that structure for 15 years, making it one of the more established corporate sustainability education efforts in India.

Impact

The Foundation states that its STEM programme has worked with more than 1,500 STEM teachers and District Science Coordinators, and that Wipro Cares volunteers planted 6,500 mangroves in the Sundarbans over three years. It also convenes its partner network through the Wipro Healthcare Partners' Forum and an Education Fellows' Meet, and publishes Arogya Darpan, a periodical covering community health engagement and nutrition work with its healthcare partners.

Leadership

• Narayan P S, Managing Trustee, Wipro Foundation and Global Head of Sustainability and Social Initiatives, Wipro Limited
• Anurag Behar, Chief Sustainability Officer, Wipro Limited
• Isaac George, Head of Group Social Initiatives and People Function, Wipro Infrastructure Engineering
• Samir Gadgil, Pune Location Head, Wipro Cares

Working here suits someone who wants to see social sector work at the scale a large corporate funder operates at, across several states and multiple domains at once. Much of the work is partnership-based, so the exposure is to grant-making, partner selection, programme design and long-term outcome tracking rather than direct service delivery alone. It fits people who are comfortable with systems-level change in public education and public health, who can hold relationships with non-profit partners over several years, and who want the resourcing and continuity that a two-decade-old corporate foundation provides.