Sachin made his first attempt to clear the IIT-Joint Entrance Exam in 1999 but failed to secure admission. He joined a lesser institute, the Punjab Engineering College, but took the IIT-JEE test again while still enrolled there.
A local tutor by the name of Ashok Chitkara had achieved fame in Chandigarh as someone who could identify the brightest kids and help them secure admission into the best colleges. Sachin signed up for Chitkara’s classes. Chitkara had a peculiar teaching style. He would sometimes explain complex mathematical concepts in Hindi, using muhavares, or draw on well-known historical events to make his point. He was also eminently methodical. He assigned class slots and devised seating arrangements based on his estimation of his students’ abilities. Students had to regularly take mock exams. Sachin’s scores were often in the top tier even though he was never to be seen at the ‘front benches’. After a year of Chitkara’s coaching classes, Sachin got his break. He pulled off an impressive national rank of 49 in the IIT-JEE test in 2000, surprising Chitkara himself.
That was a record year for both Chitkara and his city with respect to the IITs.4 Every one of Chitkara’s front-benchers – his most obviously sincere students – made it into the IITs. Many of the ‘back-benchers’, which included members of Zomato and Grofers’ founding teams, also got in. Chitkara’s fame grew, and so did his ambition. He launched his own university a few years later. Unfortunately, by then Chandigarh was producing IIT-worthy students in far fewer numbers.
In 2000, Sachin and most of Chandigarh’s other star pupils, hoping to become engineers, chose to go to IIT Delhi. This would be the first fortuitous step in Sachin’s drift towards entrepreneurship. Later, taking a job at Amazon India would be another.
At IIT Delhi, Sachin would meet the people who would later become crucial early employees at Flipkart. He would build his first technology product at this institute, learn how to overcome the humiliation of failure, how to give up addiction. He would cultivate deep friendships here and, for the first time, be able to venture out of his sheltered life in Chandigarh. He would get his first taste of life in a metropolis, and of the West. In fact, IIT Delhi’s graduating classes of the early 2000s turned out to be the most significant suppliers of the country’s initial entrepreneurs. The founders of some of India’s most influential startups, such as Snapdeal, Zomato and Delhivery, were students at IIT Delhi at the turn of the century.
Hostel life greatly characterized one’s time at IIT Delhi. There were several social networks apart from classes – study groups, sports groups, cultural activities – that brought people together. But the hostel ranked the highest in importance. Loyalty to one’s hostel was paramount; some of the competitive-minded senior students enforced this unwritten law and passed on their zeal for their respective hostels to the juniors. Rivalries grew intense during inter-hostel competitions and campus elections. It was common for students to lose their voice after screaming abuses against rival hostels. This subsequent inability to speak was considered a badge of honour. By usual Indian campus life standards, what went on at IIT Delhi in those years wasn’t exactly outrageous.
Among the programmes, computer science was easily the most in demand, owing to the IT boom and the general hype around computers and the internet. This was followed by electrical engineering. The rest of the programmes were perceived as inferior. It was believed that the academic abilities of the computer science students were far greater than those enrolled in civil engineering, for instance. Sachin’s exceptional rank in the IIT entrance exam ensured that he was one of a select group of about sixty admitted into the computer science programme in 2000. Many engineers who became entrepreneurs later boasted degrees in computer science from the IITs or other engineering colleges.
The computer science programmes at the various IITs aren’t identical. At the Delhi campus, the focus is on the fundamental principles of programming rather than a specific manner of writing code, which is an ever-evolving process. Many IIT Delhi graduates benefited from this approach as working professionals.
The professors, mostly middle-aged or elderly men, were unsparing. One professor would spend his class hours writing complex equations on the blackboard in tiny handwriting, without stopping to check if his students were able to keep up. On finishing, he would simply wipe the board clean and no explanations would be proferred. Instead, he would inform his clueless students that assignments were going to be based on his blackboard notes. Harsh Dhand, one of Sachin’s batchmates, compares the computer science programme to being ‘thrown into a deep well’. If one emerged victorious, this victory could be replicated in their career. But there are always a few who can’t handle the pressure.
Each semester lasted about four and a half months, during which time students had to take a variety of tests; there were also class assignments, cultural events, sports competitions and the call of hostel life.
Ajay Bhutani, who knew both Sachin and Binny at IIT Delhi, says that the programme ensured students learnt how to cope in a high-pressure environment. ‘The number of things you have to do ... you don’t necessarily [have time to] get organized – you just figure out how to do things. You learn to solve problems faster, more efficiently.’
SACHIN’S FIRST FEW days at IIT were not pleasant. He was an ‘ek thappa’ – cricket slang adapted into IIT Delhi lingo to refer to those who had passed the entrance exam after one failed attempt. Those who secured admission on the first try were called ‘full toss’ and the ones who needed three attempts were crowned ‘dead ball’. All first-year students had to endure being
