₹2,200-crore expansion on anvil: BITS Pilani chancellor

Aditya Birla Group chairman and Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani chancellor Kumar Mangalam Birla on Sunday announced major expansion plans for the prestigious institution, aimed at increasing the capacity of its Indian campuses, embracing artificial intelligence (AI), and foraying into the ed-tech space.

- Sanjay Maurya

Birla was addressing the 2025 convocation ceremony at BITS Pilani, where former chief justice of India DY Chandrachud was the chief guest. The billionaire businessman unveiled three initiatives for the institution's expansion with an investment of over ₹2,200 crore. They include setting up of a state-of-the-art AI+ campus at Andhra Pradesh’s Amaravati with an investment of ₹1,000 crore, a ₹1,219-crore investment to expand and modernise the institution's three existing Indian campuses at Pilani, Goa and Hyderabad under ‘project vistaar’, and the launch of BITS Pilani Digital — the institute's dedicated EdTech platform — with an investment of ₹35 crore.

The proposed AI+ campus at Amaravati will be spread across 35 acres and offer undergraduate twinning programmes, cotutelle doctoral degrees with top global institutions, and master’s programmes in artificial intelligence/ machine learning (AI/ML), innovation, and strategy.