BITSAA rings the NASDAQ Opening Bell

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On Monday, 23 December 2013, BITS Alumni Association (BITSAA) proudly rang the NASDAQ opening bell in Times Square, NY, USA. This was an incredibly rare honor for BITSians and also a critical opportunity for us to showcase BITSAA as a family of world class leaders. Only a handful of educational institutions, like MIT and CalTech have been invited for such an honor.

 

The Opening Bell Ceremony at the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York’s Times Square serves as a platform to generate exposure for companies and nonprofits, make a news announcement or celebrate organizational milestones. Hosted by a NASDAQ OMX senior executive, the Opening Bell allows listed companies and invited non-profits to address a wide audience with specific messages. A common sight today is the highly publicized events in which a celebrity or executive from a corporation stands behind the NYSE podium and pushes the button that signals the bells to ring. Many consider the act of ringing the bells to be quite an honor and a symbol of a lifetime of achievement. This daily tradition wasn’t always this highly publicized either. In fact, it was only in 1995 that the NYSE began having special guests ring the bells on a regular basis. Prior to that, ringing the bells was usually the responsibility of the exchange’s floor managers.

2013-14 marked the 50th anniversary of BITS Pilani as a world class institute of technology and sciences. This ceremony was the curtain raiser for the celebrations and kick-off of second edition of the BITSAA Global Meet , held at the Hyderabad Campus from January 3-5 2014.

The great chance to ring the Opening Bell at NASDAQ was a proud moment for the entire BITSian community – The efforts of tireless BITSAA volunteers who have translated their passion for BITS into transformative projects over the years and the unflinching support of alumni like you, have made this event happen.

The event was broadcasted on several television networks like CNBC, Bloomberg, etc. reaching millions worldwide. This allowed BITSAA to showcase flagship initiatives thereby boosting awareness about BITSAA initiatives and uplifting the BITSAA brand to the ranks of world class universities who have participated before.

Mr. Raju Reddy, then chairman of BITSAA International, rang the opening bell, as he was joined by several dignitaries from BITSAA, industry leaders, businessmen and academicians. Speaking on the occasion, Reddy, from the BITS class of 1981, thanked NASDAQ OMX for hosting the event. Recounting his journey from India to the U.S. to obtain a master’s degree and going on to found Sierra Atlantic, which was later acquired by Hitachi, Reddy said his “journey is typical of many of my fellow alums with whom I have the honor of sharing the stage today. Each of them is highly accomplished and a respected global leader in their field of work, thanks to the culture of openness and opportunity provided by America.”

“It is indeed a privilege to celebrate the 50th anniversary of BITS Pilani by ringing the bell on Nasdaq today,” he said. “BITS has a deep connection with the U.S. since its founding years. Mr. G.D. Birla, one of independent India’s iconic industrialists and also the university founder, consulted then chairman of the MIT Board of Trustees and also the Ford Foundation to design programs that would make collaboration with industry an integral feature of our education…Today, BITS is one of the most selective universities in the world with only 1 in every 68 applicants admitted.” Reddy said that many BITS alumni have been at the forefront of innovation and job creation in the U.S. as entrepreneurs and senior executives in some of America’s best known companies, including several listed on NASDAQ, such as Akamai, Cisco, Cypress, Intelligroup, Ixia and SanDisk. “Our alumni are highly regarded for their path breaking research and teaching at leading universities such as MIT, Stanford and Princeton. Closer to Wall Street, BITS alumni are known for their pioneering work in banking and finance. We even have an Emmy winner amongst us. And a Mars Rover scientist, too.”

Mr Reddy then pointed out the opportunity represented by a lot of alumni in both India and the US, lauding their innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit. He mentioned the BITS Spark  program that aims to nurture such entrepreneurs. He expressed hope that BITS, as India’s #1 private University, is well positioned to become the next Stanford or MIT.

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In an internal email to the organization, BITSAA CEO – Rohit Koul, expressed “special thanks to the Weekend Witchcraft team for creating the video that was played at the event; Vikrant, Kris, Raghav and the local BITSAA NY team for taking care of the on-ground logistics; Kalyan Krishnamani (CPRO, BITSAA), Kaushik (BITSAA Marketing Lead) and his team for apt marketing; Aditya Garg (BITSAA Chapter Relations) for driving social media and Aditya Sharma (BITSAA Technology) who seems to be perennially available for us.

Any report on the event would not be complete, without thanking Venu Palaparthi (Co-founder BITSAA Intl, OMX Exec & Dreamcricket fame) who made this happen; Atul Bhatnagar (CEO, Cambiam Networks) for getting on multiple calls & generously putting his PR machinery behind us and Sandeep Arora (Co-founder BITSAA & COO Knack Systems) for sponsoring the pre-event reception on the 22nd. The motley group of folks who assembled at NASDAQ have pledged USD 1 Million for BITS, to be raised in coming decade.”

Here is what some prominent BITSians who attended had to say about the ceremony:

“The NASDAQ opening bell ceremony marks a milestone event for BITSAA. It symbolizes the recognition of the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of BITS and BITS alumni around the globe making a difference in people’s lives” – S.P. Kothari, deputy dean and Gordon Y. Ballard Professor of Management at Sloan School of Management, MIT.

“This is a very proud moment and is telling of the times where years of hard work and the resulting contributions of BITSians to the world community are beginning to be recognized. We have a very proud legacy that is great to see others share and admire”- Anurag Jain, Entrepreneur.

“This proud moment is ultimately a result of the joint effort go thousands of volunteers who have translated their passion for BITS into transformative projects over the years. Some of the recent projects like BITSConnect  2.0 are impacting the lives of thousands of BITSians every day, and our helping put BITS on the international map” – Shashikant Khandelwal, CTO, The Find

The coverage of the event can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8bcnilmHio

 

BITS 80s Reunion!!!

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It was a chilly November in the San Francisco Bay Area, There was palpable excitement in the air. It was Nov 28, less than 12hrs removed from saying thanks in proper tradition. Less than 8 hrs removed from the last sip of wine.  Less than 4 hrs removed from arguments over the football game. For many, the festivities had ended. But, for some, it was just the beginning. And, they were thankful about one thing, hitting that button on bits80.org and saying “YES”!  The 3 day forecast on the BITSometer was loud and clear “ Nov 28- 100% chance of fist pumps, back slaps and hugs. Nov 29- 120% chance of heart thumping, feet tapping and body gyrating thunderstorms. Nov 30 – 150% chance of psenti-feelings”. A storm was indeed brewing..

 Storms are not created overnight. They are a culmination of forces of natural elements building momentum with positive re-enforcement to sustain it along the way. There is a perpetrator for every storm and the BITS80 Reunion was no different. Suvashish Ghosh (83) batch – the master mind sowed the seeds which bloomed to this beautiful reunion. Suvashish along with a group of energetic bitsians – Vijay (83), Vikas (83) and Ratnesh (82) Nivi Padhy(85) Anu Murari (86) Rajiv (80) Venu (80) Sriram (87) and Sudha (86) – formed the core committee spanning the batches 80 to 89 , who championed this re union.

Having lived years not knowing one’s own batch mates, the notion of motivating and uniting BITSians several degrees apart was a tall order.  And if you thought biking to pahadi was hard  … this was a step harder…  but, the rewards and the descent after the accomplishment paralleled the same heights and sights that pahadi had injected into the BITSian lives.

The Reunion clocks started ticking fast and the core committee got into the full swing of preparations. Right from scouting for venues, figuring out events to crafting the agenda the engines for the reunion rolled out in great speed. Elaborate thoughts and endless lacha sessions resulting in getting the “where”, “when” and “who” questions of reunion answered. The team decided that the reunion had to be a long weekend and they all settled in on the thanks giving holidays. Thanksgiving would allow families to travel together and also meet the extended BITS family.

Once the “where” and “when” items were finalized, the committee realized the need of an agenda which would keep the incoming bitsians and their extended families on their toes. So they got together and whipped up music, drama and ELAS/HAS for starters. Creative one-off activities with local attractions were thrown in as optional choices. Armed with a decent “agenda” the committee were all ready to jump into action.

Initially the core team did face hiccups in getting more registrations as there were lot of skepticism with enthu meters very low.However it was the exact opposite with music gang, whose enthu caused needle-bending readings. The spotlight was on the music night which was to be the crown jewel of the reunion. With dates and venue locked in… The feverish pitch towards the music night began earnestly in the month of October. Virtual rehearsals, conference calls etc. indicated that music night is going to rock on Reunion. The enthusiasm infused video clips of music night practices acted as a catalyst in turning around the re union registration. It served as the perfect trailer to build momentum.  It was further bolstered by another music event, a karaoke night in Los Altos, Bay Area with an open invitation to the larger BITS crowd. This did turn the tide in the right direction.

Finally all the planning paved well and the celebrations kick started from Nov 28th to 30th 2014 in San Francisco.Celebrations and excitement were filled in air. Not to forget that all bitsians eyes were gleaming at those ever yummy panner Maggi, Kashmiri pulao, sweet curd and Jalebi which were served. Also reunions without RAF would be definitely a miss.So RAF night was organized and Amitabh Bachan’s Don was screened which added more excitement. It was extremely enjoyed by bitsians, their spouses and the kids too.

Series of events like fashion show, ELAS/HAS plays, antaskhari, and dumbchardes engaged all the bitsians thoroughly in immense fun and awakened the animated, adrenalin generating hyper tension that was the very hall mark for any event in BITS. This was followed by Photo-shoots which provided a nice break between ELAS/HAS events and the music night. Set in a beautiful location of Presidio in SFO, the customary group and batch photos turned up some interesting nuggets like the “bookends of the reunion: 80 + 89 batch photo” and “The lone guy and the women: 84 batch photo”

As the final evening of the reunion rolled out, the excitement and anticipation towards the Music night continued to climb higher every minute. the melodies started rolling out with “Deewana Hua Baadal” “neele neele ambar par”. Intertwined with the rocking tunes like “Jaane Jaan”, “Piya thu.” the audience got into the groove heading out to the dance floor. The music night went on for 4 plus hours with nonstop hits that kept coming like a juke box set on automatic. It was a nostalgic blast from the past with great song selection and brilliant performances. Challenged by geographies and very little practice time, the music night team simply rocked putting on a stellar show.

All good things come to an end and that applied to BITS80 reunion. This reunion perfectly resonated nostalgic memories, unlimited joys, boundless happiness of good old college days. The BITS80 Reunion is one such reunion which was a journey in itself and truly lived up to the tagline Reconnect, Relive and Renew the Bitsian Bug.

For more details on the event – Check out (https://www.facebook.com/BITS80s)

 

The BITS2MSPhD Talk: 31st August, 2013

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Thinking about a higher degree?  MS or PhD might be for you. Find out for yourself. BITS2MSPhD, along with Embryo, presents this opportunity to BITSians on and off-campus. Get to know about the graduate school experience. We will help you find answers for:

Why Graduate School?

How to select a university?

How to write your resume and Statement of Purpose?

How should be your letter of recommendation?

Now you can tweet your questions to us too!
Post your questions on twitter with the hashtag “#bits2msphd”. And we shall take it from there. You may tweet your questions before or during the talk.

Off campus participants can join too, via WebEx conference.  You may find the link to live webex conference here.

The talks are held on campus:

In Goa and Hyderabad – Date: 31st August 2013 Time: 6.30 PM IST 

About the speakers:

Srivarsha Rajshekar(2007B1TS563P) is currently doing her PhD at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Cornell University in New York.  She studied M.Sc. (Hons.) Biological Sciences at BITS-Pilani and graduated in 2011.  She pursued her Thesis work at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. She has also worked in research laboratories in the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune prior to beginning her PhD. She is passionate about science research and education.

Adwait Gandhe(2008A3TS199G) graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Goa campus in 2012. He interned at Cameo Digital Media Lab (PS1), where he implemented a computer vision algorithm on an embedded platform. He then developed an inventory management system and presented his work at an international IEEE conference in Fukuoka, Japan. He was selected for the StartingBloc Fellowship, and traveled to Boston, USA to attend the Institute for Social Innovation. He then pursued his Bachelor Thesis at Fraunhofer Institute for Visual Computing in Darmstadt, Germany. He also attended the International Conference on Computer Vision, Barcelona, Spain before joining the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to pursue his Masters in Robotic Systems Development. He was the Vice-chairperson of the IEEE Student Branch and helped revive Celestia, the Astronomy club. Adwait’s focus at CMU was Robotics, Machine Learning and Data Mining. He also took coursework in Entrepreneurship and is currently a member of the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club at the Tepper School of Business. He is currently pursuing an internship at FMC Schilling Robotics, a company that develops sub-sea robots, based in California, USA.

In Pilani – Date: 31st August, 2013 Time: 8:30 PM IST Venue: LTC 5103
About the Speaker:

Yashkumar Gandhi (2007A1PS432P) is currently pursuing M.S. in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette,Indiana, USA.  He completed his B.E. (Hons) in Chemical Engineering at BITS-Pilani in 2011. Earlier this year, Yash interned at GE Global Research Centre, at John F Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore. He has also worked as  a research intern at National Aerospace Laboratories, (CSIR-NAL) Bangalore  and had  been a UGC summer fellow at Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT-Mumbai) in 2010.

Announcing Winners – BITSAA Awards

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BITS has had a tradition of recognizing and commemorating its faculty, alumni & students or their achievements in academics, extra-curricula’s  and  contribution towards business or a societal cause. BITSAA International continues that tradition with the BITSAA Awards.  It gives us immense pleasure to recognize and honour this year’s outstanding efforts of those volunteers who keep the 40000+ BITSians spread across the globe connected with each other as well as their alma mater.

The BITSAA Awards were instituted earlier this year in order to recognize and commend all those who went above and beyond their call of duty to take BITSAA one step further to its vision of creating a resourceful and well networked alumni community.

This is our humble attempt to reward the exceptional amount of time, efforts and interest these people have put in. The following are categories being awarded this year:

  • Most Successful Team – Given to the team(s) that has shown remarkable commitment, excellent execution beyond the listed goals, and credible collaboration across teams. All BITSAA teams are eligible to be nominated in this category.
  • Distinguished Service to Alumni Community – Given to the individual(s) that has served the Alumni Community not just to the best of his/her ability, but over and beyond that. He/She has exhibited consistent and sustainable efforts over time, and spent considerable efforts in developing relationships and individuals for the benefit of BITSAA. This category is open to all BITSAA leaders.
  • Exceptional Leadership – Given to the individual(s) who has proven to be an exceptional leader with proven integrity, interpersonal skills, goal setting for team, and carrying the team along with him/her. This category is intended for Managers and above, but exceptions will be made if there is sufficient justification.
  • Outstanding Volunteerism – Given to the individual(s) who put in efforts outside of his stated project tasks, has excellent communication skills, and is result driven. This category is open to all Volunteers and Team leaders
  • Promising Newcomer – Given to the individual(s) who joined BITSAA recently, but proved to be an invaluable resource to the team, and the organisation, through his/her dedication, leadership, and commitment. As the name suggests, this is open to any leader who is a newcomer.

The nominations under each category were rigorously reviewed by the leadership team to choose winners who have shown skyrocketing levels of enthu!. It was really tough to choose between such talent and dedication, and took us several rounds of discussions and debates!

Finally the time has come for us to open the envelopses and reveal the winners. We take great pleasure in announcing and congratulating the recipients of BITSAA Awards 2013:

  • Most Successful Team:
    • Shared by Scholarships team and BITS Spark team.
  • Distinguished Service to Alumni Community
    • Aalap Tripathi, Ex-CEO
    • Kaushik Subramanian, Ex-CFO
    • Vijay Sharma, Ex-COO
  • Exceptional Leadership
    • Soumyadeep Ghosh, BITS2MSPHD
    • Kaushik Balasubramanian,  Marketing & Communications
    • Rahul Parsani, Finance
    • Hari Kishore, Scholarships
    • Sherin Kurian, Scholarships
  • Outstanding Volunteerism
    • Hari Prasath, Alumni Membership
    • Deepan Kishore, Campus Relations
    • Pramod Vadlamani, People Strategy
    • Anurag Jaipuriar, Scholarships
    • Aakash Goel, Technology
    • Chetan Bansal, Technology
  • Promising Newcomer
    •  Sunalini Sinha, Operations

Congratulations to all the winners!! You have made BITSAA and BITS- Pilani proud.

Rest assured, such dedication and efforts will continue to take us forward by leaps and mark us on the map as one of the best alumni organizations in the world.

 

BITSAA International – at your fingertips : Thank you Ariose Software

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BITSAA Goes Mobile

At BITSAA International, we have always embraced technology – be it using recruiterbox for recruiting, Webex for conferences, Trello for managing actionable items, Dropbox for repository, SVN, Git or any of the plethora of content management products out there. Being the alumni of a technical university (and a good one!), we believe, we ought to show others how to leverage technology to bring virtual teams together, We ought to show others how it is done!
Here is yet another milestone, yet another jewel from our technology team – BITSAA mobile application. Yes, the Beta is now live!

BITSAA app, the free mobile application for BITSAA International, puts BITS alumni, events, and news on your mobile device – wherever you are. This application will open up new opportunities for alumni to connect with both the institution and each other regardless of where they are at the time.

Current features of the Beta include

  • News
  • Events
  • Social connect
  • Campus
  • Calendar
  • Gallery
  • Blog
  • EStore

Download it now

Search for “BITSAA” in the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play(Android)

Future Releases

What would YOU like to see included (OR changed)?
Tell us (tech-team AT bitsaa DOT org) what else you’d like to see added! Do let us know if you don’t like something. We are eager to listen and change & hopefully get better with time.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to fellow alumnus and passionate BITSian Amit Goenka (1991-95), Co-Founder and CEO of Ariose Software (P) Ltd who spent his valuable resources to build this app for us for FREE. Kudos to the Amit and his team and a big Thank you from all of us at BITSAA International. Ariose Software provides expert services and solutions in the area of Mobile services – Consumer, Enterprise and Telecom. Do check them out!