In the late 1990s and 2000s, Indian Americans transformed personal wealth into new philanthropic infrastructure. Dr. Suri Sehgal and Edda Sehgal founded their private foundation in Des Moines, Iowa in 1998, one of the earliest diaspora-led philanthropic institutions in America. Dr. Romesh Wadhwani directed Silicon Valley wealth toward large-scale job creation through the Wadhwani Foundation. Premal Shah co-founded Kiva in 2005, enabling ordinary Americans to lend as little as $25 to entrepreneurs worldwide and facilitating over $1 billion in loans from 1.5 million lenders.
