Institute Of Chemical Technology, Mumbai

The Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai is ranked 6th in the country for pharmacy on NIRF 2025 while its engineering programmes sit at 41st, and that split is the most honest thing you can know about the place. It is a specialist, not a general-purpose university: chemical engineering, chemical technology and pharmacy are almost the whole of what it teaches. Founded in 1933 as the University Department of Chemical Technology, still called UDCT by generations of its graduates, it became a deemed-to-be university in 2008 and remains a state-funded public institute, an unusual combination in Indian higher education. The split between its pharmacy and engineering standing, and the placement and seat figures behind it, come from ICT's NIRF 2025 submission and its 2026 admission notices.

ICT began on 1 October 1933 as the University Department of Chemical Technology of the University of Bombay, set up to build India's own capacity in chemical science and technology, as its official admission portal records. It grew through a long series of upgrades that its graduates still argue about by their old names: partial autonomy from the University of Mumbai in 1985, autonomous status on UDCT in 1994, a rename to a Mumbai University Institute of Chemical Technology in 2002, full autonomy in 2004 as a lead institution under the World Bank's Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme, and finally deemed-to-be-university status from the Government of India on 12 September 2008, when it took the name it carries today.

Two facts set ICT apart from the private deemed universities it is often listed beside. It is a state-funded public institute rather than a self-financed one, and the Government of Maharashtra granted it Elite Status and Centre of Excellence, a distinction its admission notice treats as central to its identity. It holds Category-I graded autonomy from the UGC and carries NAAC accreditation at the A++ grade, with a CGPA of 3.77 out of 4, the top band the assessor awards, as printed on its master's admission notice; several of its engineering and technology degrees also carry programme-level accreditation from the National Board of Accreditation. Wikipedia describes it as the only state-funded deemed university in India, a claim worth knowing but one you should weigh as a secondary description rather than an official designation.

Beyond the main Matunga campus, ICT runs two regional campuses, one at Bhubaneswar in Odisha set up with the Indian Oil Corporation and one at Jalna in Maharashtra, so a programme you see listed may run at more than one location.

ICT's programme list is deep in a narrow band rather than broad. At the undergraduate level it runs a four-year Bachelor of Chemical Engineering alongside specialised B.Tech degrees in Dyestuff Technology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology, Fibres and Textile Processing Technology, Surface Coating Technology, Polymer Engineering and Technology, Oils, Oleochemicals and Surfactants Technology, and Food Engineering and Technology, plus a Bachelor of Pharmacy, as listed on its official programme portal. There is also a five-year Integrated Master of Technology in Chemical Engineering.

At the postgraduate level the catalogue widens into master's degrees that map onto those same technologies: M.Chem.Engg, M.Tech streams in Polymer, Surface Coating, Perfumery and Flavour, Green Technology, Bioprocess and Food Engineering, M.Pharm, several M.Sc programmes in chemistry, physics and mathematics, an MBA in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Venture Development, and a large doctoral programme across the same fields. Taken together the portal lists dozens of distinct programmes, nearly all of them anchored in chemistry, chemical engineering or pharmacy.

On fees, ICT publishes the binding tuition figure per programme in its admission prospectus rather than as a single headline number, and as a state-funded public institute its structure is set on that basis. The one fee its current admission notice states plainly is the application charge: a single-programme master's application costs Rs 2,000 for open-category candidates and Rs 1,000 for reserved-category candidates, payable online, per the ICT master's admission notice. For the programme tuition itself, read the exact amount for your course and category in the current prospectus on the official admission portal, since that is the only figure that binds.

You do not sit one common ICT entrance for everything, because the undergraduate and postgraduate routes are completely different. First-year undergraduate admission to the Chemical Engineering and B.Tech degrees runs through the Maharashtra CET Cell: applicants are told to check eligibility and apply as per the state CET cell guidelines at the MahaCET first-year engineering portal, which means an MHT-CET score, with JEE (Main) scores used for the relevant quota, decides a seat rather than any test ICT owns.

Postgraduate admission is where ICT runs its own machinery. Master's applicants apply online through the ICT admission portal and are assessed on an ICT entrance examination together with a valid national score, GATE for the M.Tech, M.E. and M.Chem.Engg engineering streams, GPAT for M.Pharm, GAT-B for the biotechnology programmes, and MAH-MBA-CET or GAT-B for the MBA, as its master's admission notice sets out. Candidates with a valid GATE, GAT-B or GPAT score also become eligible for the fellowship attached to the thesis-based master's programmes. Doctoral admission is conducted directly by the institute across its specialised departments.

There is no single "ICT cutoff" you can quote in advance, and treating undergraduate and postgraduate entry as one number is the common mistake. For the undergraduate chemical engineering and B.Tech seats, the closing MHT-CET score is fixed only when the Maharashtra CET Cell publishes each round of its centralised admission process, so the real cutoff is whatever that round's official CAP result settles at, and for a highly selective specialist institute in Mumbai those closing scores tend to sit near the top of the state list. For the master's programmes, there is no state cutoff at all: selection rests on ICT's own entrance examination and your GATE, GPAT or GAT-B score, ranked by the institute. Any specific closing rank you see quoted before the relevant list is published is an estimate, so track the official round results rather than a figure lifted from an aggregator.

The honest headline for ICT placements is that a large share of its graduates do not go to a placement at all, they go to higher studies, which is what you would expect from a research-heavy chemical and pharmaceutical institute. In the data ICT submitted to NIRF for the class that graduated in 2023-24, 264 undergraduates finished in the minimum stipulated time, 127 were placed and 71 went on to higher studies, at a median salary of Rs 9,00,000 per year, as recorded in its NIRF 2025 undergraduate data. The two batches before it show the same shape.

Master's placements sit lower. ICT's Overall filing puts 192 of 310 two-year postgraduates from the 2023-24 cohort into jobs at a median of Rs 7,00,000 a year. If you have seen a "highest package" figure for ICT on a listing site, note that the official NIRF data reports a median, not a peak, and a median is the number that tells you what a typical graduate can expect. For a place where roughly a quarter of the undergraduate cohort chooses further study over a job, the median is also the more meaningful signal.

ICT's intake reflects its specialism: modest overall and weighted toward postgraduate and doctoral work rather than a broad undergraduate base, which sharpens the fight for a seat. Its NIRF 2025 submission records the approved intake across the whole institute for 2023-24 as 241 undergraduate seats in the four-year programmes, 524 in the two-year master's programmes, and 120 in the five-year integrated programme, as set out in its institute data.

Within that undergraduate total, the engineering and technology side accounts for 211 seats and the pharmacy programme for a further 30 B.Pharm seats, a deliberately tiny cohort. The category-wise split of these seats, including reserved-category and EWS shares, is published each cycle in the relevant admission and CAP notifications rather than as a fixed table.

ICT's ranking profile is a portrait of a specialist. On NIRF 2025 it stands 6th among pharmacy institutions and 41st in engineering, while placing 40th among universities, 64th on the overall list and 41st in research. The pharmacy rank is the standout: a top-six national placement from an institute whose entire pharmacy stream is one small department.

The parameter scores show where the pharmacy strength comes from and where the whole institute is held back. Set the engineering and pharmacy breakdowns side by side and the pattern is clear.

The pharmacy column carries a graduation-outcome score of 90.46 and a research score of 71.08, both far above the engineering equivalents, which is the arithmetic behind the 6th place. The one number that drags on the wider standing is perception, only 16.24 in engineering against a strong 59.22 in pharmacy, a familiar gap for a technically excellent institute that competes for reputation against far larger and more visible IITs and universities.

ICT teaches through departments organised by technology rather than by broad faculties, and the department you join is effectively the degree you take. The chemical engineering side spans Chemical Engineering itself along with the specialised technologies its B.Tech and M.Tech degrees are named for: Polymer Engineering and Technology, Surface Coating Technology, Oils, Oleochemicals and Surfactants Technology, Dyestuff Technology, Fibres and Textile Processing Technology, Perfumery and Flavour Technology, Green Technology and Food Engineering and Technology, as its programme portal lays out.

Running in parallel is a strong pharmaceutical and biological group, including Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacology, Bioprocess Technology and Food Biotechnology, alongside the basic-science departments of Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics that support the whole institute. The Department of Chemical Engineering and the pharmaceutical group are the two that carry ICT's national research reputation.

ICT occupies a compact campus of about 16 acres at Matunga in central Mumbai, near Khalsa College, according to its Wikipedia entry. For an institute of its size that is a tight footprint, and the campus is built around laboratories and pilot-plant facilities rather than sprawling grounds, in keeping with an institution whose work is process chemistry and technology.

The research infrastructure is the real asset here. ICT hosts specialised centres including the DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences, and its departments run the pilot-scale plants that let chemical-technology work move from a bench reaction toward a commercial process, which is the kind of facility that distinguishes a technology institute from a pure-science one. For the current, detailed list of laboratories, hostels and student amenities, the facilities and campus pages on the official website are the authoritative source, since ICT does not publish a single consolidated infrastructure inventory.

ICT's teaching reputation rests less on headcount than on a research lineage that is genuinely rare. Two of its own, Raghunath Mashelkar and Man Mohan Sharma, are the only Indian engineers ever elected Fellows of the Royal Society, and Man Mohan Sharma, a former director, remains one of the most cited names in Indian chemical engineering, as recorded on its Wikipedia page. That standing shapes the place: a large doctoral programme, faculty who have won national science awards, and a research-first culture that explains why so many undergraduates leave for higher study.

In its NIRF 2025 submission ICT reported 193 faculty members across the institute, but the figure that better captures the place is the doctoral one: the same filing records 452 full-time PhD scholars, more than two doctoral researchers for every faculty member. For the staff in a specific field, the department pages on the official website carry the actual names, because at an institute this specialised the department, not the college, is the unit that teaches.

ICT's alumni record is unusually heavy on industry founders and chemical-engineering leaders. Its most prominent graduate is Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, who in 2025 announced an unrestricted gift of Rs 151 crore to the institute during the release of a biography of Man Mohan Sharma, as its Wikipedia entry documents.

Beyond him the list runs through the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry it feeds: Ashwin Dani, the non-executive vice chairman of Asian Paints; Keki Gharda, founder of Gharda Chemicals; Nilesh Gupta, managing director of Lupin; and the scientist and former director Jyeshtharaj Joshi, a Padma Bhushan awardee who now serves as the institute's chancellor. Wikipedia records that civilian honours awarded to ICT alumni include three Padma Vibhushan, eight Padma Bhushan and ten Padma Shri recipients.

ICT's main campus sits in Matunga East in central Mumbai, well connected by the city's suburban rail network. The admission portal lists these points of contact for the Matunga campus.

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