This year, Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar celebrates 30 years of distinguished service in academics and business. The celebration sought to bring together alumni from all realms of business and create an insightful blend of ideas.

On September 22, the institute conducted a Business Excellence Summit at its campus in Bhubaneswar in the presence of 26 alumni of the college. The central theme was ‘Building a vision for XIMB at 40 in accordance with the VUCA world’. Many among the alumni delivered meaningful insights across a range of topics.

Setting the stage

The summit commenced with Father Augustine delivering the welcome address. He spoke of how XIMB came into being 30 years ago and described the achievements of the college and the students. This was followed by the Dean, Dr Subhajyoti Ray, introducing the alumni to the audience and felicitating them. Vice-Chancellor and Director of Xavier University Dr Fr Paul Fernandes delivered a speech on excellence and universal education.

This was followed by talks delivered by the alumni. Catalyst IT Solutions MD Chandra Sekhar Chitrala gave a talk on entrepreneurship, drawing from his own experiences as an entrepreneur. Simanta Mohanty (VP, HR, Community Empowerment Lab) spoke on the industry-academia interface and how industry’s linkage with XIMB would create excellent opportunities. Sunita Raut, (Chief Inspiration Officer at her own consulting practice), concluded the session with a talk on leadership, highlighting how leaders not only deliver significant results but also inspire and impact other people.

The day ended with students putting up a cultural event.

Being a good leader

The second day of the summit had several panel discussions, led by alumni, on subjects that aimed to discuss the challenges XIMB would have to surmount in the next ten years. “Without compassion, you cannot become a good leader,” Axis Bank group executive Sidharth Rath said in the panel discussion on how management education inculcated leadership capabilities. Moderated by Sunita Raut, the panel of Sanjib K Ambasta (Senior VP, Aftermarket Business CV & Vespa 2W, Piaggio) and Prithwish Mukherjee (Marketing Head, Vodafone, Kolkata) put forward their views on leadership. “Leadership is not a part of education system. It is something we develop over time,” Ashish Pati (COO, Care Hospitals), added.

The summit featured leadership talks by alumni, such as Shreeprakash Hota (Associate Director, HSBC), Subrat Sarangi (Associate Professor in Marketing, KIIT University) and Dipankar Das (Business Development Head & APAC Sales Leader, BridgeI2I).

Nilanjan Roy (Business Head, Global Health & Group Benefits, Cigna TTK) spoke about how having a mentor was very important and Mrinalini Khusape (Head Special Projects, Sales and After-Sales, Skoda India), Lalit Desiraju (Senior Director, Capgemini), Krishna KV (Senior VP, Transactional Banking, Yes Bank), Vijay Sinha (Senior VP HR, JSW Energy Ltd) and Sanjay Nayak (Strategic Business Practice Head-Industry Solutions, Infosys BPO) delivered motivational speeches on using persuasive leadership to get people to contribute. “If you create values, money comes on its own,” said Chittaranjan Mohanty, (former Executive Director, JP Morgan Chase) while Ashok Dash ended the session with an address on the growth mindset.

VUCA

The panels also addressed the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, confusion, ambiguity) challenges facing the world today. One group discussed the kind of strategies XIMB needs to adopt to surmount these challenges and be an enabler in the VUCA world, with AL Jagannath (Senior Director, Dell-EMC Alliance, VMware) noting: “If we are not prepared to change, we will be VUCA-ed.”

On how management education could foster entrepreneurship, Chandra Sekhar Chitrala said management education is giving a huge boost to employment in the country.

“Be industry-fit and industry-relevant,” Sudhansu Sekhar Mishra (Chief Safety Officer, East Coast Railway and National President, XIMB Alumni) said.

Rahul Patnaik, XIMB’s student representative, thanked the management, alumni, core team, volunteers and students of XIMB for making the Summit a memorable one. Ipsit Bibhudarshi, Student Media & PR Coordinator, XIMB, credited the success of the summit to the management and the alumni.

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