Indonesian Acts in 'Giving Back to Society'

The New York Times, by Liz Gooch, March 18, 2012

SINGAPORE — “You have to give people the bait, not the fish,” said Tahir, the founder of a vast Indonesia-based business empire. “The fish, you can finish it in a week. But you give them the bait — the talent, the education — they can use this for their whole life.”

Mr Tahir, ST (Photo: Desmond Foo) 

It is this philosophy that has guided the philanthropic endeavors of Mr. Tahir, who goes by one name, and whom Forbes named the 15th-richest Indonesian last year. His beneficiaries include universities in Indonesia, Singapore, China and the United States.

Mr. Tahir, founder of the Mayapada Group, whose interests include banking, property, hospitals and media, has poured millions of dollars into universities, often in funding for needy students and most recently medical research.

While there is a growing culture of giving to higher education institutions in Asia, Mr. Tahir takes a more hands-on approach than many other donors.

Mr. Tahir, who came from a humble background, is now seeking to impart what he has learned on his way to becoming a tycoon whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.4 billion. He is also the first Southeast Asian to sit on the board of trustees of the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Tahir, born in the Indonesian city of Surabaya in 1952, says his family struggled financially during his early years, when his parents ran a pedicab business, leasing the three-wheel vehicles out to drivers.

By the time Mr. Tahir had finished high school, his family could afford to send him to university, although his academic career would feature a few false starts. First, he tried civil engineering at a university in Surabaya but only lasted a semester. Then he went to Taiwan, where he had been accepted into medical school, but he only stayed a month before his father fell ill and he returned home.

At the age of 20, Mr. Tahir found his calling at the business school at Nanyang University in Singapore. Every month he would return to Surabaya with products from Singapore department stores — women’s clothing, children’s bicycles — and capitalize on Indonesians’ desire for imported goods to help fund his schooling.

He returned to the classroom at 35, completing a master’s degree in finance through an overseas program offered by Golden Gate University at Singapore Management University. Mr. Tahir said his belief in the importance of education had only grown over the years.

“The strength of a family, or the country or an organization or business entity does not just purely depend on the current management but more it depends on how you prepare the future generations to take over,” he said in an interview in Singapore.

Mr. Tahir, who serves as the deputy chairman on the board of trustees at Pancasila University in Jakarta, has donated about 30 billion rupiah, or $3.27 million, to 10 state universities in Indonesia, mostly in the form of scholarships for needy students.

He is planning to donate 10,000 laptops to underprivileged Indonesian high school students who rank in the top 5 percent academically, at a cost he estimates at $3 million.

“We see around us so many needy students,” he said. “They lost the opportunity to go to school. I think that inspired me. We have to pay more attention to education.”

Mr. Tahir said he “owed” Indonesia because the country had given him the “chance to make a living, to feed my children and now I have a little bit of achievement.”

“So taking from society, giving back to society — I think this is a very core principle of the Eastern values,” he said.

Mr. Tahir’s largest donation to date has been to the National University of Singapore. He donated 30 million Singapore dollars, or about $24 million, this year for medical research. Mr. Tahir, a Singapore permanent resident, said he had an “emotional relationship” with the university because it was akin to his alma mater and because his son is an alumnus. (Nanyang University merged with the University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore.)

“The Singapore education system is good, so a lot of Indonesians come to study in Singapore from primary school up to university level,” he said.

Mr. Tahir has also made donations to several universities in China and two in the United States. Last year, Mr. Tahir, whose three daughters attended the University of California, Berkeley, donated $1 million to the Haas School of Business there to provide scholarships to international M.B.A. students primarily from Asia. Mr. Tahir was appointed to Berkeley’s board of trustees in 2007.

 “Dr. Tahir was an obvious choice for the U.C. Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees because of his connection and passion for Berkeley and for his many personal strengths as an ambassador for the university in Asia,” Scott Biddy, vice chancellor for university relations at Berkeley, said by email.

Tan Chorh Chuan, president of the National University of Singapore, said the number of alumni making donations to the university had grown recently, with more than 6,700 alumni contributing in the 2010 financial year, a 9 percent increase from the previous year.

“While the culture of giving to universities here is not as well established as in the U.S., it is gaining traction in recent years,” Mr. Tan said in an e-mail. “We are working hard to engage our alumni, supporters and friends on the critical value and impact of N.U.S.’s work — in education, research and service — to Singapore, Asia and beyond.”

Chua Beng Hwee, executive director for the Council for Advancement and Support for Education Asia Pacific, said that while Asian philanthropists had long been donating to various causes, including higher education, the trend was increasing.

“With Asia growing to be a global center of wealth, coupled with increasing geographical mobility, we are witnessing an enhanced philanthropic awareness towards giving to higher education in Asian countries,” she said.

Ms. Chua said Asian institutions were becoming more competitive, placing greater emphasis on research, adopting a global outlook and climbing up the global varsity rankings.

“With more and more leaders and philanthropists, or their children, having studied at or having some form of relationship with Asian universities, it is no surprise that increasingly more are giving to these institutions,” she said. “An interesting observation is that the Asian way of giving is based very much on relationships and gratitude.”

Universities must work more closely with the private sector, Mr. Tahir said, so that business leaders are inspired to help. He added that public universities must also raise professors’ salaries to ensure that talented faculty members are not lured to the private sector.

He does not let governments off the hook, saying that countries like Indonesia must allocate more public funds to universities.

Mr. Tahir, who describes himself as a “devoted Christian,” said he considered his contribution as “a passion.”

“I like to see people get help,” he said. “I like to see people advance their study and become good in society and even better for the country.”

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