Flipkart founders Binny, Sachin Bansal to invest Rs 125 crore in IIT-Delhi fund

Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal have committed an amount of Rs 125 crore in the endowment fund of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. The 'IIT-Delhi Global Alumni Endowment Fund' will be launched by the institute on Thursday at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. IIT-D has received a launch commitment of Rs 255 crore and plans to target Rs 7,000 crore by 2025.

Out of the Rs 255 crore, Rs 125 crore has been committed by Sachin and Binny Bansal, who are alumni of the institute. V Ramgopal Rao, Director of IIT-D said that Rs 100 crore has been committed by Binny while Sachin invested Rs 25 crore. "In fact, Sachin Bansal has also given his commitment for more in future," he said, as mentioned in a report in The Times of India.

HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said that such an endowment fund could be used for development work, student scholarships and research, which would put IIT-D in the same league as the leading institutions globally.

With the seed fund, IIT-D has set a target of Rs 1,000 crore by 2020 and Rs 7,000 crore by 2025. The endowment fund is similar to the one in Harvard University. Rao said that the endowment fund will be managed by an alumni board like in Harvard.  The interest from the fund will be used for developmental activities and innovations. He said they will also look at other investment opportunities to create more revenue sources out of the endowment fund.

Endowment funds are a huge source of income for universities across the world. Harvard and Stanford have an endowment corpus of more than $39 billion and nearly $28 billion, respectively.

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