February 16, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 25: IIT Madras CS Batch of 1998 | Part 2

One of a kind episode: Explosive Conclusion of the Conversation! Together in one room--Seven graduates of IIT Madras (Chennai)'s Computer Science and Engineering Bachelors' degree Batch of 1998, now all technologists in the US. They discuss their immigration journeys as well as their perspectives on IITs, India, and immigration. Part 2 of 2.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Explosive conclusion of the conversation among IIT Madras (Chennai) India CS Batch of 1998! This episode features a free-ranging discussion on everyone’s perspectives on the IITs, on India, on technology, and on life as Indian immigrants in the US. For the individual journeys of these six immigrants, please listen to our previous episode, Episode 24. All these individuals wrote the IIT JEE 1994 (IIT Joint Entrance Exam). In 1994, only those ranked in the top 48 ranks in the entire nation of India, among 200K candidates, were admitted to IIT Madras’ Computer Science batch. Surprises abound, as we discover new things about each others’ backgrounds. And some of us make surprising revelations about how our outlook has changed in the 24 years since we came to the US, and some of us divulge surprising plans for our futures. Featuring: Balaji Srinivasan, Praveen Patnala, Ramesh Chandra, Rajasekar Krishnamurthy, Shankar Ponnekanti, Sriram Sellappa. Together with the host (Indy Gupta), these seven individuals comprise nearly 25% of the CS Batch of IIT Madras 1998 (7 out of 30 total students in that batch). Of these guests, three are/have been startup-founders, and three are long-timers in companies. Part 2 of 2.

Disclaimer: Because India is a large country, the second most populous nation in the world, no single episode can capture the experiences of all immigrants originally from India, and that’s not our goal at all in this episode! Instead, our aim is to talk to technologists who studied, graduated, and immigrated together. Seven individuals with parallel careers.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.49: Introduction, and Voices in this episode
  • 4.08: Act 1 – Challenges of Preparing for the IIT JEE (IIT Joint Entrance) Exam in 1994. And a discussion of the inequity inherent in IIT JEE and other exams.
    • (This Act 1 is repeated from Episode 24, for continuity. If you’ve already heard Episode 24, use the Chapter Markers in embedded audio, to skip to Act 2.)
    • 4.59: Balaji Srinivasan 
      • “Access… I have become conflicted with what IIT JEE has stood for… It is not a level playing field!” 
      • “In some way we were the product of a system that was inherently flawed, but we waded through it.”
      • 1.05.23: Comparing IIT JEE vs. SAT (US)
    • 10.46: Rajasekar Krishnamurthy 
      • “Grew up in a big city… with access to tutors. Different from smaller towns.” 
      • “I as an individual needed to know — what is my strength, play to that strength to the max, and learn the subject where you’re weakest so you don’t fall too much. … True at every career level”
      • “At IIT… working with peers who are as smart or smarter than you.”
    • 12.59: Ramesh Chandra 
      • “I’m from a smaller town… Last time someone went to IIT from my town was 6 years before me.”
      • “It was super hard when you don’t have anything to calibrate against.”
    • 16.10: Shankar Ponnekanti 
      • “Small town… my brother’s journey helped me.”
    • 16.48: Praveen Patnala
      • “My family wanted me to go into medicine.” 
      • “I had to reverse engineer what was needed to get into IIT.”
      • “I prepared 12 hours a day for IIT… rest of education didn’t matter.”
    • 22.08: Balaji Srinivasan on accidentally choosing Computer Science
      • “When I joined IIT, I had no idea what Computer Science was.” 
      • “We accidentally landed in this field (Computer Science).”
    • 23.09: Sriram Sellappa on learning programming in school
    • 23.38: Ramesh Chandra on intentionally choosing Computer Science
      • “I was interested in computer science from very early on.”
    • 25.01: Balaji Srinivasan
      • “Kids in Bay area are under tremendous pressure.”
  • 25.20: Act 2 – The Tendency to compare oneself to others.
    • 25.58: Rajasekar
      • “The peer group plays a significant role in shaping any of us. Societal pressure… is the variable.”
      • “If everyone in a particular area has opportunity, they can’t all go to the same destination.”
    • 27.41: Praveen
      • “I chose to get to the top… It may not happen for everyone. It is up to the person to identify what to do.”
      • “In the Bay area, kids commit suicide… due to parental pressure.”
    • 31.10: Ramesh, who draws an analogy to how companies look at competition and thrive from multiple “winners”
      • “In most areas except sports, there is not one winner… You can find some space in which you are valuable.”
      • “What is that person doing that I am not doing? How can I learn from them… I’ve seen this in the best people who run companies.”
    • 34.32: Balaji
      • “In our generation, we needed to find a stable line of work. Which is largely gone in the current generation.”
      • “In any profession where you want to be in the top, it is impossible to do it without sacrificing everything else.”
    • 37.11: Shankar
      • “It is a natural tendency to compare… even in my kids.”
    • 38.28: Sriram
      • “Just like the tendency to compare is primitive, the tendency to belong is also primitive. There is a tension between the two. How do we reconcile?”
  • 41.41: Act 3 – Immigration in 1998: Hardest and easiest things to adapt to?
    • 41.41: Sriram. 
      • “I was homesick.”
    • 43.09: Shankar
      • “It caused me to question my place in the world… why am I here?”
      • “It makes you question things and rethink… your values, habits, beliefs.” 
      • “It can also cause an identity crisis. You have to reconcile everything and give meaning to your life.”
      • A lot of people go through these things even if they stayed in the same country, but when an event like immigration happens, it forces it on you.”
    • 45.26: Balaji
      • “Hardest thing for me is to accept the inherent privilege we’ve had over the years.”
    • 47.29: Rajasekar
      • “At (University of Wisconsin) Madison I may have a record for the most number of rejections before my first paper got accepted.”
      • “With a few exceptions, we all did what others were doing. Now it’s more open, there’s more choice.”
    • 50.42: Praveen, on the differences in class system between US and India
      • “Even today I am an Indian citizen.”
      • “We were lucky in grad school that we were around people we knew.”
      • “One difference I see from India is the class difference in people is different in the US – there is strong respect among people irrespective of what their professions are, or their finances, …their appearance, clothing, conversations, personality… Even today, in India, I don’t think this is true… I hope someday in our lives that will change.”
  • 54.22: Act 4 – India’s class/caste system: Does it bleed into the US? And inequities in US tech sector.
    • Reference: [Casteism Case at Cisco, US (article from The Economic Times)]
    • 54.46: Balaji
      • “I have not seen it here, but I may be blind because I am biased.”
    • 55.05: Rajasekar.
      • “People relate to people similar to themselves.”
      • “In India, that history is thousands of years, while US is much younger. Correcting for something for thousands of years… is going to be slow.”
    • 57.05: Ramesh
      • “I have seen cliques, where people work together, help each more than they help others. The cliques don’t seem to be segmented by caste. They are segmented by background, whether they knew each other before, whether they went to the same school.”
    • 57.58: Sriram
      • “Even in this country, a few years ago, women couldn’t vote,… and people had slaves.” 
      • “Caste… It wouldn’t be surprising if people have biases. But the environment here normalizes that and the opportunity for biases to manifest is less.”
    • 58.51: Praveen
      • “Caste is only one aspect… in the US there is race, gender. Asian women are more common in tech but not among caucasians.”
      • “Last 20 years I have interviewed 300-400 candidates. I don’t recall interviewing even one African-American candidate. I can’t explain that.”
    • 1.00.51: Balaji
      • “The pendulum has started swinging in the other direction.”
  • 1.01.38: Act 5 – Have you thought of returning to India (permanently)?
    • 1.02.12: Balaji
      • “We definitely want to move back… retiring in India is much easier… economically.”
    • 1.02.41: Sriram
      • “Families… kids… I belong here (US)  now. In 20 years I may not belong here… I owe a lot to India.”
    • 1.04.05: Ramesh
      • “Hardest part for me is leaving family (parents) there (in India).”
    • 1.05.26: Balaji 
      • “Needn’t have one career. I would love to go back and be a full time teacher, or learn music. My wife would love to have a farmland. We don’t need to think of having this engineering career till 65, and then retire and play tennis in some back-alley somewhere.”
      • “The system here (US) is gamed to keep you running until 70… pay mortgage, etc. That needn’t be the case.”
    • 1.08.08: Praveen
      • “It is possible. The work culture (US and India) are similar. Personally if I could go back, I would go back anytime. But we are not bachelors (we have families)”
    • 1.09.39: Rajasekar
      • “Once you get into a zone, kids go to school… how much do you want to uproot the entire family.”
  • 1.10.36: Act 6 – Is there one thing you would go back and change, if you could?
    • 1.11.00: Balaji
      • “As a community (industry) we have been extremely passive in responding to social causes… BLM, Occupy wall street. Only now we are seeing some activism from employees in companies rising up to tackle their masters. Would have liked to see that happening sooner.”
    • 1.11.41: Rajasekar.
      • “Starting spending more time working with kids, others, and teaching them, because you learn a lot while teaching others.”
    • 1.12.48: Shankar. 
      • “Buy Bitcoin.”
      • “Read more books… outside the normal line of work.”
    • 1.14.02: Praveen
      • “I wish I’d taken the entrepreneurial plunge earlier.”
    • 1.15.44: Sriram
      • “In school I focused on Math and science… now I’ve started reading non-technical books. Also Yoga and meditation. I’m happy I made that change.”
  • 1.18.08: Act 7 – Closing thoughts.
    • 1.18.14: Balaji
      • “Whenever we meet, it’s about the immediate things going on in our lives. This is great, and this podcast really made it happen.”
Featured in this Episode

Six guests who all graduated from IIT Madras (Chennai) India, Computer Science and Engineering Bachelors’ degree batch of 1998. In alphabetical order of first name:

  1. Balaji Srinivasan, Director of Engineering, SAP Ariba
  2. Praveen Patnala, Co-founder and Chief Architect of stealth mode startup Valtix (with $27M+ funding including Series A)
  3. Rajasekar Krishnamurthy, Principal Research Staff Member & Senior Manager, IBM Watson Discovery
    • 1970s-early 1990s: Grew up in the state of Tamilnadu
    • 1994-1998: IIT Madras CS Batch
    • 1998-2004: PhD in Computer Science, from University of Wisconsin Madison
    • 2004-Present: 17 years at IBM
  4. Ramesh Chandra, Co-Founder of Moka5, Software Engineer at Databricks
  5. Shankar Ponnekanti, Co-founder at startup Trust Lab
    • 1970s-early 1990s: Grew up in the (then) state of Andhra Pradesh
    • 1994-1998: IIT Madras CS Batch
    • 1998-2004: PhD in Computer Science from Stanford
    • 2005-2020: 15 years at Google, where he left as Distinguished Engineer
    • 2020-Present: Startup founder, Trust Lab
  6. Sriram Sellappa, Member of Technical Staff at Arista Networks
Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

If you haven’t already done so, the individual immigrant journeys of these six technologists are in the previous episode: Episode 24.

This is the second episode of a 3-episode segment featuring technologists who immigrated from India, specifically from the southern part of India.

Look for our next Episode 26 featuring a woman technologist from India who went elsewhere than the IITs. She also wrote a book in 2016 covering about 20 American women technologists.,

In case you missed it | Season 1

If you haven’t already done so, the individual immigrant journeys of these six technologists are in the previous episode: Episode 24.

Season 1 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!
Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Podcasts Listen on Spotify RSS Feed Listen on Stitcher Listen on iHeartRadio

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indygupta Written by:

Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign