IIT and IIM grads take AI roles as startups surge
Even with India's startup scene booming, more IIT and IIM graduates are choosing steady AI-adjacent jobs instead of founding new companies.
This year, only 79 IIT and 20 IIM grads started tech startups between January and August, a sharp drop from last year's numbers (307 from IITs and 71 from IIMs).
Meanwhile, the overall number of new tech startups actually jumped to 6,353 in the same period.
IIT founders present in 6,147 startups
AI and no-code tools have made starting up easier than ever, but many grads are leaning toward job security because of economic uncertainty and layoffs.
According to Tracxn's Neha Singh, IIT alumni continue to account for a substantially larger share of startup founders than IIM alumni, which is consistent with the larger IIT alumni base and the strong engineering and deep-tech orientation of many technology startups.
The technical founders have the tendency to initiate ventures early, often complemented by business expertise from IIM graduates or other professionals as companies scale, and 6,147 tech startups still have at least one IIT grad as a founder, while 2,102 have an IIM founder on board.