New Delhi, December 4th, 2020: IIT Alumni Council announces the India Empowerment initiative, a financial fund and accompanying technological intervention vehicle in the form of PanIIT Institute – to revitalise the research ecosystem in India.
Every global IIT Alumni to contribute in cash or technology a sum equal to the subsidy on his or her IIT Education to the India Empowerment Fund.
The Fund will operate under the Angel Fund regulatory framework in India as the IIT Angel Fund and will be the fourth leg of the MegaFund initiative – the other three being a social fund, a co-investment platform and a Fund of Funds . The India Empowerment Fund will increase the total target corpus of Fund of Funds much beyond the planned initial target of Rs 21,000 crores.
The India Empowerment Fund will be launched alongside the IIT2020 Virtual Summit on the theme “Future is Now”. The Summit is expected to be the largest virtual conference in the world with 20,000 attendees and will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi at 9:30 pm India time on the 4 of December 2020.
“Every IIT alumnus, whether in India or overseas owes a large unpaid debt to Bharat Mata and to the Indian Govt for the subsidised education they received in India . IIT Alumni Council will motivate every IIT Alumni to contribute in cash or Technology, a sum equal to the subsidy on his or her Education to the India Empowerment Fund. With an initial response from the top 10 – 15% of the 500,000+ IIT alumni , a Corpus of Rs 50,000 crores can be created . This uniquely structured fund will be used to revitalise domestic research through talent & infrastructure as well as to import key technologies . Both of these are critical in the quest of empowering India to become the leading technology super power of the world . IIT Alumni Council believes that it is only technology that can transform India into a world leader in the emerging world order and the India Empowerment initiative could play a key role in this transformation “said Ravi Sharma, President and Chief Volunteer of the IIT Alumni Council.
“I am making a personal commitment to IIT Alumni Council and PanIIT USA to make India Empowerment Fund – a program of giving back to our motherland a success. IITians will collaborate with the US and Indian governments to help build better policies to foster cross border entrepreneurship, ensure technology cooperation and enable joint research. We owe this to our Janma Bhumi and Karma Bhumi too. We have 50,000 IIT alumni in the US. IIT Alumni Council has over 35,000 individual members and over 350 venture funds. We collectively have today what it takes to make a difference for a better tomorrow.” added Sanjiv Goyal, Chairman of the IIT 2020 Virtual Summit, Board member of PanIIT USA and City Chapter Chair of IIT Alumni Council.
