WELCOME

Distinguished guests, students of the Class of 2007, parents and all the family members of the Graduating Class, members of the ISB Board, the media, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ISB’s sixth Graduation Ceremony. At the outset, I would like to welcome our Chief Guest, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India.

Mr. Ahluwalia was previously the first Director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to joining IMF, he has been a member of both the Planning Commission and the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minster. Before that he served as Finance Secretary, Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Commerce Secretary, Special Secretary to the Prime Minister and Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance. Between 1968 and 1979, he held various positions in the World Bank Research Department.

Mr. Ahluwalia was a Rhodes Scholar and earned his MA and M.Phil from the University of Oxford. His published works include papers in various professional journals and several contributions to books.

Mr Ahluwalia is one of the faces of the Indian economic reforms and it is an honour and a privilege to have him with us today. In my speech at the previous year’s graduation day, I had made a mention of his brief visit to ISB as one of the notable visitors. This year, I welcome you Sir, as the Chief Guest of today’s occasion.

I would also like to welcome our Chairman, Rajat Gupta, and Members of the ISB Board who have come down specially to be with us today. Thank you all for coming.

It is a very special moment for us with 416 students of the Class of 2007 graduating today. The students at the ISB have a very pivotal role to play in the progress of the school and the Class of 2007 have shouldered their responsibility in an excellent manner. I would like to highlight some of the achievements of the last academic year.

CURRICULUM

Our focus at ISB has been to offer a curriculum that is in tune with the fast changing global business trends and this has been one of our significant strengths. Our students benefit from this exposure and the industry values this a lot. Some of the notable new courses offered to the students this year include Healthcare Management, Strategies for Success in Web 2.0, Social and Cause Marketing, Gender and Leadership, Property Finance and Investment.

The Curriculum Review Committee, chaired by Professor Sanjay Kallapur has released a draft of their recommendations which are currently being reviewed by faculty, area leaders and others. We hope to have the final recommendation of the committee in a few months time.

ISB continues to use technology to aid teaching. We have gone live with the SAP Higher Education & Research module, a first in India.

EXCHANGE PROGRAMMES

The number of exchange agreements with B-schools worldwide now stands at 30. Not only has this been a very fast ramp up of exchange programmes at the post graduate level, but the diversity and quality of the partner schools has increased. It gives me pleasure in mentioning here that we hosted 33 students of 9 nationalities who visited us on student exchange programmes this year.

ELP and GCP

In collaboration with Wharton, we received two Global Consulting Practicum projects. These high end student consulting engagements give students the opportunity to work with Wharton students on an extended global consulting project.

The Experiential Learning Programme provides students an opportunity to work on live projects for companies, in lieu of a typical internship programme. All of the participating companies have reported a very high customer satisfaction index. Interestingly, one of the projects that our students undertook was to devise a strategy and expansion plans for a new and upcoming b-schoool in Kolkata. Our students continue to work on projects for not-for-profit organisations with similar great results.

5th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS

It was a proud moment for the school to host the Hon’ble Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh who visited us on December 5, 2006 to inaugurate the Global Logistics Summit. On this occasion, he also launched the 5th Anniversary celebrations of the school. During his talk, Prime Minister Singh spoke of the need for 100 more ISB type of campuses in this country. We are grateful to the Prime Minister for his kind words and support. The 5th Anniversary Celebrations saw the active participation of the entire ISB community in this very joyous and momentous occasion of our growth. We were privileged to have the presence of the Governor of Andhra Pradesh H E Rameshwar Thakur and the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who is a major source of support to the school.

EVENTS

Events at ISB serve multi purpose objectives. The students augment their class room learning with several learning events outside the classroom. The various student clubs organised events like the Healthcare Summit, Ikshaa – Marketing Summit, Capital Markets Conference, Social Responsibility Conclave and Media Conclave. These events serve as a platform for the students to interact with industry leaders, and academicians.

The students successfully organised the ISB Leadership Summit, which has now become an annual tradition for the School. The theme this year was ‘The New India – Changing paradigms in business leadership’. With a new format, the summit saw some very interesting discussions in separate tracks on Business Technology, Media, Marketing and General Management.

AWARDS

Our students participated in several inter b-school events outside the ISB and have brought laurels to the school. Our students have excelled at several business plan competitions, both at the national and global levels.

• Sundeep Tibrewal, Anuj Gupta, Kanika Atri, Sakar Mawandia bagged the first prize at the Anveshan B-Plan Competition at IIM-A
• Anshuman Das, Enakshi Chatterjee, Aashish Midha won the second place at the IIM-C B-Plan Competition
• Siddharth Vijayakrishnan, Vivek Krishna and Gururaj Rao won the first prize at IIT Madras
• Prateek Garg, Alok Jain and Jagprag Gujral won the first prize at the NITIE B-Plan Competition
• Both First and Second prizes at the IIM-A Master Plan Competition was bagged by ISB teams – Sujay Kalele, Sandeep Sehgal, Nupur Govil, Ruchir Kalra and Nikhil Gilani, Sachin Vij, Sanket Maheshwari, Divya Gupta)
• Subramani Viswanathan won the Economic Times - Wharton B-Plan Competition
• The team comprising of Megh Kalyanasundaram, Sindhu Shanmugam, Ali M Potia and Pranav Saraiya won the first prize at the IIM-Kozhikode business plan competition. Their plan on creating a knowledge management system was recommended to the Prime Minister’s Office, as the ‘Best Plan for Rural India’.
• Two teams from ISB figured in the global top ten at the Darden Global Innovation Competition - Amit Sawhney; Dipti Rao; Rohan Nag; Tarun Sainanee; Shivanand Sinha and Siddhartha Pakrashi; Manas Mishra; Saurabh Kaura; Chaitanya Chakravarthy
• The first prize in the Asia Moot Corp – Challenge Round was bagged by Sujay Kalele, Sandeep Sehgal, Nupur Govil, Ruchir Kalra
• Four teams from ISB figured in the top 40 teams selected for pitching to VCs at the TiE-ISB Connect –
  Sundeep Tibrewal, Anuj Gupta, Kanika Atri, Sakar Mawandia
  Siddharth Vijayakrishnan, Vivek Krishna, Gururaj Rao
  Anshuman Das, Enakshi Chatterjee, Sartaj Singh
  Amit Diwan

I would like to make a special mention of the team which won the overall championship at Intaglio at IIM Calcutta comprising of Jagdeep Singh, Rishik Ghosh, Rohan Rijhwani, Rutvik Pawgi, Sharad Mittal and Sonal Minhas.

I congratulate each one of you for your efforts and success.

The ISB Young Leaders and the ISB Torch Bearers Awardees symbolise the extraordinary ability, leadership, commitment and quality of participation of the PGP students in the ISB campus life. I congratulate each one of them for a well deserved recognition.

PLACEMENTSS

The ISB graduates continue to script new success stories as far as placements go. The increased interest amongst international recruiters is a testament to the rich talent pool at the school. We have seen some interesting trends of students preferring challenging assignments in India over international assignments.

A formal announcement on the placements will be made early next week and I would like to thank our friends in the industry for their continued association with the school.

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Well known painter Laila Khan was the Artist-in-Residence this year. The purpose of this programme is to stimulate creativity in the students. Her beautiful work of art will soon adorn one of the walls at the ISB. We also invited noted ad film maker, Kailash Surendranath and leading art historian, Girish Shahane to address the ISB community on art and creativity.

SFA

The Spouse and Family Association of the class of 2007 continued the rich tradition of being the torch bearers of a vibrant community life on campus. Their enthusiastic celebrations of events like, Monsoon Fiesta, Holi, Dandia, Diwali, pottery making and painting competitions brought the entire ISB community together as a family. The ISB Juniors, as the children on campus are affectionately called, are a bundle of joy. During the course of this year 9 students were blessed with babies. I am happy to say that the families at the ISB enrich our academic lives in innumerable ways.

CENTRE FOR EXECUTIVE EDUCATIONN

The Centre for Executive Education continues its dominant position in the Indian market and continues to grow. The Inside India programme of the CEE which equips corporations to have a better understanding of doing business in India, has been very well received globally.

FACULTY

We have been able to make steady progress in recruiting resident faculty. Our permanent faculty figure stands at 19. We expect four more to join us in the next six months. Professor Ravi Bapna has joined us as a tenured Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and the Networked Economy while Professors Sridhar Samu, Ram Thirumalai, Aditya Jain and Amit Mehra have joined us in the rank of Assistant Professors. Needless to say, each of our faculty bring with them a deep passion and commitment to research and teaching. Our recent faculty achievements and publications in top ranked journals are testimony to this fact.

The faculty research seminars and the Brown Bag seminars are now a regular feature of the academic life on campus, facilitating very enriching discussions. We have also been host to 8 Visiting Scholars in the past one year, who have chosen to spend their sabbatical period at ISB, engaging in productive research projects.

The Indu Chair in Real Estate and Urban Studies was set up with funding from Indu Projects. We are thankful to Indu Projects for their contribution. This is very relevant to the real estate boom that we are witnessing today. The search for a Chair Professor is currently underway.

Professor Kavil Ramachandran has been named as the Thomas Schmidheiny Fellow of Family Business and Wealth Management. We are grateful to Dr. Thomas Schmidheiny for his generous contribution towards the Research Chair.

CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE

The Centre for Information Technology and the Networked Economy was set up in July 2006. CITNE is India's first academic research centre focussed on promoting scholarship that enhances the long-term competitiveness of the Indian IT industry. In it’s first year of existence, CITNE hosted the International Symposium of Information systems in December 2006 and co-hosted the 5th International Symposium on Data Envelopment Analysis in January 2007. CITNE is presently working with the Centre for Executive Education in developing an Executive Education programme for a large global consulting corporation.

The Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) continues to promote the entrepreneurship ecosystem in this country. The second edition of the TiE – ISB Connect, a platform which brings together entrepreneurs and venture capitalists was very well received. WCED co-hosted the First International Conference on Entrepreneurship in Emerging Regions in December 2006. The Asia leg of the Global Social Venture Competition, organised by WCED and ISB saw participation from 26 business schools in 7 Asian countries. WCED actively promoted the Entrepreneurship Week in collaboration with the National Entrepreneurship Network and the Wadhwani Foundation. WCED also has initiated work in the Base of Pyramid Learning Lab and has undertaken some very interesting and socially relevant projects.

The Centre for Analytical Finance had another successful year with its research and conference agenda. Starting from the new academic year 2007-8, CAF will team up with the Financial Institutions Center (FIC) at the Wharton School, and the Swedish Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) at Stockholm to hold joint research conferences. India’s Financial System is the theme of the first CAF-FIC-SIFR conference. It is going to be held at the Wharton School during April 19 – 21, 2007. In another first, this time in Asia, New York Stock Exchange offered a generous best paper award at the CAF conference in December, 2006. The centre is also conducting a number of path-breaking studies on the structure and quality of Indian capital markets in partnership with the National Stock Exchange (NSE). For ISB, this is great example of academia-industry partnership.

The Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies co-hosted the Global Logistics Summit along with Hero Mindmine Institute which was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. A book on ‘Achieving Rural & Global Supply Chain Excellence – The Indian Way’ featuring seven thought provoking papers was released by the Prime Minister on this occasion. The Summit on Indian Manufacturing Competitiveness in August 2006 co-hosted by GLAMS saw a very enthusiastic participation from industry and academia alike. It is noteworthy to mention here that ISB signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IBM in February 2007, to develop first-of-its-kind, joint research on Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) in India. As a part of this collaboration, ISB and IBM will initiate and develop research, produce case studies to streamline service processes and replicate them across industries.

VISITORSS
The most notable visitor to the campus this year was Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. Other prominent visitors include Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Assistant Secretary of State, USA, Dr. Khalid Bin Mohd Al-Angari, Minister for Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iceland, South Korea and New Zealand. In addition we had Vinod Dham widely recognised as the ‘Father of the Pentium Processor’. We also had the pleasure of receiving my counterparts from some very prominent schools worldwide and several industry leaders.

INTERACTIONS WITH HYDERABAD SOCIETYY

We have actively worked with the Hyderabad community on various occasions. These include the Net Impact Club’s activities and the Hyderabad 10K Run. This year several of our students, staff and faculty enthusiastically participated in the 10K Run.

As always, the AIKYA families, the Art Committee, the ISB Society members, the Government of Andhra Pradesh and the media have been a big support for us. I recognise some of you in the audience today.

CONCLUSIONN

While we have made considerable progress on several fronts, we still have a long way to go. The Board has been a solid source of support in our work. The Deans and faculty of our associate schools have time and again volunteered their very precious time. The Area Leaders and the Visiting Faculty have contributed significantly to the development of the school. The resident faculty and management staff at the ISB have always stood out with their innovative ideas and dedication in building this school.

Now a few words for the graduating class. I congratulate each one of you for completing a successful year at the ISB. Congratulations to the Scholars of Excellence and those who have made it to the Dean’s List. We are very proud of you. I wish you all the best as you embark on your new careers today. As you set about charting new career paths, I urge all of you to think carefully in choosing the best and right career path. You are, and will always be, an integral part of the ISB family, and we look forward to sharing in the joys of your accomplishments as corporate leaders and worthy citizens of this world.

I leave you with a quote from the Upanishads –
“You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

I look forward to seeing you all again at the Solstice! I wish you all Good Luck!

Thank you.