Tata Trusts to prioritise impact over scale: Noel

“Trying to become the biggest before becoming the best rarely ends well,” Tata said, outlining the need for greater clarity in identifying areas where the Trusts can make the greatest difference, discipline in deploying resources and a long-term view of the country’s needs.He said philanthropy in India was changing, with a new generation of entrepreneurs bringing greater ambition, innovation and commitment to social causes.

Institutions such as the Tata Trusts would need to respond by holding themselves to higher standards of effectiveness and accountability. The focus, he said, should be on what contributions achieve and whether those outcomes endure, rather than simply how much has been contributed. They believed that enterprise carried with it a responsibility to society, and that the true measure of progress was an improvement in the quality of people’s lives,” Tata said.

He added that every rupee entrusted to the Trusts carried a responsibility, requiring resources to be used with care and purpose. The Trusts, he said, were increasingly identifying areas where the need was not merely to support an existing effort but to build institutions and models that could become enduring public assets. Their legacy of institution-building includes the Indian Institute of Science, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Tata Memorial Hospital.

Education is one area where this approach is particularly important, Tata said, noting that India needs more institutions capable of nurturing talent and giving young people opportunities to learn, discover and contribute without having to look abroad. The Trusts will continue to incubate institutions of national importance and may partner with other philanthropies and like-minded organisations to advance this objective.

In healthcare, the Trusts are working towards a network of 40-50 not-for-profit general hospitals across the country. Under the proposed model, those who can afford treatment would help make quality care accessible to those who cannot. The Trusts are also strengthening distributed cancer-care models to bring treatment closer to where people live. The Tata Trusts disbursed Rs 1,556.31 crore in FY26, including Rs 1,353.32 crore towards institutional grants and direct implementation projects and Rs 202.99 crore in individual grants.

Of the institutional and project-based spending, education received Rs 270.26 crore and healthcare Rs 105.97 crore, while cancer care accounted for Rs 178.46 crore. Tata said the Trusts’ role was often to bring people, ideas and resources together so that governments and other organisations could scale successful programmes. Systemic change, he said, required coordinated efforts to make progress sustainable.