Dear Alums

December was just full of events and activities on campus.. the weather was glorious and Hyderabad seemed like a hill station. ISB day was celebrated with great fervor by the entire community. We officially stepped into our 10th year of existence and the feeling of satisfaction, yet knowing that the journey has just begun, was over whelming. We hope that ISB day, which is the first Sunday of December, will be celebrated by all our chapters around the world by doing something socially responsible from next year on.

The theme for the ISB leadership summit (ILS) this year was ‘Leadership through innovation’ and Rajendra Pawar, Chairman and Co-Founder, NIIT, gave the inaugural address. A series of engaging panel discussions, on topics critically relevant to modern business leadership, were also held in conjunction with the various student clubs.

The Marketing Science Institute and ISB together hosted their first ever international conference in India from the 8th to the 10th of December. This conference saw speakers like K R Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO, Videocon, Shikha Sharma, CEO, Axis Bank, Venkatesh Shankar, Professor of Marketing, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University who was also the conference Co-Chair, S Sivakumar, Chief Executive, ITC Ltd (Agribusiness), Ajay Nanavati, CEO, 3M India, Vikram Kaushik, CEO, Tata Sky Ltd, and Bhaskar Das, Executive President, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. talk about marketing innovation and challenges particularly in relation to India and the emerging world.

Now for an update on what many alums called ‘the best Solstice ever’ J… We had 450 alumni on campus for the three days which were filled with knowledge sessions, fun events and of course glorious entertainment. Propero – the investment day for alum entrepreneurs saw 60 venture capitalists, banks, angel investors and funds participate. 10 alum ventures were short listed for round two, potentially leading to funding, out of the 30 which were shortlisted for the first round.  The UID event saw a packed house and we plan to roll out a workshop organized by the Srini Raju Centre for IT and Network Economies (SRITNE) every Solstice. Adventure sports, hookah lounges, poker games, kiddie events, Kinetic by Microsoft games, an RJ hunt by Radio Mirchi, and of course the magnificent performance by Strings kept the alums enthralled.  Sifar, Conjoint and the Class of 2011 band also played to a packed house. So much so that we saw tens of alumni trying to get in after the registrations were closed. I must say, the Solstice team from the Class of 2011 especially Aman Raza Khan, Dhruv Vohra, Prachee Dubey, Rohan Dayal, Saad Ahmed, Siddhartha Jain, Somi Rai and also Prashanthi, Manasa and Deepika from the alumni relations team deserve all the accolades. They were just superb!

The year-long 10th anniversary celebration of the School was launched with a heartwarming ‘Journey so far – Part 1’ with Founding Dean Pramath Sinha, Kamal Narang (Founding Class and Chairperson of the ISBAA), Subhanu Saxena (Novartis), Executive Board member Srini Raju, Prof. K. Ramachandran who was the first resident faculty, sharing the stories of the founding years and Dean Rangnekar leading the discussion. The audience was spellbound for two hours and came out hankering for more. We also webcast this session live, but in case you missed it you can catch snippets of it at www.isb.edu/10years.

We also launched ‘Atrium- the ISB board game’ the first ever board game by a business school in the world. This game was developed in house by a group of students and alums and is the ‘funnest’ game ever J .There are also elements of strategy involved and limited pieces are available for sale online on the 10 years site.

The 10th year celebrations now move to Bangalore on the 11th of January 2011 with a session hosted by Narayan Murthy (Infosys) and to the Bay area on the 14th of January 2011 with a session hosted by Vinod Khosla (Khosla ventures). You can find more details on the 10 year micro site and do write to us if you want to take part in either of these two events. This year is a huge opportunity for us to increase the alum brand globally, so definitely take advantage of that.

With warm wishes for the New Year and beyond,

Nidhi