Ashish Dhawan Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ashish Dhawan

• Ashish grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata). In his school days, he told his mother that he would become a teacher but his mother with the help of his maths teacher brainwashed his thought of becoming a teacher by making him believe that teachers do not get good pay.

• From his early years, Ashish was highly influenced by Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. His idea of having multiple careers developed by knowing about Benjamin, who was also a polymath.

• In 1992, he started working at a Wall Street boutique bank named the ‘Wasserstein Perella & Co.’ Ashish worked there till 1993.

• He worked in a private equity firm, ‘McCown DeLeeuw & Co.’ as a junior-most associate. It was an 8-member firm based in California.

• While pursuing his MBA, Ashish decided that he would become an entrepreneur at the age of 30 and a philanthropist at the age of 45.

• He worked at Goldman Sachs company from 1997 to 1999, located in the Greater New York City Area. He left this job to return to India and began a private equity business, ‘ChrysCapital’ with his MBA classmate, Raj Kondur in the year 1999.

• ChrysCapital became India’s leading private equity fund company, raising around $1 billion in 5-6 years. When this company made the largest funds in India, Ashish left it in June 2012 to dedicate himself fully to his philanthropic endeavours.

• Ashish faced many dotcom crashes which he recovered through the success of ChrysCapital, which was sold for more than 2 times its original investment in 3 years.

• He had also invested in news companies like Yes Bank, IVRCL, Suzlon Energy etc. and picked up stakes, extracting impressive profits.

• In 2010, Ashish Dhawan was India’s 4th-highest taxpayer and co-founded the Young India Fellowship program, which provided an experience-based learning course for a year to create the next generation of leaders for India.

• In 2012, he established the Central Square Foundation with a vision to provide quality education in India, especially to children who belong to poverty-stricken families. It works to open affordable schools, provide teachers with quality training, and bring accountability to education by introducing technology in it.

• He also serves as a member of the board of several non-profit education organisations like Akanksha Foundation, 3.2.1 Education Foundation, Teach For India, Centre for Civil Society, Janaagraha, India School Leadership Institute, and Bharti Foundation.

• In 2014, Ashish Dhawan in collaboration with 40 other philanthropists established the Ashoka University. This University is the first university in India to offer Liberal Arts in its curriculum. The idea of this university was discussed at a party with Sanjeev Bikhchandani, the founder of Info Edge. He serves as a Chairman of the Ashoka University.

• In 2015, the Central Square Foundation collaborated with Khan Academy to launch Khan Academy Hindi.

• In 2017, Ashish co-founded the India Leaders for the Social Sector (ILSS) with Anu Prasad.

• He also established the Air Pollution Action Group (APAG) in 2019.

• With economist, Karthik Muralidharan, he founded the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS).

• To support Indian scholarship, Ashish Dhawan equipped the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professorship at Yale University to support scholarship in Indian and South Asia Studies.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ashish with his Central Square Foundation began the ‘ACT EdTech Ambition Fund’ to support the education of children from humble backgrounds.

• Ashish Dhawan and his wife, Manisha Dhawan established ‘The Convergence Foundation’ in 2021 with a vision to escalate the economic growth and overall development of India. For this, it includes organizations that work on jobs and investment opportunities for all, air pollution quality improvement, economic women empowerment, improving the effectiveness of nonprofits, etc.

• In 2022, Bill Gates appointed Ashish as a member of the board of trustees for his organisation named ‘The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.’

• He doesn’t like commodity investments like cement and steel.

• Ashish Dhawan is a social drinker.