Hyundai’s slogan “New Thinking, New Possibilities” and IIT Madras’ motto “Siddhirbhavati Karmaja” (Sanskrit for “Efforts Yield Success”), form a potent combination that exhort the importance of innovative thinking and perseverance for achieving success in today’s competitive world.
Strolling through the quiet avenues inside the IIT Madras campus, reflecting on my half-decade long professional journey, it seems like only yesterday that I joined Hyundai Motor India as a Graduate Engineer Trainee in 2010 — armed with dreams of realising my passion for automobiles. The Chennai plant, where I work, is one of Hyundai’s largest and its production lines have been buzzing with activity for close to two decades now, churning out more than five million cars since inception, powering Hyundai’s growth into the largest exporter and second largest car manufacturer in India.
The professional background
For young professionals like me, Hyundai’s success has meant a plethora of opportunities for hands-on engineering and management experience, covering the entire gamut of automobile production.
Technical expertise and operational efficiency form the core competence of engineering professionals. I constantly look for opportunities to augment and upgrade my technical arsenal to stay relevant and tackle the myriad challenges in the evolving automotive industry.
Hyundai recognises and addresses this imperative need through the Step-Up higher education programme for employees, through which I was selected for a two-year, full-time, sponsored Masters’ programme in Automotive Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras from 2014-2016.
IIT Madras is synonymous with excellence in technical education and needless to say, I was really excited at the prospect of becoming an IITian. The professional experience at Hyundai gave me a more focused perspective while choosing courses in my Masters programme
Becoming a student again
Going from a daily schedule of meetings and project deadlines to that of a student in IIT, was a stark change. However, the work ethic I imbibed at Hyundai, helped me put in the hard work to make the transition, during which I spent long hours in the initial months to revise theoretical concepts to get up to speed with the demands of the academic rigour.
Course-based curriculum of IIT Madras means that a typical classroom has undergraduates, post-graduates, research and doctoral students sharing desks and ideas. Professors, with their rich experience, make classes intellectually stimulating and the flexibility built into courses empowers them to tailor it in a way they deem fit.
Given the calibre of students at IITs, the academic competition is obviously high and the continuous, multifaceted evaluation pattern makes students work hard and get a good grasp of concepts. Despite the competition, there is a healthy environment for forging lasting bonds of friendship and I’ve found many friends among the young undergraduates, whose competitive streak, contagious energy and passion about ideas are a real inspiration.
Semester schedules proceed with clockwork precision at the institute and we are constantly kept on our toes, chasing assignment deadlines, studying for quizzes and end-semester exams. Long study sessions stretching into the wee hours is usual and it is typical for us to walk to the 24-hour canteen in IIT for a tea break at 1.30 am during exam season, only to encounter a huge line of other students who got there earlier!
From a professional standpoint, I could make an instant connection with the various new concepts learnt in courses and envision their potential application to solve real-world engineering problems in the automotive production process. My final year project at IIT-M is in the domain of mechatronics, through which I aspire to enhance the quality of a critical process through automation.
A peek into IIT-M campus life
There is an aura of legendary excellence about the IIT Madras campus — one that instantly envelopes and fascinates anyone that steps in to the 620-acre oasis of green in the heart of Chennai.
Sprawling green expanses, humongous trees, spotted deer, endangered blackbuck, bonnet macaque monkeys and colourful insects, make IIT Madras look like a place Tarzan could call home. Monkeys’ chattering and rappelling down water pipes in the hostel replace morning alarms. Pigeons flutter playfully on window sills, while the more adventurous primates decide to rummage through litter bins in our hostel wings or visit our classes occasionally. When the stress runs high, a walk down any of the quiet roads is enough to unwind and find peace.
The prohibition on use of powered vehicles by students makes bicycles ubiquitous on campus. A typical day starts with classes at 8 am, sparking a pedalling rush from the hostels to the mess for a quick bite and then to the classes. The campus is also dotted with a number of eateries, which are light on the pocket and offer dishes for every kind of palate.
Hostel lanes and playgrounds come alive in the evening with the sound of cricket bats hitting the ball, football dribbles and basketball hitting the hoops. Fitness freaks go jogging or hit the gym while others simply hang out at the various gathering spots spread across campus. There is always something interesting happening inside the campus — Student Activities Centre (SAC), Central Library, Himalaya lawns and the IRCTC 24-hour canteen are popular hangouts.
“Insti”, as IIT Madras is fondly called by students, has a club for everything — from robotics to cooking, astronomy to music. The Centre for Innovation (CFI) is a cradle of student ideas and their realisation while the IIT Madras Research Park has incubated a number of innovative start-ups in recent years.
Insti lingo
An inextricable part of the IIT-M campus experience is the quirky, unique “insti lingo” — the student slang in which the single verb “put” replaces many others. To “put peace” is to take things lightly, “put infi(nite) fight” is to try really hard at something, “put funda” is to discuss the fundamentals of a concept . You get the drift, right? There are many such arcane words in the vocabulary — so fascinating is it that an MA thesis was published on the etymology of the slang by Evelyn Richter, a German linguist!
Student teams like EML (Extra Mural Lectures) bring in highly accomplished speakers from a wide variety of fields throughout the year. The famous twins “Shaastra”, the annual tech festival and “Saarang”, the cultural festival, transform the IIT-M campus into carnival mode. The buzz is electrifying for two weeks in the month of January every year.
Taking up the baton of excellence
My two year educational stint at IIT Madras has come at an opportune time in my career. Industry-academia collaboration holds key to synergistic development and material progress of society and such higher-educations initiatives by Hyundai and IIT-M bode well.
A star-studded galaxy of alumni spanning a wide spectrum of technological domains is a testament to the strong technical foundation built by the legendary IIT education system, inspiring confidence and belief in students to excel. I’m really excited to be a part of the new generation of graduates, taking up the baton of excellence to realise New Thinking and New Possibilities at Hyundai inspired by IIT Madras’ spirit of “Siddhirbhavati Karmaja”.