Prof. Satya Chakravarthy| "Takes off like a drone, flies like a plane"| Ep. 7 | IIT Madras

The Agnikul 3D printed rocket packs more, more technology than the largest of the rockets. In my view, the universal principle is follow your heart. In, in good time, we will actually get Hyperloop to actually do Chennai, Bangalore in 15 to 20 minutes. We build the shortest winged eVTOLs in the world, so that we will be able to land in highly tight spaces, and pick you up from where you are, take you to where you want to go. So we are, we are looking at first commercial flights happening sometime in 2026. [upbeat music]

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. This is the Best Place to Build podcast. Today, we are with Dr. Satya Chakravarthy. He's a professor at IIT Madras in Aeronautical Department. Uh, he's also a co-founder in multiple companies, including The ePlane Company, and we'll talk about it a lot today. He's the head of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development at IIT Madras. Welcome, Professor Satya. Uh, good morning, and, uh, before anything, I want to know... I mean, I think we should start from the very beginning, and you were a student at IIT Madras, right? Which years were you here? How was insti like back then? And, uh, most, uh, interesting to me would be to know if insti lingo was still a thing then, and how did it sound like?

Well, yeah, I was, uh, here as a BTech student, uh, in aerospace, uh, from 1987 to 1991. I was in, uh, Alak, is the hostel in which I was. Um, insti lingo was huge, uh, back then when compared to what I can see now, uh, to the extent I can interact with students, but students won't talk the lingo to me. [chuckles] So I think the insti was, like, far more laid back when compared to what it is today.

Did you have, uh, the culture of giving nicknames? Did you have a nickname?

I did. I do- I still do. I still do carry the nickname.

Can I... May I ask?

Yeah, it is, it's, it's a, it's a very nice nickname to have. It's, it's... I, I was called Mama.

You were called Mama. And is there a funda behind it?

Um, maybe I was actually a bit bigger than other people.

Ah, okay. [chuckles] Nice. Damn cool. Um, when you say insti was more laid back, uh, what, what do you mean? Like, was there lesser academic pressure? Was there less... I, I don't know what that means.

We did not feel academic pressure as such. Um, but, uh, uh, academics was difficult. Uh, we had to, we- particularly in aero. Aero is actually an extremely difficult branch to be in, uh, it- while you are a student, but you really enjoy what you're doing once you get out of there, um, and so on. Because you have to get down to things like, uh, some fourth-order partial differential equations and all of those sets. It's, it's highly mathematical now. So we enjoyed doing that, but, uh, they, they will, they will give you assignments. You have to keep beyond the toes and stuff, but it was not exactly like pressure, it was just work. And, uh, uh, professors were actually a lot more laid back, uh, as I could see. Um, they were a lot more approachable back then, or at least we- you don't see students approaching us as much [chuckles] today. I don't know why, and so on. Yeah. So there is, there is, uh, de- definitely, uh, something a bit more personal back then when compared to a bit more impersonal these days.