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More than 20 years ago Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy offered a donation of Rs 8 crore in Infosys shares to one of the prestigious institutions — IIT Kanpur. He made the offer in order to help one of the top engineering institutions in India with long-term capital. But Murthy’s plan hit regulatory guidelines and the central government did not allow educational institutions to accept equity-based donations. Interestingly the bonus share of the tech giant since that time have skyrocketed 256 times than the original offer. Similarly Indian Institute of Science (IISc) the shares of Infosys would have multiplied 768 times. “If they had accepted the shares and simply held on to them today they would be worth Rs 2000 crore. Even the dividends alone would have brought them Rs 500 crore over the past eight years” Moneycontrol quoted Murthy as saying. Since prestigious educational institutions are only allowed to invest in fixed deposits Murthy’s family office- Catamaran has found a external way to support students. Catamaran has introduced a scholarship program at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad. This scholarship program smartly uses a mix of equity index and fixed income investments to fund scholarship for the MBA topper every year for 20 years. This scholarship is well protected by inflation. Notably the scholarship is purely merit-based it means that it is awarded to only top-ranking first-year MBA student. Financial need is not a factor in the selection process. “Let us ensure that for the next 20 years the top-ranking student from IIM Ahmedabad gets all his or her expenses covered — including tuition fee hostel fee mess charges books everything” Murthy told Moneycontrol. A second proposal submitted by Murthys wife—an IISc graduate—was also rejected. The reason cited was the prohibition against government-funded educational institutions owning or managing equity investments. Murthy said these werent the only cases. If the equity gifts in the form of donation had been kept instead of sold the total value today would be around Rs 15000–16000 crore as estimated by him. “Just the dividend yield on those shares would have given Rs 110-120 crore to IISc every year for the last 5-8 years” Murthy added. It is worth mentioning that western universities rely heavily on endowments and donations generating billions in grants every year unlike Indian institutions which are largely restricted to low-return investments.