EMPI Business School, New Delhi

The Vision Foundation for Development Management and EMPI Business School organized a National Conference on “How CSR is beneficial to Business” on September 14, 2016 at India International Centre, New Delhi. The welcome address was done by Prof. Ranjan Mohapatra, Chairman, Vision Foundation. It was a great opportunity for the students to interact with Eminent Personalities like Mr. Mahendra Ranga, IRS, Commissioner, Commercial Tax; Mr. Pooran Pandey, Executive Director, United Nations Global Compact; Mr. R.P. Singh, Director, HR & Legal, IFFCO; Satish K Singh, Consultant Editor, NEWS 24; Mr. Mohanty, Founder & Head, Fortune Group. The sessions covered important topics like how we can create political education among people; corporates must understand the real sense of CSR; fighting malnutrition by clubbing CSR with Business etc. It was a good learning opportunity for the students and they actively participated in the conduct of the event and were awarded participation certificates.

Entrepreneurship and Management Processes International (EMPI Business School) welcomed Mr. Alan Mamedi, one of the co-founders and global CEO of Truecaller, for an interaction session with the students of EMPI to share experiences and insights on entrepreneurship development, success story of Truecaller, and learnings on marketing and customer orientation.

Alan shared that Truecaller has evolved because of the relationship that it has established with its customers. Their processes have a community-based model. They do not get data from mobile networks, but from communities. This model has worked for them because their mantra has always been focused on not just innovation, but also on core values like keeping trust, customer satisfaction and taking responsibility for company decisions. In their first week of start, they had 10,000 downloads. Today they have more than 45 million users globally. And now their dreams are bigger. They have been funded by top silicon valley companies like Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, investors behind Google.

Alan advised the students of EMPI to never give up. He told the students, “Whatever you do, just give your best to it. If I am a company offering services in cleaning, then my objective would be to be the best and the largest cleaning services in the world”.

Alan was also accompanied by Mr. Manan Shah, who is the Director Marketing (India), of Truecaller, and an alumnus of EMPI Business School. Truecaller is also willing to take up students of EMPI Business School for internship programs at Truecaller and make them Truecaller Ambassadors.

This interactive session was organized by the EMPI SUV (Start-Up Venture) Lab. This is a unique initiative of EMPI Business School that aims at creating an entrepreneurial environment at the business school and encourages the students to become young turks who can disrupt the industry with their start-up ideas. In addition to start-up talks, EMPI SUV (Start-Up Venture) Lab has also organized entrepreneurial hackathons at national level and promoted the culture of “innovating futures” which has been the vision of the institution since its inception 22 years ago.

EMPI Business School and ManpowerGroup (World’s largest HR Services Company and One of the Fortune 500 companies) joined hands to create the EMPI-ManpowerGroup Skill and Capacity Building Centre; an initiative of the EMPI’s Udai Pareek HR-LABS.

The Centre aims to be a pioneer in India focusing on the emerging area of “Outsourced HR”, a new trend that is exemplified in the building of multi-billion dollar businesses globally in this space. This Centre shall also attempt to study and analyze the recent trends that are taking place in the newer paradigms of working in the digital era. It aims to provide a platform to build on the work of Professor Udai Pareek in marrying deep research based psychometric modeling to the enhancement of skills and capacities for modern India. It shall take forward its agenda through conferences, workshops, publications, training programmes etc. The Centre shall aspire to become a key enabler in the skill India mission of the government of India.

The Centre was inaugurated by Mr. Vishnu Dev, Director, Manpower. He addressed the students and spoke about the demand of today’s industry. He talked about the transformation in HR from a corporate HR function to a business HR function, where HR is getting outsourced but meshed at the highest levels with the business KPI’s of an organization. Students should actively consider building a career in this new paradigm.

Mr. Pankaj Saran, Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives, EMPI Business School, narrated his personal experiences of working with the legendary Dr. Udai Pareek, Founder Chairman, EMPI Udai Pareek Human Resources Laboratory for applied Behavioral Sciences (HR-LABS), in bringing Applied Behavioural Sciences back into HR.

Prof. Sushama Khanna, Former Dean and Director (Outreach), Udai Pareek HR-LABS, shared her experiences in the unique journey of the setting up of the HR-LABS in the year 2005 and how the initial batch of students have gone on to become trend setters in the industry.

Ms. Arpita Ganguly, Regional Manager-HR, DACHSER India Pvt. Ltd. complimented EMPI and Manpower for this much needed Centre and spoke about the changing role of HR and the myths that it's a ‘light’ function for women.

EMPI B-School co-organised India's first health hackathon along with IncibateIND and BWDisrupt. The challenge of this Hackathon was to explore and develop technology and social business/model solutions in response to the problem of self-care for long term health issues. The theme for the health hack was to come up with technology or social solutions related to organ donation. The solutions can be oriented towards health informatics, wearable devices, and personalised medicine. Students from institutions like IIT, Delhi Technological University, Delhi University, YMCA, to name a few, participated in the battle of hackathon. It was a 30 hours non-stop hackathon. It ended on the second day with a judging process where the teams had to pitch their products to a panel of esteemed Jury, which comprised of:

Simi Anderson - Convener & Chairman, Association for Medical and Wellness Tourism
Puneet Kanodia - CEO, Ricoh
Hitendra Gosain - Co-Director, New Delhi Chapter, Founder Institute

The above judges had also given one to one mentoring session to the students. The Hackathon also had other distinguished mentors who came at different points in the course of the Hackathon to mentor the teams in shaping up their concepts:

Dr. Sanjay Saxena - AI Expert and Entrepreneur
Himanshu Aggarwal - Country Head, Marketing, IBM India
Kartik Arora - Product Expert, Deskera

Dr. Sanjay Saxena was the opening speaker who had set the theme and the pace of the Hackathon. The final pitches by all the teams at the end of the Hackathon was very interesting and some of them were potential scalable models. Three winning teams, who had pitched excellent products/concepts, won attractive cash prizes up to Rs. 50,000. The event was a great success, paving the way to more future entrepreneurial Hackathons at EMPI B-School.

India's First Health Hackathon organised by EMPI Business School with IncubateIND and BWDisrupt

The alumni who started arriving from the morning in small groups were accorded the traditional warm welcome by the current students, though the seniors were really returning to the place which was their earlier home for two years. Most of them promptly went off to the hostels, mess, canteen and the lawns to revive their nostalgia. There was a good amount of backslapping, recalling funny past events and pranks. Many of them were accompanied by their spouses and parents who were proudly shown the sacred spots of the campus. Among the visitors, two small children were also spotted.

Gently pushed and cajoled by the faculty, mindful of the time, the graduates collected their ceremonial gowns and assembled in the allotted spaces for the procession converging at the Convocation Assembly Hall of the R&D Building.

Now it was time for EMPI Academic procession which was led by the President, followed by the Chief Guest, Dr Uma Nambiar, a woman pioneer – Ex-Navy, Neurosurgeon, Hospital CEO, Global Advisor and now a Start-Up CEO (with VGH – Harvard)… and Mr P.S. Bami, Presiding Chairman, Academic Advisory Board, India Energy Forum Former Chairman, NTPC and other facilities of the institute. The Convocation Ceremony began with a mesmerising Saraswati Vandana followed by the ceremonial lighting of the auspicious lamp by the Chief Guest, Guest of Honour and the Dignitaries.

After a formal welcome to all  Mr Gurnam Saran, President, EMPI, invited Mr P.S. Bami to preside over and take charge of the function. The students of the various Programmes were by turns called to order conferred their diplomas and were administered the oath of their honour to 'adhere to and abide by the covenants of practice and behaviour deserving of their respective Diplomas they were honoured with'.

Dr Uma Nambiar, the Chief Guest delivered her Convocation Address. In the well-received speech, she advised the students and said “You don’t live up to anybody’s expectations except your own. You decide your own path. Education gives you a head start, you are far better than all those who do not have the kind of education you have. Education brings you power, you keep learning every single day of your life. Learning is an endless thing so keep learning from anybody and everybody who teaches you. In addition, she exhorted them also by saying “Don’t stop living. You decide what is good and what is bad for you. Nobody has the right to judge you. One thing which you have to stop doing is comparing yourselves with somebody else. You are your own benchmark, your own yardstick. You decide what are the limits you want to take and go ahead and do it. There is nothing that stops you”. Further Dr Nambiar guided the students by saying “Don’t think that anything is beyond you. You have to develop other interests as well. When you are well educated you are like shining diamonds, you have been well cut. But to really dazzle in life you need to have a good setting. The setting is what you need to develop in life for yourself. Hope you bedazzle the whole country. In today's country, you are the leaders in the world. Today you can proudly say you are Indian and you get recognised.  Ms Uma said that “I want you to be the torch bearers of that India and make everybody proud”.  

Thereafter the meritorious students were called and the respective Heads of the Departments gave away the Honour Certificates and Mementos to them.





The event came to a close with the rendering of the National Anthem. The students followed the Dignitaries and faculty to the PTDA Building steps for group photographs. That marked the end of the formal academic and administrative part of the Convocation.

This being the most cherished event in the day of any student none was in a mood to leave it off easily. Selfies and group photos of and with all friends had to be taken in different combinations for FaceBook and Whatsup postings and for future reference. The gowns, hoods and mortars were returned with great reluctance, for only then the original Diploma Pads would be given. After the usual high-tea, the new Diploma holders left the campus with moist eyes but happy hearts.