http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=32448004
MUMBAI: What’s making the likes of Bill Gates, Rajat Gupta, Victor Menezes, and Vindi Banga gather in Silicon Valley in the second week of January? Some of the world’s highest-flying professionals are coming together to promote a brand — and no, it’s not a new, new, geeky thing.
It’s 50 years old, but this is the first formal attempt to create and promote awareness about the Indian Institutes of Technology, put together by IIT’s mega-watt celebrity alumni.
Says McKinsey’s Rajat Gupta, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, “Brand IIT in general has lagged behind the quality of the alumni and it is time to correct this discrepancy.”
It’s perhaps most fitting that the 50th anniversary of the first IIT — IIT Kharagpur, which was set up at an erstwhile prison camp — should be celebrated in Silicon Valley, with American TV’s 60 Minutes and the world’s richest man in attendance.
After all, the IITs have produced the likes of Victor Menezes, vice-chairman of Citibank, Rajat Gupta, managing director of McKinsey, Kellogg Business School’s Mohanbir Sawhney, venture capitalist Kanwal Rekhi, Vinod Khosla, Former US Airways chief Rakesh Gangwal, MS ‘Vindi’ Banga, chairman of HLL, Nandan Nilekani of Infosys… the list could go on. Not to mention that the Silicon Valley IIT alumni association can probably muster much larger numbers than Kharagpur’s.
“While an IIT is among the top five global educational institutions, an MIT or a Stanford are better recognised brands,” says Silicon Valley-based Dilip Venkatachari, president Cashedge and a 1981 batch IIT Madras alumnus, who is one of the main co-ordinators of the event.
An aberration which the organisers of the IIT 50 hope will be corrected in the years to come. BusinessWeek, in a cover story, called IITians the “hottest export from India.”
IIT50, largest event ever staged by all IITs under a common aegis over the 17th and 18th of Jan is an attempt to convert the success of IITians into lasting benefits and mindshare for the IITs themselves. Says NR Narayana Murthy, chairman Infosys and a speaker at IIT50, “Brand promotion is important for every institution, including the IITs.”
Mr Narayana Murthy will share the podium with the likes of Bill Gates and John Hennessy, president of Stanford, among other guest speakers and alumni across all IITs.
The scale and importance being attached to the event can be seen by the fact that the directors of all the seven IITs (Kharagpur, Madras, Bombay, Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati and Roorkee), are flying in for the occasion, and discuss their collective vision for the IITs.
And while it may be some time before Brand IIT acquires its rightful place in the pantheon of haloed academic institutions, there is no doubting that this January will see the congregation of some of the best and the brightest that India has produced to chart the course of Brand IIT.
