Tristate XLRI Alumni Meet: Oct 6th 5.30 PM

Friends,

Gerry Farias and I have been in touch with some of you offline to finalize the details of  the planned XLRI Alumni Meet on Saturday October 6th evening.  We have finalized AKBAR RESTAURANT (at Route 1 South in Edison NJ), as the venue based on the feedback received.  The details are as under:

 

Date and Time:  Saturday 6^th October, from 5.30 PM till 11 PM.

Venue: Akbar Restaurant (Akbar Restaurant - Directions),

Off Route 1 South, 21 Cortlandt Street, Edison, NJ 08837   Tel: (732) 632-8822

The tab is $35 per person – this just covers the dinner, drinks and gratuities for the service, and the PA system, etc.  You can confirm your participation by email with the headcount and later pay by cash or check at the door. Format is informal, preferably with spouse, but no kids' activity has been planned (as we are expecting to hear the visitors speak and mingle with us).   Kindly confirm your attendance ASAP by email  to one of us below:

Venkatesh Kommineni XL 11: 

K N Venkataraman, (KNV) – XL90: 

Gerard Farias (Gerry) – XL 81

For directions - 

http://www.akbarrestaurant.com/Interactive-Direction-Akbar-Restaurant-NJ  

There is free parking at the venue.  The closest NJTransit train station is METUCHEN on the North East corridor Princeton/Trenton line. Do let us know if you need any help or info.

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The main idea of the meet is to show up with our love, affection and gratitude to Prof Sarin and Fr Abe and of course, you know how we do it – in large numbers. Many of us know Prof Sarin and Fr Abe - it'd be a delight to meet with them in person. 

Director Fr Abraham and Prof Sarin will share with us the many new developments at our alma mater, which has undergone a name change from `XLRI Jamshedpur' to `Xavier School of Management'.  Yes – we are now alumni of XSM !! 

As I understand, they'd share with us the many exciting new developments that XSM has in mind, including the new branding of XLRI as XSM to prepare for a global brand launch, a new second campus in New Delhi, a growing list of student exchange programs with B-schools around the world, a growing strong faculty that is recognized by industry by their books and research.  The objective is also to:

(a) Strengthen, and give some shape and form to, our existing alumni networks in the US/Canada, and                

(b) while it is not expected that any of us would cut checks overnight to the XEF – Xavier Endowment Fund, of which Prof Sarin is a Chairman (well, don't mistake me - of course, you are very welcome to do so if you are able to join the many that have done so with a large heart of gratitude) –we'd be discussing how best to contribute as US resident alumni to XEF over the next many years. 

Look forward to seeing you on October 6^th.. the wet bar opens at 5.30 PM, so please be early. 

Warm regards,

Venkat Karimanasseri (`KNV') 
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PS. We have booked a hall with an underlying commitment of atleast 50 people joining us for dinner.  So please email us and confirm your attendance with headcount ASAP. Thanks.

Ramakrishnan (BMD 82) Appointed President of Bombay Management Association

From IPF Online

Mr R Ramakrishnan, Vice Chairman, Joint MD & Group CEO, Polycab Wires Pvt Ltd, took over as President of the Bombay Management Association (BMA) at its 58th Annual General Meeting held recently. The Bombay Management Association (BMA), established in 1954, is one of the oldest associations in the field of management. BMA is the principal association of managers, academicians, professionals and students with a membership of over 3000 members. BMA conducts management development programmes, arranges conferences, seminars, workshops, study-tours & industrial visits, evening lectures, etc. The BMA Awards are a coveted recognition in Corporate India. Mr Ramakrishnan held the position of Vice President in 2011-12 in BMA.

Speaking at the meeting, Mr.Ramakrishnan, said, "The Association takes pride in the capacity of its members to come forward willingly and work towards the cause of promoting it to even greater heights. I am sure, each one of you will come forward to contribute in which ever way you think you can to make this a vibrant and a dynamic association, providing opportunities, both for the Management Professionals, Academia and the new Management Students to intermingle and learn from the other. In conclusion, let's work together to make this year a memorable year in the history of BMA".

Mr Bhaskar Joshi, General Manager - HR, Somaiya Group of Industries and outgoing President said "I have had a very satisfying year as President of BMA thanks to the excellent support of all my Committee members and well wishers. I am sure that Mr Ramakrishnan as incoming President will take forward the good work done in the past and take BMA towards greater success and achievements".

Village goes digital, courtesy XLRI

From The Telegraph

XLRI student Himanshu Singh with village pradhan Manu Singh Sardar on Sunday. (Bhola Prasad)

Seventy-year-old Manu Singh Sardar had a dream for his village Janumdih in Potka block of East Singhbhum. It came true on Sunday for village boys like Rohit Sardar, an eighth grader, with a digital twist.

Manu Singh, who dropped out of school in Class VIII but went on to become a Mundari poet and village pradhan, always wanted a library for Janumdih.

XLRI students and NGO Kalamandir fulfilled the elderly man’s vision with some 21st century extras thrown in.

While Kalamandir constructed the library near its grass-mat training and weaving centre, XLRI students collected the lion’s share of the 500 books in Hindi, English and Bengali. XLRI students also donated a computer with Internet connection and a webcam to the library that Manu Singh inaugurated on Sunday.

So if Rohit and his friends were excited about Aesop’s fables, Champak, Tintin and Tinkle comics as well as textbooks, they were completely in awe of the Internet. “I know about www dot com and Google,” smiled Rohit, pronouncing each word carefully.

His school, Mutkeshwardham High School, Harina, doesn’t even have a library.

The general management programme students of XLRI who did most of the project’s legwork sounded moved with the digital gateway.

“This was a social project for our group of 10 students, a part of the course where we take up a sustainable social project and implement it. Though it is a part of our curriculum, it gives us pleasure to see villagers happy. If they use the Net and read books, they can achieve so much,” said Himanshu Singh, part of Team XLRI.

He and other students — Deepak Suri, Devesh Thakur, Gaurav Sharma, Mayank Gupta, Ravjit Kokardekar, Mandar Buddhikot, Tanveer Anwar and Paul Jacob — went around telling villagers about books and Internet. 

A computer-trained local youth, Satyajit Barui, will maintain the system. Villagers can learn to browse the Net and chat on the web with anybody, even the district administration if needed. “We will convert this hub into a full-fledged computer system and shift the library to a bigger area. We will also appoint a librarian,” said Monica Bhatia, Kalamandir co-ordinator.

The Telegraph asked Rohit what he would search on the Net.

 “America!” he grinned.

Association of Indian Management Schools management award for XLRI director

From The Times of India


The Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) conferred the prestigious Ravi J Mathai national fellowship award on Father E Abraham, director of the premier city-based business school XLRI, for his exemplary contribution to the field of management education. The award, instituted in the memory of Ravi J Matthai, first director of IIM Ahmedabad, was given to Fr. Abraham at AIMS national convention held in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

"I feel honoured to receive the prestigious Ravi J Mathai National fellowship award. I dedicate this to all the board members, faculty, staff and students of XLRI and XIM Bhubaneswar, where I spent my last 30 years," he said. He further added: "Mathai is a role model for all of us. He was a superb man-manager with the gift of drawing out the best in people."

As director of XLRI, Fr Abraham has been instrumental in launching collaborative ventures with universities abroad. However, he is concerned about the less privileged and the marginalized sections. In his second tenure as director from January 2008, XLRI has had received several distinguished laurels.

"Today, XLRI is an institution of learning par excellence largely because of Fr Abraham's dedicated support and involvement with endeavors that include social responsibility activities alongside imparting world-class management education," said a faculty at XLRI.

Business class experience

From Hindustan Times

It is an institution where learning is a life-changing experience,” says Anusheel Shrivastava, who is pursuing an MBA in human resource management at XLRI, Jamshedpur. For students at the institute, studying for an MBA degree is not just about learning from books, it’s about gaining knowledge from everyday activities.

“XLRI gives you tremendous scope to be part of a plethora of academic and extra-curricular activities that make learning  fun and interesting,” he adds.

USP: Established a few years after Independence, the business school has earned an impeccable reputation both for academic rigour and its emphasis on a value-based managerial approach. The facilities it offers are comparable to any top-ranked institute.

“It produces not just students with management degrees but also inculcates a sense of social responsibility and ethical behaviour in them. We strive towards producing responsible global business leaders of tomorrow,” says Pranabesh Ray, dean (academics), XLRI. The institute boasts of an excellent placements record and a very strong alumni network.

Programmes: XLRI runs a range of full-time and part-time courses. The flagship ones are the two-year full-time postgraduate programmes in business management and human resource management and the 15-month, full-time general management programme. It also offers a doctoral-level qualification through a fellow programme in management and one-year certificate courses via satellite links called virtual interactive learning (VIL) programmes. The VIL programme is accessed by students in 100 classrooms across India. An executive fellow programme in management, a certificate in entrepreneurship management, an international students’ exchange programme, a certificate course in agri-business management, an executive management programme for defence personnel, PGDM for working professionals and entrepreneurs are in place as well.

Proposed programmes include a master’s in positive organisational development and change in partnership with Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States, and the three-country global MBA programme.

To get admission to a flagship programme, candidates have to appear for the Xavier Admission Test (XAT) conducted in the first week of January every year. The candidate has to first register for XAT and use the XAT ID and password to apply to XLRI. The process starts in mid-August every year.

Faculty: XLRI has more than 80 members in the faculty, including 65 permanent.

IT quotient: The IT network helps students learn and collaborate with peers. The campus is Wi-Fi-enabled. The computing facilities  include latest servers and workstations. There are high-end servers, which host the XLRI web page, mail and SNTP server, Oracle, Lotus notes, SAS, DB2 and other software. The institute also has video conferencing facilities.

Infrastructure: The campus is spread over 50 acres and has excellent classrooms and comfortable residential facilities. It has a mix of heritage buildings and modern architecture, a world-class library, top-of-the-line IT backbone, besides a good support system necessary for value-added management research and publications. Residential facilities include four hostel blocks with around 500 rooms for students in two-year programmes. For sports, there’s an indoor badminton court, football and cricket fields and basketball courts and an auditorium with a capacity for about 1,500 people. The institute recently set up an inter-disciplinary behavioural laboratory on campus to enable researchers to explore the minds of prospective consumers across categories.

Clubs and societies: CRUX - consulting and research undertaking at XLRI, aims to nurture research initiatives to develop consultancy skills among students. ECT (Ensemble core team) is responsible for managing the institute's annual international management festival. FINAX is the finance association at XLRI, a committee focused on increasing the knowledge and enthusiasm for finance among students. MAXI, the oldest committee on campus, is a forum for discussions, event, conferences and industry interaction. SIGMA - the social initiative group for managerial assistance creates a platform to network with NGOs, corporate governance cells and government departments for community capacity building.

FactfileFounded by Father Quinn Enright, SJ, XLRI started its journey in 1949 in Jamshedpur

WishlistStudents wish for a stronger industry-academia link across all sectors of management