3 July – Neev 2015 (Welingkar, Bengaluru)
Ashok Soota, Executive Chairman, Happiest Minds, addressed the students in the morning session.
Soota weaved in the sub-themes of the fortnight – governance, passion and curiosity. He said that self-governance supported by a framework of values leads to integrity in our daily lives – a quality he said that was of overarching importance in life. He substantiated that with the live example taken from his career. In his entire career, while he had directly been involved in the firing of nearly 40 employees, only one was for non-performance and the rest were on grounds of breach of integrity – financial or intellectual. Underlining the importance of passion in work he said that passion for work renders all the talk about work -life balance superfluous. He elaborated on the role of curiosity in our lives, and asserted that lifelong learning is imperative failing which you would soon become obsolete in this world.
“Happiness is a state of mind that is the result of fulfilling your own potential”, he said. He shared the values that his own company had set as a governing framework that goes by the acronym SMILES (Sharing, Mindfulness, Integrity, Learning, Excellence and Social Responsibility).While other values are commonly talked about, he focused on the role of Sharing and Mindfulness with regard to how they directly contribute to happiness – sharing because you are happiest when you are giving and mindfulness because it ensures that you live in the moment and give your best at everything you do. He urged them to make happiness their ultimate purpose and realising their optimum potential as the means to it.
While responding to the students, he emphasized the role of luck by sharing the example of his meeting. Premji of Wipro by chance and how it changed his career trajectory to the high-growth IT industry. But he asserted that while luck plays a role, destiny is shaped with hard work. He said, age is just a number; one has to care for their mind and body as they move ahead doing what they enjoy most.
In the Hello We session Prof. Aparna explained the role of Examinations Cell; the CGPA based grading system and the rules of conduct during examinations. Prof. Hema D. and Prof. Vijaykumar N. gave an introduction to the fundamentals of Accounting by explaining basic concepts such as debit and credit, keeping in mind that a majority of the student population are engineers who are not exposed to financial accounting.
In the panel discussion the theme was- Marketing Leadership – Responsible and Passionately Curious. The experts on the dais were Ajit Belani, Director-Marketing, Aricent Technologies, Dr. Rajaram Kudli – Founder and Chief Consultant, Prajnan Enterprises and Sangeet Kishore – Group Category Manager – Vdot, Madura Fashion & Lifestyle.
Belani described curiosity as a personality trait. He encouraged the students to continuously learn, not just from books or classes, but from the world around them. According to him irresponsible behaviour is the result of the limitations of the mind. Sangeet Kishore implored the students to keep their child like curiosity alive. He pointed out that successful CEOs differ from the normal in three traits – passion, team playing attitude and adaptability. Being unethical, he cautioned, always hits back.
Under the Hands on session, Eureka was a team-based activity where the teams with the given material had to create new prototypes. It was designed to help students learn team work, collaboration and tested their ability to think out of the box.
