Indigo’s ex-director Rakesh Gangwal donates Rs 100 crore to IIT Kanpur

Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of IndiGo Airlines announced a personal donation of Rs 100 crore on April 4 to the School of Medical Sciences & Technology at IIT, Kanpur. Gangwal IS an IIT Kanpur alumni, graduated in 1975.

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Sharing the news, IIT Kanpur director Abhay
Karandikar wrote on Twitter, Here is big news from @IITKanpur. In an
extraordinary gesture, our alumnus Mr Rakesh Gangwal, Co-Founder of IndiGo
airlines has made one of the largest personal donations with a 100 crore
contribution focused on supporting the School of Medical Sciences &
Technology at IIT Kanpur.

The funds will be utilized for the School of Medical
Sciences and Technology, a new school that IIT Kanpur is already building. The
commitment is in a personal capacity.

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Gangwal will join the advisory board of the new school.
After IndiGo co-founder Rahul Bhatia was appointed in a newly-created managing
director role last month, Rakesh Gangwal resigned from the airline’s board and
announced his plan to slowly reduce his stake over more than five years, ending
a year-long conflict with Bhatia.

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Last year, IIT-Kanpur has announced to open a school of
medical research and technology, along with a medical school and
super-speciality teaching hospital as they strive to become multidisciplinary
and complement each other in engineering and medical research.

The IIT-Kanpur aims to combine medicine with engineering
and encourage cross-disciplinary learning through this initiative. School and
college will have a built-up area of approximately 1 million square feet. The
first phase of the project will be completed in three to five years.

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In addition to government funding, the IITs are
increasingly seeking industry support, donations from past students and
endowments to accelerate their growth.

IITs in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai have already made
significant progress in earning corpus from alumni and industries. IIT Kanpur
is increasingly focusing on building relationships and leveraging them for its
growth.