The Xavier Institute of Management is celebrating 30 years of distinguished service in the field of academics and business, and to the society. This celebration aims to bring together alumni from diversified realms of business and to create an insightful blend of ideas which will make the next leg of the journey even more fulfilling. In this pursuit, the institute inaugurated the Business Excellence Summit on the September 22 at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, in the presence of 26 distinguished alumni of the college spanning across the 30 years. This was done to initiate an opportunity to interact, celebrate, discuss, reflect and collaborate. The central theme of the event is, ‘Building the vision for XIMB at 40 in accordance with the VUCA world’.
The summit commenced with Father Augustine, the Registrar of XIMB, taking a trip down the memory lane and speaking about how XIMB came into being 30 years ago. VC and director of Xavier University, Dr Fr Paul Fernandes, concluded the inauguration ceremony by delivering an enlightening speech on excellence and universal education. He spoke of ‘wings of excellence’ about which, he quoted, “We need to put on and make sure we are able to have conviction and commitment in the future.” He believed that there is a need to, “think, reflect, inspire, and empower” minds to achieve this excellence. The summit witnessed leadership talks by esteemed alumni and panel discussions participated and moderated by the alumni. Panel discussions delved into topics like entrepreneurship, bond between industry and academia, and leadership.
Chandra Sekhar Chitrala, MD, Catalyst IT Solutions, opened the first panel discussion by delivering a talk on Entrepreneurship, a topic, he professed, was very close to his heart because he, himself, is an entrepreneur. The speakers felt that entrepreneurship was necessary for our country at this point. They discussed as to how management education could foster entrepreneurship, noting that management education is giving a huge boost to the employment of our country. He quoted, “We are being taught entrepreneurship in our MBA without us knowing about it”.