Establishment of School of IT :(1998-2000)

I conceptualized, planned and set up the Kanwal Rekhi School of information Technology at the Institute. This included raising funds for the initial infrastructure and equipment. This was an important initiative which permitted many important and innovative ideas to be tried out in the academic, research, and administrative fronts.

Distance Education Program : (1999-2002)

There are a large number of talented students and professionals working in CS/IT fields who do not have a chance to participate in the quality education processes developed in the IIT system. I have always believed that this large segment of learners deserves to benefit from IIT education. Given the paucity of quality faculty resource, this need has become only more critical.
I had studied different models of distance education practiced by leading universities of the world, including the pioneering work done by Institutions like IGNOU, and a variant by IIT Kharagpur. I felt that a classroom offers the best primary learning environment, and decided upon using a VSAT based synchronous and interactive simulated classroom. This was established with a back up support of e-learning tools and recorded videos.
Our Center of Distance Engineering Education Programs (CDEEP) is the entity created to extend this model to entire spectrum of technical education spanning all disciplines. This effort has been led by Prof.Shevgaonkar initially, and by Prof.Kannan Moudgalya and Prof.B.Tembhe currently. We have strong participation in NPTEL program. Our special MoU with ISRO has given us an exclusive satellite channel, and we are beaming our courses to over 50 remote centers in the country, where the participants have the unique opportunity of live interaction with our teaching faculty.

Business Incubator : (1999-2002)

Large companies are typically the major wealth generating engines of modern economy. However, innovative solutions and product development typically happen in relatively smaller companies working on novel ideas with great focus. Promoting entrepreneurship in the young minds and encouraging them to take business risks by developing new technologies and building products, is essential but had not been happening in India.
Here again. I studied different incubator models used by leading global universities and evolved a workable pattern to set up the IT business incubator. Prof. Chandorkar and I were involved with students of the Institute in planning the ‘Eureka’ business plan completion and Techfest in 1997-98. I discussed the idea of the incubator with students whose response, as prospective participants in start-up companies was very enthusiastic. I also discussed the plans with Nandan Nilekani and Kanwal Rekhi who made many valuable suggestions. The incubator was lstarted in 1999. Processes which evolved in the incubator , with considerable help from Prof. Lagu, have been further refined by Prof Suryanarayanan, and are incorporated in our Society for INnovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE). Today, SINE has the distinction of being considered one of the best incubators globally.