90'S IITians to Take the Legacy Forward, Funded 6.5 Crores for the "Legacy Project"

The Indian Institute of Technology- Bombay’s (IIT-B)has been funded with a truck load of money. The batch of 1990 has gaged Rs.6.5 crore towards the “Legacy Project” of IIT-Bombay. The contribution, activity or a cause was adopted by the batch on Sunday when celebrating its Silver Jubilee anniversary or reunion for the betterment of the institute and of the people associated with it.With this money they plan to create a retired faculty wellness fund. The fund involves benefits like, providing medical coverage for the faculty members who retired prior to 2003, as well as for their spouses.

The seed money will help create scholarship programs for students, young faculty award or new faculty sign-on bonuses and faculty development fund.This initiative was originally started by the batch of 1982, and was followed by the 1983 batch. The batch of 1990 will now take it forward by adding funds to the existing corpus to fund sign-on bonuses for new faculty members.This fund is supposed to attract and support new faculty members at IIT Bombay, a joining bonus of Rs.4 lakh will be given to them over a period of three years. The money will also help create new products as it will be used to set up an innovation fund which will provide early stage funding for students with product ideas that can be developed and later developed into start-ups and bigger companies.

The batch of 1990 is also a “clean campus, green campus project” fan, they have decided to fund this project too. Initially this project was started by the batch of 1980 to raise funds for causes like cleaning and revitalising the Powai Lake and beautifying the institute campus etc.The whilom IITians, pledged their support to their alma mater and also relived their memories of the campus and was accompanied by their spouses and children. They lived their past standing with their present for a better future.

Sandeep Asthana, a chemical engineer from IIT-B, now the country head of Sun Life Financial as also representative of the 1990 batch, said, “Our roots lie at IIT-B. We know that whatever we are today is because of the institute and the lessons that we learned here from our teachers, friends, and hostel mates. Therefore, we feel that it is important to give something back to the institute that has given us so much.”