The Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta Family Foundation, based in Houston, Texas, USA, was established by Nisha, Rahul, Jainesh and his wife Mamta, and Dharmesh and his wife Archana to honor their parents, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta, from Mumbai, India. Bhupat and Jyoti instilled in their children the importance of education in improving outcomes for individuals and society. For more than 20 years, the Foundation has supported worldwide quality-of-life initiatives and funded more than 100 organizations that advance access to healthcare and education.
The Foundation’s primary philanthropic focus is to expand new talent in India. Its mission is to create intellectual talent through global academic collaboration. To accomplish this, the Foundation is supporting the development of new bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs at Indian academic institutions by connecting renowned international faculty with faculty at the Indian institutions. In keeping with its vision of creating opportunities for students in emerging scientific fields, the Foundation has funded more than five new schools in India in critical areas such as bioscience, engineering in medicine, data science, and artificial intelligence. Through these and other collaborative efforts, the Foundation seeks to elevate the students of India’s academic institutions to new levels of excellence, generating a well-educated and highly skilled workforce that will drive innovation, propel economic growth, and position India as a global technology leader now and into the future.”
Originally from Mumbai, India, Rahul Mehta is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Bhupat & Jyoti Mehta Family Foundation. He established the Foundation in 1996 after successfully exiting his first startup and has since dedicated himself to advancing higher education and building research ecosystems around the world.
Rahul's entrepreneurial journey began at the University of Houston, where a class project sparked his first venture. At 23, with just ten dollars to his name, he launched a company that solved critical challenges for multinational corporations. He went on to build and sell four companies, all self-funded, to Platinum Technology, HP, Veritas, and Brocade, before stepping away from the for-profit world in 2006 to focus entirely on philanthropy.
Under Rahul's leadership, the Mehta Family Foundation is guided by the belief that investment in science drives economic prosperity. This vision has led to the establishment of eight schools across six prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in India, spanning bioscience and bioengineering, data science and artificial intelligence, and sustainability. Together, these programs have created a capacity for more than 3,000 students across 620,000 square feet of infrastructure. The Foundation has also funded more than 100 nonprofits/NGOs, created the Mehta Rice Engineering Scholarship program with Rice University, and supported numerous initiatives at the University of Houston.
Rahul has served on the boards of several Houston-area nonprofits, including DePelchin Children's Center, Ronald McDonald House, Bo's Place, American Leadership Forum, Krist Samaritan Center, and Houston Methodist Hospital. A lifelong learner, he is a 2021 Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow and a 2024 Oxford Next Horizons Scholar. He has completed executive education programs at Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Rice.
An avid traveler who has explored every continent, Rahul remains devoted to the development of humanity and endeavors that his lifelong commitment will leave a meaningful legacy in the lives of others.
The partnership with the foundation provides impetus to the research and education in DS and AI at IIT Palakkad enabling it to become a leading academic, research, and technology hub in these areas. The Foundation intends to support the new school for establishing faculty chairs, promoting research collaboration and exchanges between the school faculty and students and the Mehta Family Foundation Collaborative for Academic and Research Excellence faculty and other international partners, organizing and conducting international conferences at IIT Palakkad, organizing online/in person research seminars, and importantly establishing a state-of-the-art physical infrastructure to meet the growing academic and research needs of the school faculty and students for the next couple of decades.
MFSDSAI at the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad is generously supported by the Mehta Family Foundation.
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