IIPM, Bangalore unleashes the bright & young MBAs in their Convocation 2009

The Indian Institute of Planning and Management, Bangalore held its Convocation Ceremony for the batch of 2005/6-08 on the evening of Saturday, the 13th of June at the Leela Palace Kempinski, Bangalore. The occasion was graced by the Chairman of The Indian Space research Organization (ISRO) Mr. G Madhavan Nair, as the chief guest and the brand expert and CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults, Mr. Harish Bijoor along with Mr. Ramamnujam Sridhar, CEO of Brand Comm as the guests of honor. It was a day of fond remembrance and achievement for the 157 graduates who received their degrees on the day with their parents and faculty in attendance. The Dean of the institute, Prof. R Jayachandran delivered the inaugural Dean’s address where he stressed on how exciting the times are in the Indian economy and the opportunities it holds for young graduates like the ones at IIPM. Mr. Madhavan Nair spoke to the graduating class of students after the formal inauguration through the ceremonial lighting of the lamp and a bharatnatyam performance. He congratulated the students and urged them to be the innovators who will create new age solutions to solve the country’s problems. He then presented the roll of honor to the best students of the batch. Gold medals for academic achievements were awarded by Mr. Nair for both the Spring Summer and Fall Winter sessions for the batches of 2005/6-08. For the Spring Summer batch of 2006-08 Bhavana Prakash Jain was awarded the Academic Gold Medal while Alefyah Hassanali was awarded the silver. The director's gold medal for the batch was won by Devananda K and Deepika Betala the director's silver medal. The respective academic medals for the Fall Winter 2006-08 batch was won by Rekha Sasikumar (she won the gold and also won the director's gold medal) and Shailja Chawla (Silver). Debottam Mahanti took the director's silver medal. The next speaker was Mr. Harish Bijoor who did a lively little jig of demonstrating how people often happen to either over sell or under sell themselves and advised everyone to honestly present themselves to the world. He left everyone with the thought that though India’s largest component of the GDP is services, there are loads of opportunities in the other robust sectors like manufacturing and agriculture.  Finally, the other guest of honor Mr. Ramanujam Sridhar brought out the element of entrepreneurship. He mentioned how starting young as an entrepreneur is a great idea, since there always in an option to fall back on a ‘normal’ career in case things don’t work out. Finally, he thanked all the parents and asked the students to strive to follow the values they have instilled in them.

It was indeed an emotional opportunity for all to reunite and relive the memorable moments of the most exciting and crucial two years of the students' lives that they had spent at IIPM. The students relived the nostalgia as they swayed to a lovely rendition of Green Day's Time of Your Life' and ‘Tum Ho to’ from Rock On by the IIPM Rock Band. IIPM has come a long way since its inception three and a half decades ago in 1973. What was conceived as an Institute to study and conduct researches on the management of national economic planning, has today been deemed as one of the largest academic movements of the country. With eighteen infrastructurally modern campuses spread across sixteen Indian cities, the Institute has also created a niche for itself globally with various international programmes like Global Opportunity and Threat Analysis (GOTA) and Global Outreach Programs.