IIT Madras raises Rs 131 crore from alumni and corporates in FY22, up 30% YoY

IIT Madras Research Park.

The Indian Institute of Technology in Madras (IIT-Madras) has raised Rs 131 crore from alumni and corporates in 2021-22, making it the highest collection by the elite tech school ever.

On a year-on-year basis, IIT Madras on May 16 said that its fund raising increased by more than 30 percent. The institute aims to accelerate fundraising by strengthening alumni networks and increasing engagement with corporates, philanthropies and high-net-worth individuals.

“Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the fundraising from alumni, donors and corporate firms has been increasing by over 30 percent Year-on-Year. The number of corporate firms donating funds to IIT Madras through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has almost doubled in the last five years,” according to IIT-M.

Fundraising from CSR partnerships accounts for nearly half of the total Rs 131 crore raised in the last financial year.

“We are grateful to all the alumni and corporate partners who have helped us through impactful contributions…IIT Madras is fortunate to have thousands of alumni invest both time and money to grow the institute. This group is crucial to the institute’s future development,” said Mahesh Panchagnula, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations) at IIT Madras.

The funds raised have been vital in supporting infrastructure development, scholarships, chair professorships, research, and other key initiatives, the IIT-M said.

Some of the older IITs including IIT-M are increasingly tapping alumni and corporates to contribute so that they can accelerate their growth, fulfil their desire to expand, pursue R&D activities, and rely less on annual government budgetary grants.

Several of them have set up endowment funds and have become active in chasing a target. For example, IIT Delhi has a target to raise $1 billion in endowments.

Even as IIT Madras spoke about its fund raising success, IIT Kanpur director and a team are in the US to talk to alumni, brief them about their growth path and seek their support.

“I apprised the alumni about the recent progress and sought their help for the growth of the institute,” IIT Kanpur director Abhay Karandikar has written in a social media post.

Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of IndiGo Airlines, on April 4 committed to contributing Rs 100 crore to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-Kanpur). The corpus will be utilised for the School of Medical Sciences and Technology, a new school that IIT Kanpur is already building.

In March, staffing and human resource firm Quess Corp founder Ajit Issac and his wife Sarah Isaac committed Rs 105 crore to establish a Centre for Public Health at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

A month back in February, IT firm Mindtree co-founders Subroto Bagchi and NS Parthasarathy, along with their spouses, had donated Rs 425 crore to IISc to establish an 800-bed multi-specialty hospital along with a postgraduate medical school.