Never paused in my pursuit of excellence, says IIMB gold-medalist at convocation

Bengaluru: "I was late to the PGPPM course in IIM-B by two weeks. On my first day, I asked the professor if I would fail and I was told to stop worrying and focus on learning. I pursued excellence for all I was worth and received the gold medal for academics," said Pranav Kumar Mallick, the proud gold medallist who was among 598 students to receive their honours at the 42nd Convocation of the Indian Institute of Management.

A father of two and the director of budget from 2012-2016 in the Railway Ministry, Pranav was nominated for the PG course in Public Policy and Management at IIM-B. After 18 years of civil service, he emerged from the course with flying colours. He plans to implement the theoretical knowledge he has gained in his next posting. Pranav has also been promoted to the senior administrative grade in the government to manage policies at a broader level.

The graduation ceremony for post graduates in Management, Public Policy and Management, Software Enterprise Mangement and Enterprise Management 2017, had Uday Kotak, VC and MD of Kotak Mahindra Bank as the Chief Guest.
G. Raghuram, Director IIM Bangalore and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson of IIM-B and MD of Biocon Limited also addressed the gathering.

Awarded a Gold Medal for All Round Performance, Kushal Nitin Dalal not only secured the top rank in the Management Programme, but is also the founder of an informal club called Ramanayan 2.0, to showcase and celebrate cultural events. Batchmate and fellow gold medallist for Academics, Nikhil Goyal, also a member of the Informals club said," We performed a skit which was a satire on Management consultancies. Once Sita is Kidnapped by Ravan. Ram takes the help of Hanuman, who is a management consultant and helps bring her back."

Kushal discovered his creative tendencies during his time working as an IT professional in the U.S. "I am a percussionist and was invited to play with my band in the U.S when Prime Minister Modi came to visit. Later, we were called to perform for the cricket match with Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne."
Some toppers like Suresh Ganesan went on to publish projects features in the Harvard Business Review.

“My term project was about predicting frauds in companies, to do with their earnings. An algorithm has been built as a part of the case study. All B-schools can download and use this to predict manipulation and frauds,' said Ganesan, who wants to go on to use his expertise to partner with the Indian Government.

"The IT sector is geared towards working with the foreign market. We rarely cater to our own government when we can do so much with departments like railways, transport, digitization and more," Suresh explained.

Many of these students received placements through their internships as well, like Vaibhav Gupta, whose internship with Morgan Stanley in Mumbai fetched him a pre-placement offer.