12th Foundation Day celebration of Navrachana University

"It was Information Technology that saved the world during the pandemic. Instead of voluminous data files on paper, we had online dashboards for COVID updates to help take the right decisions quickly and effectively, asserted Harish Mehta, Founding Member and first elected Chairman of NASSCOM. He was speaking from Mumbai at the virtual celebrations of the 12th Foundation Day of Navrachana University today, where he was Chief Guest.

The Guest of Honour was California-based Dr. Krishna Sudhir, cardiologist and consulting professor at Stanford University, and Vice President at Abbott Vascular. Dr. Sudhir, emphasised on the need for Academia, Industry and Capital to come together to think out-of-the-box and solve the problems facing the world today.

Start-ups by bright young people are the way forward as has already been demonstrated by so many in the Silicon Valley – a place that has proved that tolerating failure and learning from it, collective creativity with diverse thinking and employee ownership via stock options are the mantra for fast-growing businesses as against the stodgy conservatism of traditional work places. Dr Sudhir's own work on stents has been path-breaking.

Both speakers stressed on meritocracy as the only gauge for individual growth and that the IT industry is one of the few merit-based ones acknowledging and rewarding only talent and skill in the field. This industry has grown 30 times in the last 30 years, giving fabulous opportunities to women IT engineers. Harish Mehta talked in detail about its prospects to generate employment along with statistical highlights on employment ratio in the industry, saying "It will quickly dominate all aspects of society with Health-tech, Space-tech, Agri-tech and Edu-tech."

Tejal Amin, Chairperson, Navrachana Education Society, and Dr. Nilay Yajnik, Provost, Navrachana University also spoke on the occasion. A virtual exhibition of projects undertaken under the KHOJ program initiative of the University was inaugurated. KHOJ is a University-Community Connect program that was implemented in the current academic year between the University with the active participation of its students and the Aatapi Seva Foundation.