The Alumni Newsletter

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 15TH FEB,2011

From the desk of Faculty Coordinator Dear Alumnus, It gives me great pleasure to launch the SJMSOM Alumni Newsletter– “Alumni Connect” !! SJMSOM is now completing a decade and a half of its existence. The number of graduates has increased from 40 to 120 every year over

Prof. Anand Kusre

these years. Many of the alumni have great achievements to their credit. The School has also considerably strengthened its faculty in

Inside this issue:

various disciplines.

Avenues’ 10

3

While the alumni have been meeting in Mumbai and at various locations I

Continuums’10

4

believe a stage has been reached when we need to substantially raise

E Summit ‘11

5

the level of our interaction. With this in mind we share with you the

Events at IIT

6

first issue of “Alumni Connect.”

Iquiz’ 10

7

Alumni Connect is a platform for all of us to share our ideas and take up

Alumni Meets

8

activities to make SJMSOM Alumni a very vibrant community. Some of

Alumni Achievements

9

our recent initiatives have been the development of the online “Connect Portal”, starting “Reflections ”- a platform for the current students to

SJMSOM Achievements 10

interact with the alumni and holding regular Alumni meets.

The Team

11

We now look forward to more participation from the Alumni in all our

Events Calendar

12

activities and in the events held at the School. We also look forward to better interaction with the alumni through online mentorship forums at the Connect portal. Further, we plan to institute awards to felicitate our distinguished Alumni for their achievements.

" And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln

All these things would be possible with your active participation which could be through personal interactions as well as the Connect Portal. Wishing each one of you all the very best in your professional and personal lives.

With best wishes,

Prof. Anand Kusre Faculty Coordinator – Alumni Relations Team

Campus News..!! Avenues 2010

AVENUES 2010, the annual Business festival of

Ashwamedh- the championship event– where the

SJMSOM, IIT Bombay was conducted on 23rd-24th

participants were required to act as PE investors

Oct 2010. This year, the theme of the festival was

to create strategies and make decisions in a

“Change, evolve and sustain”, a theme that is very

changing economic environment.

relevant in today‟s fast-changing world which is now threatened by environmental pressures and inequity.

Mudra and Mulyankan were the Finance events which tested the financial acumen and real time

The event was graced by luminaries including Mr.

decision making capabilities of the potential

Adi Godrej, who gave the key note address, Mr.

CFO‟S of our country.

Kamal Hassan, Mr. Subrata Roy, Mr. S Gurumurthy, Mr. Satish Jha and many others.

Shrinkhala the supply chain event was one of the most popular ones, with students from all across

Avenues included many never-before-seen events

the country displaying their operation‟s skills and

including Nirvikriti- an event to develop a marketing

proving their mettle.

plan for sustainable tourism in Maharashtra. Abhyutthan was a novel marketing case study Navonmesh- a business plan competition for up-and-

competition where the case studies were actually

coming innovations provided by the Technopreneur

developed by the students in association with

Promotion Programme (TEPP). The judging panel,

Corporates . It provided a great learning oppor-

which included Mr. Kumar- VP, SIDBI, really appre-

tunity for the students as well as the partici-

ciated the event. The event incorporated the chal-

pants.

lenge of getting funds and management expertise from VCs and angel investors.

A huge dose of entertainment was provided by Mr. Kapil Sharma, a stand-up comedian and win-

Pragyaan, the business quiz, was also a huge success,

ner of “The Great Indian Laughter Challenge”.

drawing a large crowd from corporate houses as well

The auditorium was packed, and the audience en-

as from B-Schools- with over 250 team registra-

joyed every moment of it.

tions from companies such as TCS, IBM etc, and institutes such as IIMs, SP Jain etc

Continuums 2010 "Financing the Future: Opportunities and Challenges" .The

event

was

inaugurated

by

Mr.Dharmakirti Joshi –Chief Economist at CRISIL and Mr. Anand Bajaj Group Executive Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer, Yes Bank. Other speakers included : 

Mr. Sivaraman – Sr. VP, L&T Finance



Mr. Gopakumar –President,ICICI Securities



Mr. J.Niranjan – Head Investment Banking, Tata Capital

Systems Continuum 2010 The Systems Continuum, in association with knowledge partner Deloitte, involved discussions on the theme: “Evolving role of IT: It’s everybody’s Business”. The event was flagged off by Dr Karuna Jain, head of department, SJMSOM, and Kirthiga Reddy, Director- online operations, Facebook India. Other speakers included : 

Mr. M. G. Raghuraman - CIO, Mphasis



Mr. Amod Vijayvargiya- Director, Global Knowledge & Business Services, Capgemini



Mr. Sanjay Mehta –CEO SocialWavelength



Dr. Viswanath Poosala – Head of Bell Labs - India, Alcatel-Lucent



Mr. Milind Padalkar – SVP and Head Oracle Universe, HCL Technologies

Marketing Continuum 2010 On the 24th July 2010, marketing experts from industry discussed the theme “Marketing 3.0: From Relationship to Collaboration”. The Speakers included Mr. Mahesh Murthy (CEO-Pinstorm), Mr. Vikrant Khanna ( VP- Bharti Airtel), Mr. Atul Sinha (VP- Britannia), Mr. Vivek Sharma (CMOPhilips India), Mr. Sridhar T. (AVP-Idea Cellular) and Mr. Prashant Pandey (EVP-GSK). Finance Continuum 2010 The theme for the Finance Continuum‟10 was



Mr. Rahul Shukla – Head Corporate Banking, Citibank



Ms. Latika Kundu – Head, Market Operations, MCX-SX

HR Continuum 2010 The theme for the HR continuum was “Evolution of HR as a Strategic Partner”. The keynote speaker for the day was Mr. Suryanarayan Iyer, currently working as Director, Pre Sales and Human Capital Management Solutions, Oracle. Other speakers included :  Mr Prashant Srivastava, Country Manager & Managing Partner- Gallup  Dr. Arvind Agarwal, HR Head, RPG Group  Mr.Alok Ranjan,Head of Organization Development, SAB Miller  Srihari Udupa, the Chief People Officer at PWC  Mr. Jon Glass, Director - Credit Suisse

E-Club in action @ E-Summit –2011

Faculty and students with Dr. Shailesh J. Mehta during E-Summit

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay organized ESummit 2011 on 6th February,2011. The campus was flooded with start-ups from IIT Bombay and outside, fund managers, Venture Capitalists and potential partners. SJMSOM’s E-Club worked along with E-Cell to make this event a grand success.

Pavan,Alumnus-2008 batch, along with his brother Rakesh Thata, added another laurel to the list of SJMSOM achievements by winning second prize in Eureka, Asia’s largest B Plan writing competition. They received a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh. Their

Our honored contributor Dr. Shailesh J. Mehta, Mr.

business plan was based on a software

Tulsi Tanti of Suzlon, public policy entrepreneur Mr.

which provides internet security solutions

Sam Pitroda along with others graced the event and

thus safeguarding from hacking. The tech-

talked about the challenges and scope of entrepre-

nology is undergoing a patent process.

neurship.

The other events included “Networking Lounge” where industry behemoths networked with students and answered all their questions regarding business, Start-up Expo was an exclusive initiative that aimed to provide visibility to some of the most exciting and innovative startups. Business

Mentoring

Hub

where

startups got 30 min one-on-one inputs from the domain experts. There was also a workshop in Business Modeling for budding innovators and entrepreneurs. The Workshop was conducted by Phillipe De Pavan Thata - Alumnus(2008) received IInd prize in Eureka !!

Ridder from Board of Innovation, Belgium.

SJMSOM’s E-Club was formed in March 2007 by a group of SJMSOM students who were enthusiastic about entrepreneurship. The club augments and complements the efforts of IIT Bombay’s E-Cell.

Events at IIT PG Sports 2010

Eminent Visits Honourable Minister of Human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal unveiled the inaugural plaque and also delivered a lecture at IIT Bombay's brand new Victor Menezes Convention Centre (VMCC) on January 8,2011 . Victor

Badminton SJMSOM declared its supremacy in badminton at PG Sports, once again. With a blemish-less performance in the early rounds, both the girls and the boys teams secured gold!! With this victory, SJMSOM has been the champion for 2 years running in

Menezes,

retired

Senior

Vice Chairman of Citigroup, Inc. and a distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay (BTech '70 Electrical Engineering),contributed $3 million towards its construction through the IITB Heritage Fund.

badminton. Table Tennis The girl's team from SJMSOM stormed through the competition and won the first place without dropping a single set on the way to the title. The boy's team secured the third

Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India, visited IIT Bombay and delivered his first Institute lecture on "Challenges Before the Indian Economy" on Friday, December 24, 2010, at the Victor Menezes Convention Centre

place. Squash Aakash place

(SOM12) in

the

secured squash

second playoffs.

SJMSOM thus left its mark on squash, a sport where we haven't had much success in the past.

Auditorium. The lecture was organ-

Swimming

ised by IIT Bombay and supported

SJMSOM ruled the pool at the girls

by Nomura.

swimming events. Anjali (SOM11) se-

The

Russian

President

Dmitry

Medvedev visited the campus and spoke to students about various

-

cured three positions (first, second and third) in various events. Neha (SOM11) secured a silver.

issues like „WikiLeaks‟, democracy

Chess

and India‟s aspirations to become a

SJMSOM reached the finals of the

permanent member of the UN Se-

chess tournament but went down to

curity council.

CSE 2-1 in a best of three.

I quiz..!! – A Marktrix Initiative

Marktrix club , SJMSOM, IIT Bombay in association with Mahindra Scorpio presented “I Quiz -A national level business quiz competition” on the 28th of August,2010 which was graced by Mr Avinash Dharmadhikari ( IAS ) Ex Director General, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan as the Chief Guest. The Quiz was hosted by Mr Rohit Nair, founder, editor in chief , www.Quizzing.in. A few highlights of the event : 

600+ teams participated in the online elimination round from 150 B-Schools across India.



50+ corporate entries



10,000 website views within 3 days of the launch and the count reached up to 50,000 towards the end.( 17 different countries)



The Winning team consisting of– Mitesh Agrawal ( Sun Microsystems ) and Rohan Khanna ( Accenture ) won a cash prize of Rs 60,000 and were also the winners of The Brand Equity quiz in 2009 ..!!



1st runners up were a team from TCS consisting of M Sureshkumar and Aniruddhha Dutta who were the winners of Tata Crucibles from 2008-2010.

Staying in touch ..!!

All India Alumni Meet..!!

The much awaited Alumni Meet of SJMSOM, IIT Bombay was organized on 28 th August, 2010. It began with an address by Prof. Patwardhan who expressed his warm welcome to the home coming students of the institute. It was followed by an interesting video that showcased the events that had happened over the year at SOM. A discussion ensued with suggestions from the alumni which opened new avenues for improvements. Sagaran Jos, a student from class of 2011 was felicitated for his efforts towards creating an official website for the school ( som.iitb.ac.in/ SJMSOM_Connect/ ). Prof Anand Kusre also expressed his warm welcome to the alumni in his address . Post the formalities the guests were escorted to the famous “SOM WELL” where fun activities awaited them. This informal get together came up as a platform for interaction between the alumni and the current students. There were cultural events and fun activities organized by the current students. The occasion was graced by some senior alumni such as Mr. Krishnan Mani (Class of 1999), Mr. Vishnu Ramachandran (Class of 2002), Mr. Raja Ram (Class of 2004), Mr. Gokul Raj Perumal (Class of 2004) and Mr. Paras Mehta (Class of 2004). The splendid event reached its apt end with an expression of gratitude by Prof. Karuna Jain, HOD, SJMSOM and a gala dinner.

Alumni Hangout @ Delhi..!!

On

19th December, 2010, Team Alumni -

SJMSOM organized a regional Alumni Hangout in Delhi at the N-Block Cafe Coffee Day at Connaught Place. There were multiple rounds of coffee as we chatted and discussed things. To our surprise Sarin (2009 batch) read out a couple of his poems to us which he had written about SOM and his life in the corporate. The meet was a success. We all had a lot to gain and we had a good time too. We look forward to more of such hangouts and better participation from the Alumni in the future.

Alumni at the top..!! Akash Mavle An

entrepreneur,

Sanjeev Chachondia This 1997 batch alumnus

a

of SJMSOM puts up an

CTO, a faculty and a

example of how hard work

technical expert in IT

and perseverance can

are a few attributes

result in an accelerated

that describe this dis-

growth.

tinguished alumnus. He did his MBA in operations research, business strategy in 1998 from SJMSOM and is currently pursuing his PhD in entrepreneurship also from SJMSOM. He teaches entrepreneurship at SIBM, Pune as a visiting faculty and the course which focuses on creating companies/organizations on campus at SIBM has been designed by him completely. He has more than 14 years of experience as CEO/CIO and CTO. Prior to joining his PhD he worked as a CTO at Clarion Technologies Pvt. Ltd. He has also worked in multiple Government Projects in the US. He has also founded two companies namely Eximserve and Solversa. Eximserve focused on the B2B market place where he played the role of Lead Architect in building a sophisticated web based trading platform for trade. Later the company was sold to an auto parts company. Solversa, focused on E-business, Manufacturing Solutions, ERPs ( Baan/SAP/Oracle Applications), J2ee and .NET based development for large enterprise initiatives like SCM, CRM and ERP. He has also worked at Unibex, Mafatlal Consultancy and Reliance Industries Ltd. He is a dynamic entrepreneur and a multi tasker. He has all the right qualities to make it big over time. His deep technical expertise in IT and non-IT is a differentiator. We are proud to have him as our alumnus.

He has an expertise in the telecom industry and has honored the posts of COO and CEO at leading telecom companies. After completing his MBA at SJMSOM, IIT Bombay he joined BPL Mobile as the Head of Planning. His technology management and strategic skills helped him to take up his new role within BPL Innovision group as Head of Business Strategy and also Business Head of Western Region at BPL Broadband. Thereafter, he moved to Tata group as General Manager at Tata Power‟s Broadband division. He was part of "Tata Group Executive Leadership" plan and within a period of three years he was awarded the post of Vice PresidentStrategy and Corporate planning at Tata Teleservices. He then joined Essar Telecom as the COO. In 2008 he was invited to drive BPL Mobile (India) Ltd as the Director and CEO of the firm. He led the company to increase its market share in Mumbai market and led the brand transition from BPL Mobile to Loop Mobile. He currently works as an Operating Partner at New Silk Route, USD 1.4 Billion growth capital fund focusing on India and South Asia. He leads the Telecom and Solar Energy sectors and is a Director on Boards of the portfolio companies in these sectors. He is also an Adjunct Faculty at SOM and is an advisor to the Technology Strategy Lab (TSL). His accelerated growth trajectory has set a precedent for others to follow and we are extremely proud to have him as an alumnus of SJMSOM, IIT Bombay.

SJMSOM reaches Heights..!! School Achievements 18th Business School Affaire & Dewang Mehta Business School Awards: # B-School with Best Academic input in IT # Best Faculty in Operations Management: Prof. Rahul Patil # Best Faculty in Information Technology - Prof. R.M. Sonar # Best Student in Management - Mr. Vishal Singh STAR NEWS National B-School Awards: # Best B-School using Technology in Training / Education # Outstanding B-School (West) DNA & Stars of the Industry Group - Innovative B-School Awards: # Innovation in Building Academic & Industry Interface # Best Teacher in Marketing: Prof. Arti Kalro

Students’ Achievements

Vishal Singh(left) and Sanjoe Tom Jose(right) at Dewang Mehta B-School Awards 

Vishal Singh from SOM 11 won the prestigious Best Management Student award with a cash prize of INR 0.2 million at Dewang Mehta B-school awards 2010. Over 1200+ students competed for the coveted title.



A team from SOM 11 comprising of Kundan Shimpi, Surinder Singh and Nitin Raghuvanshi won the First Prize at Vista 2010 IIM Bangalore - Operations Strategy Event.



Sandeep Bhatia and Narender Dhankhar from SOM 11 were all India Winners for devising a go to market strategy for Amul.



Sanjoe Tom Jose from SOM11 presented a Research Paper on Innovation & Knowledge Management at the Keio University, Tokyo.



Kunal Roy from SOM11 was adjudged the winner in an Article writing competition organized by “IIM Shillong”



A team from SOM12 comprising Ravi Shankar D, Neerad Agarwal, Madhuri Wagh and Jubin Varghese

were the winners of

Backwaters 2010

Konsulenti - Flagship strategy event of IIM Kozhikode,

Introducing the Team 11’..!! Akansha Gupta ( [email protected] ) Akansha is a fresh Electrical Engineering graduate from Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad. She is a marketing enthusiast with a keen interest in Operations. She is an active member of the Marktrix club and is also an Editor of the L!VE magazine.

Amit Kumar ( [email protected] ) Amit has completed his computer science engineering from MIT Manipal in 2007. He has a rich and varied work experience of 3 years in IT, working in Virtual, Storage and Mobile VAS domain. He wants to pursue his career in Marketing and is an active member of the Marktrix club.

Ankit Bansal ( [email protected] ) Before joining SJMSOM, Ankit worked as a Software Engineer for 32 months at Infosys Technologies Ltd., Bangalore. He is interested in the field of Finance and is also a member of Finesse club at SJMSOM. He contributes regularly to leading Business newspapers by his articles covering different areas of Finance.

Ashish Nahata ( [email protected] ) Ashish holds a Bachelor‟s degree in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Tiruchirappalli. He has a rich experience of two years in Operations Domain working in Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Emami Biotech. He is a Finance enthusiast and an active member of the Finesse Club.

Nisarg Gandhi ( [email protected] ) Nisarg is an Electronics and Communications Engineer from Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad, Gujarat Subsequently he worked for 34 months at Space Applications Centre, ISRO as an embedded systems and digital logic designer. He has a keen interest in supply chain management and is an active member of the E- Club. He is also the Secretary of the Alumni Relations Team. Rakesh V. ( [email protected] ) Rakesh is a graduate in Electronics and Communication from College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram. He worked for couple of years with Toshiba, Bangalore, as a Software Engineer. Apart from being a member in Alumni team, he is also the student Coordinator for Technology Strategy Lab ( TSL ) and a member of Consig, the consulting club.

Sudhanshu Pandey ( [email protected] ) Sudhanshu has worked at HSBC Global Technology as a Software Engineer for 3 years and contributed in developing BFSI applications in HSBC Group. He is the head of the E-Club and an active member of the Finesse Club.

Block your Dates..!!

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Upcoming Events 1st March- Post Budget Analysis session with “NDTV Profit” 5th & 6th March– “KALADARSHAN”- The Annual IITB Arts and Photography Workshop 12th March- H.R Contin-

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Continuum

This newsletter is an attempt by us to connect more with you, We need your suggestions on how to improve our interaction. We also invite articles and views from the Alumni for the newsletter. You can also share your experiences at the school. We request you all to strengthen the database by updating your information regularly @ the Connect Portal.

Your suggestions and feedback are highly valued.

Contact us at : [email protected] www.som.iitb.ac.in/SJMSOM_Connect/