Minoo Shroff on A D Shroff Memorial Trust and the Forum of Free Enterprise

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rI3OuqWi7k Duration: 267.8s

Minoo Shroff (00:08): Yes, it was founded a year after he died and there are many people who said that this is fine, but why don’t you have a memorial trust for objects which were… because one was public education, financial literacy, partly overlap of the Forum. But if Forum was not there, this would… because there was no organization. Then it was for publishing biographies of famous people and elocution contests and the other because he was a professor, part time professor in Sydenham College. So keep the memory on, started in a small way, now we are much better organized because we have so many trusts’ support, you see, Palkhivala Trust is there, they have a large corpus. And Forum is there, M. R. Pai Trust is there, all have their separate niche. And now everybody is supporting, Piramals, Godrej is supporting Palkhivala Trust. And ECC and Tatas gave large corpus donation, ITC also, to Palkhivala Trust and because Palkhivala, if there is a body, it can carry on. So we provide the infrastructure, the word which has become common. And Pai was central and he trained up… One of Pai’s great contributions was Diwakar. It was a great help. When when Mr. Palkhivala was getting… had his strokes and was getting very inactive, he approached me, and I took on first the Leslie Sawhny Foundation for Democracy. He asked me to take over and then the Forum of Free Enterprise. He asked me to preside at a meeting and then followed. And then A. D. Shroff Memorial Trust for a year or two, Deepak Parekh was there. So Deepak says you are a natural choice and I’ve got so many things in. It requires more attention. By that time, I was the executive vice chairman of the JK group, very involved with Raymond and going abroad. Malegam is associated with the A. D. Shroff Memorial Trust. Adi Godrej is there. Deepak Parekh is there. They’re all senior to me, my colleagues, but I’m there. And in Forum also, have got a battery of… but people with active involvement is involved, giving money, raising money. So we have built up quite a solid corpus now and I also go and speak at various… You see people with vast experience are very few. It is difficult to go across now. So he has got an assistant who was with ICICI, Swati Kapadia, she is also very helpful. So at least in our periphery and even to Southern states, most colleges call us. So we have mobilized several trainers and we get very laudatory remarks of these people have never had like good grooming, effective speaking, time management. He was very, very particular about time management. Even now, Diwakar gets very impatient when we start a minute late whether there is audience or not. He is training from five because both Mr. Shroff and Mr. Palkhivala were immaculate about keeping time and keeping their commitments. They went around the country, they spoke to people, opened their eyes. But you see now the things have opened up, Forum’s role is on the economic literacy and so on. Our booklets are very much appreciated. We have memorial lectures, two, one — A. D. Shroff by Forum, now we have decided to have one. Difficult, all people who are worthwhile have, if you see our booklets, I write to anybody worthwhile, he will say, if people like Governors of Reserve Bank, ex finance ministers have all come on your platform, how can I say no? Like Subbarao. When he couldn’t come, he said, look, can I do it next day? He rang me up. So you see the… it has that brand image.