Dear BITSians

The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) at BITS Pilani aims to create future leaders at BITS Pilani. CEL not only seeks to create all-round leaders, but also focuses specifically on students who break new grounds in the field of entrepreneurship, innovation and social ventures. In addition, CEL aims to empower and inspire BITSian women to play a significant leadership role.

The Mantra awards were instituted by CEL, in 2009, to recognize and reward outstanding students who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential and/or entrepreneurial initiative. Anupendra Sharma, co-founder of CEL, Investment Partner at Siemens Venture Capital in Boston, and CEL Alumni Advisor had initiated the creation of the Four ‘Mantra Awards’ namely :

1. Mantra Award for Outstanding Leadership – 2 awards (1 male, 1 female): For outstanding achievement in areas of leadership, with a particular focus on at least 1 outstanding achievement in a chosen category, and consistent demonstration of all-round leadership potential. Rs. 5,000 each in prize money.
2. Mantra Entrepreneur of the Year Award: For outstanding achievement in entrepreneurship demonstrated during the stay at BITS, either in writing business plan(s), starting social or commercial ventures, or creating commerializable innovations on campus. Rs. 5,000 in prize money.
3. Mantra Award for Social Leadership: For demonstrating a commitment to social leadership either through the creation of sustainable ventures or for contribution in not-for-profit events on campus. Rs. 5,000 in prize money.
4. Mantra Innovator of the Year Award: For demonstrating an ability to invent or build innovative products or ideas in the labs. (Optional Award)

Eligibility

These awards shall be open to all current, full-time students of BITS Pilani (on-campus or Practice School), excepting:

• CEL student member on the Award selection Panel
• Any past winner of Mantra Awards in that category
• Any student with a record of indiscipline and/or malpractice at BITS Pilani.

Cases where eligibility is not clear will be decided by the Award Panel.

CEL will also proactively seek out people to nominate as recipients of these awards.

The Panel

The Panel will include faculty members and students from all the four campuses.

In order to ensure fairness, the identity of the student on the Panel shall be known only to the Panel members and the CEL Student President.

The faculty members for the next year’s Panel will be decided by the Panel members, with advice from the CEL Faculty Coordinator and Student President.

Faculty members may serve the Panel for more than one year. Student members may not serve for more than one year.

Calling for Nominations

· The Panel would call for nominations beforehand by electronic submission.

· CEL should also proactively nominate deserving candidates.

· CEL student body would be responsible for coordinating the awards.

· Advertisements calling for nominations shall be put up on campus in the last week of January. They would also be marketed electronically, through email etc.

Selection Process

The selection process will be in two steps.

1. Candidates submit a short write-up on their achievements electronically.
2. If required, more information would be requested from the candidates

Winners would be announced at the event. All nominees would be invited.

BITS,Pilani - Pilani Winners

Rohit Agarwal- Entrepreneur of the year An avid software programmer, Rohit currently pursues his graduation in Chemical Engineering . He co-founded Anaya, a technology solution provider to the Animation and Gaming industry, in 2010 upon a winning run at the Sparks New Ventures Program,2009. He was the youngest winner at the ET-Power of ideas held at IIM-A where Anaya was awarded a seedfund. His love for learning new software technologies dates back to his school days.Swears by Jack Johnson and John Lennon’s music, R.K. Narayan’s writings, Pixar’s short films, Hot Chocolate Fudges’, handy Firefox plugins and his own blog posts.

SHARATH HOLLA- Social Leader of the year Sharathchandra Holla is a student of Electronics and instrumentation from BITS, Pilani. He wants to be a social entrepreneur and create livelihood opportunities to the poor. He strongly believes in infinite abilities of every human being and wants of focus on tapping this by giving right training, exposure and thus providing opportunities to the lesser privileged. Interested in social activities since school days, he joined Nirmaan in BITS-Pilani with the same focus. Here has worked on various issues ranging from providing education to the underprivileged kids to women empowerment as a volunteer, project lead and later on as the President. He has spent most of his time on working on providing quality education to underprivileged kids and believes that it holds the key to the development of the nation in a long run. He also has a deep interest in technical field also which drove him to work with the Instrumentation forum as a project coordinator. He also has some acclaimed projects and a national level conference paper to his kitty. He loves to listen to music, hang around with friends and play during his free time.

RAGHAV MIMANI- Leader(male) of the year Raghav is a Chemical Engineering graduate from BITS Pilani wherein he was also the General Secretary of its Students’ Union and actively involved with the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), SPICMACAY and the Wall Street Club (WSC) amongst others. An aspiring business entrepreneur, he is one restless being who values experiences, people and impact a lot. This has seen him getting awarded the ‘Green Globe Foundation Awards’; win the National Knowledge Commission essay competition; be a fellow of ‘Grassroutes’ & ‘E4SI’ and also an International Climate Champion of British Council; intern at ‘Grasim Industries’, ‘iDiscoveri’ and ‘IICT’; conduct numerous summer camps for kids; amongst others. A curious fellow, highly interested in travelling, music, writing/reading and sports, he can almost always be seen either engaged with people conversing about the world and its intricacies or being the tech buff reading/browsing something interesting and the likes. Presently he is pursuing the same passion of observing and understanding in the form of Young India Fellowship at New Delhi.

APURVA MISRA- Leader(female) of the year Apurva Misra is a final year student of Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus. Conservative in thoughts but extrovert in action this girl can boast around knowing the maximum number of students on campus. An enthusiastic person with a passion for both technical and entreprenurial activities, she became a part of the disciplinary association and Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership unit. As a member of CEL she worked on various projects in her 3.5 yrs of stint on campus and also became the lead of Something Sunday and Mantra Awards. She also worked as a professional assistant for a course New Venture Creation, aimed to convert ideas to start-ups. She displayed excellent leadership skills as the secretary of Electrical and Electronics Association by organising & co-ordinating the year wide technical events. Participant in technical festivals and winner at IIT Shaastra and BITS Pilani's APOGEE, she truly is an all rounder. An avid sportsperson, she was a part of the volleyball and athletics team on campus. She also went on to become the captain of Volleyball girls team. Her hobbies include running, dancing and reading books. Her dream is to see a 100% literate India. Apurva got selected this year as Legislative Assistant of Member of Parliament Fellow.

ANKIT GUPTA- Innovator of the year Ankit Gupta, a Mathematics & Computer Science student at BITS, Pilani is an aspiring young entrepreneur with his head brimming with novel ideas.He is the co-founder of innovese, a web & software consultancy/development firm which has been recognized by press and media and listed as one of the top start ups in India by NEN and IIT Delhi E-Summit 2011. Innovese certainly holds a strong potential with over 650 websites across 80 countries and 10 of their products out in the market. Their latest and most innovative product yo!CAPTCHA- a web-based advertising platform, which replaces regular CAPTCHAs with a unique ads rendering platform has been creating a buzz in its ideation stage and holds a promising future in the market. Apart from Innovese, Ankit was appointed as the Head, Dept. of Publications and correspondence for BOSM 2010 and successfully achieved some unprecedented milestones.

BITS, Pilani-Goa Winners

Dhairya Sanghvi - Outstanding Leadership (Male) Dhairya is pursuing his B.E. (Hons.) Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Goa Campus. He is the current Head of The Dramatics Club of BITS, Pilani – K.K. Birla Goa Campus for the academic year 2010-11, Head of Purple Patch (The Department of Specials) for Spree 2011, Annual National Level Sports festival of Goa campus, Event Manager of National Level Go-Karting Championship held in Goa as part of Spree 2010. He has won numerous prizes for extra-curricular excellence (primarily dramatics, dance and literary events) in inter-collegiate and school events. He believes leadership is his forte and yearns to learn more about it. He admires leaders who take charge and are ready to face the consequent flak as they are the ones that are instrumental in churning out the next set of effective leaders from their very own team and flavours his own style with this. His key qualities are resilience under pressure, thirst for knowledge and meticulous attention to detail. He can read, write and speak 4 different languages. He dreams of opening his own theatre in the future to take forward his passion for dramatics. Books like ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’ have profoundly influenced his philosophy towards life and society. His hobbies include wildlife, cinema, cricket, reading and travelling.

Pooja Dave- Outstanding Leadership (Female) Pooja Dave is a final year B.E. (Hons.) Electrical and Electronics Engineering student currently pursuing her Practice School – II at Cypress Semiconductors, San Jose, California. Pursuing her interest in marketing, she is learning new methods and approaches to technical marketing in the heart of the silicon valley. Having spent a chunk of her BITSian life working for Marketing and Sponsorship for QUARK and TEDxBITSGoa (and towards the end, leading the bandwagon for the same), she finds the application of the same concepts in the industry very challenging and exciting. She lead the team of around 60 members effectively to raise substantial sponsorship critical for the events’ successes. Sports and health is also an area she puts particular focus. Pooja has represented BITS Goa and Ahmedabad (at some point) at the Women's Badminton Championships and lead the BITS Goa girls’ team to 2nd place in SPREE 2010. She plans to do her Masters in Management of Technology or an MBA. She enjoys classical and post-modern psychedelic music and was very active in the Music Society at BITS Goa.

Swetansu Mohapatra- Entrepreneur of the Year (Joint) Swetansu is a senior undergraduate pursuing M.Sc. (Hons.) Mathematics & B.E. (Hons.) Chemical Engineering at BITS, Pilani – Goa Campus. In August 2010, he started AlphaBeta Labs, a company based in product design and development in Automation & Analytics, whose first product FoodKhoj.com, an online portal for food order and delivery, was awarded the Top 30 Student Startups in India by the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). For his entrepreneurial spirit, Swetansu has been featured as "Student Rockstar” by leading youth portal Twenty19.com and "Successful Student Entrepreneur” by Business Goa & Planet Goa Magazines and MINT Newspaper. His motivation towards bringing social change won him the StartingBloc Fellowship and the NSEF Author of Change Award in 2010. His interest in entrepreneurship sparked off after attending the Laboratory for Entrepreneurial Motivation (LEM) Workshop by Prof. Sunil Handa, who later became his mentor. In BITS, Swetansu served as the Curator of TEDxBITSGoa Conference 2010 & Coordinator of Quark 2010 where he was instrumental in organizing guest lectures by Nobel Laureates and exhibitions by the likes of DRDO, CSIR & Indian Navy. He believes entrepreneurship is now a way of life for him and plans to build AlphaBeta Labs as a brand churning out innovative products in the automation and analytics industry with a focus, later, on the healthcare sector.

Hanu Prateek Kunduru - Entrepreneur of the Year (Joint) Hanu is a final year B.E. (Hons.) Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering student at the Goa Campus currently in the process of completing Practice School - II in his own company AlphaBeta Labs Pvt. Ltd. He has a deep interest in entrepreneurship and innovative business models and the idea of starting something new and working towards that direction is a major driving force for him. As a student he has been a part of many student organisations and involved with numerous activities on campus through all the year. Hanu has also been awarded the StartingBloc Fellowship for work in the areas of Social Innovation. He worked as the Chief Marketing Officer for the National Social Entrepreneurship Forum helping out with the organisation and the fund raising activities for the National Youth Confluence held in Bangalore in November 2010. He, recently, had the opportunity to be a delegate representing India at the "World Business Dialogue” held at Cologne, Germany. His interest in entrepreneurship began with participation in business plan competitions which was later fortified when he was part of the prestigious Summer Business Scholars Program at the University of Chicago: Booth School of Business. AlphaBeta Labs is a result of structuring his ideas into a concrete mechanism to deliver results. This, he has achieved, with likeminded partners. He envisages Foodkhoj.com, the flagship product as a common household name and a one-stop shop for all food-related information. He plans to diversify into portals for cab services, online groceries, bus routes, real time GPS tracking, etc.

Amitabh Mishra - Social Leadership Amitabh is pursuing his MSc. (Tech.) Information Systems at BITS, Pilani – K.K. Birla Goa Campus. He is founding member of NSEF-Goa and President of Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Goa where he drives a strong team of 50 members to be their own bosses. He is extremely interested in rural entrepreneurship and alternative banking. At CEL, he also leads the Rural Entrepreneurship Division where he is focusing on catalyzing social businesses in nearby slums by establishment of, primarily, women Self Help Groups. This, he believes will facilitate enterprise creation and improve livelihood of women in such urban slum pockets. Currently, he is working on establishing 2 SHGs with around 100 women in total. He hails from Bihar and, there, he is working with Madhubani Painting artists, a GI certified handicraft from North Bihar, trying to remove the cartel of middle men and develop the art with a competitive design subject to international markets. His nationwide travels discovering enterprises and a dense network with start-ups has given him a passion towards social businesses. With a deep interest in policy making and use of technology for impacting lives, he sees himself playing a major role in India’s administrative service at some point of time. He is a Kairos Global Fellow 2011, delegate to World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue 2011 , alumnus of Tata Jagriti Yatra and Urban Habitat Fellow 2011.

Chetan Bansal - Innovator Chetan is a third year Student at BITS Pilani Campus, pursuing a dual degree in BE(hons) Chemical Engineering and MSc(hons) Biological Sciences. At BITS, he has been a part of various administrative and student activities starting from his first year. He was the nucleus member of the Centre for Software development and the Department for Publicity. He also assisted the SWD in conducting various student activities such as Student Council elections, Hostel allotment, etc. and was a Professional Assistant for the RCED division during the first year. Currently, he is the Chairperson for ACM – BITS Goa Chapter and also a Tech Team leader at BITSAA Intl. He has been passionate about Computers & technology right from my childhood. He has also worked for numerous Startups and also had the pleasure to be selected for the prestigious Google Summer of Code program twice in his first year and the second year. Currently, he is doing a research internship at the Microsoft INRIA Research Center, Paris. He is interested in the latest gadgets, listening to music, reading books and travelling.

BITS, Pilani-Dubai Winners

Vidur Khurana - Outstanding Leadership (Male) Vidur is an avid machine enthusiast pursuing B.E.(Hons.) Mechanical Engineering at BITS, Pilani- Dubai. Founder of the BITS, Pilani- Dubai Baja Team XTREME ADDICTION and also the Chairman of the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) at BITS, Pilani- Dubai. Part of the ASME SDOB (Student District Operating Board) District J, Middle East and Africa; he has attended various leadership training and professional development conferences across U.S. and Middle East. Moreover, he has also been the host of the 2 major international student development and leadership conferences held at BITS, Pilani- Dubai. He has also graced success in a number of technical competitions held in UAE and India including BITS, Pilani Rajasthan and BITS, Pilani Goa Campus. His love for auto motives lead him to work as a project trainee in Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers Ltd. and have also given him experiences in CNC tooling in companies across Europe and US.

Archi Goyal - Outstanding Leadership (Female) Archi graduated from BITS Pilani-Dubai Campus in the year 2011 aftercompleting her B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science. Calm and confident by nature,she was popularly known to be the "Go to Girl”! Apart from beingan active member of the Cultural committee, she has been a part of the organizing committee of several events such as B’Quizzed and Jashn. She joined the student council in her first year as a class representative, became the General Secretary in her third year and graduated as the Head of Cultural Activities and a student member of the Disciplinary Committee. Currently she plans to work in India and later pursue higher studies in management. Her hobbies include music, reading ,movies and dramatics .

Praveen Bansal - Entrepreneur of the Year Praveen is pursuing his major in Electronics and Communication Engineering and is now in his final year. Gathering inspiration from fund raising drives he fuelled in college events he started up several small ventures on campus. His entrepreneurial spirit soon caused him to free lance with various media buying and advertising agencies. After clinching a 50% partnership deal with a leading national daily, he is now in the process of starting up his own campus newsletter which is envisioned to empower the youth of UAE. His hobbies include reading and playing guitar.

Rushda Anwar Shahid - Social Leadership Rushda is currently pursuing Semester VII of B.E. (Hons.) Biotechnology at BITS, Pilani - Dubai [BPD]. Born in India in 1990 Rushda has lived in Dubai for the past 20 years. After spending years amongst the multicultural society in Dubai she realized that any form of psychological help for suffering teens wasn't made available. This led her to form the support group called ‘A project of hope’ which helps such troubled youngsters. She hopes that someday problems such as depression addiction self injury and suicide will be discussed in families openly. Her hobbies include cooking and reading.

Aditya Narain - Innovator Aditya is a Computer Science Graduate from BITS, Pilani – Dubai (2007-2011 Batch) and has a penchant for developing innovative computer programs. He developed a course grading software for which he was awarded Special Prize at Technofest 2010 .This was further improvised utilizing the concept of Artificial Neural Network under the aegis of Prof(Dr) RK Mittal (Director, BITS, Pilani – Dubai). He has also engineered a unique Cloud Computing based software program which can be used to personalize emails. In view of his innovative projects he was invited to attend the Google Workshop held in Dubai in March 2011.Besides his interest in programming he is ardent about music, solving puzzles and playing chess.