India should have world-class education ecosystem: Anand Mahindra

Mahindra outlines his vision for Mahindra University in the long-run

Mahindra Group Chairman ANAND MAHINDRA and his family have pledged Rs 550 crore over the next five years for Mahindra University (MU) and the Indira Mahindra School of Education in Hyderabad. MU was established in 2020. In a telephonic conversation with Sohini Das, Mahindra outlines his vision for MU in the long run. Edited excerpts:

I want to credit a gentleman named Vineet Nayar, who served as the vice-chairman of Tech Mahindra during my tenure as chairman. He’s since retired. He is a great educationist himself, and one day he came to me and said, “Anand, your family is always dedicated to the cause of education”. He added that, given the commitment we have as a family, we really ought to set up a university.

It has long been our aspiration to establish world-class universities here, attracting people from around the world, rather than Indians having to go overseas. However, my concern has always been the red tape surrounding accreditation for a private university.

When we took over Satyam, a 130-acre campus came to us which was created for training, which seemed overly large for its limited purpose. So, Vineet suggested we should start there.

And so we began with one college called the Mahindra École Centrale, the College of Engineering. The École Centrale is the French equivalent of the Indian Institute of Technology.