US-based alumni couple donates USD 1 million to BITS Pilani

Premier engineering and science institute BITS Pilani has announced that it received a USD 1 million pledge from a US-based alumni couple for its campus programmes, the largest individual donation ever received by the institution.

The couple -- Prashanth and Anuradha Palakurthi -- made the announcement on Friday, during the ruby anniversary celebrations of Prashanth's 1978-83 batch.

More than 200 alumni of the batch have gathered from all over the world to relive their campus memories in the desert town of Pilani in Rajasthan from November 16-18.

Warmly welcoming the contribution, Prof Souvik Bhattacharyya, Vice-Chancellor, BITS Pilani, termed the announcement by the Palakurthis as momentous and a game changing gesture.

With this pledge, BITS Pilani is launching a campaign to set up a Rs 100 crore Research Endowment Fund. This fund would help provide an additional thrust to Research by way of attracting research driven faculty, post-doctoral fellows and research scholars," he said.

Prof Bhattacharyya said the donation will also help "provide seed fund support to new faculty, and help set up advanced research labs to purse institutional research agenda."
Speaking at the gala event commemorating 40 years of his entry to BITS Pilani, Prashanth said that we wanted to give back to our alma mater which gave us so much and where we started our journey."
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