IIT-Madras alumni run companies with combined revenue of $71 bn

Of those who left core engineering after graduating, about a third are entrepreneurs

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More than 40,000 IIT-Madras alumni are collectively estimated to have a 2014 revenue responsibility of $71 billion based on the median amount calculated from a recent survey.

A recent survey of IIT-Madras alumni by an alumnus of the 1973 graduating class, Dr Gopala Ganesh, has brought some insights into how post-graduation priorities have evolved over the decades from the 1960s. More than 2,000 alumni participated in the survey, making it one of the largest undertaken by any IIT.

About 30 per cent of IIT-Madras alumni are currently employed in core engineering; the percentage is significantly higher among those whose first degree is a post-graduate one. Of those that left core engineering, about a third are entrepreneurs, a quarter are in service industries, and another quarter are in education/ research.

The percentage of IIT-Madras graduates living abroad peaked at 40 per cent in the mid-70s to mid-90s batches, and has now dropped to 34 per cent post-2000. The drop is even more severe post-2010, down to the 20 per cent range.

Post-2005, there has been an uptick in IIT-Madras graduates opting for manufacturing professions, versus information technology & software.

M Tech students as a group account for the largest share of 2014 revenue when estimated using the median. When examined by decades of alumni, the 1986-1995 and 2006-2014 batches stand out when median-based estimates are examined.

When the 2014 budget responsibility is examined, the IIT-Madras alumni are estimated to account for $105 billion (median-based).

Alumni are estimated to have contributed a total of 3.6 million jobs based on the median, The Master’s degree holders outshine the B Techs. The batch of 1976-1985 does best when looking at the median-based estimate of job creation.

About 70 per cent of the total revenue responsibility, and 90 per cent of jobs creation by alumni leaders, is in India. Post-2006 alumni have the largest current presence in the social sector.

The mid-70s to mid-80s alumni have founded the most number of companies. Uniformly across batches, greater than 70 per cent of the companies are tech in nature. High revenue firms, defined as  > $100 million per annum, are concentrated in the before-1976 and the mid-90s to mid-2000s alumni batches.

About 25 per cent of all alumni are currently in research& education, and 40 per cent have been there sometime. Of these, 20 per cent characterise themselves as being in leadership roles. Overall, 30 per cent of all alumni see themselves as leaders.

Nearly 25 per cent of alumni serve on Boards of Directors, and about 45 per cent have led a turn-around (half of them, more than one). About 40 per cent of alumni claim to have made a very high or high contribution to India. The percentage peaks for the pre-1976, and the mid-1990s to mid-2000s batches.

About 30 per cent of alumni claim very high or high contribution outside India, a number that peaks for the mid-70s to mid-90s batches. The preference for working in India has gone up in recent batches.

About 90 per cent of alumni rate the value of IIT-Madras education as very high or high, and this is fairly consistent across all batches.

Of the 1,228 respondents who completed the entire survey, 60 per cent were from India, 33 per cent from North America. Ninety per cent of respondents were male (comparable to their enrollment percentage), 50 per cent identified themselves as "middle class" and 47 per cent identified themselves as living in towns with a population more than one million.

Around 60 per cent identified their first IIT degree as a B Tech and the Electrical, Mechanical and Chemical Engineering disciplines accounted for 21 per cent , 18 per cent and 17 per cent of the respondents, respectively (consistent with enrollment trends). Around 35 per cent of the respondents graduated in the past 10 years.