The government’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is quite dynamic – with new categories being added every year – but one constant has been the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
Since 2016, IIT Madras has been ranked the best engineering institute in India, every year.
In addition, since 2019, IIT Madras has been ranked the best institute overall in India, every year.
In the latest NIRF 2023, IIT Madras was the best institute overall, second-best research institute, best engineering institute, second best in innovation, and its management school was ranked 15th in India.
Prof V Kamakoti, director, IIT Madras, told FE that decades of excellence have gone into making IIT Madras what it today is, and the institute will keep getting better with the kind of unique initiatives it has been taking.
Inter-institute research
Prof Kamakoti said that there are dozens of research institutes around the campus, with whom IIT Madras has been doing joint research. “We’ve been working with CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, Central Leather Research Institute, National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research, and so many others around the campus,” he said. “We also worked with IIT Kanpur and the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research to license 5G tech to Tejas Networks (a Tata Group company).”
All this knowledge creation, he said, adds to the knowledge bank of the institute, the country, and the world at large.
Outreach beyond the campus
IIT Madras has made a big impact with Anaivarukkum IITM (IIT Madras for All), which provides equal opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to pursue higher education in fields such as Data Science and Electronic Systems at the institute, without having to clear tough exams such as the JEE.
“We are consuming Rs 900 crore of taxpayers’ money every year – which we get from the government – so we need to be serving not just the 12,000 students on the campus, but the country at large,” Prof Kamakoti said. “IITM for All lets anyone be part of the IIT Madras universe, and there is no upper limit as these courses are online. For example, our BS Data Science and BS Electronics have about 30,000 students, and if you successfully complete the course, the degree you get is the IIT Madras degree.”
You don’t need to clear JEE to get into IIT Madras. Recently, it accepted students under sports excellence admission, and soon it will accept students under cultural excellence admission. Prof Kamakoti said this will give the campus a lot of diversity.
IIT Madras recently set up the Zanzibar campus in Africa, and Preeti Aghalayam, an IIT Madras alumna and professor in its Department of Chemical Engineering, was appointed as the director – first-ever woman to be a director at any IIT.
Breaking Kota
It’s argued that a student who has taken intensive coaching to clear JEE – often at private coaching institutes in Kota and elsewhere – has an undue advantage over an equally bright but poor student from rural India who cannot take such coaching. The answer, Prof Kamakoti said, is the institute’s BS programmes.
“We’ve started the world’s first four-year Bachelor of Science (BS) Degree in Data Science and Applications, with options to exit earlier in the foundation, diploma or BSc degree level. You can work towards a UG degree/diploma from an IIT regardless of your age, location, or academic backgrounds. You don’t even need to take JEE,” he said. “It’s a success, and more than 29,000 students are currently studying with us. It’s online, with pre-recorded and synchronous sessions, weekly online assignments, and quality is maintained by in-person quizzes. There is absolutely nothing that can stop a deserving student from taking an IIT Madras degree, even though he or she may not have cleared the JEE.”
Start-ups at IIT Madras
Two famous start-ups incubated at IIT Madras are Ather Energy and Agnikul Cosmos, but Prof Kamakoti wants a hundred more. “We should have an international start-up culture, under which a student in IIT Madras can join a student at, let’s say, a German university, and both can develop solutions for India and Germany, respectively,” he said. “I tell this to every foreign visitor who comes to us. Maybe we will have such start-ups soon.”
In April, IIT Madras set an ambitious target of incubating 100 start-ups in a year – a start-up every three days – and a patent a day. “We will hopefully achieve the 100 start-ups target next year, but I want patents to go much more than one a day. After all, innovation and protection of our IPs will help make our country a superpower,” he said.
B-schools at IITs
In NIRF 2022, the Department of Management Studies at IIT Delhi was ranked fourth-best management school in India, higher than IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore, XLRI Jamshedpur and MDI Gurgaon.
Although the Department of Management Studies at IIT Madras slipped from 10th rank in 2022 to 15th in 2023, Prof Kamakoti said that with the field of management becoming more and more technical and data-driven, management schools at IITs will continue gaining relevance. “Long ago, banks were run by lawyers, later banks were run by auditors, and in the last decade banks are being run by people from information technology – as everything has gone digital,” he said. “I believe a technology institute will have more relevance in tomorrow’s management than a conventional business school.”
Animals at IIT Madras
On the campus, you can see hundreds of deer, cats, fox and monkeys, and thousands of butterflies – as the Guindy National Park is in the same compound. Prof Kamakoti said that if you ask a student what all he has seen at IIT Madras, his answer will be: spotted deer, blackbuck, fox, butterfly, birds, students, and finally professors.
“Animals at IIT Madras are something we take very seriously,” he said. “They teach our students compassion, respect, patience, following your path, discipline, and even traffic rules. Nobody honks inside the campus, people drive at less than 30 km/h, if there’s a deer crossing the road, the vehicle gives way … all these are life lessons that stay with our students, and anyone who visits us.”
He added that IIT Madras has a lot of green cover and a strict environment committee. “Even if we want to pull a branch, we have to take their permission,” Prof Kamakoti said. “All future expansion will happen vertically, not horizontally – we won’t cut trees or even a blade of grass. This was the land of animals and we humans are trying to coexist with them.”
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