(Note: "IIT" refers to the Indian Institutes of Technology, a network of public engineering and research institutes across India. "Bombay" is the traditional name for Mumbai, and "Indore" is a city in Madhya Pradesh; "Tamil Nadu" and "Delhi" and "Kharagpur" refer to other Indian states/cities home to other IITs mentioned for context below.)
Quick Verdict
IIT Bombay has the edge on research opportunities, backed by a meaningfully higher score on NIRF's Research and Professional Practice (RPC) parameter — 83.05 versus IIT Indore's 55.01 in the overall rankings, and 84.81 versus 59.55 in the engineering-specific rankings (source, source). IIT Bombay also has a much larger faculty base to support research supervision. That said, IIT Indore runs a genuinely distinctive undergraduate research program that's worth knowing about even if you choose Bombay.
Snapshot
| Metric | IIT Bombay | IIT Indore |
|---|---|---|
| NIRF Research & Professional Practice (RPC) score, Overall 2025 | 83.05 (source) | 55.01 (source) |
| NIRF Research & Professional Practice (RPC) score, Engineering 2025 | 84.81 (source) | 59.55 (source) |
| NIRF Overall Rank 2025 | 3 (source) | 27 (source) |
| Faculty count | 759 (source) | 204 (source) |
| Dedicated undergraduate research scheme | Research internship program (IRCC) (source) | PRIUS — Promotion of Research and Innovation for Undergraduate Students (source) |
Note: faculty counts come from a general Wikipedia table listing all 23 IITs rather than a source built specifically for this pairing, but they still offer useful background on the scale gap between the two institutes.
Detailed Analysis
The clearest, most direct evidence here is NIRF's Research and Professional Practice (RPC) component — one of the five parameters (alongside Teaching and Learning Resources, Graduation Outcomes, Outreach and Inclusivity, and Perception) that make up the overall NIRF score (source). On this specific research-focused metric, IIT Bombay scores 83.05 in the Overall 2025 rankings and 84.81 in the Engineering 2025 rankings, while IIT Indore scores 55.01 and 59.55 respectively (source, source). That's a substantial and consistent gap across both ranking tables, which corroborate each other.
IIT Bombay's own research office describes an institute offering "an outstanding environment for research and development," with "many nationally and internationally important research projects" underway, and it actively recruits project staff to support them (source). It also runs a formal Research Internship program (through its Industrial Research and Consultancy Centre, IRCC) that gives eligible students full-time, funded exposure to faculty-proposed R&D projects in science, technology, and emerging areas each academic year (source).
IIT Indore, for its part, has built a distinct research identity around interdisciplinary work, describing its mission as promoting "inter-disciplinary research programmes focusing on basic and applied research, technology development and innovation" (source). It states that "a key competency of IIT Indore is research driven academic programme as it forms a core component of the undergraduate and postgraduate teaching" (source), and — notably — it has "consciously promulgated the idea of involving undergraduate students in forefront research projects," formalized through PRIUS (Promotion of Research and Innovation for Undergraduate Students) (source). IIT Indore also states that its research "has been recognized at both international and national level" (source), though no specific publication counts, patent numbers, or funding figures were available in our sourced facts for either institute to substantiate scale.
In short: IIT Bombay wins on scale and NIRF-measured research output, almost certainly a function of being a much older, larger institute with a correspondingly larger faculty base. IIT Indore, while measurably behind on the aggregate metrics, has deliberately built an undergraduate-research-first culture (PRIUS) that may appeal specifically to students who want hands-on research exposure early, even at a smaller institute.
Verdict
Winner: IIT Bombay, on the strength of a clear, corroborated NIRF Research and Professional Practice advantage and a larger faculty and project ecosystem. Runner-up: IIT Indore, whose research infrastructure is smaller in scale but genuinely oriented around undergraduate involvement via PRIUS. The one condition under which a reader should lean toward IIT Indore: if getting hands-on, faculty-mentored research experience as an undergraduate — rather than working within the largest possible research ecosystem — is the priority, IIT Indore's explicit undergraduate-research culture may be a better personal fit even though its aggregate research metrics are lower.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Which IIT has stronger research output, Bombay or Indore?
A: IIT Bombay, based on its considerably higher NIRF Research and Professional Practice scores in both the Overall and Engineering 2025 rankings (source, source).
Q: Does IIT Bombay offer research internships to students?
A: Yes — its IRCC Research Internship program gives students full-time exposure to faculty-proposed R&D projects each academic year (source).
Q: Does IIT Indore have a program specifically for undergraduate research?
A: Yes — PRIUS (Promotion of Research and Innovation for Undergraduate Students) is IIT Indore's formal scheme for involving undergraduates in research (source).
Q: Do we know exact publication or patent counts for either institute?
A: No — our sourced facts don't include specific publication, patent, or research-funding figures for either IIT Bombay or IIT Indore, so we can't compare on that basis.
Q: Is IIT Indore's research reputation purely domestic?
A: According to its own research office, IIT Indore's research has been "recognized at both international and national level," though no specific international rankings or awards were listed in our sourced facts (source).
Q: Is IIT Bombay's research advantage mostly about scale?
A: Likely, in part — it has roughly 3.7 times the faculty count of IIT Indore per the general IIT faculty table, which would naturally support a larger research output, though this specific comparison wasn't drawn explicitly in our sources (source).
Related
For the complete picture beyond Research Opportunities -- placements, academics, campus life, and more -- see the full IIT Bombay vs IIT Indore comparison.