It’s been 25 years since I entered IIIT-H and it is definitely the best thing that happened to me, says Vipul Kedia. The 1999 batch alum was recently felicitated with the IIIT-H Outstanding Service Award for his contribution in multiple roles in setting up the fledgling research Institute, and his prodigious work in establishing the Alumni Fund and the alumni community. The IIM-A graduate has notched up over 19 years of experience in Adtech and Consulting, at Affle and IBM.
Sometime in 1998, Vipul Kedia was so impressed by the Institute’s name that he felt it merited more exploration. Joining IIIT-H may have seemed like a round of Russian roulette at the time, but looking back, he considers it his biggest defining moment. “I always call IIIT-H my first startup because that is how it panned out. When we joined the Institute, it had no deemed university status, no buildings nor permanent faculty. There was just a vision that we had as students, a vision which we had to help make a reality”.
“Initially, we were identifying what was missing and taking the initiative to put it in place. So, if we wanted certain courses, or extra library hours or initiate some fun activities, we just did that”, observes Vipul. “We divided ourselves into Houses, planned inter-house activities, organized a 3-day festival with debates, cultural and sports programs”.
There was a place marker in the almanac for a students’ cultural festival and it struck him that they could put together a nice intercollegiate festival. That was the genesis of Felicity. “From concept to execution, over 45 days, Felicity was my first large scale undertaking, which was more of a journey of self-discovery into understanding our organizational strengths”, he explains. “As Prof. Jayanthi Sivaswamy wrote in an email – Felicity, in a true sense, will be the coming of age of the student community. It brought faculty and students together as an institute and helped us discover our own capabilities”.
When Vipul took on the mantle as coordinator of the placement committee for the two founding batches, there was no structured brief to go by. They were learning on the fly; whether it was visiting companies with a CD of student profiles or sitting overnight with a designer near Nampally railway station to create the first Institute Brochure. “When I look back, I’m amazed at how we were able to pull it off, because we were working at a time when there was no software available nor platforms like LinkedIn to create a shiny profile. Everything just kept happening on the go.”
The faculty understood that if certain credentials had to be created for the Institute, their students needed to get into good companies and good academic programs. “Our professors reached back to their own universities, talking personally to friends and professors in relevant fields globally and also building up the research culture in IIIT-H. I remember having conversations till midnight in the offices of Prof. Kamal Karlapalem, Prof. Sangal and Prof. Jayanthi Sivaswamy. That was a unique time when both faculty and students were equal stakeholders”, recalls Vipul who recently ended his stint as an Alumni Observer in the Governing Council.
“Since I was actively involved with everything on campus, when it came to building our resume, terms like secretary, student body representative, coordinator for Felicity or placement committee were roles that were retrofitted”, says Vipul with a laugh. “That was possibly the happiest time of my life because there was obviously a lot of recognition and a feeling of achievement when even small things were accomplished. It helped shape me as an individual and then led to me getting into all the 6 IIMs and pursuing my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. The momentum that picked up in IIIT-H carried over into IIMA, where I was one of the most active students.
The courage that IIIT-H had always given me, influenced my decision to join a startup named Affle in 2006” says Vipul, who is an Executive Director and Chief Data and Platforms Officer there. “Here I am after 18 years in that startup which is now a 3 billion-dollar company with 600 people across the globe. So that was the growth journey and a lot of it came because of IIIT-H, which really shaped me up as a person and taught me what actual leadership meant”.
While at IIMA, Vipul could see how the alumni gained from its vibrant alumni community and over the years has tried to do that for IIIT-H. “I have tried to remain in touch with a few active students of every batch so that they can always feel that connect and the strength of the alumni. Initially, our alumni community was still very young with just four batches that had graduated, and we were either pursuing further education or were in our early career. But we still collected almost 30-40 lakhs over two years to support a few needy students who could not pay their fees at IIIT-H. This led to a more formalized Alumni Fund where we created a sustainable model of loan disbursement and repayment, in lieu of scholarships, which was an idea given by Prof Rajeev Sangal. As a Member of the Executive Council, initially we considered an entrepreneurship incubation program and the Banyan intellectual initiative was conceptualized. Though it didn’t get off the ground, it was possibly the seed for the vibrant entrepreneurship centre that we have in CIE, led by Prof. Ramesh Loganathan.
“For the 20th year celebrations that were held in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Seattle and San Francisco, Meenakshi Viswanathan, Alumni Affairs head and I attended all the alumni meets”, remarks Vipul. “IIIT-H is like a second home for me and I will do things for the Institute, just as I would for my family.”.
Next post