Back home

When PNC Menon arrived in Muscat from southern India, aged 28, he had just $7 in his pocket. The year was 1976 and the GCC’s oil boom was well underway, offering fertile ground for an entrepreneurial college dropout with an eye for opportunity. 

Menon was quick to launch a small furniture and interiors business, which found a ready market in Oman, then a seaside sultanate in the grip of a building frenzy. The company grew rapidly into a major fit-out firm, snapping up high-level contracts in the GCC and beyond, including for the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat and the palaces of Brunei.

Success in Oman was a springboard into Qatar, Tajikistan and Bahrain, and then on into India and the UAE, where today, Sobha Group is a privately-held powerhouse in real estate, construction and more.

Along the way, Menon has amassed a fortune, most recently estimated by Forbes at $1.1bn. But this affluence came with a self-imposed caveat.

“Forty years ago, I decided I should give half of my wealth to society,” explains Menon from his 13th floor office of Sobha Sapphire tower in Business Bay, one of Dubai’s main commercial districts. “It was a decision I took when I was 31. I know what life is like when you don’t have money, and what that means, so that was the inspiration for me to take this decision. Fifty per cent for my family, and 50 per cent for society. I thought that was a fair amount.”

For more than a decade, Menon has donated close to $8m a year through his Sri Kurumba Educational and Charitable Trust, which he set up in 1994 to support impoverished communities in India.

The trust acts as the philanthropic arm of Sobha, and its flagship project is Graamasobha – a play on the Sobha brand, and the Sanskrit word for traditional village councils. Established in 2006, the project works to improve the education, healthcare and livelihoods of low-income families in three municipalities close to Thrissur, Kerala, where Menon was born.

Thanks to the trust, there is now a school, clinic and retirement home, both serving and employing residents in the panchayats of Vadakkenchery, Kizhakkenchery and Kannambra; areas that each house two villages. Other community initiatives benefiting the district’s approximately 5,000 families include vocational training; mentoring projects for promising students; funding for wedding dowries; assistance for young mothers; women’s empowerment programmes, and sustainable agriculture schemes.

Menon’s motivation for giving is simple. “It’s not a favour: when a person has done well, they should invest their wealth back into society,” he says. “I believe in karma and that the sole thing you take with you are your deeds. So be kind.”

Sobha’s model is not unusual. Across India, corporates ranging from Canon India to the State Bank of India have ‘adopted’ villages as part of their CSR efforts, as a way to help lift rural communities out of chronic poverty. In partnership with local authorities, and often with implementing NGOs, funding is used to find and fill gaps in village infrastructure that contribute to families remaining trapped in penury.

Interventions can range from funding sanitation facilities and village infrastructure, to scholarships, microloans and more, helping to offset shortfalls in government spending.

Graamasobha’s approach is to target those with the lowest incomes, to break the cycle that has traditionally kept India’s poorest out of school and their families below the breadline. It is holistic in its programming; going beyond basic teaching to fund support for gifted students, as well as providing struggling women-led households with the tools to improve their lives and those of their children.

“There’s no difference between a poor child and a rich child,” Menon says, “it’s about education. With the opportunity of education, children in these villages can achieve anything.”

GraamaSobha’s initiatives are built on a blueprint of community needs. Before launching the project in Kerala, Sri Kurumba carried out a social empowerment mapping exercise – or SEME for short. This detailed, multi-question survey was conducted by teams of researchers going house-to-house to poll villagers on their income, housing situation, availability of water and sanitation, education levels and access to healthcare.

At least three rounds of SEMEs have been completed since GraamaSobha began, providing insights on progress, the impact of investment to date, and the effectiveness – or not – of various interventions. The data also helps to decide which services are funded and how individuals are targeted for support.

Without this information, says Menon, “we wouldn’t be doing our job. [The work] has to be delivered properly.”

The 71-year-old is as vocal an advocate for structured philanthropy, believing ad hoc donations to be an ineffective and potentially wasteful way to give.

“This is my hard-earned money and fortunately, I have a team of people who can look after that better than I can myself,” he says, adding that paying staff competitively is key to ensuring you attract and retain talent. “It’s important to have a good team. We pay a good salary because I don't want charity from the people who work for us. You have to pay them properly, that's very important.”

So while Menon visits his ‘adopted’ panchayats regularly and follows what goes on there closely, he does not take a hands-on approach, instead leaving the running of Sri Kurumba to his staff.

“I don’t do micro management. Anything of this size, you have to professionalise it,” he says. “You can’t have your whims and fancies and then start dictating.”

In 2016, Menon took the Giving Pledge, making public his early promise to give away half of his wealth to charitable causes. The pledge, a campaign founded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet to encourage purposeful giving among the world’s super-rich, has shifted the narrative around philanthropy, attracting signatories ranging from Elon Musk to Saudi’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

In his accompanying pledge letter, Menon said his motivation was inspire his peers – especially non-resident Indians in the GCC – to participate and collaborate in philanthropy.

“The sooner we can discover the importance of philanthropy, the more impact we can collectively have on a global scale,” he wrote. “I see no greater gift than the ability to give.”