Visakhapatnam: Noted industrialist and the chairperson of the Board of Governors, IIM, Visakhapatnam, Hari S. Bhartia said, “You need to adapt to change to deal with disruptive technological advancements happening across the globe. The fourth industrial revolution is at our doorstep and manufacturing is going to be automated and bespoke. You can learn things faster and have the ability to grasp the technological advancements.”
These are some of the observations he made to the outgoing 47 IIM-Visakhapatnam students. In his address at the first convocation of the institute to the students held in Visakhapatnam on Friday, Mr Bhartia asked the IIM-V students to learn things and become an entrepreneur when they develop some appetite to take risk. “Entrepreneurship is the only way to create more jobs in India,” he said. Referring to his own organisation Domino’s Pizza India Ltd., Mr Bhartia explained how technology has become the order of the day and how they were forced to recruit data analysts and IT experts.
A total of 47 students of the two-year full-time Post Graduate Progra-mme in Management (PGP) graduated at a simple and elegant ceremony in a star hotel of the city on Friday.
While 42 students collected the diplomas in person, five were awarded diplomas in absentia. The students graduated from the new institution in the presence of IIMV’s Board of Governors, including IIM Visakha-patnam director Profe-ssor M. Chandrasekhar, IIM Bengaluru Professor G. Raghuram and Prof-essors Rajendra Bandi, Ganesh N. Prabhu, and Anil Suraj from IIM Bengaluru.
Professor Chandrase-khar said, “I am fortunate that I came in at a time, when the institute has already made substantial progress under the guidance of the successive directors of IIM Bengaluru, our mentor. Their inspiring vision and passionate commitment brought this institute into the admirable shape,” he said.
Our gamble paid off, say outgoing IIM-V students:
For Abhishek Goel from New Delhi, who had worked with Samsung for 4 years before joining IIM-Visakhapatnam in 2015, choosing a new IIM like IIM-V as his alma mater was just like a gamble. But two years after joining IIM-V and after receiving a gold medal for the first rank in academic performance on Friday, he was all praise for the IIM-V. “An interactive session with the mentor institution, IIM-Bangalore, dispelled all our doubts about the new institution (IIM-V) on the first day of joining IIM-V itself in 2015. Now, I can strongly recommend the IIM-V for any aspiring IIM student. It has been a great start for the IIM-Visakha-patnam so far which I didn’t prophesise earlier. The wide alumni network and strong industry connections of the mentor institute would also be a great advantage for us,” said Mr Goel.
Same was the opinion of another gold medallist, Ganapathi Subramanian V., who secured two gold medals for second rank in academic performance as well as the gold medal for best all round performance. “The students of 2015-17 PGP batch at IIM-V were a mix of experience professionals as well as freshers. This significantly raised the quality of debate, dialogue, discussions and deliberations both inside and outside the classrooms,” said Mr. Ganapathi Subramanian. In the end, the outgoing students were seen rejoicefully tossing the graduation caps into the air. The very first convocation of IIM Visakhapatnam ended on a festive and celebratory note.
