Arun Jain at the second convocation of the Indian Institute of Information Technology-Ranchi (IIIT-Ranchi)

Address by Mr Arun Jain:

Hon’ble President of India Smt Droupadi Murmu, Hon’ble Governor of Jharkhand Thiru CP Radhakrishnan, Hon’ble Chief Minister Jharkhand Shri Hemant Soren, distinguished guest member of Board of Governor of IIIT-Ranchi, Director Dr Vishnu Priye, Registrar Dr Mandal, members of the faculty, staff, parents, and my dear graduating students.

Good evening to all. I'm privileged to welcome on all of your behalf, Hon’ble President of India Smt Droupadi Murmu as a chief guest. Ma'am, we are inspired by your presence amongst us in the evening.

Thank you very much for kindly accepting our invitation and embracing the occasion. This institution was inaugurated when you were Governor of Jharkhand in 2016. We were therefore delighted to share the progress since then.?I'm also happy to welcome the Hon’ble Governor of Jharkhand Thiru CP Radhakrishnan, and Hon’ble Chief Minister of Jharkhand Shri Hemant Soren who has currently consented to be amongst us in our celebration.

This is the second convocation for the institution of the 21st century. I am defining the 21st century, because it started in 2016, which is a new era of information technology where we are looking at the new age of technology. In that age of technology, we are looking at the US where there are some institutions which started in the 16th century or 17th century, which was Harvard 1636, and the new age institutions started in Stanford, which are in 1992. The nature of this institution, Harvard on one side, is focused on economic, political, and economic development of it.

While the new age technologies, which is coming from Silicon Valley, Stanford has created the impetus for the growth of Silicon Valley. Today's Silicon Valley four companies' market cap may be equivalent to India's GDP. When I was examining that, it's about the thinking process that Silicon Valley has.

They look at the opportunity differently, and that is an inspiration running behind this institution, that this institution has an opportunity to change the way education in information technology is conducted where Professor Vishnu Priya has looked at it, the institution is different. We look at the institution from Design Thinking first. Design the thinking of the students who are thinking holistically, who are not thinking itemised specifically, but holistically to solve the problem, solve the problem of the particular technology, solving the problem of a particular company, and then solving the problem at the state and solving the problem of the nation.

And this is possible through design thinking, followed by applying digital, followed by data, for the development. So there are four Ds over here, design, digital, data and development. All four are integrated and connected, and that's an opportunity, I see you, the young batch of students who are coming in, how you would like to keep the different thinking process when you join the industry and join wherever the jobs you are going to have it. You are going to set up the alumni of the future. And this alumni, every powerful institution is the responsibility of alumni to inspire young students for this institute.

In this, I'm completing 40 years when I passed out when I was sitting on the other side of the table. In 1983, I graduated from the Delhi College of Engineering when I got graduated. So it's exactly my 40th year, in my journey which is encompassing an entrepreneurship journey of mine where I decided not to go to the US, but set up a software company way back 40 years back in India when the software industry was not existing.

And then we set up three companies after that, Nucleus, Polaris, and Intellect. The difference in each of the companies is that we focused on intellectual property. We are saying that today India is doing a lot of services business. We are doing cost arbitrage business. The students of this college should participate in creating intellectual property, which lasts for the next 30 to 50 years.

And that intellectual property, what I'm looking at, is the faculty over here is they have a spark in their eyes, a commitment to them, and a hunger to create something new technologies for the world. It may be a small institution, in a smaller part of the country, maybe not being so much known. It's advantageous for us.

If it is not too much known, we can do the way we want to run the business the way we want to educate ourselves in this institution. In this place, when 1980, I visited Silicon Valley, it was all barren. It was hardly anything there. There were only two to three companies in 1980, Hewlett-Packard was the only company at that time, which was worth the name in 1980.

By 2010, the state has transformed. California has transformed with the state. My request to all the students is to build aspiration, build imagination of what Jharkhand Valley could be, what Ranchi Valley could be. Ranchi is a valley itself. So that way Silicon Valley is there. Mr Secretary, Jharkhand is a valley, and Ranchi is a Valley. Hon’ble Chief Minister, if we brand ourselves as a Ranchi Valley and Ranchi Valley with a technologist from this kind of institution and you have multiple institutions, IIM and other institutions are there, if we come together and create a brand of a Ranchi Valley, which where the best quality education is conducted and that education is used for holistic and collective development, I'm using the two words, holistic and collective development.

Holistic means all the equity in the society, which is holistic in nature and collective, where multiple bodies should participate not a few companies should come in. There should be a system of innovative culture among farmer producer organisations among SHG, among the startup ecosystem, and encourage you to set up a startup ecosystem where you become a role model for young students coming over there and create the role modelling behaviour with them.?Maybe, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe next five years or 10 years, I would request you to come back and contribute to building Jharkhand as a Ranchi Valley.

At this point in time, I would like to also suggest that in design thinking, we call it Imagine your future. Imagine your future 20 years from now. Imagine you are in 2043 and you are sitting as a manager, as a vice president, as a CEO of the company, or an IAS officer, or whatever the job you are, there you are in a senior position.

At that point in time, you'll be 40 years old. You'll have a hunger, you have a commitment. Imagine what you'll be doing, what you'll be contributing. Put it on a sheet of paper, take out your diary, put a dream on your sheet of paper, or take a diary I would suggest, and that diary will become your formal diary. Diary on which your convocation happened, sign that diary and write down that dream of 2043, 20 years from now. And then you start building the backcasting. There's forecasting, I call it backcasting. You start backcasting from 2043 to 2038 to 2033 to 2028, every five years. You do the milestones on that backcasting model, and you start designing your future. Design Thinking to be applied for designing your future, designing the community, designing the nation.

And I think that's a humble request I have from you. In the end, I want to congratulate you again on the first major milestone of your professional life. I would like you to spend some time in the next few weeks to reflect on designing your future.

Best of luck.?Best wishes.

Thank you.