BITOSA meet

Aero-science department’s hypersonic laboratory, IISC Bangalore –

With absolutely no connections to hypersonics and aerospace, what in earth was I there for?

Well, a sunny Bangalore afternoon and we all BITians hurried through the scenic boulevards of Indian institutes of sciences to attend the BITOSA coffee meet arranged at Professor Reddy’s office. It was supposed to be an informal talk by Subhash Dhar, Senior Vice President and Head, Global Sales, Alliances and Marketing Head, Infosys. However, the talk turned out to be vastly different from what it was meant to be and I am glad it did.

The setting was that of a sci-fi movie, with cutting edge technologies and machines strewn all over the hypersonics lab. We occupied a quiet conference room besides Dr Reddy’s office. Dr Reddy promised us to show around the place after the meeting. After a brief moment of introducing each other, Subhash introduced himself and we were awestruck by the sheer simplicity and the sheer sense of business this fellow BITian had. Subhash belongs to the class of 1983 from Birla institute of technology, Mesra and has been in various progressive roles ever since. Subhash, spoke at length about his initial formative years, which was completely mesmerizing.

Subhash recalled his initial days in global sales and marketing when he used to wake up at 4 in the morning in order to make cold calls to prospective clients in the west coast while he was based at the east coast of the US. Indeed, it takes a lot of hard work and perseverance over the years to be at a leadership position of a company or a business. The discussion had suddenly taken a tilt towards the market driven economies and Subhash told how he believed the US to be a huge successful experiment in humanity. The market driven economy of the US is the success factor of this huge experiment in humanity. Just a few decades ago, before the Indian markets were open to the world, our debt and corruption ridden public sector units were the largest enterprises we had and today we have some private enterprises which are way too larger than the public enterprises and that too world class. Had we realized the benefits of the market driven economy, a decade earlier than we did, we could have been on a different growth trajectory, than we are at today. However the socialistic structure of the economy and the resultant public sector enterprises were established by Nehru in order to usher in an era of growth after independence. Though I do not have the audacity to criticize the socialistic structure of the economy established by Nehru but the fact remains the same and it has been agreed upon by many scholars and economists. In his book ‘India unbound’, Gurucharan Das speaks at length about the wrong protective policies we had and which prevented Indian economy from taking off.

 I was taken aback when Subhash described ‘greed’ as a virtue rather than a sin and we all saw a point in relevance to the market driven economies. The greed to grow more, the greed to get better in what we do!!- Is what drives our market driven economies today. The discussion was not only enlightening but it was at a whole new level due to the presence of other distinguished BIT alumnus.

We concluded our BITOSA session and were eager to see the rest of the hypersonics lab. Prof Reddy took us on a short tour of the place, telling about the cutting edge hypersonics, IISc was working on. It was exhilarating to see certain technologies which only India had and Prof Reddy explained that how we are way ahead of the world in certain technologies. To give you a sneak peak, a futuristic aircraft engine that could reduce your travel times by 90%!

We almost forgot that it’s time; India takes on Ireland in the world cup match at Chinnaswamy in a few hours from now. We headed to our homes to catch a glimpse of the second best thing of the day!!