InMobi, Yulu, Other Start-Up Founders Commit ₹100 Cr School to IIT Kanpur

A group of prominent start-up founders, including InMobi and Glance CEO Naveen Tiwari, have pledged ₹100 crore to set up the Millennium School of Technology and Society (MSTAS) at their alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. 

Other contributors include NoBroker founder Amit Kumar Agarwal, Yulu’s Amit Gupta, and the founders of Knowlarity and Card91, among others. The contributors belong to IIT Kanpur’s 2000 batch, popularly known as the Millennium Batch. 

The batch also had senior executives from companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel, BCG, Morgan Stanley, and GIC among its alumni. MSTAS is envisioned as a centre that brings together technology, public policy and social impact. 

It will focus on nurturing critical thinking, leadership skills, and a global outlook among students. It is being said that the fresh commitment is the highest-ever by any batch at IIT Kanpur. 

Of the total ₹100 crore corpus, ₹30 crore will come from InMobi’s founder. Apart from government grants, IITs are turning more actively to industry partnerships, alumni contributions and endowment funds to speed up development and support their expansion plans.

IITs in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai (Madras) have already built substantial financial corpora through alumni and corporate backing, and IIT Kanpur is now stepping up efforts to strengthen such ties and leverage them for its own growth.

In 2022, Rakesh Gangwal, cofounder of IndiGo Airlines, pledged ₹100 crore to his alma mater, IIT Kanpur, making the commitment in an individual capacity.

IIT Madras, meanwhile, has quietly emerged as arguably India's most successful incubation centre for deep-tech start-ups, with VCs now lining up at its doors, eager to access a pipeline of companies that have spent over a decade being nurtured in an ecosystem where technical risk is systematically de-risked before the first cheque is signed.

There has been a sharp increase in annual fundflows to IITMIC-incubated start-ups in recent years, reaching $121 million in 2024 and $291 million so far in 2025, up from just $13-22 million per year in the 2015-2018 period, according to Venture Catalyst.

This year at IITMIC saw water-tech startup Greenvironment India raising $1 million, EV-as-a-Service player Fyn Mobility securing $2.5 million, deeptech startup Plenome Technologies bagging ₹6.5 crore in seed funding, and space-tech venture Inbound Aerospace raising over $1 million in a pre-seed round. 

The shift is also visible in startup valuations and impact. Today, IITMIC’s portfolio features some of India’s most recognisable deeptech successes, including Ather Energy (the first IITMIC-backed company to go public), Uniphore (valued at $2.5 billion), Agnikul (which recently raised $15 million at a $500 million valuation), and emerging global-scale players like GalaxEye, MediBuddy, and Stellapps. 

The 500-plus startups supported by the IIT Madras Incubation Cell is valued at over ₹53,000 crore ($6 billion) The ₹53,000-crore ($6 billion) cumulative valuation reflects all startups that IIT Madras Incubation Cell has supported over the years and not just those currently in the programme. This total includes both active incubatees and alumni firms that have passed through the centre, including well-known companies like Ather Energy.

In all, IITMIC-incubated startups have attracted ₹17,310 crore in external venture funding, generated over 11,000 direct jobs, and produced more than 700 patents. In comparison, IIT Delhi through its incubation/innovation arm Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT)  has, as of 2025, incubated over 280 startups and facilitated more than ₹450 crore in cumulative funding. 

While IITMIC’s ecosystem reflects large-scale deep-tech growth, scale and long-term value creation as shown by its large funding haul, thousands of jobs, and hundreds of patents, IIT Delhi’s ecosystem appears more modest in scale, with lower funding numbers and a smaller startup base. That said, IIT Delhi is also broadening its scope, launching newer initiatives in 2025 such as a semiconductor-startup incubation programme under “Pitch Perfect 2.0”, indicating potential for future growth.