Pilani. September 12^th, 2001

It was our first month at BITS. A time when we were all up to attend the 8 am Common Hours. And no, not just-in-time to attend class. We were up in time for a morning shower, a proper breakfast and a leisurely walk to FD-II. The wiser ones knew this as common fresher behavior that lasted all the way up to the First Test Series. On this particular Wednesday morning, the front page of The Hindu screamed at us with pictures of two of the highest buildings in the world engulfed in smoke.

Vamsikrishna Pendyala

The event changed many lives around the world, in many ways. It was a while before we on campus got to know about Vamsikrishna Pendyala (’88), on board American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into one of the twin towers. This tragedy of a life that came to an untimely end marked the start of a series of events that would transform every BITSian’s life.

New Jersey. October, 2001

Anupendra Sharma (Eco Instru ’87), Venu Palaparthi (Eco CS ’87) and Sandeep Arora (MMS ‘87) had gone through a lot of effort to organize a fundraiser for their batchmate, SS Seshadri (Eco Civil ’87), which would set up a scholarship for the students of Pilani. The events of 9/11 made them rethink its scope. Vamsi’s death (which, sadly, also resulted in his wife Prasanna ending her life), brought in a lot of attention to this New Jersey fundraiser that was being planned. A scholarship was initiated in Vamsi’s name. And, over 7000 miles from Pilani, BITSAA was registered.

Pilani & The Silicon Valley. September 7^th, 2002

The long lines outside the IPC were the worst part of any day. Students however, patiently stood outside waiting for their turn at e-mail. Telnet Prithvi was what put everything together. It was an efficient but cumbersome mail host which took care of all e-mail traffic into and out of BITS. Two blocks away, in FD-III, was S9, with three computers that supported a graphical internet experience. Students were out there too, writing their names down in a little “booking list” to get access to an hour’s worth of internet the next day.

All that was about to change.

A little later that same day, in California, the Diro, Dr. S. Venkateswaran and a gathering of 22 BITSian alumni, laid the foundation of BITSConnect, an ambitious project totaling $1.2 Million, of which BITS laid out $450k. From its beginnings of having collected $10k from alumni in two years, BITSAA set itself up with a huge challenge to raise a mammoth $750k in under 12 months. The objective of BITSConnect was simply stated: Design, fund and maintain one of the finest networks of any university campus in India.

“We have jointly embarked on a mission to give BITS the most advanced network infrastructure of any educational institute in India. This is one of many steps BITS is taking to make us not just the leading engineering school in the country, but in all of Asia” the Diro said, urging alumni to help make BITSConnect a success. He needn’t have worried. With an extensive marketing campaign of its own, donations for BITSConnect poured in from all over – from BITSians and non-BITSians alike.

Pilani. March 20^th, 2004

With the click of a button on a Wireless-enabled laptop, Dr. KK Birla inaugurated Neuron, the Gigabit Ethernet network that connected the entire campus. In an auditorium packed with students, alumni, faculty and media, BITSConnect stamped its first initiative a roaring success.

The BITSian and Neuron, by Rahul Chandra

This was a start to several other initiatives, each initiated from BITSAA. Later that year, BITS2BSchool and BITS2MSPhD were launched. “This made perfect sense,” said Anupendra, “We needed to help BITSians with their careers. This is what would build the brand.” The impact has been significant, increasing admits to MBAs significantly over the years, from 15 in 2004 to around 70 annually over four years. Today, hundreds of BITSians still correspond with alumni and recent graduates through this forum.

Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu. 2005

The Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu was one of the worst hit during the tsunami that hit the East Coast of India in December 2004. Close to 6,000 people died and 100,000 were left homeless. The Chennai Chapter got together to organize the BITS Pilani Alumni Tsunami Rehabilitation Trust (BITSunami), assisted by the District Collector of Nagapattinam and the District Monitoring Commissioner. With the formal involvement of BITS Pilani (led by the then Vice Chancellor Dr. Venkateswaran) and enthusiastic BITSians around the world, and several corporations and NGOs, the team took upon the arduous task of rehabilitating two of the hardest hit villages, Naaluvedapathy and Pushpavanam.

Pilani. March 19^th, 2006

BITS has a large number of alumni, in various spheres of work, spread globally. It wasn’t long before BITSAA realized the importance of knowledge sharing across borders. Obviously, traveling to Pilani to deliver a lecture was not the easiest way to do this. Well, either Mohammed goes to the mountain or the mountain goes to Mohammed, they say. Or else, you could just Skype.

It is with this objective that BITSEmbryo was formed. Its objective was to remove the distance barrier by using Internet and the video conferencing technologies to enable alumni anywhere in the world to deliver online lectures to the students at BITS Pilani.

This is how 6 alumni first got together to deliver the first video lecture, on the Power of the BITSAA Network for the BITSian Entrepreneur . Since then, several lectures have taken place, transforming the classroom into a true knowledge-sharing forum, helping students understand current research trends and providing guidance for pursuing research projects.

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Through the years BITSAA has developed from an informal organization where friends used to share their experiences and nostalgia, to one that, while keeping these feelings intact, builds on a structured backbone to become one of today’s strongest alumni foundations. BITSAA’s vision, borrowed from Sandpaper 2.0’s 2005 Fall Edition, is to “build a close knit BITSian community by promoting participation, evoking feelings of nostalgia, pride and connectedness by keeping everyone in the community informed.” BITSAA now is a 40-chapter network with around 19,000 members. With specific teams taking care of fundraising, communications, social and media relations, newsletters, and annual reports, it has developed initiatives such as BITS2Marathon, BITSAA CEL, Let’s Promote BITS Pilani, BITSAA Miles and BITSAA Women’s Council, among others.

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Delhi. Jan 7^th, 2011

Homecoming, it was called. And it was one, indeed. In the culmination of 8 months of effort by the alumni and a dedicated group of campus volunteers, the first ever BITSAA Global Meet came to life. Dr. Kumara Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, introduced the BGM with the statement that said it all “What is it that can empower our nation? The most obvious answer is education.” With a cultural evening, Battle of Brain of BITS, talks, panel discussions, laccha sessions and a visit to the Kingdom of Dreams cultural village, the 1600 odd BITSians from all over the world went home with the fondest memories.

September, 2011

It’s been 10 years since BITSAA was first formed. As Venu rightly puts it, “Ten years is a short time for any organization.  Over the last decade, it is remarkable how BITSAA International has transformed from its humble beginnings in New Jersey into a forty chapter network with 19,000 members. During this time, BITSAA as an organization has stayed true to its BITSian roots.  It is a grassroots organization that is neither rigid nor top-down.  Whatever has been undertaken so far has been sustained and nurtured by grassroots volunteers. Each initiative serves a purpose – each of the alumni initiatives have enriched the BITSian experience as well as enhanced the BITS brand.”

From the 9/11 Memorial Service on CNN, Sep 2011

Following the tremendous success of BITSConnect, it is now time for us to Reconnect. “BITSConnect 2.0 is very dear to me” says Venu, “It is the logical extension to BITSConnect and to BITS Embryo. Just last month, I stopped at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad for interaction with students of Economics and Computer Science. The topic was Market Micro Structure. In that context, two things struck me about the proposed BITS Reconnect project.  Firstly, it would have been awesome to simultaneously interact with all four BITS campuses. Secondly, because we have several experts on market structure among our alumni – Madhu Kannan (President of Bombay Stock Exchange) and Vijay Kedia (CEO of FlexTrade) – with the BITSConnect 2.0 infrastructure, we could expand the alumni interaction into a virtual seminar with the touch of a button bringing in experts and students into one big virtual conference hall. Today the vision of BITSAA under the leadership of Raju Reddy, is to contribute to making BITS the leader in research and entrepreneurship.”

We’ve come a long way, my friends. And in saying that, the most exciting part is that there’s still a long way to go.