Raipur

Meeting people at IIT Bhilai

IIT Bhilai is one of India's youngest IITs, set up in 2016 and on its own 445-acre campus in Bhilai only since August 2023, so students are still shaping its traditions, starting with Meraz, the techno-cultural fest first held in 2018.

The story of IIT Bhilai

IIT Bhilai was established in 2016 as one of the new IITs and inaugurated on 7 August 2016 by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh. It was the first IIT in Chhattisgarh.

IIT Hyderabad mentored the new institute in its early days, and classes began at a transit campus inside Government Engineering College, Sejbahar, in Raipur. Prof. Rajat Moona became director in March 2017, followed by Prof. Rajiv Prakash in September 2022.

On 1 August 2023 the institute moved to its permanent campus in Bhilai, a 445-acre site designed for sustainability that earned GRIHA's highest five-star rating. It now offers BTech, MTech, MSc and PhD programmes across computer science, data science and AI, electrical, mechanical, materials and other fields.

What the campus is like socially

Because IIT Bhilai is so new, almost every club and fest was started by students in the last few years, and that shows in the culture: it is easy for first-years to take on real roles and start something of their own. The batch sizes are small, so people across years know each other well.

Student activities run through Polaris, the umbrella for the cultural and science and technology councils. Evenings are for club sessions in dance, music, drama, quizzing and robotics, and the whole campus gears up together for Meraz. Raipur and Bhilai town are close by for food and weekend outings.

Traditions every IIT Bhilai student knows

• Meraz: IIT Bhilai's techno-cultural fest, first held in October 2018, with pronites, cultural competitions, robotics events and hackathons.
• Prayatna: The annual multi-sport event on campus, held since 2018.
• ExQuizite: The annual quiz event run by Quizzotica, the quizzing club.
• Robotics at Meraz: The Epsilon runs robotics competitions at Meraz every year, one of the fest's most popular technical draws.

Campus lore and insider spots

• Seven years in Raipur: IIT Bhilai's early batches studied entirely at a borrowed engineering college campus in Raipur before the move to Bhilai in 2023.
• A campus built from scratch: Students who joined before 2023 are the founding generation for nearly every club and fest on campus today.
• First IIT in Chhattisgarh: Before 2016, Chhattisgarh had no IIT, which makes the institute a point of state pride.
• Epsilon's motto: The robotics club, founded in April 2017, still runs on its original motto: Imagine, Invent, Inspire.

How to find your people here

At IIT Bhilai, a hobby club, technical society, or the fest organizing crew is the fastest way to meet people outside your own department.

Fests and societies at IIT Bhilai

Signature fests

• Meraz
• Prayatna

Notable societies

• The Epsilon (robotics)
• Beathackers (dance)
• Quizzotica (quizzing)
• Motorsports Club

Societies worth knowing at IIT Bhilai

• The Epsilon: The robotics club, founded in April 2017, running projects, workshops and Meraz robotics events.
• Beathackers: The dance club, training in jazz, hip-hop and breaking for national competitions.
• Drishya: The drama club, staging plays and street theatre.
• Quizzotica: The quizzing club, which runs ExQuizite and prepares teams for Inter-IIT.
• Swara and The Pixel Snappers: The music club and the photography club, which also runs the institute's YouTube content.
• Motorsports Club: Founded in 2017, it builds vehicles for national design competitions.

Careers, internships and placements

IIT Bhilai's placement process brings recruiters from software, consulting and core engineering, with computer science and data science and AI drawing the most interest. Its location near the Bhilai Steel Plant and the region's industry also gives materials and mechanical students core options.

Because the institute is young, students often build their profile through projects, hackathons and club work, and the institute's innovation council runs hackathons and design events for those interested in startups.

Rivalries and eternal debates

IIT Bhilai students follow every rank jump closely, as a young IIT measuring itself against the other new IITs. In Chhattisgarh, JEE aspirants compare it with NIT Raipur. Inter-IIT meets are where Bhilai gets to test itself against much older campuses.

Meeting people at IIT Bhilai by interest

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

Colleges nearby

IIT Bhilai sits close to NIT Raipur and HNLU, all part of the same Raipur student scene. Cross-college friendships often start at inter-college fests, hackathons, or shared-interest communities rather than in class.

Similar campuses across India

If you are looking beyond your own campus, students at IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and IIT Dharwad 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 IIT Bhilai, 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 IIT Bhilai? 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.