Over 500 students pass out of IIM-B

Over 500 students graduated from various courses during the 35th annual convocation of the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore   (IIM-B) on Monday.

For the first time in its history, the IIM-B had an alumnus as the chief guest of the convocation ceremony. K Radhakrishnan, chairman of Space Commission and ISRO, and secretary, department of space, urged students to set high goals and innovate.

“The most lasting learning is produced when you are engaged in finding real solutions to real problems,” he said while speaking at the event. “Inculcate the spirit of leadership. Judge (yourselves) by the number of leaders you help create and not by how many you had led.”

This year, the flagship Post Graduate Programme (PGP) had 268 graduates, the Executive Post Graduate Programme (EPGP) had 70, the Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM) had 35, and the Post Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management (PGSEM) had 120.

Ankit Agarwal got the gold medal for first rank in PGP, and the gold medal for second rank was awarded to Jiten Umesh Poojara.

“I wasn’t expecting to win any gold medal when I was a new student at IIM-B,” Ankit, a BTech from IIT Madras who will be joining McKinsey & Co, said. “After a year, it seemed like a possible target. A mix of luck, hard work and dedication is essential to succeed.”

Jiten, also an IIT Madras graduate, comes from a Gujarati business family. He worked for three years in strategy consulting before joining IIM-B. He will be joining Temasek Holdings in Singapore. “Having relevant experience before IIM-B made my stay at the institute quite fulfilling as I was able to relate to what was being taught in class,” he said.

The gold medal for the best all-round performance in PGP went to Tony Thampan.

In PGPPM, the gold medal for academic performance went to Rashmi Ranjan Das.

He belongs to the 1989 batch of the Indian Revenue Service and has been employed with the income-tax department. He is currently posted as the additional commissioner of income-tax at Bhubaneswar.

The gold medal for the first rank in PGSEM went to Taran Deep Arora. An IIT Bombay graduate, he has over eight years of experience and is working as product manager at JDA Software.

Narayanan Vinoba won the gold medal for the best all-round performance in PGSEM. Vinoba works with IBM India Pvt Ltd. He has eight years of experience in the software industry.

In EPGP, Abhishek Khandelwal got the gold medal for the first rank; Gopalakrishan D got the gold medal for best all-round performance.