IIT Alumni Council announces the India Empowerment initiative, a financial fund and accompanying technological intervention vehicle in the form of PanIIT Institute. This will revitalize the research ecosystem in India. This is an addition to importing required technologies for filling critical gaps in India’s overall strategy to emerge as a leading soft superpower.

Operating under the Angel Fund regulatory framework in India as the IIT Angel Fund, it will be the fourth leg of the MegaFund initiative – the other three being a social fund, a co-investment platform and a Fund of Funds. The India Empowerment Fund will increase the total target corpus of Fund of Funds much beyond the planned initial target of Rs.21,000 crore.

“Every IIT alumnus, whether in India or overseas owes a large unpaid debt to Bharat Mata and to the Indian Government for the subsidized education they received in India. IIT Alumni Council will motivate every IIT Alumni to contribute in cash or Technology, a sum equal to the subsidy on his or her Education to the India Empowerment Fund. With an initial response from the top 10-15 percent of the 5,00,000+ IIT alumni, a corpus of Rs.50,000 crore can be created. This uniquely structured fund will be used to revitalize domestic research through talent and infrastructure as well as to import key technologies. Both of these are critical in the quest of empowering India to become the leading technology super power of the world. IIT Alumni Council believes that it is only technology that can transform India into a world leader in the emerging world order and the India Empowerment initiative could play a key role in this transformation,” said Ravi Sharma, President & Chief Volunteer, IIT Alumni Council.

“I am making a personal commitment to IIT Alumni Council and PanIIT USA to make India Empowerment Fund – a program of giving back to our motherland a success. IITians will collaborate with the US and Indian governments to help build better policies to foster cross border entrepreneurship, ensure technology cooperation and enable joint research. We owe this to our Janma Bhumi and Karma Bhumi too. we have 50,000 IIT alumni in the US. IIT Alumni Council has over 35,000 individual members and over 350 venture funds. We collectively have today what it takes to make a difference for a better tomorrow,” added Sanjiv Goyal, Chairman, IIT 2020 Virtual Summit, Board member of PanIIT USA and City Chapter Chair of IIT Alumni Council.

The India Empowerment Fund will be launched alongside the IIT2020 Virtual Summit on the theme ‘Future is Now’, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 9.30 PM IST today.