Now Reading: Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas overcame IIT, MIT rejections
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Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas overcame IIT, MIT rejections
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas overcame IIT, MIT rejections
Aravind Srinivas, 32, became India's youngest billionaire on the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2025 as CEO of Perplexity AI. He was rejected from IIT Madras's Computer Science programme and missed switching…
The Story in Brief
Aravind Srinivas, 32, became India's youngest billionaire on the M3M Hurun India Rich List 2025 as CEO of Perplexity AI. He was rejected from IIT Madras's Computer Science programme and missed switching branches by 0.01 CGPA. He also failed to get into MIT for a PhD. Instead, he did an Electrical Engineering dual degree at IIT Madras, self-studied AI, and earned a PhD at UC Berkeley. He interned at OpenAI, Google and DeepMind. His first startup failed. In 2022 he co-founded Perplexity AI, an AI search engine backed by Jeff Bezos. The company plans an IPO after 2028.
The Indian Opinion
Stories like Srinivas's feed the 'IIT or nothing' myth, but the truth is more nuanced. The IIT system is hyper-competitive, and a few thousand seats cannot define India's talent pool. His success came from persistence and US opportunities, not from any Indian institution's failure. The real test: will other rejected students get similar access to capital and global labs? Or is this just the exception that proves the rule?
Source: livemint.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
