From Ritesh Banglani to Rajat Khare, IIT Alumni throw some light on how IIT has emerged as a hotbed for tech-preneurs over the years
IIT alumni have always remained the front-runners in India’s start-up space and in fact, studies have shown that they are among the leading founders of start-ups not only in India, but across the world as well. Many of the well-known entrepreneurs today bear the ‘IIT’ tag – from the founders of Flipkart to the founders of Zomato and Ola. With that said, is it a mere coincidence that most of the successful entrepreneurs hail from IIT or does studying at IIT actually make a difference in a person’s entrepreneurial career especially in the field of technology?
According to Ritesh Banglani, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and a partner at Helion Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Mauritius, there are three things that help IITians gain an edge in the business world –presence of role models, confidence of getting a decent job even if their business venture fails and accessibility to a strong alumni network. With many of the top designations in companies acrossboth private and government sectors held by IIT alumni, there is no doubt in the fact that IITs have strong network of alumni and this allows budding entrepreneurs gain wider access to mentors with rich global and technical experience.
In addition to this, Rajat Khare IIT Delhi alumnus and founder of Boundary Holding, a Luxembourg-based investment firm, opined, “We all know about IITians holding top positions in some of the biggest corporates, for me, what matters is the capability of IITians not only to adopt the latest technology in the market easily but to do miracles with it.”
Moreover, different colleges have different start-up ecosystems and among them are IITs and few other leading institutes that have managed to build strong industry network to support the aspiring entrepreneurs over the years and remain on par with the industry demands.