Infotech bigwigs make a bid to take over IITs

Infotech bigwigs make a bid to take over IITs
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 12: A group of infotech bigwigs including Infosys promoter N R Narayanamurthy and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kanwal Rekhi have made a concerted bid to take over the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

The group, which includes big names from The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) and Indian IT industry, has offered to create a $ 1 billion fund for privatisation of the country's premier technology institutions.

"We met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee earlier this week and proposed an industry takeover of IITs and the government has agreed to the idea in principle," Kanwal Rekhi, president of TIE, told PTI here.

Rekhi said Vajpayee has asked the group, most of whom are IIT alumni, to submit a detailed report on the proposed industry takeover of the IITs within the next 30 to 40 days. The group, which calls itself `Friends of IIT', is planning to set up a new council, comprising academicians, alumni and industry leaders, to run the five IITs in the country. "Once we get thefinal go-ahead from the government, we plan to put IIT alumni like Narayanamurthy and Nandan Nilekani in the proposed council," he said.

Rekhi said the core group would work towards raising the level of IITs to make them comparable with world-class institutes like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford.

"The government, which is attempting to raise the level of IITs to world standard, is under tremendous financial strain. It is about time successful alumni did their bit for these institutes," he said.

Rekhi said the group was currently in the process of chalking out details of the proposed privatisation.

"Although about 20 entrepreneurs would be members of the Friends of IIT movement to start with, the council size would be smaller," he said.

Other members of the group include Rajendra S Pawar of NIIT, Saurabh Srivastava of IIS Infotech, Satish Kaura of Samtel and Suhas Patil, founder of Cirrus Logic.

Rekhi said once the five IITs in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kharaghpur andKanpur were privatised, the group would target the Regional Engineering Colleges in the country.

He said the privatisation process of the IITs would take about five years to materialise, adding $ 5 million had recently been pledged for IIT, Mumbai.The Angel Investor claimed the alumni have already pooled in $ 50 to 60 million for the project.