INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, MADRAS: The German Connection

Everything about IIT Madras (IITM) is huge. Beginning from the campus to the
size of faculty and number of students. Spread over 650 acres, 4000 students,
360 strong faculty and 1250 administrative and support staff makes IITM one of
the biggest technology schools in the country. Cutting across various
disciplines IITM offers B.Tech, M.Tech and PhD programs spread across 14
academic departments. With over 100 laboratories, IITM has unfolded several
path-breaking studies in various fields. A prominent one being the corDECT WLL
technology developed by Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala and his team of scientists from
the Electrical Engineering department. Today IITM has become synonymous with
corDECT, which has spread the name of the institution across the world.

The antecedents of IITM can be traced back to the year 1956, when the then
prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while on an official visit to West
Germany (now called Germany after unification) was offered a technical
collaboration proposal to set up a premier institute of higher technology
learning in India. This offer fructified in 1958 with the signing up of the
Indo-German Agreement in Bonn.

Since its inception, IITM has grown in leaps and bounds. One of the biggest
drivers for distinction not only rests in its high academic level but also the
partnerships and collaborations it has forged all through with the industry. The
Department of Electrical Engineering is one shining example. Prof. Ashok
Jhunjhunwala, professor at the department who also heads the TeNET group and the
developer of corDECT has given a revolutionary low cost communication technology
that is being implemented in various emerging geographies like India, Brazil and
host of others. And one look at the overall research projects IITM is doing
drives home the point. For 2003-04 it executed 772 consulting projects and did
103 sponsored research projects. These projects garnered revenues of Rs 8.59
crore and Rs 24.72 crore respectively.

Meanwhile IITM is the only technology school that has a placement record of
close to 100%. Also it is the only IIT to have a dedicated office and staff for
placement. Says Prema Chakrapani, Assistant Registrar, training and placement,
IITM, " We have an excellent placement record over the years. This year Mc
Kinsey has taken an IITM student on Rs 7.5 lakh remuneration. Similarly top IT
companies like Infosys, Wipro, Samsung, Oracle have taken good numbers this year
with average salary ranging between Rs 3.5 to Rs 4 lakh."

All IIT’s across India excels but every IIT has a unique signature of its
own. IIT Madras has always been forefront in being ahead of times. And it
produces state of the art computer science graduates and it is prevalent that
any company hunting for IT talent makes the first stop at IITM. Also the MBA
program launched two years back also lays a strong emphasis on IS Management,
and hence most of the MBA graduates of the class of 2004 were already placed in
frontline companies as business analysts. For instance Rohit Morde, who has
taken an offer form Mindtree consulting, finished his MBA this year. Says he,
"It has been an extremely rewarding experience for me doing MBA. What I
liked most is the routine sharing of knowledge between industry and the
students. Even before completing the course we had placements on hand."
Most of the students we spoke to echoed the same sentiment and everybody
unanimously votes that the beautiful campus creates a sense of bonding and
creates a great ambience for intellectual development. Academic excellence
apart, IITM has a lot of cultural technology festivals. The famous ones being
the annual Saarang and the Shasthra events attract students’ from across
India.