Chennai: The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) will soon launch two new online Bachelor of Science (BS) courses in Aeronautical and Economics, Director V Kamakoti has said.

He said IIT Madras, which recently topped the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) overall category for the seventh consecutive year, is committed to driving innovation and entrepreneurship as part of the country's “Viksit Bharat 2047” vision.

“Last year alone, 100 startups received business incentives. If India wants to emerge as a superpower, ownership of new innovations should rest with its citizens. For this, we are starting an incentive programme soon,” Kamakoti said in an interview.

Highlighting the need to expand higher education access, he noted Tamil Nadu's gross enrolment ratio is nearly 50 per cent, compared to the national average of 27-28 per cent. “The National Education Policy targets raising this to 50 per cent by 2035,” he said.

To achieve this, IIT Madras launched the Vidya Shakti programme three years ago, providing online education through 5,000 centres and reaching five lakh students so far. Plans are underway to scale it up to 40,000 centres to benefit one crore students, he added.

Currently, about 50,000 students are enrolled in online BS courses offered by IIT Madras, including Data Science and Electronic Systems. The new courses in Aeronautical and Economics will be introduced shortly.

On concerns about quality, Kamakoti stressed IIT Madras does not compromise. “Our online BS courses are on par with our regular programmes. Students from our BS Data Science course secured places in the top 10 of last year's GATE results,” he said.