XLRI alumni to raise endowment fund for B-school's infrastructure

From The Financial Express

Jamshedpur: Alumni of the XLRI School of Business & Human Resources will be here soon to attend the Homecoming 2009, a re-union the B-School has been hosting for the last five years. They are raising an endowment fund to improve the B-School’s infrastructure.

The fund was initiated in 2008 by the 1983 batch. They will be contributing Rs 1 crore, which would subsequently go up to Rs 5 crore.

“The whole idea is to make the fund bigger, as XLRI really didn’t have much of an endowment as we always have lived from hand to mouth,” said XLRI director Father E Abraham, adding that it was only now that the institute has some money to build the infrastructure.

Members of all the alumni batches who have been visiting the B-School over the last few years to attend the Homecoming reunion have been expressing their own ideas in improving things at the institute.

The B-School has chalked out a two-day (November 21-22) programme that would make the alumni members aware of the different initiatives undertaken by XLRI including its expansion and diversification plans in the academic field.

“This forum is going to channelise all the different ideas as we have now set up an endowment fund; and through the fund we are going to channelise whatever ideas come from the alumni towards the growth of the institution”, said Rana Sinha, managing director of Telcon and president of the local XLRI Alumni Association.

XLRI’s alumni members have been behind the setting up of a unique “entrepreneurship trust” which has helped some of the B-School’s two-year management students in starting social entrepreneurship ventures like “Parichay”, “Swavalamban”, “Dream4Others”, “Brandtadka.com”, etc by way of giving seed money.

“The entrepreneurship trust is set to grow because every batch would be reinforcing it with fund and we would have more and more examples of success stories”, said Sinha.

Homecoming 2009 also proposes to confer lifetime achievement awards as well as “distinguished alumnus awards” to those of its alumni who have not only excelled in industry but also in academia. The B-School will also be honouring Father E H McGrath.

“Considering this is the 60th year of XLRI, Homecoming this year is of special importance”, said Bushen Raina, the national president of the XLRI Alumni Association, adding the response from over 150 alumni members so far has been “very positive”.