Mar 28

Mar 28 Why IIT graduates become CEOs of IBM and other Global Companies

By Ravi Rao, Professor of Computer Science, Fairleigh Dickinson U*

On April 6, 2020, Arvind Krishna, my mate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and a friend, will take over as the Chief Executive Officer of International Business Machines, the global American computer company with a market value of $96 billion. On January 31, after the announcement of Krishna’s new role, the stock rose 5% as investors welcomed the decision by the company’s board of directors.

Like IBM’s investors, I expect Arvind will be a good leader for IBM. I first met him in 1980 when he began studying for a bachelor’s degree at IIT, Kanpur. I was a year senior to him in the electrical engineering program, renowned in India and around the world. Arvind and I embarked on our professional journeys in the same city, more precisely in Kalyanpur, which was then an isolated rural suburb of Kanpur. For the four years we overlapped, we stayed in the same residence halls on the IIT campus. The campus, spread over 1,000 acres, is a collection of buildings which house classrooms, laboratories, and residence halls, amidst well-maintained flower gardens and trees.

IIT’s produce world class engineers

As students of an IIT, which are now globally recognized for producing top quality engineers, we were humbled yet inspired by the courses and the professors. The genius of the IIT system is that it harvests the intellectual talent of students from ordinary backgrounds and propels them to great heights. Being admitted to an IIT, is like standing in front of Mount Everest and realizing that one day, after much work and struggle, you will reach the top. There is no legacy admission of kids of wealthy parents or bribing of officials to get in through the back door. This greatly reinforces in the students the belief that talent and effort matter more than your family wealth and connections.

Right from the first week, students had to study up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week to keep pace with the coursework. The work was a mix of reading and assimilating theory from textbooks and solving problems, combined with working in the laboratories. We started with learning to use a saw and woodworking tools, and moved on to working with lathes, milling machines, arc welding, and pouring molten metal into molds. This part of our core curriculum gave us a strong base in manufacturing technologies.

The facilities and resources available at IIT Kanpur were excellent for the undergraduate education we were receiving, especially when compared to other colleges in India and most developing countries. There were occasional glitches, including power failures. One time, the cable supplying power to the campus was stolen, resulting in a loss of power for a week! That was during the final exams. Therefore, we studied under candle-light.

Demanding but inspiring teachers

The course work and teachers instill an ability to grapple with difficult practical problems and make students quickly realized that most real-world technological challenges have no easy answers. Our attitude was never to complain about the course load or the teachers. We saw the intense and long hours of study as a challenge to be dealt with. This is an important habit which was a big help later in our professional careers.

As students, we learned a great deal from our teachers, some of whom were leading global experts in their fields. The core courses were taught by the best faculty and, in contrast to U.S. universities, not by graduate students preoccupied with finishing their Ph.D.s. My introductory mathematics course, for instance, was taught by Professor J.N. Kapur, the head of the department and one of India’s leading mathematicians. Professor P.R.K. Rao, who taught Communications Theory, covered the course material at a very fast pace, reaching graduate level concepts in an introductory undergraduate course.

Professor K.R. Sarma, who taught Circuit Theory, was feared by students for his tough exams, since he gave an average grade of 10 out of 100. Nevertheless, he was a brilliant teacher and no textbook could ever explain ideas as clearly as he did. We enjoyed his teaching and accepted the tough exams as a learning experience. The IIT education system never conditioned us to expect high points in examinations as is becoming prevalent in the U.S. Fortunately, we were graded on a curve, so everything evened out at the end and we emerged with our egos intact! This is one of the defining characteristics of an IIT education.

Looking back, the teaching at IIT Kanpur was truly world class – something I appreciated only after leaving India and comparing it with the top engineering universities in the United States. We also learned a great deal from our fellow students, most of whom were sharp, curious, driven, and helpful.

Relaxing with rock n roll and samosas

Taking a break from my studies, I would join some other students, chatting and relaxing while listening to rock and roll music, played on a cassette recorder. One favorite was the Pink Floyd album “Another Brick in the Wall,” which had just been released in 1979. It had provocative lyrics that include “We don’t need no education, … Teacher, leave those kids alone”. Other bands we enjoyed included the Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Deep Purple and Jethro Tull.

At times, in the middle of the night, students would spontaneously gather in the hallways of the residential buildings to stage dance parties. The dancing was a mix of Bollywood gestures, twist and bhangra, the Punjabi folk dance. Energy and enthusiasm filled the air. The music and the dancing also enabled us to get to know our classmates better.

A few times a week, tired of eating the bland dal, vegetables, and rotis served in the IIT residence halls, we bicycled over to nearby dhabas. Found in most parts of India, they are open-air roadside shacks with just a tarp roof, selling freshly prepared food, hot tea, and cold beverages stored in iceboxes. Their regular customers are truck, taxi and rickshaw drivers, taking a break from their work.

The dhabas had no menus and the prices were very cheap, about Rs.10 (or about $1 at the exchange rate prevalent in the early 1980’s) for a full meal topped by cups of hot chai. We sat on a cot made of coir rope, which sunk with our weight, while eating food from plates laid out on a wooden plank, which serves as a dining table. Over samosas, dal fry, tandoori roti, and several cups of chai, we exchanged stories about our professors, courses, and fellow students. Like all Indians and other South Asians, we argued about social, political, economic and career issues as well as whether Sunil Gavaskar or Kapil Dev was a better captain of the Indian cricket team. Despite the heated arguments, when we got back on our bicycles and headed back to campus, we were friends again.

Since the nearest movie theater was an hour away and there was no internet/streaming in those days, we would watch films screened inside our largest lecture hall, the cigarette smoke-filled L-7 room. There were two weekly screenings of popular Bollywood films starring Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini and other actors. But rather than the heroes, we were fascinated by the dialogues of the villains, such as Ajit, Amjad Khan and Pran, which were memorized and used in our conversations and arguments.

Ambitious and motivated to succeed

IITs admit less than 1% of applicants, screened through two stages of rigorous admission exams. In 2019, the 23 IITs admitted about 11,200 students, from among more than 1.3 million who take the first exam. So those who get in have good work habits, are highly motivated to succeed and very competitive, including with each other for the top grades in a class. Yet on campus most of us were civil to each other and many became, and continue to be, my friends. While competing with each other, we recognized and respected each other’s talents even if we were in the same class for a course. We also offered encouragement and support, including when one of us got a bad grade in a course or had some personal problems.

Several graduates of IIT Kanpur have achieved major success around the globe as managers, technologists, company founders, teachers and in other professions. In management, in addition to Arvind, other chief executives include Narayan Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, the Indian information technology (IT) company with a market value of $33 billion; Pradeep Sindhu, founder of Juniper Networks, a U.S. based IT networks supplier with a market value of $7 billion; Rakesh Gangwal, former CEO of U.S. Airways and co-founder of IndiGo Airlines, India’s largest discount airways; and Dheeraj Panday, founder of Nutanix, a cloud-based IT services company with a market value of $3.3 billion.

About once every summer, I join several alumni of IIT Kanpur living in the New York area for a family picnic at one of our homes. A recurring and enjoyable part of the gathering is a round of mutual roasting, where we laugh at ourselves as we recall our mistakes, funny incidents, and social errors while we lived on the campus. This also serves as a reminder that nobody is infallible and that all crises in life are learning opportunities and, in retrospect, often humorous. In fact, the greater our stumbles, the more enjoyable is its recounting at our picnics.

After graduating from IIT Kanpur in 1984, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A year later, Arvind also came to the U.S. to do his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. He then joined IBM and quickly rose through the management ranks. Recently he built and led many of IBM's data-related businesses and managed its systems and technology group’s development and manufacturing. Having seen his technical and personal skills on the IIT campus, I am confident that Arvind will motivate and lead IBM’s employees to a successful future.