IIT Bombay’s alumni have blazed trails all over the world in diverse fields, and now they’re giving back to their alma mater.
IIT Bombay’s 1998 batch has pledged to donate Rs. 57 crore to the institute as a part of its silver jubilee celebrations. This is the highest sum given by any single batch to the college. Prior to this, the highest donation for IIT Bombay had come from its 1971 batch, which had donated Rs. 41 crore to the institute as a part of their golden jubilee celebrations.
The contributions have been made by over 200 alumni including PeakXV Managing Director Shailendra Singh, Vector Capital managing director Anupam Banerjee, Silver Lake managing director Apoorv Saxena and Great Learning founder and chief executive Mohan Lakhamraju . Google Deepmind’s Dileep George, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sundar Iyer, HCL’s Srikant Shetty and Indovance CEO Sandesh Joshi also donated towards the initiative.
It’s remarkable that a single batch of an institute produces so many luminaries, but IIT Bombay is known globally for its strong alumni network. The funds raised by the class of 1998 will help the institute support key academic and research projects including Project Evergreen, which aims to create sustainable and eco-friendly hostels for students; Makerspace labs to foster scientific and technological innovation and creativity; and Student Aid initiatives (including scholarships).
“We are very grateful for the wonderful support we are getting from our alumni, which will help build IIT Bombay’s infrastructure to a level we can be justifiably proud of and help us take IIT Bombay to even greater levels of excellence in the years to come,” Professor S Sudarshan, deputy director, Academic and Infrastructural Affairs, IIT Bombay said.
IIT Bombay isn’t the only top institute that’s received large sums from their alumni. In the past, Quess Corp’s Ajit Isaac has donated Rs. 105 crore to IISc Bangalore, Indigo’s Rakesh Gangwal has donated Rs. 100 crore to IIT Kanpur, Happiest Minds’ Ashok Soota has donated Rs. 20 crore to IIT Roorkee and Reckitt Beckinser’s Rakesh Kapoor has donated Rs. 10 crore to BITS Pilani. Nandan Nilekani, meanwhile, has donated Rs. 400 crore to IIT Bombay in what is the biggest single donation to a college in India.
And it’s perhaps involvement from alumni like this that’ll propel India’s colleges to truly world-class status. India has plenty of top institutes that produce thousands of very capable graduates, but none of the them are ranked in the top 50 globally. It’s perhaps through initiatives like these that these institutes can spend money on original research and development, which will enable them to compete with the best in the world.