By IANS,
Chennai : The alumni of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) now in senior positions in industry and government across the world have a total budgetary responsibility of $885 billion, states a study.
“In terms of incremental economic value creation, the IIT graduates have been associated with over $450 billion across the sectors and have also been involved in the creation of over 20 million new jobs,” Rajan Srikanth, chairman and managing director of S2K2 Advisory, told the media here Monday.
He was giving a preview of a first of its kind study on the impact that the IIT graduates have made across the globe.
The study based on a web survey of 4,573 IIT alumni together with statistical extrapolations has been done by the Bangalore headquartered Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt Ltd at the behest of PanIIT, India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) and sponsored by Vodafone.
PanIIT is an umbrella organisation of all seven IITs in partnership with the Indian Brand Equity Fund (IBEF).
“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will release the full study in New Delhi next month coinciding with the launch of PanIIT 2008, a three-day global conference of IIT alumni, to be held in Chennai,” said B.Santhanam, the event chairman.
According to the study, one in 100 IIT alumni has started his own company with over 40 per cent of them being serial entrepreneurs. Two-thirds of the companies founded are in India.
The other interesting point is that 54 per cent of the top 500 Indian companies have at least one IIT alumnus on their board and these companies have a cumulative revenue that is ten times greater than that of other companies on the list.
To a question whether management schools can claim credit for the above as many IITians also have management degrees, Chand Das, chief executive of ITC Ltd.’s education and stationery product business, said: “We have to study the full report and do deeper analysis to draw further conclusions.”
Not ruling out the possibility of management schools in India coming out with a study like this, Das said, “In terms of brand equity, IIT has a global recognition whereas the Indian management schools don’t have that privilege.”
According to Santhanam, the three-day conference will have six sessions on rural transformation, innovation, education, research and technology, entrepreneurship and infrastructure development.
The conference is expected to be addressed by economist Amartya Sen, Orkut Buyukkokten, founder of Orkut, Google, Bob McDonald, chief operating officer, Procter & Gamble, C.K.Prahalad, professor, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Indian finance minister P.Chidambaram, and others.
The conference is expected to attract around 3,000 IITians from all over the world.