New Delhi: Premier engineering and science institute BITS Pilani has announced that it received a $1 million (Dh3.67 million) pledge from a US-based alumni couple for its campus programmes, the largest individual donation ever received by the institution.

The couple — Prashanth and Anuradha Palakurthi — made the announcement on Friday, during the ruby anniversary celebrations of Prashanth’s 1978-83 batch.

More than 200 alumni of the batch have gathered from all over the world to relive their campus memories in the desert town of Pilani in Rajasthan from November 16-18.

Warmly welcoming the contribution, Professor Souvik Bhattacharyya, vice-chancellor of BITS Pilani, termed the announcement by the Palakurthis as “momentous and a game-changing gesture”.

“With this pledge, BITS Pilani is launching a campaign to set up a Rs100 crore [Rs1 billion or Dh51.2 million] Research Endowment Fund. This fund would help provide an additional thrust to research by way of attracting research driven faculty, post-doctoral fellows and research scholars,” he said.

Prof Bhattacharyya said the donation will also help “provide seed fund-support to new faculties, and help set up advanced research labs to pursue [an] institutional research agenda.”

“I believe Prashanth and Anuradha have started a brilliant endeavour to propel BITS Pilani to the next level; I understand they will continue to support and I invite other eminent alumni to support us in our efforts,” Bhattacharyya said at the event.

Prashanth Palakurthi is the founder and CEO of US-based Reflexis Systems, and his wife Anuradha, the founder of Juju Productions, is a professional singer and radio personality in the United States.

Speaking at the gala event commemorating 40 years of his entry to BITS Pilani, Prashanth said that “we wanted to give back to our alma mater which gave us so much and where we started our journey.”

Anuradha, who joined BITS in 1984, said the institute has needs in several areas including infrastructure and research.

“We hope our contribution is followed up by many more from the family of hugely successful alumni,” she said.