“India story is alive and kicking” – Shekhar Gupta at PGPEX Lattice 2013

Lattice is the annual business symposium organized by MBA students (Post Graduate Programme for Executives) at IIM Calcutta. The event facilitates interaction between leaders of Indian society and IIM Calcutta students and aims at discovering and propagating new ideas and ways of thinking in the corporate world and the society.

Lattice 2013 was held at the IIM Calcutta campus on 25^th and 26^th October and focused on the theme ‘India: The Time Ahead’. The event explored India’s potential to resolve the complex issues troubling its economy and its ability to find a path back to its record high growth in the past few years. The symposium explored India’s increasing role in the world, the climate for entrepreneurial activities, managing businesses during tough times and several other important issues which need to be dealt with before any new economic success story can be written.

The two day symposium was graced by esteemed guest speakers including Padma Bhushan Shri Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-chief, The Indian Express, Mr. Prashant Panday, CEO, Radio Mirchi, Mr. Sudipta K Sen (Regional Director South East Asia, SAS), Mr. E. Sarath Babu CEO and founder of Foodking, Winner of CNN-IBN Award for Young Indian Leader.

Shekhar Gupta, Editor in Chief, The Indian Express

Mr. Sudipta K Sen inaugurated the event with a talk on the Impact of emerging technologies on Business. He stressed the importance of being adaptable, innovative and optimized in order for organizations to thrive. He provided interesting insights on how innovations through analytics can benefit variousindustries like retail & banking.

This was followed by the keynote address by Mr. Prashant Panday. In his very candid and motivational speech, he spoke about political reform, the the contribution of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), PDS (Public distribution system), the Internet and the mobile revolution in moving India forward. He stressed on the importance of going rural along with going global. He also highlighted the need for leaders to balance EQ (emotional quotient) with IQ (Intelligence Quotient).

Mr. Sarath Babu captivated the audience with a truly touching story on his journey to success. It was extremely inspiring to hear how he followed his dream towards a hunger-free India by starting FoodKing from scratch and eventually growing it into a  company with a $1.3 Million turnover. The talks were followed by a very thought-provoking panel discussion on ‘Industrialization at cost of human values’. Mr. Dipankar Bhattacharya (General Secretary Communist Party of India Marxist- Leninist Liberation), Mr. Armstrong Pame (IAS officer – Manipur cadre and social activist), Mr. Pradeep Lenka (CEO at Aditya Birla Group) and Mr. Anurag Danda (Head – Climate Adaptation, WWF India), Prof. Anoop Sinha, (Professor of Economics at IIMC) were part of the panel.

In his keynote speech Mr. Shekhar Gupta shared his thoughts on the current Indian economy, government and bureaucracy. He reiterated that the India growth story is very much alive and kicking and said that opportunities for the betterment for every deserving citizen have multiplied over the past decades.

PGPEX alumni were not far behind in sharing ways to chart a new growth path. Mr. Ashish Chaturvedi, alumni of the 2012 Class of the PGPEX at IIM Calcutta & Founder & CEO of uFony (http://bit.ly/ufonyltd) spoke about his own entrepreneurship venture and provided useful tips to the students on embarking on a entrepreneurial journey.

Speaking about the event, PGPEX Chairperson, Professor Runa Sarkar said, “Lattice is an idea incubator, and should help generate thought leadership for businesses and the society as a whole.”

Lattice 2013 came to an end with a interesting and informative business quiz followed by the official PGPEX alumni meet in the evening.

With inputs from Samara Almeida , PGPEX 2014 Candidate at IIM Calcutta