On November 14, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta celebrated its 64th Foundation Day at its campus in Joka with the annual Distinguished Alumnus Awards and a special lecture by Ajai Chowdhry, co-founder, HCL and chairman, EPIC Foundation
All images by Soumyajit DeyThe institute confers the Distinguished Alumnus Award annually to its former students who have made a mark in their career contributing greatly towards their industry and society. Along with the awards, a Foundation Day lecture is also delivered by a guest speaker
Ajai Chowdhry delivered a talk on the subject ‘India as a product nation...from middle-income trap to a developed nation’. Addressing the audience, Chowdhury said, ‘IIMC has been deeply connected in a lot of ways with HCL. When we founded HCL in 1976, we came here for our presentation to students. They all felt that we were starting on the right track. We were going to make computers in India for the first time. But at the end of our presentation, lots of students got up and said, looks very exciting, but very risky for us to join you. So, our answer to that was, ‘we are not offering you a job. We are offering you adventure.’ Five students from IIM Calcutta joined us back then’
The award ceremony followed the lecture. The first alumni to receive the award for 2024 was Sameer Gupta, group chief analytics officer and managing director, DBS Bank (IIMC Alumnus – 30th PGP Batch). In his acceptance speech, Gupta said, ‘It really feels surreal to me being back here. Learning here has given me life skills, which are very important. One of them is the ability to take risks. As an entrepreneur or even in your corporate career, it’s an important ability’
The second receiver of the award was (centre) Venkat Viswanathan, founder and chairperson, LatentView Analytics Ltd. (IIMC Alumnus – 30th PGP Batch). Addressing the students, Viswanathan said, ‘Having come to a top institute like IIM Calcutta, you probably feel you have arrived in life and there’s not much more left to achieve. But the reality is this is just one step in the journey that you’re going to take. Some of us may not do that well in courses here as well, but that doesn’t define you. Your real opportunity is how well you invest in yourself, whether it’s in terms of knowledge, upskilling yourself, looking at the changing world, being humble enough to accept the things that you don’t know and constantly learn and also look at yourself as an investment opportunity’
Sanjoy Mukherjee, IPS director general and inspector general of police (Apex Scale), West Bengal (IIMC Alumnus 23rd PGP Batch) was also conferred with the award as well. ‘It is such a pleasure and honour for me to stand here before you today in my alma mater. I was an indifferent student in IIM and the screening committee for the Distinguished Alumni Award must have spotted gems in me that I myself was blissfully unaware of,’ said Mukherjee
Shrikrishna G Kulkarni, chairperson, board office and (below) Bhaskar Chakrabarti, dean (Academic Programmes) delivered the vote of thanks and closing speech