IIT alumni conference in Chennai from Friday

Chennai, Dec 17: PanIIT 2008, the three-day global conference of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni, will begin at IIT Madras here Friday.

Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar, management guru C.K. Prahalad, economist Raghuram Rajan, three Tata Group CEOs - B. Muthuraman (Tata Steel), S. Ramadorai (Tata Consultancy Services) and Ravi Kant (Tata Motors) - along with Home Minister P. Chidambaram will be among the participants.

PanIIT is the umbrella organisation of all the IITs, and is partnered by the Indian Brand Equity Fund (IBEF), an organisation set up by the government and now managed by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for the promotion of Indian brands abroad.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will deliver the inaugural address from New Delhi. He will also release a study on the impact that IIT graduates have made across the globe.

According to the study, one in every 100 IIT alumni has started his or her own company with over 40 percent of them being serial entrepreneurs. Two-thirds of the companies founded are in India.

As much as 54 percent of the top 500 Indian companies have at least one IIT alumnus on their board.

However, many IIT alumni also have management degrees, and which institution - the IIT concerned or the management school - claims credit for their business achievements remains debatable.

The event is expected to attract around 3,000 participants.

--IANS