When Vijay Eswaran founded the QI Group of Companies in the 1990s with a number of partners, one of its premises was that some of its profits should fund social initiatives. Later, and with QI grown into a multinational concern, with offices in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand the Philippines, this principle was institutionalised in the RYTHM Foundation, based in Malaysia but operating internationally.
Vijay and his wife, Umayal, who runs the Foundation, explain the derivation of the name (which is not a mis-spelling), the ideas behind this ‘built-in’ CSR – and why they no longer refer to it as either CSR or philanthropy.
