Keeping in mind its resolute mission to keep the alumni of BITS connected to their Alma mater and to maintain the integrity and strength of the vast alumni community, BITS Alumni Affairs Division – Student Team Goa conducted the second edition of Alumni Summit on 28th of August, 2016. The speakers reminisced about their life back at BITS campuses and their journey thereafter.
Seven speakers who were invited for BITS Alumni Summit 2.0 are:
1. 1. Mr. Kartik Aneja, CEO and Co-Founder at Nayi Disha Studios.
2. 2. Mr. Rishabh Goel, Associate Relationship Manager at Prodigy Finance
3. 3. Mr. Ankit Taparia, Co-Founder of Teramatrix Technologies
4. 4. Mr. Sanchit Sethi, CEO and Founder of StayUncle
5. 5. Mr. Prakhar Bindal, CEO & founder of NameCart(formerly Axsiom)
6. 6. Mr. Bhaskar E V, Under-Secretary to Ministry of Finance, Government of India
7. 7. Mr. Nikhil Tavora, Former Match Coordinator & Operations Executive at FC Goa
Kartik Aneja, co-founder and CEO of Nayi Disha Studios started his speech by expressing how happy he was to come back on campus. He walked us through his BITS life and the experiences he had being a part of the Goa campus. College taught him major life lessons. He talked about different ways of teaching and the skills that made his company a part of 100+ schools. He encouraged everyone to bank upon hard work for success, instead of shortcuts.
He was followed by Rishabh Goel, Associate Relationship Manager at Prodigy Finance. He started off with his interest in joining BITS Goa campus. Being more interested in extra-curricular activities, he opted for doing some work by his own. He spoke about the fact that he loved reading and loved to work at weekends unlike all the people. Having done his masters in London Business School (LBS), he told about the perks of studying abroad, the freedom and experience of being one of those. Then he spoke about his work with the Prodigy finance and its expansion process. He concluded his speech specifying the facts which included that hard work has no substitute and the importance of BITSian tag.
Ankit Taparia, the alumnus from Pilani campus shared his inspiring story and the hardships he faced in the journey to his own start-up. As most of the students, even he entered college without any idea of what to do in life. He spent his first Practice School in Goa and realized in his later years that he was interested in telecommunications. He completed his masters from U.S and Europe. He then talked about his publications with IEEE and work experience which was pushing him to the field of research. Unwilling to pursue research, he came to India to start his own start up and founded Teramatrix Technologies. It took him more than 3 years to get 9 clients for his company. He said that failure is a part of journey and one must not be disheartened by that. He emphasizes the importance of alumni network of BITS and its great potential. At last he shared photos from his Antarctic expedition and concludes the talk with general tips to enjoy life and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Sanchit Sethi, Founder and CEO at StayUncle took the stage next. He said that he started his journey of success from BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus. In earlier days he used to attend start-up events in India. He got the motivation of doing something on his own from this. While he was doing his job in Goa, he interviewed 48 people and found out the problems people were facing on tourist places, this motivated him to establish StayUncle. After 2 years of hard work, StayUncle was a huge success. Then he started getting calls from couples, which let him built new business strategies like renting hotels to unmarried couples on an hourly basis. Initially his conversion rate was too low, but today StayUncle is doing very well.
Prakhar Bindal is the CEO of NameCart, India's domain registrar and web hosting company. He formerly worked as a financial employee at D.E.Shaw, a global investment management firm. He spoke about his campus life and heartfully expressed himself out as being very poor at academics and his poor performance at practically every interview he had given. Being very enthusiastic in entrepreneurship, he with the help of 12 people started the domain NameCart. He then threw some light on entrepreneurship. He took examples from his life experiences, thereby showing us what it actually took him to reach his current position. His speech about entrepreneurship included a few disciplines like ideologies, strategies, effort and dedication which were to be followed, not only for being a successful entrepreneur, but to be the best at one's own work. He concluded by stating the consequences that one faces during the initial period of becoming entrepreneur.
The next speaker, Bhaskar E.V. is Under Secretary to Government of India, Ministry of Finance. He shared his journey from ‘BITS to Bureaucracy’. Leaving behind engaging job offers, he followed his heart to civil services. The 9 pointer from Pilani Campus shared his thoughts about Civil Services and the attitude required to pursue such jobs. He stated civil services to be as exciting as start-ups, as one requires 360-degree vision to excel in both of them. In the end, he expressed his satisfaction and pride in the job as he gets to serve his nation through it.
Last speaker was Nikhil Tavora who cofounded Vahanalytics. He is a serial entrepreneur. He founded amazing things like book-bank and BITS FC league during his college days. Despite lacking interest in field of electronics, he found his own ways on campus. He said that football runs through his veins. He started working with Zeppo after being an operations manager of FC Goa. BITSian tag helped him irrespective of his calling. His sabbaticals consist of travelling and scuba diving. He concluded by saying that he has also been to Antarctica and he is an adventurous person.