new Delhi: Armed with degrees from IITs, IIMs, UPenn, Stanford and other top universities in the world, a new generation of wealthy Indians is trying to reshape the Indian education system with the help of collective philanthropy.
This essentially entails resourceful individuals coming together to establish institutions with the aim of changing the way education is imparted in Indian universities. Many of these high net worth Indians are counted among the co-founders or management of companies such as Zomato, Innov8, MakeMyTrip, Thermax, Biocon and Info Edge.
Mohali’s Plaksha University, established last year, is the latest in the list of institutions supported by collective philanthropy in India. Earlier in 2018, Kriya in Sricity, Andhra Pradesh came and Ashoka University in Sonepat, Haryana established in 2014. Hyderabad – opened its doors to students in 2001.
On the post-2014 boom of collective philanthropy-funded universities, educationist Pramath Raj Sinha, a pioneer in this field, told ThePrint: “After ISB, there were no significant models for people to follow. In the past, Birlas, Tatas and Thapars did this but they were all business houses. ISB was a unique model in that it was a collective philanthropy. Then came Ashok, who set an example and after it did well, we saw more people coming forward.
Sinha, an IIT Kanpur and University of Pennsylvania graduate, was the founding dean of ISB and co-founder of Ashoka University. Similarly, fellow co-founder and IIT Delhi graduate Vineet Gupta is also one of the founders of Plaksha University.
Besides Gupta, Plaksha and Ashok have other common founders including Info Edge India Ltd CEO and MD Hitesh Oberoi, an IIM Bangalore and IIT Delhi alumnus. Other common founders include Clix Capital Chairman Pramod Bhasin – an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) – and Ambareesh Raghuvanshi, former CFO of Info Edge India, Xavier School of Management (XLRI) Are included. ) Jamshedpur and ICAI graduate.
Although Kriya does not specifically list its founders, former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan, law firm’s managing partner Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Cyril Shroff and Biocon executive chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw have been associated with the university.
“Kriya is a collective philanthropy and is being formed with the objective of providing high quality, research-oriented and industry-relevant higher education in India through its unique pedagogy of learning,” read the website.
It further states: “Embedded learning links thought with action, art with science and, ultimately, our learning from the past with our preparedness for the future.”
Kriya’s list of donors includes billionaire and former Thermax chairperson Anu Aga, who is one of the founders and sponsors of Ashoka University.
Young entrepreneurs like Ritesh Malik, founder of co-working space Innov8 and an alumnus of Dr MGR Research and Educational Institute, and Pankaj Chadha, co-founder of Zomato, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, are among the founders of Plaksha, while Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, an IIT Delhi alumnus, and MakeMyTrip co-founder Deep Kalra, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, are among the founders of Ashoka University.
‘Want philanthropy to be contagious’
As one of the country’s first liberal arts universities, Ashoka pioneered the study of the humanities in India by offering courses in English and creative writing, economics and history, politics, philosophy and economics, among others.
“Because of the governance structure in these institutions, the fact that they are not owned by an individual, it gives people a lot of freedom to experiment and do something different. They also want to make sure that from day one Sending the right thoughts,” said Pramath Sinha.
At KREA, students can “Design Their Own Degree”, choosing to graduate in subjects that are a combination of the humanities and social sciences, science, and literature and the arts.
Meanwhile, Plaksa’s courses are a combination of technical subjects and humanities. Some of the programs offered by the university are B.Tech courses at the undergraduate level, including Data Science and Robotics and Cyber-Physical Systems.
The University celebrated its first foundation day on 17th December.
On collective philanthropy empowering new universities, Neeraj Agarwal, President (Asia Pacific), Boston Consulting Group, said it is very important for individuals to come together and engage in such initiatives because “the onus of nation-building is not solely on the people. may be omitted.” Governments”. Agarwal is the founder and trustee of Plaksha.
“While we all have these individual thoughts, it is a collective one that makes it special,” he said.
Agarwal added: “While we want to be a leader in higher education, we also want to be a leader in research. We ourselves want to pioneer a model of philanthropy that others will emulate. No one individual or corporate knows the world completely and when we bring them all together, then only we become a force to be reckoned with.”
Plaksha’s founding chancellor S. Shankar Shastri, an IIT Bombay alumnus who is now associated with the University of California, Berkeley, told ThePrint: “Individual philanthropy is so important because it is so lucrative. It also creates incentives for people and needs to be persuaded.
Rudra Pratap Singh, Plaksha’s founding vice-chancellor, said the university and its founders want “philanthropy to be contagious”.
What motivates them to invest in education? Some of the founders ThePrint spoke to said it is the fact that they can make a difference and see a multiplier effect for generations to come.
“People want to contribute to something that can make them proud and by doing so they can also contribute to the nation and society. I am sure there will be more such initiatives in the future. A lot of them have benefited from the education system in India and want to give back,” said Sinha.
Speaking on similar lines, Agarwal said that education is the “biggest multiplier” in any country. “The people who come out of it (education) can solve one of the biggest problems. This is what motivates me personally to invest in education.”
Disclosure: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is one of the distinguished founder-investors of ThePrint. Please click here For details of investors.
(Editing by Amritansh Arora)