Don’t get swept away by professional success alone, find your passion: IIMB director

Students need to develop a global perspective in today’s interconnected world, said Sushil Vachani, IIMB Director.

Addressing the IIMB’s 41st annual convocation, Vachani read out listing the institute’s major accomplishments past year, the global recognition that IIMB has received, the institute’s deep commitment to contributing to education, research initiatives and skill-building for the nation, individual feats of the faculty, students and alumni.

Lauding IIMB’s contribution towards social causes, he said: “IIM Bangalore also has a deep commitment to supporting important nation-building programmes. One example is the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, which encourages premier academic institutions to develop solutions for challenges faced by rural India.”

“IIMB has volunteered to coordinate the national rural initiatives for education and has adopted 10 villages in Northern Karnataka to test new models for addressing the needs of rural India,” he added.

Wishing the graduating students success, he urged them not to be swept away by their professional success alone but also to find their passion, dream big and take chances.

“Combine your dreams for personal success with a commitment to public good. You can, and must, confront norms that have become entrenched and hold us back as a society, such as corruption or discrimination. You have an obligation to help those who are less advantaged, and help level the playing field for those who are powerless. Whether you work in corporate India, or start your own venture, or focus on advocacy in an NGO, or opt for public service with the government, you have the power to change the culture and norms that provide or deny opportunities, that promote or deter equality, that enhance or suppress freedom, and that make us a stronger or weaker nation”, he said.

Dr Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson, Board of Governors, IIMB, in her address, highlighted the achievements of IIM Bangalore during the academic year 2015-16, the global rankings the institute achieved, the important partnerships it entered into, the social initiatives taken up by IIMB, etc.

She also had a special word of appreciation for IIMB’s incubation centre, the N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), which has consistently played a key role in seeding, nurturing and promoting entrepreneurship with an emphasis on early-stage start-ups.

“Today, NSRCEL incubates 18 start-ups – perhaps the largest for an incubation centre in an academic institution. NSRCEL, which also provides free mentoring for budding entrepreneurs, organised 400 mentoring sessions and 34 entrepreneurship-related events during 2015. During the year, NSRCEL also signed a couple of important partnerships aimed at facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship by educating entrepreneurs on global best practices,” she said.

List of Gold Medallists:

Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP)

I Rank – Anurag Garg (Batch 2014-16)

II Rank – R Bharadwaj (Batch 2014-16)

Best All Round Performance – Kshitij Chaudhary (Batch 2014-16)

Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM)

Best Academic Performance – Keshav Kumar (Batch 2015-16)

Post Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM)

I Rank – Kaushik Kumar Bar (Batch 2013-16)

Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management (PGPEM)

I Rank – Nirav Shah (Batch 2014-16)

Best All Round Performance – Kiran Shirgaonkar (Batch 2014-16)

Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP)

I Rank – Mohamed Jaffer Ali Allapitchai (Batch 2015-16)

Best All Round Performance – Santosh Mishra (Batch 2015-16)

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