5 IIT dropouts who became successful in different fields

Indian Institutes of Technology, popularly known as IITs, are the most premium engineering institutions in our country. Admission to IITs is a dream come true for students who aspire to study science and engineering. In fact, major tech companies all around the globe queue up to hire IIT graduates, as they are considered to be highly skilled and meritorious.  

While there have been many IITians who have made a name for themselves (for instance, Google’s Sundar Pichai), there have been a few others who chose not to continue or simply dropped out during their course years and went on to become super successful in their chosen fields, later in life. We have compiled the names and contributions of a few below.  

Narayan Murthy  
Infosys founder Narayan Murthy was an IIT dropout as his family couldn’t afford his education there. So, Murthy attended the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore. He went on to become one of the tech pioneers of modern India. After struggling to find a proper job even after years of trying, Murthy borrowed his wife’s life savings of INR 10000, and launched Infosys along with six peers. Ever since, Infosys has been one of the leading IT companies in the world. Hailing from a lower middle-class background, Murthy became an icon for generations to come. 

Prashant Bhushan  
Prashant Bhushan is a renowned lawyer and politician and by far one of the most dedicated advocates of public interests who has undertaken over 500 PILs (Public Interest Litigations). Bhushan had joined IIT Madras but after the very first semester chose to drop out and pursue a major in Philosophy, with Economics and Political Science. Bhushan’s contribution to secure socio-political, economic and moral interests of the citizens of India are considered to be unparallel. 

Vinod Rai  
We all know about the 2G scam, but the person responsible for breaking apart the scam is none other than this IIT dropout, Vinod Rai. Though he had successfully passed the IIT entrance exam, Rai had joined Delhi University by ignoring everyone’s warnings. He later went on to become a gold medallist in Economics in his post-graduation from the Delhi School of Economics. This former Comptroller and Auditor General of India is also responsible for auditing coal allocation, and handling other scamming cases like that of Colgate or Commonwealth games corruption.  

Shashvat Nakrani  
The recently released IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2021 declared Shashvat Nakrani as the youngest and richest self-made Indian. The co-founder of the UPI payment service BharatPe, Nakrani had dropped out of IIT Delhi in 2018, just a semester before the completion of his graduation. In fact, this youth icon was also named as the youngest Indian co-founder in the Fintech space in India, just at the age of 22.  

Azhar Iqubal  
Azhar Iqubal, the co-founder and CEO of the news app company Inshorts became an overnight sensation when his brainchild became an avantgarde platform to receive news update and personalize advertisements; their specialty being 60 words news. This IIT Delhi dropout’s NOIDA-based company is now worth INR 600 crores and had secured a place in Google’s 2015 list of 10 best Indian apps.