California’s Stanford gets a lot of credit for the rise of the new economy. But don’t underestimate the contribution made by the IIT system, five elite colleges founded by tech-minded Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1950s. IIT Kanpur produced Narayana Murthy, CEO of Indian software powerhouse Infosys–now valued at more than $20 billion on America’s Nasdaq. Other campuses graduated some big names in Silicon Valley, including Desh Deshpande of Sycamore Networks and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. IIT has produced about 110,000 graduates since the 1960s, and a fourth of them left India for the United States. But nowadays more and more are, like Murthy, building their careers at home.
They’re able to do so thanks to a virtuous circle linking the IIT, business-minded state governments and Silicon Valley. Tech centers in Bangalore (home of Infosys) and Hyderabad, with its glittering software hub Hitech City, are drawing young engineers back home. And this spring a group of IIT alumni who made fortunes in America pledged to raise $1 billion for the five schools in six years. Crowed IIT Mumbai’s director S.P. Sukhatme to the Indian Express, “We have become a brand.”
Like any good brand, the IIT is famous for its standards. Applicants must pass the notorious Joint Entrance Examination; some hopefuls prep four years for the nine-hour test on math, physics and chemistry. Says Shelley Kataria, a consultant at PaineWebber in New Jersey: “We used to joke that IIT stood for the Institute of Infinite Tests.” Of the 130,000 who take the exam at 350 centers around the country, only 3,000 are allowed in. They earn four-year degrees in sciences, computers or math. The pressure’s worth it, says Kataria: “The companies give you such good treatment if you’re an IIT grad.”
The newest star in the system is the Indian Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Just under two years old, IIIT is a cutting-edge collaboration between big business and Andra Pradesh’s tech-minded government. The school is located in the desert outside Hyderabad, and its ambition of becoming a high-tech hub seems within reach. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Satyam and Metamor have already opened multimillion-dollar research centers on the campus. It used to be that IIT graduates went to far-off technology companies. Now, it seems, the companies are coming to them.
