Roorkee

Meeting people at IIT Roorkee

IIT Roorkee is the oldest engineering institution in Asia, founded in 1847 to train engineers for the Ganges Canal, and today student life on its 365-acre campus revolves around the Bhawans, as hostels are called here, and four big fests: Thomso, Cognizance, E-Summit and Sangram.

The story of IIT Roorkee

James Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, founded the College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee in 1847 to train engineers for the Ganges Canal. It was renamed Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854 and kept that name for almost a century.

In 1949 it became the University of Roorkee, and in 2001 it was converted into an IIT, making it at once the oldest technical institution in the IIT system and one of the newer IITs by title. Its motto translates as nothing can be achieved without hard work.

Alongside the main campus, the institute runs a campus in Saharanpur focused on polymer science and paper technology, and an extension centre in Greater Noida set up in 2011. Its central library holds a 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's plays.

What the campus is like socially

Roorkee is a small cantonment town about 170 km from Delhi, so IITR's social life is built on campus. The Bhawans are the centre of it, each with its own mess, common rooms and inter-Bhawan teams, and Bhawan names stick with alumni for life.

The old colonial buildings, wide lawns and canal setting give the campus a calm, heritage feel, but the calendar is busy: Thomso in autumn, E-Summit and Cognizance in spring, and Sangram for sport. In 2017 the institute removed curfew restrictions on women's hostels after long-running student demands, giving all students the same 24/7 access to campus.

Traditions every IIT Roorkee student knows

• Thomso: IIT Roorkee's cultural fest, running since 1982 and named after James Thomason. It runs for three days around the end of October, with dance, music, drama, comedy and fashion events.
• Cognizance: The technical fest, held in spring, with competitions, workshops and talks by scientists and engineers.
• E-Summit: The entrepreneurship summit run by E-Cell IITR, with founder talks, startup expos and business plan contests.
• Sangram: IITR's sports fest, bringing teams from other colleges to Roorkee's grounds.
• Bhawan life: Hostels at Roorkee are called Bhawans, and inter-Bhawan competitions and Bhawan events shape most students' first-year friendships.

Campus lore and insider spots

• Asia's oldest engineering college: IITR began life in 1847, before most Indian universities existed, to build the Ganges Canal.
• The Shakespeare First Folio: The Mahatma Gandhi Central Library holds a 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works, a rare treasure for an engineering library.
• Thomason's name: The founder's name lives on in the cultural fest Thomso, so every autumn the campus celebrates a 19th-century administrator without most freshers realising it.
• The Ganges Canal: The canal the college was founded to build still flows through Roorkee, and walks along it are a favourite escape from campus.

How to find your people here

At IIT Roorkee, 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 IIT Roorkee

Signature fests

• Thomso
• Cognizance

Notable societies

• Hobbies Club
• E-Summit organizing team
• Sangram (sports fest committee)

Societies worth knowing at IIT Roorkee

• E-Cell IITR: Runs E-Summit and startup programmes. Razorpay's founders are the campus's favourite startup story.
• Cognizance team: One of the largest student organising teams on campus, running the tech fest end to end.
• Thomso team: Organises the cultural fest, from artist bookings to competitions, and is a big social circle in its own right.
• IMG: The Information Management Group, a student group that builds the institute's apps and web platforms.
• Watch Out: The long-running student news publication covering campus life, events and student issues.
• SPIC MACAY IITR: The campus chapter of the classical arts movement. IITR hosted the SPIC MACAY national winter convention in 2015.

Careers, internships and placements

IIT Roorkee runs a central placement season with recruiters across software, finance, consulting and core engineering. Computer science and electrical engineering see the most competition, while civil, architecture and the institute's historic engineering departments keep strong links with core and infrastructure firms.

E-Cell and the institute's incubator support students who want to build startups, and the Razorpay founders are often cited as proof of what IITR graduates can build. Internships in the pre-final year are a common route into full-time offers.

Notable alumni

• Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar: Co-founders of Razorpay, both IIT Roorkee alumni, who launched the company in 2014.
• Naveen Jain: Founder of InfoSpace and Intelius and co-founder of Moon Express.
• Rakesh Agrawal: Computer scientist known as the father of data mining, a former IBM and Microsoft fellow.
• Amit Singhal: Former senior vice president at Google, who led its core search work.
• Narendra Patni: Founder of Patni Computer Systems.
• Jaiprakash Gaur: Founder chairman of the Jaypee Group.

Rivalries and eternal debates

IITR students enjoy reminding the original IITs that Roorkee was training engineers a century before any of them existed, while the others point out that it only became an IIT in 2001. Thomso gets compared with Rendezvous at IIT Delhi as the big North India fests, and Inter-IIT sports turns the rivalry into points. Inside campus, Bhawan versus Bhawan is the debate that never ends.

Meeting people at IIT Roorkee 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.

Similar campuses across India

If you are looking beyond your own campus, students at JNTU Hyderabad, KJ Somaiya College of Engineering, LD College of Engineering, and MANIT Bhopal 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 Roorkee, 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 Roorkee? 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.