Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, hosts its 16th and 17th convocation
1145 Students who passed out and currently employed in blue chip companies received the honours on the convocation day.
Chennai, April 27, 2022: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, hosted its 16th and 17th convocation for the 2020 and 2021 batch students at the Chennai Trade Centre on Wednesday. The chief guests for the occasio n. Mr. C P Gurnani, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Tech Mahindra delivered the graduation ad dress and Mr. Shyam Srinivasan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Bank, delivered the keynote address.
A total of 1145 students from 2020 and 2021 batches across two full-time and two executive programs includ ing PGPM, PGDM, PGXPM, and PGPM (FLEX) got their certificates this year.
From 2020 batch, a total of 599 students graduated and from 2021 batch a total of 546 students graduated. Ne arly 112 students from 2020 batch received gold medals and 92 students from 2021 batch received gold medals. Nine students each from 2020 and 2021 batch received cash awards and 13 students were recognised as Best Outgoing students.
Welcoming the students, Dr Suresh Ramanathan, Dean of Great Lakes Institute of Management thanked the fam ilies of the students for supporting the students through the toughest times in the history of our nation. Speakin g about the past two academic years he said, “We have placed 100% of our students and our faculty have tripple d their overall research productivity from 2020-2021 to 2021-2022, this is part of our long-term agenda which we wish to highlight. Our class of 2021 patiently endured hours of online classes and after coming to campus de alt with an unprecedented bio-bubble on campus for four months.
We faced these turbulent times, but through all that we shared many memorable events on campus. We learnt many big lessons in dealing with disruption. Amidst facing challenges, during the pandemic, it was clear that a status quo was not the answer and we needed to be innovative. Keeping our students engaged during pandemic, while they were still waiting to come to campu s was a priority for us and so we crafted a one-of-a-kind initiative called Term Zero, it brought in some of the top-most global faculty to address our students through zoom.”
Delivering the graduation address, C P Gurnani, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Tech Mahindra said, “You as a leader would play various roles, that of a coach, role model, you would have to become humble, but whenever in doubt, think of what your parents would do. In all the nice companies you work for, think about yourself as a leader. Would you not be working as a team? Would you not be challenged to innovate? Would you not be challenged to do with less? Would you not be challenged to create teams when you do not have the budg et? Where do you draw that lesson from? Not from your life journey alone, but from life journey of your parents. Parenting as a style of leadership, if we can adopt, will make us better managers, better entrepreneurs, better professionals and gain extreme ownership.” He also elaborated on the 4 P’s in life that is Purpose, Passion, Peop le and Performance.
Mr. Shyam Srinivasan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Bank in his key note address said, “One characteristic that defines a leader is to have grit, nothing substitutes grit and the ability to withstand any stress. Post pandemic we have understood that nothing is a straight line and no one knows how your career is go ing to shape up.”
Mr Srinivasan also spoke on the need to be a relentless genuine learner. “Learn, unlearn and re-learn. We thoug ht we were prepared for challenges. In our banks we have very well documented business continuity plans, but not one of us visualised a pandemic of this nature would affect us and we needed to continue offering to our cus tomers the seamless services. That is a skill you learn on job as you go on implementing and innovating, but what keeps us at the top is capability to keep learning.”
Mr. Mohan Lakhamraju, Chairman, Great Lakes Institute Of Management addressed the students and said it was the first convocation without the towering presence of Padma Shri Awardee Dr. Bala V Balachandran, founder o f Great Lakes Institute of Management.
This was the most anticipated event for the students of GLIM. Most of the students and faculty would be mee ting each other after the COVID -19 struck and classes went online. However, the virtual classrooms did not have an impact on the long-lasting bonds between the students and faculty as the convention centre was rev erberating with the energy of alumni who were reliving their campus memories.
About Great Lakes Institute of Management: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai founded in 2004 by Padma Shri Awardee Dr. Bala V Balachandran is one of the premier B-schools in India. Great Lakes has, within a short span of 17 years emerged as a top-ranked business school. Great Lakes has 50+ full time faculty and 150+ visiting faculty including over 25+ international faculty from top global schools like Yale, Kellogg, Stanford, and Harvard. Further collaborations with world’s leading institutions like the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Cornell University, University of Bordeaux, Babson, Skema School of Business, Frankfurt School of Ma nagement etc., have helped Great Lakes in globally benchmarking its programs.
Great Lakes, Chennai, was accredited by the Association of MBAs (AMBA), UK in 2014 and became the youngest B-school in India to receive this prestigious international accreditation. In 2015, Great Lakes, Chennai also recei ved international SAQS accreditation and in 2017, its two-year PGDM program was accredited by National Boa rd of Accreditation (NBA). For the years 2019 -2021, Great Lakes was ranked No.1 in India by Analytics India for its Analytics program. Great Lakes, Chennai was ranked 4th by Outlook India among top private MBA instituti ons, 9th by Business India and 15th by Business Today. It was also placed in Super League 2 category by Business Standard in the year 2021.
Led by exceptional academic faculty, steered by an outstanding advisory council, and buoyed by international collaborations, Great Lakes has been constantly innovating to stay ahead of the needs of our businesses and community. It is the first B-school in India to offer full time specialization in Analytics and first to introduce AI and Machine Learning specialization.
Great Lakes has a 30-acre LEED Platinum rated green campus in Chennai and a second campus in Delhi-NCR. In the year 2019, Great Lakes Gurgaon campus received the prestigious AMBA accreditation and was also ranked among the top 5 emerging business schools by the National HRD Network (NHRDN) for the year 2018-2019. Gr eat Lakes Gurgaon was also ranked 13th by Business World for its one-year program in the year 2019.
Great Lakes offers One Year full time MBA (PGPM) for experienced professionals, Two-year MBA (PGDM), Part Time Executive MBA for senior managers, and Weekend Executive MBA Program. Great Lakes alumni currently numbering 9800+, work at world renowned organizations both in India and overseas across 33 countries.
