With a very heavy heart, we share the tragic news that we lost our dearest friend Vinayak Srivastava on 8th May 2021 to the raging Covid pandemic. Vinayak leaves behind his mother and two wonderful teenage children Aditi Srivastava and Amogh Srivastava. The children’s mother Madhu had passed away a few years back and today both the kids have no parents to be looked after by.

It was shocking and heartbreaking for us, the news of losing Vinayak. He was only 45 years old. He had tested COVID positive on 20th April and was admitted in Fortis hospital in New Delhi. Though he fought bravely, his condition worsened eventually and he was in the ICU for 3 weeks; it’s extremely sad that his family didn’t get a chance to say goodbye while he breathed his last.

We, friends of Vinayak & Madhu, on behalf of his family are raising funds to secure a financial foundation for both kids’ education for over a period of the next  6-8 years. Our goal is to raise INR 1.5 Crores (USD 200K) to provide a solid foundation for the future education needs of both the children.

About Vinayak & Madhu
Vinayak and Madhu both graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1996. Both of them fell in love while studying at IIT Kharagpur and married post graduation. After a brief stint of work in India; both of them moved to the US and lived there for more than a decade. Both of them were living their dreams with 2 beautiful kids until tragedy struck in 2017 when Madhu passed away in an unfortunate tragedy. 

The family made a decision to return back to India and since then Vinayak had been working in New Delhi living with his mother and both children. Today, Aditi is studying in Grade 12 and Amogh in Grade 10. Both are bright students; have seen and gone through a lot of struggles and sadness that no children should ever have to go through. 

In the midst of all of life’s misfortunes, they have been putting up such brave faces and supporting and taking care of their grandmother. They are courageous and ambitious and want to continue with their higher studies and working towards a successful future and good career options.

While Vinayak’s immediate family has been able to pay off the huge medical bills and existing liabilities, the kids don’t have enough financial security to continue with their long term higher education plans. 

We have planned to create an independent trust foundation based out of India that would support the needs of their educational expenses until they are financially independent, for about next 6-8 years. We have estimated the overall budget to cover (adjusting for future inflation) their educational expenses to be around INR 1.5 Crores (USD 200K).

The foundation trust will ensure that the funds raised are spent only in case of educational needs. We have already started the process of setting up the trust foundation and will share more updates in the coming days.

This is a plea going out to all of you to support this fundraiser by donating whatever each one of you can.

It would mean a lot if you could share this fundraiser with others who knew both Vinayak and Madhu personally and others too who didn’t but are ready to contribute.

How will the Funds be managed?
The funds will be managed and disbursed as needed by the trust and will be utilized solely for kids’ education support. The unutilized funds will be invested for growth with a goal to accommodate the increased costs in coming years till the kids complete their higher education. All details in regards to the management of the funds will be available to the campaign contributors.


Is this campaign genuine?
Yes it absolutely is. This campaign is started by friends of Vinayak and Madhu friends (Class of IIT Kharagpur 1996) and each of them can be reached out at:

- Bipul Sinha (Co-Founder & CEO Rubrik, Inc)
- Anirban Mukherjee (CEO PayU India)
- Smita Sahatpure (Product Management, Symphony Teleca)
- Sagar Chaudhuri (CEO & Co-Founder HiFives)
- Premkumar Asokan (Director at Franklin Templeton India)
- Sumanta Ranjan Das (Director Product Development, Intuit)
- Seshadri Rajgopalan (Co-Founder & Director at Saiph Energy)
- Anand Sekhar (Managing Director at KPMG)
- Saurabh Gupta (Data Strategy, ThoughtWorks)

How much should I donate?
Any contribution in any currency is welcome.

How will the funds be used?
The funds raised will go to the corpus of trust foundation in India. This trust will ensure the funds are disbursed only for the educational expenses for Aditi and Amogh over the next years until they are financially independent completing their higher education.

How much money are you targeting to raise?
We are targeting to raise ₹ 1.5 CR (around USD 200K). We’ve come up with this based on the current funds available to the family, their current pressing loans, and the expected expenses to ensure the children can get a good education of their choice in a professional university. We believe this is what both Vinayak and Madhu would have liked to do for both Aditi and Amogh.