ENGINEERING THE NEXT CONVERGENCE

BITS Pilani maintains its top spot in private engineering education and is moving to an interdisciplinary approach that combines AI, health tech, sustainability and more

- By SONAL KHETARPAL

Reminiscing about his time as a student at BITS Pilani from 1980 to 1984, Bengaluru-based Harish Bhat, former brand custodian of the Tata Group and author of five national bestsellers, said, “I entered BITS Pilani as a starry-eyed boy and left as a confident adult.”

After a protected life with his parents in Madurai and Kollam, the experience BITS Pilani offered was a “crucible of life”. The college, he says, was about more than getting an engineering degree. It opened up the world of liberal education, which few technology institutions offered then, allowing Bhat to venture into Philosophy, Psychology and Literature, and take responsibility for his own timetable.