Fundaman Club
Started in 1985 in Silicon Valley
By an IIT Alumni group from the Kanpur campus
Silicon Valley wasn’t then what it is now. Few companies were located there. There were a sprinkling of semiconductor startup’s. Those were the days of semiconductor wars. And the ascension of Japan as a manufacturing supremo.
And then the Internet happened.
And Silicon Valley took off.
The IIT Alumni movement started gradually taking shape. I set up the Delhi Chapter of IIT Bombay Alumni in 1992 with Prof B. Nag. The Kanpur alumni had a pretty robust organisation by then. The first global PanIIT conclave was held in Delhi at Pragati Maidan with Abdul Kalam Sir as our Chief Patron. I was Chairman of the Membership committee. But for some reason or the other, we kept running into hurdles.
The name PanIIT was somehow jinxed.
Whoever became Chairperson ran into some kind of legal problem.
Rajat gupta had the worst experience.
Then in 2012 when Arvind Kejriwal was emerging as a political debutante, we had an unbelievable situation. Someone changed the constitution of the society. I filed a complaint. The choice was between ethical and commercial. I sought guidance from Gyanesh Chaudhry. And his answer was simple “back what is right”. The Registrar held daily hearings. He came up with a speaking order of 36 pages rubbishing the changes completely. The other side went to court. The court ruled that the Registrar is not an appellate court and cannot revise it’s own order. Bank accounts were seized.
That was the real end of PanIIT.
A group of well meaning alumni including Debashish Bhattacharyya worked hard to revive the PanIIT Society. Many joined the new IIT Alumni Council. Mending something broken is far harder than creating from scratch. I have personally believed that sometimes some entity gets jinxed. And to get over that jinx, one has to start afresh.
A fresh start is also a good time for fresh thinking.
The Fundaman Club of Silicon Valley came back to life in 2016.
The club asked hard questions:
“ What can we do as alumni ?”
“What should we do ?”
“Is our branding right?”
“ Do the IITs really need alumni funds”
“Do IIT Alumni really need help from other alumni”
In the end, we all decided that what India needed was a massive philanthropic foundation . We didn’t need another alumni body.
And that is how IIT Alumni Council came into being.
With 3000+ dollar billionaire members, it is by far the largest non profit of it’s kind anywhere in the world. With another 2000 applicants in queue – it is positioned to not just cooperate with the Govt to do good but to compete with them. 15th August marked five operating years. It is a 50 year plan. We are 10% down the journey.
On 15th August, all the affiliated and aligned entities dropped the PanIIT name tag and replaced it with “IIT Alumni”. It is now a new journey.
The PanIIT Society of 2006 continues independently with a different agenda and focus. And we wish them luck.