Rajat Gupta assumes new role as Chairman of non-profit organisation

India-born former Goldman Sachs Director Rajat Gupta has assumed a new role as Chairman of a US-based non-profit organisation, a gradual return to a normal life after completing a two-year prison term on insider trading charges.

Gupta, 67, is Chairman of the WHEELS Global Foundation (WGF), a non-profit organisation focussed on applying technology to uplift rural communities and provide technological solutions to global challenges in six areas: water, health, education, energy, lifestyles, and sustainability.

The non-profit was founded in 2013 by a group of alumni from IIT, all prominent entrepreneurs and financial executives.

A source told PTI that Gupta assumed the role of Chairman in October this year.

Gupta's name appears under the list of WGF's Board of Directors with the title of Chairmanon WGF's web page.

According to his profile on the WGF website, he serves on its board as a key strategist in defining direction and focus of the non-profit organisation. It said Gupta brings his "considerable skills to WGF, along with his leadership associations and advisory roles to many other non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria."

His profile further adds that the IIT-Delhi and Harvard Business School alumnus and former McKinsey head is a "leading Indian-American businessman and philanthropist" and is "widely regarded as one of the first Indians to successfully break through the glass ceiling, as the first Indian-born chief executive officer of a multinational corporation (not just a consultancy)."

Gupta was one of the highest-profile defendants convicted in the government's crackdown on insider trading and was sentenced to two years in prison.

He served his term in a federal prison in Ayer, Massachusetts and walked a free man in March this year after completing his sentence.

Prosecutors had accused Gupta of passing confidential boardroom information about Goldman Sachs to now jailed hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

Gupta is still fighting in an appeals court to have his insider-trading conviction thrown out.