I decided to explore the trend of the past decade to see what the data says about the career preferences of IIT graduates.

Limitations

1. Data is only about undergraduates (b.tech + M.Tech + M.Sc. integrated courses) - I removed data about post-graduates since I have seen that they usually follow a different career trajectory than undergraduates.
2. It is based on the year of entrance to IIT and not the year of graduation.
3. Few alumni went to Europe, Singapore, Korea, Middle-east, Australia, and Africa. This is not covered in the graphs.
4. Data covers only IITK alumni. I did not have the data for the rest.
5. Data covers all departments.
6. The anomaly in 1997 (year of graduation=2001) is probably due to the dot-com bust and recession in the US economy in 2001.

I do believe that graphs are good enough to draw qualitative conclusions but due to the aforementioned limitations, I would suggest the reader refrain from drawing any quantitative conclusions.

The graphs are based on the data provided by Cherian Varkey Mathew.