Sachin and Binny Bansal back IIT-Delhi's Rs 200 Cr alumni fund

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi's 'Alumni Endowment Fund' is being launched by the President of India at the end of this month.

The institute is targeting to launch commitments of Rs 200 crore fund with Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal among its major contributors for endowed professorships, fellowships, startup grants, and annual gift programmes.

The fund aims to collect corpus $1 billion by 2025 to assist IIT’s functioning.

According to V Ramgopal Rao, Director of IIT-Delhi, commitments of more than Rs 125 crore are already in place from alumni such as the Bansals among many others.

Apart from Bansals, its list of other marquee alumni includes Policy Bazaar's Yashish Dahiya, Advendus Capital's Ranu Vohra, Co-founder and CTO of Delhivery-Kapil Bharati, Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah, Ivycap Venture's Vikram Gupta, and Pranay Chulet of Quikr.

Last month, IIT Delhi had also launched its Endowment Fund music video featuring many of its alumni to raise funds for the institute. The video which was termed as a revolution featured more than 30 IIT-Delhi alumni including Chetan Bhagat, Binny Bansal, Yashish's Dahiya, and Hitesh Oberoi.

Along with the funds, the institute is also approaching towards appealing its alumni to contribute up to 1% of their annual earnings to their alma mater.

The graduating batch of 2019 has pledged Rs 1 crore i.e around 1% of their first-year earnings. Thus, the institute has an overall fund-raising aim of Rs 1,000 crore in the next four-five years, mentioned an ET report.

This proposal is in line with the income-share arrangement that is followed by many universities abroad to enhance IITs revenue for further growth and development.

Importantly, IIT Delhi alumni run and manage companies with a cumulative value of over $100 billion. Direct and indirect employment created by this institute's alumni is over 30 million. Of the 30 plus Unicorns founded by Indian Entrepreneurs, over half of them have been founded by IIT Delhi alumni.