Best Place To BuildThis Dean left the US to build IITM's entrepreneurial future | Prof Ashwin Mahalingam | BP2B S2E13
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
50 min read · 9,947 words- 0:00 – 1:00
Intro
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
I was trying to get students to call me by my first name, so they would say, uh, "Okay, sir." I said, "It's not sir, it's Ashwin." And they'd say, "Yes, Ashwin, sir." [laughing] Today, I think a civil engineer is someone who goes beyond just working with steel and concrete. So a big thrust in civil engineering today is really saving the planet. A lot of people say, "What is the scope for civil engineering?" It's a typical concern that- Yeah ... particularly parents have. Why do large infrastructure projects not get built on time and on budget? And I learned very quickly that it had nothing to do with the engineering. Hey, there are these guys called Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who just stayed in the same dorm, and they've started this company called Google. And our head of the department came and said, "Look at that guy. He's just selling soap." I even had a call from an irate parent once, saying, "You are, uh, you know, purpose- Ruining my child. [chuckles] Uh, exactly. It's exactly what that person said. Hi, this is Amrit. We are at IIT Madras, my alma mater, and India's top university for people who like to build. We are here to meet some builders, ask them: What
- 1:00 – 1:25
Welcome to the Best Place to Build
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
are you building? What does it take to build? And what makes IIT Madras the best place to build? [upbeat music]
- 1:25 – 5:50
Introducing Prof Ashwin Mahalingam
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Hello, and welcome to The Best Place to Build podcast. Today, we are sitting with Professor Ashwin Mahalingam, who's an alumnus from the batch of '98. Uh, he was a lit sec in Godav, uh, but currently a professor in the Civil Engineering Department, and the Dean of Alumni and Corporate Relations, ACR. Uh, we'll learn a little bit about what that is. Professor, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Amrit. Pleasure to be here. Um, Professor, I want to start by just tracing your career a little bit. I know that you were studying here from '94 to '98. Uh, were you a civil engineering student? I was, uh, did a BTech in Civil Engineering from '94 to '98. Uh, when I was here, uh, uh, my, my life at IIT was a mix of academics, but also literary and, uh, you know, athletic pursuits. I played a little bit of tennis. I used to quiz quite a bit. Uh, it was a very enjoyable time. After I graduated, I went to Stanford. Um, I had the opportunity to do a master's in a field of civil engineering called construction management. Okay. A lot of civil engineering is about designing things, buildings and bridges, and airports, and things like that. Construction management is all about getting them built, so it's an interesting field that's at the intersection of technical engineering, but also requires you to understand finance, contracting, how to deal with people. So it's a little bit of a engineering-meets-management- MBA ... kind of program. Uh, right. And after that, I actually... So I- at Stanford in, uh... if you were in the, in the Bay Area in the late '90s, uh, you could not be- you could not avoid the, uh, being, being bitten by the dot-com bug, right? So everybody was starting up companies. The people were coming up with these valuations that were astronomical. And at Stanford, I stayed in this dorm, and people said, "Hey, there are these guys called Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who just stayed in the same dorm, and they've started this company called Google." And the next thing we knew, it- Blew up ... this was a, uh- '98? They'd already finished by then, so they'd already started up. But there were still these stories about, "These guys are in the same student accommodation that you're in." So the thinking was, "These guys can start a company. I mean, they use the same toilets, they eat at the same cafeterias, then why not us?" Mm. So, uh, as soon as I graduated, I helped start up a company in Silicon Valley. Oh, okay. Um, and it was, uh, uh, I guess it was... People call it the sharing economy now, and it was probably the sharing economy twenty years before it was time. Uh, so this was a company that essentially said, "If you're a construction firm and you have equipment that you're not using, can we find a marketplace where you can rent it to other construction companies?" and things like that. Uh, so it was going well, uh, but unfortunately, two things happened. We had the, the dot-com bust, uh, and then also we had 9/11, where the airplanes sort of crashed into the World Trade Center. And so the bottom of the market fell out. Investors lost confidence because the world was a very uncertain place. Mm. And we needed to raise a round of funding, which we were unable to do, so we did a fire sale to another company. Uh, so we got acquired, uh, but then I ended up leaving the company and was wondering what to do when my advisor at Stanford called me and said: "You wrote a piece of code when you were here. It doesn't seem to work, and no one else [chuckles] seems to know how to fix it, so can you come back?" So I went back to Stanford, and, uh, in his words, I ended up staying too long, and they made a, a professor out of me, so I ended up doing a PhD. And towards the end of my PhD, the then director of IIT Madras, Professor Ananth, and a team had come to the US and were meeting a bunch of people. And they painted a wonderful picture of how IIT Madras could be a place where you could really do meaningful and cutting-edge research. So I essentially, in early 2006, just bought myself a one-way ticket and ended up flying back from San Francisco to Chennai, and I've been here, uh, ever since as a professor in, uh, civil engineering. I remember that time. I think, uh, I was here on campus, and you were teaching some of my friends, so you were a young faculty back then, uh, who had just come back and had a startup in the US, and- That's right, yeah ... It was, uh- It was very exuberant. I was trying to get students to call me by my first name, so they would say, uh, "Okay, sir." I said, "It's not sir, it's Ashwin." And they'd say, "Yes, Ashwin, sir." [laughing] So, yeah, so those, those were fun times. Yeah. Professor, this is very interesting. Um, can I ask you, just for my understanding in, uh, civil engineering, you mentioned
- 5:50 – 12:20
What is Civil Engineering?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
it briefly, but civil engineering as a discipline, what are all the things that contain civil engineering? Yeah. So that's actually, uh, you know, becoming a difficult question to answer. Earlier, we had these silos where we would say, civil engineering contains this, and mechanical engineering contains this, but now the boundaries are blurring.... I think a long time ago, there were two kinds of engineering. There was military engineering, and, uh, which was essentially what the army did. Uh, and then there was everything else that was non-military, and that was called civil engineering. And in those days, because electrical and electronic technology had not really evolved and computers were not even there, and we're talking about decades ago, civil engineering was really more about building physical assets. So these could be houses, these could be, uh, you know, factories, these could be dams, these could be bridges, airports, railways, things like this. Um, and a lot of civil engineering at the time was brick and mortar. So essentially, you use materials, you put them together, and you built a structure. And because technology had not really evolved, building was actually quite easy. Designing was the difficult part, so people spent a lot of time figuring out the mathematics behind, "How do I design a slab that will not break?" and things like this. But over a period of time, the field has evolved. Today, if you look at a, at a building, for instance, there's quite a lot of mechanical and electrical equipment in a building. So you have, uh, you know, building management systems that monitor temperature, uh, you know, you automate your air conditioning systems. There's all kinds of smart lighting that's available. So anything that you build now is a composition of materials, but also electrical, mechanical, communication kinds of equipment. So civil engineering today is a lot more complex. Uh, it involves creating assets that impact people's lives, um, but it involves creating assets that bring together a multitude of disciplines. Um, and also one of the things that people don't really realize, because it impacts people's lives, the people side of, uh, of the equation is something that's part and parcel of civil engineering. So if you want to build a water treatment plant, for instance, it's a very nice thing to do, because you can treat wastewater and bring out fresh water, but the local community is probably going to be unhappy that you're doing it close to where they stay, because they're going to be worried about-
- SPSpeaker
...
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Exactly, right. So you've got to figure out, as a civil engineer, how do you also convey the benefits? How do you take people along? So there's a lot of social engineering that comes into, into civil engineering. So today, I think a civil engineer is someone who goes beyond just working with steel and concrete. Someone who obviously understands steel and concrete, but also understands a little bit of computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, social engineering, uh, principles of finance. You know, when I did my PhD, I, I, I was looking at, why do large infrastructure projects not get built on time and on budget?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
And I learned very quickly that it had nothing to do with the engineering. We know how to design these things. It's just that in the process of getting built, some delays happen. Because of that, somebody loses money. Um, and that then sets into motion a series of events that lead to delays on projects and things like this.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
So understanding how finances on a project work, understanding how contracts work, understanding how people respond to incentives, all of these are part and parcel of civil engineering. So to me, when I joined civil engineering at IIT Madras, the only thing in my mind was, uh, these bridges-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... that would span over rivers. You know, these, these drawings that little children draw with mountains in the background, and this river, and all of that. Um, uh, and that's sort of what I thought I was going to build. But as my journey has sort of expanded, I've realized that this is, uh, it's a melting pot of interesting perspectives, and it allows you to develop some expertise in varieties of engineering discipline, management disciplines, sociological disciplines, and things like this. And just to sort of conclude with where the field is going today, I think we all realize that, uh, the planet is in a bit of a crisis from a sustainability perspective, right? So everyone has heard about global warming and how global temperatures are rising, and that's leading to all kinds of uncertainties in weather patterns, and that's affecting people, because you have unseasonal floods, and droughts, and things like this. So you wonder, why is this happening? And fingers are now being pointed towards the civil engineering profession, because the process of building all of these things that we're building across the world is leading to the emission of greenhouse gases that are exacerbating global warming. So civil engineers have been responsible for where we are today, and civil engineers, therefore, have the responsibility of providing solutions-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... to where we are today. So a big trust in civil engineering today is really saving the planet, okay? And that, again, is, is fascinating, because you've got to understand technically what you can do. But you've also got to understand sociologically, how do you bring people along? From a policy perspective, how do you put in the right policies that encourage people to build in a certain way, that will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that you emit, and things like that. So again, my life is super interesting. I speak to engineers, I speak to people, I speak to, you know, bureaucrats, politicians, I speak to financiers, and all of them have a role to play in the kind of work that we do to make the planet a greener and safer place to live.
- SPSpeaker
Professor, let me try and see if I understood this. Uh, so you started by saying that, yes, buildings and bridges-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep
- SPSpeaker
... but buildings and bridges have become more and more complicated as time has evolved. Bu- buildings today, for example, have electrical systems, mechanical systems-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep
- SPSpeaker
... all kinds of systems. It's not just doing the load diagram, and it's not just-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep
- SPSpeaker
... selecting the material. Uh, but you're also saying that in constructing these massive projects, there's a lot of other things that come in, not just the engineering.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
The people aspect, project management, finance, dealing with the local community, especially i- the example you gave with the wastewater treatment plant.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, and the last thing you said was that there is, uh, uh, uh, uh, a sort of the, the, the latest in civil engineering is to do with: How do we do all these things sustainably?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
Did I oversimplify it?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Um, well, I think you've... If you had to-... you know, compartmentalize it into a 30-second [chuckles] module, I think you did a fantastic job. But yeah, uh, the simple point being that civil engineering is, is diverse,
- 12:20 – 13:13
What’s the scope of Civil Engineering?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
it's interesting, and it's definitely an area... I know, I talk to people, a lot of people say, "What is the scope for civil engineering?" It's a typical concern that-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... particularly parents have, right? When, when our incoming class of civil engineering undergraduates come in, got a bunch of parents saying, "What is the scope?" And one of the things we say is, the scope is, is, uh, a- a- and the, the conception is that the scope is shrinking a little bit because, you know, building is, is not as, as sexy as, for instance, AI and all of these other things that are coming up. Uh, but if anything, it's the contrary, right? There is so much more that humanity needs, humanity needs to build physically, and the impact of that on climate, on people, et cetera, are going to be so important that the scope of civil engineering is widening, to a point where many of these disparate fields are actually merging.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
So, you know, somebody asked me, "You know, what do you mean they're merging, right? What's the connection between
- 13:13 – 16:50
The connection between AI & Civil Engineering
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
AI, which we think is the hottest, newest thing on the block, and civil engineering, which is probably the oldest engineering discipline, right?" Because people built pyramids and whatever-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... uh, you know, centuries, millennia ago. Uh, and what's happening is we are... we're trying to sort of use technologies like AI to, uh, make our lives easier as civil engineers. So for instance, I'm out building something somewhere in rural India, and I have no way to understand whether my project is going on schedule or not, when do I ship the next shipment of materials, and things like this. Now, today, I can fly a drone over the project, I can take some images, I can use AI to process those images, and sort of literally at the click of a button, understand how my project is doing and what needs to be done, if anything-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... to push the project along. So the fact that new technologies are emerging are enhancing civil engineering, not restricting-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... its scope. So to me, yeah, civil engineering is something that's, uh, there, there's, there's a great future ahead for, uh, civil engineers, provided you take this interdisciplinary perspective.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right? If you spend four years or whatever, just figuring out how to design with, uh, reinforced concrete, I think those days are past.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right? I think you really need to figure out how to get things done.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Um, right.
- SPSpeaker
Or unless you're mean- building a 3D printer for reinforced concrete or something like it.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Correct. And so that's, again, an interesting mixture of robotics and material science for a civil engineering application, and I think that's super cool as well. And so we've got people trying to figure out: how do you create material that will flow in a 3D printer, but still give you the kind of strength that you need in a regular building? How do you sort of put in enough robotics into these printers to print accurately? Uh, because, again, these structures need to be dimensionally perfect, and things like this. So the traditional civil engineer would never be able to do it, but the new civil engineer, who understands a little bit of instrumentation, embedded systems, material science, and traditional civil engineering, would be someone who comes in and develops this kind of a robotic 3D printer, which is going to save, uh, a lot of time, money, and have, uh, considerable impact. Because one of the big problems today is you don't have enough people on construction sites.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Uh, right? So every construction site is complaining, saying, "We can't find enough people to do the work."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
And that's because of a mult- multitude of reasons. One is there's so much construction happening, the people, of course, are distributed. Second is, in the old days, maybe people didn't have an option, and they had to go and work, do hard physical labor. Today, they do. There are a lot of other jobs that people can do that require less physical effort, and a lot of people gravitate towards that. But at the end of the day, you've got to build something, you don't have enough people. How do you solve that problem? You have to automate. 3D printing is one way-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... in which you automate. So if you can then bring that knowledge of civil, mechanical, electrical, computer science, all of that together, and develop these devices, then you're doing the world a huge service.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right? And, and that's all part of civil engineering, as far I'm concerned.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I was listening to some, uh, startup pitches in the civil engineering side. Of course, 3D printing in civil engineering-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... is a big hot topic. I was listening to a pitch about, uh, using drones to paint buildings.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
It's fascinating.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, especially a really tall building or-
- 16:50 – 25:45
Prof Ashwin’s entrepreneurial journey & thoughts
- SPSpeaker
the US.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep.
- SPSpeaker
Um, o- obviously, you were not a student entrepreneur here when you were here.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, but since you've joined, I know that, uh, you were faculty advisor in CTIDES-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yep
- SPSpeaker
... which is the entrepreneurship cell.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
That's right.
- SPSpeaker
I don't know if it's still called that.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
No, we changed the name at some point because, uh, CTIDES was a mouthful. I think it stood for Center for Technology, Innovation, Development, and Entrepreneurship Support. So even the people who are running CTIDES sometimes forgot what-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... it stood for, and so we figured we've got to go with something simple. So we just changed the name to ECell.
- SPSpeaker
ECell.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Maybe about a decade ago or, um, uh, yeah, seven, eight years ago. I can't quite remember, but it's the same.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So the entrepreneurship cell you were heading, you were a fac- faculty advisor for the entrepreneurship cell when Tarun Mehta was the student head.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
That's right. That's... Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, I think that was 15 years ago.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, so from your own entrepreneurship experience to when you were the first, uh, a faculty advisor for student entrepreneurship on campus, to now-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... how has that journey been? How have things changed?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah, so, uh, you know, if I, if I go back and start from when I was a student at IIT Madras, I don't think we even knew that entrepreneurship was a word. [chuckles] Okay, I, I, I think, you know, even though we prepared for the GRE and we went through these word lists and things like that, I don't think people even knew that such a thing existed. Um, so the, my first brush with entrepreneurship was, of course, when I went to the US, and, you know, I landed at Stanford, and suddenly everyone was talking about startups and things like this, and I reluctantly-... poked my head in to understand what was happening, and of course, it's a, it's an amazing world. It's an exciting world, particularly if you're a young student and things like that. Um, when I came back to IIT Madras, entrepreneurship was still not a thing, but there were a few pockets of entrepreneurship on campus. So the CTides thing was there. It was actually housed in the Department of Management Studies. It was sort of, um, you know, I think somewhere in the corner of one wing or whatever it is. There were a few people who were trying to start up. Um, and this was a handful, I think, out of however many thousand students we had on campus at the time, probably five or six.
- SPSpeaker
Can I just say that-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... my startup was one of those.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Oh, you were one of those? Okay, fantastic. And my impression, by and large, was people were smart, people were motivated, but they were clueless in terms of-
- 25:45 – 31:30
The statistical reality of entrepreneurship at IITM
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
student-
- SPSpeaker
Teams
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... teams that start up, uh, today. Hopefully, many of them will actually become successful startups. But, you know, that's an enormous, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... number from the time from when we started.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Um, just to give that a number, if there are 100 startups on campus, that will be about 500-odd people in their founding teams.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
That's right.
- SPSpeaker
There are about 10,000 kids on campus-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... so that's a significant, like-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... I'm doing bad math here, about 5%.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
5%, right? And, and that's therefore... And it's very doable. 5% is a, you know, it's, it's a- if you, if the goal is to say, "I want 5% of the student body to aspire to become entrepreneurs," I think that's very doable. If you start saying, "I want 75% of students to aspire to become entrepreneurs," I think that's, that's a yardstick that's very difficult to achieve. But if every year I can get a minimum of 500 students to start thinking about entrepreneurship and starting up companies, and even if some fraction of them go on to become Athers, you know, that's still, you know, that will-
- SPSpeaker
It's a huge impact.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Absolutely.
- SPSpeaker
But I want to just, uh, talk about the other 95%. Um, entrepreneurship is about building, and not every builder needs to be an entrepreneur.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Correct, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So the, the culture of building that has percolated into the campus goes well beyond these-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... 500-odd people who are starting up there.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right. Yeah, so I look at it as a funnel, and I say this now when I meet alumni, is that when I was on campus, and many of my contemporaries were on campus, or people even senior to me, we spent four years, or five years, depending on which vintage you were, uh, getting a degree at IIT Madras, and while we learnt a ton of things, we built nothing, right? There's absolutely no building. A lot of it was theory we learned. Of course, we'd do some experiments in the lab, but those are just experiments, right? You're not really building anything. So we came out never really feeling like a true engineer.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right? So we had a lot of knowledge but hadn't really built. Today, particularly with CFI, that's changed. Uh, right? You've got a space to build, and there are no barriers to building. So you can be a naval architecture/ocean engineering student, and you can go build a drone if you want, or you can be part of the Raftaar-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... race, uh, you know, racing team. So you can follow your passion, um, and, and actually build. And I think it's important, the, the journey of entrepreneurship, I think, starts with building something.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Only when you have something that is sort of worth building and has been built, can you really then talk about commercializing and things like that.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Otherwise, ideas are a dime a dozen. You can actually-
- SPSpeaker
And actually, all that, I wanted to say that in that early journey-
- 31:30 – 37:00
Is IITM really the Best Place to Build?
- SPSpeaker
IIT Madras is... I know at this place, this pod- podcast is called Best Place to Build.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Do you think we are living up to that name?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Oh, absolutely. I can't think of a better place to build. You know, as an academic, I do get invited to a number of other universities. I either go there, um, you know, to present papers and conferences, or I'm advising on some committee or whatever it is. So I've... I think I've seen a fair bit of Indian academia, and I've still- I'm still yet to see anything that comes close to, uh, I- IIT Madras, as far as the building ecosystem is, uh, is concerned. And, uh, you know, of course, people will accuse me of being biased because I am a part of IIT Madras, and I've had some role to play in setting up all of this. But I think genuinely, uh, you know, we seem to be ahead just because this is a, you know, a barrier-free environment, right? So you don't necessarily have to be a mechanical engineer to build a mechanical piece of equipment, right? Anybody can walk in. Anybody can be part of any team. You could even be a master's student or a PhD student who, like me, feels that: "Oh, when I was an undergraduate student, I never built anything. Here's a chance for me to build." So the complete lack of barriers is sort of, I think, one, s- you know, secret sauce, which I've not really seen elsewhere. And the second is the fact that people have somehow now very nicely organized into teams, and each team sort of progresses from year to year by piggybacking on-
- SPSpeaker
Previous work
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... on, on previous work, right? And so you're not constantly reinventing the wheel, because when you reinvent the wheel, in a year, you just sort of make a quick and dirty prototype. And, you know, the next year, you move on to something else. And I see a lot of this elsewhere, but here you can actually come into a mature team, and you can take the technology that has already been taken to a certain level, uh, to one or two notches, uh, you know, higher down the stream, if you will. So-
- SPSpeaker
Fair enough, Professor. You were, you were here as a student in '94 to '98.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I was here as a student from 2003 to '8. Uh, one thing that I've always admired about the student culture at IIT Madras is it's a very paid-forward kind of culture.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
There's a lot of, like... I've never had a senior who said, "I didn't get this, so you won't get it."
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's always been, "Please do better than me."
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, and there's, it, it's a sort of like, not, uh, in- v- very institutional building kind of-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
That's right. Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... process.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah. No, absolutely. I think, uh, and even now, even today, our alumni support us quite a bit, right? In terms of providing a lot of mentoring. Can you go back to the Ather story, and if you, you know, ever have a chat with Tarun, he'll tell you many touch points with alumni that, uh, you know, really made them pivot at very important times in the journey of their company. And without that kind of advice, without that direction, they may have ended up in a completely different place. Um, you know, today, when we bring alumni, one of the first things they want to see is CFI. They want to come here, they want to see some of the teams, talk to them. So this paid forward culture, I think, is, uh, is very, very important. And to some sense, that's sort of, um, uh, what this office that I'm now a part of, the Alumni and Corporate Relations office, is trying to do, right? What we're saying is we've got today, what? Ten, twelve thousand students on campus, but we've got about sixty, sixty-five thousand alumni outside in the world, and those alumni are super accomplished, right? We've got people... You know, take the top technology companies, right? People think about Google, people think about Microsoft, people think about Amazon, Walmart, whatever it is. You look at all these companies, and you look at the top leadership, you'll find an IIT Madras person there, right?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
The person who's heading engineering at, uh, OpenAI-
- SPSpeaker
OpenAI, mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... is an IIT Madras alumnus, right? So, you know, you, we can, we can sort of... And I'm not just talking about the big American companies, right? You go to the Tata Group, and you look at the top, and you'll find, uh, there are a number of executives at the top who are IIT Madras alumni. So these are fantastically accomplished people, right? And they want, uh, you know, to give back to the institute, right? And what our office therefore does is a bit of matchmaking. It's try to say, "How do we get you guys to get engaged with the institute, uh, right, so that the institute can benefit? Can you mentor teams? Can you be on advisory boards of research centers, right? Could you contribute a little bit of funding so that we could actually develop things?" CFI, for instance, is, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Alumni funded
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... alumni funded, right? So the 1981 batch was one of the batches that contributed, uh, generously. Then there was a particular individual from the '81 batch who then put a little bit more money, so we could actually build the building and things like that. So, um, I think alumni support, to me, has been very critical to us getting this building ecosystem to the point where it is today, which, in my honest view, is best-in-class in India.
- SPSpeaker
For sure. It's very hard to explain to someone, actually. Uh, when we talk to parents who are, whose kids have given JEE, and we tell them that the alumni network is very strong, uh, if they have been part of a similar alumni network-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... that is rare, uh, then they get it. But in general, they don't understand the kind of power that it brings and-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... how, how much it guides you through your entire life.... yeah, I, I don't even know how to begin explaining it-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- 37:00 – 41:00
Why is the IIT Madras tag important?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
right... So we had this thing called Sangam in Bangalore in-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... in July, where we had big IIT Madras alumni, uh, sort of gathering with talks and things like that. You go there, and first of all, you see that there are these extremely accomplished people that you can now have conversations with, right? And so you enrich yourself. But also tactically, I know situations where, uh, somebody's looking to change jobs, and there's somebody within the IIT network who sort of says, "Uh, hey, you know, these guys are actually looking for somebody with exactly your profile."
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
And because everyone's an IITan, there's a basic level of... Or everyone's an IIT Madras alumnus-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... there's already this basic level of trust built in, that, you know, you have a quick conversation and say, "You know, come on board. You're hired," right? And all of a sudden, this person goes from sort of being in a little bit of a dead-end job to now shifting towards a, you know, very exciting career trajectory, primarily because of the strength of the, of the alumni network. During COVID, for instance, right, just the fact that we had this alumni network allowed us to come together and raise funding for a lot of very important causes, oxygen cylinders for the underprivileged and things like this. So the fact that you have a network that's connected, that also all have this shared sort of sense of belonging, I think allows you to multiply many things, right? Personally, your career could take off, but also the institute, society, communities, all of these can benefit because you've got a large group of extremely accomplished people who are willing to come together only because they are tied together by this one mourn.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Right? And that, to me, is the strength of the IIT Madras alumni network. Of course, of any other alumni network as well, but we are privileged to have been in existence for-
- SPSpeaker
A little longer
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... yeah, 65 years or whatever it is today, and yeah. Um-
- SPSpeaker
But also, I think we've taken the effort to keep it engaged.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
That's right, yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
And that's very important as well, because, you know, when you finish, the last thing on your mind... Or when you're, when you finish your studies, the last thing on your mind is engaging with your alma mater, right? Because you're looking at the next step of your career. Uh, very often, as you... You know, after you graduate, you, uh, you might study a little bit more, you try to make your way upwards from a career perspective, but also you're trying to start a family. I mean, there are lots of things. You're looking at taking care of parents. So it's, I think, the institute's responsibility to go out and start engaging with people. And what I've found is, while IIT Madras may not necessarily be automatically top of mind, when IIT Madras goes and projects itself, alumni are more than willing to sort of sit, listen, understand, and see what they can do to help. So one of the privileges of being the dean is I get to go around the world meeting alumni. I never have a challenge with getting, you know, meetings with people, even though they're extremely busy. Never have a challenge, uh, in, in terms of engaging them, and it's just a question of trying to find the right fit.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Uh, but, but you're right, the institute needs to put in a little bit of work to develop that network. But it's, it's, it's like a sleeping bear in some sense, right? It's there.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, it's there.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
You just have to prod it a little bit, and lots of-
- SPSpeaker
It's there, and it's... Of course, any network is made of people, and, uh, you mentioned, uh, Seshan. Seshan, right?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Earlier, and he's such a heart of gold, like-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Absolutely
- SPSpeaker
... you just give.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
If you just say, "I need some help," he'll just give.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah. Yeah, uh, uh, Seshan's a great example of an alumnus who will personally give, and he's given both his own time, and he's also given us some money to help us with a few things. But he's also a, a fantastic cog in the network. I mean, he just knows so many people, and he's so well-respected, that, you know, we've been able to... Many of our startups have benefited because of Seshan.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Not because Seshan directly, uh, advised the startup, but he was able to connect the startup to others. And the thing is, there are many Seshans, right? And that's the beauty of the alumni network, right? If you had this one guy, and you had to scour the Earth trying to find him, that would be a challenge, right? But, uh, you know, you've, you've got... There's so much goodwill that alumni have for their alma mater, that this coming together, this networking, all of that just happens automatically.
- SPSpeaker
Fantastic. Professor, you mentioned the ACR office a couple of times. Just to formally understand, what does the office do, and, um, how is it organised,
- 41:00 – 48:07
Friend-raising, fund-raising & closing thoughts
- SPSpeaker
and what is the impact like?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah, so we are, uh, uh, you know, essentially we also call ourselves the Office of Institutional Advancement, and so our, uh, goal is to help the institute advance. We do it through, you know, two key mechanisms. Uh, we call them friend-raising and fundraising. So friend-raising is, of course, connecting with not only alumni, but also influential people who, uh, may have a stake in IIT Madras, uh, corporates and businesses that are in the larger engineering and technology space that could have some connection with IIT Madras. So we just try to engage people, uh, make them more aware of what's going on, try to find ways in which collaborations could happen. So that's one part of what we do. The other part of what we do is fundraising, because essentially a lot of entrepreneurial activity or research activity, all of that requires funding. Faculty, of course, will write grant proposals, but those are typically smaller proposals. We try to raise larger, institutional-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... sort of funding arrangements, if you will. Um, we have- we're actually organised like a, a corporate office. We have a sales team, as we call it, and they go out knocking on the doors of alumni and corporates and others, trying to sort of see if people are interested in-... in, uh, interacting with IIT Madras. Um, uh, then we have people who sort of say, "Okay, if you've actually committed to spending some time or money at IIT Madras, let me then tell you what the impact has been." So we've got what we call a donor stewardship team. Uh, we do our own events, uh, so we have sort of a marketing team as well, that sort of tries to, um, uh, uh, tries to broadcast the image of IIT Madras to get more people interested in the story, uh, you know, things like that. So, uh, but, but these are... And of course, there's, there's a big back end that works towards if somebody wants to institute a scholarship for a deserving student, making sure that, uh, that scholarship is implemented on a, on an annual basis, and things like this, right? So there's a sort of a more mundane deployment perspective that we have. But yeah, so it's essentially, it's, it's like running a company.
- SPSpeaker
Nice. Yeah. Is... How old is the office? Like, when was it set up?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
So the Office of Institutional Advancement is probably about maybe close to about 20 years old.
- SPSpeaker
20 years.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
But, uh, the... in its current incarnation, uh, with a dean and, uh, you know, this kind of structure, the genesis was about 12, uh, 13 years ago. So Professor Nagarajan was the first Dean of Alumni and Corporate Relations, and he set the office up. Um, and he sort of developed it for about six years. Mahesh Panchagnula came in after that and did another six years, and now I've been here for a year. So 13 years in this avatar, probably another decade, um, you know, in its sort of from its infancy to where it is today.
- SPSpeaker
And already, I think, uh, from what I have understood, in terms of alumni engagement and alumni funds coming to the institute, um, we are leading in the numbers by quite a significant margin there.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, uh, in terms of alumni engagement, I think definitely. In terms of funding, I think there are a few other universities, IISC Bangalore, IIT Bombay, that attract, uh, you know, similar quantum. We may be a little bit ahead, but, uh, not really. Uh-
- SPSpeaker
Sure, these things go up and down.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah, go up and down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but certainly in terms of engagement, which I think is a more important metric, if you just sort of look at the number of alumni that you touch, uh, you know, I would expect that we're probably a little bit ahead.
- SPSpeaker
Nice. Professor, thank you so much. I think I have... I, I wanted to talk to you about three broad lines. One is civil engineering-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... what is it like? And I wanted to talk to you about student entrepreneurship, and I wanted to talk to you about the ACR office. So my checklist is done. Professor, is there anything else you want to talk to us about?
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah, maybe just one other thing, and this is because I know there are a lot of, uh, people listening who are probably aspiring to be, um, students at universities, perhaps at IIT, and also people who are probably already students at universities. And I think one of the questions that I never really thought about was, how... what's the best way to spend, um, you know, four years or five years, or whatever it is, on campus? And I think in hindsight, I would say the best way of doing, of sort of spending your time as a student at an IIT or at any other university, I think you should do a mix of things. Uh, right? I think the world is a changing place, and, uh, you need to have certain technical skills, so you need to spend some time, uh, you know, trying to upgrade your knowledge on a particular aspect. It could be mathematics, it could be civil engineering, whatever. But I think it's also important to build, uh, you know, a bunch of societal skills: the ability to speak, the ability to think critically, and things like this. And very often, those come from other avenues. Those could come from playing a sport, being on a team. Those could come from... In those days, I used to do a lot of quizzing and going to very-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, you mentioned to me you were the Lone Wolf winner.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yes. Uh, still the highlight of my, of my entire life [chuckles] is winning the Lone Wolf quiz at IIT Madras. Uh, so, uh, there's a... It's one of these things that you only learn about in the wee hours of the morning, but, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Just for the audience, the Lone Wolf quiz happens in Saarang. It's a quiz that starts at midnight, and obviously, it's a Lone Wolf quiz. Each person is one. It takes a lot of effort to get there, and then you're quizzing from 1 to maybe 12 in the night to 6 in the morning.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So there are very few winners, because every year there's obviously one winner, and [chuckles] then that's why we were telling-
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
Once upon a time, it was actually an open quiz, which meant-
- SPSpeaker
Okay
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... you didn't even have to be a college student.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
And so the winner of the Lone Wolf quiz could legitimately claim that they were the, the best-
- SPSpeaker
Top
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
... quizzer in India. Right. Now, by the time I came in, it wasn't quite as open, but, uh, still a prestigious quiz. But the point is, you know, uh, by virtue of quizzing and things like that, I used to sort of go all over the country to these cultural festivals. You meet, you meet different kinds of people, you learn how to negotiate and things like this. And I think those skills, the, the, the fact that you have some technical knowledge, but you also have these other kinds of, you know, I don't know, societal skills or business skills, and so on, is the potent combination that I think will take people forward. Um, so I think, first of all, if people were looking at, "How do I invest the next two years, or three years, or four years of life in college?" and things like that, then I would think about: can you mix it up a little bit? Can you do technical stuff? Can you also do other kinds of stuff? And I think places like CFI, you know, actually bring all of that together. Uh, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- AMAshwin Mahalingam
You, you can, you, you can, you can sort of... Not only can you work on building something, but you can also work on writing a business plan, pitching it to an investor, getting rebuffed, getting rejected, coming back, going back to the drawing board, iterating, things like this. So I think it's really important to find a home where you can do all of these things together and not be a one-trick, uh, one-trick pony. I think it's gonna be very important as the world moves forward, and really no better place to do it, I feel, than IIT Madras and the building ecosystem we have here.
Episode duration: 48:08
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