At 11, Vivek Shangari found the thing that would one day give him back his life.

It was 1987. He was walking down a school corridor in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, when he looked through a doorway and saw four BBC Micros being set up by technicians. On one screen, a ping pong game was running.

There were no computer teachers then. No curriculum. No one to guide him. There was only a thick manual and BBC Basic, the programming language that appeared every time the machine was switched on.

So, while his classmates went outside to play cricket during lunch breaks, Vivek went to the computer lab.

Every lunch break. Every library period. Every games period.

When school hours were not enough, he found another way. In Bhilai, some enterprising citizens had begun renting out computers by the hour for Rs 10. Vivek had a piggy bank, given to him by his grandmother to teach him the value of saving. He used those savings to teach himself computers.

Years later, the same self-taught skill would help him survive homelessness, build companies, and create wealth. Today, Vivek has donated more than 96 percent of his wealth to a trust that supports children who cannot afford education.

“I will not romanticise what came next. Being homeless at 18 is not an adventure. It is cold and exhausting and profoundly lonely,” says Vivek, now 49.

His story is also the story of LivingMyPromise, a community of Indians who believe that philanthropy can begin much before one becomes a billionaire.

Those who join the community must be over 18 years of age and have a net worth of Rs 1 crore. They pledge 50 percent of their wealth to charitable causes of their choice, either during their lifetime or in their will.

The pledge is moral and personal. It is made over email. There is no legal document binding the person to it.

Yet, for the people who make this promise, it becomes a way of thinking about security, family, legacy, and what it means to have enough.

A school lab, a manual, and a boy who taught himself

Vivek was four years old when he lost his mother. His father, who struggled with alcoholism and gambling, could not take care of him and his little sister. The children were handed over to their uncle, who took charge unwillingly.

Vivek was poor at studies. When he was in his first year of college, his uncle stopped funding his education. Worse, he threw him out of the house.

By then, Vivek had one thing he could trust: his ability to programme.

He approached the owner of a computer institute in Bhilai and told him about his coding skills.

“I told him about my coding skills. He gave me a test and since I did very well, I got a job as a part-time instructor and lab assistant. I was allowed to stay at the institute. I was surrounded by 20 computers and hundreds of books on computer science, maths and physics! I used these to teach myself what I had failed to learn in school,” he says.

By the late 1990s, India’s IT revolution was beginning to gather pace. In October 1998, a friend returned from Bengaluru and handed Vivek some books wrapped in a Bengaluru newspaper.

His friend thought he was giving him reading material. For Vivek, the newspaper opened a doorway.

Inside it was a job advertisement from a company in Bengaluru looking for freshers who could programme in C and C , the two languages Vivek loved most.

He borrowed money, bought a train ticket, travelled to Bengaluru, took the test, and returned to Bhilai to wait.

The phone number on his resume was that of the computer training institute where he worked, because he did not own a phone. When the call came, the offer was Rs 7,000 a month.

“They noted, gently, that since I had no formal degree, they would start me lower than my peers and observe my performance. I agreed immediately, on the call, and then asked them to book my train ticket. They did,” he recalls.

When Vivek arrived in Bengaluru, his boss told him the job involved ANSI Common Lisp and Calculus.

His mathematics teacher in school had once declared him a failure in front of the entire class. Now, the job was asking him to do the one thing he believed he could not do.

His boss, who was based in the US, became the mentor he had never had. He told Vivek to calm down. He sent books from America. He gave him time, patience, and the rare gift of believing that he was capable of more than he thought.

His mathematics teacher in school had once declared him a failure in front of the entire class. Now, the job was asking him to do the one thing he believed he could not do.

His boss, who was based in the US, became the mentor he had never had. He told Vivek to calm down. He sent books from America. He gave him time, patience, and the rare gift of believing that he was capable of more than he thought.

Then something changed.

Vivek realised he was good at it. Mathematics, the subject once used as evidence of his inadequacy, became something he genuinely loved.

“That was my first real awakening. Not the job. Not the salary. The discovery that I was not the student who had failed. I was the student who had never been properly taught,” he says.

Vivek became so absorbed in learning that he began teaching others. First, he taught colleagues on weekends. Then freshers. Then the security guard’s children, the office help’s children, and anyone in the neighbourhood who wanted to learn.

“My company gave me the resources. I gave everything I had. And I discovered something that has shaped every decision I have made since: the more you give, the more you receive. Not metaphorically. Literally. In every measurable way,” he says.

After one year at Rs 7,000 a month, the company raised his salary to Rs 40,000. In the year 2000, in Bengaluru, as a single person, that was a fortune.

Vivek spent four years at ICS. He then worked with........

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