?Mata Amritanandamayi taught me the life-changing power of giving,? says Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Benioff, who donated œ2 million to British charity to fight Covid-19

Marc Benioff is a famous American Internet entrepreneur with a net worth of $6.9 billion. Founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company, he owned 4.14% of Salesforce shares, worth $4.33 billion.

One of the world’s greatest philanthropists, Benioff thanks to the spiritual encounter with Hindu sage Mata Amritanandamayi that he had during a visit to India.

A millionaire by 25, he was the youngest ever vice-president of software giant Oracle. ‘But in his heart he knew that something was missing,’ says a report published in the Daily Mail.

‘It was like a scene from a movie,’ Benioff recalls his meeting with Mata Amritanandamayi, who is lovingly called ‘Amma’ (Mother) by her devotees. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere in this tiny Indian village and everybody’s dressed in white and orange and there’s incense wafting.’

‘I’m with a friend who is Indian. He’s telling her [the guru] about the challenges in his life and his struggles and about this business that he was going to start. I thought he was going to ask her to invest, he was quite aggressive.’

“Then she looked right at me and said, ‘In your quest to change the world, don’t forget to do something for somebody else. It was a comment that would forever change his life,” he says.

Benioff says it was Amma who introduced him ‘to the idea, and possibility, of giving back to the world by pursuing my career ambitions.’ ‘I realised that I didn’t have to make a choice between doing business and doing good. I could do both.’

He has donated £1 million, along with another £1 million from Salesforce, to support the Mail Force Charity, a charity set up by the Daily Mail to help Britain fight the Covid-19.

According to the report, “The money raised will fund essential equipment required by the NHS and care workers and this equipment is vital in protecting the heroic staff whilst they perform their fantastic work in helping the UK overcome this pandemic.”