“For FY 25-26 alone, the philanthropic spending of the Tata Trusts was ₹1,600 crores approx., slated to go up to ₹2000 crores in the current fiscal. This scale of spending, on a year-on-year basis, has enabled us to provide quality, yet affordable cancer care, to citizens of Assam, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and UP,” he said.
Sharma said he was prompted to write the post after receiving a message in his LinkedIn inbox offering to help address alleged “chaos” at Tata Trusts. “I was bemused to find a message in my LI inbox from someone offering to help me address the ‘chaos’ at the Tata Trusts,” Sharma said in the post.
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Referring to media coverage, he said, “Much of our media today feeds on TRPs and dishes out news that sells; amplifies certain narratives, unfortunately, at times, without verification & analysis.”
Sharma said the Tata Trusts, established in 1892 during British rule, gave the Tata Group its philosophy and approach towards community welfare. “The Tata Trusts, which came into existence in 1892, when India was still ruled by a colonial power, gave the Tata Group its distinctive philosophy, its DNA and its moral underpinning,” he said.
According to Sharma, the Trusts deploy dividends received as majority shareholders in Tata Sons towards philanthropic initiatives, a practice that predates the corporate social responsibility mandate introduced in India in 2014.
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Sharma added that the Trusts have undertaken rural livelihood interventions across the central Indian belt, worked on programmes aimed at improving nutrition among newborns, adolescents and mothers, strengthened primary and secondary healthcare, and supported early childhood education as well as foundational literacy and numeracy.
The Trusts have also supported youth employability through skilling initiatives, provided grants for medical treatments through hospitals, and awarded scholarships to students pursuing studies in India and abroad.
In the post, Sharma said the organisation is finalising a collaboration with a reputed educational institution to establish a university for undergraduate studies. He added that the Trusts are contributing to the setting up of a multi-speciality hospital in central India.
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Other initiatives cited by Sharma include funding research in agriculture and genomics, supporting IIT Mandi’s Centre for Disaster Preparedness and Resilience in the Himalayan region, and enabling brain research at IIT Madras.
“The Tata Trusts are continuing to do what they do best—serving those at the margins of society. No hype, no publicity; only solid, hard work. Everything else is noise,” Sharma added.
(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)
First Published: Jun 13, 2026 9:28 PM IST
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