IIT Delhi alumni introduces award to promote innovation, entrepreneurship

Alumni of IIT Delhi from the 1969 batch have contributed over Rs 1 crore to their alma mater for establishing an award to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The alumni have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with premier institute and named the award-- 'Batch of 1969 Innovation Fellow (Award)' on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee reunion of the batch here.

The Award will be executed and managed by the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. "While funds are usually available for students to continue with their projects in the incubation mode, most investors do not permit their funds to be used as stipends or salary for the students themselves," Rajat M Nag, an alumnus of the 1969 batch said.

"Many, if not most, graduating students thus find it difficult to continue with their projects as the alternative of high paying jobs are much more attractive than the risk of supporting themselves using personal resources to work on projects which ultimately may not find venture capital support," he added.

The batch has proposed to partially fund this gap by establishing the corpus at IIT Delhi for providing an annual stipend to a graduating student at any level and of any discipline or programme in any department, centre or school.

The award would enable the recipients to continue working on their near finished project to bring it to a level of preparation for serious consideration by investors. It will carry a monthly stipend of Rs 1 lakh for a period of one year. In exceptional cases, the awardee may be considered for further support for a maximum of six months.

The corpus will enable the institute to present one award annually for a 10-year period (2019-2028). "IIT Delhi alumni have made their mark in the entrepreneurship space with over 300 successful companies created by them all over the world. This award is a great beginning to a similar fellowships institute is planning to create for budding entrepreneurs. We welcome this initiative from our alumni," said V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi.