Annual Corporate confluence Lakshya 2009 by NITIE Mumbai

National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai, the epitome of Industrial Engineering in India, hosted the 10th edition of India's largest corporate confluence Lakshya, from 23rd to 25th October. The event was graced with the presence of great visionaries and entrepreneurs. Lakshya is an annual fest organized by the students of the flagship program Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering (PGDIE) focusing on events and contests based on real-life projects, case studies, and strategies to hone the business/managerial skills of students. Every year the greatest stalwarts of the industry are honored with the Lakshya Business Visionary Awards. This time, the awardees were Mr. A. M. Naik, Chairman & Managing Director, L&T, Dr. Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman-Cognizant Technology Solutions and Mr. Venugopal N. Dhoot, Chairman & Managing Director- Videocon Group. Empresario is an initiative to promote entrepreneurial development. Under the aegis of Empresario, this year Mr. Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Co Founder and CEO, Naukri.com was felicitated with the Best Start – up of the Year award and Mr. Gracias Saldanha, Founder and Chairman, Glenmark was honored with the Most Inspiring Entrepreneur of the Year award.

"In short Lakshya embodies the watersheds of the past, enforcing in present to carve our dreams of future to reach the zenith of excellence", said Dr. Subhash D. Awale, Director NITIE.

During the course of the three days of the corporate magnum opus, elite corporate contested in the On the Job Achiever's Contest. This event provides a platform for Industry-Industry-Institute interaction and benefits the participants from industry, academia and students. It is a one of its kind event where industry honchos present their projects to eminent jury members comprising of senior executive experts from various areas in the industry. This event saw NITIE campus transform into a battlefield with industry hot-shots competing for the coveted Lakshya Best Project Award. The participants were companies like Bajaj Auto, Bosch, Cadbury, Cummins, ICICI Bank, HP, HPCL, J&J Medical, L&T, Maruti Suzuki, M&M, Patni, RR Donnelly, Tata Motors, Titan, which competed in four modules of management, namely Supply Chain Management, General and HR Management, Systems and IT Management and Operations Management. The Jury comprised of Heads of various verticals of their respective companies like Dell, E&Y, Godrej, J&J Medical, L'Oréal, Reliance Infra, Stanton Chase, Volkswagen, and many more. This year's Best Project was awarded to Maruti Suzuki for their project in the Operations Management module.

Empresario saw budding student entrepreneurs compete in various interesting contests like the Business Plan Contest for budding entrepreneurs from every walk of society, Navkriti for start up companies and Elevator Pitch in which the idea has to be intelligently presented in just 2 minutes. The organizers even lined up venture capitalist firms and funding bodies to award winners with business accelerator program and seed capital funding of up to whopping Rs 5 crores. The participants comprised of students from ISB Hyderabad, IIMs, IITs, IIFT Delhi, FMS Delhi and many others. Corporate participation comprised of participants from Aramex, TCS, Zensar and many more.

Lakshwiz and Samadhan, the online quizzing events for students of various management and engineering colleges respectively, had participation from IIMs, IITs, NITs and many more with winners from IIFT Delhi, BITS Pilani, SRKNEC Nagpur and others.

Sparsha the CSR initiative by Lakshya, in association with Muskaan Trust (an NGO initiative by NITIE Alumni) comprised of a NGO project contest, followed by a panel discussion which was attended by senior representatives from both NGOs and Corporate, on the theme "Bridging gap between NGOs and Corporates via focus on Sustainability, Credibility and Governance". There was major brainstorming which brought out the possibilities of Corporate CSR and NGOs bringing a positive change in the society.

Prof. Ashok K. Pundir, who is also the Dean Placements at NITIE Mumbai, has been associated with Lakshya since its inception. "Every year Lakshya unveils the parameters of change management taking place at all levels in the dynamic scenarios of the industry and brings the essence of the same on the forefronts of learning, widening its spectrum by inviting international participation, showing that this event has been reinventing itself over the years.", he said. NITIE admits students for its unique flagship program through the GATE examination score.

Corporate giants like Atos Origin, Dhanush Infotech, GMR, Godrej, SBI, Mahindra and Mahindra, ONGC, Pepsi Co, Safexpress, SIDBI, Stanton Chase and Subros were the major sponsors of the event. The major media partners were The Financial Express, CNBC TV18, Big 92.7 FM, Outlook Business, Entrepreneur, India Infoline.com