As IITian cracks UPSC after quitting Rs 36 lakh job, Meet IIT alumni who made it big after rejecting hefty salaries

Robin Bansal, 25, from a lesser known town in Rajasthan has cracked UPSC in his fourth attempt, but he had managed to clear IIT before that. Bansal quit a Rs 36 lakh per annum job in the corporate sector to serve the public.

But apart from civil services, IITians have pursued diverse entrepreneurial dreams, such as IITian VK Mathews, who left a dream job with perks such as a villa and luxury cars in Dubai 25 years back to launch IBS Software which is now worth Rs 11,500 crore.

She has become a household name after appearing as a judge on Shark Tank India, but Vineeta Singh had to take a big risk and say no to a Rs 1 crore per annum job. She then founded her own startup with a Rs 10,000 salary for herself, faced failures and finally emerged successful with Sugar Cosmetics.

Chaayos is India's answer to coffee chains such as Starbucks in the west, but it exists because IIT alumnus Nitin Saluja chose his passion for brewing chai over a comfortable, high paying, consulting job.

At a time when people look for corporate jobs instead of farming, IIT-Kharagpur's Kishore Indukuri quit his job at Intel in the US and came back to start a dairy farm. His brand Sid's Farm is worth more than Rs 100 crore today.