Pilani

Meeting people at BITS Pilani

BITS Pilani's original campus is a 328-acre residential town in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district, about 200 km west of Delhi, where almost everything social happens inside the gates: Bhawan life, three national fests and the late-night culture of a campus far from any city.

The story of BITS Pilani

BITS began in 1929, when the Birla Education Trust, founded by industrialist G. D. Birla, opened an intermediate college in Pilani, his family's hometown. A science college followed in 1943, the Birla College of Engineering in 1946 and a pharmacy college in 1950.

In 1964 the colleges merged into the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, a deemed university. Working with MIT, BITS adopted a semester system, modular courses, continuous evaluation and letter grading, all unusual in India at the time, and built the Practice School programme that still sends every student into industry.

BITS then grew beyond Pilani, opening India's first offshore campus in Dubai in 2000, Goa in 2004, Hyderabad in 2008 and a Mumbai campus at Kalyan in 2024. Kumar Mangalam Birla is Chancellor, and NIRF 2025 ranked BITS 16th overall and 7th among universities.

What the campus is like socially

Pilani is a small desert town, so the campus is the city. Students live in 14 hostels called Bhawans, and Bhawan identity shapes everything from mess debates to inter-hostel sports. Nights stretch long with canteen runs, wingie sessions and club rehearsals, and BITS's relatively relaxed attendance culture leaves plenty of room for projects and fests.

BITS has its own vocabulary. PS means Practice School, CGPA rules conversations, a ghot is a hardcore studier, and alumni have compiled whole BITSian dictionaries of campus slang. The academic rhythm is intense because grading is relative, but the social calendar is packed from BOSM in the autumn to Oasis and APOGEE.

Traditions every BITSian knows

• Oasis: The cultural fest, started in 1971 as an intra-college event and now past 50 editions. It draws 8,000 to 10,000 attendees from over 350 colleges, and has hosted Zakir Khan, Kenny Sebastian, Amit Trivedi, Seedhe Maut and Raftaar.
• APOGEE: The international technical fest, founded in 1983, with competitions, exhibitions and talks.
• BOSM: The BITS Open Sports Meet, which invites college teams from across India to Pilani.
• Rocktaves: Oasis's rock competition held prelims in eight cities, and alumni bands include The Local Train, Parikrama and Indian Ocean.
• Bhawan rivalries: Inter-Bhawan sports and cultural contests keep hostel pride alive all year.

Campus lore and insider spots

• The Clock Tower revival: The campus clock tower was silent for nearly four decades until a student-led team under Rohit John Varghese and Rohit Carlos De Sa brought it back. On 20 October 2011 they rang the bell 41 times by hand for the 41st Oasis, and by 2016 it chimed on its own again.
• Meera Bhawan: Of the 14 Bhawans, 13 house men and one, Meera Bhawan, houses women, a ratio that sparks plenty of campus conversation.
• BITSian slang: From ghot to PS to CGPA panic, campus slang is so thick that alumni have written dictionaries to decode it.
• The Sabeer Bhatia myth: Every BITSian knows Hotmail's co-founder studied here, and it remains the campus's favourite proof that big ideas can start in Pilani.

How to find your people here

At BITS Pilani, a technical club, hackathon team, or the fest organizing crew is the fastest way to meet people outside your own branch.

Fests and societies at BITS Pilani

Signature fests

• Oasis
• Apogee

Notable societies

• Finomaniac (Finance Club)
• Vishwast (Marketing Club)

Societies worth knowing at BITS Pilani

• Robotics teams: Student robotics and engineering teams compete nationally and internationally, and selections are competitive.
• Fest departments: Teams that run Oasis, APOGEE and BOSM, handling everything from sponsorship to stage control. Freshers queue up to join.
• Debating and literary societies: Active on the national circuit and central to Oasis's literary events.
• Dance and music clubs: The stars of Oasis, with practice rooms busy late into the night before the fest.
• Regional associations: Students from different states run cultural associations that celebrate their festivals on campus.

Careers, internships and placements

Practice School is BITS's signature. PS-I is an eight-week industry stint after second year, and PS-II is a 22-week project-based placement in the final year that often converts into a full-time offer. Students effectively graduate with work experience.

Pilani graduates move into software and product companies, quant and finance, consulting, core engineering and research, and BITS has a famous startup streak. CGPA matters for shortlists, so most students manage it carefully from their first semester.

Notable alumni

• Sabeer Bhatia: Co-founder of Hotmail, who studied at BITS in the late 1980s.
• Sanjay Mehrotra: Co-founder of SanDisk and CEO of Micron Technology.
• Baba Kalyani: Chairman of Bharat Forge and one of India's best-known industrialists.
• Prithviraj Chavan: Former Chief Minister of Maharashtra and former Union Minister for Science and Technology.
• Vivek Paul: Former CEO of Wipro Technologies.
• Anu Hasan: Actress and TV host, known for her Tamil and Telugu work.

Rivalries and eternal debates

BITS versus the IITs is the debate that never ends, fought on Quora with BITSAT ranks, Practice School and alumni lists as ammunition. Inside the BITS family, Pilani purists insist the original campus is the real BITS, while Goa and Hyderabad push back with their own fests and campuses. BITS versus VIT, Manipal and other private colleges is the friendlier sideshow.

What BITS Pilani is talking about now

AI side projects and quant-finance prep are among the hottest topics in Pilani group chats, while Oasis keeps going bigger with cinematic themes and comedy headliners.

Meeting people at BITS Pilani by interest

A lot of friendships here form around a shared interest rather than a class or a hostel wing. If you are into finance and investing, coding and hackathons, startups and builders, gaming and esports, and running, those pages cover where that scene actually happens in India and how to find people near you who are into the same thing.

Similar campuses across India

If you are looking beyond your own campus, students at CBIT, CET Trivandrum, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, and COEP Technological University share a similar campus culture, and Zyber works the same way at each: showing you verified people nearby who match on interest, intent, or timing.

Zyber on campus

Zyber is built for meeting people nearby in real time, with verified profiles only. At BITS Pilani, that means showing you people near you who share your interests or your drive, whether or not you overlap on a class or a society.

New to BITS Pilani? Start here

If you are just starting out, these freshers guides are written for exactly this moment: first week of college checklist, how to choose societies in college, making friends beyond your branch, and hackathons for beginners in india.

the freshers guide, the Meet People pillar, or read what Zyber is.