
SPJIMR holds Annual Convocation 2025 with HUL's Nitin Paranjpe as Chief Guest
PRNewswire
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], May 22: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, one of India's leading business schools, hosted its Annual Convocation 2025 at its Mumbai campus on Saturday, 17 May. The event celebrated the achievements of over 800 graduating participants from across the Institute's full-time and modular postgraduate programmes, including two (2) Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) scholars.
The Convocation was graced by Nitin Paranjpe, Non-Executive Chairman of Hindustan Unilever, as Chief Guest. Also, present were Mr. Deepak Parekh, Chair of SPJIMR's Governing Council; Dr. Varun Nagaraj, Dean, SPJIMR; faculty and staff; and family members of the graduating participants.
Delivering the Convocation Address, Nitin Paranjpe drew upon his decades of global business experience to urge the graduating cohort to lead with purpose, resilience, and a commitment to continuous growth. Speaking of India's bold aspiration to become a Viksit Bharat by 2047, he highlighted the need for a new kind of leadership--one that is ethical, compassionate, and driven by the common good.
Paranjpe shared three powerful life lessons drawn from his personal and professional journey: "There's no such thing as a good job or a bad one -- it's the mindset you bring that shapes your experience. The real joy, and the foundation for excellence, lies in loving what you do. Don't chase being the best in the world -- strive to be the best version of yourself. Continuous self-improvement is your right, your responsibility, and your greatest opportunity. Purpose is that inner force that fuels your energy and passion. When you find what truly drives you, hold on to it -- it's the most precious gift you'll ever have."
In his address, Dean Dr. Varun Nagaraj shared a candid reflection on the challenges graduates face in an uncertain world--geopolitical tensionsand the dual promise and peril of AI. He urged them to enter this complex landscape with confidence, guided by SPJIMR's mission of value-based growth and wise innovation.
He reaffirmed SPJIMR's commitment to nurturing leaders who combine knowledge with empathyand impact with purpose: "Tomorrow you will be a different and better person than today. Embrace a growth mindset--remember, you are a work in progress, not a finished product. The world offers no ready-made answers; solutions come only through hard work and wise innovation."
Sixteen (16) top achievers across programmes were presented with Scholastic Medals by Chief Guest Mr. Nitin Paranjape, and 50 recipients from the Dean's Honour List received their commendation certificates from the Dean.
Diplomas were conferred across the Institute's full-time and modular programmes, including the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGPM), PGDM (Business Management), Post Graduate Executive Management Programme (PGEMP), Post Graduate Programme in Development Management (PGPDM), Post Graduate Programme in General Management (PGPGM), and Post Graduate Programme in Marketing & Business Management (PGPMBM).
The Convocation ceremony concluded with the traditional hat throw, celebrating the graduates' journey and the beginning of their next chapter as responsible, value-based leaders.
About SPJIMR
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) is a leading postgraduate management institute, recognised by the Financial Times MiM Global Rankings as India's #1 business school, by Business Today as one of the country's top five business schools, and by the Positive Impact Rating as one of the top five business schools worldwide for societal impact. Known for its innovative and socially conscious approach to management education, research, and community engagement, SPJIMR aims to influence managerial practice and promote the value-based growth of its students, alumni, organisations and their leaders, and society. SPJIMR holds the international 'triple crown' of accreditations from EQUIS, AACSB, and AMBA.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Time of India
36 minutes ago
- Time of India
Google Deepmind CEO says global AI cooperation 'difficult'
Artificial intelligence pioneer and head of Google Deepmind's CEO Demis Hassabis on Monday said that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve "in today's geopolitical context".At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological London's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said. At Paris's AI summit in February, 58 countries -- including China, France, India, the European Union and the African Union Commission -- called for enhanced coordination on AI governance . But the US warned against "excessive regulation", with US Vice President JD Vance saying it could "kill a transformative sector". Alongside the US, the UK refused to sign the summit's appeal for an "open", "inclusive" and "ethical" AI. Hassabis on Monday advocated for the implementation of "smart, adaptable regulation" because "it needs to kind of adapt to where the technology ends up going and what the problems end up being".


Time of India
36 minutes ago
- Time of India
AI 'vibe coding' startups burst onto scene with sky-high valuations
By Anna Tong, Krystal Hu NEW YORK: Two years after the launch of ChatGPT, return on investment in generative AI has been elusive, but one area stands out: software development. So-called code generation or "code-gen" startups are commanding sky-high valuations as corporate boardrooms look to use AI to aid, and sometimes to replace, expensive human software engineers. Cursor , a code generation startup based in San Francisco that can suggest and complete lines of code and write whole sections of code autonomously, raised $900 million at a $10 billion valuation in May from a who's who list of tech investors, including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. Windsurf , a Mountain View-based startup behind the popular AI coding tool Codeium, attracted the attention of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is now in talks to acquire the company for $3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Its tool is known for translating plain English commands into code, sometimes called "vibe coding," which allows people with no knowledge of computer languages to write software. OpenAI and Windsurf declined to comment on the acquisition. "AI has automated all the repetitive, tedious work," said Scott Wu, CEO of code gen startup Cognition. "The software engineer's role has already changed dramatically. It's not about memorizing esoteric syntax anymore." Founders of code-gen startups and their investors believe they are in a land grab situation, with a shrinking window to gain a critical mass of users and establish their AI coding tool as the industry standard. But because most are built on AI foundation models developed elsewhere, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek, their costs per query are also growing, and none are yet profitable. They're also at risk of being disrupted by Google , Microsoft and OpenAI, which all announced new code-gen products in May, and Anthropic is also working on one as well, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The rapid growth of these startups is coming despite competing on big tech's home turf. Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, launched in 2021 and considered code-gen's dominant player, grew to over $500 million in revenue last year, according to a source familiar with the matter. Microsoft declined to comment on GitHub Copilot's revenue. On Microsoft's earnings call in April, the company said the product has over 15 million users. LEARN TO CODE? As AI revolutionizes the industry, many jobs - particularly entry-level coding positions that are more basic and involve repetition - may be eliminated. Signalfire, a VC firm that tracks tech hiring, found that new hires with less than a year of experience fell 24% in 2024, a drop it attributes to tasks once assigned to entry-level software engineers are now being fulfilled in part with AI. Google's CEO also said in April that "well over 30%" of Google's code is now AI-generated, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last year the company had saved "the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years" by using AI. Google and Amazon declined to comment. In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a conference that approximately 20 to 30% of their code is now AI-generated. The same month, the company announced layoffs of 6,000 workers globally, with over 40% of those being software developers in Microsoft's home state, Washington. "We're focused on creating AI that empowers developers to be more productive, creative, and save time," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "This means some roles will change with the revolution of AI, but human intelligence remains at the center of the software development life cycle." MOUNTING LOSSES Some "vibe-coding" platforms already boast substantial annualized revenues. Cursor, with just 60 employees, went from zero to $100 million in recurring revenue by January 2025, less than two years since its launch. Windsurf, founded in 2021, launched its code generation product in November 2024 and is already bringing in $50 million in annualized revenue, according to a source familiar with the company. But both startups operate with negative gross margins, meaning they spend more than they make, according to four investor sources familiar with their operations. "The prices people are paying for coding assistants are going to get more expensive," Quinn Slack, CEO at coding startup Sourcegraph , told Reuters. To make the higher cost an easier pill to swallow for customers, Sourcegraph is now offering a drop-down menu to let users choose which models they want to work with, from open source models such as DeepSeek to the most advanced reasoning models from Anthropic and OpenAI so they can opt for cheaper models for basic questions. Both Cursor and Windsurf are led by recent MIT graduates in their twenties, and exemplify the gold rush era of the AI startup scene. "I haven't seen people working this hard since the first Internet boom," said Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor. What's less clear is whether the dozen or so code-gen companies will be able to hang on to their customers as big tech moves in. "In many cases, it's less about who's got the best technology -- it's about who is going to make the best use of that technology, and who's going to be able to sell their products better than others," said Scott Raney, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, whose firm invested in Sourcegraph and Poolside, a software development startup that's building its own AI foundation model. CUSTOM AI MODELS Most of the AI coding startups currently rely on the Claude AI model from Anthropic, which crossed $3 billion in annualized revenue in May in part due to fees paid by code-gen companies. But some startups are attempting to build their own models. In May, Windsurf announced its first in-house AI models that are optimized for software engineering in a bid to control the user experience. Cursor has also hired a team of researchers to pre-train its own large frontier-level models, which could enable the company to not have to pay foundation model companies so much money, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Startups looking to train their own AI coding models face an uphill battle as it could easily cost millions to buy or rent the computing capacity needed to train a large language model. Replit earlier dropped plans to train its own model. Poolside, which has raised more than $600 million to make a coding-specific model, has announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services and is testing with customers, but hasn't made any product generally available yet. Another code gen startup Magic Dev, which raised nearly $500 million since 2023, told investors a frontier-level coding model was coming in summer 2024 but hasn't yet launched a product. Poolside declined to comment. Magic Dev did not respond to a request for comment.


Hans India
an hour ago
- Hans India
India tops ChatGPT usage globally, signaling major AI-driven job shifts ahead
India has officially surpassed the United States to become the largest user base of ChatGPT, signaling a dramatic shift in how the country is adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday life and work. A recent report by venture capital firm BOND highlights how AI is rapidly reshaping workflows, redefining job roles, and transforming the future of work across sectors. During a recent tech event in Bengaluru, attendees were welcomed by a robot—not a human—demonstrating just how seamlessly AI is being integrated into real-world environments in India. From fluent English-speaking bots to AI-powered workflows in offices, the landscape is evolving quickly. According to the Trends – Artificial Intelligence report, Indians are adapting to AI tools faster than anyone else. ChatGPT adoption in India has now overtaken the U.S., and the country also ranks high in usage of other AI tools like DeepSeek, following only China and Russia—where ChatGPT access is restricted. This rapid uptake is more than a trend—it's a signal of readiness for AI-led work models. The report further notes a 448% increase in AI-related job postings in the U.S. since 2018, while traditional tech roles saw a 9% decline. This suggests a growing demand for AI proficiency across industries. Enterprises are already seeing major benefits. Bank of America's virtual assistant 'Erica' has handled over two billion customer queries, while JP Morgan is leveraging AI across functions—from fraud detection to creative brainstorming—with up to 65% gains in productivity. Yum! Brands, owners of KFC and Pizza Hut, have implemented 'Byte by Yum!' to streamline operations from inventory to staffing. Healthcare is also undergoing an AI transformation. At Kaiser Permanente, doctors now use ambient AI scribes to document consultations in real-time, enabling more direct patient care. As per NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, 'AI is now part of infrastructure,' equating AI data centers to the factories of the modern age. India's enthusiasm for AI adoption positions it as a global leader in this transformation. But as AI tools become smarter and more ubiquitous, organizations and individuals alike will need to adapt quickly—either evolve, collaborate with AI, or risk being left behind.