New Delhi, Mar 12: Aiming at promoting entrepreneurship and innovation among youths, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has established an award with the support of its alumni from the 1969 batch, who have pooled and contributed over Rs 1 crore to their alma mater for instituting the award.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the alumni and the premier institute of technology during the Golden Jubilee reunion of the 1969 batch in New Delhi recently. The IIT Delhi’s Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) will execute and manage the award, which is named as the ‘Batch of 1969 Innovation Fellow (Award)’.
The award carries Rs 1 lakh monthly stipend for one year
Under the MoU, the institute will present one award annually to a budding entrepreneur for a period of 10 years from 2019 to 2028. The award carries Rs 1 lakh monthly stipend for one year. In rare cases, the institute may also consider to support an awardee for a further period of maximum six months.
The award aims at enabling the recipients to keep on working on their project, which is near finished, and bring it to such a level of preparation that investors seriously consider investing money into the project.
According to Rajat M Nag, an alumnus of the IIT Delhi 1969 batch, though there are funds usually available so that the students can continue with their projects in the incubation mode, generally the investors do not let to use their money as salary or stipends for the students themselves. Therefore, the students find it difficult to continue with their projects. And most of the time, they quit the project for high paying jobs as it is much more attractive than risking personal resources to work on projects which have no surety of find venture capital support, he said.
He further added that to partially address this issue, the 1969 batch had proposed to set up the corpus at the IIT Delhi which can provide an annual stipend to a graduating student. The student can be at any level and of any discipline or programme in any department, centre or school.
IIT-Delhi alumni have set up over 300 successful companies across the world
Welcoming the initiative from the IIT Delhi alumni, Director V Ramgopal Rao said that the alumni from the institute have made their mark in the entrepreneurship space. IIT Delhi alumni, he said, have set up over 300 successful companies all over the world. “This award is a great beginning to similar fellowships institute is planning to create for budding entrepreneurs,” Rao said.
