An IIT Bombay graduate has stirred up a fresh online debate over whether an engineering degree from India's premier institutes still holds value in an age where artificial intelligence can answer almost any question in seconds. Shikhar Agrawal, co-founder and CEO of the startup Anahad, tackled the question in a LinkedIn post, arguing that the real payoff of his IIT years had little to do with textbooks or the institute's famous name tag.
The question everyone keeps asking him
Five years out of college and running his own company, Agrawal says one query refuses to go away. "It's been 5 years now since I left IIT Bombay, built Anahad but people still ask me, 'IIT actually worth it tha? Or just hype?'" he wrote. He added that the doubts have only grown louder as AI tools make knowledge easier to access than ever. "Especially now, when AI can explain almost anything, information is free & a degree doesn't carry the same weight it once did," he wrote. Agrawal completed his BTech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2021.
