The suspense over whether Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will interact with students of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad like Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav did recently during his much publicised visit has finally been broken.
IIM-A has announced that along with delivering a lecture series on the turnaround of Bihar, Kumar will also preside over the closing ceremony of Confluence-2006, the institute's international business summit.
The theme for Confluence this year is 'The India Phemomenon' and will involve a series of lectures, management games and other activities around four themes - managing nations, new horizons, advantage India and genesis.
The event, especially the management games, have generated a buzz in the international circles.
"We have extended invitations to 60 domestic schools and expect approximately 360 sponsored participants alone. In addition, we expect around 50 people from other colleges to visit Confluence and listen to the speakers. We have also received a very enthusiastic response from international schools. We have four new international schools participating for the first time in Confluence -- Sungkyunkwan University (Korea), NUS (Singapore), Oxford University (UK) and Birmingham Business School (UK) which makes it a total of 55 participants from international schools, " said Arjun Balan, Secretary, Confluence.
Mousetrap, Confluence's online strategy game, where participants use their business acumen to compete with the best B-schools' students all over the world, has gone international with a total prize money of $3,400.
Over 550 teams competed with 52 international teams amongst them in the preliminaries and the 45 top teams, including 10 international teams, have received sponsored travel and accommodation at IIM-A.
Last year, speakers for Confluence comprised Mukesh Ambani, Kumarmangalam Birla, Deepak Parekh, Vijay Mallya, Sunil Mittal, J J Irani among others.
This year, speakers include Naina Lal Kidwai, CEO, HSBC India, Douglas Baillie, CEO, Hindustan Lever Ltd, Kishore Biyani, CEO, Future Group and MD, Pantaloon Retail India, Sudha Murthy, Chairperson & Trustee, Infosys Foundation, R Seshasayee, President, Confederation of Indian Industry, Ronnie Screwvala, CEO, United Television, Shekhar Gupta, Group CEO, The Indian Express Group and Subir Raha, Former Chairman & MD, ONGC among others.
Confluence's advisory committee, which usually comprises leading business and industry leaders in India, will be mentored by Deepak Parekh, executive chairman, HDFC Ltd, with Deepak Satwalekar, MD & CEO, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co Ltd, as its chairman.
Ajay Piramal, chairman, Nicholas Piramal India, Aroon Purie, chairman, The India Today Group & TV Today Network Ltd, B H Dholakia, director, IIM-A, J J Irani, director, Tata Sons, Jerry Rao, CEO, Mphasis and others will be members of the committee.
