IIT Roorkee announces Distinguished Alumnus Awards and Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards, 2019

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Roorkee: IIT Roorkee announced its Distinguished Alumnus Awards today. Each year the award is presented to alumni of IIT Roorkee (or its predecessor, the University of Roorkee) to recognize their outstanding contributions in their chosen careers.

Over the years, the students graduating from the institute have achieved excellence and stature in the industry, business, government, academic and research institutions, or as successful entrepreneurs.

IIT Roorkee recognizes its alumni who have distinguished themselves in their chosen field of work and made the institute proud. The Distinguished Alumnus Awards were instituted in 2005 and are awarded annually. Since the inception of the awards, 62 alumni have been selected for the award. This year, the awards have been bestowed on 9 distinguished alumni in recognition of their outstanding professional contributions, which include 3 young alumni below 40 years in the category of Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards (DYAA) which have been started from this year only.

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS AWARDEES OF 2019

A)    ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

Prof. Vishwani D Agrawal (1964 – B.E. Honours – Electronics & Communication Engineering) is James J. Danaher Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Auburn University, USA. He is the Edior-in-Chief of the Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications. He is well known for his contributions to the field of VLSI testing and low-power design.  Prof Agarwal received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993. For his innovative contributions to the field of electronic testing, Prof. Agrawal was awarded the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award of the IEEE Computer Society in 1998. For his contributions to VLSI Technology and Systems, he was awarded the Lifetime Contribution Medal of the Test Technology Technical Council of the IEEE Computer Society in 2012. Prof Agrawal is a Fellow of IEEE and ACM. For more information, please click http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~vagrawal/

Prof. Subhash Suri (1981 – B.E. – Electronics & Communication Engineering) is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Prof. Suri’s research work has received exceptional recognition from his peer group by being cited close to 20000 times. At UCSB, Prof. Suri directs the Applied Algorithms Lab and the Center for Geometric Computing with a mission to develop fundamental geometric and network algorithms of broad applicability. Building on his combinatorial auctions research, he has co-founded the e-sourcing company CombineNet whose software drives the procurement of goods and services of several Fortune 500 companies. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ACM and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For more information, please click https://cs.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/suri

B)    EXCELLENCE IN ENGINEERING INNOVATION

Mr. Rajiv Kumar (1990 – B.E. – Computer Science Engineering) is the Managing Director of Microsoft India Development Center (IDC). He is also the Corporate Vice President and member of the Senior Leadership in Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices (E+D) Group – which comprises of Office, Windows and Surface lines of business. His passion to build innovative products has earned him 15 technology patents. His team, known as E+D India, delivers a range of Microsoft Office productivity solutions for desktop, mobile and web. The product portfolio spans Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, OneNote, Outlook, Yammer, Groups, Exchange, Skype, etc. His product portfolio contributes to delivering close to 10 Billion USD worth of business Impact from India. Rajiv was instrumental in Microsoft’s successful entry into the Content Management Server space and catapulting SharePoint into a multi-billion-dollar product. When, the world was moving from the PC to being mobile-only. Rajiv led a think tank on a path of discovery to find what it meant to be productive on mobile. This group built seven potential mobile-only products, of which five were productized to completion. For more information, please click https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivk-ms/

C)    MANAGERIAL EXCELLENCE

Mr. Dinesh C. Paliwal (1979 – PG Diploma – Pulp & Paper Technology) is President and CEO of the US-based multinational company HARMAN. Since his joining HARMAN in 2007, it has evolved from a manufacturing-centered business to a software-focused technology company that is at the forefront of developing solutions at the convergence of connected technologies between the car, home, work and everywhere in between. Under his leadership, HARMAN acquired the global software services company Symphony Teleca. Further, the company acquired Red Bend to expand upon HARMAN’s ability to conduct Over-The-Air (OTA) updates in cars and smart devices. The addition of TowerSec further rounded out HARMAN’s automotive cyber security offering. These moves set HARMAN up for the ultimate road trip – to combine with one of the most innovative, profitable and admired companies in the world – Samsung. Thus, Mr. Paliwal led an acquisition through – an all-cash transaction for $8.8 billion. HARMAN is now an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics with its own CEO and Board of directors (similar to the Jaguar Land Rover model adopted by TATA). Prior to joining HARMAN, Mr. Paliwal spent 22 years with ABB Group, a $50 billion global energy and industrial leader, where he rose from a Control Engineer to the Group President and last held the dual role of President of ABB Group and Chairman/CEO of ABB North America. Most notably, he achieved profitable growth for the multi-billion North American operation following 18 years of losses. After becoming the youngest and the first Asian executive to join the ABB Group Management Board in 2001, he was tapped by the company’s Board to run the global automation division, representing more than half of ABB’s sales. He is a member of the CEO Business Roundtable in Washington DC and serves on the corporate advisory boards of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Wilson Center (a policy think tank), and the Advisory Council of Lincoln Center. Previously, he served as Chairman of the U.S. National Foreign Trade Council and on the boards of the US China Business Council. For more information, please click https://www.harman.com/leadership.

Mr. Sushil Chandra (1977 – B.E. – Civil Engineering) is Election Commissioner of India. He is a 1980 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer. He has a rich and varied experience in various areas of taxation including litigation, compliance management and International Taxation. He signed various treaties with other countries for automatic exchange of information between the countries. His forte has been in the field of Investigation where he spent considerable time as Director of Investigation and Director General of Investigation followed by a stint as Member (Investigation), CBDT. At the time of demonetisation, he was both member (investigation) and Chairman CBDT. The taxes collected sky-rocketed under his supervision. He has been at the forefront of the government’s attempts to unearth black money. Under his stewardship the Income Tax Department made extensive use of data mining and analytics for carrying out investigations into dubious transactions and tax evasion matters in a non-intrusive manner through ‘Operation Clean Money’. An avid proponent of the use of technology, Mr. Chandra has also taken the lead in rolling out the e-assessment process where scrutiny assessments are being made without any physical interface between the tax payer and the tax department. Having held several important posts in the Income-Tax Department, he was appointed to the top most post of Chairman Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in 2016. Prior to his superannuation in 2017, the Government extended his tenure as Chairman CBDT by one year. Subsequently, his exceptional performance led to another one-year extension of his tenure as Chairman CBDT.  However, before he could complete his second one-year extension, he was elevated to the constitutional position of Election Commissioner of India. Mr. Chandra is only the second IRS officer who has achieved the distinction of being appointed Election Commissioner of India. For more information, please click https://eci.gov.in/honble-commission/shri-sushil-chandra-r10/.

D)   ENTREPRENEURIAL EXCELLENCE

Mr. Mohit Saxena (1997 – B.E. – Metallurgical & Materials Engineering) has been a co-founder and CTO of InMobi – a global Technology powerhouse and India’s first unicorn i.e. a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. InMobi offers mobile advertising solutions for leading brands, developers, and publishers, reaching out to over 1.5 billion unique mobile devices and is used by over 20,000 global advertisers. InMobi was conceptualized and born in India in 2007 against all odds. Venture Capital was hard to come by and investors frowned on internet companies from India. InMobi was founded in this environment because its founders had foresight and the passion to be able to disrupt an industry. He built and scaled one of the most awesome technology team that made Inmobi a force to reckon with at the global level. He articulated and executed the vision for teams responsible for managing all aspects of technology (Engineering, Operation and Data) thereby driving innovation at InMobi. Mr. Saxena is a serial Entrepreneur who later started a luxury vacation market place Rizort. For more information, please click https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohitsaxena/.

DISTINGUISHED YOUNG ALUMNUS AWARDEES OF 2019

Mr. Ketan Kapoor (2001 – B.Tech. – Industrial Engineering) is an entrepreneur who built and sold the startup Mettl to the US based company Mercer which operates in over 130 countries. The acquisition closed at approximately Rs 300 crore, which was about seven times that Mettl had raised in equity funding. As the co-founder and CEO Ketan led Mettl to make it India’s largest corporate skill assessment company with a vision to become the largest in the world. Before co-founding Mettl, Ketan led the marketing division at Isango and helped in turning the start-up into one of the world’s premier sellers of tours, trips & activities. Ketan was also instrumental in setting up the eco-system for India’s first mobile payment & transaction platform at Indepay networks. Mr. Kapoor is a technopreneur who has spent a significant part of his professional life with start-ups, providing him with the necessary vision and acumen to build a company from ground up. For more information, please click https://www.linkedin.com/in/ketankapoor/?originalSubdomain=in.

Mr. Harshil Mathur (2013 – B.Tech. – Mechanical Engineering) is CEO and co-founder of Razorpay – a leading online payment service provider company which allows online businesses to accept, process and disburse digital payments through several payment modes like debit cards, credit cards, net banking, UPI and prepaid digital wallets. Razorpay payment solutions can be integrated by both web and mobile applications. Razorpay is the second Indian company to be a part of Silicon Valley’s largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator. Acoording to media reports, Razorpay today has a valuation of $75M which at its startup stage was only $120K. Currently Razorpay is catering to 3,50,000 merchants and processing transactions to the tune of $5 billion annually. Razorpay is expected to raise $100mn to aid the recently launched business arm Razorpay 2.0. He has received several honors including Fortune India 40 Under 40 List (2019), Entrepreneur 35 Under 35 (2018), and Forbes 30 Under 30 (2017). For more information, please click https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshilmathur/?originalSubdomain=in.

Mr. Shashank Kumar (2012 – B.Tech. – Computer Science Engineering) is CTO and co-founder of Razorpay – a leading online payment service provider company which allows online businesses to accept, process and disburse digital payments through several payment modes like debit cards, credit cards, net banking, UPI and prepaid digital wallets. Razorpay payment solutions can be integrated by both web and mobile applications. Razorpay is the second Indian company to be a part of Silicon Valley’s largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator. Acoording to media reports, Razorpay today has a valuation of $75M which at its startup stage was only $120K. Currently Razorpay is catering to 3,50,000 merchants and processing transactions to the tune of $5 billion annually. Razorpay is expected to raise $100mn to aid the recently launched business arm Razorpay 2.0. He has received honors, e.g., Fortune India 40 Under 40 List (2019), Entrepreneur 35 Under 35 (2018), and Forbes 30 Under 30 (2017). For more information, please click https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumarshashank/?originalSubdomain=in

The Director of IIT Roorkee, Prof Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi, addressed the media along with Prof Manoranjan Parida, Deputy Director, and Prof BR Gurjar, Dean of Resources and Alumni Affairs (DORA).

The Director Prof Chaturvedi said “The alumni of the institute have been excelling in various fields as academics, business leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators and as outstanding citizens of the world. Their achievements make us proud. This award is our token of appreciation for their success. We also hope to connect with more alumni through such initiatives.”

Distinguished Alumnus Awards (DAA) and Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards (DYAA) of IIT Roorkee

Nominations for the award are invited from all over the world. Under DAA, at most two awards in each category i.e. a maximum of 10 awards can be given each year. Whereas, up to five DYAAs can be given.  The nominations are processed by the office of the Dean of Resources and Alumini Affairs. The winners are selected by a committee chaired by the Director, and comprising of the Dean of Resources and Alumini Affairs, two persons of eminence (nominated by the Board of Governors) and one Institute Chair Professor (nominated by the Director).

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