Sunil Bharti Mittal Is Pumping In Rs 5,000 Crore To Set Up A New University In North India

Sunil Bharti Mittal, the founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, has pledged Rs 7,000 crore, around 10 per cent of his family’s total wealth, to philanthropy, Mint has reported.

A large part of this fund, around Rs 5000 crore, will be used to set up a modern university in North India to offer free science and technology education to the poor. Named Satya Bharti University, the institution will have the capacity to enroll 10,000 students and hopes to attract academics from across the world.

“We are looking for about 100 acres somewhere close to Delhi or Chandigarh for it is tough to attract talented academics if campuses are set in extreme rural settings,” Mittal said in an interview on Thursday (23 November).

“We aim to focus on education in our philanthropic ventures, though from time to time we may look at other initiatives like Nyaya Bharti (aid for undertrials) and Satya Bharti Abhiyan (sanitation drive) but on a smaller scale,” he added.

Although the university is committed to supporting bright students from poor sections of the society, Mittal said about 60 per cent of the students, to begin with, will be those who can afford this education as it would be difficult to find 10,000 academically bright students from these sections.

While Rs 1,000 crore will be spent on infrastructure for the university, around Rs 4,000 crore will be held in a corpus for managing the running expenses, he said.

A part of the Rs7,000 crore donation will go to the Satya Bharti School programme, run by the Bharti Foundation. The programme focuses on improving primary and secondary school education.

Mittal’s decision to establish a university follows announcements by several other Indian billionaires to dedicate a substantial part of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Just last week, Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini Nilekani pledged to donate half of their wealth towards philanthropy.