Delhi NCR

Meeting people at IIT Delhi

IIT Delhi is the IIT inside a city: a campus in Hauz Khas, South Delhi, where you can walk out of the main gate into SDA market, and where social life revolves around 14 hostels and Rendezvous, one of India's biggest college cultural fests.

The story of IIT Delhi

IIT Delhi began as the College of Engineering and Technology. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, laid its foundation stone on 28 January 1959, and the first classes ran from the Delhi College of Engineering campus at Kashmiri Gate. The college was set up with collaboration from the United Kingdom.

The Hauz Khas campus was formally inaugurated on 17 August 1961 by Humayun Kabir, then Minister of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs. The institute was later declared an Institute of National Importance and renamed Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

In 2018 IIT Delhi was named an Institution of Eminence, and the same year it opened a campus in Sonipat, Haryana. In July 2023 it signed an agreement to set up a campus in Abu Dhabi, its first outside India.

What the campus is like socially

Unlike most IITs, IITD does not feel cut off. The campus sits between Hauz Khas, Katwaria Sarai and Ber Sarai, so evenings often spill into SDA market, Hauz Khas Village or a late-night chai run. Inside, life is organised around hostels, each named after an Indian mountain range, and around the student boards that run culture, sport, tech and welfare.

The academic load is heavy, and the joke about Five Point Someone never quite dies, but the social calendar is packed: hostel nights, Diwali decoration contests, inter-hostel sports, club productions and the build-up to Rendezvous and Tryst. Delhi itself also means internships, startup meetups and events across the city are within a metro ride.

Traditions every IIT Delhi student knows

• Rendezvous: IIT Delhi's cultural fest, started in 1976 and run by the Board for Recreational and Creative Activities. It runs over four days in late September or early October, with Pronite concerts, rock battles and Bollywood guests.
• Tryst: The science, technology and management fest, billed as North India's largest of its kind, with hackathons, robotics and talks.
• Hostel Diwali: Hostels compete on rangoli, lights and decorations around Diwali, one of the most loved nights of the year for freshers.
• Freshers' orientation and mentorship: First-years are paired with senior mentors in a structured programme, which is how many students make their first friends outside their hostel.
• Inter-hostel competitions: Hostels compete across sports and culture through the year, and hostel loyalty is a big part of IITD identity.

Campus lore and insider spots

• Five Point Someone: Chetan Bhagat based his novel on his years as a mechanical engineering student at IIT Delhi. It later became 3 Idiots, and every IITD student gets asked if campus is really like that.
• Mountain-range hostels: All 14 hostels are named after Indian mountain ranges, such as Kumaon, Nilgiri, Zanskar, Karakoram and Aravali.
• The strike Raghuram Rajan regrets: As a student leader in the early 1980s, the future RBI governor was part of a protest that shut IIT Delhi for a day. He later called it not his proudest moment.
• SDA and Hauz Khas: The market just outside the gate works as an extension of campus, from cheap meals to late-night coffee.
• Hoobastank at RDV: Rendezvous booked the American rock band Hoobastank in 2013, still one of the fest's best-remembered pronites.

How to find your people here

At IIT Delhi, 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 Delhi

Signature fests

• Rendezvous
• Tryst

Notable societies

• Robotics Club
• ACM Student Chapter (ACES-ACM)
• Entrepreneurship Development Cell (eDC)

Societies worth knowing at IIT Delhi

• BRCA clubs: The cultural board runs dramatics, dance, music, quizzing, literary and fine arts clubs, and organises Rendezvous.
• CAIC: The academic and technical board, which runs Tryst and supports technical clubs like robotics.
• English Debating Society: One of the oldest and most respected societies. Raghuram Rajan was once its secretary.
• DevClub: A student-run developer community that builds tools for campus and runs a student wiki on IITD life.
• Entrepreneurship Development Cell: The startup hub for students, linked to the institute's incubation ecosystem. IITD is a well-known source of Indian startup founders.
• Board for Student Publications: Runs campus publications and newsletters covering hostel life, events and student issues.

Careers, internships and placements

IIT Delhi's placement season draws recruiters across software, finance, consulting, product and core engineering, with computer science and electrical engineering in the highest demand. Being in Delhi makes it easier to fit in internships and networking with companies, startups and policy organisations during the semester.

IITD has a strong reputation as a startup school, and its alumni include the founders of Flipkart and Zomato. Society roles in debating, quizzing and fest organisation are commonly seen as useful for consulting and product roles, while coding clubs feed into software interviews.

Notable alumni

• Raghuram Rajan: Former RBI governor and economist, who studied electrical engineering at IITD from 1981 to 1985 and was general secretary of the Student Affairs Council.
• Vinod Khosla: Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and venture capitalist, an electrical engineering graduate of IIT Delhi.
• Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal: Co-founders of Flipkart, both computer engineering graduates of IIT Delhi.
• Deepinder Goyal: Founder of Zomato and an IIT Delhi alumnus.
• Kiran Bedi: India's first woman IPS officer, who earned her PhD from IIT Delhi's Department of Social Sciences in 1993.
• Chetan Bhagat: Author of Five Point Someone, a 1995 mechanical engineering graduate whose hostel years inspired the novel.

Rivalries and eternal debates

The big one is IIT Delhi versus IIT Bombay: which gets the higher JEE rankers, which has the better social life, and whether Delhi or Mumbai is the better city to spend four years in. Rendezvous is constantly measured against Mood Indigo. Inter-IIT sports turns the debate into points on a table, and locally, the huge DU crowds that show up for Rendezvous are welcomed and teased in equal measure.

Meeting people at IIT Delhi 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, startups and builders, gaming and esports, running, and reading and book clubs, 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 Delhi sits close to St. Stephen's College, Hindu College, Lady Shri Ram College, Miranda House, and Shri Ram College of Commerce, all part of the same Delhi NCR 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 Dharwad, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Goa, and IIT Hyderabad 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 Delhi, 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 Delhi? 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.

See meeting people in Delhi NCR, events in Delhi NCR, the freshers guide, the Meet People pillar, or read what Zyber is.