Five post-graduate programme (PGP) students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have set up a Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) club to help students get hands-on experience by involving PE/VC players from India and abroad. Unlike finance clubs run by most B-schools in the country, this club exclusively focuses on PE and VC funding.

The lack of opportunities and experience in the PE and VC space led five students to set up the club called ‘Leverage’. With around 50 students interested in being members, the club will be a forum for students interested in all aspects of private equity and venture capital.

“We came up with an initial skeletal structure of the PE club by looking at institutes like Harvard and others from the Ivy League. But the end product has been entirely our idea of how a PE club should be. Although we prefer to call it an interest group for the time being, we plan to run a full-fledged club with more activities soon,” says Anirudh Singh, a member of the club.

“PE as an industry has boomed in India and we plan to invite speakers to the campus, hold conclaves, workshops and other events to provide a platform for the students and corporates to interact. Also, we are looking forward to hold intra-institute events, where the students can write an investment proposal and a panel of faculty members can judge them.

We have no restrictions when it comes to corporates as we would be involving both top- and middle-level players to encourage more and more activities in the field of PE and VC,” says Gagandeep Singh, another member of the club.

As part of formalising the club, the students are holding the first intra-institute event called the ‘Zen of Investing’, where the club plans to invite alumni working in the area of private equity, besides involving the faculty and students for the activity.

The club also has plans to tie-up with Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) students to getter a better perspective of private equity. “The PGPX students would be able to share their experiences about private equity and with their support, we plan to involve ourselves with the corporates in a deeper way through various activities, including projects and case workshops,” adds Anirudh Singh.

The club is in talks with a few corporates, who have shown interest in sponsoring the club.

“We are considering more options for funding besides the institute and the corporates we are in talks with. Currently, we are in the stage of gauging the responses from the people about the club,” says Anirudh Singh, before adding, “Although we have started out PE and VC, we may consider branching out to other areas like micro finance later.”

More : business-standard.com

The National Academy of Sciences, a private organization established by Congress in 1863 to advise the Federal Government, has elected 60 new members. The election brings the number of active members to 1,683.

The academy also named 15 nonvoting foreign associates, bringing their total to 298.

Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded an American scientist or engineer. The academy said election recognized “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

Following are the new members and their affiliations at the time of the election. New Members

Yakir Aharonov, professor of physics, Tel Aviv University, Israel, and University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Paul G. Ahlquist, professor, Institute for Molecular Virology and department of plant pathology, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Bishnu S. Atal, head, speech research department, A.T.& T. Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.

Bruce S. Baker, professor of biological sciences, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

Ransom Lee Baldwin Jr., professor of animal science, University of California, Davis.

Denis Baylor, professor and chair of neurobiology, Stanford University.

Malcolm R. Beasley, professor of applied physics and electrical engineering, Stanford University.

Klaus Biemann, professor of chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Claude R. Canizares, professor of physics, head of the astrophysics division and director of the Center for Space Research, M.I.T.

Charles P. Casey, Helfaer Professor of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin.

C. Thomas Caskey, chief of medical genetics; professor of medicine and biochemistry; director, Institute of Molecular Genetics; Henry and Emma Meyer Chair in Molecular Genetics, and investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.

The government has decided to devote a chapter about the life, times and benefits of Kalpana Chawla in the IT @ School handbook for the ninth standard topic of conversation is described as a fitting tribute to the country’s first female astronaut, in collaboration with six astronauts Scholars, met a tragic end of the Columbia disaster.

The new chapter in the coming academic years, a spokesman for the Mission of information technology, implementation of information technology official in the State, said. This manual is also new chapters on the GNU operating system based on Linux.

While space technology are included in the text book, there are instructions on “Doing exercises based on the life and activities of Kalpana Chawla. A brief article on Kalpana Chawla was also a tribute to him, the spokesman.

The introduction of the GNU-Linux-based operating system, an alternative to Microsoft Windows-based system, it is expected that students a chance to find out that the two platforms. The content of the book is divided into eight chapters viz. “Information Technology - basic ideas, the operating system, word processing, presentation software, spreadsheets, computer network and the Internet, information technology in various fields and further to Basic Studies” .

ITES Habitat for holistic approach: The Habitat Centre for Information Technology Enabled Services Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium complex, Kochi, the British Council for teacher training college in the English language. The training-cum-incubation in the centre of the habitat has opened its doors to latent April-end, after the University of tests is over.

According to the Mission of computing, colleges of the city are invited to nominate two teachers for the British Council “Business-English-certification (BEC) Classes for the habitat. The course will help participants learn English quality.

The habitat is an “IT” Carnival “in the third week of this year, with April Top officials from IT / ITES. IITM-K places: Nearly 80 percent of candidates on the first charge of the Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management - Kerala (IITM-K) were able to find internships with companies in India and abroad. Thirty-eight candidates were selected by interviews and campus have been offered pay packages, “said spokesperson. The recruitment company Infosys, TCS, HCL, MasTek, Patni Computer ELXSI and Tata.

The success of the first series of IITM-K in recognition of its structure and, of course, the quality of training. The spokesman quoted Dr K.R. Srivatsan, Director, with words that students of IITM-K got the same as taking into account IITS. The first batch, 60 students for post-Graduate Diploma in IT and management courses (PGDITM), of which 12 received job offers before the end of the course.