IIM Shillong held the third edition of the Business Leadership Summit (BLS), its flagship event across 2 days- 30th and 31st January 2021. The event witnessed industry stalwarts from all domains including, Consulting, Finance, Human Resources, Operations, Systems and Analytics, and Marketing, from across the country to address the students of IIM Shillong, this time in an online mode. The event carried forward the vision that a strong industry-academia interaction paves the way for building the leaders of tomorrow who can inspire society and build the future of our nation.
The theme of this year’s event is -"India: The leading emerging market and its Global Footprint". The summit began to enlighten how India can become a more active player in contributing goods and services and shaping the global development agenda itself.
Day 1 of the event kickstarted with Niveshak, the Finance club of IIM Shillong’s subtheme of “Build in India, Build for the World” with well-known industry leaders such as Sanjeev Bikhchindani, Amol Warange, Adil Zaidi & Alok Misra. This was followed by ConQuest, the Consulting and Strategy Club of IIM Shillong, which had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Sudip Datta, Partner PwC; Mr. Atrideb Basu, Director, CRIF India; Mr. Piyush Saxena, Vice-President, and Head-Hybrid Cloud Services, HCL Technologies; Mr. Rahul Gupta, Function Head, Corporate Development, Tech Mahindra in their panel discussion on the theme was “What business model innovation strategies should Indian businesses adopt to increase their global footprint in the future”. After a highly engaging session on how India and Indian businesses can bring innovation to the grassroots level and improve India’s global footprint, the day concluded with the next panel discussion by usHR, the HR club of IIM Shillong. The discussion took place on the topic- “Up-skilling India's workforce to thrive in the competitive Global Economy”. It threw light on the macro level scenario, unwritten competencies like growth mindset, tech-savvy during the hiring process, and how the government, corporates, and educational institutions need to work together to rethink skill ecosystems. It was led by Dr. Anil Kumar Misra, Mr. Chandrajit Pati, and Ms. Babita Basak.
The next day opened with esteemed panellists like Mr. Sandeep Baxla, Ms. Garima Jain, Mr. Vivek Sarbhai, and Ms. Kartik Shah, from the domain of Operations, led by Opera, the Operations Club of IIM Shillong. The stalwarts got together to discuss the theme: “The next evolution of supply chain”. The panellists discussed how the recent developments in the domain and how the industry is incorporating metrics to gauge the resilience of the supply chain to withstand any disruption. Following this was bITeSys, the System and Analytics club of IIM Shillong, which brought a panel including Gaurav Vatsa, Mythili Krishnan, Tony Thomas, and Dhruv Rastogi, who presented a fruitful discussion on the role of Data Analytics in transforming small and medium scale business in the emerging markets of India. The last panel discussion was held by Markathon, the Marketing club of IIM Shillong, wherein, industry leaders like Nishith Patel, Krithika Sriram, Piali Dasgupta, and Srihari Gopinath had a thought-provoking discussion on how digital transformation can form the stepping stone for India’s global dominance.
Both days ended with entertainment events organized for the students as the post-discussion celebration of the Business Leadership Summit. The events witness live performances by Mumbai-based alternate rock outfit- The Yellow Diary and the famous Indian composer, singer, lyricist, music director, and sound recordist- Gajendra Verma. The entire event not only enlightened the students in the various fields of Business but also successfully brought leisure and refreshment to the MBA students through the virtual medium.