Under the chairmanship of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, the board of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) is setting up a committee to help it raise funds to finance its various academic ventures on the campus. The IIM-B board, which met on April 2, took a final decision in this regard.
IIM-B will be first such institute to formally announce a fund-raising exercise. It is initially planning to raise over Rs 100 crore which could be subsequently be revised to Rs 500-800 crore.
The funds will be used to finance research, student scholarships, faculty remuneration, establishment of chairs and invite top international management faculty on the campus. Sponsoring the visit of international faculty would help raise IIM-B's international portfolio and its scope of international research.
“It's true that we are looking at raising funds through various resources but it's too premature to talk about it. We would decide on this in a month’s time,”said Pankaj Chandra, director, IIM-B without divulging any further details.
Earlier, Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries — was understood to have expressed interest in footing the salary bills of international faculty at the institute.
IIM-B will have a dedicated team to look into this activity. The institute is in the process of tapping its successful alumni for sizeable donations besides approaching some philanthropic organizations and industry houses. “We understand that the market is not good at present but we are optimistic that we will be able to manage a good show,” said a professor close to the development.
Meanwhile, all IIMs are looking at building a significant corpus or endowment to fund various activities on the campus. At a recent IIM director’s meet held by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), it was clarified that the IIMs can have an endowment fund of over Rs 50 crore.
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The MHRD earlier, had an objection that the institutes can’t use government funds granted to them for academic activities, to create a corpus and thus would insist that the institutes spend it all.
Internationally, almost all institutes have endowment funds, which they use to fund research and teaching activities on the campus. Also, many institutes invest a substantial amount of their endowment in hedge funds, private equity funds, commodities and real estate.