IITs accept stocks as alumni donations

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Mohit Aron, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, (IIT-Delhi) has donated $1 million to his alma matter in the form of company stock in November 2020, The Indian Express reported on Friday. Aron is an entrepreneur and businessman. He was a student of Computer Science and Engineering department’s 1995 batch. This marks a new trend in India’s premier engineering colleges as IIT Bombay and IIT Madras have also received stock transfers from their alumni as donation.

In the last couple of years, IITs have been making a major push to tap into their alumni networks to increase funds for research, development and expansion.

Donors from US exempted from paying capital gains

Aron founded Cohesity, a data protection firm and also co-founded Nutanix, a cloud computing firm which are both unicorns. The publication said that the entrepreneur transferred shares worth $1 million of Nutanix, which is listed in NASDAQ. According to a statement from IIT Delhi, the donation will be used for faculty’s research activities and also ensure that the undergraduate, Masters and PhD students of the department can attend conferences and workshops in India and abroad.

IIT Delhi Dean (alumni affairs) Prof Naveen Garg was quoted in the publication saying that donors from the US, transfer of company stock is an appealing option as they are exempted from paying capital gains tax. On behalf of IIT-Delhi, alumni donations are received through the IIT-Delhi endowment foundation which is a registered charity in the USA.

The premiere institute had announced that it was planning to raise $1 billion by 2025, while launching the endowment fund in 2019. It had an endowment of Rs 186 crore approximately, as of March 2020.