Singapore, April 2012Singapore, April 2012

Reading the signposts of a changing landscape

A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE CONFERENCE

Pan IIT APACPan IIT APAC

Connect Create Celebrate

Table of Contents

Day 1 Highlights

1. Quiz & WTWG

2. In conversation with Meira Chand

3. Inauguration by Minister S Iswaran

4. Business & Innovation Track

5. LEARN Symposium

Day 2 Highlights

6. Balki Talk

7. His book of memoirs - An Unexpected Journey

8. Science and Technology Track

9. Conversation with DPM

10. Banking and Finance Track

11. Education Track

12. Opportunities for Global IITians

13. Handshake

Gala Dinner Highlights

14. Pandit Chaurasia Performance

15. Distinguished Alumni Award

16. MDIS Performance

17. IIT Rock-Band

01 Quiz and WTWG

The Quiz and WTGW transported 100 odd

IITians back in time to those challenges and

debates amidst the sylvan surroundings.

We got to experience times when we

had to match our sloshed wits against

those of other "high-thinking" IITians over a

contest of words, trivia or verbal concoctions. Our

very own VP of IITAAS (2010-12), Indrajit

Lahiri (IITKgp' 85) was the

key organizer of this

event.

Raj Jayaraman (IITB' 85), the WTGW

event conductor and the Quizmaster,

Suhrid Devsharma (NIFT 91),

ensured that the 100 participants

were entirely engaged and racked

their brains. The winning teams were in for a

suprise, they received 10 sleek HTC mobile

phones !

02In Conversation with

Meira Chand

She

shared with us,

about her memorable journey

to write the book: Meira had no "memories"

of Singapore, having arrived in the city-country during

later part of her life; she decided to research the city pioneers that

were buried in the archives. Once she had envisioned the characters

and the background, Meria laboriously wrote 200 pages of 'history"

rather despondently! One night, almost 8 months later, she woke up at

in the middle of the night with voices of the characters in her head. That

was the Eureka point! Meira emphasized on the importance of

researching a story's background and its characters thoroughly

even while writing fiction.

“A

different sky", by

Meira Chand, is a modern Asian

epic and to me personally, a

thought-provoking novel. It reminded

me of times when I would question myself

about Singapore, the cosmopolitan island and if

it could truly be my home. I had enjoyed every bit

of Meira's book and was thrilled to attend her

talk, "Weaving stories from the

sands of time".

03In Conversation with

Meira Chand

The event was organized by nine lovely ladies of IWA

Singapore (Indian Women's Association). IWA

endeavours to bring the Indian community together by giving

them a platform to connect, support, and network with each

other whilst living Singapore. Our very own IIT Shakti

member, the Social Chair of IWA, Piu Lahari was

instrumental in organizing this conversation at Pan IIT and

also for putting together the write-up!

Meira

shared an interesting

piece of information with us about

how she had been requested to write

a book about Singapore by none other

than our PAN IIT patron Former

President S.R. Nathan!

04IIT Rock Band

It

all started

when music lovers from

the Pan IIT steering committee got

together to discuss about inviting a local

Singaporean rock band. The President of IITAAS (20120-

12), Amrit Barman insisted on inviting an IIT band. It seemed

fair to encourage our fellow IIT students to perform at the

conference. But the impending question was which one? That

led to the conceptualization of the first of its kind "you-tube

rock competition", encouraging bands from across 16 IIT bands

to participate.

The band

members literally rocked the

show. They covered all genres of music, as

IITians traversed memory lane, yet again. The best

part was when Akanhsha, the female vocalist and Shukdev,

the male vocalist took turns to do phenomenal blends of

Western and Bollywood music. Hats off to the guitarists,

Aditya and Kushagra and the drummer, Anirrudh

for jamming impromptu and satiating every

IITians request!

Approximately 50.6 cups of coffee and

15 meetings later, using a Google spreadsheet to

empirically analyze performance of 16 odd

bands (yes, us IITians have a way of

putting numbers against everything!),

we came to a conclusion that IIT BHU would have

this opportunity to showcase their talent to the 600

guests at our conference! IIT Kanpur and IIT

Kgp were first and second

runners-up

respectively.

05Balki Talk

On a rare sunny evening at Singapore, Balaji Ramanujan

(IITM'94) picked up his phone and dialled a number. He was

quite unsure how his friend, Rajagopalan Balakrishnan would

react to his voice after nearly 7 years.... In fact, the person on

the other end of the phone was delighted "Sure, I'd love to

come down to the Pan IIT conference and we'll catch up!" And

that paved way for the famous "Balki talk" at our conference.

When

asked how he comes up

with such mind-blowing ideas, Balki, in his

ever so causal style responded "Clear

your head. When you are patient

and have loads of empty room in

your head, the idea just drops in. And Oh! don't

forget to use a P&G shampoo".

When

Balaji (moderator of the event)

was curious to understand what "kind" of

IITian would be suitable to cast in his movie, to which

Balki replied "The guy's who got a bit of Rajnikanth in

him!" The Talk ended on that note with most of us burst

out laughing.

06 Balki Talk

VIDEO

Balaji went on to show us some of his creative eyebrow-

raising advertisements. The audience got to laugh like a

drain over some of his Camilin, Tata Tea Jaago re and

Tanishq advertisements. I personally love the commercials

and the concept made perfect sense!

7

The panel

discussion was moderated by

Mr Subroto Som with Prof. Lito

Camacho and Mr Tarun Mehrotri providing

perspective on investment banking prospects and Mr

Pulak Prasad and Mr LN Sadani on private equity

opportunities.

We

had Prof.

Lito Camacho, Vice

Chairman of CSFB Asia-Pacific give

us the key note speech. His theory was that Indian

and Chinese banks should not go out and acquire cheap assets

in the West but look to grow stronger at home by facing up to

global competition and servicing Indian companies abroad. It

was interesting when Mr. Prasad differed from Prof. Lito's

analysis of Indian and Chinese bank strategy for growth.

Mr Tarun's view was that investment

banking model is changing with regulatory and

capital restrictions and that profitability and

employee compensation will be under

pressure. It would be very interesting

to watch how the industry would evolve

in the next few years. Mr Prasad and Mr Sadani

explained the importance of private equity in a bottom

up, entrepreneurial country like

India.

8

Mr Sanjeev Sinha (IIT

Alumni Association, Japan) highlighted the

opportunities in Japan and the huge untapped

potential for collaborating with Japanese companies

looking to expand business in Singapore and India

across diverse areas like Infrastructure Manfacturing,

Education and Services.

True to its name, the session had a

crucial agenda: to collaborate with various IIT

Alumni Associations across APAC and form

strong liaisons. The moderator, executive

committee member, Mr Piyush Agarwal

(IITK) recounted his internationally

diverse experience and emphasized on the importance of

global diversity as a key to unlock social and business

networking.

9

"Mr

Ashok Kalbag

(Pan IIT Association) spoke

about the mission of Pan IIT Organization:

to enhance the IIT Brand, engage with IITs and provide

a forum of Advocacy. He listed a wide range of activities of Pan

IIT including: The Indo-US collaboration for Engineering

education, IITians for ITIs, Entrepreneur Mentorship Program,

Research Ecosystem, and urged IITians to participate.

Mr Inderjit Singh ( IIT Alumni Association Australia)

recounted that although 500 IITians reside in Australia there

was a dire need to raise the awareness of IIT as a brand in

Australia. Gautam Mukerjee (IIT Alumni Association,

Malaysia) engaged the audience about Malaysia's growth

plans designed to enhance the country as a high technology

hub. He emphasized on tapping a pool of opportunities with

collaboration between IITs and institutes across Malaysia.

10 The Handshake

With mentors in Mr Arjun Malhotra (Founder and ex-

Chairman, HCL Technologies and Board member of

TiE Global), Mr Karan Thakral (Chairman of TiE

Singapore), Mr Vijay Iyengar and Mr Pradeep Gupta,

the scene was set for a power-packed confluence of

opportunity and innovation. Packed, was the word. There

were 65 attendees at least, and knowing that each one of

them owned a company, invested in some, I felt humbled by

the turnout!

The Handshake had four other

speakers - Mr Rajesh Krishnan and Mr

Prabhat Ranjan from Brick Eagle Pte Ltd, a real-estate

investment company; Mr Sourabh Sarkar and Mr Ram

Badrinathan from Karm Yog Ventures, an education-focussed

investment firm; Mr Yinglan Tan, an entrepreneur and incubation

specialist with the NRF (Prime Minister's office, Singapore)

and Mr Sanjeev Sinha from Japan, who spoke of

potential opportunities in Japan.

'The Handshake',

was hosted in partnership with

The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE). The

organizers Murali Akella (IITR'06), Dhruv

Jain (IITR'04) and Vikram Doshi (IITR'06)

ensured participation from diverse

backgrounds - Real Estate, Technology,

Education, Venture Capitalism and Finance. The

event brought together CXOs, with a balanced

representation from the Investor and

Entrepreneurship communities

to maximise business and

networking opportunities.

11The Handshake

Mr Malhotra spoke about his

story through entrepreneurship and life. I

heard him say, "I tried to retire twice so far.

Each time, the effort lasted for all of a

week's time at best. My wife says

that she married me for better or for

worse, but not for lunch! That makes me

forever on the lookout for newer things to do." This

showed, very simply, the energy, drive and

creativity that an entrepreneur

brings to the table.

As

the event

came to a close, Murali

quipped "Probably the world's first

entrepreneur was the snake, when he sold the

Apple to Eve!" That left the audience in splits and well

primed for their networking over wine and cheese over

the next half hour.

12 Inauguration by

Minister S Iswaran

The conference was

inaugurated by Minister PMO &

Second Minister for Home Affairs &

Trade and Industry, S Iswaran.

He went

on to express that "Innovation

is a key source of competitive advantage in

a higher value-added economy,". In fact, he

emphasized that industries will need to leverage on

design, technology and a skilled labour force to

create products and services for their own

domestic markets, as much as for the rest

of the world.

I agreed to Mr S Iswaran's viewpoint

on why Asian economies have to move away

from their dependence on the low-cost

manufacturing business model. "As

manpower costs increase, energy

prices rise and Western currencies weaken in

relative terms; some Asian economies are losing their

valu e proposition as a low-cost

manufacturing centre for

global markets."

13

An Unexpected Journey

On the

second day of the conference,

The Chief Patron of the Pan IIT APAC

2012 Conference, former President Mr S R

Nathan, kindly agreed to sign copies of his book of

memoirs "An Unexpected Journey - Path to the

Presidency" to the first few lucky participants in the

conference.

The book captures the essence of his

journey through life, interspersed with glimpses

of quintessential Singapore life and

anecdotes of his own tumultuous

professional and political career, that

eventually culminated in him becoming the President

of one of the fastest economically growing,

infrastructurally sound and safest

economies in the world -

Singapore.

The

crowd

immediately made a

beeline to the stall where his books

were on sale, knowing that this was the

opportunity of a lifetime to meet with the legend. The

excitement was palpable and as I walked up to organizer

Mr Murali Akella (IITR'06) to ask for his views, he put it

aptly, "There are hundreds of people who want to shake

hands with him, but in 20 minutes, Mr Nathan can

probably only sign about fifty. I never had to apologize to

so many people in one day and turn them away!"

14

VIDEO

Mr. Nathan was very pleased in turn at the overwhelming response

that the conference attendees displayed, and as he was walking

away from the stage, after signing and leaving a personalized

message for about 65 people, he stopped in his tracks as he

glanced a young boy of about 10, holding out a grubby piece of

paper in his hand, asking "Autograph, sir?". He took his own pen

out, signed it with a smile, and posed for the camera. Picture

perfect is what I thought.

15Distinguished

Alumni Award

VIDEO

Towards the end of the Gala

Dinner, Mr R. Gopalakrishnan, Executive

Director of Tata Sons was presented with the

Distinguished Alumni Award of

recognition, by President of

Singapore, Mr Tony Tan.

Mr S.N.Venkat (IITD '84), executive

committee member delighted us all by reading out a

citation on Mr Gopalakrishnan's achievements

through life.

16Day1

Hightlights

Day one began with Minister S Iswaran inaugurating

the Pan IIT Conference. It was followed by Mr Ho

Kwon Ping's speech about how Asia can strive for

ethical wealth creation. It was interesting when Mr Ping

opined about how in Asian triumphalism, we should not

fall victim to simple hubris. I went on to hear the business

tycoons' debate about business and innovation

challenges in today's world.

17Day 1

Highlights

There's

not a soul in Singapore who

doesn't love the traditional Chinese

Lion dance! As Mr Nathan arrived for Pan

IIT, the lion-dance troupe welcomed him with

bells, drums and blessings.

VIDEO

As

day one come

to a close, The IITians trudged

off to their Annual General body Meeting,

where they elected their new President and Executive

Committee. That done, they all proceeded to Harry's at Millenia

Walk for two quintessential quenchers: Cricket and Beer. Harry's

was exclusively open for Pan IIT participants, who enjoyed their

F&B with the IPL screening on a 90 inch screen.

19Conversation with

DPM

It was

insightful to attend

Deputy Prime Minister Tharman

Shanmugaratnam's conversation with Mr Vijay

Iyengar (Managing Director, Agrocorp and IITB'84).

DPM said that Asia is growing in importance and

Singaporeans need to understand the region and its

complex connections better. In fact, the "Genius of India"

offered by the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology

is welcome in this regard.It was

interesting to

understand how Singapore can

address urban solutions like clean

water and the environment. Cities

like Singapore have experience in a

whole range of urban solutions and this can

aid to provide a standard of living in India

that is acceptable to a broad

mass of people and

spur economic

growth.

From a

fairly young age, people need to

understand other parts of Asia besides their

own country. This is extremely important for Singapore.

We have fairly strong relationships with China and East Asia

and we have relatively weak linkages with India in education until the

last five or six years, when it has been growing rapidly," said Mr

Tharman. I understood that 15 per cent of Singapore

secondary schools already have tie-ups with India, but

much more can be done.

20MDIS

Performance

We had a brilliant dance

performance by the students of

MDIS. I particularly

enjoyed the break-dance

solo by one of the students.

Superb coordination, I must say!

VIDEO

21Pandit Chaurasia

Performance

VIDEO

At the Gala Dinner, the Master of Ceremonies,

Sudipto Ghatak (IIT Kgp'86) invited the legendary flute

player, Pandit. Hariprasad Chaurasia, on stage. Co-

organized with SPIC MACAY, the concert saw Pt

Chaurasia accompanied by Ms Seetha Manognya on

the Tanpura, Mr Sonar on the flute and Mr Shubankar

on the Tabla. For the next 45 minutes, the audience in

the packed Raffles City Convention Centre were

enraptured by the beauty of his melodies. Over 600

guests, notably President Tony Tan and DPM Tharman

Shanmugaratnam joined in the thunderous applause as he

concluded.

22Day2

Hightlights

As I walked in to Suntec on Day two, I looked at the

schedule of events. Conversation with Balki, Mr

Nathan giving signed copies of his memoirs, the power-

packed Tech track, interactive Q&A with DPM

Tharman and three parallel tracks in Banking,

International business and Entrepreneurship. Wow,

now that is one incredible list!

23Day 2

Highlights

VIDEO

Former President S.R.

Nathan and DPM handed over mementos to

luminaries and sponsors gracing their presence at the

conference, as tokens of appreciation. Designed by a non-profit

organization called Protsahan, the mementos were 'Madhubani'

(indigenous Indian art form) paintings. It was a splendid, novel idea, I

thought, and noble even, that the proceeds for these mementos

contributed to a charitable cause.

24Gala Dinner

Highlights

Amrit

soon invited his steering

committee on-stage to convey thanks,

and also called three surprise members who were

instrumental in making the Pan IIT a runaway success - Mr

Pillai, Mr Tharman and Mr Nathan! In a classic display of

“enthu", the team broke out in slogan - "IIT ka tempo high

hai!"

25 Gala Dinner

Highlights

VIDEO

Soon, Sudipto invited the floor to dinner. I

couldn't help the smile that crept my lips - the

many odours that wafted through were

becoming increasingly tough to resist!

After a dance performance by

MDIS, a concert by Suspended Animation, a

student rock band from IIT BHU, winner of the

inter-IIT online rock competition, followed.

26Education and

Development Track

Moderated by Dr Raj

Srivtsava, Dean Provost SMU,

the Education track panel comprised of Mr PD

Rai, Minister of Parliament, India ; Ms Sonal Kapoor

(CEO, Protsahan India Foundation) , Mr Hemant

Kanakia , (Technopreneur) and Mr Pradeep Gupta

(Chairman, The Cybermedia Group)

It was intriguing

when Mr Rai spoke about

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Indian

Governments concerted efforts at

universalizing elementary

education across India. When

Ms Kapoor opined how education for

street children was linked to their livelihood,

and how it could add value to their

'jobs' in retail outlets,

for example.

Mr Gupta,

also the Chairman of the

Board for IIT Alumni Trust elucidated on

the various avenues that IIT Alumni can explore to

provide education to marginalized people. I told myself

to surely participate in a few. Mr Kanakia spoke about

how IIT alumni, along their path of success, had to

stick to the ethics of their paths.

27Learn Symposium

The

symposium was attended by the

IIT Directors from Chennai, Indore, Mandi,

Ropar; the Presidents of SMU, National University of

Singapore and Singapore Institute of Technology; the Provosts

of the SMU and Singapore University for Technology and Design

(SUTD) and the Deans IIT, Guwahati and the Lee Kong Chian

School of Business at SMU. There was also participation from

Tata Consultancy Services and A*Star (the statutory

research board set up by the Ministry of Trade

and Industry).

The

LEARN

segment was sponsored and

hosted by SMU (Singapore

Management University). It was a collaborative

symposium for IIT Directors and the senior management

of the Institutes of Higher Learning in Singapore. It

aimed at encouraging an exchange of ideas and initiating

joint projects between participating institutions.

28 Learn Symposium

The participants felt that it would be useful to organize an iconic Asian

Innovation annual event where IITs, Singapore universities, public

sector organizations such as A-Star and VCs could get together to

encourage innovations and the commercialization of these innovations.

Also, IIT directors expressed the need for greater alignment between

industry and academia particularly at the undergraduate level. The

IITs hope to explore how 6 months of class time could be productively

used for industry and academic collaborations. For example, IIT

students could spend a semester plus the summer working with a

company and a partner institution in within India and abroad.

The participants discussed topics

like enhancing collaborations between academic

institutions, the private sector and government

agencies; comparisons of environments that

promote or thwart technological

innovations; how universities can

enhance their impact on the economic and

educational fronts, the different models and

experiences of academic and research institutions in

managing innovations.

29Business and

Innovation Track

VIDEO

The

Business

and Innovation

track was moderated

by Mr Arjun Malhotra

(Founder HCL

Technologies). The panel consisted of

Mr R. Gopalakrishnan (Executive Director

of Tata Sons), V Shankar (Group Executive

Director, SCB) and Ashank Desai (Founder & Ex-

Chairman, Mastek). I recollect how the panelists

went through the changing role of Asia

in response to Mr. Ping's comments on

how Asia's triumph would not come easily.

The panelists opined that there were some

macro shifts occurring in consumption and growth

due to which the centre of the financial universe

would have to move east.

Mr R.

Gopalakrishnan drew an analogy

between a fly and an organization. "The fly has a

complex eye, it sees different things in different ways, and

likewise successful organizations have to seek multiple

perspectives and move in a self-correcting fashion towards their

target. It is important to understand how to drive organizational

innovation and at the same time instill values and principles,

which are in turn essential to managing change and

innovation.

30Science and

Technology Park

The track consisted of four speakers giving their individual perspectives on changing

landscapes across the Science and Technology field. Prof Tan Chorh Chuan

(President, NUS) took us through the history of R&D development in Singapore,

specifically highlighting the need for Asia to accelerate R&D in bio-medical sciences.

Nobel Laureate Prof Kurt Wüthrich (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2002) spoke about

evolving technology breakthroughs and his work in developing Nuclear Magnetic

resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. What was interesting, was that the notorious "1980's

Mad-Cow" disease was eradicated because of the "3D protein structures at Atomic

resolution by NMR in Solution"

VIDEO

Mr Shekar

Mitra (Senior VP, P&G),

spoke about the importance of recognizing

changing trends in consumer needs and building

technology around these very needs. Later, in Mr Anantha

Krishnan's ( CTO, TCS India) talk, I could clearly see the

potential of "Frugal Innovation" in emerging markets and

how it can make substantial innovations with little

resources, making opportunity a reality.

"Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing

India's urges, India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are

coming to India “

-Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India in the first IIT convocation address at IIT Kharagpur

1956

IIT Alumni Association - Singapore

PO Box 543, Crawford Road Post Office, Singapore 911902