SAMPARK

I was born a quarter century or so back when a couple of crazy guys thought of digging up a hole right in the middle of the campus. RIght from that time IMT has witnessed many changes but I stand here unwavering as the sands of time slowly passes by. I am the person who has seen you in pain , in joy; in anger, in love; in frustration, in jubilation; in solitude, in togetherness; in parties, in grave discussions; celebrating success, sulking failure.... I have been the muse of the photographer, the place where you shared Old Monk in cheap plastic glasses on a chilly winter night. I have been the place where the shaky girl, madly in love, proposed her beau not knowing the answer, the place where you unashamedly bitched about the faculty with your friends,the place where you planned how to get revenge on the placecomm guy who threw you out of Kapil Mohan for not shaving properly and turning up in a guest lecture. I have been the bed of the fallen drunkard, the conference hall for the strategists of case studies, the host for the night long brainstorming sessions for Passion and Chakravyuh. I have been smeared with gulaal on Holi, lit with lamps on Diwali, sloshed with coke and whisky on parties. I have seen the first kiss, the fisticuffs between two guys over the same girl, the breaking down of a month long ego, the last goodbye and the tears of separation. My heart; it bleeds when each batch passed out, it leaps with joy at the sight of the newcomers, it smirks quietly when the seniors ragged the juniors in the name of interaction, it becomes awestruck when I get to know that a popular Bollywood song has been written keeping me in mind  and today it is heaving in pride when I get to see that so many of you have assembled once again. So lets relive those golden moments once again, let relive the PARTY once again, lets relive AMPHI once again.

Yours sincerely, The Amphitheatre

Table of Contents

Alcom Initiatives - Building Alumni Database ……………………. Pg 4 - Short Term Projects ……………………. Pg 4 - Mentorship Program ……………………. Pg 4 - Knowledge Connect ……………………. Pg 5 - Sampark ……………………. Pg 6 - Batch Champions Initiative ……………………. Pg 6 - FMCG Symposium ……………………. Pg 7 - HR Symposium ……………………. Pg 8 - Foundation Module ……………………. Pg 9 - Alumni Calendar - Upcoming Events ………… Pg 10 - Gift Store ……………………. Pg 10 - IMT Alumni Goes Digital ……………………. Pg 11 - IMT Flame Many Miles Away ……………………. Pg 13 - Batch Champions ……………………. Pg 14

Amphi Nights ……………………. Pg 16 - Mumbai ……………………. Pg 17 - Hyderabad ……………………. Pg 18 - Bangalore ……………………. Pg 19 - Kolkata ……………………. Pg 20 - Chennai ……………………. Pg 21 - Delhi ……………………. Pg 22 In Focus - President of Alumni Association - Debashis Das ……… Pg 28 - President of Alumni Relationship Committee - Manoj Kaushik ………… Pg 30

Senior Alumni Relationship Committee - Introduction …………………Pg 32 Junior Alumni Relationship Committee - Snapshot …………… Pg 35

�4ALCOM INITIATIVES

The Alumni Relationship Committee at IMT Ghaziabad is a body that not acts as bridge that connects the Alumni to their alma mater but brings together the prominent leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, writers. In short it is a part of life of every IMTian.

In an effort to serve and promote brand IMT, the Alumni Relationship Committee has undertaken a number of initiatives in bringing the current students of IMT Ghaziabad and the esteemed alumni together. With the constant support and involvement of the alumni on day to day basis, we have been able to achieve unmatched heights of success and endeavour to continue the same in future.

BUILDING ALUMNI DATABASE Currently the database contains details of about 5082 alumni. About 4200 have been attempted to contact this year and the details of alumni close to 3000 have been updated this year. For people whose details are not available in the database, the team is in the process of collecting their information through other sources like Facebook, Linkedin and their batch mates.

On the IMT Ghaziabad Alumni Konnect Facebook page about 1815 people are connected with an additional 400 people to be added. This forum is used to send out regular updates to the alumni on the upcoming events in the college.On the LinkedIn page, the Alumni Relationship Committee has about 1782 connections and about 1.2 Million people in the network.

Short Term Projects Short Term Project is an initiative which mainly focuses on getting as many as virtual projects possible for students. Students are selected either by the faculty or alumnus and then interviewed by the STP Team. A proper feedback from the alumnus and students is taken every week till the STP is closed in order to ensure the proper completion of the project. This gives the students an opportunity to learn from the alumni as well as practice some of the industry norms of working in a short while.

The STPs received in years 2013-14 included topics like Social Media Marketing, Market Research for demand estimation and getting consumer insights for companies like Tech Mahindra, Vision360 Management Consultancy, Videocon and Costa Coffee.

Mentorship Program Mentorship is an initiative which is aimed at helping students by getting an experienced person from the industry to help them guide for the tenure at IMT and beyond. It is not about Summer Placements or final placements, but getting a first-hand knowledge about the prospects of the industry, helping students understand the real-time application of the subjects they learn in college. A total of around 100 mentors have agreed to be a part of

�5this initiative and last year around 187 alumni agreed for the same and we hope to get more mentors on board this year.

Knowledge Connect This initiative has been a platform for all the alumni to help the current students with their domain knowledge, their experiences. Through a series of Guest Lectures filled with examples of real case studies in the industry, students get to gain a lot of insights into the companies and industries.

We had the privilege to hear about the golden rules needed in the world of business from some exceptional speakers like Krish Dhanam - CEO, Krish Dhanam training international Inc, Harmeet Chandok - DGM, Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Abhinav Sharma -Retail Marketing Manager, Adidas Group amongst many others.

MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH BY KRISH DHANAM

LESSONS ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY SHASHANK SHEKHAR

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Sampark It acts as a bridge between IMT and its 6000 strong alumni community. It aims to provide a glimpse of the current happenings at IMT as well as all new initiatives being implemented and upcoming ones as well. Two issues of Sampark newsletter have been sent out this year.

Batch Champions Initiative Last year the committee has initiated the Batch Champions concept, to enable a point of contact from each batch have been identified. The aim is to connect to the entire batch and in the past we have not been able to do this since the database keeps changing. It also ensure that the perspective of every batch is taken into account before reaching a conclusion. For all practical purposes therefore, the Batch Champions represent their batch in the alumni body and are the decision takers for any alumni related initiative. The first meet happened on 22nd Feb where the initiative was launched followed up another meet on 12th July. The third meet is scheduled on 27th September. It is only due to the constant participation and ideation of new ideas by the batch champions that we have been able to launch a couple of new initiatives and improvise the others like guest lectures and symposiums.

Couple of snapshots from the last two batch champion meets

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FMCG Symposium

On 2nd of August, 2014, Alcom hosted the FMCG symposium. The auditorium was jam packed with students as FMCG and marketing roles are no doubt the most sought after in the college during placements. The conference witnessed the culmination of several great minds from diverse fields marketing, converging their thoughts and ideas under one roof with real life case studies.

Ms. Sujatha V Kumar, our alumnus from the batch 1995, currently employed with Coca Cola, Chaired the symposium and mesmerized the audience narrating the story of

evolution of one of the iconic brands in the world. Not many of us knew that Santa was a Coke creation to encourage people to drink Coke in winters.

To talk of any other brand after hearing about Coke is a challenge, but Debashis Das, alumnus from the batch 1996 built on the momentum talking about Communication Strategy and Execution. He brought in Martin Lindstrom’s Brand Sense – the sensory branding concept with a live case studies.

Mr. Vidhu Sagar, alumnus from the batch 1990 presented on the Media Landscape prevalent in the market. He shared some of his experience and insights on the media buying world, the narrowing divide between rural and urban and the evolution of digital.

Mr. Puneet Avasthi, alumnus from 1992 batch produced a power packed presentation about his passion and the backbone of marketing and business decisions – research. He captivated the audience by presenting some astonishing facts and figures about the Indian retail market and displaying the pivotal role of market research in getting to know your customer well.

Their intellect and acumen left everyone calling for more of such events in the coming year.

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HR Symposium The Alumni Relationship Committee organized the first ever HR Symposium at IMT Ghaziabad on 30th August, 2014. The symposium garnered lot of excitement among the students and faculty and it witnessed the convergence of several great minds on one

s ingle p lat form. The symposium was Chaired by Mr Prabhat Ummat, a n I M T G h a z i a b a d alumnus of batch 1995.

The first session of the day on Setting the HR Context : The HR Role - Where are you in the power structure was d e l i v e r e d b y M r s Madhu l i ka Makar o f batch 1995, Director and f o u n d e r o f M i r u s Solutions. It was a highly interactive session where students were made to undertake group activities

and participate in spot interviews. She also covered the topic “Hiring for Success : Talent Acquisition Perspective- Hiring Strategy, complexities and challenges related to the field of HR.

The next speaker, Mrs Harpreet Dutta, an alumnus of 1995 batch, is Vice president - Human Resource and Administration at SMS Siemag. She started her session with the key topic “Addressing Human Capital: Talent Management and Retention, Managing employee expectations, Employee Life Cycle interventions, Career Development and Employee Engagement.” She emphasized on the signif icance of HR professionals, who according to her, are ‘harbingers of change in an organization; responsible for understanding the objectives of the company and creating an env i ronment conduc ive to achieve the same.

Mr Sudeep Ralhan, 2001 batch pass-out of IMT Ghaziabad is the HR Business Lead for Sales and Marketing at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare. He spoke on ‘Building Organisational Capability- Organisation

�9Development and Learning and Development. From being a peripheral function designed to store employee information to being a key factor in shaping policies and strategies of today’s multinational organizations, he explained the importance and changing dynamics of human resource management.

The final speaker for the day was, Mr. Dev Amritesh, an alumnus of 1999 batch. Mr. Amritesh, is currently the COO of Dunkin Donuts. He shared his insights on the topic ‘Living The Brand – A Brand and Business Perspective- Organisation Culture impacts Organisation’s Brand and Expanded and Long term role of HR in being an equal stakeholder of the Organisation Brand. He explained the process of achieving business goals by defining a process of steps, which begins by nurturing the required culture or attitudes among the organization and its people to achieve results. He summarised all that had been discussed by the previous speakers about the role and dynamics of talent acquisition and human resource management and linked it with the overall strategy of the firm.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the alumni present at both the symposiums and are looking forward to host them soon again.

Foundation Module for Batch of 2014 – 16 & Reorientation for Batch of 2013-15 This year the first year batch was privileged to be ears to some esteemed alumni during

their first week in the college itself. The foundation module had a day dedicated to the alumni and we, students were privileged to get some insights about the IMT campus life and wide range of career opportunities post that from the ambassadors of the brand IMT in the industry. We were privileged to have the presence of Mr. Rajeev Karwal , Founder, Mi lagrow Humantech, Mr. Debashis Das, President Alumni Association, Mr. Manoj Kaushik, President, Alumni Relationship Committee, Mr.Sanjay Gupta, Mr. Deepak Sinha, Mr. Prabhat Ummat, Mr. Chirag Mehrotra, Mr.Sumit Basin, Mr. Ankur Jain and Mr. Nishant Singh. We are thankful to each one

of them for taking their day off for the current batch of students from their tight schedule. Mr.Debashis Das was also a part of the Reorientation module for the senior batch passing out in 2015.

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Alumni Calendar - Upcoming Events

Apart from the city wise alumni meets, the committee has also planned the following activities in the coming months. These include the Finance Symposium, Analytics Symposium , Reunion - Speaking of reunions, another highlighted reunion came in the form of Yaadein. This year the Yaadein is going to happen to bring together the batch of 1989 and have a day of reminiscence and also, newly initiated 15 year reunion for 1999 batch.

We, the Alumni Relationship Committee are grateful to the entire alumni base for their incessant support and sustenance to help us grow further in establishing the connect and carrying the brand of IMT to the entire globe.

Refresh your IMT memories with the Gift Store Alumni Committee took its relationship with IMT alumni a notch higher, launching a range of IMT merchandise at Amphi Nights - The All India IMT Alumni Meets in all the 6 cities. The merchandise was exclusively available at a separate stall set up at all the venues as the IMT Gift Shop. Vidisha Sharma from the 2014 batch made a statement #IMTianForLife. It is something that we all realize over a period of time that IMT is not about a MBA institution, it is about a religion, a way of life. And that is what has been taken forward as the first idea in the gift shop. The merchandise have the IMT logo imprinted on them along with quotes like “IMTian for life”. IMT gets into your heart and soul and the two years spent here get imprinted in your mind forever. The IMT Gift Shop is an initiative to help the alumni cherish their ever-lasting memories they have with IMT in the form of merchandise. They can even

�11send it to their friends on occasions to celebrate which long years ago they celebrated together on campus. The merchandise on offer ranges from pens to coffee mugs, whiskey glasses and beer mugs to the regular T-shirts and sweatshirts so that you can flaunt the IMT logo. So if you remember your Amphi party friends while having a drink, tell us and we will have it sent to him in any part of the globe. As we launch the IMT Alumni Website at the D e l h i m e e t , the IMT

Gift Store is slated to become the largest and only authorized on-line gift store for IMT Merchandise. So refresh your IMT memories for yourself and your friends through THE IMT GIFT STORE. Thank you Vidisha 2014 batch, Priyanka, Charu, Sounak 2015 batch, Vinamra, Nikhil, Dikshit, Prerna 2016 Batch…. For all the efforts of putting this together for the alumni.

IMT Alumni goes Digital

IMT alumni has launched t h e w e b s i t e i m t a l u m n i . c o m exclusively for the IMT a l u m n i . T h i s i s a n attempt to bring the alumni closer in the digital age and provide services to them on the go. In the next phase the Alumni Association plans to launch the mobile link app for this website, so that alumni can access this anytime, anywhere.

The objective of the website and other digital platforms is to become a platform of interface with the alumni and offer them specific services like:

�121. Provide a Directory of alumni

2. Career Services – Mid career counselling and interventions

3. Placement services – jobs4imtians

4. Provide information about upcoming events and activity updates

5. Host the IMT online gift store

6. Become a data bank for business opportunities

7. Offer special service deals to alumni with offers on travel, etc.

The initiative has been rolled out with the launch of the website as that is possibly the easiest platform for the alumni to b e c o m e t h e f a s t e s t communication platform. There are many different sites of alumni today in linkedin, Facebook, google groups hosted by alumni or current batch of students. None of them are professionally managed and lose their charm over a period of time. This platform will consolidate all of them and become one Mega site for all such mini groups. Another problem with these platforms have many members who are actually not from IMT and access information to their benefit that is not meant for them. Through a feature we will identify the genuine IMT alumni only and provide them the access.

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IMT flame many miles away

Living the Spirit of IMT, the residents of San Francisco Bay Area in the United States had an alumni meet on the 27th Sep, 2014. Vikas Ratra and Vandana Deep spearheaded the initiative in coordination with the Alcom team members at IMT campus. It was a night of nostalgia for fellow IMTians who flew down from various parts and attended the event.

We fondly hope that this meet becomes a tradition and is followed up by many more Annual Alumni Meets not only in US but across the globe so as to celebrate the joy of being together as the IMT Family.

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BATCH CHAMPIONS The Batch Champions act as an interface between the Alumni and IMT. They are the ones who have always been contributing to the Initiatives of the Alumni Relationship Committee; be it the Symposiums, the Guest lectures or the Goodie bag.

So far there have been 3 Batch Champion’s meet conducted successfully with an agenda to present before them the upcoming events of the Alumni Relationship Committee and seek their views on the same.

They represent their batch in any events/activities /engagements with IMT. This helps in a smooth coordination of events like Reunion, HR Meet, AIM, inter-city

�15Meet etc. The concept also aims at helping in maintenance of accurate database details. They help us pass information about alumni from their batch who have taken up leading roles in an organization. There have been a tremendous help in coordinating chapter meets and the All India Alumni Meets. We take this opportunity to thank all the Batch Champions for extending a helping hand to us in times of need and are extremely proud for being associated with this team of champions that has been so proactive in all the events taken up by the committee.

The following alumni are the batch coordinators for their respective batches:

1982 Ashwini Kumar

1983 Sunil Verma, Mukesh Kakkar

1985 Sanjay Gupta

1986 Deepak Sinha

1987 Romaa Maheshwari

1988 Manoj Gupta

1989 Kalpana Narain

1990 Anjali Kumar, Raji Verghese, Ravi Pahuja

1991 Indravir Saran Das

1992 Amit Banga, Puneet Awasthi

1993 Sumeet Narangm, Asheet Makhija

1994 Somit Makar, Piyush Mathur , Anurag K Mathur

1995 Prabhat Ummat

1996 Lalit Bhardwaj

1997 Anshul Bagai, Manish Sethi

1998 Viral Vikram

1999 Arun Jethi

2000 Bharat Diwakar

2001 Animesh Puri, Akash Garg 2002 Betty David 2003 Gaurav Choudhary 2004 Arvind Mohta 2005 Sumit Kumar Bhasin 2006 Aditi Bhasin, Ashish Dua 2007 Ranjith Kollannur, Sadaat Ahmed 2008 Srikant Iyer, Siddharth Mukund 2009 Vishesh Chadha, Aseem Goyal, Abhinav Sharma 2010 Mahesh Kakani, Ankur Jain, Pragya Shree

�162011 Sushant Agarwal, Jayesh Doshi, Anoop Kurup 2012 Nikunj Agarwal, Nishant Singh 2013 Ambuj Sinha, Vaqar Merchant, Astha Gupta, Nikhil Maheshwari 2014 Abhishek Ghosh, Sameer Doda, Toshaali Ghosh, Nidhi Trivedi, Inderjeet Singh, Vidisha Sharma

AMPHI NIGHTS – The Annual Alumni Dinner 2014 Amphi Nights – The All India Alumni Meet 2014 was conducted successfully across 5 cities Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. The Delhi Meet is scheduled for coming Saturday i.e 15th November. Continuing with the progress of last year the program dubbed amphi nights, which celebrate the special place of the amphi in the heart of each IMTian.

At the meets we try to highlight the success of our alumni in various ways. Last year we started with an initiative of giving a Gift bag to people who came for the event. The products inside the gift bag were samples of brands handled by IMTians. We are tried to highlight some of the Entrepreneurs of IMT and authors who had published their books. Some alumni making news in the year like Pawan Shankar (won the best actor award on TV) and Anish Diddee (won a Cannes Bronze Advertising award twice) were also felicitated. The key highlight was the launch of the “Spirit of IMT” Award given to the alumni who has made the maximum contribution towards alumni work. Rajesh Kumar – the creator of jobs4imtians was the recipient of this. At the venue, we also set up a photograph corner where people could get themselves clicked along with their friends with a IMT backdrop.

This year too we are gearing up for the Delhi Meet. While we are building from the activities of last year like the Gift Bag, etc. this year will also have something new. An entertainment filled event is planned. A stand-up comedy show will be hosted at the Delhi Meet by an alumni from the 2011 batch Rahul Subramanium. Rahul Subramanian is a 29 year old, batch of 2011, working as a Marketing Manager at Mumbai, who loves to do stand up comedy at free time. In his short time of doing stand up comedy, his notable achievements have been winning the Virgin Pants and Canvas Laugh Club - all India open mics. He has performed in renowned places in Mumbai like Canvas Laugh Club, Blue Frog, Three Wise Men, Bonabo, The Hive, Extreme Sports Bar in Bangalore and any other Club/Hotel/Bar/Udipi/Tapri that offered like a true IMTian, him a free drink. The photography corner set up last year is now moving to s Selfie corner. Sampark dedicated to Alumni Activities of IMT will be made available.

The highlight of the evening on 15th would be the launch of the IMT Alumni Website, launch of the IMT Gift Store and the Alumni Awards. This alumni meet we would also install the #IMTian For Life award to people who have contributed significantly to the

�17alumni objectives in the past year. We would also present the prestigious “Spirit of IMT” award for the individual who has portrayed, as the name suggests – spirit of IMT – passion, focus, go-getter attitude into practice. This award will be announced by the Founder of the IMT Alumni Association Mr.Rajeev Karwal and Board Members of IMT at the event. Have fun ! Come to Amphi Nights

MUMBAI CHAPTER The All India Alumni Meets 2014 got off to a grand start with the Mumbai chapter at Meluha - The Fern, located in Hiranandani - Powai. Around 120 people turned up and the

meet was initiated by a special message from Manoj Kaushik on the theme of the event - Amphi Nights. The event lightened up as batch mates met after a long time a n d i n d u l g e d i n impromptu acts like m i m i c r y . T h e a t t e n d e e s a p p r e c i a t e d t h e whole event as the arrangements were made really well. A selfie contest was also held which saw good part icipation

from everyone. Gift shop - an exclusive IMT merchandise store was also initiated at the meet. Anurag Mathur, an alumnus from 1994 Batch was actively involved in organising the event and oversaw the proceedings of the meet.

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HYDERABAD CHAPTER The All India Alumni Meets kick started with its first round of meets in the city of Hyderabad. The meet took place at the Radisson Blu hotel in Banjara Hills on the

18th of October ’14. The meet was a vibrant one which was attended by 25 a lumni . Some of the alumni present were Mr. Sandeep Chandola and Mr. Sandip Kr. Ramji (1997 Batch), Mr Javed Ahmed (2010 Batch), Mr. Santanu Dat ta (2009 Batch) and Mr Vaqar Merchant who is also a Batch Champion for the 2013 Batch. As the night unfolded it was made entertaining with the selfie

contest where in the alumni were clicking their group selfies and uploading them on social media. The IMT Gift Shop was also unveiled at this meet for the first time and a great numbers of orders were booked for the IMT Merchandise. The faculty present at the meet were Professor Ratna Vadra and Professor Anand Khanna.

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BANGALORE CHAPTER

The Alumni meet that began in the Hyatt on 8th of November saw over 130 alumni coming in. The Meet seemed to be a perfect event for the alumni most of whom met their classmates after years. The Reunion brought back to life all those priceless moments that every IMTian cherishes throughout his/her life

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KOLKATA CHAPTER We conducted the Kolkata AIAM 2014 on 8th November at the prestigious Tolly Club in southern part of the city. Around 20 alumni turned up for the meet. We started the evening with a welcome speech that talked about the omnipresence of amphi in the memories of each IMTian followed by a video message from our director Dr. Bibek Banerjee. Next up we conducted a quiz on IMT which saw excited responses from the alumni present. There was a tie breaker and finally the honours went to Mr. Nimesh Gupta. In between we demonstrated specimens from the newly started gift shop initiative which saw enthusiastic buying from our alumni. The night ended with a sumptuous dinner spread and lot of photos to carry happy memories back home.

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CHENNAI CHAPTER The Chennai alumni meet took place on the 8th of November this year at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Chennai City Centre. The meet was attended by 43 alumni and to our delight it was a fifty percent increase in the number of attendees from last year. Some of the senior alumni present at the meet were Mr Rajesh Kumar, Mr Manish Jain, Mr Judhajit Malik and Mr Krishnapal Solanki. The alums present enthusiastically participated in the IMT Quiz and the Selfie Contest organized by the ALCOM members present there. Analogous to the other cities, the newly unveiled gift shop initiative was greatly applauded by the attendees. Faculty members present at the meet were P r o f e s s o r L u b n a N a f e e s a n d Professor Ajay Kumar Chauhan.

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Delhi Chapter The 2014 edition of Amphi nights came to a close on 15th November 2014 with the Delhi meet which saw a huge turnout of 500 + alumni and 25 + faculty of IMT Ghaziabad. The event was organized in Margossa lawn at India Habitat Centre and the occasion was graced by the presence of The Director IMT, Dr. Bibek Banerjee, Mr.Rajeev Karwal, Mr.Debashis Das , Mr. Manoj Kaushik, faculty members and other distinguished alumnus of IMT. Mr. Rahul Subramanian, an alum from the 2011 batch anchored the event and delighted the audience with his stand-up comedy, jokes and witty questions. Important initiatives like the Alumni Web Portal and Gift Shop were launched on the occasion. Many of the guests carried back home different memorabilia from the gift shop like sweatshirts and dummy beer mugs.

The Rajeev Karwal #IMTian For Life awards were installed and given away to alumni who contributed significantly in the past year to build alumni relationships and steer alumni initiatives. The recipients of this prestigious award were Ms.Sujatha V.Kumar, Mr. Deepak Gupta, Mr. Sameer Doda, Mr. Ridhesh Sharma, Mr. Prabhat Unmat, Mr. Abhishek Ghosh and Mr. Manoj Kaushik. Log on to FB page of IMT Alumni Association Chungi Nights for details and photographs.

Alcom awards were given away to members of the Senior Alumni Relationship Committee as a token of the appreciation for the hard work they put in round the year for driving forward the Alcom activities.

The prestigious “Spirit of IMT” award which celebrates the most significant contribution to alumni work for last 10 years or more, was conferred to Mr. Debashis Das.

Precious college memories and nostalgic moments were revisited and shared by the alumni present, many of whom interacted with their batchmates and old friends after almost an year and the night ended with the promise of an even bigger and better meet next year.

We take this opportunity to humbly thank our sponsors and contributors who have helped make the event a success.

Mr.Jyoti Prakash Sahu and Mr.Varun Chowdhary from Perno Ricard

Ms.Sujata V. Kumar from Coca Cola

Mr.Manish Seth from Bacardi India

Mr.Rachit Vohra from Marico

Mr.Anand Menon from Café Coffee Day

Mr.Saurabh Jha from Lipton

�23Mr.Sanjay Bhat from Radico

Mr.Arshad Siddiqui from Pepsico

Mr.Avik Sarkar from ITC

Mr.Vishal Sikka from HeathKart

Mr.Rajeev Karwal Founder Milagrow

Mr.Kavi Mathur Godfrey Phillips

Mr.Sayan Basu SC Johnson

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�25IMTian for Life Awards

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In FocusIMT has a unique Alumni Model amongst the best known B schools in India, not only are some initiatives innovative and a benchmark for others to follow, there is a Passion that goes into building it. Lets drill deep into what has been the journey....

W e f e a t u r e a n e x c l u s i v e i n t e r v i e w w i t h Mr.Debashis Das Founder President of t h e I M T A l u m n i A s s o c i a t i o n a n d Mr.Manoj Kaushik - Pres ident o f the Alumni Relationship C o m m i t t e e o n t h e o c c a s i o n o f Amphi Nights to find m o r e a b o u t t h e progress of alumni affairs and the plans for the future

You have been associated consistently with alumni related work for the past 12 years or more. How did you get involved into the alumni work. Take us through the journey.

I am basically an introvert and take time to make friends around. Therefore, I have never been a very well networked person. Years ago I was appearing for a job interview. It was my first job change in 1997, so a little nervous times. When I got selected, the HR person told me that he was making an offer to me, but was taking me one grade lower than others. On probing I found that the company – which was a great company those days and still is, had a policy of recruiting from IIM – ABC, XLRI and FMS at a certain grade and the rest of colleges at a lower grade. I explained that I had cleared the interview on merit so why this discrimination. Nothing changed. I came back with the offer letter but declined the offer next day leaving the opportunity of working for a good organization. Many times in desperation, I felt like I should go back them again. But something made me do a different thing. I started tracking IMTians who were doing well through newspapers, some magazines and whenever I found an IMTian featured, I would cut that clipping and send it by post (those were the days where emails were yet to enter many offices) to this HR Manager. It was after almost 2 years post that when an incident happened. I met this HR Manager at the airport – he was from XLRI. He came forward and recognized me. He told me that I can now stop sending him the achievements of IMT alumni and some time ago he recruited an IMTian at the same grade as the top colleges. The company had made an exception and have elevated IMT’s rank in their list of preferred colleges. But this was not the end …. What he said after that was like honey dripping into my ears…. He said that the IMtian he had recruited at a senior position in now pushing him to recruit more IMTians. He congratulated me and said he wished his college has such feeling amongst the alumni. It was more than a moment of joy for me, I suddenly realized there are many

�29others who are doing more than what I can imagine and I felt happy that I was also trying to do my bit.

So we were all doing things in our own way, but what was lacking was a consolidated effort and a structure to build the alumni relations across batches.

Few years later when I was in Chennai, I was privileged to attend a Crossfire Business session between two CEOs – one of whom was Rajeev Karwal from IMT. Rajeev Karwal at that time was ranked among the Top 10 most powerful CEO’s of the country. After the session I went and introduced myself to him as a kid from the same college that he belonged to. We spoke barely for a minute but after 3 months I got a call from him saying that he is coming to Chennai again and would like to have a breakfast meeting with few alumni.

He said he wants to put a structure to IMT alumni relationships and create zonal Vice Presidents. And so we started. It is difficult to imagine for many of us now as to how much effort had been put in by the students and few key alumni then to put things place. Alcom structure was created. There was no room for alcom office – it was set up, a clerical resource was put in place, we had a national level core committee meet, then appointed a PR agency, launched a mentorship program, etc.

From there to now, life has got better. Now we just speak to some of our alumni and implement their suggestions.

How did the Alumni Association come to life. What are the things planned in the Association.

My personal experience – whenever a few IMTians get together, there is a beautiful positive energy that gets created, there is enough to learn from each other there is enough to do for each other. This was the philosophy behind the evolution of the Alumni Association.

IMT is known for its Marketing talent, many successful brands around the world have been created by IMTians. They have done this for companies and businesses. So there is no reason why they wont like to do this for their own brand – IMT. After all, alumni are the best representation of the brand IMT, they are the Brand ambassadors themselves. The vision of The IMT Alumni Association is to build the brand IMT.

To do this the association will facilitate collaborative business opportunities amongst alumni that would benefit a larger base of alumni. The purpose of the Association therefore is to take initiatives that bring tangible benefits to the alumni.

�30The Association is also the governing body of the Alumni Relationship committee at IMT, nominates the President of Alcom, selects the alcom students who will work for alcom so that there is a common purpose of building Brand IMT.

Any activity or initiative taken therefore has to pass through two out of the three filters

1. Does it benefit the current students and the institute

2. Does it benefit the alumni

3. Does it build the Brand IMT

To give some examples – The mid career intervention and personalized coaching program that we have help alumni fast track their career and helps them tackle issues that are a hindrance to career growth. When IMTians do well, Brand IMT does well.

The housing project was launched to give the alumni excellent investment options and you don’t require external brand building exercise it 50 IMTian families start living together in a common place.

The Gift shop provides opportunity of nostalgia and gifting to your IMT friends living in different cities. Would you not walk up and speak to a stranger wearing a IMT logo T-shirt on the street and establish a connect because you know he is from IMT.

We are launching the website now and there are many more initiative to follow, opportunities of doing things together are immense. And we look forward to it.

All India Alumni Meets have been a success in all 6 cities and there have been new initiatives such as the goodie bags and the IMT gift shop at the AIAMs. How can we further increase attendance at the AIAMs?

So far the attendance in all the meets organised this year has been good but we aim to excel further in terms of the attendance and the alumni involvement

through the All India Alumni Meets by bringing in the batch champions to invite and update us on the tentative number of alumni attending and building on a better network which can also, be sector wise segregated so as to have a congregation of alumni by streams and industries to help them connect with the alumni belonging to their sector. Also, our choice of venue and the food and beverage have improved over the past year but we intend to have better venues with central locations in the coming years. Lastly, with every passing year a newer initiative is being introduced like we started with goodie bags and this year we had the gift shop and from here on, we endeavour to touch the zenith of successful meets.

“ W H E N E V E R A F E W IMTIANS GET TOGETHER, THERE IS A BEAUTIFUL POSITIVE ENERGY THAT GETS CREATED"

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Being an alumnus yourself how do you suggest should we keep the flame alive in the hearts of the alumni for their alma mater?

Having spent two of the most crucial and vibrant years of our lives here, we all remain attached to the college. So, as when we get an opportunity to connect with our alma mater we are all more than willing to lend our support. Being a part of the corporate, it does get tough to find time to get back to the college and relive the memories and this is the sole reason why events like All India Alumni Meets are organised. Also, we have started investing in discovering new frontiers for connecting the alumni like the US Meet and the Dubai Meet. These meets have helped the alumni to relive their IMT times no matter how distant they are from home. Furthermore industry oriented events like the symposiums also provide avenues to the alumni to not only share their knowledge and experience with the current batch of students but also learn and get connected to their peers belonging to the same industry.

How do you foresee the new initiatives such as the IMT Gift shop and the Online Alumni portal to contribute and how can it be improved?

The Online Alumni Portal and the Gift Shop are two initiatives that have great potential to service our Alumni in breakthrough ways. For the Gift Shop, we can let the alumni customize the products we have according to their wishes. We can customize it by printing their name, batch or any photos on the merchandise we are selling. We can also start taking online orders for the gift shop before the meets and they can come and collect it when they attend the alumni meet in their respective cities. For the alumni portal we aim to introduce each feature and initiative of the Alumni Relationship Committee separately and then take each of the initiatives to a newer height by involving the batch champions to involve their batches individually and also organise events for the same.

“THESE MEETS HAVE HELPED THE ALUMNI TO RELIVE THEIR IMT TIMES NO MATTER HOW DISTANT THEY ARE FROM HOME”

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Introduction to the Senior Alumni Relationship Committee Charu Sharma, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Borges Mediterranean Group. She was the Co-Founder of a StartUp named In2Events She has been a professional oil and glass painter and loves travelling, adventure sports, poetry.

Deepak Krishnakumar, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Greenrockstore.com . He worked at ChaYoWo Games for 21 months. He is passionate about creative writing and has carried it forward over the years..

Divya Arora, PGDM – Finance, interned at Goldman Sachs. In her free time, she loves sketching and dancing

Jhalak Airon, PGDM – Finance, interned at Power Finance Corporation.She has worked for 10 months in Airtel and likes solving sudoku and dancing.

Kamalika Mitra, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Sab Miller. She has a work experience of 12 months at Sreenath Engineering and Services. She loves to dance, paint and sing.

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Priyanka Agarwal, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Michelin India. Her work experience includes a 23 months stint at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. She likes reading and watching movies.

Rishabh Mathur, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Godfrey Philips. He worked for 22 Months at Ericsson India Global Services Private Limited. His interests lie in singing and he loves being surrounded by positive people.

Rohan Arora, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Godfrey Philips.His work experience includes a 29 month stint at Tata Consultancy Services.He loves playing chess.

Prasanth Nair, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Abbott India. He worked for 29 months at Tata Consultancy Services. His favourite pastimes include playing football and tennis.

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Rupayan Banerjee, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Genpact. He has a work experience of 31 Months at Cognizant.His hobbies include Astronomy, adventure sports and teaching.

Sounak Biswas, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Idea. He likes travelling and exploring new places.

Vineet Verma, PGDM – Marketing, interned at Emami. He worked for 18 months at Accenture. He enjoys playing Football, solving Sudoku and listening to music.

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Top Row (L to R) : Ankit Kaushik, Manthan Ajwalia, Amanpreet Singh Thind, Vaibhav Oberoi, Dikshit Wadhwa, Souhardya Banerjee, Manu Jain, Aditya Sen, Sohan Uchil, Nikhil Abrol, Vinamra Jain

Bottom Row (L to R) : Ankita Rai, Shubham Maheshwari, Kanika Narang, Akshata Mohite, Adrita Guha, Sonal Chotrani, Aarushi Seth, Ambika Agrawal, Prerna Naresh , Karishma Dipti Srivastava

Junior Alumni Relationship Committee

Compiled by Sampark Team

Alumni Relationship Committee