How did this team from IITM quietly build the world's largest edtech platform? | BP2B S1 Ep. 25

Andrew Thangaraj 0:00 So it started out by recording classes at IIT, putting it up on the portal, making it free for anybody to access. This is before YouTube and all that. We have taken them from zero, literally, and given them every single thing that they know. At least get a peep into the classes at IIT.

Speaker 0:17 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 0:17 Because otherwise, IITs are these really tough places to get in. This year, GATE DA paper, Rank 1, Rank 7, and Rank 10 are BS students. First rank, you won't believe it, is an AIIMS doctor. So whatever we can scale, we should scale. [upbeat music]

Speaker 0:43 Hi, my name is Amrit. We've heard that IIT Madras is the best place to build. [upbeat music] So we've come down to the Sudha and Shankar Innovation Hub. We want to meet some people. These are builders. We want to talk to them about their work and also ask them, what makes IIT Madras the best place to build? [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to The Best Place to Build podcast. Today, our guest with us is Professor Andrew Thangaraj. He's a professor of electrical engineering at IIT Madras, but also is involved in NPTEL, CODE, and the BS degree. So we'll learn a little bit about electrical engineering and a lot about how the other stuff works, uh, the outreach of IIT Madras. Professor, welcome to the podcast.

Andrew Thangaraj 1:31 Thank you. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1:33 Professor, let's start with, uh, uh, what are your research areas? What do you teach? What are the courses where students interact with you?

Andrew Thangaraj 1:40 Yeah, so my research area is in the broad field of information theory, so, uh, sort of theoretical, mathematical-oriented, probability, statistics. So what I teach these days is primarily that. I teach, uh, probability class, which is quite popular with the students. Uh, I teach an information theory class, which is popular with the students as well, and, uh, I'm gonna teach a statistics class as well, so those kind of topics I teach.

Speaker 2:04 Professor, um, I don't know much about it, but I've read that information theory or Shannon's information theory is-

Andrew Thangaraj 2:10 Yeah

Speaker 2:10 ... like, a very magical moment in this field.

Andrew Thangaraj 2:12 Yeah.

Speaker 2:12 Can you tell us a little bit about that? [laughing]

Andrew Thangaraj 2:14 So when it started, it was, uh, really magic, because I think people didn't really think of information as a quantity, right? I think, uh, you always think of it as, um, some abstract entity. Uh, so Shannon's work, I think, first quantified information, how much information is there when somebody talks, when somebody sings, when somebody is shooting a movie, et cetera, et cetera. And then not only that, he came up with, uh, algorithms or not, not... Yeah, actually, I shouldn't say he came up with algorithms. He came up with analysis of these algorithms to say, how best you can store information, how best you can process information, how best you can communicate information. These kind of, uh, fundamental limits on how best you can do these things is what Shannon did very, very early on. And today, after so many years of decades of work, uh, today, you can say a lot of algorithms that are currently in existence, in your phone, in your cameras, in your recording devices, are pretty close to the best, uh, that Shannon had predicted. So that way, it is theory, it's mathematics, and it's engineering, all of it coming together wonderfully.

Speaker 3:19 Very interesting. What I remember from my own engineering days, which was 20 years back, uh, is that, uh, before Shannon, uh, people assumed that if there's a recording, for example, the entire thing has to be recorded.

Andrew Thangaraj 3:33 Mm.

Speaker 3:33 And after Shannon, it- people realized that you don't need to record the whole thing, you need to record... I don't know what that means, but [laughing] can you, can you-

Andrew Thangaraj 3:41 No, I think-

Speaker 3:41 Tell me if I'm right or wrong.

Andrew Thangaraj 3:42 Yeah, maybe, maybe, um, so what you're talking about is how much you have to store. You record something, do you store everything you recorded, or do you, do you store a s- smaller-sized version of it from which you can recover everything? So that, uh, is called source coding, generally, in the Shannon literature, and that is something that he thought about and he created. So for instance, in English, when we speak, there is a lot of repetition, right? So a lot of things we repeat, a lot of things we say, and, and, and sometimes when you speak four words, you automatically know what the first word is.

Speaker 4:13 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 4:14 So things like that, you don't have to store again. If you k- if you know it is English, you can come back and recover those things. So that's source coding. Another interesting thing is what's called channel coding, where you communicate information. So when you send a bit, it may get flipped, right? You, you may send a zero, it- the receiver may think it's a one. So that happens a lot in communication when you send from your mobile phone to the tower. Now, in spite of that, how do you communicate? How do you make sure that your zero remains a zero, your one remains a one? So that's called channel coding. That's also something that Shannon did. So he came up with fundamental limits. So when I say fundamental limits, you might wonder what that is, right? So a lot of us, you can see around us, there are building-- people are building things. You can build something and make it work once. So that's good, and that's very tough engineering skill. It's, it's hard to master. But then how do you know that somebody else won't build something better than you, right? So somebody else may come in and build something better and beat you, right? On the other hand, if you are close to the fundamental limit of how best somebody can build, then not only you know that you've built it, you also know that you've built it in a way that it is the best possible thing that you can do, and nobody else can beat you. So that, I think, is the sense you have to get from information theory. Information theory, in the information context, tells you fundamental limits of how best something can be built.

Speaker 5:35 Nice. So these are the courses you take, these are your research areas, and, uh, I understand that, uh... Actually, from a broader lens in electrical engineering-

Andrew Thangaraj 5:44 Mm

Speaker 5:45 ... uh, if, if a student joins-

Andrew Thangaraj 5:47 Mm

Speaker 5:47 ... BTech in Elec, what does he actually learn? What are the interesting courses? What are the specializations?

Andrew Thangaraj 5:53 [chuckles] So I have a take on electrical engineering. I think all of electrical engineering is the sine wave.... Okay, so it's, it's not my, uh, take on it. A lot of other professors, I'm sure, will say the same thing. I think, uh, there's, in art, I think the capability to, you know, draw a circle or a line or a stroke is very interesting. I think for, uh, an electrical engineer, understanding and controlling sine waves is very interesting. So, uh, so, so that also tells you something about what it is, right? So s- the sine wave, you can study mathematically as an equation, you know, you ... all the trigonometry of the world, and then you can also do calculus around it. A lot of mathematics is behind it. But also what's interesting about the sine wave is it, it gets generated by physical processes. Like, you know, maybe you can think of so many vibration, things that happen, it happens with a sine wave. Open and close a door, it sort of happens in a sine wave. So a lot of sine waves happen in physical systems because differential equations and all of that, those kind of things. So, so one, one way to view electrical engineering is it models, uh, the physics of electromagnetic variation and all of those things, but in the context of being able to control it and build devices from it. So you need the mathematics and you need the physics. Together, you control potential and current in different places, and then build circuits and get things to react to you the way you want them to. So any electrical device that you see around you is like that. You control potential and voltage, I mean, potential and current, that's all you control. And you can control it very smartly by building these circuits, and then get things to react to you. So everything is like that. Generators are like that, motors are like that, transformers are like that, small mobile phones are like that. I mean, except the kind of voltage you deal with may be very high or very low or something like that, but nevertheless, uh, it's, it's fundamentally, it's about controlling potential and current in circuits.

Speaker 7:44 Very interesting, and, and I love that you took, took those examples, because then I can segue into this.

Andrew Thangaraj 7:49 [chuckles]

Speaker 7:49 Um, the issue that happens when people talk of electrical engineering is that they sometimes think of electrical as power systems, generators-

Andrew Thangaraj 7:57 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:57 - and, and some other people think of it as circuits

Speaker 8:00 and-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:00 Mm

Speaker 8:00 ... PCBs and-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:01 Mm.

Speaker 8:01 And so, and, um, the question that we get asked often-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:05 Mm

Speaker 8:05 ... is what is different between electrical engineering and-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:08 Mm

Speaker 8:08 ... EEE and ECE-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:11 Mm

Speaker 8:11 ... and EEE, and what IITM offers is EE.

Andrew Thangaraj 8:14 Yeah.

Speaker 8:15 Which is so confusing now.

Andrew Thangaraj 8:16 Yeah.

Speaker 8:16 So-

Andrew Thangaraj 8:16 Yeah

Speaker 8:16 ... can you give, give me an understanding of, is there any, like ... Okay, I'll leave it to you.

Andrew Thangaraj 8:21 Yeah. So I think we used to have two different branches before. We used to have EE and ECE, EC before, and then eventually somebody saw the unification of the sine wave somewhere and then said it should all be the same. So, uh, today, I think if you look at other IITs, uh, except I think for a few, I think maybe Kharagpur offers still ECE and EEE, but pretty much all IITs now do only electrical engineering.

Speaker 8:43 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 8:43 And, uh, NITs, I think, maybe still have that difference.

Speaker 8:47 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 8:48 So, uh, in, in, in a basic way, if you want to think about it, it's about the voltage levels and the current levels in your circuits. If your voltage levels and current levels are very high, like, you know, 220 volts and a few amperes here, they have that kind of current and that kind of voltage you're dealing with, then you're in the high-power territory. So what you do there is dramatically different from the low voltage, low power territory. Like your phones, for instance, the kind of voltages and currents they deal with, maybe currents are slightly higher, but the voltages they deal with are very, very low, right? So, I mean, few volts maybe here and there. So what you can do in these two regimes end up being dramatically different. The size of the device itself has to be slightly bigger when the voltages go up.

Speaker 9:30 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 9:30 The size of the device can be smaller in this sense, so miniaturization, all of these things come in. So it looks dramatically different-

Speaker 9:37 Mm

Andrew Thangaraj 9:37 ... but, uh, the basic theory is sort of the same.

Speaker 9:40 At a undergrad level, maybe it can be the same course, and then-

Andrew Thangaraj 9:43 Yeah

Speaker 9:44 ... as you specialize further.

Andrew Thangaraj 9:45 Yeah.

Speaker 9:46 So what are the kind of specializations that undergrads end up taking from the-

Andrew Thangaraj 9:50 Hmm

Speaker 9:51 ... department here?

Andrew Thangaraj 9:51 Yeah, so it's, um, three or four. In fact, in our department, [chuckles] in IITM, we have seven different specializations, but I think seven is a bit too much. Maybe some three, four are good. One is communications and signal processing, so that's sort of my area, uh, where we are worried more about, uh, information, how to communicate information, how to store information, how to manipulate information. So information sort of unifies communications and signal processing together. And then you have microelectronics, where, uh, we call it microelectronics. I guess larger thing would be devices, you know, building these diodes and transistors, and as they get smaller and smaller, how do you pack them up, et cetera. So that kind of technology is very, very interesting. And then you have circuits. Circuits area is the area where they take these communications and processing algorithms or other algorithms and figure out how to put it into a device and get it to work. So that is, uh, the circuits part of it, VLSI, digital, analog, all of those things come in. So this is one, uh, part of it. And then, uh, you have the high-power area. So frankly, I mean, I, I don't know too much about the high-power area. I should be a little bit cautious when I say, [chuckles] but generally, motors, generators, power electronics, uh, power generation, power transmission systems, power stability, high power, everything, that, that is one part of it. So the high-power area is slightly more mature than the signal processing communications area. Even that, people are saying today is very mature, but, uh, the high-power area is very, very, very mature. So the kind of work that gets done is very different, except now you have applications like EV.

Speaker 11:22 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 11:23 Now, once an application like EV comes in, a lot of new things, uh, start happening there. Renewable energy, all of those things become interesting there. Solar, all of that is interesting, right? So a lot of new technology is still happening everywhere, except levels of maturity in terms of theory and development are different. The high-power area is a little bit more mature. Communication signal processing is getting mature very fast. And then even devices, uh, one would say, you know, a lot of physics and that, et cetera. So these, these are the main areas I would say: the high-power areas, the electronic systems areas, and the signal processing communication areas.

Speaker 11:56 Okay, so in electrical engineering, there are a broad set of courses which sort of-... are in the areas of communication, signal processing. Uh, second one was microelectron- electronics-

Andrew Thangaraj 12:06 Electronic systems. Yeah, I can call it electronic systems. Maybe that's broadly.

Speaker 12:10 Okay, and, and then circuits and, uh, and, and, uh-

Andrew Thangaraj 12:14 High power-

Speaker 12:15 Circuits, and then high power.

Andrew Thangaraj 12:16 High power, yeah.

Speaker 12:17 Very interesting. Professor, um, uh, I want to ask you, traditionally-

Andrew Thangaraj 12:21 Mm

Speaker 12:21 ... even when I was a student-

Andrew Thangaraj 12:22 [chuckles]

Speaker 12:23 ... uh, there was a conception, or there's a, uh, I don't know if it's true or not, but people say electrical in IIT Madras is very hard. Is it true? [laughing]

Andrew Thangaraj 12:31 It used to be much, much harder than this. I think more than electrical, the subject being hard, I think the faculty were, had-- were very tough-

Speaker 12:39 Okay

Andrew Thangaraj 12:39 ... in, um, some 25 years ago. They used to be very strict about grading. Uh, even though we had relative grading, some of our courses, the grades used to start with B.

Speaker 12:47 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 12:47 And they would say: "None of you are good enough for me to give A." [laughing]

Speaker 12:50 [laughing]

Andrew Thangaraj 12:50 So faculty used to be much, much harder at us. I think that, that's, that was a long time ago. Today, if you actually look at the grades, the EE grades are way, way better than the other departments.

Speaker 13:00 Oh.

Andrew Thangaraj 13:00 So many more students get good grades now. Uh, faculty are much more kind, [chuckles] shall we say, shall we put it like that? So that part of it is not that difficult. But I think as far as the subject is concerned, it's a bit challenging because it's a strong mix of physics and math. So all the topics I mentioned, fundamentally, it's electromagnetics, right? So you have to know how to control electric field, magnetic field, using circuits and all that. And then there is- there are abstractions, which make it very mathematical. There is, first of all, the circuit theory abstraction, which converts the electromagnetics you see in certain situations in a circuit into equations, and then you solve those equations, and then you put them back, et cetera. So that abstraction itself is hard for many people, particularly when the circuit has nonlinear elements, it becomes very hard. So then you have the abstraction in communication, signal processing-

Speaker 13:48 Mm

Andrew Thangaraj 13:48 ... where it is abstracted even further. Things become vectors, things become, you know, very abstract quantities which you deal with, and even bits, for instance, is very abstract in some sense. So we deal with that, our algorithms deal at that level, and then you have to convert it. So you have to be conversant with the physical reality, you have to be conversant with the abstraction, and you should be comfortable with the translation between the two. So that, I think, makes EE challenging, but, you know, what's the fun if there's no challenge, right? [chuckles]

Speaker 14:15 Yeah, as you were saying, I remember learning about the Fourier transform the first time-

Andrew Thangaraj 14:19 Mm

Speaker 14:19 ... and getting utterly confused on, [laughing] on it all.

Andrew Thangaraj 14:21 Very abstract, right?

Speaker 14:22 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 14:22 A very abstract view of a signal. You see a signal, but then the Fourier theory, which is at the heart of all of electrical engineering, is it's very abstract. It's, it's a, it's an equivalent to that signal, but it lives in some other space, and you can do something there and then convert it back into the reality, and then make it work, and then it works wonderfully. But if you don't have that comfort between going into the abstract space and coming back in-

Speaker 14:43 Right

Andrew Thangaraj 14:43 ... then you get stuck.

Speaker 14:45 Understood. So you're saying, like, it's hard, but there's a reason it's hard-

Andrew Thangaraj 14:48 Yeah

Speaker 14:48 ... and it's a good thing it's hard because-

Andrew Thangaraj 14:50 And the faculty are there to help you. If you're really interested, today's faculty, I think, are very friendly.

Speaker 14:54 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 14:54 They work very closely with the students, and they're there to help you, my research.

Speaker 14:58 So cool. We spent so much time on electrical engineering. Uh, maybe we can, uh, move a bit. I think a, a lot of people at IIT Madras, um, know you for your work in the outreach side of things and the, the work that IIT Madras has done on the, on, on democratizing access to higher education, technical, higher technical education.

Andrew Thangaraj 15:19 Mm.

Speaker 15:20 Could you tell us how it started?

Andrew Thangaraj 15:21 Mm.

Speaker 15:22 And, uh, maybe we could go through the NPTEL days and how it's evolved now.

Andrew Thangaraj 15:25 Yeah. It's a long story. Yeah, I'll try and make it short.

Speaker 15:28 Please go ahead-

Andrew Thangaraj 15:29 [laughing]

Speaker 15:29 ... and make it as long as you want. We have a lot of-

Andrew Thangaraj 15:30 And also, it's, it's hard to... I mean, uh, I mean, I hope I don't forget giving credit to everybody, uh, who deserves that credit. Well, a lot of people are involved. It's, it's, I mean, I happen to be the chair, of course, right now, but I think it's, it's, uh, not at all [chuckles] an exaggeration to say I'm definitely standing on shoulders of giants, right? So there's no doubt about it. So a couple of people early on who deserved a lot of credit is, uh, Professor Ananth, of course, and Professor Mangal Sundar. So two of them, back in 2000, okay, this is like 25 years ago, a lot of us don't remember how things were [chuckles] at that time, uh, 25 years ago, uh, proposed the NPTEL project to the ministry. Okay? And, uh, got it approved and, and got it funded. So NPTEL started under their, uh, leadership, so that was a really, really non-trivial, uh, change. So it started out by recording classes at IIT, putting it up on the portal, making it free for anybody to access. This is before YouTube and all that.

Speaker 16:26 Before internet was ubiquitous.

Andrew Thangaraj 16:28 Pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 16:29 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 16:29 Yeah, they did all that. Uh, that's amazing. So, uh, they did that,

Andrew Thangaraj 16:33 and then YouTube came, and then YouTube, m- I mean, NPTEL went into YouTube, and it made it much more popular. And then around 2010, '11 or so, was when I joined NPTEL. So already, like some nearly 10 years had passed by the time I joined. And then what I did in NPTEL, primarily, was to bring in the certification element.

Speaker 16:51 So in the first phase of NPTEL-

Andrew Thangaraj 16:53 Mm.

Speaker 16:53 ... I remember Professor Mangal Sundar.

Andrew Thangaraj 16:54 Mm.

Speaker 16:55 I was on campus when he was pretty active.

Andrew Thangaraj 16:57 Mm.

Speaker 16:57 So we used to have these recorded classes.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:00 Yeah.

Speaker 17:00 So I also sat in some-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:01 Yeah

Speaker 17:01 ... recorded classes.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:01 Yeah.

Speaker 17:02 And I think, uh, a lot of the undergrad level courses that were being taught at IIT Madras were recorded full and full.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:08 Yeah.

Speaker 17:08 Uh, from the first-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:09 Exactly as it happened in class.

Speaker 17:10 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:11 And then put up on the portal.

Speaker 17:12 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:13 And people could see it. So the reasoning was, there are a lot of colleges in India, a lot of people go to many colleges, and, and it's, it's hard to hire the teachers that IITs have everywhere. I mean, that same level of quality is very hard to hire. The finances don't work, so many things don't work. So, uh, if you record the classes that happen here, then people everywhere get a chance to at least get a peep into the classes at IIT.

Speaker 17:36 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:36 Because otherwise, IITs are these really tough places to get in.

Speaker 17:40 A lot of colleges would like, sort of, uh-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:42 Yeah

Speaker 17:42 ... put them on DVDs.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:43 Yes.

Speaker 17:44 Uh-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:44 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 17:44 ... and, and I know you're saying that faculties are hard to hire, and so on, but actually, the behavior that I, uh, we have seen in that 2005 to 2010 period-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:53 Mm, mm

Speaker 17:53 ... is a lot of faculties would use the NPTEL lectures-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:56 Yeah

Speaker 17:56 ... as the coursework.

Andrew Thangaraj 17:57 Yeah.

Speaker 17:57 And then maybe-

Andrew Thangaraj 17:58 Yeah

Speaker 17:58 ... spend more time on the activities-

Andrew Thangaraj 18:00 Yeah

Speaker 18:00 ... or the exercises.

Andrew Thangaraj 18:01 Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people, when they go into lecture, would see the NPTEL videos, and then sort of do the lecture like that. So that, it became very popular at that point.... but-

Speaker 18:09 Okay

Andrew Thangaraj 18:10 ... by 2010, '11, '12, that time period, internet had become a little bit more popular. 3G made a big difference. You could start seeing videos now if you- I mean, it was not so, very easy as now, but it was still much, much easier. And around '11, '12, et cetera, MOOCs

Andrew Thangaraj 18:25 also became a very popular word.

Speaker 18:26 And I want to stress this.

Andrew Thangaraj 18:28 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18:28 So NPTEL started doing the lecture recording and spreading it out before a good one decade before MOOCs became-

Andrew Thangaraj 18:35 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, no doubt about, no doubt about it. It's, it was so popular even then. Now, when MOOCs became popular, of course, there was a big buzz around it, hype around it, saying, "You know, everything will become a MOOC, and MOOC is the only thing that's out there," et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, I mean, so it, it is good to get caught up in the hype and, you know, do something about it. But I think we also wanted to do, uh, some sort of certification around NPTEL. So this came also independent of the MOOCs. It's a lot of people came and started asking us, "You know, I've seen all your lectures that you've put up, and I think I have a command over the subject. Can you give me something to sh- you know, show that I've done this? Can you give me a certificate? Can you do some certification around it?" So at that time, we were thinking about how best to do it, you know? How do you do this? How do you, uh, do a certification based on online content? And I think the MOOCs guys were doing it purely online. They were doing the exams online, and somehow we thought that wouldn't get traction. No, that wouldn't be something that would become mainstream. People may not like it, at least in a country, country as vast as India, with so many people who really need such certification. We wanted to create something which would be... Which would have- which has a chance of building up a reputation, right? Right. So for that, we said it has to be followed by a proctored exam, and you should do certification only after a proctored exam, not just based on an online exam. So that also, I think, for the Indian context, it was an important step to do.

Speaker 20:02 So you're using a technical word. What is proctored exam?

Andrew Thangaraj 20:05 Oh, proctor is basically you go to a center, sit down-

Speaker 20:07 Okay

Andrew Thangaraj 20:07 ... and somebody is invigilating. You write an exam under controlled circumstances-

Speaker 20:10 Okay

Andrew Thangaraj 20:11 ... not in your own house, with no supervision.

Speaker 20:13 Right. So the chances of somebody trying to cheat the system is-

Andrew Thangaraj 20:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think if you want to mainstream things, that has to happen, because all college exams pretty much are proctored, right?

Speaker 20:23 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 20:23 And you don't let people do, uh, whatever they please. So, so we devised a system. This is again, an NPTEL effort. It was a pan-IIT effort. Uh, I was involved in it from day one, and, uh, we put together a system where we would take these NPTEL lectures, teach them like a MOOC for about eight weeks, 12 weeks, like that, and then at the end of it, we would conduct an exam. This exam would be like the JEE exam or GATE exam or something. People would go to a center, write the exam, and if they do well in it, they get a certificate in that course. So this is something that we started, and we started in a small way in 2014. Uh, we picked a very popular course, Programming Data Structures Algorithms, which everybody needs, and we put it out there. That's the first course we ran. Some one lakh people signed up, enrolled, and about some, uh, 3,000 or so wrote the exam. So you can see the fall, right? [chuckles] People, people sign up for the buzz, and then they realize, "Okay, no, I can handle this, I cannot handle this," [chuckles] et cetera. So, and then some, I think if I'm not wrong, thousand-odd got certificates. Okay? So that started in 2014, and slowly, I think we- this idea of a course followed by a proctored exam, followed by a certification, had some inherent value in it, and it started becoming popular. So colleges started adopting. Faculty in IIT started believing in it, and it started picking up steam, picking up steam slowly, and, and it started increasing and increasing and increasing and increasing. Today, after like nearly 10 years of running it, 10, 11 years of running it, every semester, we do... I mean, last semester, we ran some 800 courses. Okay, 800-odd courses in the same format. Some 30 lakh people enrolled in these courses. Some 9.8 lakh registered to write the exam.

Speaker 22:08 Wow!

Andrew Thangaraj 22:08 You can see the consumption, [chuckles] right? And out of that 9.8 lakhs-

Speaker 22:12 That's a million kids.

Andrew Thangaraj 22:12 Yeah, nearly a million kids in just one semester, right? We've, we've overtaken GATE now very easily. So, uh, so inherently, people saw value in it. Government saw value in it. They created the SWAYAM program and portal around such certification, and we, we now run SWAYAM. I mean, the IITM CODE office runs the SWAYAM portal of the ministry. So w- this program expanded, and a lot of colleges today do these courses for credit transfer,

Andrew Thangaraj 22:37 so-

Speaker 22:37 Okay, okay, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Um, you introduced SWAYAM, so I was waiting for the moment for you to introduce SWAYAM. So maybe you could just tell us what is SWAYAM?

Andrew Thangaraj 22:44 Yeah. So NPTEL started certification in 2014, right? So it became a very popular thing, and the ministry saw an opportunity around 2016, '17, to expand it to beyond technology and all of that, all areas, bring in other players, get them all to be part of this course offering plus certification initiative. So the, the SWAYAM initiative started in, in 2017, the SWAYAM portal also started.

Speaker 23:07 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 23:08 Mm.

Speaker 23:08 So right now, if I am a student in some other university-

Andrew Thangaraj 23:11 Mm

Speaker 23:11 ... I would do an NPTEL course-

Andrew Thangaraj 23:13 Yeah

Speaker 23:13 ... give the, uh, give this exam-

Andrew Thangaraj 23:15 Yeah

Speaker 23:16 ... and then via SWAYAM, transfer those credits onto my grade card?

Andrew Thangaraj 23:20 Yeah. So SWAYAM is like the MOOC portal.

Speaker 23:22 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 23:22 So you, you do the course on SWAYAM, and because the ministry is doing it, because everybody's approved it, a lot of people find it easy to approve credit transfer through SWAYAM.

Speaker 23:30 Oh.

Andrew Thangaraj 23:31 Right? So you can do a course, and if it's in your approved list of courses that for which you get credit transfer, then your institute will give you credit for that. So that's one of the reasons why it's very, very popular, and you can see our idea of mainstreaming the MOOCs has, has now materialized.

Speaker 23:47 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 23:47 This has not materialized in many other countries.

Speaker 23:50 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 23:50 Many other countries probably didn't need it, but we really needed it, and it has happened.

Speaker 23:55 Alternatively, if I, if, uh, uh, one university has to cre- do credit transfer with another university-

Andrew Thangaraj 24:00 Mm

Speaker 24:00 ... they have to have an MOU between them and them.

Andrew Thangaraj 24:03 Yes.

Speaker 24:03 They have to look at each other's courses-

Andrew Thangaraj 24:05 Yes

Speaker 24:05 ... approve each other's courses.

Andrew Thangaraj 24:06 Yes.

Speaker 24:06 And it's a very high involvement-

Andrew Thangaraj 24:09 Yeah

Speaker 24:10 ... job.

Andrew Thangaraj 24:10 Small scale, right?

Speaker 24:11 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 24:11 It's tough to make it large scale. And also, if somebody has to physically go to another university, it's a blocker. For many, many people, it's a blocker. See, I think-... I mean, you have to really see the country. I mean, uh, as part of this initiative, me and a couple of colleagues, Professor Pratap, Professor, um, and Bharati, I have to bring them, bring them in at some point, because all aboard- all three of us were heavily involved in the starting of this NPTEL and making it popular.

Speaker 24:32 Bharati ma'am is the CEO of this-

Andrew Thangaraj 24:35 COO of CODE right now, but she was also the main, uh, leader in, uh, you know, making NPTEL popular. And Professor Pratap, who's now the dean of academic courses, he's, uh, he was also one of the coordinators of NPTEL in this effort. So three of us have actually traveled across the country to remote corners, and you can see, I think- see, people can't go to Madras. You know, when you see that... And, and there are places where girls don't get email IDs, you know, because they think, "Oh, you get a email ID, you will go corrupt," or something. It's very-- It's grown, it's really become large scale, and it's, it's really become part of people's regular college-going exercise, so that's very nice. It's important to say, I mean, all IITs have a, like, an NPTEL office, the older IITs. That's how NPTEL started, so their support also is very important. So a lot of NPTEL courses come from all IITs.

Speaker 25:23 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 25:23 And, uh, we... But the coordination of all the exams, all the activities, happened here in IITM. And so, so our role was coordination, but equally important was the role of all the IITs.

Speaker 25:36 Fair enough. You're saying that if somebody is, uh, uh, looking at NPTEL courses, it's not necessary that they're looking at an IIT Madras-

Andrew Thangaraj 25:42 Yes

Speaker 25:42 ... professor-

Andrew Thangaraj 25:42 Yes

Speaker 25:43 ... teaching an IIT Madras course. It could be an IIT-

Andrew Thangaraj 25:45 Yeah

Speaker 25:45 ... Delhi or IIT Bombay or IIT Kanpur. Um, and acknowledge that, I mean, uh, something of this scale cannot be, uh, a singular, it has to be a collaborative-

Andrew Thangaraj 25:55 Yeah

Speaker 25:55 ... effort.

Andrew Thangaraj 25:55 Definitely. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:58 So at some point, uh,

Speaker 26:00 your office started offering, uh, a BS degree, right?

Andrew Thangaraj 26:04 Yeah.

Speaker 26:04 So how did that transition happen? Because I feel like you are telling me this story-

Andrew Thangaraj 26:08 Mm

Speaker 26:08 ... but in that process, you have built one of India's largest, or maybe India's largest, edtech.

Andrew Thangaraj 26:13 Mm.

Speaker 26:14 Right?

Andrew Thangaraj 26:14 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 26:15 Far outsizing all the big names we have heard.

Andrew Thangaraj 26:18 Yeah.

Speaker 26:18 So you have to tell me this journey.

Andrew Thangaraj 26:20 See, first thing is, I think when a, when a university gets into edtech, it's much more interesting, because universities can give degrees, right? And, uh, universities know how to, you know, cultivate relationships with students, how to bring students together, so they, they know that a lot. A lo- a lot of edtechs focus on professionals a lot, and they give certificates, so it's, it's a different crowd. Uh, so, so that way, I think a university getting into edtech is, is, I think, very important, and, and the more we do it, the better it will be. So now NPTEL gave us the confidence of being able to run a large-scale, uh, you know, certification, sort of edtech-like effort, okay? Around, uh, credit-worthy courses that are tied to the college curriculum, not, you know, independent, uh, job-oriented stuff, et cetera. But, uh, nevertheless, it gave us confidence with the processes, like, you know, how to run your LMS, how to run a workflow with people coming in, registering, paying money, you know, dealing with all of that. So all those operations, how to set up the question paper, how to set up the exams. Operationally, we got a lot of confidence. A lot of credit to Bharati for that, because she runs really the operations in all of that.

Speaker 27:26 She's absolutely amazing.

Andrew Thangaraj 27:27 Yeah.

Speaker 27:27 I've interacted with her a few times.

Andrew Thangaraj 27:28 Yeah.

Speaker 27:28 She's amazing.

Andrew Thangaraj 27:29 Yeah, so she's very good at that. So sh- that's, that's something that's very, very, very important. We also lucked out with the right people. And also I should say, uh, we keep saying IITM is Best Place To Build, right? I think IITM also has a unique infrastructure, where they allow faculty to build projects, to build, you know, hire fa- uh, hire people of different types, and then build these programs. Particularly when they see the program is becoming interesting, they're able to allow it to grow. I, I, I'm not the only example here. You'll see every other person you've spoken to would repeat the same thing, right?

Speaker 27:58 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 27:59 So IIT has... IITM, I should say. This is IITM now, [chuckles] you know? IITM has a unique position among IITs in really being able to facilitate it, where the, the rules are carefully done. It's not like we violate any rules or something, but the rules are done to facilitate such scaling, and such scaling is what can create impact. Now, that is, that part is also very important too. So now, after NPTEL, we got the confidence about one thing, right? Because a lot of people used to top NPTEL courses, and we used to interact with them, and these are people who didn't study in an IIT, right? So they didn't get through JEE, but they do so well in an NPTEL exam, and, and they do well in life after that. So then, uh, then the natural question that comes is, right, w- we admit students into IIT with a very tough entrance process, really, really hard, one of the-

Speaker 28:45 Yeah

Andrew Thangaraj 28:45 ... hardest things in the world, definitely.

Speaker 28:47 Uh, in addition to technical skills, it also tests, uh, rigor-

Andrew Thangaraj 28:51 Mm

Speaker 28:51 ... and it tests, uh, how much, uh, support you have from your family to do this. [laughing]

Andrew Thangaraj 28:55 Money today.

Speaker 28:56 Money, yeah, 'cause you need that.

Andrew Thangaraj 28:58 That's a very important thing that has happened over time, right? Of course, if you're really brilliant, that's okay, I mean, you come through. But, uh, for a, for a typical student, if you look at it, the kind of money and effort that is involved in JEE coaching today is tremendous. And, and in fact, a, a lot of us are very disillusioned by the coaching industry in some sense. And, and some of them are good, some of them focus on the right things, but some of them are brutal.

Speaker 29:20 A lot of great students-

Andrew Thangaraj 29:21 Yeah

Speaker 29:22 ... get, uh, simply, uh, don't have, uh, the right path to JEE.

Andrew Thangaraj 29:27 Yeah. Yeah, they, they either don't have the inclination to go through such abuse, quote, unquote, [laughing]

Speaker 29:32 [laughing]

Andrew Thangaraj 29:32 ... in their 11th and 12th, and, and they don't have the means to do it also.

Speaker 29:36 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 29:36 It's very costly. I think it's about 10 lakhs easily, right? Coaching. And number of people who can put away 10 lakhs for their kids' coaching before college, it's not that high in India. You should look at the economic distribution, it's very hard, number one. Number two is, the actual courses that are being taught inside IIT can be handled by a lot more people than only those who we let in.

Speaker 29:56 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 29:56 Right? That's also definitely true. I mean, it's not like what we do inside here is impossible to handle.

Speaker 30:01 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 30:02 But what the campus provides is, it provides the, you know, ecosystem for a few smart individuals to come together, interact, learn from each other. That peer interaction and that give and take, and all of that is amazing, right? So that, I think, is only a small-scale operation.

Speaker 30:19 I get what you're saying, like, the IIT experience is an ensemble experience of many things coming together.

Andrew Thangaraj 30:24 Yeah.

Speaker 30:24 But when you come down to a single course-

Andrew Thangaraj 30:26 Yes, yeah... it can be

Andrew Thangaraj 30:28 scaled.

Speaker 30:28 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 30:28 I, I, the, the teaching, learning that happens in one course and the curriculum itself possibly can be scaled, but the dramatic change in the, in the mindset and the growth of an individual in four years of close-knit life together, that I think is tough to scale. You know, I mean, I, I don't know if anybody can figure out how to scale it. Uh, maybe we can scale that, maybe we can't scale that, but at least NPTEL gave us the confidence that we can scale this part.

Speaker 30:54 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 30:55 So whatever we can scale, we should scale, I think, right? So I think it's- it gives value to the economy, value to the country, makes it accessible for so many people. You're not so much of an ivory tower, at least, right?

Speaker 31:06 Yeah. I just want to underscore that what can be scaled, should be scaled-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:09 Yeah

Speaker 31:10 ... is a very important attitude to have.

Andrew Thangaraj 31:12 Yeah.

Speaker 31:12 Because when-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:12 Yeah

Speaker 31:12 ... when 20 years back, 30 years back-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:14 Mm

Speaker 31:14 ... the IIT system, there was these words used, you know, we are an island of excellence.

Andrew Thangaraj 31:18 Yeah.

Speaker 31:18 And there was almost a sense that we are-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:20 Yeah

Speaker 31:20 ... excluding-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:21 Yeah

Speaker 31:22 more than-

Andrew Thangaraj 31:22 And, and y- you would have met... I've, I have met people who never ever went into an IIT, and are amazing.

Speaker 31:28 Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Thangaraj 31:29 Right? Excellent in every possible way. They, they're no, no worse off than any of the best students I've seen. So it, it's possible to cultivate this other stuff, but it's tough to scale that. Maybe they have other ways of cultivating it, I don't know. Maybe I will, I will try my best to get there, but I may not get there. But-

Speaker 31:46 Mm

Andrew Thangaraj 31:46 ... at least the curriculum part, why, what we teach here? Because I think, see, it's also important to note that how college works in India, right? See, um, IITs get 33% of the ministry's higher education budget.

Speaker 31:59 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 31:59 And IITs account for less than 0.2% of the UG enrollment.

Speaker 32:04 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 32:04 Pretty much no student. And so, so government spends a lot of effort on making the small group be ultra great. Okay, which is good, uh, um, I don't want to say anything no to that. But what happens in that bargain is there is a large group of people, if you take, like, for instance, marks versus rank in JEE Advanced-

Speaker 32:22 Mm

Andrew Thangaraj 32:22 ... up to about 5,000, 10,000, you see a dip. After that, it's pretty much flat. And we do sort of some [chuckles] bar, you know, some threshold setting to let some people in, not some people in, and we draw the line at 17,000, 18,000 today.

Speaker 32:37 Mm. And the ministry has, uh, the right to say that-

Andrew Thangaraj 32:40 Yeah

Speaker 32:40 ... if there's so much funding, why can't it be scaled?

Andrew Thangaraj 32:42 Yeah. At least the parts that can be scaled. See, if you have to scale the other part, then that's a huge investment, right? You have to build up hostels, build up so much else. That may not be possible, but can we not scale the other part, is the question. And, and if you see what happens to the remaining people, right? About 80 lakh get into college every year. A lot of people get into smaller colleges in smaller towns, where simply the awareness and, you know, knowledge of what to study, how to study, is simply not there. And the bright kid who ends up there doesn't get an opportunity to at least learn.

Speaker 33:13 He won't learn about Shannon's-

Andrew Thangaraj 33:15 [chuckles]

Speaker 33:15 ... beautiful Information Theory-

Andrew Thangaraj 33:16 For instance, right?

Speaker 33:17 Or fast Fourier transform.

Andrew Thangaraj 33:19 Yeah, yeah, which are good to learn, I think. So, so with the confidence of NPTEL, we felt like we can get into a degree. Okay? So we thought, like most places, we should do a PG degree, because PG is safe to do. But then somebody- I mean, this, I should give credit to Prof- Professor G. Venkatesh. He's a faculty in the Humanities department. So it was one of his thoughts that we should do a... I mean, you should talk to G. Venkatesh. He's a great guy to talk to too. So one of his thoughts was, we should do something in the UG space, because the impact, real impact comes if you do something in the UG space. And he also acknowledged, [chuckles] "Well, it's much harder to do anything in the UG space." And IIT, first of all, has a big UG brand, right? So how do you do it? You know, it's, it's got to do it very, very carefully. And there also, there is credit for Professor Bhaskar Ramamurti, who was the director. So he- without him also, none of this would have happened. He, he was really a visionary leader who really saw that this, such a program is important in the context of the country, in the context of, uh, so many other things. So putting all that together, we came up with the idea of doing a BS program. Now, BS program is sort of different from the BTech program, so we get a differentiator on day one, so it's not too complicated. Uh, but at the same time, we wanted to build up the prestige of the BS program as much as possible. It should look like a solid program. It should look rigorous, it should look like not... Maybe it's more accessible in the beginning, but it should definitely pick out the good ones when they come out at the end. So we wanted to have a very different system in place. We didn't want to have a strong entrance process. So, so it is a very carefully designed program. If I start talking about it, it'll take a long time for me to go through all the details, but let me just say

Andrew Thangaraj 34:58 that instead of doing

Andrew Thangaraj 35:00 the filtering in the beginning and ensuring that only the very best of the best come in, and then pretty much letting them all sail through to the end and get their degree, we have a different model. The model is, we admit a larger group of people who we think have a chance of getting through our program. Okay, we don't measure everything down to the bottom very strongly. We only measure, okay, can you pass the kind of courses I teach in my first semester? Can you pass my first exam? Like, how many-

Speaker 35:30 Students would that be?

Andrew Thangaraj 35:30 So right now, I mean, the program is very popular. [chuckles] So over the past four, five years, some two lakh people have applied, right?

Speaker 35:36 Okay, so two lakh people have applied to the-

Andrew Thangaraj 35:39 To the qualifier, as we call it.

Speaker 35:40 Qualifier.

Andrew Thangaraj 35:41 Yeah. And about one-fourth qualify. Okay, so you can see already there is some filtering, but we don't filter down to, like, you know, some ridiculous 0.1% or something, [chuckles] you know? One-fourth qualify. But what happens after qualification, they get into a stage which we call foundation stage.

Speaker 36:00 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 36:00 They don't get into the BS degree directly, they get into this foundation stage. They're in the BS degree, but it's in the foundation stage. And these are eight courses: math, stats, and, uh, programming, because this is a data science course. That's what it is.

Speaker 36:13 The BS course offers two degrees.

Andrew Thangaraj 36:16 Two degrees now. One is in data science-

Speaker 36:18 Data science

Andrew Thangaraj 36:18 ... the other is in electronic systems.

Speaker 36:20 So we are now talking about the data science BS course?

Andrew Thangaraj 36:22 Yeah. Bo- both have similar structure.

Speaker 36:24 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 36:24 Structure is very similar.

Speaker 36:25 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 36:25 So they get into a foundation-

Speaker 36:27 Okay

Andrew Thangaraj 36:27 ... where we build the foundation that is needed for the program.

Speaker 36:30 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 36:30 So in data science, they would learn math, stats, programming. In electronics, they will learn a little bit more math, some circuits, some, uh, you know, things like that. Okay?... foundation is, uh, tough. Well, not so tough, but nevertheless, it also filters.

Speaker 36:46 It's tougher than the qualifier?

Andrew Thangaraj 36:47 Tougher than the qualifiers. They have to do eight classes, do more rigor, a lot of things. Only about half of those who qualify make it past foundation.

Speaker 36:55 At this point, I guess what is happening is that some students will also get to realize how easy or

Speaker 37:00 tough the course is.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:00 Yeah, it is not for them. Find the fit, right?

Speaker 37:03 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:03 See, right now, one of the flaws in the JEE system is you don't find any fit with the subject you learn.

Speaker 37:08 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:08 Right? You come in, you got a rank, so you're studying metallurgical engineering. And you, you may have absolutely no connection to metallurgical engineering, but you study it because IIT gives you so many other things. You pick up all of those things, you get the degree, and you leave. So this happens now, I think in IIT, at least to one-third of the students, this happens, right?

Speaker 37:25 Uh, and I want to just, uh, uh, emphasize that that happens to CS students. [chuckles]

Andrew Thangaraj 37:28 CS students also. [chuckles]

Speaker 37:29 They enter CS, and they have... I- I-

Andrew Thangaraj 37:31 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 37:32 ... feel sad about it-

Andrew Thangaraj 37:32 Yeah

Speaker 37:32 ... because you've got the best package in the world.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:34 Yeah.

Speaker 37:34 You have any choice.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:36 Yeah.

Speaker 37:36 You could go anywhere and do anything-

Andrew Thangaraj 37:38 Yeah

Speaker 37:38 ... and because of, like, sort of a peer pressure-

Andrew Thangaraj 37:40 Peer pressure

Speaker 37:41 ... then you join CS, and then you realize-

Andrew Thangaraj 37:42 Then you don't like it, right?

Speaker 37:43 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:43 Then your, your heart is empty, as people say, and it's not, not a good feeling to have. So, so we didn't want to do that, and we've kept the foundation price very low.

Speaker 37:52 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:52 The cost of the entire foundation is, like, 30K or something, 30K.

Speaker 37:56 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 37:56 So it's, it's, uh, it's kept very low so that people can try it out.

Speaker 38:00 Yeah, so that, that 30K is the price of sort of figuring out, "Is this for me?"

Andrew Thangaraj 38:03 Is this for you? Yeah. If this is not for you, you try something else. If it's for you, you carry on. That's about half. Then comes the slightly tough part. Okay, so this is the toughest part of the program. It's called the diploma level. So the philosophy is, we give hands-on skill early in the program, okay? So after foundation, you pick up skills. You don't do theory again. So a typical BTech program will do a lot of theory in the beginning, and only towards the end, you start actually picking up skills. So here we do skills. So in the data science program, you'll learn about programming, how to build an application, full stack development, all of that. And you'll also learn how to build a ML model, how to get it to work with data. You'll also do theory. A little bit of theory will be there to do enough skills, okay?

Speaker 38:45 Professor, now we are talking about skills. Um, this is a sort of a mostly remote program, right?

Andrew Thangaraj 38:51 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 38:52 Does it scale well in-

Andrew Thangaraj 38:53 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the data science part seems to be working quite well. So because most of it is online, right? All the labs, so to speak, are online, and part of the diploma is also four projects that they have to do individual, and each person has to do it, and our evaluations are through vivas and all of that. So we do one-hour-long vivas for each project to evaluate and get them to make some change live, you know, if they, if they understand something. So we have sort of figured out how to do, and that scales quite, quite reasonably. It's not like tens of thousands, but thousands we are able to handle, that kind of scale. Now, diploma is a huge filter, okay? So out of the people who qualify, if you go back to the qualification and starting, only about 10% or so finish the diploma. So that part ends up being harder for people.

Speaker 39:41 From 2 lakh to

Speaker 39:42 2,000.

Andrew Thangaraj 39:42 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 39:43 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 39:43 It comes down to that kind of number.

Speaker 39:45 And I remember at the beginning, you had mentioned some numbers, uh, 1 lakh people in their first year gave [chuckles] uh-

Andrew Thangaraj 39:52 No, that is the NPTEL start, right?

Speaker 39:54 Correct.

Andrew Thangaraj 39:54 Yeah.

Speaker 39:54 But there also it was 1 lakh to 1,000.

Andrew Thangaraj 39:56 Uh.

Speaker 39:56 This is also 1% kind of-

Andrew Thangaraj 39:58 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 39:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 39:58 Okay. So once they cross the diploma level, if they want to, they seem to be going through and getting the degree. Many people exit at the diploma level. So why they exit? That's because they already have another degree. Many of them do this in parallel with another degree.

Speaker 40:11 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 40:12 So they have another degree, they've picked up all the skills they want. They have a degree, they leave at that point. Quite a big number does that also. They have a job, et cetera, and they leave.

Speaker 40:20 Well, just to underscore that-

Andrew Thangaraj 40:22 Mm

Speaker 40:22 ... i- in recently, I've- what I've understood is, it's only recently that the UGC allowed-

Andrew Thangaraj 40:27 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 40:27 ... two degrees to be pursued-

Andrew Thangaraj 40:29 To be pursued-

Speaker 40:29 ... at the same time

Andrew Thangaraj 40:30 ... at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this sort of happened sort of when we started.

Speaker 40:33 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 40:33 Around 2022, I think they started that. So many people get out in the diploma level. Some of them will feel like it's stay around and get the degree. That number reduces further. So it looks to me like, at most, we may be graduating about 1,000 people a year in the degree level. That's the sort of number you'll get.

Speaker 40:50 The program has already had... This will be the second convocation year, right?

Andrew Thangaraj 40:54 Yep, yep. The people will be getting degrees.

Speaker 40:56 Nice. [chuckles] Congratulations, Professor. This easily makes you the largest edtech, uh, at the most reasonable cost.

Andrew Thangaraj 41:03 Mm.

Speaker 41:03 Just to get on the fees part-

Andrew Thangaraj 41:05 Mm

Speaker 41:05 ... how much does it cost?

Andrew Thangaraj 41:06 The data science and electronics are priced differently. Data science cost, the entire degree is about 3.2 lakhs, okay? And, uh, for the electronic system, is about five and a half lakhs. And we give huge discounts. For people who have family income less than 5 lakh, we give a 50% discount. People who have family income less than, between, less than 1 lakh, we have a 75% discount. So it's not a discount, it's like a fee support. That's the correct way [chuckles] to say it.

Speaker 41:34 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 41:34 Okay, and 40% of the people who are learning now, at all levels in the BS degree programs, are from less than 5 lakh income category.

Speaker 41:43 Is it?

Andrew Thangaraj 41:43 Yeah.

Speaker 41:44 Oh, that is-

Andrew Thangaraj 41:44 And amazing, it's, it's 25% are from the less than 1 lakh rupees income category.

Speaker 41:50 Wow!

Andrew Thangaraj 41:50 So really, we are able to hit people who... And, and the individual stories, I mean, I can talk about stories. You know, there are, there are people who are from very, very

Andrew Thangaraj 42:00 ordinary backgrounds, really ordinary, father and mother working in very low-level jobs, who cannot even afford to go to a good school, forget about JEE coaching. And those kind of kids are in the program, have done well, have gotten jobs now, and they have a chance to bring up their family, society, all of that. And that impact is, is, I mean, it, it's one of the most, uh, satisfying things, at least, that I've done, uh, in my life and career that I can look forward- look back upon.

Speaker 42:30 Professor, that is amazing. I feel like sometimes we live in these worlds where there's an impression that, uh, you, uh, that, you know, if you democratize education a lot, then the quality will come down. But you're saying that that absolutely doesn't happen. We are able to hit-

Andrew Thangaraj 42:44 ... yeah, so you, you have to understand what is quality, right? So how do you define it? You gotta caref- you have to be a little bit careful about it, right? See, if you say I, I do this impossibly hard exam, I filter it down to a small number of very smart people, then there is no quality improvement that your program itself is doing outside of just scraping them together and then giving them, not ruining things, right? You don't ruin everything. You just keep everything together and be- keep it liberal and-

Speaker 43:09 One second

Andrew Thangaraj 43:10 ... keep them to go, right? So that's all you have to do. And, and-

Speaker 43:13 Right

Andrew Thangaraj 43:13 ... that is one type of quality where I would say, frankly, we didn't have a role, right? In BTech quality, if you talk about it.

Speaker 43:21 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 43:21 In BS, on the other hand, there are people who, who would have had no chance of walking into a data analytics job or anything like that. We have taken them from zero, literally, and given them every single thing that they know, and now they're ready for jobs. They're doing MTechs in IITs, they're doing PhDs here, there, and the other. Look at the transformation. And if, if you say, if you, if you, if you go ask this guy who graduated with a BS degree something about some, you know, a tough algebra problem or an integration, maybe he doesn't know, right?

Speaker 43:54 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 43:54 So is that, is that the only goal? I don't know, right? So you have to, you have to redefine your goals carefully. And under that kind of a redefined goal, these guys are amazing in quality and, and just attitude, how hard they work, and, and you can see, see that around. And the good ones from the BS program, I think, are really, really good today. I've interacted with, with so many of them. Of course, the BTech students have a different quality to them, right? So they've, they've come from a different background, and they have a different type of thing. Maybe they can work on really tough problems of a different caliber, et cetera. Maybe the BS students will work on different types of problems, and all types of problems are there in the industry today. If you go to a company, company doesn't want to hire all BTechs with [chuckles] all intense problem-solving abilities, right? So you also want people who can execute well, digi- diligently, and also understand the theory enough to make contributions. So I think you have to broaden the outlook of w- who you're trying to produce.

Speaker 44:48 Okay. I'm gonna try and attempt and summarize some of the things you said.

Andrew Thangaraj 44:51 Yeah.

Speaker 44:51 See, I wanna know if I got it right, okay?

Andrew Thangaraj 44:53 Yeah.

Speaker 44:53 You started by saying that we inherited this IIT JEE system.

Andrew Thangaraj 44:57 Yeah.

Speaker 44:58 Uh, I... It's not like IIT Madras had a role to play.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:01 Yeah.

Speaker 45:01 And there's a lot of quality, there's a lot of filtering that happens at JEE.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:04 Yeah.

Speaker 45:04 And a lot of students who get through JEE may have, even without IIT, done very well.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:08 Yeah, true.

Speaker 45:09 Right? So-

Andrew Thangaraj 45:09 If they had been in a liberal environment where-

Speaker 45:12 Yeah

Andrew Thangaraj 45:13 ... nothing was messed up with them [chuckles] .

Speaker 45:14 Right. Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:14 Right.

Speaker 45:15 So if their college experience didn't ruin them-

Andrew Thangaraj 45:16 Yeah

Speaker 45:16 ... they would have anyway, because there's, uh, so harder filtering that's happened.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:20 Mm.

Speaker 45:20 So therefore, you can say that, uh, we are already starting from a good place-

Andrew Thangaraj 45:24 Yeah

Speaker 45:24 ... and maybe we are moving up.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:26 Yeah.

Speaker 45:26 Uh, but here at the BS level, the, the inputs that the program gives-

Andrew Thangaraj 45:31 Mm

Speaker 45:32 ... is much higher.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:33 Yeah.

Speaker 45:34 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 45:34 Well, the variance in the beginning is high, so we, we have ways of tracking their CGPA. If you see the CGPA, the spread in the CGPA in the foundation level is very high. As they come closer and closer to degree level, the spread lowers, it moves higher. So we see that the program is really giving them what they know, you know, teaching them what they know, bringing up to a good level. So some of the things which we find hard to do in the BS level is the, you know, keeping... bringing people together, giving them that-

Speaker 46:01 Now, I've heard that the BS students have-

Andrew Thangaraj 46:03 Yeah

Speaker 46:03 ... formed their own groups-

Andrew Thangaraj 46:04 Yes, yeah

Speaker 46:05 ... they're city-wide groups.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:06 Yeah.

Speaker 46:06 And-

Andrew Thangaraj 46:06 Yeah

Speaker 46:07 ... and they're doing their own festival-

Andrew Thangaraj 46:08 Yeah

Speaker 46:08 ... their own setups.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:09 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 46:09 I think that will also sort of catch up.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:11 Yeah, it'll catch up. So that part will catch up as well, and then that part, that missing part will also come in. Many of them are writing GATE. In last year, we had GATE. This year, GATE BA paper, rank one, rank seven, and rank 10 are BS students.

Speaker 46:23 Is it?

Andrew Thangaraj 46:23 Yeah.

Speaker 46:24 Wow!

Andrew Thangaraj 46:24 It's amazing story. The first rank, you won't believe it, is an AIIMS doctor.

Speaker 46:28 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:29 He went into AIIMS, realized he doesn't want to be a doctor, and then how do you come back? You can't come back.

Speaker 46:34 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:34 But our program gave him the way. Now, he wrote... I mean, he did, uh, our program, then he wrote GATE. He got number one rank in GATE.

Speaker 46:42 That's amazing.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:43 Rank seven, rank 10 are also very interesting people that way.

Speaker 46:46 And also, at the end of the day, when they graduate from BS, they become IITM alumnus.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:51 Alumnus, yeah.

Speaker 46:51 So it's the same.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:52 Yeah.

Speaker 46:53 And after that, after you graduate, maybe your first job, people care about-

Andrew Thangaraj 46:56 Yeah

Speaker 46:56 ... where you're from.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:57 Yeah.

Speaker 46:57 After that, you are the same.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:58 Who cares, right?

Speaker 46:59 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 46:59 Everybody is the same, and then what- how you do there matters.

Speaker 47:01 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 47:02 Yeah. So I think in the next decade or so, the graduates of this program, I think, will establish the reputation of it. I'm as eager and waiting. I'm quite confident that they'll do a great job.

Speaker 47:12 Wow! [chuckles] I, I, I, guess, um... I mean, most of us who are alumnus and who have been in the industry in India have met some BS students who've come out-

Andrew Thangaraj 47:22 Yeah

Speaker 47:23 ... and we are also quite unaware of the details, but thank you for sharing so much. And, um, there- but there are also two programs. So you spoke about the Data Science BS-

Andrew Thangaraj 47:33 Yeah

Speaker 47:34 ... uh, which is graduating students, uh, but the Electronic Systems just

Speaker 47:37 started.

Andrew Thangaraj 47:37 It's just started. It's much smaller in scale, [chuckles] by the way. Not too many people, uh, jump into electronics as easily as they jump into data science. It's much smaller. We have about 2,000 applications a year, and again, the same type of filtering is happening through a qualifier, through foundation, through diploma. We are waiting to see. We, we... I, I'm, I cannot talk about numbers of that program yet.

Speaker 47:59 Okay. And will there be more programs that are coming up?

Andrew Thangaraj 48:01 So we are thinking, we are planning, we are debating what to do. Now, I think we understand the process very well. Uh, we are trying to see, uh, you know, the economics of the situation, the requirement of what kind of people. See, data science, clearly a lot of people are required. So only when you need large-scale employment, such programs make sense, in my opinion. So if, if, if you need only smaller scale, anyway, people are happy. So what, what, what, uh, disruption are you [chuckles] going to do?

Speaker 48:26 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 48:26 In the data science AI area, it looked like people are looking for, uh, qualified people, so that is, uh, something important. Uh, electronic systems, in a way, needs people, maybe not in the same scale as data science. It needs people.

Speaker 48:39 ... I get what you're saying. In many of the engineering disciplines, we already have enough-

Andrew Thangaraj 48:42 Uh, yeah, yeah

Speaker 48:43 - uh, courses from-

Andrew Thangaraj 48:44 Yeah

Speaker 48:44 - reputed universities.

Andrew Thangaraj 48:46 Yeah, it seems to be okay. Maybe in core engineering, uh, the only thing we have to see now, I think one of the interesting thing that's happening now is all private engineering colleges are closing down their civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, all of that. So I think if we have to keep the minimum number [chuckles] in play, we may have to do something in the core area. I don't know how we will do it. It's, it's very hard. It doesn't scale that easily, and we have to... Electronic systems, for instance, we bring them to campus every semester for labs.

Speaker 49:11 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 49:12 So like that, we may have to do. I don't know, that is one thing. But we- I think the more interesting thing is non-engineering. I think economics, finance, uh, commerce, these kind of areas have the largest potential. We are thinking we'll partner with the, some of the top colleges in that area and see if we can do a joint sort of interesting degree, maybe in economics, finance, management, data science, commerce, some combination like that-

Speaker 49:38 Mm

Andrew Thangaraj 49:38 ... which I think is a much larger group than engineering.

Speaker 49:41 As you're saying it, I'm thinking when edtechs, when a privately funded edtech thinks about this-

Andrew Thangaraj 49:46 See

Speaker 49:46 ... mm, they have to move at a particular pace because the capital is demanding them to-

Andrew Thangaraj 49:51 Yeah

Speaker 49:51 ... and they ho- they don't have the luxury of thinking-

Andrew Thangaraj 49:54 Yeah

Speaker 49:54 ... this through.

Andrew Thangaraj 49:55 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 49:55 But the way you are saying the programs, NPTEL started 25 years back, then you had a decade of experience in building courses, then a decade of experience in-

Andrew Thangaraj 50:03 Yeah

Speaker 50:03 ... Uh, and so there's a lot of, like, uh, you have the time to think things through-

Andrew Thangaraj 50:09 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 50:09 ... without, you know, just-

Andrew Thangaraj 50:10 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. See, I'm answerable to the Senate and the board of IIT, which is very, very different from what the edtechs are answerable to, right? So they have to show quarter and quar- quarter-on-quarter numbers to keep their board happy, their investors happy, and people who invest in them are expecting returns, which is higher than, uh, you know, fixed, uh, fixed deposit returns [chuckles] or something, right? So, uh, uh, you can't even just give them that, uh, returns, right? So on the other hand, for us, the- definitely our interest is in nation building, right? Uh, at some, at a broad level, that's our interest. Now, what is, what is good for the young people, the huge number of young people who are coming out of the country? How do you equip them with better skills? How do you make them more employable? How do you give them a brand that they can, you know, that they can bring up their societies, uh, you know, uplift the societies around them? So that's, that's our idea. And we are also in a good situation, you know, I mean, we have wonderful IITM ecosystem to take advantage of.

Speaker 51:05 Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 51:05 I don't have to pay rent, I don't have to, you know, pay for internet connection, this and that. So our, our amount of money that we need is, uh, very less. And because of IITM being a great place to build, we've been able to do everything in-house. We don't outsource anything, our development, our organization, our operations, everything we're able to do in-house.

Speaker 51:25 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 51:25 And that reduces costs tremendously. You don't have to give any money away to anybody in a large sum.

Speaker 51:31 Um, uh, this is amazing. I want to underscore one thing-

Andrew Thangaraj 51:35 [chuckles]

Speaker 51:35 ... which maybe people won't understand. When you say, "I'm answerable to the IITM Senate," [laughing] maybe people don't realize that the IITM Senate is made of other IIT professors-

Andrew Thangaraj 51:43 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 51:43 ... who are quite brutal-

Andrew Thangaraj 51:44 Yeah

Speaker 51:45 ... if it comes to it.

Andrew Thangaraj 51:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 51:46 Like, if you thought they were hard on students, [chuckles] imagine how hard they can be on each other.

Andrew Thangaraj 51:50 Yeah, I know. So this kind of results, this program quality is monitored by the Senate quite closely.

Speaker 51:55 Wow! I think we've mostly covered most of the things that I wanted to cover. Um, a few things as I'm

Speaker 52:01 reading my notes, um, I'm just thinking if we can dial back to the BTech program.

Andrew Thangaraj 52:06 Mm, mm.

Speaker 52:06 Uh, of course, you are a professor in electrical engineering.

Andrew Thangaraj 52:09 Mm.

Speaker 52:09 And, um, uh, uh, in, in IIT Madras, there's a course called, uh, engineering physics-

Andrew Thangaraj 52:14 Mm, mm

Speaker 52:15 ... which is a high overlap, right?

Andrew Thangaraj 52:17 Mm.

Speaker 52:17 So, um, how is that different from electrical?

Andrew Thangaraj 52:20 So, uh, I should, I should say, [chuckles] the first thing I should say is, I don't know entirely how the curriculum is different, but I've seen EP students in all my courses, right? [chuckles] Every course I teach has EP students.

Speaker 52:30 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 52:30 So I think there is tremendous overlap between the EE and EP curriculum, number one. Second thing I'll say is, some of the EP students I've met here have been some of the most amazing students, easily the best students I've met.

Speaker 52:42 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 52:42 Somehow, I think even though their ranks are not as high, they, they end up being slightly lower in rank, but the EP program, the way it is structured, the way the students are, the way that group is, the way the seniors are, they, they're all so amazing. They, they work very hard, they, they understand things conceptually very well, and then they, they're not scared of the math. They seem to know the math very well. I think they do slightly more math courses than the [chuckles] EE guys, I think. I'm not sure.

Speaker 53:08 Mm.

Andrew Thangaraj 53:09 So I would say between the EE and EP program, I mean, I don't know, I would even pick the EP program better. [laughing] The EP program-

Speaker 53:16 I-

Andrew Thangaraj 53:16 ... it was, I think, at least the, from my vantage point, uh, the EP students are amazing. Some... I'm, I'm not joking. I mean, I've, I've had EP students, uh, who work with me, publish papers, go into research, go into top-notch companies, and amazing.

Speaker 53:31 Okay, okay. And, and do, uh, students from other departments like mechanical or civil, do they take electives into your course?

Andrew Thangaraj 53:38 Uh, I think that's harder. It's harder. I think not many of them do. I think the, the background that is needed in terms of mathematics is covered only by in EE and EP.

Speaker 53:47 Okay, understood. And I guess you're, you're teaching a little more advanced course, so maybe-

Andrew Thangaraj 53:51 Yeah

Speaker 53:51 ... some of the other electrical courses.

Andrew Thangaraj 53:52 I, I do a probability class, which is quite basic, but it is, um, it, it sort of, it has a math flavor to it in, in the sense that you have to be comfortable with the abstractness, and that, that part, I think I find EE, EP students much better here.

Speaker 54:08 Okay. Okay, Professor,

Speaker 54:10 this was great. I want to just to dial back to the fact that you were a student here-

Andrew Thangaraj 54:15 Mm

Speaker 54:15 ... um, a BTech student from '94 to '98.

Andrew Thangaraj 54:18 Yeah.

Speaker 54:19 Uh, do you have a nickname?

Andrew Thangaraj 54:20 Uh, actually, interestingly, no nickname. My name, uh, it was sounding interest- I mean, uh, different enough to them. I mean, Andrew is not a common name.

Speaker 54:28 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 54:29 So people said, "Okay, we'll just call you Andrew."

Speaker 54:31 And, uh, which hostel were you in?

Andrew Thangaraj 54:32 Alak. Alak, no.

Speaker 54:33 You were in Alak. Okay. So, um, and how was your experience in IITM? And I, I ask this question because I think the student experience today is quite different from... Yeah.

Andrew Thangaraj 54:42 Yeah? Yeah.... different in some ways, but maybe not that different. I don't know. I think, I mean, you, you have to account for the changes in the times, and once you account for that, maybe the experience is okay. But my experience was amazing. I mean, I wouldn't, uh, say anything less. I definitely grew into more than half of what I [chuckles] was because of my IIT experience. I think, I mean, I'm from, I was from a small town, Trichy. Uh, my, my parents didn't go to college. I was one of the first-generation college goers. And, and I mean, my world was very limited in some sense, right? I hadn't met too many people. Once you come to IITM, you meet people of so many different types, so many different, uh, you know, priorities, diff- different places they come from, different ways of thinking about life, about, uh, oh, what is important, what is not important. All of that was really amazing. At the same time, really great people. I think, uh, very deep in what they... how they could think, and how they could articulate, and how they could debate, and how, uh, you know, all those things were very, very important, and it played a huge role in shaping me into what, [chuckles] whatever I've become now. Definitely, those four years were unforgettable.

Speaker 55:51 Wow! Okay. So we spoke about, uh, electrical engineering, the courses that are taught, a little bit about EP, uh, and we spent a lot of time talking about NPTEL, uh, the outreach programs of IIT Madras, and the BS degrees. Uh, a, a little bit of a

Speaker 56:06 gap here, uh, the CODE-

Andrew Thangaraj 56:08 Yeah, umbrella.

Speaker 56:09 Umbrella-

Andrew Thangaraj 56:10 Sure

Speaker 56:10 ... is broader than just the BS?

Andrew Thangaraj 56:11 Yes, yes. So, so what IITM did aft- when they saw NPTEL, BS, and all these things coming together is, all of these things were put into the Center for Outreach and Digital Education. Now, CODE today handles everything that is aimed at people outside of campus. Like, if a faculty member wants to organize a conference, they do it through CODE. So everything, everything like that. I- i- in fact, CODE now does a lot of executive education. We do an MTech program. It's called the Web MTech program, uh, for working professionals mainly. So that's also quite popular. A lot of people do it. I mean, over 1,000 people are there [chuckles] in the program now. It's, it's not as large as the BS program. It's, uh, it's more specialized. It's for people who are working. Uh, we do that. Uh, a lot of executive education programs, which are aimed at certificate programs, three months, six months, like that, uh, but aimed at people who are working and just want to, you know, make the knowledge about, let's say, the EV vehicles, electric vehicle space better, or additive manufacturing, they want to learn about that. They want to learn about quantum computing. So basically, they want to learn about deep tech. Most edtechs don't do deep tech, right?

Speaker 57:17 Right.

Andrew Thangaraj 57:18 So if you want deep tech upgradation in your knowledge-

Speaker 57:21 Yeah

Andrew Thangaraj 57:21 ... CODE offers those courses. Amazing courses we have.

Speaker 57:24 So if you're in a company, and you need to sort of upskill-

Andrew Thangaraj 57:27 Yeah

Speaker 57:27 ... in one particular-

Andrew Thangaraj 57:28 Yeah.

Speaker 57:29 And it's not just a weekend course, it's a proper-

Andrew Thangaraj 57:31 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 57:31 ... you need a few weeks.

Andrew Thangaraj 57:32 We can even do, uh, you know, bespoke content. You know, if company comes in and says, "I need eng... I have engineers of this, this, this type. I want them to be trained in this, this, these areas," we can put together a group of faculty who will put a courses, put courses for them. So we have done that.

Speaker 57:47 Okay, Professor, this was

Speaker 57:48 great. I have one very silly question, which we get asked all the time.

Andrew Thangaraj 57:50 [chuckles]

Speaker 57:50 I have no idea what the answer is. What is the difference between BS and BSc?

Andrew Thangaraj 57:55 [laughing] BSc is like a three-year degree.

Speaker 57:59 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 57:59 BS is a four-year degree.

Speaker 58:01 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:01 So a pretty simple answer.

Speaker 58:02 But both expand-

Andrew Thangaraj 58:04 Are Bachelor of Science, yeah.

Speaker 58:05 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:06 In the degree certificate, it'll say Bachelor of Science (BSc) , Bachelor of Science (BS) .

Speaker 58:11 Okay.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:12 [chuckles] So that's the difference.

Speaker 58:13 Okay. Oh, so the BS, uh, degree students can exit at diploma, at BSc, and BS?

Andrew Thangaraj 58:22 BS, yes.

Speaker 58:22 Okay, Professor, thank you so much.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:23 Okay, thank you.

Speaker 58:24 This was great. I know you're very busy, and so sorry to occupy your morning.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:28 Mm.

Speaker 58:28 Uh, folks, if you want to learn more about Professor Andrew's work, please visit his website. Uh, the CODE programs, uh, the BS programs have their own websites, uh, so please do check them out. Thank you for watching. Uh, save, subscribe, share, do all of those things, leave some comments. Thank you so much.

Andrew Thangaraj 58:47 Take care.

Speaker 58:48 Like, share, subscribe, save. All yours. [chuckles] Thank you. [outtro jingle]