ETYL B-School Edition 2015: These young leaders are a diverse lot
24 November, 2015 | The Economic Times
Share12 of 22 from tier-II towns; ten women too make it to final
The Economic Times
24 November 2015
Twelve of the 22 candidates who made it to The Economic Times Young Leaders B-school Edition 2015, from almost 13,000 aspirants, are from tier-II towns. Ten in the final list are women. This should come as good news to India Inc which has been on an overdrive to ramp up both gender and social diversity among staff.
“The gender and social diversity were amazing, and the passion and talent that candidates demonstrated was incredible,” said Amit Agarwal, vice-president and country manager, Amazon India. Agarwal was one of the 10 leading India Inc chief executives who interviewed a shortlist of 46 candidates before arriving at the final list of 22.
The ET Young Leaders B-school edition is India's largest such talent hunt of final-year students with leadership potential. Of the initial 13,000 aspirants who went through three rounds of intense tests of aptitude, competency and case studies, only 46 came through to be interviewed by the panel of 10 CEOs. The Aditya Birla Group is the presenting sponsor of the programme.
Twenty six of 46 candidates in the last stage were from smaller towns such as Chandigarh, Durgapur, Ganjam, Haridwar, Panchkula, Sangli, Vadodra, Coimbatore, Bhandara, Gorakhpur, Korba, Jabalpur, Patna, Pune, Udaipur, Thodupuzha, Secunderabad, etc. Nineteen were women.
“There was such diversity in the background, from their socio-economic background, from the kind of experiences they've had, also from what they've done before starting B-school,” Rekha M Menon, chairman, Accenture in India, and part of the 10-member CEO panel, said.
“I liked the diversity in candidates - not just gender diversity, but also social diversity. I'm see ing a great number of people coming from big towns in India but also small towns - people coming from all sorts of backgrounds.And people who have experience in life-changing adversity,” said Sanjay Rishi, president, American Express, South Asia.
Other CEOs on the panel included Dev Bhattacharya, business head, group corporate strategy, solar power &e-commerce, Aditya Birla Group; Saugata Gupta, managing director &CEO, Marico; Dilip Gaur, deputy managing director, UltraTech; Vivek Gambhir, managing director, Godrej Consumer Products; Pranab Barua, business director - retail &apparel, Aditya Birla Group; Sanjay Rishi, president, American Express, South Asia; Satish Pai, deputy managing director, Hindalco Industries; Ajay Srinivasan, director financial services, Aditya Birla Group.
The 22 students who made it to the ET Young Leaders B-School Edition 2015 list got pre-placement interviews (PPI) from the Aditya Birla Group for their leadership programme.
Talent loves companies with startup DNA
Minutes after a panel of 10 CEOs interviewed 46 aspirants to pick the final list of The Economic Times Young Leaders B-School Edition 2015, they came together for a discussion on how companies can engage better with B-schools. The discussion was moderated by Sandeep Gurumurthi, executive editor, ET Now.
