Comment by porridgeraisin

Making private sector/startup consultancy really easy for professors to do is one of the main reasons there is an insane pickup of pace in the return of the diaspora. Many professors in my IIT suddenly have BMWs. I''ve never seen it before 2021ish. And yes, BMWs are a luxury car in India. And no. IITs being a government college don't pay professors enough for them to afford a luxury car on salary alone (in the context of financial conservativeness typical to india). For more context, my starting SWE job before I came back for M.S paid as much as my professor earned decades into his career, being dean, and having a couple of other responsibilities. - 50L per year (total comp, not base). Also helps that the STEM economy is picking up like crazy.

It is true that the govt institutions themselves have less IIT representation, mostly due to low salaries. However, what matters to the private sector is sources of capital. Tech investors in india usually went to IITs themselves, and so the ecosystem always remains close to IITs, allowing professors easy access. Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes. Similar to Rajeev Motwani holding a stake in Google, they get really rich sometimes.