Iit: Cracking the Powai code: Why toppers make a beeline for comp science at IITB

But only a handful – the brightest, the top rated-rated – make the minimize every single calendar year. The competitors is fierce.
Admission varieties loaded by those who experienced in the JEE (Innovative) 2022 showed 16,585 of the 43,000 who cracked one particular of the world’s toughest tests experienced set down personal computer science at IITB as their first alternative. And of the prime 100, it was the range a person solution for virtually 90. Only 69 of them won a place.
The tale is the exact this calendar year. Forty-seven of the prime 50 have picked the laptop science department of the Powai campus at the near of the very first spherical of admissions for 2023-24 – 89 of the leading 100 picked CSE-IITB as their 1st choice, and 67 have built the slash.

Vavilala Chidvilas Reddy, All India Rank 1 in JEE (State-of-the-art) 2023, mentioned his preference was based mostly on his individual investigation and by hunting at the path his seniors took. “IIT Madras is ranked quantity 1 in the Countrywide Institutional Rating Framework for its overall excellence. But if a single wishes to go after pc science, IIT Bombay is range one particular in India,” he explained to TOI. Some of his friends from the best 100 ranks questioned Reddy to share his listing of options.
JEE toppers could flock to IIT-Bombay’s Laptop Science class but Powai, ironically, was not in which the tale of pc science engineering commenced in India. That honour goes to IIT Kanpur. In August 1963, an IBM 1620 technique put in in the nation’s very first “pc classroom” in IITK designed this campus the indisputable decision for computer system science research.

“It was then the only and the very best position to review this subject,” recalled professor S Sudarshan, deputy director, IITB. All those at the Powai campus experienced a Russian Minsk design in comparison.
Community Outcome: Toppers arrive to IIT-B & that attracts recruiters, and extra toppers
JEE toppers may well flock to IIT-Bombay’s Laptop Science system but Powai, ironically, wasn’t in which the tale of pc science engineering commenced in India. That honour goes to IIT-Kanpur. In August 1963, an IBM 1620 method mounted in the nation’s initially “computer classroom” in IIT-K designed this campus the indeniable choice for computer system science research.
“It was then the only and the very best position to examine this subject matter,” recalled professor S Sudarshan, deputy director, IIT-B. Those people at the Powai campus had a Russian Minsk design in comparison. “It was a monstrosity. These were the times when chemical engineering was the top rated department in IIT-B, then arrived mechanical and electrical was a lowly third,” explained Ruyintan Mehta, a serial entrepreneur who has offered more than $1 million to assistance many causes in India.

When Mehta graduated in 1970, engineering was a five-12 months programme and there was no undergraduate programme in computer science. There was only a compulsory program that gave all students an introduction to the issue.
But inside a decade, pretty much all IITs ended up providing a BTech in computer system science, with IIT-K major the way. IIT-K passouts became the mainstay of pc science college in other IITs in the early 1980s. Till the early 1990s, Kanpur remained the pre-eminent centre. “That is when a lot of faculty from Stanford University came to IIT-Kanpur and taught there for a 12 months,” recalled professor Sudarshan.
How Powai conquer Kanpur
Social media is whole of chatter and theories on how IIT-B overtook IIT-K in laptop engineering. A person principle has it that pupils from the Kota coaching hub, right after clearing JEE, travelled to IIT-B for counselling, appreciated the campus’s vibe and made the decision to remain set. The fact is fewer vibrant but is also a better ad for IIT-B’s institutional ethos, say its college.
“In 1989, we experienced an inside assembly in the section in which we said we ended up great, but not good sufficient. In that conference, it was decided that every new school who would be appointed to this division experienced to be much better than each individual of us. We assiduously adopted that and so did our successors,” recalled Padma Shri Deepak Phatak, who headed the IIT-B CSE section from 1991-1993.
Consistency was the key. “Top faculty, their slicing-edge investigate got the institute increased ranks and that pulled more college students. It is like the prosperous becoming richer,” additional Professor Phatak.
“This becomes a self-sustaining virtuous cycle. Toppers want to be all over many others who are high ranked. Since students are of this sort of superior top quality, they get higher placements and the campus builds its registry of major alumni. And the finest faculty want to be here as well. As the input will get improved so do all other results,” claimed Kashyap Deorah, founder of Hypertrack, a serial entrepreneur-writer and IIT-B CSE alumnus. When he was continue to on campus, Deorah started his personal begin-up, “something that was not fashionable” then. But the assistance he received from faculty and senior alumni “set him up” for the rest of his ventures.
Far more than the unwavering mental and money assist, Professor Sudarshan, also a CSE school, attributes the good results of his section to the fact that a ton has been taking place in this area. “Every 10 years, there is a big bang in the area of personal computer science so there is a great deal of excitement. And at IIT-B, pupils come across immersive educating-learning experiences… the start-up society is flourishing and for the other people there are large-shelling out positions lined up at the stop.”
Revenue Talks For CSE
All that excellence displays up in salaries. Facts from IIT-B demonstrates that when the average annual shell out of campus recruitment last 12 months was Rs 16 lakh, that of the CSE section was Rs 49.6 lakh this 12 months, it is about Rs 46.9 lakh. Crore-furthermore income packages are mounting in number the development commenced with intercontinental firms initially providing them, but domestic companies caught up far too.
When Zishaan Hayath, founder of Toppr, joined IIT-B in 2000, he discovered that the top 100 college students were being distributed nearly equally between IIT Madras, Delhi, Kanpur and the Powai campus. “But little by little, IIT-B and Delhi solidified their place and by the time I was graduating, IIT-Bombay was the number just one decision for most toppers and more than 50 out of 100 came to this campus,” he recalled.
“I connect with it the community influence. With so a lot of toppers deciding on IIT-B, pretty much all leading recruiters want to come to the Powai campus to seek the services of talent. And simply because most companies occur to IIT-B, college students decide on to choose for this campus,” he included. Apart from that, the centrality of Greatest City, robust term of mouth and a minor bit of the herd mentality, stated Hayath, draws in the finest brains to Powai.
Echoing Hayath’s ideas, AIR1 in 2017, Kalpit Veerwal, IIT-B CSE graduate from the course of 2021, reported a number of variables occur into participate in when candidates attract up their tutorial options. “Following a set pattern is a no-brainer. Usually, several toppers appear from a certain coaching centre. They are currently friends and all head to the exact same IIT. In addition, smart men and women like to be about people with similar calibre as they obstacle each and every other. And lastly, the vibe of an IIT also matters and IIT-B presents the emotion of staying a melting pot,” reported Veerwal.
Stay Property, Start out Up
Veerwal is a normal gen Z graduate, a considerably cry from his seniors like Mehta for whom IIT-B was a launchpad for an academic and specialist vocation that almost promptly took them to the US. Back then, just about 70% of freshly minted graduates flew westwards to go after their master’s diploma.
Irrespective of whether it is Bharat Desai (co-founder Syntel), Girish Gaitonde (founder and CEO of Xoriant), Rajesh Mashruwala (govt VP Tibco Software Inc), Shailesh Mehta (president of Granite Hill Capital Ventures), Victor Menezes (retired senior vice chairman Citigroup) or Raj Subramaniam (CEO of FedEx), Ram Kelkar (controlling director, money markets group at Milliman Economical Risk Administration LLC), everybody took the identical route and flew out post-graduation.
It was with the change of the millennia that some thing changed significantly at IIT-B. Its graduates began to remain household. A survey by Perception, the students’ newspaper, in 2017 mapped the addresses of its outdated boys and uncovered that a sizeable percentage (around 40%) of alumni who graduated just before 2000 experienced settled abroad. This quantity dropped sharply to considerably less than 16% publish-2000.
“From the calendar year the initially batch handed out in 1983 to 2012, I would spend the full month of December crafting recommendation letters for college students who wished to use for their master’s diploma to American universities,” recalled former head of the laptop science office, Supratim Biswas.
The change to entrepreneurship has been significantly remarkable just after 2014-15, underscoring the influence of the start out-up growth in India. “On an typical only 9-10 students from the division now fly out to examine additional. But we are observing much less CSE graduates pursue their PhDs much too,” reported Professor Sudarshan.
Whatsoever they do however, one thing’s widespread for CSE IIT-B college students — they are the best amongst the greatest.