3rd Annual Silicon Valley Event

March 16, 2002

The third annual reunion of the Silicon Valley chapter was held on March 16 2002 at the Santa Clara Marriott. The Silicon Valley chapter of the Alumni Association was started primarily due to the efforts of Jayan Ramankutty, Deven Verma, Roop Jain, Ramki Sankaranarayan and Rampalli. The first year such a reunion was organized (three years ago) there were about 50 people who gathered. It grew to about 160 last year. This year the Grand Ballroom of Santa Clara Marriott was filled to capacity with about 250 attendees. There was a strong participation from the more recent batches particularly the batch of 93.

The gathering is a representation of over 1000 BITS alumni who are in the San Francisco bay area. The numbers have increased considerably in the past few years and BITS alumni have been steadily distinguishing themselves in the valley in diverse roles as venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and senior management at leading hi-tech companies. Among the more prominent people at the gathering were Narpat Bhandari (CEO, Vasona Systems), Vivek Paul (CEO, Wipro ), Pankaj Patel (Senior VP Engg, Redback Networks), Deven Verma (Redwood Ventures), Jayan Ramankutty (Cypress) and Vivek Pendarkhar (MD, Cypress Semiconductor).

The event began with registration by the alumni and a mixer. People mingled with each other and found long lost friends. Infact, two alums of the 1965 batch met each other after 30 years even though they had been living in the valley for all those years! The event began with an opening address by Jayan who gave an account of the genesis of the organization and the efforts put in by various people over the last two years. A few talented attendees entertained the crowd with light music and mimicry. The mimicry brought peals of laughter by reminding people of the hilarious moments they had during their classroom days. This was followed by a short film “Pilani Days” which, consisted of a collage of film scenes interspersed with four BITSIANs reminiscing about their “Pilani days”.

The film, which lasted about 20 minutes kept people engrossed and thoroughly entertained. Considering the fact that only 6 people (including the cast) had produced this film it was obvious that a lot of hard work and creative input had gone into it. The final event before dinner was a game/BITS trivia quiz, which caused people to move across tables in an effort to find the right answers. For example, the game required a participating team to find the junior most BITSIANs and get his autograph. The winners were given BITS T-shirts. From the answers to the quiz questions, it was evident that the sweet memories of their college days could not easily be forgotten. Tables at which people were seated were adorned with cartoons that depicted scenes from Pilani. Dinner was followed by dancing, where BITSIANs of all ages danced with the energy more often see in college undergraduates. “BITS Pilani” decals were distributed and it wasn’t long before some of the more enthusiastic people adorned their car windshields with it.

The event was sponsored by Morgan Stanley (Platinum sponsors), Wipro Systems and Redback Networks (Gold Sponsors), Tata Elxsi (Silver Sponsor) and contributions from Pankaj Patel, Jayan Ramankutty and Vijay Parikh.