(The full text of the speech made by Executive Director CITNE on the occasion of the endowment)

Dean Rao, Deputy Dean Rangnekar, friends and colleagues. On behalf of the entire faculty and staff of CITNE, it gives me great pleasure in welcoming Mr Srini Raju, seasoned champion of the Indian IT industry, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist and a long-time supporter of the ISB.

As you are aware, Mr Raju is here today to express his recognition and continuing support for the research, education and outreach we have been doing, and hope to significantly grow, at the Centre for IT and the Networked Economy, or CITNE as we call it. His generous pledge of Rs 35 crores, for which he will secure naming rights for the centre, has to be viewed in the context of the larger picture of Indian higher education and research. For a nation that boasts of the world’s first university, in Nalanda, to a civilisation that has a strong argumentative tradition as documented by Prof Amartya Sen, we rank today at the bottom of emerging economies (leave aside the developed world) such as Brazil, Indonesia, China and South Africa, on per capita spending on higher education and research. Yet, it is this very investment that is required to make us a compelling global knowledge powerhouse. While not widespread in India, Mr Srini Raju’s generous gift belongs to a long standing rich tradition pioneered by Carnegies and the Rockerfellers in the early part of the last century in the US. Much like them, Mr Raju has taken it upon himself to endow institutions of higher learning that strive for excellence in all aspects of their work. For this we thank you, Sir.  

I’m sure many of you are curious about the specific activities we do at CITNE and about how this money will be used. CITNE’s research and education impacts CIOs to middle managers to people at the base of the pyramid. From projects and training related to creating and appropriating above average value from IT investments, to understanding the productivity impact of close to a billion dollars the Indian IT industry spends on competency development, to estimating the economic impact of mobile telephony in rural India, CITNE research is characterised as being rigorous and relevant. By rigorous, we mean targeting our publications to the top-tier peer reviewed journals such as Management Science and Information Systems Research.  Not only does this directly improve the ISB’s standing in global rankings such as the FT100, but it also makes lasting contributions that stands the test of time.

On the education front we continue to push the frontiers of where technology meets business. In a collaborative programme with the ISB CEE and a large IT major, we are in the process of training thousands of Indian trained IT engineers to become globally capable managers.

To pursue such activities requires competing for talent in the global marketplace, resources, perseverance and most of all patient capital. As with all endowments, we will use the interest that we earn from this generous gift to attract more global faculty and graduate students to collaborate with our resident faculty in pursuing cutting edge research and education; tackle hard problems that require presence in adverse conditions to collect primary data; and last but not the least, put Hyderabad and ISB on the knowledge map by conducting global conferences such as the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2009) on July 9-12, 2009.

Sir, I thank you for taking the time today to share this news with members of the ISB and the Hyderabad community.