BITSAA International Inc. is a not-for-profit organization registered in New Jersey, USA (Federal EIN# 22-3835037) on October 12, 2001.

BITSAA International was founded to engage in charitable and educational activities by raising funds for setting up endowments, creating scholarships, rewarding teaching and research and generally promoting the development of resources at Birla Institute of Technology and Science campuses.

BITSAA International Founders

Anupendra Sharma ('87)- Founder, BITSAA International Anupendra grew up in Delhi, and attended BITS Pilani from 1987 to 1992, graduating with a Masters in Economics and Bachelors in Instrumentation Engineering. BITS, was a life-changing personal experience for Anupendra, and he got involved with many team and leadership-based based initiatives, in most cases lacking in talent but never in enthusiasm. He took part in the Hindi and English Drama Club, Music club, and was part of winning choreography and fashion parade competitions during Oasis. Anupendra ventured to bring Blitzkreig, a Delhi-based heavy band to play on campus through a Rock Club he co-founded. Read more about Anupendra>>

Venu Palaparthi

Sandeep Arora

BITSAA International Leaders

Prasad Thammineni

Anand Rajaram

Suraj Srinivasan

Prasenjit Chaudhari

Vinod Agarwal

Santhana Satagopan

Laxman Mohanty

Karthik Krishna

Buvana Dayananda

Ashok Roy

BITSAA Chapter Leaders

Jayan Ramankutty	Founding President, Silicon Valley Chapter
Krishnaraj Inbarajan

Project BITSConnect Leaders

Anita Agrawal	Prof J.P Misra
BP Agrawal	Subodh Mittal
Vinod Agrawal	Venu Palaparthi
Sandeep Arora	Pankaj Patel
Dr Rahul Banerjee	Anand Rajaram
Shyamoli Banerjee	Jayan Ramankutty
Hitesh Bhatnagar	Deepu Rathi
Ashish Bhinde	Rohit Sah
Mukul Chawla	Vikram Shah
Satish Gupta	Anupendra Sharma
Prem Jain	Mani Sundaram
Roop Jain	Prashant Vishwanathan
Karthik Krishna	Yogesh Vaidya (STG)
Raj Khare

Ashish Garg (’97) - Chief Executive Officer ( 2008-10 ) Ashish is a Strategic Marketing Manager at Cypress Semiconductor. Ashish has worked with BITSAA for four years at different positions including Chief Editor, BITSAA Sandpaper 2.0 (Alumni Magazine), Secretary of the BITSAA Silicon Valley Chapter as well as a volunteer for Project BITSConnect. Ashish created on-campus BITSAA teams at the Pilani and Goa campuses as well as the first Cypress PSoC lab in India at the BITS Pilani Goa campus. Ashish is an Instruite from the almost-famous 1997 batch of BITS Pilani. At BITS, Ashish was member Election Commission, member Department of Controls, Instru APOGEE co-ord and President, Sangam. Incidentally, he also holds an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Aalap Tripathy (’ 04) - Chief Executive Officer( 2010-12 ) Aalap is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Embedded Systems Co-design Group at Texas A&M University, College Station. He graduated from BITS Pilani Goa Campus in 2008 with a B.E. (Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE). At BITS, Aalap has held a host of leadership positions - co-founded and led the Center for Software Development as Student Cordinator, EEE Student's Association as President," Team BITSAA (Executive Committee for Goa Campus) as Founder Secretary and BITS Embryo as the first Campus Manager. He was also the Co-Editor for ""Sizzling Sands - 2007"""," the annual Goa Campus magazine and an Advisor to the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL). He has also been a founding member of ""Abhigyaan"" - the on-campus literacy program", NSS which conducted the largest Blood Donation Drive in Goa (2005), and BITS 360 (http://www.bits360.com). At BITSAA International, Aalap has worked as a Volunteer, Manager and Director of BITSAA's Technology Team.

Nikhil Kolar (’ 96) - Chief Operations Officer( 2008-09 ) Nikhil is a Senior Product Manager for Windows Live Search with Microsoft Corp. Previously, Nikhil was an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton in the Operations & Strategy practice at their Cleveland Office. At Booz Allen, Nikhil has worked on a number of operations and growth related projects in the auto, consumer, energy and healthcare industries. Nikhil has also worked at Amazon.com as an Operations Manager. Back in India, Nikhil worked for Celstream Technologies in Bangalore, developing embedded applications for Xerox color printers. At BITS, Nikhil was part of the election commission in addition to being the CompSci Co-ord for APOGEE'99. Nikhil holds an MBA (with University Honors) from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon (2005) and completed his BE (Honors) Computer Science from BITS, Pilani (2000). Nikhil lives in Seattle with his wife, Reema, who is also from BITS, Pilani.

Arun Arvind (’ 97) - Chief Operations Officer & Trustee( 2009-11 ) Arun is an Energy Market Analyst at Dominion Resources. He currently supports Dominions lobbying efforts with analysis to determine the financial impact of climate change legistlation on electric utilities, his past included working in commodities trading desks, and working with a stock broker in India. In BITS, he was the Secretary of Dance Club, co-ord for Dance Workshop. Arun graduated from BITS, Pilani in 2001 with a M.Sc(Tech) in General Studies. He obtained an MS in Quantitative Financial Economics from Oklahoma State University. Arun is based out of Richmond, VA with his wife (Deepa Devadas, a BITS Dubai ('01) alum). In his spare time, you can find him trekking/biking along the James river in Richmond.

Krishna Hegde (’96) - Trustee & Chief Finance Officer( 2008-09 ) Krishna works in the credit strategy team at Barclays Capital, New York. Before joining Barclays, Krishna handled a similar role at Lehman Brothers. He earned his MBA (with distinction) from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 2006 and was an Edward Tuck scholar. From BITS, he joined Hindustan Unilever as a Business Leadership Trainee and subsequently worked as an IT manager handling business intelligence systems for sales and supply chain. At Pilani, he did his BE (Hons) in Computer Science and his ID number was 96A7PS034. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Priya. Krishna co-founded BITS2Bschool and coordinated the public-relations efforts within India for BITSConnect.

Sarath Kolla (’93) - Chief Technology Officer( 2006-10 ) Sarath is an independent Software Consultant providing technology services to Insurance and Finance companies. He served as a Product Development Architect at Netkey (Kiosk and Digital Signage Solutions provider), SupplyInsight (RFID Solutions provider) and Metaserver (Business Process Workflow Middleware Provider). His expertise includes providing Vision and outlining Technology Roadmap for complex products and applications. He graduated from BITS, Pilani in 1998 with a B.E. in Computer Science and M.Sc in Biological Sciences. Sarath holds a Masters degree in Computer Science at University of Denver, Colorado, USA in 2000. He lives in CT, USA with his wife (Meghna) and son (Yug Sai). His passions include playing VolleyBall, Cricket, Tennis and Table Tennis.

Ramakrishnan Lakshminarasimhan (’96) - Director, Fundraising( 2008-09 ) Ram (aka Punra) is a Lead Architect at AT&T and designs software solutions for the entertainment and wireless businesses. At BITS, Ram was a Compsci-ite, a member of Dept of Controls and a backstage member of Tamil Drama Club. Before joining AT&T, he earned his MS from University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the co-founder and President of his high school alumni association. He has worked with BITSAA as a Coordinator for the BITS2MSPHD team since 2005. He is a fundraiser for ASHA, Chicago and a Project Coordinator for Yuva Foundations, a BITSian educational non-profit venture. Ram is interested in educational charity work and running. His favorite pastime is to train for marathons in the suburbs of Chicago.

Karthik Subramanian (’01) - Director, Human Resources( 2008-09 ) Karthik Narayanan Subramanian, fondly known as KaNa, is a 2001 batch Instruite from the BITS Pilani campus. After completing his Bachelors degree he went on to work at Texas Intruments, Bangalore for an year. He then pursued his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and currently works for Ambarella Corp. in the San Francisco bay area as a Design Engineer. KaNa has been involved with BITSAA in a variety of volunteer roles and has been a moderator for BITS2MSPHD. His leisure time activities mainly revolve around keeping in touch with BITS, Pilani and BITSians.

Sandhya Krishnan (’99) - Director, Communications( 2008-09 ) Sandhya spent most of her time at Pilani with the Department of Controlz, Mime Club and EDC. After a brief stint as a techie, she set her sights on the ever-shiny MBA. At XLRI Jamshedpur, she led the PR team acting as an interface between the press, the alumni, the industry and the school, notching up media exposure. These days, Sandhya lives in Pittsburgh with her husband (also a BITSian) and works for Deloitte Consulting. When not glued to Food Network or food, she writes. Sandhya has been with Sandpaper since 2005 and is on the Editorial Team.

Dileepan Narayanan (’00) - Chief Editor, Sandpaper 2.0( 2008-09 ) Dileepan is currently working with Cypress Semiconductor as a Quality Manager. He completed Mechanical Engineering at BITS, Pilani in 2004 and Industrial Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 2006. His interests are cricket, billiards (among other sports), literature and poetry. At BITS, he was the Sports Secretary in 2003 and was a part of the cricket team and ELAS. He has served in the Sandpaper team since 2004.

Rakesh Anugula (’02) - Vice President, Campus Relations( 2008-09 ) Rakesh is currently working as Assistant Manager in Citi Group Advanced Analytical Solutions, Bangalore. While at Pilani, Rakesh was Hostel Representative for year 2003-’04 and General Secretary of BITS Students’ Union for the year 2004-’05. During his tenure, Rakesh started several initiatives like Student Faculty Discussion Forums, negotiated with UGC to approve UGC scholarships for certain ME disciplines which were not recognized earlier, launched a web portal for Students Union and initiated the Department of Networking. Rakesh also doubled the BITSian’s participation in other fests by increasing the budgets for travel grants. Rakesh was one of the two students nominated from Indian Universities to the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2005. Rakesh also founded Nirmaan, a social organization at Pilani in his 3rd year which focused on providing education and livelihood opportunities to the rural unprivileged in villages around Pilani. Bubbling energy, enthusiasm and generosity of BITSians has taken Nirmaan to eight different locations in India with approximately 750 volunteers, 500 BITSians and 250 non BITSians and is currently benefiting around 5000 people. Rakesh graduated from BITS, Pilani with M.M.S and M.Sc (Tech) Finance in 2007. He received the ‘Karthikeyan Award’ presented to the best all-rounder student of Management Association. Rakesh’s passions are Humanity, Indian Polity & Public Policy, Innovation in Public Governance and Entrepreneurship.

Ganesh Venkataraman (’95) - Director, BITSAA OLAB( 2008-09 ) Ganesh (or Ganja as he was known in BITS) is currently a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Magma Design Automation. After a brief stint at Cypress Semiconductor, Bangalore, Ganesh completed his MS from the University of Iowa and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. He has published several papers related to VLSI Design/CAD and algorithms. Ganesh was the President of the Association for India’s Development (AID-India) at Texas A&M. Under his leadership AID-TAMU raised over $12,000 which was spent in grass root level development projects in India. His passions include long distance running, hiking and outdoors. At BITS, he acted and directed in as many as eight PTM plays and was a member of the PTM executive committee. He currently lives in San Jose, California.

Ram Katuri (’92) - Director, Finance( 2008-09 ) Ram holds a bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from BITS Pilani. Ram has recently completed his M.B.A from The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Chicago GSB) and he is joining McKinsey & Company's New Jersey office. Prior to this, he held several leadership and management positions at large scale organizations in his 13 years of progressive experience in IT. His other interests include volunteering in non-profits and getting his hands dirty in Golf and Tennis.

Bhargav Addala (’02) - Advisor, Global Meet Team( 2008-09 ) Bhargav is an Applications engineer in the E-Business Suite group at Oracle Corp. USA and is based in the Bay Area. Bhargav has been involved with BITSAA as a moderator of Bits2MsPhd for more than a year now as well as being an active participant in BITSAA Silicon Valley Chapter initiatives. At BITS, Bhargav was a member of the Corroboration and Review Committee (C.R.C.), a member of the Election Commission panel and a member of the Department of Photography. He completed his Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (2008) and his B.E.(Hons.) Mechanical Engineering from BITS, Pilani (2006).

Sudip Dutta (’95) - President BITS.aid( 2008-10 ) Sudip is the Director Sales at Persistent Systems. He has close to 10+ years of combined experience in the management of technology based efforts and sales. He has worked in different roles including sales and optimizing the sales tracking process in a multi-billion dollar organization. He is currently managing, cross selling and up selling into clients in USA, China, Taiwan. He was one on the top sales executives with Larsen & Toubro, involving direct sales. At Infosys Technologies Limited, Sudip managed several high profile engineering teams. Sudip has been engaged with BITS in various roles.He is the President of BITS.aid the volunteering arm of his alma mater BITS, Pilani India. Sudip was the Jt. Secretary of the BITSAA Bangalore chapter. At BITS, Sudip was a member of Art 'n Decor, was elected the 3rd year representative of the Mech Engineering Association and was an editorial member of the annual Mech Eng "Horse Power". He was awarded the runnersup award at "APOGEE" for a paper presented on Artificial Intelligence and has won couple of awards at BOSM and OASIS.

Uzma Hussain (’03) - Chief Marketing Officer( ) Uzma (aka Uzi) is a Software Developer at D.E.Shaw & Co. and has experience in developing investment management solutions. She graduated from BITS, Pilani in 2007 with a B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science. She is an Associate Editor of Sandpaper 2.0. Uzma is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship and has recently started delving into finance especially hedge funds and asset management. At BITS, Uzma was involved in a host of activities. She was the Vice President at the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) and led the Networks domain of CEL .She co-founded the IBM-BITS Linux Club. She was also a member of the Election Commission, English Drama Club and the Swimming Club and a Group Leader at the Department of Photography. Uzma likes dabbling in quizzing and music in her spare time.

Vivek Iyer (’97) - Chief Technology Officer( ) Vivek Iyer is a Senior Systems Engineer at MediaFLO USA in San Diego and enjoys working on streaming multimedia over wireless networks. He studied Electronics and Instrumentation at BITS Pilani, after which he came to Arizona State University to pursue his Masters in Electrical Engineering. During his four years in Pilani, Vivek played an active role in the Department of Controlz, the Corroboration and Review Committee (CRC) and the Academic Registration and Counseling (ARC) Division. Vivek has been managing BITSAA Sandpaper 2.0 website as its webmaster for the past few years. He is also a member of the core technology team for the BITSAA website. In his spare time, Vivek enjoys exploring new gadgets, multimedia technologies and biking.

Srinivasan Nagarajan (’ 96) - Co Founder, BITS2BSCHOOL( ) Srini is working as a consultant for ThoughtWorks, a global IT consulting firm. He graduated from BITS, Pilani in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He also holds a masters degree in finance from Paul Sanders Business School, Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to ThoughtWorks, Srini was working with SAP Labs in Bangalore and KPMG in their Los Angeles & Phoenix offices. At present, Srini splits his time between Beijing and Hong Kong serving his firm’s investment banking client in their CRM program. Apart from struggling with Mandarin in mainland China, Srini enjoys traveling in Asia, reading about Mumbai, and watching foreign language films.,,,,,,,,,,,,

Kartik Bandhuvula (’02) - Vice President, Fundraising( ) Kartik aka Dolby is a 2002 batch BITSian, currently works as a Design Engineer at ARM, Inc in Silicon Valley. Kartik has been associated with BITSAA Silicon Valley Chapter for nearly two years. He has been actively involved in organizing various BITSAA events in the valley. At BITS, he was a member of the EEE Association and Backstage. Kartik holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (2008) and a B.E.(Hons) Electrical and Electronics degree from BITS Pilani.

Sairam Sankaran (’04) - Director, BITSAA Scholarships( ) Sairam is an Engineer at General Electric Co. based out of the John F. Welch Technology Centre, Bangalore where he specializes in the field of aeromechanics and probabilistics. He holds a B.E. (Hons.) degree in Mechanical Engineering from BITS-Pilani. He is an active member of GE Volunteers through which he helps teaching visually impaired students Maths and Science. He enjoys reading books and listening to music in his leisure time.

Himanshu Rautela (’05) - Director, Campus Relations( ) Himanshu graduated from BITS, Pilani - Goa Campus in 2009 with a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and is currently working as an Associate Analyst in the Analytics division of HSBC. Back at BITS, he had been a part of the BITSAA Executive Committee since its inception at the Goa Campus and also served as its highest student designatory as the Secretary. He was a part of the Placement Cell and served as the Placement Coordinator in his final year when he also coordinated the '100% Placements' initiative for BITSAA International. Apart from this, he was also involved in the BITSEmbryo Project when it was launched at the Goa Campus and was also a part of the Organizing Committee of SPREE in 2009 as an Advisor.

Dolly Fernando (’99) - Director, Alumni Membership( ) Dolly Fernando is a Technology Lead with Infosys Technologies Ltd. She graduated from BITS, Pilani in 2003 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering. While at BITS, she was actively involved in the Department of Controlz. In her free time she enjoys travelling and reading.

Sukanya Varadharajan (’02) - Director, Fundraising( ) Better known as SVS, I’m an instruite from the 2002 batch. After graduating in 2006, I joined Infosys Technologies and worked for a year during which I realized software is not my cup of tea. So now, I’m doing my masters in bioengineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. Back in BITS, I was part of backstage and an active member of EDC. I headed the crew as prod man for a year. I also worked on the editorial team for the instrumentation magazine. I’m currently involved in organizing cultural events for the Fine Arts Society of India at UTA. I am a fund raiser for "Helping Hands”, an organization for the underprivileged based in Chennai. I am interested in community services and charity. In my free time, I blog and I’m a hardcore shopaholic. I would really love to run a marathon someday.

Nilesh Rathi (’04) - Director, BITSAA Scholarships( ) Nilesh is currently working as a software developer at Microsoft IDC, Hyderabad. He graduated from BITS, Pilani in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. When at BITS, he led Maharashtra Mandal in 2005-06, was part of BOSM06 chess team and was associated with Hindi Drama Club. He loves playing chess, cricket and volleyball. He also enjoy traveling, trekking and swimming.

Sutirtha Roy (’05) - Vice President, BITS.aid( ) After graduating from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) - Goa Campus (2005-2009, Information Systems), Sutirtha is partnered with PondyCan in Pondicherry. He will be assisting the creation of sustainable infrastructure solutions. As a student, Sutirtha was an active volunteer with NGOs enabling self-empowerment. Sutirtha also cherishes his 2008 summer internship at the Vikram Sarabhai Science Center making young people enthusiastic about science. Most recently, he has managed his international alumni association\'s social front, BITS.aid, partnering with NGOs on development issues concerning India. Sutirtha believes that true change must begin at the grassroots level and he wants to fully live this message. He is as much in awe by the economics of Jeffery Sachs as by the magical riffs of Pink Floyd.

Mahima Jain (’05) - Director, Communications( ) Mahima Jain (aka MJ) is currently doing her PS2 in Bangalore and will be graduating in 2010 with M. Sc (Hons) Mathematics and B.E. (Hons) Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Most of her time on campus was spent with the Department of Sponsorship and Marketing. From being a volunteer to a senior core member, she put her heart and soul into the department. Hailing from Delhi, she was amongst the founders of the Delhi Association (Capitol) in Pilani and also served as President for the Assoc. Her interests include reading, listening to music, talking non stop.

Meenakshi Chatterjee (’00) - Chief Editor, Sandpaper 2.0( ) Meenakshi is a skilled member of the Hardware Design Engineering group at 3PAR Inc, California. She has been a part of system design, bringup and debug for the past two and half years now. Prior to 3PAR, she had been working with Nvidia in the Platforms team. Electronics had always been her passion. Getting a degree in Physics and EEE from BITS, Pilani was the first step in following her passion. A Master's in UCLA followed next. While on campus, Meenakshi had been a prolific writer. The bug of short stories had bit her in her second year and since then it has been incurable. She had won prizes for her stories in BITS from Languages group and then at Los Angeles in Henry Krunitz Creative Writing competition. English Press Club, Poetry Club, Moruchhaya (Bengali Association), Physics Assoc, EEE Assoc were where Meenakshi remained a faithful member and a regular contributor. She had been contributing short stories to Sandpaper since 2005 and came on the editorial team in 2007. Currently she is leading the effort for the upcoming Winter issue.

Aman Manglik (’05) - Director, Newsletter( ) Aman graduated from BITS, Pilani Campus in 2009 with an M.Sc(Tech.) Information Systems degree and is currently working with Oracle India as a Software Developer. Before the current role in BITSAA he was also involved with BITSAA as part of the Embryo Project and played a key role in the development of the Embryo's Technology and Video infrastructure. Back at campus he was the Editor of the Information Systems Magazine "Tech'Know" and was also a prominent member of Photography Club. He was also attached to the Software Development & Educational Technology Unit(SDETU) at BITS and one of his efforts there can be seen as the BITS Pilani Official Website. Apart from being a Technology geek at heart his hobbies include Photography, Graphic Designing and Web Designing

AtishKathpal (’06) - Director, BITSEmbryo( ) Atish has been actively involved with all BITSAA and BITS Embryo activities at BITS-Pilani Goa campus. Selected as an associate member of the first official team of Project Embryo, in 2007, he has been ingeniously involved in establishing the project and shaping the way it works today, at Goa campus. Currently he is the Coordinator of Team Embryo and also a member of the BITSAA Executive Committee, Goa. Apart from handling on-campus BITSAA activities, Atish spends his time working on projects of his interest. In his free time he likes to listen to music and chat with friends. He really loves traveling and has been to France and Thailand apart from having traveled through India. Graduating in 2011, he feels that BITSAA and BITS administration, hand in hand,will make BITS-Pilani the best university in the field of education and research, world over!