BIMTECH Business Literature Festival 2022 celebrates Books, Authors and Stories

On February 4, 2022, BIMTECH returned with the second virtual BIMTECH Business Literature Festival 2022 (BBLF 2022), the country’s first student led business literature fest organized by any B-School. The festival is a conglomerate of the best-known names in corporate leaders, academia, industry and authors and publishers. The event brought together a potpourri of writers from diverse fields to engage in meaningful debates and dialogues centred around the genre of business literature and nonfiction. The event welcomed and celebrated the works of eminent national and international personalities like Debashis Chatterjee, Prakash Iyer, Vivek Mansingh, Harish Damodaran, Samir Soni, Sandeep Dayal, Sathya Saran among many others.

Business Communication Area of BIMTECH curated the fest in 2021 to inculcate habits of reading and writing, and also establish the fact that learning is through stories and experiences of people. The fest reiterated that business schools must look beyond case studies and textbooks as pedagogical tools in their classrooms. The day began with invocation of Goddess Saraswati followed by a welcome note of Dr. Harivansh Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH, who as a patron recounted how his vision of BBLF had turned true and envisaged a bright future for it. He encouraged the attendees to engage in reading to evolve in life. He invited support of all dignitaries to assert importance of liberal arts in professional education.

The Chief Guest Prof. Debashis Chatterjee, Director of Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, inaugurated the event with leadership nuggets from his book ‘Karma Sutra’ by Sage Publication. He shared his knowledge on how karma is the foundation of life through stories from his book. He emphasized the importance of human intelligence over artificial intelligence, how the world is moving from consuming to caring, and from producing to innovating. He emphasized listening, observing, and failing as three critical leadership tools and asserted, ‘The world is changed by your actions, not by your opinions.’ He believes that we all have our own Karmas. The talk gave insights on the difference between Karma and Sutra. He explained how the book decodes secrets of effective leadership by stating that in each follower there’s an emerging leader. He emphasized listening, observing, and failing as three critical leadership tools. He asserted, ‘The world is changed by your actions, not by your opinions.’

The Valedictory address was delivered by Mr. Prakash Iyer, Founder CEO of Leadership Works’ and author of How Come No One Told Me That? He said “Figure out why you want something, do you want it, and don’t worry about the fear of missing out”. He also advised to have an alteration tailor in life to highlight the importance of agility and adaptability. He shared valuable lessons learned over his course of life in a witty way and won the hearts of all. All that the world needs is a smile and acceptance.

The seven-hour virtual literary event witnessed book discussions, book launches, themed panel talks, author interviews, masterclasses and contests. The fest was a kaleidoscope of featured books on diverse topics ranging from self-awareness, entrepreneurship, dairy and agricultural industry, branding and marketing, women authorship, future skills, research and leadership. More than 28 eminent speakers ranging from academic leaders, corporate stalwarts, bureaucrats and writers along with 17 books fresh out of oven were showcased in the unique confluence of literati and bibliophiles. The fest particularly voiced the need to encourage women authorship as well as reiterate the importance of inclusion of literature in business classes.

Robust panel discussions were quite an eye opener as the speakers spoke threadbare on issues like “Renaissance of Liberal Arts Education in Indian B-Schools’, “Future of Work & Skills Managers Need to Excel’, “Women Authorship”. Carefully designed masterclasses on Being an Author, Corporate Lessons from Gita and Blogging as the first step to getting published were well attended by students and professionals.

For the first time ever a lit fest reached the audio community as well. As an innovation in BBLF 2022 panel discussions were also held on a conversational app on compelling topics like “Future of Business Literature fests”, “Books as brand building tools”, “Do readers prefer other mediums for business literature” and “History of Business Literature.” The speakers were who’s who of corporate and publishing industry.

The festival was graced by eminent speakers Dr. Geetanali Singh Chanda, Associate Professor, Ashoka University, Author of ‘Indian Women in the House of Fiction’, Dr. Deepa Sethi, Professor Humanities & Liberal Arts in Management, IIM Kozhikode and Dr. Amit Basole, Associate Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Azim Premji University & Co-Author of the book ‘Thinking with Ghalib”. Ms. Anjana Menon (Founder- CEO Content Pixies, Author of ‘What’s Your Story’), Ms. Sagarika Verma and Mr. Subir Verma (Author of ‘Job Search Secrets: Master the Art of Getting a Job’ ranked No.1 among new releases on Amazon), Mr. Pradeep Chakravarthy (Author of ‘Leadership Shastra: Lessons from Indian History’), Ruchira Chaudhary author of ‘Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership’; Rajni Sekhri Sibal former civil servant and author of ‘Women of Influence: Ten Extraordinary IAS Careers’; Sudha Menon writing coach and author of ‘Recipes for Life’, ‘Devi, Diva or She-Devil: The Smart Career woman’s survival guide’, ‘Leading Ladies: Women Who Inspire India’ and Renu Mattoo, author of “Power Your Personality”, and Ms. Trupti Bhandari & Mr. Arvind Bhandari, Authors of ‘Brandvantage’, Mr Amit Agnihotri, Founder MBA Universe. Among BIMTECH faculty sessions were moderated by Dr Pankaj Priya, Head of Retail and Marketing, Dr Abha Rishi, CEO AIC- BIMTECH, Dr Archana Shrivastava, Head, Communication Area, and Communication faculty members Prof Saloni Sinha, Dr Shradha Kabra and Prof Meera Kapoor.

To bring together the student community in the fest, a national contest “Blog Your Way” was organised. Vishaka Choudhary, LPU Punjab, Akshay Kumar, IIT Madras, and R Gokul, IIM Indore were 1st and 2nd runner-ups respectively. The fest also acknowledged creativity demonstrated by BIMTECH students Palak Mittal, Charvi Gosain, Rishika Sharma, Pragya Singh and Niharika Chandan for their exemplary work in the promotion and branding of BBLF 2022. BBLF 2022 was well supported by reputed publications like Penguin Random House, Westland along with MBA UNIVERSE, Design Mantra, FMA Digital, Mentza and Atal Innovation Centre, BIMTECH.

Dr. Anupam Varma, Deputy Director, BIMTECH delivered a Vote of Thanks to all the speakers, authors, event partners, winners, and all the students who made this a cherished experience by offering magnificent learnings and experiences. The festival saw huge participation from across the globe and certainly was successful in igniting the minds of all to become future storytellers. Business Communication Area Faculty with the student teams Majlis – Debating and Theatre Society, Media Conduit and Editorial Conduit along with 50+ student volunteers at the helm of affairs promise another literary extravaganza in the next edition. Dedicated to the spirit of book reading and writing, and encouraging conversations and debates around books, BIMTECH Business Literature Festival 2022 was indeed very illuminating.

Some Featured Books:

My Experiments with Silence: The Diary Of-An-Introvert by actor, director Mr Samir Soni who asserted that
to be a good leader the young generation should stop focussing on end goals and start focussing on the
process.

Mentor A Million by Dr.Vivek Mansigh. He brought a new insight of publishing for philanthropy and said
“To achieve something that you have never achieved before, you must become someone that you have never
been before”.

Broken to Breakthrough: The Rise of India’s Largest Private Dairy Company by Mr. Harish Damodaran, The
book walks us through the fascinating story of an entrepreneur whose company Arun Icecream managed to
make everything on its own from plastic packaging to cones. He opined that “There should be repositories of
case studies of successful Indian Entrepreneurs to promote Atma Nirbhar Bharat campaign”.
The Art and Science of Frugal Innovation by Dr. Malavika Dadlani, Scientist, Former Joint Director,
Research, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Dr. Anil Wali, MD of Foundation for Innovation and
Technology Transfer (FITT), and Dr. Kaushik Mukerjee, Associate Dean, Training, National Institute of Bank
Management (NIBM) who always believed that “Agriculture can’t survive in India due to scarcity of
resources such as land and capital, etc.”, and stressed the importance of frugal innovation which shouldn’t be
only for people belonging to the bottom of the pyramid.

‘Being Ritu: The Unforgettable Story of Ritu Nanda’ by famous journalist Ms. Sathya Saran, Consulting
Editor, Penguin Random House enforced that you are more than your surname. The entrepreneurial journey of
Ritu Nanda is an inspiration for those who wish to achieve something on their own. When asked “What can
the GenZ take away from the book, Being Ritu – The Unforgettable Story of Ritu Nanda?” Ms. Sathya replied
with a beautiful statement, “Mrs. Nanda only highlighted the positives of a person in front of an audience, she
believed in appreciating in public, and reprimanding in private, which in itself is a very prominent and
important management lesson”.

Right Between the Ears: How to Use Brain Science to Build Epic Brands by international author Mr. Sandeep
Dayal. His book talks about the cognitive process involved in choosing brands by people. According to him, it
is the people who own and disown brands. He describes brands as something that exists in the metaphysical.
He said that brands are all about choices – choices that the consumers make instinctively. So, it is highly
recommended for the brands to target the experiences of their target group. The highlights of the session
included discussing the advertisements that the brands roll out and how they have evolved. Such things are the
need of the hour, he added.