Not just for geeks: IIT Bhubaneswar teaches students to be entrepreneurs

Sai Kiran, a third year B.Tech student at the School of Electrical Sciences, is clear about why he chose IIT-Bhubaneswar (IIT-BBS), set up in 2008, over the older IITs. “It was the faculty. I wanted to be inspired. I took one look at their profiles and that settled it,” he said.  

Kiran, who is pursuing electronics and communications, was impressed not just with their profiles but with their cutting edge research interests. This tipped the balance in favour of IIT-BBS over his other options - IIT- Kharagpur and IIT-Guwahati. 

The Odisha institute has 130 faculty members, all of them PhDs. It uses innovative methods for recruiting international faculty and for ensuring at least a modicum of long-term commitment from them so that students can benefit fully from their expertise. Though it currently only has one foreign faculty member, two more will join soon. Last year, it had three. Moreover, unlike some faculty in other institutions who visit briefly, some of the foreign faculty members here stay for a whole semester or longer.  

IIT-BBS received a congratulatory tweet from Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar recently because last month it was ranked at 21st position in India and 107th within BRICS countries in the UK’s QS World University Rankings for the region. The previous month, the institute was ranked 10 among the top 49 Indian institutes in the Times Higher Education rankings.  

“We wanted to be globally respected and for that, it is essential that all institutional operations are carried at high standards and that’s what we targeted on multiple fronts, starting from education and research and quality faculties to ambience, cleanliness and security,” said IIT-BBS Director Ratnam V Rajakumar.  

This rise in the rankings (IIT-BBS ranked last among the second generation IITs in 2015) is the outcome not just of an active policy of recruiting the best domestic faculty and foreign lecturers but also of IIT-BBS’s international collaboration and holistic pedagogical approach. 

The idea is to churn out well-rounded individuals rather than technology geeks. Where else do you learn about technology, big data analytics and  cloud computing in conjunction with Odissi dance and psychology? “I have opted for an Organisational Psychology course because it teaches me how to analyse a person’s thinking in an organization. That’s going to be very useful,” said Avani Patidar, one of Kiran’s batchmates. 

As to international collaboration, the institute has tied up with almost a dozen foreign universities. Among them are the universities of Warwick and Southampton and the Oceanography Centre in the UK and Washington University and the University of Massachusetts (Darmouth) in the US. “We are already looking ahead of the senior IITs. Our target is to go beyond them on all fronts”, said Kumar. 

The strongest pillar of the institute has been research citations where it is ranked 424 in the world in the Times Higher Education rankings.  Kumar is proud to reel off the statistics: in 2016-17, the institute published more than 348 research articles, including 227 research papers in journals of national and international repute. It filed 15 patents. 

The number of sponsored research projects doubled from 17 in 2013-14 to 34 in 2016-17. Consultancy projects rose from just one in 2013-14 to 49 in 2016-17. 

By early 2017, a total of 88 sponsored and consultancy projects worth Rs 230 million were sanctioned by various funding agencies including the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Defence Research and Development Organisation, to mention only two.  

IIT-BBS has also tried to spread itself wide across diverse areas to boost impactful research such as advanced materials, energy, nanotech hardware, healthcare, defence, ICT, environmental science and climate change, and manufacturing and urban design. 

Entrepreneurship is a key focus. The institute is nurturing entrepreneurship through the establishment of a technology incubator, a start-up centre and an entrepreneurship park. Its Centre of Excellence in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality was set up with a Rs 25million donation from Mindtree’s co-founder Subroto Bagchi and his wife Susmita. The Odisha government then matched the same amount and gave it to the Centre. Software Technology Parks of India also jumped in with Rs 25 million grant. 

Bhubaneswar celebrated its 10th anniversary this year by completing the move of all of its operations into the purpose-built, lush, 942-acre campus. Located about 30 km outside the city, the campus is a big draw for students and faculty. A central research facility and a 1,500 seat auditorium are also coming up.  “In the last three and half years we have made the campus fully operational, doubled the student intake (currently 1,766), and added new academic programmes,” said Kumar. 

Students are happy campers when they finish their courses. IIT-BBS has recorded a three-fold rise in placements to 85-90 per cent in the last three years. The average salary being offered by employers has gone up by 1.5 times in the same period. The annual average package last year stood at Rs 1.15 million and 80 per cent of students were placed in core industries. What’s not to like?

Institute profile

942 acres Area
 

1,766 Student strength
 

130 Faculty strength
 

1:13 Faculty-student ratio
 

12 Foreign university collaborations