INTERVIEW

‘Helping the needy feels more like a duty rather than charity’

Wednesday, 15 Jan, 2025
Mukund Padmanabhan (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)

Mukund Padmanabhan opens up about helming Guru Krupa Foundation in an exclusive interview for The South Asian Times’ Organization of the Year cover feature.

By Parveen Chopra

Reticent, reclusive, spartan, self-effacing. Such adjectives come to mind when you interact with Mukund Padmanabhan. You can find commoner epithets from scanning his bio: industrious, brainy, accomplished, and moneyed man. To him what is important is adding his mite to mitigating misery and creating a better world. 

Guru Krupa Foundation (GKF), which he set up with the money he made after pivoting from engineering to a hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, has silently helped scores of institutions and charities for almost two decades. Through its grants and support programs, which are in partnership with reputed organizations, it has transformed many lives. It has given substantial grants to preserve and promote Vedic wisdom, education, old age homes, and enhancement programs.  

In an interview with The South Asian Times, Mukund discusses his belief system and running GKF, which has given him purpose and a mission to which he dedicates himself.
Excerpts from the interview:

(Q) The South Asian Times: Which GKF donation has given you the most satisfaction?

(A) Mukund Padmanabhan: Difficult to pick one or the other. The only reason we give grants is because we believe they are worthwhile causes. Yet, I’d say helping the impoverished people gets the most bang for the buck because, for them, it's a difference between not having a future and opening the door to a future. That is where it feels more like a duty rather than charity. Just to be able to do that is a great thing.


Visiting book distribution at Brooklyn Book Bodega in Brooklyn, NY. (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)

 

(Q) Which projects you have funded made the most difference?

(A) The ones in the social category. I have a soft spot for kids, especially poor kids. Helping the disabled who cannot lead independent lives is equally important. Anything that reduces misery - particularly extreme misery - is worth doing.  

 

(Q) Which have been your biggest grants?

(A) Dollar-wise, the biggest grants are in the US because making a difference here takes a lot of dollars. The biggest grant so far has been to my alma mater, UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). Over many years, it has run to a few million. I first set up a UCLA grant to support research scholars because I had experienced financial difficulty as a graduate student there. Subsequently my support expanded to faculty support and capital contributions. 

UCLA is a public university with significant government support, but private institutional and alumni support is beginning to play a significant role in public universities. Universities are always happy to get the support of their alumni, and it gives satisfaction to the alumni to do something for their alma mater. 

A major project I have at IIT Kharagpur has been supporting the Academy of Classical and Folk Arts since its inception.

 

(Q) Sometimes you reach out to institutions rather than them reaching out to you…

(A) Yes, some religious causes fall into this category. I belong to a particular sect, an ashram, and helping them is more of a duty than an option. I would ask them, “What do you need?”

 

(Q) Which ashram do you belong to?

(A) My family belongs to Andavan Ashramam in Srirangam in Tamil Nadu. There is also a huge temple with which many other organizations are aligned. Ours is the Vishishta Advaita tradition, a subcategory of Vedanta propagated by Ramanujacharya.


Mukund Padmanabhan visiting (clockwise from top left) Seva Chakkara Samajam, an orphanage; Sri Poorna Mahameru Trust, an old age home; and Anandam, which provides supplementary education to children - all in Chennai. (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)


Mukund Padmanabhan indulging in his pastime pleasure of reading. (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)

 

(Q) Do you visit the projects you fund in India?

(A) Yes, I do, particularly the ones around Chennai, my home town, and New York, where I live. Other GKF trustees visit projects in their respective hometowns.  

I like visiting these projects because it gives me a first-hand view of the project and its needs and suggests synergies that can be exploited with other grantees. Many organizations support education for kids. They do things slightly differently, but each one has the same end goal.

However, traveling to grantee projects can be time-consuming if they are spread out. Consequently, I try to keep projects as local as possible. Many projects are concentrated around Chennai, India, and New York City, USA. 

Organizations are also happy to see the donor visit and take a real interest in their work and mission. It's not like I have a foundation, I need to give some money away and then forget about it. So, for us to take an interest and ask questions appears to be pleasing to almost all our grantees. Because whichever project I visit, being detail-oriented, I ask a lot of questions. I probe and push them, and they seem to like it.


Mukund Padmanabhan received the Professional Achievement award from UCLA in 2019. (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)

 

(Q) Do organizations live up to their promises? 

(A) Most organizations do what they promised to do with the money we gave. Only occasionally do we have problems. We did find an integrity problem with a couple of grantees. They sent us photoshopped pictures as part of their progress reports, but we found out and stopped supporting them. I would say that most grantees are not like that.

 

(Q) You have supported Hinduism-linked institutions as well as secular ones. How do you view Hindutva? 

(A) My interpretation of Hindutva is perhaps more middle-of-the-road. The Sanskrit word means “the quality of being Hindu” - which could be interpreted as referring to the cultural and spiritual practices that are associated with Hinduism, and which form the roots of the Hindu religion. These days, unfortunately, there is a tendency among Indian origin youth to discard our roots because it's not cool in modern life, especially when they are outside India.  

America is the most powerful country in the world, and people from all over want to come here. America is a potpourri of cultures from all over,  and we, as Americans, have also evolved an American culture that is an amalgamation of several cultures. 
However, there is no reason for us to discard our roots and the long lineage we come from - American culture can co-exist with them.

We should be proud of our lineage and should preserve our traditions. There is value in our traditions. It has good principles, such as “live and let live”, “look out for others and be of service to them”, “expand your priorities to much more than materialistic acquisitions”, and so on. Each one of us exists on earth for only a few decades, and we have no idea what happens afterward. What is certain is that we cannot take our materialistic acquisitions with us, so let that not be the sole focus of our life on earth.
As much as Hindutva seeks to preserve these ideas and values, there is certainly a place for it, especially in Hindustan, which, as the name suggests, is the home of the Hindus.

 But isn’t the pendulum swinging back? People like you who have done well in America are proud of their Indian identity. The Indian diaspora everywhere has flourished, and people are seeking meaning in their roots and taking pride in their traditions.
 These days, there are many examples of Indian accomplishments. Just think: Sundar Pichai, the CEO of the biggest search company on earth, is an Indian. Incidentally, he is also an IIT Kharagpur graduate - just saying. We are proud of many people like him who came from India and have succeeded here. But we should not forget where we came from.

You don't discard your grandparents, right? They give you so much love when you are young, you thrive with their attention and their love. Our heritage is grandparents raised to the power of n. We want to make sure that our knowledge base and our traditions are preserved. But at the same time, you have to be practical. You can't sit in an ashram and meditate or live on past glories and hope to survive. 

We have to compete on the global stage today as well. So, you must keep one foot here and one foot there. So that is what I do. 


Mukund being honored at Flushing Town Hall gala in 2022. (Photo courtesy: Guru Krupa Foundation)

 

(Q) Indian civilization is many millennia old. Has that background contributed to the success of Indians abroad?

(A) Yes, I believe it has. The main reason is the emphasis that Indian civilization places on learning and education. You have to study - your parents force you to do it. If you value education, the doors to success will open. It doesn't mean you get success, but the doors open.

Our civilization also emphasizes the value of humility, hard work and ethics - all these attitudes have contributed to our success on the global stage. Notwithstanding the many stories that are out there about the phenomenal feats and advancements of ancient India, they are not quite relevant today. The fact is that most recent material advancements have happened in the West. The success of Indian-origin people on the global stage today is because they have accepted these advancements, worked hard to build on them, and contributed to advancing the state of the field. That is how you make progress and do well in society.

 

(Q) You have many patents and technical papers to your credit...

(A) Patents I earned are in a variety of areas. I used to work at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, Westchester, NY. My area of work was speech recognition - developing various algorithms to convert speech to text. My patents are mostly related to that area, but they do span sub-fields or different types of methods to get the job done.

Big royalties? No. If you are working for a company and you file for a patent, the company owns the patent and gets the royalties.

The papers are based on my PhD research in circuits and signal processing and proceed to speech recognition, which I was working on at IBM. Signal processing involves techniques and methods that remove noise from a signal, such as wireless signals received and sent on your phone. Speech recognition involves the computer (or phone) automatically transcribing your speech into text.

 

(Q) Any pastimes?

(A) I enjoy reading books in various genres, including fantasy, adventure, science fiction, and humor. I am also learning Sanskrit, taking a weekend online class conducted by a teacher at Samskrita Bharati, a charity I support. I watch movies and enjoy listening to music, especially Hindi film music, not necessarily classical. 

 

(Q) But through GKF you have supported classical music and Indian arts.

(A) Yes, culture is one of our focus areas. So, what if I have no talent whatsoever in arts and music - I still enjoy them. If arts and culture decay and are forgotten, life may go on, but as they say, all the things worth living for would be gone. Hence, we would like to ensure that our cultural concepts are preserved and that people are given an incentive to develop them and remember them. But in a multicultural society, we have to coexist with others. So, we should make other ethnic groups aware of our culture and heritage by portraying it well. Hence, we fund the celebration of festivals such as Diwali and Holi (at Flushing Town Hall and Long Island Children’s Museum), attended and enjoyed by many non-Indians. Even some platforms for classical arts in India suffer from a lack of funding, so we support them, too.
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Parveen Chopra feels blessed compiling this Organization of the Year 2024 cover feature and thanks GKF founder Mukund Padmanabhan for helping in its production and making necessary pictures and other material freely available. Parveen has started his own nonprofit, ALotusInTheMud.com, a web magazine focused on wellness and spiritual content for all.