Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, held the annual convocation for its 2019 class on Tuesday at Airforce Auditorium, New Delhi. A total of 239 students graduated. Suresh Narayanan, Chairman and MD, Nestlé India was the chief guest.
A veteran in the FMCG industry, who has held top leadership positions at Nestlé in Singapore, the Philippines and Egypt, Narayanan joined Nestlé India as Chairman & MD in 2015. He shared wisdom gathered over the three decades of his corporate life experience and summarised it in 10 principles. The 10 Cs, as he calls them, are: clarity, competence, credibility, courage, concentration, constraints, compassion, creativity, continuous learning and contentment. He encouraged students to be passionate, to work hard, to be highly knowledgeable, and focus on building credibility, as in the tough trenches, a person is recognised by the quality of work, and not by the degrees earned.
He inspired the students to have the courage to do the right thing even against all odds, to respect human values, and be remembered as leaders for how they make people feel, and not for the targets they achieve.
‘Embrace creativity’
He advised students to concentrate on the job at hand and to embrace creativity as a part of the spirit. He said that constraints are unnecessary barriers that we build in our lives, so one should remove mental blocks, prioritise and have time for recreation. “The learning never ends and, as we move ahead in life, we should be thankful and exhibit gratitude, keeping aside our ego,” he concluded.
Congratulating the graduating batch through a video message, Padmashri Dr Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Dean and Chairman, Great Lakes Institute of Management, advised the graduates not to be afraid of taking on the toughest jobs. “If you manage to accomplish the task, you will always be remembered as a hero and if you fail, then you would have learnt a lot from the experience and you would be known for exhibiting courage,” said Dr Bala.
Dr Bala said, “One should follow one’s passion with compassion and should always try to succeed with integrity.” He said that, despite uncertainties and setbacks, it’s important to always have a winning attitude as it’s the attitude that matters, and not aptitude.
The right attitude
Dr Debashis Sanyal, Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon highlighted the institute’s developments. Receiving the prestigious AMBA (Association of MBAs) accreditation, being ranked among the top five emerging business schools by the NHRDN, liaisons with reputed foreign institutes such as ESCP Europe Business School and University of Texas, were milestones achieved by the institute.
Mohan Lakhamraju, Vice-Chairman and CEO of Great Lakes Gurgaon, addressed the graduates by describing a new acronym to MBA — mastery, belongingness, attitude. Mastery comes from developing expertise in a particular aspect and learning to do it well. Belongingness stems from developing meaningful relationships with people and maintaining those connections. And the right attitude is necessary to stay positive and do things the right way.
Award winners
In the PGPM batch, gold medals were awarded to Kothekar Pushkar Waman for academic excellence and to Bruno Varghese Nellisery for being the Dr Bala V Balachandran outstanding performer. In PGDM batch, gold medals were awarded to Hari Shrushth Shukla for academic excellence, and Garima Gupta for being the Dr Bala V Balachandran outstanding performer.
Companies across diverse industries participated in the final recruitment process, making attractive offers to graduates from both the programmes. Some of the leading companies that participated were Aditya Birla Financial Services, ADP, Axis Bank, Boston Analytics, Cognizant, Deloitte, Fractal Analytics, KPMG, NIIT Technologies and Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles. For the one-year PGPM batch, the highest CTC offered was ₹17.02 lakh, and average was ₹11.21 lakh and, for the PGDM batch, the highest CTC offered was ₹14.55 lakh, with the average being ₹9.1 lakh.