Billionaire entrepreneur Binny Bansal, who co-founded e-commerce platform Flipkart, has been recognised as one of their distinguished alumni by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi this year. Bansal, who graduated from the prestigious institution in 2005, is the youngest alumni at 38 years of age to be awarded this year for his "outstanding contribution made in entrepreneurship". Bansal is possibly one of the few to be nominated for the award before hitting the big 40.
Among others who have been recognised as distinguished alumni for the year 2019 by the institution are Srinivasan Keshav, 53, and Mohit Aron, 46. As we see the pattern in the last few years, the prestigious alumni award has been given out to people mostly beginning from the age of 40 years or more. Binny Bansal stands out. In 2018, Saurabh Mittal, who received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the Institute in 1995 and Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1999, was honoured with the award when he was about 46 years of age. Similarly, Sumant Sinha, the current Chairman and Managing Director of ReNew Power, India's largest renewable energy company, who graduated from IIT Delhi in 1987, received the award in 2018 when he was 53. Kiran Bedi, the current Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry was also an IIT Delhi alumna and she was awarded in 2017 when she was 68.
This year's distinguished alumni apart from Binny Bansal include Keshav, who graduated from IIT Delhi in 1986, is a professor at University of Cambrdige and has been recognised for his contribution in teaching and research, Aron founded Cohesity and Nutanix. Cohesity is a privately held enterprise storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Nutanix is a cloud computing software company that sells, what it calls, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) appliances and software-defined storage.
Aron is 1995 batch pass-out from IIT Delhi and has been recognised for his contribution in entrepreneurship. IIT has also recognised two alumni for significant efforts and contribution made towards the development and progress of the institute. Arun Duggal, a 1967 mechanical engineering graduate is the chairman of ICRA, an Indian independent and professional investment information and credit rating agency. Amarjit Singh Bakshi, is the MD of Central Park group known for its upscale properties in Gurgaon. He graduated from IIT in 1967 as a civil engineer.
