December
6, 2007 Nat Puri,
Philanthropic Businessman, Launches Engineering Scholarship
By Dipankar De Sarkar
London
Millionaire businessman Nat Puri, a self-effacing Punjabi who
donates half a million pounds to charities every year, is setting up
a scholarship for Indian engineering students to study in the London
university where he first made his mark.
The Nat Puri Scholarship, which will bring Indians to London South
Bank University, is aimed at giving Indian scholars the financial
opportunities that Puri himself never had when he first came to
Britain from Chandigarh in 1966.
"I didn't get any scholarships, and I didn't have the courage to ask
my family for money," Puri told IANS.
"I checked soccer pool coupons in London on Saturdays and Sundays,
and I lived in a rented bedsit. It wasn't the best of lives, but it
helped me," said the man who was listed by the Daily Telegraph
newspaper last year as among the 20 wealthiest Asians in Britain.
"My purpose is just to be helpful," said Puri, who founded the
Nottingham-based Purico Group of companies and is valued at 100
million pounds (about $203 million or Rs.8 billion).
The scholarship will begin in October 2008, and may later be
expanded to include students from other Commonwealth countries as
well.
Puri trained as an engineer at London South Bank University and
eventually bought the firm that gave him his first job. He built it
up into the Melton Medes group, a packaging-to-plastics conglomerate
with sales of 100 million pounds.
He said that although Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were
"doing a fantastic job", they did not have enough places.
"For every IIT admission, there are 10,000 applications," he said,
adding: "People cannot afford to study abroad, not even people who
are in jobs."
Last week Puri was honoured by his alma mater with an honorary
degree of Doctor of Engineering in the presence of Lord Navnit
Dholakia of the Liberal Party, former chancellor of the Exchequer
Kenneth Clarke and Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker.
Conferring the honour, London South Bank Vice Chancellor Prof. Deian
Hopkin said: "Nat Puri has a certain style of doing things his way.
He does it all in his own manner, often defying conventional logic
but proving the success of real entrepreneurship."
"He is a great role model for our own students, proof that through
education and endeavour one can achieve anything but also through
philanthropy, return the rewards of that achievement to society."
Puri was born in Mullanpur, a village on the outskirts of Chandigarh
and studied air-conditioning engineering in Britain.
After working with FG Skerritt in Nottingham, a northern city, he
left the company in 1975 to set up on his own before acquiring his
ex-employers in 1983.
It was the start of an acquisition spree that saw the launch of the
Purico Group of Companies, which now has interests in Britain, the
US, Germany, China, Mexico, Hungary and Poland.
Puri's scheme follows the launch of a Cambridge University
scholarship in the name of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month.
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