Donating AI Dreams To IIT Madras: Wadhwani’s 110 Crore Legacy

Sunil Wadhwani, Co-founder of IGATE has donated 110 crore rupees to IIT Madras to promote artificial intelligence. With the endowment the institute has launched the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence offering first of its kind B Tech Programmes in AI & Data Science. It was an emotional moment for Wadhwani who had flown all the way from the US a few decades after he left the portals of this institute. He told tellmystory.in “It was IIT Madras that made  me what I am today. I have come now to give it back as part of our alumni meet. With this I want India to emerge No. 1 in AI globally”.

This donation is being  seen as one of the largest to IIT Madras in recent years. The institute, ranked No. 1 in India for engineering studies will use returns from this corpus to draw world-class faculty in AI and develop some of its infrastructure as well. While it’s so common in universities in the US for alumni to be generous with their colleges to help with scholarship and introduction of new programmes, in India the culture is yet to gain momentum. Thrilled, IIT Madras Director Prof V Kamakoti said “This had come at the very right moment as we have just launched the department. This is going to be an important launchpad for us and we are going to see a very  steep growth”.

With a dearth of quality schools in rural India, when  asked if he had thought about building half a dozen world class schools instead, Wadhwani says “AI research would have a multiplier effect. Imagine the kind of transformation in rural schools  if AI could upgrade the quality of their teachers”.

Amid worry and concerns that artificial intelligence could take away jobs and make human resources redundant in several areas, the new school would focus on responsible AI. “I am looking at building  responsible AI applications  that’s going to impact every sphere of life making IIT Madras a leader in India and India a leader in the world”, said Prof B Ravindran, the Founding Head.