Under the leadership of Tej Kohli, the Tej Kohli Foundation has engaged in grassroots projects since 2005 that help to rebuild people and communities around the world.
The ‘Rebuilding You’ philosophy of the Tej Kohli Foundation reflects the well-documented desire of Tej Kohli to use science and technology to rebuild people and communities through grassroots interventions. The story of Tej Kohli’s own journey to rebuild himself is best captured by blog posts ‘A Technologist Who Is Investing In Human Triumph’, ’London Philanthropist Aims To Cure Poverty-Related Blindness Worldwide‘ and ‘This London Tycoon Harbours A Surprisingly Generous Streak’.
Tej Kohli also regularly shares his thoughts within his blog and social media posts. On Medium.com and on the World Economic Forum, Tej Kohli regularly blogs about blindness, inequality, poverty and global health. Tej Kohli also writes on sites such as Ghost, CityAM, and The Motley Fool about subjects including real estate, cryptocurrency, deep tech and stock market investing.
The Business Life
The Tej Kohli Foundation and the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation are entirely funded by Tej Kohli and the Kohli family. The source of this funding originates from the trade sales of a series of companies that Tej Kohli founded between 1999 and 2006. This conglomeration of companies such as Estacion Tramar grew quickly by specialising in online payment gateways and fraud protection for clients operating in high-risk sectors. The companies employed armies of software developers in South America and India by the time that Tej Kohli exited through a series of trade sales in 2006.
In 2006 the Kohli family moved to the United Kingdom where Tej Kohli began investing the liquidity from these trade sales into deep tech ventures, with a focus on AI and robotics. He also became Europe’s biggest individual investor in eSports and continued to invest and grow his interests in B2B software and e-commerce. Since 2006 Tej Kohli has been building his Zibel Real Estate portfolio. Today, the Zibel portfolio provides a reliable income stream to fund the activities of the Tej Kohli Foundation and the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation.
The Mission To Cure Blindness
According to the World Health Organisation, 90% of the people who have blindness or severe visual impairment live in the poorest countries in the world. Blindness and poverty are both a cause and an effect of each other. This relationship creates a descending cycle of inequality and poverty which impedes the social and economic development of entire communities.
Tej Kohli funded his first donor cornea implants at Niramaya Hospital in India in 2010. He was present when a 50-year-old patient who had been blind for decades was able to see his wife and grown-up children for the first time. This experience led Tej to decide that combating needless blindness in the world’s poorest communities would become his calling.
Tej Kohli initially funded thousands of corneal transplants at Niramaya Hospital. Then in 2015, he launched the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute at the LV Prasad Eye Institute, a World Health Organization collaborating centre located in India. By 2019 the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute welcomed more than 223,404 outpatients and completed 43,255 surgical procedures.
In early 2021 Tej Kohli partnered with ‘God of Sight’ Dr Sanduk Ruit to launch the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation. Its mission is to cure 300,000 to 500,000 of needless blindness by 2030. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation conducts large-scale microsurgical outreach camps to cure cataracts in the world’s hard-to-reach and underprivileged communities. It also operates programmes focused on curing children of blindness caused by congenital cataracts.
The Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation have performed interventions in Bhutan, Nepal, Ghana and soon many other nations. As of January 2023, the Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation has screened 203,261 and cured 27,963 people of cataract blindness.
Innovation
Tej Kohli is also committed to developing new medical and scientific innovations that can lead to more accessible and affordable treatments and cures for blindness that is also scalable for ‘the masses’. His Tej Kohli Applied Research team is developing a liquid biosynthetic for the treatment of corneal scarring, whilst the Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Massachusetts Eye And Ear in Boston is accelerating collaborative research to achieve new breakthroughs in the diagnosis of and fight against blindness.
The Tej Kohli ‘Applied Research’ program is a longstanding scientific collaboration between researchers in Montreal Canada and specialists at Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK. In 2020 the ‘Applied Research’ program moved one step closer to its mission to create a universal cure for corneal blindness through the regeneration of corneal tissue.
In 2019 after being approached by Harvard Medical School to support its Department of Ophthalmology to accelerate innovative and collaborative research to achieve unprecedented new breakthroughs in corneal disease in, Tej Kohli funded the Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Massachusetts Eye And Ear in Boston with an initial donation of $2m.
Alleviating Poverty
Long before Tej Kohli adopted the fight against needless blindness as his main calling, he made his first endeavours as a philanthropist by seeking to alleviate poverty within communities where poverty and inequality were stifling young people’s access to self-improvement and opportunity.
Tej’s first philanthropic project was in Costa Rica where he provided long-term financial and practical support for disabled children. Then in 2005, he launched a series of free ‘FundaKohli’ canteens in Costa Rica to feed children for free. FundaKohli has since fed thousands of young people and continues to operate today to ensure that children from struggling families have access to the vital nutrition and sustenance that they need to flourish.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2020, Tej Kohli pumped emergency funding and resources into grassroots community movements which sought to prevent young families from going hungry. Tej Kohli initiated projects in the UK in conjunction with The Salvation Army, Southall Community Alliance and Guru Maneyp Granth Gurdwara. This funding supported thousands of UK families throughout the lockdowns of the pandemic.
Global Health Advocacy
A key component of the Tej Kohli approach to philanthropy is the understanding that major global health challenges can only be solved through multidisciplinary collaboration between hundreds of organisations including NGOs and governments. In 2020, Tej Kohli joined fellow entrepreneurs and philanthropic foundations by donating $100,000 toward a COVID-19 Vaccine Development Fund at Massachusetts Eye And Ear, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston, USA.
As well as participating in collective efforts to bring about improvements in the sphere of global health, Tej Kohli has also sought to advocate for change by instigating ad-hoc initiatives and innovations. One example is a 2019/20 program in which Tej Kohli sought to highlight the plight of children in India who are living with Xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), a rare genetic condition that makes the sun’s rays lethal and which carries a heavy social stigma.
Working with internationally renowned photographer Simon Townsley and the Global Health section of The Telegraph, the Tej Kohli Foundation brought the realities of life of Indian children with XP visibly to the fore in a major photographic study and news feature. The most impactful element of this initiative was the use of ‘social impact entertainment’: Tej Kohli sponsored the production of an independent documentary short about XP, which premiered at the 2020 Manchester International Film Festival and then toured many film festivals worldwide to help raise awareness.
Embracing Technological Solutions
Tej Kohli is a strong believer in the power of technology to improve human life, and in late 2019 he was proud to launch the ‘Future Bionics program in the United Kingdom. The #FutureBionics program funds the purchase and fitting of 3D-printed bionic ‘Hero Arms’ for young people with limb differences; and highlights how technology can substantially improve the lives and confidence of younger people who are living with disabilities.
The 3D-printed ‘Hero Arm’ can be controlled with the electrical signals generated by a user’s muscles and has a superior multi-grip functionality that enables users to perform many more everyday activities compared to traditional prosthetics. The enhanced ability of the users to be able to personalise their Open Bionics Hero Arm is also a huge boost to their mental well-being and to perceived social acceptance, hopefully improving their prospects in life.
The Tej Kohli #FutureBionics program has also included social impact entertainment in the form of a YouTube mini-series that follows the story of up-and-coming musical theatre actress Gracie McGonigal as she became ‘bionic’ and pursues her career in the arts. This series is helping to inspire limb-different younger people around the world:
Impact Investment
Tej Kohli is an advocate of venture philanthropy as a vehicle for boosting global development and prosperity. He believes that artificial intelligence is already transforming developing countries and that whilst the United Nations ‘AI for Good’ campaign is fostering dialogue amongst policymakers on the highly beneficial use of technology for humanitarian work, it is technology investors who can and should prove its value.
Since 2018 Tej Kohli has made two substantial investments of over $100m into Rewired, a Switzerland-based venture studio that pursues a ‘double bottom line’ of commercial profit and humanitarian impact. Rewired is investing in ventures including a tech solution to increase the proportion of plastics that are viable for recycling worldwide; technology for the early detection of cancer using olfactory sensors; AI-powered drones that can optimise renewable energy sites and also the development of affordable bionics.
Biotech Investment
Tej Kohli believes that joining the technological frontiers of AI and biotech can solve some of the world’s greatest public health challenges and substantially improve human life. Biotechnology is experiencing exponential technological progression and improving by a factor of ten every year in terms of cost-benefit.
Tej Kohli is the owner of Detraxi, a US-based biotech company that plans to save millions of lives worldwide by developing its proprietary solution for a range of global health challenges. Detraxi is working with the world’s most talented and respected scientists across fluid replacement, diagnostics, transplantation and regenerative medicine. In 2020 Detraxi biotechnology underwent pre-clinical trials at Johns Hopkins University.
FAQ
Who is Tej Kohli?
Tej Kohli is the Founder and sole benefactor of the eponymous Tej Kohli Foundation. Between 1999 and 2006 Tej Kohli built and then sold a high-growth technology conglomerate in Costa Rica and India that specialised in building online payment gateways and associated fraud protection technologies. Since the major liquidity event of selling his companies, Tej Kohli has built a global real estate portfolio which today provides a reliable and visible income stream to support the worldwide activities of the Tej Kohli Foundation.
What is Tej Kohli’s net worth?
Tej Kohli does not explicitly disclose his net worth as a matter of longstanding policy, though many of his investments are well documented in the public domain. His Zibel Real Estate portfolio is on track to have $1 billion of net real estate AUM in the coming years and his $100m interest in the Rewired deep tech fund is growing rapidly. Tej Kohli is on record as claiming that his €50m investment in the Rewired.gg Esports Venture fund will see it grow its majority interest in one of the world’s first $1 billion esports teams. Tej Kohli also owns a global conglomeration of companies spanning everything from e-commerce to biotechnology.
How did Tej Kohli make his money?
Tej Kohli made his money after founding and then selling a series of companies that specialised in building and licensing online payment gateways and associated fraud protection technologies in high-risk sectors. Following a series of liquidity events from 2006 onwards, Tej Kohli grew his wealth by building the Zibel Real Estate portfolio and by investing in high-growth opportunities in deep tech, AI, biotech, esports, and crypto.
Why did Tej Kohli choose to fight blindness?
Needless blindness which arises due to poverty is entirely avoidable and is a major global health failure that has a pervasive social and economic effects in the developing countries where 90% of blind people live. Yet, it is not a cause célèbre that attracts widespread funding or attention from big names. Tej Kohli first encountered the problem after being invited to fund corneal transplants in India. Upon seeing a patient have his blindness cured in a single operation, Tej Kohli decided that with his accumulated wealth and expertise, fighting this needless and avoidable blindness would become his calling.
How much does Tej Kohli donate each year?
As a matter of longstanding policy, Tej Kohli does not disclose his net worth and therefore does not disclose the combined magnitude of total wealth that he has allocated into the projects of the Tej Kohli Foundation since its first project in 2005. Tej Kohli plays an active role in the decision-making process of the Tej Kohli Foundation whose long-term strategic commitments are also frequently supplemented by supporting ad hoc tactical projects.
What is Tej Kohli’s day job?
As the Founder of the Tej Kohli Foundation, Tej Kohli works tirelessly to make sure that the Foundation is delivering on its values and objectives. With major active projects in the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, and India plus a longstanding ambition to eliminate poverty-driven blindness from poor communities worldwide, Tej’s daily work life draws from his extensive experience building high-growth companies in the commercial sector to target the resources of the Tej Kohli Foundation to achieve maximum impact at the grassroots level.
Where does Tej Kohli come from?
Tej Kohli was born in 1958 in Delhi, India. In 1980 Tej Kohli graduated in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. In the mid-1980’s he moved to California in the United States where he enjoyed early success as a real estate investor. He later moved to Costa Rica where he launched and then sold a series of companies. Tej Kohli regularly entertains guests at his London headquarters, but with philanthropic projects spread across the world, he also travels very frequently.
Does Tej Kohli have a medical background?
Tej Kohli’s background is as an engineer and a technologist with a flair for problem-solving which led to his successes as an entrepreneur and investor. Tej Kohli firmly believes that the solution to seemingly intractable human problems lies in the chain reaction of rapid technological and scientific progression that is enabling brand new and novel solutions. Under the direction of Tej Kohli, the Tej Kohli Foundation has become a global hub for interdisciplinary innovation across a variety of disciplines and expertise.
What is the Tej Kohli mission to eliminate corneal blindness?
Tej Kohli is best known for his worldwide mission to eliminate corneal blindness by 2035. 40 million people worldwide are blind and even more live with a severe visual impairment. 90% of sufferers of blindness and severe visual impairments live in the poorest countries in the world where up to 80% of all blindness is preventable or curable. Corneal blindness is the fourth leading cause of blindness globally. It is also one of the most difficult forms of blindness to cure, with treatments reliant on invasive surgery using sutures (sterile surgical threads) which is simply not accessible or affordable to the vast majority of sufferers who are in poor countries. Tej Kohli’s mission is to develop a non-surgical solution to corneal blindness that is accessible, affordable, and scalable in the world’s poorest communities, whilst simultaneously making direct interventions to prevent, alleviate and cure corneal blindness using current methods.
How is Tej Kohli fighting Holiday Hunger?
In 2005 Wendy and Tej Kohli opened their first ‘FundaKohli’ canteens in Costa Rica to provide daily meals to local children before and after school. The network of FundaKohli canteens remains the most longstanding project of the Tej Kohli Foundation and embodies the preferences of Wendy and Tej Kohli to be making direct interventions that help to improve the prospects of younger people.
The 2020 Coronavirus crisis meant that plans of Tej Kohli to launch a new initiative to combat ‘holiday hunger’ in the United Kingdom had to be brought forward to provide immediate emergency alleviation of child hunger arising from the crisis. Today the foundation’s ‘Food Support’ initiatives encompass three programmes in the UK which are dedicated to empowering local groups and volunteers to combat holiday hunger within their own local communities backed by the support of the Tej Kohli Foundation.
What is Tej Kohli’s connection to disabled children?
Tej Kohli’s first-ever philanthropic endeavour was to support a group of children in Costa Rica who have a range of severe disabilities. This first project established the precepts of making direct interventions into the lives of children to improve their prospects. By 2019 Tej Kohl had helped tens of thousands of children all over the world across a range of projects, culminating in the launch of the ‘Future Bionics’ program to provide 3D-printed bionic arms to children in the United Kingdom who have limb differences.