bitsaa global 30 under 30 award winners

BITSAA Global 30 Under 30 Awards 2012

Academia, Research & DevelopmentArts, Literature & Culture

EntrepreneurshipInvention & Innovation

LeadershipProfessional Achievement

Social Entrepreneurship & Community Building

Presented by: BITS Pilani & BITSAA International Inc.

www.bitsaa.orgThe global BITS-Pilani Alumni Community

501©3 Registered in New Jersey, USA

This award is dedicated to all those young BITSians who thought and acted differently, who challenged the status quo, rewrote the rules,

and created their own paths...

To the leaders, innovators, researchers, academicians, students, entertainers, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, winners and

concerned Samaritans...

To the best examples of what it means to be a BITSian

Dedication

http://www.bitsaa.org/



The Panel

Prof. B N Jain Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani

a

Kris Ramachandran Advisor to Chairman, Aditya Birla Group

Ashok Agarwal Entrepreneur, Adjunct Professor, BITS - Hyd Prof. Reena Aggarwal

Professor, Georgetown University

Raju Reddy President & Chairman, BITSAA International

Prof. Krishna Saraswat Professor, Stanford University

Anurag Jain Serial Entrepreneur & Former SVP of Dell/Perot

Phanindra Sama Entrepreneur; Winner of 30 Under 30, 2009

Manoj Saxena Entrepreneur; General Manager, IBM Watson





Academia, Research &

Development




Vishakha is a research scientist in the Systems Architecture Lab of Intel Corporation's research arm, Intel Labs. After graduating from BITS, Pilani, she received a Master's in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her Ph.D. is from the Georgia Institute of Technology (advised by Prof. Karsten Schwan), where she studied resource scheduling in virtualized and heterogeneous environments. Such heterogeneous platforms are showing great potential in the industry’s push to exascale computing and Vishakha furthered the community’s understanding of how to manage such platforms with papers that have been published in top conferences/journals. During her stellar academic career, she received several awards including the Verizon M.S. scholarship, and the Intel Ph.D. fellowship. Her research interests now include cluster interconnects and software in support of novel multicore organizations and distributed object systems. In addition to her academic achievements, Vishakha is also active in promoting women in computing. She is also active in the Grace Hopper Conference community, which is an annual conference for women in computing. Vishakha now lives in Portland with her husband and enjoys exploring the many worthy dessert and coffee shops that the city has to offer, hiking, traveling and she wants to fly small aircrafts some day.

Vishakha Gupta BITS Batch – 2000B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science, Pilani Campus




Soumya SenBITS Batch – 2001B.E. (Hons.) Electronics & Instrumentation, Pilani Campus

Soumya’s multidisciplinary research on computer networks and economics have won several awards, including IEEE INFOCOM 2012 best paper award, Vodafone Wireless Innovation project finalist, and has received wide media coverage in MIT Technology Review, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, ACM Tech News, and many others. He is a co-founder of Datami, a startup that offers pricing solutions to Internet service providers. Soumya is also a founder and General co-chair of the Smart Data Pricing Forum that brings together academics and industry professionals every year through international workshops and collaborations, and is a co-editor of an upcoming book on this topic. Soumya got his MS & PhD from University of Pennsylvania, and is currently a research associate at Princeton University.




Shruthi Sridhar Vembar BITS Batch – 1999M.Sc. (Hons.) Biological Sciences, Pilani Campus

Shruthi is a highly motivated scientist whose goal is to make an impact on Indian education and research. Having obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Pittsburgh, Shruthi moved to the Institut Pasteur in Paris to carry out her post-doctoral research in malaria biology. This has brought her one step closer to moving back to India for an academic professorship. She is a winner of 7 awards and scholarships, including the Mellon award from the University of Pittsburgh for graduate students, the EMBO Long-Term Fellowship for novel, proven scientific accomplishment in life sciences for post-doctoral researchers, and the Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship awarded by the EU to promising globally mobile researchers. Her research has been published in top peer reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Shruthi is also a feminist and idealist and her social consciousness has led her to volunteer for organizations like AID-India, US. She has also pursued her love for languages as a volunteer for Samskrita Bharati. Traveling and art are her great passions and Shruthi spends a large part of her time outside work either on the road or painting.





Arts, Literature & Culture




Prabhu B DossBITS Batch – 1999M.Sc (Hons.) Biological Sciences, B.E. (Hons.) Civil, Pilani Campus

Prabhu, currently working as a Technical Lead at Infosys, Bangalore, is a very active filmmaker/photographer. His works have got national and international recognition. He makes short films and PSAs/Ads/documentaries. “Yamagandam” – short film directed and produced by him was screened at the prestigious prestigious Cannes Film Festival - Court Metrage – 2011. The film was also selected and screened at the prestigious International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa 2011 - Debut Indian shorts category. Prabhu is the script supervisor and the Asst. Director of a Tamil feature film "Pizza" released in Oct 2012. (Director - Karthik Subbaraj). He is one of the creative consultants for the legendary music director - Ilaiyaraaja's official website - Raaja.com. Also when at BITS, he was chosen after a national level selection process, by SPIC MACAY, to intern with HH Dalai Lama, as part of the Gurukkul initiative. "Live again" - a music video, directed and produced by Prabhu B Doss for BITSIAN band AGAM -featuring Shreya Ghoshal, has won the coveted ‘IndieGo Music Awards 2011’. He was selected as Top 50 Short filmmakers by Anurag Kashyap, Sudhir Mishra and Chakri Toleti as part of Largeshortfilms. com. He was also selected to make a film for India’s largest shortfilm festival – “XUV memorable stores”. Apart from film direction, he is a co-writer for yet to be named Tamil Feature Film, to be directed by a veteran filmmaker. He is currently making a documentary on “Bharatanatyam-Karanas”.




Dushyanth SridharBITS Batch – 2004M.Sc. (Hons.) Chemistry, B.E. (Hons.) Chemical, Pilani Campus

He started learning Sanskrit and Tamil scriptures from the age of five under his mother’s supervision and also showed inclination to public-speaking and Carnatic music. His first public discourse on Ramayana was in Pilani campus, while he was a sophomore and that was attended by Late. Prof.S.Venkateswaran, Prof. L.K.Maheshwari, the deans and a group of students. This later became a regular feature and he rendered over twelve discourses on campus. After graduation, he entered the Market Research industry and started working in Mumbai (where he currently works for a leading consultancy services firm). Alongside, he started receiving advanced training in four revered Sanskrit scriptures (Sri Bhashyam, Gita Bhashyam, Bhagavad Vishayam and Srimad Rahasya Traya Saram). He cut his first album on Ramayana with 36 hours of English musical discourses and this was released by Mr. Nitish Bharadwaj (Actor). He later released three more albums (in Tamil) in Chennai on ancient scriptures. He then became a regular speaker in some of the leading TV Channels like Star Vijay, DD Podhigai, Sri Sankara and SVBC. Till date he has rendered over 600 discourses in 4 languages (English, Tamil, Hindi and Kannada) across 11 cities. Of the accolades received, he cherishes the ‘Sollin Selvan’ (‘Mastery in Eloquence’ - Tamil) title the most and he is one of the youngest speakers in this field. He is a visiting faculty for Management at a leading Business school in Mumbai and this has interestingly aided him in delivering lectures on ‘Management in Ancient scriptures’ at various forums. He researches on some of the lesser known Sanskrit and Prakrit works and writes to various spiritual magazines. He aims to bring awareness about the rich culture of Indian Scriptures through his discourses, at the same time clearing the air on some of the baseless superstitions surmounting them.




Sarvani YadavalliBITS Batch – 2004B.E. (Hons.) Chemical, Pilani Campus

Sarvani, an epitome of dance coupled with strong fortitude and talent, is an avid Kuchipudi dancer. An engineer by profession, Sarvani is highly passionate about dancing. She started performing at the age of seven and staged shows in different national and international events including the inauguration of Common Wealth Games, 2010, Konark Dance Festival, Rukmini devi Arundale dance festival, Cuttack Mahotsav etc. She has toured South East Asia performing and conducting workshops propagating the rich Indian cultural heritage. Her choreographies enthral the audience transporting them to another world. Dance exponents and media have time and again commended her as one of the best dancers of her generation. She was honoured with the national “Nrithya Shiromani” award by Utkal Yuva Sanskrutik Sangh and with the title “Nrithya Vilasini” by Nrithyathi Kalakshetra. Using the Indian classical dance form, Sarvani proposes to take up several social issues and address them in her attempt to perpetuate peace and harmony.





Entrepreneurship




Abhishek HumbadBITS Batch – 2005B.E. (Hons.) Electrical & Electronics, Pilani Campus

Founder, NextGen, one of India's fastest growing cleantech company, also one of India’s largest out of college startups. It has presence in 6 countries with Fortune 500 clients across 16 sectors. The team has commercialized first of its kind revolutionary technology to generate Bio-CNG at prices much cheaper than conventional CNG. NextGen has collaboration with Mahindra and Coromandel Fertilizers to setup India’s first Bio-CNG plan to power telecom towers by replacing existing diesel power; generating cheaper, greener and more reliable power. Working with Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Reserve Bank of India on Non-Financial Reporting in India; working with the British Government and the Swiss Government on Climate Change Policy. In his free time, Abhishek enjoys playing, watching and betting on football.




A R Gopi KrishnaBITS Batch – 2004M.Sc. (Hons.) Physics, B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Goa Campus

Gopi Krishna floated the company Purple Pesto Technologies Pvt Ltd with the vision of creating Mosquito-Free India; acquired P.V.Bio-chem India Pvt Ltd,Hosur increasing the company’s turnover over 3 times within a year. He has got couple of new projects in Agarbathis and detergent sector recently to enrich the business. Recently he made his entry into IIM-Bangalore to pursue MPEFB. During his free time, he tries to brainstorm new ideas into his little pocket notebook, network with those with his business interests and do a lot of research. Whenever possible to take a break from work, he does some soul searching and do adventurous travel too. He is a great movie buff and a great foodie.




Gaurav Mathur BITS Batch – 2000M.Sc. (Tech.) Information Systems, Pilani Campus

After BITS, Gaurav joined Intel (Bangalore) as a software engineer. He then went on to earn an MS-CS degree from UMass Amherst and joined Google (Mountain View) in 2007. He worked on multiple projects at Google before he moved to the Android team, which saw explosive device growth during those years. In 2010, he left to start his own venture "3LM" as its founder and CTO with the intent of focusing on mobile device management in the enterprise space. 3LM successfully raised capital from Accel ventures and angels. 3LM was subsequently acquired by Motorola Mobility in 2011. Today, 3LM is an independent subsidiary of Motorola and Gaurav continues to provide executive leadership to the team.




Lohit SahuBITS Batch – 2005B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Pilani Campus

Lohit is the Founder and Director of Phyzok Learning Solutions LLP, a firm which creates education delivery mechanisms combining arts and technology. An artist himself, Lohit was a Music Clubber, member of Ragamalika, member of CEL and president of Madhyansh (cultural assoc for students and staff from central India) while on campus. Lohit started his first venture after his first year, which also got him awards at national and international business plan competitions. BITS 75 Charitable Trust has generously sponsored the Phyzok studio equipped with state of the art industrial standard audio/visual recording and fx studio for its ongoing production of "educational sitcoms". The Businessworld Magazine listed Lohit among top 10 young Entrepreneurs in India for the Year 2011. Lohit received the Star Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Year 2012. Lohit's venture is the subject of a Case-Study on Entrepreneurship published by Pearson's. Lohit is also a mentor for BITS Pilani's "New Venture Creation Course" and has been a judge at national business plan competitions.





Invention & Innovation




Chetan BansalBITS Batch - 2008M.Sc. (Hons.) Biological Sciences, B.E. (Hons.) Chemical, Goa Campus

Chetan is a final year dual degree student at BITS Pilani, Goa campus. He has been interested in technology and entrepreneurship, He strongly believes that technology can be used to solve most of the challenges being faced by mankind. He is interested in the latest gadgets, music, fiction and travelling. He recently started with his thesis in Web Security at INRIA Research Center, Paris & Imperial College, London. As a part of his thesis, he discovered several security vulnerabilities and was awarded a 2000 USD bounty by Mozilla. He is also working for the tech team of StartUp Leadership Inc as Senior Manager (Technology). He is 3-time Google Summer of Code Recipient, selected for Microsoft Paris, lead product development for several Web startups; selected as Kairos Global Fellow; 4 published research papers; Winner of Mantra-CEL Award for Innovation, 2011.




Tejas ChafekarBITS Batch – 2005B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Goa Campus

Tejas innovated a method to prepare writing paper from harmful and allergic weeds which is termite resistant. This project spanned over a few years with a lot of careful experimentation and analysis. This will give a way to eradicate the weeds which otherwise cause nuisance to the society. This project was recognized and appreciated by IISc Bangalore. After graduating from University of Michigan (specializing in systems and controls), he is currently working at Tesla Motors (an electric vehicle company). This is a small company and is the only company making only pure electric vehicles. He is passionate about renewable alternatives of energy and strongly feel that the renewable energy is going to dictate the future. He is involved with the design and controls of electric powertrains (which include electric motors, batteries, hybrid controllers etc) for electric and hybrid electric vehicles. Tejas says : “I urge all my fellow BITSians to think out of the box and do not consider any idea (however foolish it may sound) as worthless. Jot them down as they come to your minds and keep thinking on them...One day you will find a solution!”




Suvonil Chatterjee BITS Batch – 2010B.E. (Hons.) Electronics & Instrumentation, Pilani Campus

Described by his friends as a coder who is heavily invested in design, Suvonil is currently in his third year of Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering at BITS Pilani. As the Vice President of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership, he is in charge of Conquest, one of India's biggest startup challenges. When he is not sketching various avatars of Angry Birds, he is either designing user-experiences for tech startups like Sunglass, Framebench, Gharpay etc. At present, he is developing a system that revolutionizes the way astronauts are weighed in space-stations. He co-founded Xplorer which explores innovative ways to make travelling a delight. And just for fun, he is writing his own programming language, Ceasy, a childish transformation of C. He was Mantra-CEL Innovator of the Year, 2012. He is a foodie, loves his fantasy novels and Enya's music.




Siddharth Loganathan BITS Batch – 2000B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Pilani Campus

Siddharth (Sid) Loganathan currently works in the advanced technology development group at Stryker Corporation, one of the world’s leading medical device companies. Prior to Stryker, Sid was the lead engineer at NFOCUS Neuromedical where he was a co-inventor on 3 patents in the hemorrhagic stroke space. These patents helped NFOCUS raise over 20 million dollars in venture capital investment and more importantly, these patents were developed into a commercial device called LUNA AES that has been successfully implanted in over 30 people, saving their lives. Sid has won "Best Inventor" awards for his numerous contributions to intellectual property at NFOCUS and an “Outstanding Trainee” award at Stryker. Sid did Masters in ME from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and is currently pursuing an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management. He was selected to be a 2009 Fellow in the prestigious Startup Leadership Program in Silicon Valley and has served as the Director of Admissions for two years, helping SLP implement global admission processes that mirror the best practices followed at the top business schools. Sid is extremely passionate about making health care more affordable and accessible to everyone. Sid loves to travel and swim in his spare time.




Ramji Venkatasubramanian BITS Batch – 2000B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Pilani Campus

Ramji Venkatasubramanian is a passionate researcher and innovator. He holds a Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota with over 12 conference/journal publications and has won several awards including the doctoral dissertation fellowship. In his role as Senior Scientist at St. Jude Medical, Ramji has been an inventor/co-inventor in 8 inventions, been closely involved in the new product development of surgical/transcatheter tissue heart valves and also been the recipient of a STAR award for extraordinary performance, which has been received by less than 2% of the employees. He is also a co-founder of a start up that is working towards improving breast cancer diagnosis using digital mammography. In his free time, Ramji likes traveling with his wife, watching/playing football & cricket and running with his dog.





Leadership




Divya Devarajan BITS Batch – 2001M.Sc. (Hons.) Physics, B.E. (Hons.) Electrical & Electronics, Pilani Campus

Divya is the one with lot of ideas and always yearn to give shape to them. As VP of Rural Entrepreneurship division, CEL, she had an opportunity to work with rural women, understand their hardships, their aspirations and the reality. Forming the women in Garinda (village near Pilani ) into Self- Help Groups and linking their income generation activity of paper bags to Akshay (the co-operative store inside the campus) was one such idea which took shape. This experience was a trigger to the deep yearning to be a change maker. While volunteering with AID India (Chennai Chapter) after graduation, she was part of the NGO team evaluating the ‘Activity Based Learning’ system introduced in Government schools of Tamil Nadu and assessing its outcomes. With one master stroke, Mr.Vijaya Kumar, the IAS officer behind the plan, made this improved learning system earlier accessible to elite children now to millions of poor children studying in Government run schools in Tamil Nadu. This is when she realized that the Government, as an institution can create the largest impact on millions of lives, for the better or worse. She took the Civil Services Exam and joined the Andhra Cadre of Indian Administrative Service. She was chosen as the best officer trainee in both the professional courses and district training by winning the Satish Dua Gold Medal. With an opportunity to learn and work on wide range of issues like rural development, tribal welfare, urban planning, gender issues, Self-Help Groups, she says the journey has been exciting so far.




Saurabh Ladha BITS Batch – 2008B.E.(Hons.) Electronics and Communication, Dubai Campus

Saurabh is the Founder and ex-Team Leader of IFOR (Intelligent Flying Object for Reconnaissance) that placed first at the 2011 International Aerial Robotics Competition at N. Dakota, USA. Fusing his love for aeronautics and robotics he formed the team to build UAE's first fully autonomous aerial robot. The competition required the robot to infiltrate an unknown indoor environment, avoid obstacles, avoid detection by cameras & laser barriers, find a target pen drive and bring it back - all without any human intervention. He and his team finished the design and construction of the vehicle in a record time of 9 months. Apart from his technical deft, Saurabh is a gifted public speaker and negotiator. He was faced with the unique challenge of raising thousands of dollars for IFOR in UAE, where research grants are reserved for public universities. Rising to the task, he secured the financial support of BITSAA International and simultaneously leveraged a prototype to swing a dynamite deal with Intel. In exchange for using IFOR to showcase the mobility of the Atom processor, Intel agreed to fund almost the entire project. Apart from IFOR, Saurabh was very active on campus and adopted a leading role in shaping student life. He is the the founder of Jashn (Inter-collegiate cultural festival) and BITS360-Dubai (Virtual tour) and was elected to several student bodies such as the Student Council Cabinet and the IEEE Student Chapter. His contributions to BITS won him the Director's Medal for 'All-round achievement' and the Mantra Award for Outstanding Leadership in 2012. He is currently pursuing M.S. at Stanford University and his hobbies include debating, acting and playing the guitar




Satish Polisetti BITS Batch – 2002B.E. (Hons.) Electrical & Electronics, Pilani Campus

Satish Polisetti is incredibly multi-talented Leader, Writer, Editor, Entrepreneur and many other quills in his hat. He has successfully lead Sandpaper team & Newsletter for BITSAA over many years and elevated the professional quality through the signature BGM 2011 Souvenir effort. He lead the Content & Agenda team alongside Pradeep Sethi and Rishabh Kaul landing the Whos who of BITSian luminaries from all around the world and aligning the speakers to various panels deftly during the first ever BGM. He was most satisfied recently with driving 'Batch of 2002 Fundraiser for BITS Connect 2.0' (80+ batchmates coming forward (and growing) to pledge/donate - highest batch participation ever till date --It was shown as an example in the recent "Beneficiaries turn benefactors in 10 years" Newsletter and sparked interest in the 94 Batch etc. It also helped BITSAA to make the Corporate matching process more streamlined). He is an avid entrepreneur with a promising startup - Picatcha Inc - that he founded during his Masters at Berkeley and has secured couple rounds of funding and few customers already. (Their company closed some big brands like MARS as customers). He started a non-profit - Edumile.org along with Shamlu Dudeja, Chairperson, Calcutta Foundation and few others. They launched their pilot project letsgraduate.org to become 'Kiva for Indian Education'. They are in the early stages (supporting 4 students) but received good recognition as Global Finalists at GSVC 2011 & winning Youth Business Development Competition 2011 at University of Oxford. After his graduation, he also started helping a Haas faculty at UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education by giving guest sessions to executives from Latin America and Asia-Pacific.




Akash RamanBITS Batch – 2004B.E. (Hons.) Electronics & Instrumentation, Goa Campus

Akash has worked with Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Engineers for Social Impact (as CEO), BITS Pilani (as Visiting Faculty), Infineon Technologies (Singapore), BITSAA, and a few research institutes over the course of his life. During the time at his respective occupations he has been involved with strategy, consulting, fund-raising, teaching, development, and chip & algorithm design. He holds the distinction of being one of the youngest university faculty members in India, as well as being one of the youngest CxOs in the country. Akash is a graduate from Harvard University and the 2004 batch of the Goa Campus. He has been a recipient of several fellowships, including the Harvard University Fellowship, the Starting Bloc, and the Sandbox fellowships. Akash currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Oodio (US & India), a position he recently graduated to after being the Operations Head (India) since the inception of Oodio. Oodio works with the top 100 wedding photographers in the US and India and provides them digital post-production and design services. Apart from work, he recently acted as a lead in a short film that was nominated as the official entry to the Tacoma Film Festival (Seattle), won the award of excellence at The Indie Fest, worldwide and was screened at numerous other film festivals.


http://www.ashoka.org/

http://www.ashoka.org/

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=e4si&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/

http://www.infineon.com/




Aalap Tripathy BITS Batch – 2004B.E. (Hons.) Electrical & Electronics, Goa Campus

An exemplary leader who has been responsible for the resurgence of BITSAA during his tenure as CEO. Aalap was able to bring together 30000+ BITSians across 50+ BITSAA Chapters and 70+ e-Groups under one global umbrella. During Aalap's tenure at BITSAA, BITS alumni conducted their first-ever BITS Global Meet (BGM2011), raised $300k for BITS Pilani, created five new scholarships, disbursed several faculty and student grants at the BITS Pilani campuses in India. A global chapter leadership & Batch Ambassadors Council to unite BITSAA's activities worldwide was created. BITSAA Volunteer community grew from 80 to 200 at the height of projects. Flagship projects which demonstrate BITS alumni's passionate, forward-thinking nature for their alma-mater were envisaged and deployed. BITSConnect2.0 (a multi-campus, multi-platform video conferencing and telepresence solutions benefiting 10,000 students & faculty @ $1.5 Mi) & BITSSparks (creating an eco-system to promote BITSian entrepreneurship) are two examples. In a nutshell, Aalap made it possible for passionate BITSian's anywhere in the world to come together, join forces, dream up and execute game-changer projects for BITS Pilani through the BITSAA umbrella. Aalap is currently pursuing his PhD from Texas A & M University where he is working on efficient algorithms for information filtering on many-core processors. He has published several conference and journal articles in the areas of semantic computing, parallel & distributed processing, petascale data analytics, system-on-chip architecture. He considers himself "really lucky" to have mentored over 30 senior design projects in the CSE Department in diverse areas from wearable gesture recognition to chemical sensing with IR spectroscopy.





Professional Achievement




Srinath joined HCL Infosystems in 2009 to lead strategy for the consumer computing business. He was responsible for bringing over 35 content and application partnerships in place prior to the launch of ME Tablets in Oct 2011. Post that he went on to head marketing initiatives for the ME Tablet and was instrumental in creating the brand and position the Tablet in the India market to take it to a market share of 15%. In parallel, he was working on expanding the mobility business in other emerging markets. He successfully executed the launch of the tablets in UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar. Recently, he has transitioned into his new role as the business head for MEA for mobility and PC computing and leads HCL’s foray into Middle East, Africa, Russia and CIS markets. Prior to joining HCL, he was part of the founding team of a start-up Indepay networks. He secured a $4 million deal with the Government of Rajasthan to enable financial inclusion for below poverty line population across 29,000 villages and spearheaded Indepay’s foray into rural markets/ Government projects. He also created India’s first wireless railway ticketing kiosk by forging strategic relationship with Indian Railways. He was also selected by the Economic times as one of the top 61 young leaders of Corporate India in 2012 through the Economic Times Young Leaders Award program. He also Co-founded Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) while at BITS Pilani.

Srinath NagarajanBITS Batch - 2001 B.E. (Hons.) Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Pilani Campus





Social Entrepreneurship &

Community Building




Tarun CherukuriBITS Batch – 2002B.E. (Hons.) Chemical, Pilani Campus

Teach for India Fellow after leaving a high paying job at HLL; Fulbright Nehru Scholar 2011-2013; Joint Japan-World Bank Scholar 2011-2013; Pursuing Master in Public Administration/International Development at Harvard University. He was elected as U.S President in a simulation of US elections among Fulbright scholars in Nashville 2012. He is passionate about bringing in science to electoral politics, policy design, implementation and feedback. He wants to demonstrate that a person with a calling for public service can win an Indian election with integrity, intelligence and innovative management. And in the process, develop a replicable model for pursuing politics as a noble endeavor. He dreams that this pursuit will organically lead to the creation of an institution like 'Indian School of Politics and Public Administration' which crashes the barriers to entry into public life.




Abhijeet GanBITS Batch – 2000B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science, Pilani Campus

Abhijeet, as a co-founder of Rite Water, has made a significant impact on the availability of drinkable water to villagers in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Even after getting the most coveted consulting job in one of the Big 4 Consulting cos. post MBA, Abhijeet decided to return to his hometown and started Rite Water. Through use of simple and sustainable technologies for treating chemically contaminated water, Rite Water sets up water treatment plants based on sustainable products developed in house in affected villages and provides safe water to the people. In just few years, Rite Water has set up more than 80+ community water centres in water quality affected villages of Maharashtra, Chattisgarh & Madhya Pradesh providing safe drinking water to more than 100,000 people on daily basis. These people who had no option but consume contaminated water are getting safe chemical free water through these centres. Abhijeet’s work in the area of providing fluoride free safe water to villages in Maharashtra has been recognized by Ministry of Rural Development.




Keerthi Kiran KBITS Batch – 2004B.E. (Hons.) Electronics & Instrumentation, Pilani Campus

Keerthi Kiran co-founded Youth Factor (ww.yofa.org), a for-impact organization to engage youth in development sector. He conceptualized and lead Grassroutes fellowship program for young people to travel to organizations based in rural India and work on developmental programs. His last job was with Ashoka:Innovators for the public. Keerthi has been featured by ‘The Week’ as one of the Indian Gems of the year 2011. He was also invited by former US president Bill Clinton to the Clinton Global Initiative University 2011. He currently is pursuing a MBA degree from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. At Pilani he was involved with Sponz, CEL, EDC and ELAS. In his free time he enjoys reading books on contemporary India and following cricket.


http://ww.yofa.org/



Ankur Kumar BITS Batch – 2006M.Sc. (Hons.) Economics, B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science, Goa Campus

Ankur is currently working as a Software Developer with Oracle Corporation in Bangalore. He joined Let Me Know(www.letmeknow.in) as a Content Writer in 2009. Grew up in the role and converted it from being a non-profit organization to a self-sustaining and powerful social enterprise, providing low cost and effective advertising solution to start-ups, SMEs, NGOs and colleges for disseminating youth opportunities. He currently leads a team of 80 passionate souls as the CEO. Ankur is also an avid writer, has contributed for various online blogs and has won several writing contests at national level. He has been invited as a guest speaker by many colleges like Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh where he delivered a talk on “Role of Technology & Social Media in Driving Start-ups.” He has featured in leading Indian newspapers, magazines and has been selected for various international conferences. Ankur has worked with the BITSAA Sandpaper team, was awarded Travel Scholarship and was selected as the Batch Ambassador for his batch. At campus, he was a member of college Carom team, Dept. of Journalism & Media Affairs, Arts n Deco and Kala clubs. He also led the Economics Association as its Sub-Coordinator.


http://www.letmeknow.in/



Divya Nawale BITS Batch – 2003B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Pilani Campus

In 2009, Divya became the first and only BITSian woman and also the youngest BITSian(at age 23) to step onto the continent of Antarctica as an Environmental Leader to represent India on an International Expedition along with young people from 45 other nationalities. Her Antarctic dream started in Room 5106 of the Lecture Theatre Complex at Pilani when a BITS alum shared his experience of visiting and conducting research in Antarctica during his Silver Jubilee reunion visit to the campus in 2006. Since her return from the expedition, she has worked on numerous environmental initiatives at a grassroots level as well as with Major Corporates across India and has spoken/presented at various International conferences in Europe.In 2011, she worked to set up a 100% renewable energy-powered education base in Pench Forest Reserve in Maharashtra with a mission to create local awareness on Water and Bio-diversity Conservation and help the Forest Department move towards a sustainable livelihood for the Rangers. An avid dancer, she recently was adjudged runner-up at a National Ballroom Dance Championship event and continues to explore newer dance forms with each passing year.




Mayur Patnala BITS Batch – 2002B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science, Pilani Campus

Mayur is the co-founder of Nirmaan Organization and is currently serving as the Chairman of Governing Board. He founded Yuva Varadhi and serves as the President. He conceptualized “Education Help Line (EHL) - Toll-free counseling center for students” and is truly an inspiration to youth. Nirmaan Organization is formed with a mission to contribute towards achieving a developed India focusing on education and livelihoods for the underprivileged of the country. Currently, the organization is operating with 400 voluntary members spread across 6 chapters with headquarters at Hyderabad. The activities of Nirmaan span from providing education to the needy, creating self-help groups and vocational training centers to running school adoption programs. Yuva Varadhi, a national federation of student social clubs in universities/colleges and not-for-profit organizations is established with a purpose of bringing together small social groups/clubs/organizations into a bigger umbrella so as to facilitate larger social impact. Yuva Varadhi encompasses of 600 volunteers from 34 colleges and 7 not for profit organizations. Currently Yuva Varadhi is working in sensitizing youth in three focus areas by taking up projects: i) Education ii) Environment iii) Anti-corruption.




Yashveer SinghBITS Batch – 2004M.Sc. (Hons.) Economics, Pilani Campus

Yashveer founded National Social Entrepreneurship Forum (NSEF) to address talent inequity in development sector and influence youth culture in India by inspiring, educating, and supporting university students for social innovations & entrepreneurship. NSEF has undertaken social entrepreneurial activities through a number of initiatives and have weaved the “development” element into various youth-targeted entrepreneurial programs in Indian Universities. Additionally, Yashveer has served as an honorary advisor to early stage start-ups. Yashveer has been awarded prestigious Youth Action Net 2012 Fellowship – as 1 of the 20 young social entrepreneurs representing 16 different countries by International Youth Foundation and was recognized as Global Shaper 2011 by World Economic Forum. As the President of Student’s Union BITS Pilani 2006-07, Yashveer co-founded the University VISION 2020 Plan as the only student Task Force Member.





Sports




Raman Garimella BITS Batch – 2006B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical, Goa Campus

After graduation from college, Raman has logged more than 18,000 km in training and races including cycling and running. He decided to include running as cross-training and runs half marathons from time to time. While at BITS, he was involved in everything Football which included conducting championships, making football teams and representing the Institute in competition. He was also an integral part in making SPREE, a national-level festival for the first time. He became the 2nd youngest Super Randonneur from India after finishing 200, 300, 400 and 600 km bike rides in the last season. His longest ride is covering 605 km in under 40 hours in Feb, 2012. He has represented Andhra Pradesh at two National Cycling Championships so far. In September 2012, he won Gold at the AP State Road Cycling Championship. Raman been working with Hyderabad Bicycling Club (HBC) for more than 2 years now. HBC is a 3,000+ members strong not-for-profit organization based out of Hyderabad, which is doing remarkable work in the areas of urban connectivity, fitness, sport and community building through cycling. He is also getting increasingly involved with the popular local runners group Hyderabad Runners. Though his major focus is on cycling currently, he will definitely pursue his running goals. According to him, competing in triathlons a few years from now is on the cards.




Mahesh Krishnamurthy BITS Batch – 2000B.E. (Hons.) Mechanical Engineering, Pilani Campus

Co-founder of BITS2Marathon/BITS5K to help budding runners achieve their dream of running a Marathon and motivation BITSians all around the world to bring running into everyone’s life and thereby promoting a healthy lifestyle. The 5K/10K races are conducted every year simultaneously in different parts of the world. The race is designed to achieve self fulfillment of completing the run rather than being a judged competition. Mahesh has completed 5 full and 8 half marathons so far. He also has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering with focus on Dialysis access from the University of Cincinnati. Currently he is part of a Pennsylvania based medical device startup that has a novel technology for creating fast and reproducible anastomotic (arteriovenous connection) connector implants for dialysis access that minimizes the long term failure rates present in the case of standard arteriovenous connections. Dialysis access dysfunction is one of the main causes of morbidity and hospitalization in the US and accounts for more than $1 billion of Medicare expenditure per annum. He is also a reviewer of Biomechanical engineering journals. Mahesh has also received fellowship awards from the American Society of Nephrology (ASDIN) conferences.





Special Team Award




Agam (Band)

Agam is a multiple award winning Contemporary Carnatic Rock band consisting of predominantly BITSians. All the band members have a full time IT jobs. But that does not deter them from pursuing their passion, Music and have been managing their delicate balancing act as a team for a few years now since their inception in 2004. They have been performing with gusto at various places. They are a regular at Hard Rock Cafe in Bangalore and other cities in India, Storm Festival, Octoberfest, Mad Festival in addition to all the renowned concert venues in the south, the recently concluded BGM in Delhi etc. In fact, they helped the BGM 2011 team by producing the BGM Anthem Song which was used widely for all publicity efforts and they did this at no cost. Agam was chosen as the best band in South India by none other than Oscar Award winning Indian musician - A R Rahman whose comment was "When I first heard them, I thought the lead vocalist was really fantastic! The way they rendered their composition was great" is a jewel in the crown for Agam. Agam, apart from using their talent for their creative pleasure, have also been engaging in raising awareness about cancer. In October 2010, Agam partnered with Shreya Ghoshal to produce a album "Live Again" and do their small bit to spread awareness on breast cancer and support the victims. Agam is proudly associated with the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA) http://www.cpaaindia.org/ to raise funds for supporting and rehabilitating cancer patients. They performed at Coke Studio @ MTV Season 2 in 2012. Recently they released their debut album - “The Inner Self Awakens” which has already created waves.




BITSAA Awards TeamAnupendra SharmaRohit KoulSherin KurianRahul Sengupta


Thank You


bitsaa global 30 under 30 award winners

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