IT veterans Murthy, Gopalakrishnan push for research funding boost

IT industry veterans N R Narayana Murthy and Kris Gopalakrishnan on Wednesday batted for increasing funding for research and higher academic institutes in the country by both the private and public sector, and stressed on the need for changing certain archaic things by bringing in innovative ideas in this regard.

Speaking to reporters here, Gopalakrishnan, who is also the co-founder of IT major Infosys, said, "We also need to increase our funding for research, both from private and public....more is needed. Look at US universities -- MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc -- they get endowments worth billions of dollars, so I hope that our alumni will contribute more to our institutions."

"Today our institutions are primarily dependent on government funding....I want to see more industry participation also," he said.

Concurring with him, Murthy said there is a need to change some of the archaic things; for example even today an entrepreneur cannot donate shares to academic or research institutions.

Lots of innovations are taking place in the corporate world, they are needed even in the academic institutions, he said and added, "If a young entrepreneur gives some shares, we don't have to assume that all of them will fail. So once the government starts looking at these innovative ideas that prevail in the industry, things will happen."

Entrepreneurs will not have much money, but they can give shares, Murthy, who is also Infosys co-founder, said and added, "Once the company achieves certain growth they (institutions which were given shares) will get a dividend, which will itself be very significant and they will keep multiplying value. So, even educational institutions will have to look at what our future will be 20 or 50 years from now."

Gopalakrishnan too said: "Some of our premier institutes will have to look at things like holding equity....because equity if you hold it will multiply over time significantly."