Suhail Kassim (Award Category – All Round Leadership)

Current Location: Washington DC, USA.

After a stint as a private equity investor at Tata Industries, he joined the World Bank in 2007. Currently a Specialist and  Fellow with the World Bank and International Finance Corporation where he has worked on financial and private sector development in nine countries, including five conflict countries. He is the core member of eleven World Bank financing operations totaling over US$ 4 billion, including a record-size US$ 2 billion loan to capitalize India’s public sector banks.

Apart from these, he also co-authored several peer-reviewed publications on investment climate, industrial competitiveness and microfinance. He was awarded the Chevening Senior Scholarship and attended the Gurukul Leadership Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009.  Jury Member at The Power of Ideas 2010, India’s largest enrepreneurial platform. He taught entrepreneurship and finance at BITS Pilani (via BITS Embryo) in 2011 and Delhi University in 2010. Currently co-founding two tech-based social ventures at MIT. Also he Serves as an advisory board director with Harvard Kennedy School incubated nonprofit Shiksha Sankalp and communications advisory firm Barapani.

Other awards/recognitions: At the World Bank Group – World Bank-IFC Fellowship 2010, Vice Presidential Unit Team Award 2009, Green Award 2009, Spot Award 2008.

Favourite Quote: “Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.” – Doug Ivester

Greatest inspiration: Three legends from the subcontinent: Muhammad Yunus, Verghese Kurien and Abdul Sattar Edhi.

Message to BITSians: The word “impossible” must never exist in the lexicon of a BITSian.

Kartik Hosanagar (Award Category – Academia & Research)

Current Location: New York/ Philadelphia.

After winning 30U30 award in 2005, he founded Yodle, a search engine marketing platform. Yodle is a venture-backed company that has been listed as one of the fastest growing private companies in the US. He also became youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School of Business. Even more, he is listed among the Top 40 Business professors in the world by Poets and Quants

Other awards/recognition: Several teaching and research awards at Wharton

Favourite Quote : The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

Message to BITSians : Dream big, work hard, connect with people.

Mahesh Ramasubramanian (Award Category – Arts & Culture)

Current Location: Redwood City, CA, working at DreamWorks Animation.

He is part of the creative leadership team on feature-length computer-animated movies – currently wrapping up Madagascar-3 as the visual effects supervisor on the project. He completed [...]

We are very happy to announce the panel of judges for the third edition of BITSAA Global 30 Under 30 Awards. Please find below a brief write-up about each of the 9 judges.

To nominate yourself or your fellow BITSians, please fill and submit the online form available at http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=30u30nominations

Prof. B N Jain (Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani)

Professor Bijendra Nath Jain obtained B. Tech. from IIT Kanpur and Ph. D. from SUNY, Stony Brook (NY), both in Electrical Engg. Until 2010, he was with IIT Delhi, where he was Professor of Computer Science. He has held visiting assignments with Universities of Texas and Maryland, Bell Labs, and Cisco Systems. Most recently, he was a Gledden Senior Visiting Fellow at University of Western Australia, Perth. Other than authoring a large number of research papers in international journals and conferences, he has co-authored the book “OSI: Its Architecture and Protocols” published in 1993 by McGraw Hill, New York, and translated into Japanese by Soft Research. He is also a co-inventor, with researchers from Cisco Systems, in seven US patents. He comes across as a man who desires change, who strives for betterment and refuses to settle for anything less than excellence.

 Raju Reddy (President & Chairman, BITSAA International)

Raju Reddy is an alumnus of the graduating class of 1981 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He was the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Sierra Atlantic (recently acquired by Hitachi Consulting). He now serves on the boards of both Hitachi Consulting U.S. and Hitachi Consulting India entities. He worked at Intel for 10 years in “software development, marketing and general management” before moving on to create “one of the top 75 most Admired companies in Silicon Valley, Top 25 great places to work in India and Top 10 best employers in South China” in Sierra Atlantic. Among other things, Raju serves as a member of the BITS Pilani Board of Directors, a Charter member of TiE Silicon Valley, Board of Trustees for Puente, a Wharton School non-profit program and more recently the India Community Center, Milpitas.

Kris Ramachandran (Advisor to Chairman, Aditya Birla Group)

An Electrical Engineer from BITS Pilani, with a Post-graduate degree in Business Management from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kris started his career with the Tata Administrative Service (TAS). The major part of Kris’s career has been with two Companies: Philips Electronics, and Voltas, a Tata Group Company, and his experience has [...]

BITS alums never miss a chance to give it back to the BITSian community. Manoj, who co-founded Source Pilani before it acquired was by HarVa (another BITSian venture), was super excited to share his successful journey to Wharton with the BITS2BSCHOOL group. We  grabbed the opportunity and immediately scheduled a Cisco Webex conference. Everyone registered with the group could join the interaction. In what was a largely uninterrupted 90 minutes session, we had 20+ joining in with questions being asked on-the-go. For the benefit of those who could not attend the whole session was recorded too.

Manoj was candid in admitting that it could be an arduous journey to a B-School. He particularly stressed on the importance of GMAT score in his case, how school visits enhanced his application and how, in general, being a rock-star at your workplace matters.

Attendees gleefully accepted this opportunity and submitted questions beforehand. One of the participants, Rahul Yedavalli’s (05P4195) says: “Thank you for hosting such a great session. Looking forward to many such sessions in the future from BITS2BSCHOOL.”

Thanks to Manoj for extending his cooperation, all those who joined the call and BITSAA for providing the infrastructure for a seamless experience!

To hear the whole session and know more about the group, get in touch with the BITS2BSCHOOL team or join the group: bits2bschool@yahoogroups.com

We have set modest fundraising goals of $600,000 for BITSConnect 2.0 and $1 Million for Bridges to the Future, and we’re chugging away steadily!

Some batches are on a roll, so a special shout out to them! The batch of 1976 has raised nearly $225,000, the most of any batch. This batch has also signed an MoU with BITS to create an Endowed Chair Professorship at Pilani for 20 years. The Batch of 2002 has blown all competition out of the water with a record 85 pledging and donating within 15 days. Talk about togetherness and giving back!

There is nothing like BITSians getting back in touch with their batches and local/regional chapters to give back together. Networking, reminiscing and fundraising for a good cause is fun. No BITSian left behind – we urge all alumni to contribute as little or as much they can. Remember, a better BITS brand means a better you!

Recognition Levels (Donor Wall at BITS Pilani Campuses)

• Senate Circle – USD 25,000 plus
• Directors Circle – USD 10,000 to USD 24,999
• Deans Circle – USD 5,000 to USD 9,999
• Professors Circle – USD 1,000 to USD 4,999
• Friends of BITS – USD 250 to USD 999

Naming Rights (5K, 10K, 25K, 50K, 100K) - Classrooms, Conference rooms, Desktop Solutions, WebEx for Disciplines

The profound quote aptly describes Weekend Witchcrafts.

A few months ago, the BITSConnect 2.0 team threw their way a  task – create a promotional video as a teaser for the project. What we wanted was very clear – we needed to move BITSians in nostalgia, make them reconnect to their BITSian roots (if ever they had lost touch), and get them excited about BITSConnect 2.0. What we gave them to work with was much fuzzier. BITSConnect 2.0, at conception, was still largely the dry subjects of networks and unified communications.

What we gave them was a pile of rocks, what we got back was a cathedral. Every time we gave them a rock, they’d give us a piece that was beautifully etched. It took weeks of back and forths while we created the message, defined the technical content and the emotional content, and refined the script and the storyboard. What finally emerged was this beautiful video that spoke right to our hearts.

Weekend Witchcrafts is a studio that produces short films. WW was, as the name suggests, a weekend hobby that has now turned into a full-fledged amateur career for three young BITSians. ”What it takes you to do something good and new apart from the stuff you do for a living on a hectic routine, is a lot of passion. That’s what we have, and ours is towards film-making,” is how they describe themselves. Software engineers by day, protagonists of creative short film-making by night (and weekend) – Krishna Teja Chavali (’06, Goa), LVK Chaitanya(’06, Goa) and Rohit Kumar VV (’05, Goa).

Their work has proliferated through YouTube (they have more than 20 short films, that collectively have more than 100,000 views) and they have a number of fans who show goodwill on their Facebook page. Show these budding artists your support on Facebook and Youtube. Their short film “India is Creative” is a top 30 finalist in the ‘India is’ contest.