Dear friends,

I am Prudhvitej. I am from the 2018 batch of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), now working in Andhra Pradesh cadre. This campaign is to help fulfill the journey of my friends' dream.

Delayed flights are not always bad. Sometimes, they lead to lifelong friendships. On 31st December, 2018; I was eagerly waiting to go to the NYE party in Mumbai. Jet Airlines had other plans. They delayed my morning flight to late evening forcing me to spend 6-7 hours with Tarun in Hyderabad airport. We started speaking and we never stopped. 4 years later, we’ve helped each other to grow as an individual and as a professional.

Tarun has secured admission for an MBA at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. He's a community builder and has been working with startups for the past six years.

Tarun's father had been suffering from a chronic illness for six years, and he underwent a liver transplant in 2017. But post the transplant, his kidneys got affected by underlying infections, requiring high medical assistance. Tarun has supported his father and family financially for the past four years.

Unfortunately, we had to admit him to a hospital on 26th December 2020 because of problems in the respiratory system. The chances of survival were low. Despite that, Tarun decided to do everything and more to support his desire to live. After exhausting all the savings and family assets, he had taken a loan of USD 100K and raised USD 60K through crowdfunding for his treatment. Unfortunately, after four months of putting up a brave fight, his father passed away on 18th April 2021, succumbing to a heart attack resulting from massive internal bleeding. Although Tarun got admitted to the MBA class of 2021, he had to defer his admission due to severe financial issues.

He has been struggling to raise loans from financial institutions due to his existing loan history. We have reached out to a few friends/family/network and helped manage to raise around 50K USD (35L) principal amount with no interest. We approached Berkeley to help us with scholarships, but due to the low availability of funds being a public institution, they couldn't offer any scholarships. I have personally reached out to a few people in my network and asked if there is any way to help Tarun. With less than one month to go, I realized that running a campaign like this would help people contribute whatever they can, if not the total amount.


Despite these challenging times, I don't want Tarun to give up on his dream to pursue an MBA at UC Berkeley Haas and would request donors to join me in sending him to the class of 2022 this fall. As an ecosystem builder himself, I believe Tarun moving to Silicon Valley and studying at Berkeley will be extremely useful for the startup ecosystem back in India. Besides that, it will uplift the morale and financial status of the next generations of his family in the long run.

Since he has already taken a lot of loans for his father's treatment, he could not take more loans, and this campaign is critical for him.

The college costs are $2,21,000 (Including living expenses) as per an estimate from the college. https://mba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/costs-and-financial-aid 

And we are trying to raise 60K USD (45L) with some commitments of loans from friends in place so that he can pay his first-year fee for now to join Berkeley. We have made an ambitious plan to have him take care of living expenses through working on campus, summer internships etc. and pay off his fee for the second year.

I really appreciate any help you can provide to make his dreams possible.

Thanks in advance
Prudhvi Tej Immadi.