Addressing faculty, students, and distinguished alumni, Nageswaran said achieving this ambitious target would require sustained economic expansion of around 12 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms. He noted that India’s current gross domestic product stands at approximately USD 3.91 trillion and is projected to reach nearly USD 7.8 trillion within the next six years.
He emphasized that India’s long-term economic transformation will depend heavily on strengthening universities and laboratories to remain at the forefront of the global knowledge ecosystem. He further underlined the need to build capacity for acquiring and adapting global technologies to suit domestic conditions, cost structures, and large-scale deployment.
Nageswaran stressed that the key challenge lies in transitioning innovations from pilot projects to patents and ultimately to economy-wide productivity gains across agriculture, manufacturing, and services. He highlighted the pivotal role of premier institutions such as IIT Madras in this process.
The event also served as a platform to honour distinguished alumni, including Srinivas Narayanan, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, and Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Perplexity.ai. Other notable awardees included D K Sunil, Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, along with professors from leading international universities.
Delivering the presidential address, IIT Madras Director Prof V Kamakoti stated that the institute has been ranked the number one engineering institution in India for ten consecutive years from 2016 to 2025 in the National Institutional Ranking Framework. He also highlighted IIT Madras Global as a major milestone in the institute’s expansion vision, including the establishment of its international campus in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in 2023.
During the ceremony, several academic and research awards were presented. The Srimathi Marti Annapurna Gurunath Award for Excellence in Teaching was conferred upon Prof Srinivasa Rao and Prof Dhiman Chatterjee. The Institute Research and Development Awards for 2025–26 were presented to Dr Nagabhushana Rao Vadlamani and Prof Boby George for their significant contributions to research and innovation.
The event underscored India’s growing focus on technological leadership, institutional excellence, and long-term economic transformation driven by innovation and global academic collaboration.
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