Coimbatore

Meeting people at IIT Palakkad

IIT Palakkad is a small IIT in Kerala whose students live on the Nila and Sahyadri campuses at Kanjikode, near the Western Ghats, and with about a thousand students, clubs from music to trekking are where most friendships start.

The story of IIT Palakkad

IIT Palakkad was announced in the July 2014 Union Budget, and IIT Madras was named its mentor in November 2014. A site of about 500 acres in Pudussery village, Palakkad district, was chosen as the permanent home in January 2015.

Classes began on 3 August 2015 with a welcome programme for the first BTech batch at a temporary campus in the Ahalia integrated campus at Kozhipara. Prof. P.B. Sunil Kumar became the first director in January 2017.

In February 2019 students moved to the new Nila campus, and by August 2023 the institute had fully relocated to its permanent site, which includes the larger Sahyadri campus near the Western Ghats. Its motto is nurturing minds for a better world.

What the campus is like socially

IIT Palakkad is green, quiet and close to the hills, and the small size means you will know a large part of the campus by the end of first year. Palakkad town and Coimbatore are within reach for weekend food and shopping, and the Western Ghats make trekking a natural hobby.

Clubs are organised under cultural, technical, sports and literary councils, with everything from dance and filmmaking to astronomy and horticulture. Students also run their own news outlet and a podcast platform, so there is room for writers, speakers and creators as well as engineers.

Traditions every IIT Palakkad student knows

• Petrichor: IIT Palakkad's annual fest, combining cultural events, competitions and research exhibitions, with the institute's open house for the public. The 2025 edition ran in January.
• Open house: Held alongside Petrichor, it opens the institute's labs and research facilities to students and visitors.
• EBSB events: The Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat club runs events exploring the languages and cultures of different Indian states.
• Treks with Novare: The trekking and adventure club takes students into the hills around Palakkad and the Western Ghats.

Campus lore and insider spots

• The torus knot logo: The institute logo is a (5,3) torus knot, meant to show research, theory and practice tied together.
• Ahalia beginnings: The first batches studied at a temporary campus in the Ahalia integrated campus before the move to Nila in 2019.
• Nila and Sahyadri: The two parts of the permanent campus are named Nila, after the river, and Sahyadri, after the Western Ghats.
• A campus with a horticulture club: IIT Palakkad has a club devoted to plants and conservation, fitting for one of the greenest IIT settings.

How to find your people here

At IIT Palakkad, 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 Palakkad

Signature fests

• Petrichor

Notable societies

• Vadya (music)
• Curtain Call (dramatics)
• Qriosity (quiz)
• Novare (trekking)
• The Fleet Street (student news)

Societies worth knowing at IIT Palakkad

• Vadya and Sync To Beat: The music club, with jams and open mics, and the dance club, with classes for every skill level.
• Curtain Call and Bioscope: The dramatics club and the filmmaking club, for acting, stagecraft and cinema.
• Qriosity and Vaani: The quiz club and the oratory club, for trivia fans and public speakers.
• YACC and TRC: The competitive programming club and the robotics club, working on drones and autonomous vehicles.
• Novare: The trekking and adventure club.
• The Fleet Street: The student-run news and commentary publication, the voice of the student community.

Careers, internships and placements

IIT Palakkad runs a central placement process with recruiters from software, data, electronics and core engineering. Computer science and data science draw the most interest, and the institute's data science BTech reflects where demand is heading.

With a small batch, students often get close access to faculty for research projects, and many build their profiles through programming, robotics and AI clubs before internships.

Rivalries and eternal debates

IIT Palakkad students compare their progress with the other new IITs and with IIT Madras, their mentor institute. In Kerala, JEE aspirants often weigh it against NIT Calicut, the state's long-established engineering name.

Meeting people at IIT Palakkad by interest

A lot of friendships here form around a shared interest rather than a class or a hostel wing. If you are into music and jamming, theatre and dramatics, quizzing, trekking, and coding and hackathons, 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 Palakkad sits close to Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore and PSG College of Technology, all part of the same Coimbatore 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 Ropar, IIT Tirupati, IIIT-Delhi, and IIT Bhilai 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 Palakkad, 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 Palakkad? 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.