Emphasis was on technology and entrepreneurship at the 40th annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) here on Friday. As many as 592 students graduated during the ceremony.
Seven students take home gold medals at the annual convocation. They are: Kakarla Usha, Ramesha G.,Rachit Kothari, Naveen Prashanth, Debaprasad Chatterjee, Saurabh Agarwal and Anupam Nanda.
Setting the mood for the evening, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson, Board of Governors, IIMB, urged the graduates to “think like entrepreneurs, not just managers.”
“We are living in times of rapid change where the global business landscape is transforming radically. If you look at the Fortune 500 companies’ list, you will see that 86 per cent of them have either disappeared or dropped off the list,” she said.
“Many B-school graduates seem to have been infected by the entrepreneurial energy emanating from today’s e-commerce firms,” Ms. Shaw said.
Referring to a survey on B-schools, she said one in every nine students from the 2013-15 batch prefers to join an e-commerce firm or a start-up after graduation as compared to just one in 19 students in the 2012-14 batch.
Similar to Ms. Shaw’s train of thought on technology and globalisation creating a world that is a “boundary-less bazaar of equitable opportunities”, IIMB Director Sushil Vachani said the first important area of focus for the institute has been an increasing emphasis on globalisation of its programs, research and impact. “This year, we launched new international field courses and dramatically raised the number of PGP students who travelled abroad for study,” he said.
Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairperson, Narayana Group of Hospitals, who delivered the convocation address, offered a unique plan to provide health cover for people in the country – paying some part of their mobile bill towards the cause.
“India has 850 million mobile phone users. If each one of them can pay Rs. 20 a month of their mobile bills, we can provide health insurance to all,” he said. Comparing this to the Yeshasvini insurance scheme of the State government, he said, “Ten years ago, the government accepted the proposal to collect Rs. 5 per month from every farmer to provide them health insurance.”
