It’s a tradition introduced to India by IIT Kharagpur and on Tuesday, India’s oldest IIT proved its not ready to be left behind by its peers in Delhi and Mumbai.
Continuing in the tradition of scores of its illustrious pass-outs, Prabha Kant Sinha, a 1970-batch KPGian who runs a marketing and sales consulting firm in the US announced a $2 million contribution his alma mater for conducting research into bio-fuels.
The contribution will rank among the biggest alumni donations to IIT Kharagpur, and will account for around 10% of the nearly Rs 100 crore that the institute has collected from its various alumni since the trend was started off in 1993 by Sinha’s senior Vinod Gupta.
In a practice unheard of in India then, Gupta, who founded the Nebraska-based marketing firm InfoUSA, contributed $2 million to the Institute to set up a school of management.
Sinha, one of the early generation IITians who left the country as soon as they got their diplomas, says he did not give back because of guilt.
“It’s a very strong feeling of joy rather than guilt. At the back of the mind you always have a nostalgia for going back home. There’s a kind of an emotional attachment. IIT was the best period of your life,” he explains.
KGPians, as the alumni of the institute are known, have built their own associations in most of the prominent US cities.
In the early days, says Arjun Malhotra, another US-based KGPian entrepreneur, there was no way other than to leave the country.
“It was not like it is today.. People didn’t know when you said you are from the IIT — you didn’t get a job. So we had to go abroad to get the freedom and flexibility to exercise our skills,” Malhotra, who too had contributed Rs 3 crore to the institute earlier, says.
Malhotra feels Indian universities have a long way to go before they can claim to be utilising their alumni networks effectively.
“The biggest problem is that there is no feedback, so a contributor doesn’t know what has happened to his money. Then there’s no process. People there [in the US] have money, but you have to involve them with the institute first. You can’t just go and ask for money,” Malhotra, who liaised with Sinha to get him involved, says.
“In the end, the alumni themselves end up doing this sort of work (of bringing in more people,)” he points out.
Sinha, too, believes the Rs 100 crore or so raised so far is merely a trickle. “If you want to raise 10-20 times [the amount], that’s possible,” he says.
Interestingly, the contributors point out that the IITs may just be entering the ‘sweet spot’ as far as contributions are concerned.
Most of the contributors so far have been pass-outs during the period ranging from late 60s to early 70s.
“A million or two is not a big deal for most of us here. But it takes time for you to reach that phase of prosperity in life.Now more and more of us will reach that phase in the coming years,” hopes Asoke Deysarkar, CEO of Houston-based PIP technology and a contributor to IIT Kharagpur.
IIT Kharagpur’s leadership position in attracting alumni funds, something that has been successfully assailed by its Delhi and Mumbai namesakes, too will be restored in due time, Deysarkar hopes. “Some of the other institutes have had their scales tipped by one or two very large contributions, but I think we will win in the long run,” he said.
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