NEW DELHI: In the span of three days, two of India’s most storied engineering campuses found themselves in an unusual face-off, not over rankings or research papers, but over crores pledged by graduates from the Class of 2000, turning alumni philanthropy into a measure of institutional pride.
At its Silver Jubilee celebrations on Thursday, IIT-Delhi announced that the Class of 2000 had pledged over Rs 70 crore, the biggest endowment ever raised by a single batch in the institute’s history.
The figure was the result of months of quiet outreach among classmates working across geographies worldwide.
The giving wave had started three days earlier at IIT-Kanpur. At its Silver Jubilee reunion, the institute revealed that the Class of 2000 had pledged Rs 100 crore. It was the first time a single batch at IIT-Kanpur had committed such a large amount in a year. Institute officials said the pledge reflected how far the alumni had come and the institute’s growing standing on the global stage.
At IIT-Delhi, donations were structured across eight categories. The “Founder” category, for gifts of Rs 10 crore plus, included India Quotient founder Mohit Mittal, General Catalyst managing director Neeraj Arora, and an anonymous.