Month: December 2018

Smartphone App to Aid Smoking Cessation

Smartphone applications in the present times are the popular source of information on market intelligence. In the last decade, these gadgets have been revolutionizing the consumer world by replacing our wallets and bringing services such as cabs, restaurants, shops, IoT based smart homes at our doorsteps. These are also contributing to our fitness regime. But smartphones can give a lot more insights, they can tell what we are doing at the moment, our habits and the associated health hazards. This is what researchers at IIT KGP have confirmed through their latest innovation.

A research team led by Prof. Ram Babu Roy at IIT KGP’s Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship (RMSoEE), has developed a prototype of sensor-based activity tracking kit which can monitor the activities in daily living. Further, a Smartphone-based application is under development which will analyze the tracking kit data and send alerts for an unhealthy lifestyle and suitable recommendation. The innovation is a sensor-based technology for automated recognition of addictive and depressive behaviour.

While India is reaching a critical threshold for killer diseases like cancer and depression, there is an emerging need for a shift from sick care to preventive care. This issue can be addressed at a faster rate through e-healthcare considering the inadequate availability of professional caregivers and medical practitioners.

“The scenario led us to explore the most commonly used gadget and develop the much-required technology which can be used for providing interventions in near real-time via mobile app to promote cessation from addictive habits,” remarked Saurabh Singh Thakur, a research scholar at IIT KGP RMSoEE.

The technology is capable of producing a daily activity chart based on body movements especially of the hands and predict daily functions such as eating or drinking water or behavioural tendencies such as smoking or consumption of alcohol. The application can also monitor call and message logs and internet usage on the smartphone and alert the user or the caregiver regarding cell phone usage. Prolonged usage data would indicate poor sleeping habit thus predicting possible health hazards.

“We did a pilot study over a period of time capturing data on activities of daily living with the help of a mobile app developed for android phones. The different activities captured are a marker of various physiological and psychological health. The data collected was dependent on the time of the day when it was captured thus demarcating the normal and abnormal activities. Further, data analysis is being carried out to identify various behavioral activities and patterns to do behavioural profiling of individuals. This could lead to enabling of personalized e-healthcare services through a smartphone,” said Prof. Ram Babu Roy, who is leading this innovation at IIT KGP RMSoEE.

The activity tracking kit has been developed using a 6-axis inertial sensor along with a heart rate sensor which could be worn on the wrist. A pilot study was conducted with four participants. Their hand movement pattern was recorded for around 5 minutes for smoking and non-smoking intervals each, using this kit. Preliminary analysis of the data showed that there exists a periodicity in the data during the smoking episode. During the non-smoking interval, the sensor signals are random and do not exhibit such periodicity.

Further data collection with a greater number of participants in different environments, data pre-processing, analysis, training, model generation, and testing is under progress. The research team collected GPS data as well for locational information and physical movement. There is a correlation between physical activities during the day and psychological health. Thus, such data analysis would further help in strengthening the mental health and wellness of the user.

The need of such a technology can be more emphasized at the wake of the reports by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Mental Health Survey (NMHS). While according to ICMR, new cancer cases or its incidence in India are estimated to grow by 25% by 2020, NMHS 2015-16 reports that every sixth person in India needs mental health intervention of some sort.

The prototype developed at IIT KGP is initially focused on smoking habits. However, the research encompasses the scope of predicting depressive behavior as well. The team has published several peer-reviewed papers in international journal and conferences of repute. They are working towards filing a patent for further commercialization of the product.

“At the Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship, we encourage entrepreneurial minds of the engineering students. It is the first school of its kind in India and we focus on incubating innovations into start-ups. Considering the field reports and further test results and preferred career choices of the innovators, such innovations are quite capable of creating new markets,” affirmed Prof. Partha Pratim Das, Head, RMSoEE, IIT KGP.

Going places

Prof. Abhijit Mukherjee, Dean international South Asia and Director, Curtin-India Academy, Curtin University, has been visiting IIT Kharagpur for the past five years with a team drawn from the top faculty of Curtin University who understand, as he does, the immense potential the Curtin University-IIT Kharagpur joint PhD programme holds out for both countries in the field of education, research and the betterment of human resources. Prof. Mukherjee is a civil engineer, researcher and educator. At the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University, he has taught structural mechanics, structural design, structural stability and finite element analysis courses. His industrial consultations are on structural assessment, structural rehabilitation and new structural materials. He loves to work on rehabilitation of heritage structures.

Prof. Mukherjee was in the IIT Kharagpur campus recently to attend the joint symposium of Curtin University-IIT Kharagpur and was mighty excited by what students, the real beneficiaries of the project, had to say about the programme at the symposium. Thrilled by the students’ accounts, he said, “The students are the best advertisement of the programme. They have made our job easy by coming out with such beautiful accounts of their experience at Curtin. “

Prof. Mukherjee talked at length about his own experiences during the promotion of the joint PhD programme and what plans Curtin University has for the future.

 

Could you tell us about your association with IIT Kharagpur and the program you are promoting?

“I was a PhD student of IIT Kharapur from 1984-87 and have possibly come to IIT KGP every year after that… if not multiple times then at least once a year. But now it’s more of an official engagement where my present university, Curtin, has been working with IIT KGP for research partnership, especially the joint PhD programme. I am happy with the way the programme has developed. I would go on record in saying that IIT KGP students have great reputation on Curtin campus.”

Why is that?

In this case, it is a combination of academically superior quality but also the willingness to work hard. The students who come to us from IIT KGP spend about a year. The way they contribute to our research is fantastic. But at the same time, I have asked the students and they are extremely happy with what they gain from their experience in Curtin. It’s a win-win situation. Some of them have told me that they have learnt a completely different style of doing research… first grade way of doing research ethically and safely. These are some of the big takeaways. Students are wonderful raw materials and they get a very good polish when they go to Curtin.

When can we expect Curtin students to come here?

This is a joint degree programme and students can travel both ways. The first student in the programme came from Curtin to IIT KGP and not the other way around. Unfortunately, we have not been able to expand on that. No we have more students going to Curtin from IIT KGP. We are mindful of that imbalance and imbalance is something that Curtin University as a policy does not want to have. So we are taking a few measures so that more students come from Curtin to IIT KGP. One measure is to expand the programme from just PhD to other areas. We have signed an agreement to increase student mobility. Which means that now IIT KGP students can go to Curtin University without paying fees to Curtin and our students can come to IIT KGP without paying fees since they have paid to Curtin already at the time of registration.

The other programme is that IIT KGP’s top professors will go to Curtin and hold a workshop there. Once the students know the quality of research that happens at IIT KGP, they will automatically choose to come.

The other project still at the discussion level is that Curtin wants to start a global PhD where students will compulsorily go and work in other universities to do research. It happens in undergraduate level, we want it to happen in PhD programmes as well. And we feel that India is a wonderful destination. Remember Australia is a country of 25 million people. You cannot have the same impact that you have on 25 million on 1.3 billion people. (Laughs) That is why I, personally, as a researcher send my students regularly to India and China among many other countries.

IIT KGP Sets New Placement Benchmark

The Week     Business Standard    Economic Times   Zee Business  Financial Express

IIT Kharagpur has completed the phase 1 of placement for 2018-19 with 1275+ offers from 192 companies. The campus has witnessed the presence of many IT-Software, e-commerce, Finance and Analytics companies including the core engineering one. About 40% of the profiles offered are in IT-Software followed by 20% in core engineering, 15% each in analytics and e-Commerce and 10% in finance.

Companies who have made a remarkable contribution in terms of number of hires are Google, Apple, Microsoft, EXL, Intel, Tata Steel, Flipkart, L&T Construction, Mahindra & Mahindra, TVS Motors, HSBC, Quantiphi, JP Morgan, Qualcomm, Oyo, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Master Card, Capgemini etc. The number of international offers stands at 23 with Japan contributing the highest number of offers and Germany being a first-time recruiter.

It is also to note that this year, in particular, the participation of core companies have been increased substantially. They have also hired a good number of students which is a matter of utmost satisfaction. The recruitment drive has also witnessed the participation of public sector and government institutions. ISRO and ONGC have already visited the campus and more are planning to visit during phase II.

This year IIT Kharagpur achieved the fastest 1000 in just six days of placement. Also, the total number offers have crossed all the benchmarks set in the last four years. The second phase will commence from January 2019.

Prof. G.P. Raja Sekhar, Chairman, Career Development Center at IIT Kharagpur, expressed satisfaction with the performance of the students during the placement drive. He acknowledged that academic preparation of the students has benefitted them and appreciated by the companies. Companies have also expressed the desire to come in the next phase for recruiting the students. The efforts by CDC team by organizing open houses and briefing the students about strategies to be followed rendered such results.

Global Experts to address Antimicrobial Resistance Challenge at IIT KGP

Business Standard      Jagran Josh     NDTV     The Week     Millenium Post

Antimicrobial Resistance is one of the most crucial challenges faced by the healthcare industry. In the 21st century, germs are evolving resistance to drugs at a faster rate which has now been identified as a severe global threat. A major contributor to this issue has been our malpractices of antibiotic use, be it not finishing the entire antibiotic course or over-prescription of antibiotics for human patients or in livestock and pisciculture. This is further aggravated by poor infection control in health care settings, poor hygiene and sanitation, and the absence of the rapid development of antibiotic drugs. Moreover, evolution might lead to the appearance of new drug-resistant microbes that will pose a huge impact on the treatment of the patients.

Researchers from the Dept. of Biotechnology at IIT Kharagpur are making efforts to address such issues in a global forum with the focus on antimicrobial chemotherapy and the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. In this regard, the Institute is organizing the 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Antimicrobial Research (ICCAR-2018) in collaboration with the Society for Antimicrobial Research (SAR), India. Experts from across UK, USA, South Korea, and several EU nations are participating in the conference to address the issues related to the know-how to handle these resistant micro-organisms clinically so that the average human life expectancy can at least be maintained, if not increased.

The thrust areas include antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, evolution and propagation of antimicrobial resistance, new target identification, prospective antimicrobial therapeutics, structure-based drug design, clinical aspects of handling antimicrobial resistance and novel detection methods & antimicrobial resistance.

“Further support is required though in creating awareness among people at large about the pros and cons of the indiscriminate use of antimicrobials. This would reduce drug abuse and misuse, thus bringing down the adverse effect on future antimicrobial therapy,” opined Prof. Anindya S Ghosh, faculty at IIT Kharagpur and Convenor of handling & co-ordination, ICCAR-2018.

Prof. Ghosh further mentioned that efforts are already being undertaken by the healthcare industry and drug manufacturers in developing new drug molecules, introducing combination therapy, repurposing of already existing drugs, adding new and useful drug delivery systems to address the issue at drug research and medical advisory level.

The Changemaker

Times of India

Alumnus Arjun Malhotra has been conferred with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the Dataquest Digital Leadership Conclave 2018. Arjun who graduated from the Dept. of Electronics & Electrical Communications Engineering at IIT Kharagpur with B.Tech. (Hons.) in 1970, is considered to be one of the pioneers of the Indian IT industry with his leadership role and entrepreneurial zeal of over three decades. At the Dataquest ICT Conference & Awards 2018, Arjun was felicitated with this award for his outstanding contribution in organizing and building the Indian IT industry from where it was over 40 years ago to today.

Arjun’s journey as an IT leader started with co-founding HCL in the 70s’. He played a pivotal role in putting Indian IT giant on the global map.  And it was only the beginning. Arjun has guided several ventures across the IT sector globally, partnered with several global majors like Hewlett-Packard and Dr. James Martin and launched joint ventures to create new products and solutions addressing markets untapped before. Arjun took charge of Headstrong after the merger of his venture Techspan with the former and led it to one of the fastest-growing IT-based Financial Services companies till 2011 when Genpact acquired Headstrong.  He is at present the Chairman of SolMark and Magic Software Inc.

Arjun Malhotra with Kgpians Kiran Behera, Pranav Chavan, Poonam Gupta and Bhavya Kumari at Gurugram in 2017

Arjun has been a father figure for the entire tech startup community in India through the various initiatives including TiE and PAN IIT. He has encouraged and cultivated the spirit was entrepreneurship, that played a big role in shaping, perhaps, the most number of tech entrepreneurs who went on to start their own ventures in hardware, software, and services; and thereby contributed to building the Indian IT industry. He also serves on the board of corporations and supports several start-ups.

But IT is not all. Arjun’s vision for giving direction to the Indian telecom industry led to the foundation of the G S Sanyal School of Telecommunication at IIT Kharagpur. The School is now an R&D leader in  5G Communications, Biomedical Signal Processing, Cellular Networks, Chemical and Material Science and Cloud RAN. He further envisioned encouraging students right from their undergraduate studies to explore innovative ideas which could later become their entrepreneurial ventures. With this in mind, he seed-funded the M N Faruqui Innovation Centre at IIT Kharagpur. These were not only giving back initiatives to his alma mater but pillars of building the tech ecosystem and human resource development for India and the world.

With this award Arjun joined the ranks of Prof. R Narasimhan, considered as the father of computer science research in India, F C Kohli, referred as the father of the Indian software industry, Dr. N. Seshagiri, Founding Director General, National Informatics Centre, Govt. of India, Dr. Vijay P. Bhatkar, best known as the architect of India’s national initiative in supercomputing, Nandan Nilekani and many more.

“To become a true leader, you must never be shy of venturing into the unknown and let your confidence and the team back you up to achieve the impossible,” says Arjun.

Arjun is now championing the Centre for Classical Arts at IIT Kharagpur which would introduce in collaborative interventions in Indian classical music and other classical arts with science and technology.

with inputs from PR NewsWire

6 Days, 1000+ Offers

Times of India   Business Standard   India Today    CNBC TV18   Anandabazar

IIT KGP has received 1000 job offers in a record 6 days. A total of 112 companies visited till December 6, 2018 with the 6th day ending with 1000+ offers. This included more than 250 PPOs. This has been the fastest 1000 till date, typically it takes a little more than a week.

About 40% of the profiles offered are in IT-Software followed by 20% in core engineering, 15% each in analytics and e-Commerce and 10% in finance.

“The dynamic content of the curriculum equipping the students with the necessary technical skill which is fetching fruitful results,” said Prof. G P Raja Sekhar, Chairman, Career Development Center at IIT Kharagpur.

Some of the top recruiters are:

EXL 37 Intel 33 Quantiphi 31 Flipkart 30
J P Morgan 26 Qualcomm 25 Oyo 24 Barclays 22
Goldman Sachs 21 Microsoft 21 Master Card 21 Eaton 21
Jio-Data 12 Apple 9 Google 9

“Students have been presenting the right mix of academic performance and an attitude groomed through their extracurricular activities. Several companies have focused on the creative and managerial aspects of students which they get to learn during their association with various student societies and cells in socio-cultural techno-management activities, sports,” remarked Vishal Singh, Students’ Vice President.

“My interview for the profile of product development analytics was mostly based on my association with the branding function and how we conceptualized new initiatives to support outreach activities of the Institute,” said a former member of a student’s cell.

23 international offers have been received till now. Japan has been leading in international offers with 4 Japanese companies making 11 offers, 6 offers in the US by Microsoft, Uber and Cohesity, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. has made 4 offers. Germany is the new entrant this year at IIT Kharagpur with 2 offers made by KPIT. For the last two years, 26 international offers were received. The phase I of the placement will go until December 12 and will resume again from January 1st week which will continue till mid-April, 2019.

“Few more international profiles are lined up. Also, we are expecting few PSUs to visit the campus during phase-II,” added CDC Chairman.”

The Career Development Centre at IIT Kharagpur has a 15-member strong students’ team managing placement right from interacting and inviting companies for placement, to conducting the placement activities led by a group of faculty members and the Students’ Vice President. “All the team members along with the staff of the Career Development Center have been working relentlessly since last month ensuring the best experience for recruiters and students,” he added.

 

 

Leading Cyber Security Education

Times of India     The Week    Business Standard

IIT Kharagpur has been adjudged the winner of the DSCI Excellence Award 2018 for Cyber Security Education by NASSCOM‘s Data Security Council of India (DSCI). The Institute, which has been making waves in the areas of cybersecurity, IoT security and associated areas in Artificial Intelligence, was awarded for its focused curricula and research work in cryptography, hardware security, cyber security, network security, that has helped create awareness among students.

“Our research and coursework in cyber security, network security and cryptography are targeted towards delivering the necessary technologies and also creating leaders in research, industry and governance who would bring forward such transformation in India which is undergoing the digital revolution right now as we talk,” said Prof. P P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

A number of research ventures led by Prof. Debdeep Mukhopadhyay at the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kharagpur were primarily considered for this Award. These included DRDO funded projects on developing lightweight protocols for authenticating IoT nodes, IC reverse engineering and trojan detection, and the DST funded Swarnajayanti project on secure authentication protocols for smart grids. The Award committee specially cited the advanced infrastructure and lab equipment procured by the Institute for these projects, including a DRDO funded  FIB station for IC imaging.

“At IIT Kharagpur we focus on online and offline security of data in the digital space since our experience at consumer and B2B levels tell us that without appropriate security measures, any data-centric solution would create a Mr. Hyde instead of a Dr. Jekyll,” opined Sikhar Patranabis who received the award at the NASSCOM-DSCI Annual Information Security Summit 2018 on December 5.

Sikhar, a B.Tech. topper in 2015 and currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, is among the few buddying technologists in India pursuing research in the area of cryptographic security for the Internet of Things. “You might think of making your home smart by installing IoT gadgets and applications but what happens, for instance, when the access is overridden by unauthorized entities? By the time you reach home, the security of your house would be breached. So any smart application must be designed keeping the security requirements in mind,” he explained.

Data Security Council of India (DSCI), is a not-for-profit, industry body on data protection in India, set up by NASSCOM, committed to making the cyberspace safe, secure and trusted by establishing best practices, standards and initiatives in cybersecurity and privacy. To further its objectives, DSCI engages with governments and their agencies, regulators, industry sectors, industry associations and think tanks for policy advocacy, thought leadership, capacity building and outreach activities.

The purpose of the DSCI Excellence Award is to recognize, honour and reward organizations and individuals who have taken strategic, proactive and innovative security and privacy efforts to help the organization address real risks, build resilience, increase trustworthiness and create a conducive environment for doing business and thus enable the organization to harness data protection as a lever for business growth.

PAN IIT Conclave 2019

PanIIT, the alumni association of more than 30,000 IITians from all the IITs, is going to hold a Conclave at IIT Delhi on Artificial Intelligence on January 19-20, 2019. The theme of the meet is “Artificial Intelligence: What does the Future hold for India?” The conclave will be attended by over 1,500 IITians from across the world, thought leaders, researchers and authors, ministers from the Central and state governments, senior bureaucrats, industry captains, entrepreneurs and practitioners.

PanIIT has previously held national meets on issues of great national and international importance. There is no doubt that AI and Machine Learning are all set to transform the way humans interact with machines and this is going to transform the role of machines in human life. While there is great excitement on the one hand about the myriad possibilities that AI holds for the future, especially about its anticipated role in enhancing and enriching human life, there is also fear about the likely impact of these changes on freedoms and privacy. Yet, there is no doubt that both AI and ML will mean big business.

We need to know where India stands in the AI world right now. What are the future risks and benefits that may accrue to society? The report of the Task Force formed by the government of India to investigate these issues is already available. However, it is not good policy alone that can ensure India develops into an AI powerhouse.

The PanIIT Conclave will look into many of the other issues involved. Other than looking into the matters of AI and social good, AI regulation and the questions of ethics and privacy and bias, the conclave will try to bring together policy makers, investors, global thought leaders, academics, policy makers and business leaders to confer on the risks, pitfalls as well as the benefits of AI.

The speakers for the keynote addresses and plenary session are well-known personalities who hail from industry, government and the education sector. Dr P. Anandan, CEO, Wadhwani AI will be talking on AI for social good, Prof. Rajat Moona, Director, IIT Raipur will speak on ethics, privacy and security and Prof. Arun Sundararajan, New York University will elaborate on Governance of AI. Apart from this, in ‘Industry focus’, various sectors such as finance, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, the future of work and so on will be covered by speakers. Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur will talk on the manufacturing sector, while Mr Aneesh Reddy, IIT KGP alumnus and CEO and founder of Capillary Technologies will talk on AI and the retail sector. Prof. V. Kamakoti of IIT Madras will be covering finance and Mr Manish Singhal, Founder Pi Ventures will talk on Start-ups and AI.

PanIIT conclaves have seen the congregation of towering personalities, such as Bill Gates, A.P.J. Abxdul Kalam, Bill Clinton, Narayana Murthy, Manmohan Singh, Tom Friedman and others. The Conclave at IIT Delhi promises to bring together many such inspiring figures. Many of the global leaders in AI development and business are IIT alumni, and PanIIT alumni are therefore in a unique position to take the AI agenda forward in terms of bringing all stakeholders together.

Banner design: Suman Sutradhar

Smart Diagnostics for Pulmonary Healthcare

Business Standard (IANS)   Business Standard (PTI)    Deccan Chronicle   Biospectrum     Outlook    Quint     Devdiscourse

Researchers at the Dept. of Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering at IIT Kharagpur have developed a decision support system to diagnose malignant and other diseased tissues in the lungs. While one system can refer to CT scan images to detect lung nodules and test them for the possibility of malignancy, a second software can detect Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) patterns in chest HRCT images.

“Biopsy especially in the lungs is a critical process, hence conducted only after initial medical analysis is done by expert radiologists. The developed systems use noninvasive and comparatively affordable methods of image analysis that would aid the radiologists to identify malignancy by reading growth in the lung nodules. The other system will help identify interstitial disease patterns in HRCT images depicting the lung tissue texture,” explained lead researcher Prof. Sudipta Mukhopadhyay.

“The novelty of the system lies in its India-centric reference point i.e. the medical image scan database used for reference is sought from the Indian patient population. We worked with Prof. Khandelwal and his team from PGIMER Chandigarh for data ground truth and clinical data. Also, foreign database such as LIDC-IDRI and MedGIFT ILD database has been used. The biopsy cases were primarily taken from PGIMER,” explained researcher Shrikant Mehre.

The malignancy detecting tool detects the lung nodule, segment the nodule, and provides a way to modify segmentation, retrieve similar nodules from the database with their report and assess the chance of malignancy of the query nodule based on the retrieval results. The ILD tool is developed by incorporating feedback from expert radiologists to make it easy to use for non-tech savvy clinicians. The software is equipped with necessary modules such as automatic segmentation of lung boundary and pathological region within lung area, provision to modify the boundary, retrieving similar segments from the database with their report and assess the probability of the pathological segment to be a particular ILD category based on the retrieval results. The mapping of disease is performed by doctors based on the ILD pattern and clinical inputs.

“We have successfully tested both software systems at AIIMS Delhi. Prof. Ashu Seith Bhalla and her team provided the neutral test site required for the validation. Currently, lung nodule detection rate and classification rate is 86% and 87%, respectively, and the success rate for ILD classification is 84%. We are working towards further improvements in order to conduct clinical trials on bigger sample sizes,” said another researcher Mandar Kale.

With the growing cases of cancer and other respiratory diseases in India, the need for skilled radiologists is expected to grow exponentially in near future. Budding radiologists will be highly benefited in learning from previous images stored in Picture Archival and Communication System (PACS) and reports in Radiological Information System (RIS) on their own and to help practicing radiologists in differential diagnosis using the CBIR based Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system.

The research has been reported in more than 13 international journals and 19 international conferences through its various stages of progress.

Japan Fever Hits IIT KGP Placement

Times of India   Times Now   Economic Times   Indian Express    Financial Express    Business Standard   The Week   The Hindu BusinessLine    ABP News  First Post Hindi

Analytics is again ruling the roost in the first three days of campus placement at IIT Kharagpur with 150+ Analytics profiles among the 769 offers made so far.  The recruiters include top global corporations such as Microsoft, Intel, Barclays, Master Card, Qualcomm, EXL etc. offering positions in their offices in India and abroad. The American analytics company EXL has made 35 offers so far followed by Intel and Barclays with 29 and 22 offers respectively; Qualcomm, Master Card and Oyo made 21 offers each. Microsoft Corporation has made 4 offers in USA and 13 more for its India office. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. has made 4 offers. The 769 offers included 258 Pre-Placement Offers and 23 international offers.

Japan making headline at IIT KGP for the first time

What is unique this year, is the presence of 5 Japanese corporations for phase I placement session. On  Day 1, Mercari Japan led the show with 6 international offers. On day 2, two more corporations Bizreach and Yahoo made 3 and 1 offers respectively for positions in the island-nation. WorksApplications, another Japanese firm recruited for one profile on day 3 while Rakuten is scheduled on day 6.

So what is attracting Japanese corporations to hire from IIT KGP this year?

“Compared to USA and EU, there is a much lower presence of IITians and bright Indian graduates in Japanese corporations. Now the industrial sector in Japan is looking forward to attracting talented youth from India. With Japanese companies showing significant interest in recruiting graduates from IIT KGP, a career in Japan is expected to become a popular choice for bright IIT graduates,” remarked Prof. G P Raja Sekhar, Head, Career Development Center (CDC) at IIT Kharagpur.

Bilateral relations between India and Japan has been on an upward trajectory since the late 1950s. This symbiosis between the technology leader and India’s giant market has made way for a robust technology-trade-investment corridor for the mutual benefit of both countries.

“IITKGP has several MoUs with Japanese universities in the field of Naval Architecture, Agriculture, Transportation studies, Medical Studies etc. and our Director has just returned from a tour of Japan with stronger possibilities of industrial and academic collaborations,” explained Prof. Baidurya Bhattacharya, Dean, International Relations, IIT Kharagpur.

Campus First-timers

This year more than 362 companies have already registered and more than 618 profiles have been opened by them. The figure includes 16 companies which would be recruiting from the campus for the first time. To name a few, ARPWood Capital, AB InBev, Blackrock, Bidgely, ARPWood, Auctus Advisors, MasterCard, Bizreach etc. “This will provide an ample opportunity to our students to choose their career wisely,” said the CDC Head.

Start-ups Hiring

This placement session is also witnessing the participation of some of India’s leading start-up business and the figure is touching 33 with Zomato, Ola, Oyo, Flipkart, Innovacer etc. and most of the other start-ups visiting the campus in the first few days of placement. “The students are quite enthusiastic to join in this sector, as being an emerging field, it will ensure the high growth of their career trajectory. Moreover, students are giving importance to the profile offered than merely the name of the companies. Startups are eager to participate as early as possible during the phase 1 placements at IITs. Students are more specific about the profile and they are very much comfortable with startups. They are of the opinion that the growth at startups is quick,” added the CDC Head.