Contributed By: Arunabh Kalita
The 2018 edition of Vista, IIM Bangalore’s annual flagship business summit was successfully conducted on Sept 14-15, 2018. Vista is organised by the business club of IIMB, Forum for Industrial Interaction, and attracts huge crowds from across the country. This year was no different and the campus was buzzing over the three days with speakers, guests and students from all over the country. The event was inaugurated by Mr. Ajay Shah, President of Polymer Chain, Reliance Industries in presence of G Raghuram, the director of IIM Bangalore and Padmini Srinivasan, PGP chair.
Day 1 of this edition of Vista had a nice palette of speakers, competitions and other events. The highlight of speaker sessions was that of the critically acclaimed Bollywood actor, Rahul Bose, who enthralled the audience by sharing his learnings in the industry. The other notable speakers were Mr. Raghav Bahl and Ms. Lavanya Chari, MD of Deutsche Bank, Asia region. The much popular Young Leaders Summit was also kicked off with over 300 participants from different institutes across the country. The Reliance Sustainability Conclave was a standout event with panellists like Samir Pathak, Director Sustainability of PepsiCo India, Vijay Habbu, VP of Reliance & Wilma Rodrigues, CEO Saahas Zero Waste. The discussion revolved around the need of moving towards a circular economy and to sensitise the leaders of the future about sustainable development. Another exclusive event of this year’s Vista was the Alum Night, a first-of-its-kind student and alumni interaction event where all the key members of the Alumni Association interacted with the current students. There was a great deal of knowledge sharing in terms of career paths, handling stress and life after IIMB in general.
The second day had in store sessions from some heavyweights of the industry like Manu Jain, India Head of Xiaomi and Madhusudhan Gopalan, CEO of P&G India. Both these speakers delivered some great insights on the current dynamics of the Indian market and had a good interaction with the students as well. Besides these, the day saw a host of competitions like Numero Uno, Smart City, Eloquioim, Retailer, Dynamark etc. The key highlights of this day were the workshops like Logistics, Minimalist & AI. Towards the end of the day, there were two interesting conclaves, Diversity Conclave & Corporate Conclave which saw discussions on inclusivity and the changing industry dynamics owing to technology and the path ahead for companies in this new environment. The day ended on a lighter tone with a live stand-up comedy show by Sumit Anand who tickled the funny bones of the audience.
The final day of Vista was packed with finals of many competitions and some insightful workshops like Media workshop, digital marketing workshop and Power BI workshop that were attended by students and professionals alike. The day started off with a speaker session by Mr. Parth Jindal, head of JSW industries followed by a Sports Conclave with the theme of “Sports as a career opportunity”. The latter had panellists which included Mr. Ramky S, CEO of Sports Mechanics, Srinath TB, Deputy GM of Sunrisers Hyderabad, Mr. Venkatesh Srinivasan, Co-Founder, Nexus Consulting amongst others. However, the key highlight of the day as well as the summit was the interactive session “Youth & Truth” by the famed Indian mystic Sadhguru where the sage took questions from students on various pressing issues on life in campus and beyond. He shared some valuable nuggets of wisdom to the jam-packed audience. The three-day extravaganza finally concluded with a DJ night where the students got to unwind after three days of intense intellectual stimulation. Overall, Vista 2018 was a great success and left everyone behind with high expectations of even better things to come in the subsequent edition.
Arunabh Kalita is a PGP 2018-2020 student of IIM Bangalore.