24 hour Jodhpur hackathon had 365 teams. TR Meghwal led the jury and gave the prizes.
New Delhi [India], April 01: The IIT Alumni Council, which commenced on Independence Day 2019 with a small group of founding members, has steadily evolved into a global network of over 50,000 members—approximately one in every twelve IIT alumni—supported by around 3,000 patron members.
Conceived as a platform to enable meaningful contribution rather than personal gain, the Council was built on a simple but demanding objective: to create pathways through which IIT alumni and aligned well-wishers can contribute to India’s progress and to the broader quality of life. Over time, it has sought to bring together individuals willing to engage with work of consequence—through expertise, mentorship, partnerships, and resources.
One of the Council’s earliest large-scale moments of participation was the Howdy Modi event in Houston, which demonstrated the organisational capability of a globally distributed Indian community working in coordination. Shortly thereafter, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Council undertook a practical response through its Covid Task Force. This effort focused on real-world challenges around testing and prevention, reflecting a preference for grounded, solution-oriented engagement.
As the immediate Covid phase receded, the Council’s work organised itself around four broad areas. These include energy and transport transition—covering nuclear energy, biogas, and electric mobility; healthspan and preventive health—exploring areas such as epigenetic reprogramming, genetic testing, and natural biologics; waste to wealth and circular economy—focused on local production and regional solutions; and transformational technologies, where the emphasis is on the convergence of multiple systems and innovations rather than isolated breakthroughs.
These areas provide the organising structure for a growing set of initiatives and platforms. Today, the Council’s activities are broadly aligned across six functional pathways: social impact funding, startup incubation, sustainability infrastructure, applied research, professional networking, and project management. Together, these create structured opportunities for members and partners to engage.
As these platforms have evolved, emphasis has increasingly shifted from isolated initiatives to coordinated execution across domains. Many of the challenges being addressed—whether in energy transition, health, or regional economic development—require sustained collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and geographies. The Council’s role has therefore been to enable this coordination: bringing together individuals with complementary expertise, aligning effort across multiple initiatives, and supporting continuity over time.
“What is emerging is not a set of individual initiatives, but an ecosystem of coordinated effort. The value of such a network lies in its ability to sustain work across domains and over time—beyond individual projects or cycles,” said Ravi Sharma, President & Chief Volunteer of IIT Alumni Council.
IIT alumni remain central to this effort—as contributors, mentors, builders, and supporters. The Council brings together individuals who are knowledgeable, credible, and committed to engaging with work of consequence. What is offered in return is not recognition, but the opportunity to participate in efforts that seek to create long-term public value.
As the Council evolved, it became necessary to strengthen membership processes and clarify expectations around alignment and participation. Screening and membership pathways were therefore formalised over time, with the intention of maintaining trust within the network and ensuring meaningful contribution. With over 50,000 members and 3,000 patron supporters, the Council is able to act as a connector and enabler across projects of national relevance, focusing on areas where technology, coordination, and long-view thinking can contribute to beneficial outcomes.
The Council is not an alumni association in the conventional sense, nor is it primarily oriented toward networking. Its emphasis is on collective participation in initiatives addressing broader societal and developmental questions. At the same time, it recognises and values the role played by campus-level alumni bodies and continues to support dual participation where appropriate.
Over the past year, allied entities have aligned more clearly around the “IIT Alumni” identity to reduce confusion and strengthen clarity of purpose, as part of an ongoing process of refinement. In parallel, members have supported the emergence of wider platforms and communities of thought, including initiatives such as the Bombay Club, Lutyens Club, and Alumni Next. The latter extends participation to families of Council members and is showing encouraging early engagement.
The Council has also begun restructuring parts of its membership architecture with greater attention to hometown and regional affinity, rather than campus or city of residence alone. As a global body, it became clear that people often find deeper shared purpose through their relationship to place and community. This restructuring is expected to be completed by 15 August 2026, alongside ongoing changes in systems and infrastructure.
The world is passing through a period of rapid technological, institutional, and geopolitical change. These shifts are affecting how people work, live, relate, and organise. In that context, the Council has felt the need for a way of viewing multiple domains together rather than in isolation.
MegaSpheres is part of that broader articulation. It serves as an orientation through which different domains of activity, systems, and participants may be viewed in relation over time. This articulation has informed the Vishwaguru book series, through which patterns of stewardship and contribution are being examined and shared. In alignment with this direction, the Council has identified eleven individuals whose work reflects long-view stewardship across domains, and has begun documenting their pathways through a series of books.
Looking ahead, the Council intends to strengthen its startup circuits, mission platforms, and partnership pathways across regions. The first such circuit—from Delhi to Jodhpur, with nodes at Alwar, Jaipur, and Ajmer—is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2026–27. Efforts are underway to support up to 500 startups and 21 public-private initiatives over the coming period, as these platforms take shape.
What matters most, however, is not any single milestone. It is whether an organisation can create meaningful work, attract serious participation, and build structures that endure beyond individual personalities. That remains one of the Council’s underlying aspirations: to be a platform that continues to serve those who wish to contribute with sincerity, capability, and long-term commitment.
The work is still unfolding. Much remains to be done. But if the Council has created a credible space in which accomplished individuals can engage with seriousness—feeling both the weight of responsibility and the value of contribution—then it has already taken a meaningful step forward.
Startups seeking incubator partnership in Jodhpur may write to Mailbox@ftmorris.com
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