Mumbai, April 4, 2022: IIT Kanpur alumnus and co-founder of the county’s largest airlines IndiGo, Rakesh Gangwal, has made a personal donation of Rs 100 crore to support the School of Medical Sciences and Technology at his alma mater.
IIT Kanpur Director Dr Abhay Karandikar, in a series of tweets, said that the corpus will be utilised for the School of Medical Sciences and Technology, a new school that IIT Kanpur is already building.
“Here is big news from IIT Kanpur. In an extraordinary gesture, our alumnus 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 and Technology at IIT Kanpur,” Karandikar tweeted.
The IndiGo co-founder will also join the Advisory Board of the school.
Gangwal earned a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1975. Later, he also did this MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
The IIT-Kanpur had last year announced to open a school of medical research and technology, which will have a medical school along with a super-specialty teaching hospital as they seek to become multidisciplinary and make engineering, technology, and medical research complement each other.
The IIT-Kanpur wants to combine medicine with engineering and encourage cross-disciplinary learning through this initiative and required INR 600 crore as investment.
On the occasion, Mr Gangwal said that he was proud to see that the institution that has produced thousands of leaders across various sectors is now paving the way in the healthcare sector. He added that “more than ever, healthcare is intertwined with technological advances and this school will accelerate innovation in healthcare.”
According to the officials, the School of Medical Sciences and Technology will be completed in two phases. Phase 1 will include setting up a 500-bed super-specialty hospital, academic block, residential/hostel and service block with a total built-up area of around 8, 10,000 sq ft. It will also involve setting up Centres of Excellence (CoE) for pursuing R&D activities in futuristic medicine and is tentatively planned to be completed over 3-5 years.
Phase-2 is planned to be completed in 7-10 years and will see the hospital capacity to grow to 1,000 beds. It will also involve expanding clinical departments/centres, research areas, the inclusion of paramedical disciplines, alternative medicine, hospital management, sports medicine and public health programmes.
Beyond the government funding, the IITs, especially the older ones, are increasingly looking at industry support, donations from past students and endowments to accelerate their growth and achieve desired expansion.
