Since the NIRF rankings were first introduced in 2015, IIT Madras has dominated the engineering category every single year.
In addition to these achievements, IIT Madras has also been ranked No. 1 in the ‘Innovation’ category, previously known as the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA), improving from its No. 2 position last year.
The institute also secured the top rank in the newly introduced ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)’ category. This recognition follows the establishment of its School of Sustainability in October 2023, which aims to scale up the institute’s work in sustainable development. In the ‘Research Institutions’ category, IIT Madras retained its No. 2 ranking, behind only the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, according to a statement.
The 2025 NIRF results were officially announced today in New Delhi by Union Education Minister Shri Dharmendra Pradhan at a ceremony. Pradhan said India’s higher education enrolment has grown from fewer than 3.5 crore students in 2014–15 to over 4.5 crore today, with an ambitious target of reaching 9 crore students by 2030. He said that rankings and accreditations would play a key role in achieving this goal, it added.
Receiving the awards in person, IIT Madras Director Prof V Kamakoti, accompanied by Prof R Sarathi, Dean (Planning), and Prof Rajnish Kumar, Chairperson of the Rankings Committee, praised the collective efforts of students, faculty, alumni, and staff, stating that consistent top performance is the result of “collective, cohesive, and focused team effort.”
In 2024-25, IIT-M incubated more than 100 start-ups for the first time in its history and filed 417 patents during the financial year—surpassing the director’s vision of “One Patent a Day.”
