“Students should not only be professionally competent, but also responsible corporate citizens,” said Venkaiah Naidu, Vice-President of India, while addressing students at the 15th Convocation of the Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai.
“The scope of management studies should cover the rural economy and agriculture, and provide solutions to make these sectors viable and vibrant. Agrarian distress is making farmers quit agriculture; it is our duty to make this sector viable, profitable and sustainable. We need to come up with new strategies and programmes to bring structural changes,” he said.
Naidu stressed that to achieve equity with global parameters, Indian institutions must adopt globally accepted teaching practices, methodologies and curriculum to ensure students are recognised in the global job market.
He said, “Today, we are ranked 77th in the ease-of-doing-business index. We are witnessing the fourth Industrial revolution, driven by rapidly changing technology. As managers, you will be required to manage technology-driven challenges. Every change is potentially disruptive. You have to control and manage the disruptions.”
Fostering innovation
“This Institution has been awarded the prestigious Atal Innovation Mission grant to set up an incubator. This, along with artificial intelligence, IoT, machine learning and data analytics will motivate young researchers to experiment with new ideas,” said Naidu.
“Everywhere, there is a new-found enthusiasm to know about India. In just five years, we have gone from being the 11th largest economy in the world to the sixth. India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies as per the World Bank, World Economic Forum, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, and Moody’s ratings,” Naidu said, adding that India is poised to become $5-trillion economy in a few years.
He said students should not forget their parents, native place, mother tongue, motherland and gurus. Naidu quoted from Thirukkural : “Learn thoroughly all that is to be learnt and, what is even more important, is to live true to that learning.”
Naidu said, “We have just concluded the festival of democracy. Millions have voted in a peaceful and systematic manner.” He further said, “exit poll is not exact poll.”
RA Mashelkar, President, Global Research Alliance told BusinessLine , “My advice to students is no matter what they have achieved, when they get up every morning, they should tell themselves that the best is yet to come. Then, every day becomes meaningful.”
Addressing the students over a video call, Dr Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Dean and Chairman, said, “Achieve greater heights but do not forget to give back to the society, and especially your parents for the numerous sacrifices that they have done.”
Awardees
A total of 624 students graduated from full-time programmes — PGPM and PGDM, and corporate programmes — PGXPM and PGPM Flex. The average CTC of the PGPM batch stood at ₹13.1 lakh and the highest domestic CTC offered was ₹29 lakh. The average CTC of the PGDM batch is ₹10.14 lakh.
“We achieved 100 per cent placements this year. Corporates say Great Lakes students have a ‘we-try-harder’ attitude and the knowledge of conceptuals skills that makes them walk into an office and start functioning as business professionals seamlessly. The notion of hiring someone business-ready is appealing to corporates,” said Dr Sudhakar Balachandran, member, Board of Directors, Great Lakes Institute of Management.
Thummalakunta Sai Medha Pradeep, who bagged four gold medals for best academic topper, best outgoing student, marketing domain topper, and best empirical study, for the PGPM batch of 2018-19, said that: “Business school is an investment in yourself. This is a very important day in my life. An MBA provides a platform for you to learn, but what you make of it is subjective. I’d like to thank the faculty of Great Lakes for their constant support and guidance. I have been placed in Accenture as a strategy analyst.”
The academic toppers of various courses were Anand Bagdare in PGXPM batch 2017-19, Deepika V in PGPM Flex batch 2016-18, Thummalakunta Sai Medha Pradeep in PGPM batch 2018-19, and Satish Kumar S in PGDM batch 2017-19.