Meet IIT-Madras alumnus Prem Watsa, iconic BlackBerry’s new owner

Forty two years after he migrated to Canada, V. Prem Watsa, who was then just another IIT engineer in search of an MBA, now holds the future of an ailing, but still iconic BlackBerry in his hands. On Monday afternoon, a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings, Watsa’s flagship company, bid $9 a share to buy out Blackberry.

A 1971 batch IIT-Madras graduate in chemical engineering, Watsa arrived in Canada with little more than pocket change with which to pursue his dreams. He did his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Since then, he has made a name for himself, mostly as an investor who identifies distressed and undervalued assets, bets on them, and reaps returns. Fairfax Financial Holdings, an insurance-cum-investment company that Watsa founded in 1985, went on to become Canada’s most profitable company in 2008.

“I know he is an ardent admirer of Warren Buffett and is sometimes referred to as the Warren Buffett of Canada,” says MG Venkatesh Mannar, the Ottawa-based President of The Micronutrient Initiative, and Watsa’s senior at IIT-Madras. “I remember him then as a shy and reserved person (maybe he still is).”

Funds for Alma Mater
Watsa, Mannar says, has made significant contributions to the IIT-Madras Alumni Fund. Despite a couple of recent lacklustre years, Fairfax Financial Holdings’ revenue crossed $8 billion in 2012, up over 7% from a year earlier, with net profit at $532.4 million and nearly $37 billion in assets, spread across pulp mills, specialty retailers, and restaurant chains. Its stock price has compounded at 19 percent annually.

Watsa, 63, and one of the wealthiest individuals in Canada, is reclusive by nature and limits public appearances mostly to Fairfax’s annual shareholder meetings. However, his company’s latest move – a $4.7 billion bid to buy smartphone maker BlackBerry, has put the spot light on the Hyderabad-born billionaire. BlackBerry is by far the most high profile company in Canada and Fairfax – short for fair, friendly acquisitions – is its largest shareholder with around a 10% stake. Fairfax raised its stake in Blackberry from 2 percent in January 2012 (when he joined the Blackberry board) to 10% by mid-2013, during a period when the company stock prices were on a decline.

Last month, when BlackBerry announced it was exploring options for a sale, Watsa resigned as a director on the Blackberry board, citing potential conflict of interest. This was read as a statement of intent to mount a bid for the company.

Watsa has been a strong believer in BlackBerry from the time he started buying its shares. “The brand name, a security system second to none, a distribution network across 650 telecom carriers worldwide, a 79 million subscriber base, enterprise customers accounting for 90% of the Fortune 500….are all formidable strengths..” he wrote in a letter to Fairfax Financial shareholders this March.

Truck Start
His professional career started in 1974 at the Confederation Life Insurance Co. (CLI) in Toronto, where he stayed till 1983, rising to become the company’s vice president. After a short stint at GW Asset Management, he founded his own asset management company – Hamblin Watsa Investment Counsel Ltd. (now wholly owned by Fairfax) – along with his former boss at CLI and three others. In 1985, Watsa bought over Markel Financial, a Canadian company specialising in trucking insurance, and later renamed it Fairfax Financial Holdings.

Watsa’s mantra of risk-averseness and long term view has stood him well over the years, but it’s his eye for the big picture that enables him to see investment pitfalls and financial crises way before others, say observers. He was among the first to predict the crash of 1987, the Japanese collapse of 1990 and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), September 25, 2013

Alumni open purse to help IIT-Delhi build research schools

The highly successful alumni of Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) have pumped in millions of dollars to the alma mater since it was established in 1961, helping the institute look beyond government funding for several ambitious research projects.

Currently, two complexes are being built in IIT-Delhi with 100 per cent alumni funding and the foundation for another one was laid recently to boost the institute’s research prospects. The first is Amarnath and Shashi Khosla School of Information Technology, named after parents of IIT-Delhi alumnus and US-based venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

Khosla, a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT-Delhi, co-founded Sun Microsystems along with his Stanford classmates in 1982. Dean of Alumni Affairs Ambuj Sagar said Khosla has provided $5 million for construction of the building and for research work to be taken up there. “The complex will be ready in the next six months,” Dean of Infrastructure Ashok Gupta said. It will be for inter-disciplinary, goal-oriented research, and also serve as an innovation centre for post-graduate education in information technology.

Kusuma School of Biological Sciences, funded by alumnus Anurag Dikshit through the UK-based Kusuma Trust, named after his mother, is another project coming up on the campus. The trust has said to have contributed more than £5 million to build the school. Dean of Infrastructure Gupta said Rs. 100 million has already been released for the building, while the rest would be utilised for setting up research laboratories within the facility. The project mission is to promote research by “interfacing modern biology with applied engineering sciences to address problems affecting human health and welfare, and training scholars to be the next generation scientists”.

Patanjali Keswani, Managing Director of Lemon Tree Hotels and an IIT-Delhi alumnus, recently announced Rs. 200 million for GH Keswani Research Centre at the institute. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal laid the foundation of the project, which will be built in an area of approximately 130,000 square feet. It will reserved for research facilities for students.

IIT-Delhi has so far produced over 30,000 engineers, technologists, scientists, managers and entrepreneurs. Over the years, this rich roll-call has helped the institute financially and logistically take up several alumni-funded projects.

Source: The Indian Express, September 23, 2012

IIT faculty to meet PM to object new common entrance exam

The IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) faculty is taking its fight against the new common entrance examination all the way to the Prime Minister. A group comprising members of the All India IIT Faculty Federation and Alumni Association will be meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday.

The protesting faculty members and alumni had earlier written to Prime Minister Singh explaining their objection to the common entrance examination that had been approved by the IIT Council in May. They had sought the Prime Minister’s “direct and immediate intervention” to settle the issue.

The move comes after human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, who is currently in the United States, virtually ruled out a roll back of the decision. Sibal has made it clear that the decision to adopt the new admission procedure wasn’t his or his ministry’s but an “unanimous decision” of the joint IIT, NIT and IIIT Councils.

The HRD minister also made it clear that he had no intention of interfering with the autonomy of the institutes. He said that the rationale for the the common examination system lay in the need to reduce the stress of multiple examinations and to restore the importance and central place to school education.

The protesting faculty has argued that in matters of admission, the Senate was supreme. This is an argument that is contested, as the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 clearly states that the IIT Council has the final say in matters such as admission. The law, which details out the functions of the Senate, doesn’t list setting admission standards among them.

The IIT faculty and alumni have said that any “unnecessary meddling” with the current format of entrance exams could seriously jeopardise the prestige and standing of the IITs “respected across the world”. Urging the Prime Minister to use his “good offices” to thrash out the contentious issue at the earliest, IIT-Kanpur has also asked the Prime Minister to order cancellation of the new common entrance examination system.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 14, 2012

IIT-Delhi alumni open to talks on CET row

A day after HRD minister Kapil Sibal said that the government had no intention to impinge on IITs’ (Indian Institutes of Technology) autonomy, IIT Delhi Alumni Association said that while a legal recourse was an option, it would be willing to discuss the differences.

IIT Delhi Alumni President Somnath Bharti said that it was deeply worried about Sibal’s decision not to rollback. “The new JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) will not only ruin IITs’ autonomy but will also be detrimental to the interests of the students from rural India and the move, if properly analyzed, seems benefitting to no one but coaching institutes — a fact belying the claims of MHRD [Ministry of Human Resource Development],” he said. Bharti added that the alumni were willing to discuss issues but seeking legal recourse would remain an option.

When asked about the controversy over the common entrance test for IITs, Sibal, who is Washington, said, “Quite frankly this is not the minister’s decisions. This is the unanimous decision of the IIT Council, consisted of all the IIT Directors and Chairmen. Then we have the IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) Council representatives there, we have NIT (National Institute of Technology) Council representatives there. All of them decided unanimously for a particular course of action,” he said.

“In terms of the IIT Act, there is an IIT Council. In terms of that Act the Council is entitled to take certain decisions by virtue of a statue. The Council has endorsed those decisions. I do not know what the exact objections to it are? I will go back and find out the exact nature of these objections and will surely address it,” he said. “But one thing I want to make clear that there is no intent to impact on the IIT system’s autonomy. That is quite clear. The academic autonomy of the IIT system has to be maintained and must be maintained. The exam that is being contemplated is going to be set by the IIT, not by the government, not by anybody else,” he added.

Meanwhile, All India IIT Faculty Federation Secretary Prof. A K Mittal on Tuesday said that IIT-Kanpur’s decision had “set the tone for other IITs that do not agree with the current MHRD [Ministry of Human Resource Development] proposal of common entrance test.” Mittal said the faculty members had no personal agenda and that it was their responsibility to “defend and protect the academic excellence and autonomy of these great institutions envisioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from any political interference…In opposing the HRD ministry’s test, we are not trying to achieve elitist status but protect the sanctity of academic freedom granted to these institutions by an act of Parliament (Institutes of Technology Act, 1961) and ensure that only the best students get selected by a fair process,” he added.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 13, 2012

Kapil Sibal rules out rollback of common exam, no intent to impact IIT system’s autonomy

Even as members of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) faculty and alumni continue to protest over the new common entrance examination, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal virtually ruled out a rollback. The minister, who is currently in Washington for the India-US Higher Education Dialogue with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stressed on the need to reduce the number of examinations that students have to take for admission to colleges and universities and to accord the integrity to the school system.

“In India, each child has to look for a university or a college and then he has to sit for 30-35 exams… the mental stress and torture of having to go to 30-35 exams, I think, is not fair to the parents as well as to the children. Then, the other thing is that the school system must be accorded its integrity. The class XII board is a very important milestone in the life of a child and how he does in the class XII Board is exceptionally important. Any process of admission should take that into account. So these are the objectives,” Sibal said while explaining the rationale for the common entrance exam.

Sibal told newspersons the ‘one nation, one test’ proposal was a unanimous decision of the IIT Council taken in accordance with the IIT Act passed by the Indian Parliament. “There is no intent to impact the IIT system’s autonomy. The exam that is being contemplated is to be set by the IIT itself. It is the JAB ( Joint Admissions Board), which will actually set the examination. We have no desire in any way (to infringe on the autonomy).”

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 13, 2012

Single engineering admission test formula hangs in balance over dissent

Differences have surfaced within the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, whose senate on Friday opposed a country-wide common entrance examination for technical colleges. If this dissent cascades — a section of the IIT-Kharagpur faculty is the latest group to express reservations — the plan for the common entrance test for all engineering and technology schools may come undone.

“One nation, one test, is a desirable objective. While IIT-Kanpur senate has passed a resolution, we have to look at its implications,” M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman of the Board of Governors (BoG) at IIT-Kanpur, said on Sunday. “One IIT cannot run the IIT exam. We have to think whether all the IITs will go along. IITs are a close group and decisions need to reflect the view of all.”

But for the exception of two states, India is poised to move to a single entrance test for admission to engineering colleges across the country, possibly as early as next year, Mint reported on 6 June. This was decided at the state education ministers’ conference convened by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the capital on Tuesday. The country has around 4,000 engineering colleges and at least 1.5 million students enter them every year.

After the senate resolution on Friday, IIT-Kanpur’s Director has already formed an admissions committee, and the first task of this panel will be to coordinate with other willing IITs to conduct a separate admission test in 2013, a senate member said on condition of anonymity. A section of the IIT-Khargapur faculty on Sunday also expressed dissent over the proposed common entrance exam, said A.K. Mittal, secretary of the All India IIT Faculty Federation.

In the worst-case scenario, there could be two different tests for the 15 IITs; those who support the common admission examination devised by the IIT Council can go for the single test and those with IIT-Kanpur can have their own admission process, the Kanpur senate member said. Anandakrishnan said the government, the BoG and the senate cannot behave like “different political parties”, and it is possible to have a “harmonious relationship”. The BoG of an IIT is its highest decision-making body.

Meanwhile, IIT Delhi is set to hold a senate meeting on 21 June after its director returns from a vacation. Some of its faculty said it is “possible to have a similar resolution like Kanpur”, but others said a clear picture will emerge only within a week. The teachers declined to be named. Both IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur have expressed their dissatisfaction over the IIT Council’s 28 May decision to hold a common entrance exam. The Council is headed by HRD minister Kapil Sibal and comprises of all the directors, the chairpersons of the board of governors of IITs, industry experts, a few ministry bureaucrats and officials from the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The Council decided that applicants will be selected on the basis of three tests—the class XII board exam, the joint entrance examination (JEE) main test and the JEE advanced exam. All the centrally funded technical institutes except the IITs will give weightage to these three sets of examinations in the proportion of 40:30:30. The ministry says a uniform national test will reduce the demand for capitation fees that many engineering colleges demand, just as it will reduce stress on aspirants, who now write multiple entrance tests. It will also diminish the influence of coaching centres on entrance preparation and re-emphasize the importance of class XII board exams across India.

At least two officials of the MHRD said they were yet to receive any formal communication from IIT-Kanpur. “Despite all the noise, we expect to find a common ground. At the maximum, we will sit down for another round of dialogue with the IITs and things will move on from next academic year,” said one of the officials. “When he (Sibal) is back in action (on 18 June), we expect things to settle down and a clearer picture to emerge,” the second official said. Both officials requested anonymity.

Somnath Bharti, President of IIT Delhi Alumni Association and a Supreme Court advocate, said IIT-Kanpur can hold its own entrance examination. “The IIT council’s decision is not binding on individual IITs,” he said. “It (the common admission test) looks like a populist decision by the minister.” The IIT Delhi Alumni Association is set to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week and is weighing legal options to “protect the autonomy of the IITs”, Bharti said.

Source: Mint, June 11, 2012

IIT faculty, alumni step up opposition to ‘One nation, one examination’ system

The face-off between the government and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Council on one side and the IIT faculty and alumni on the other over the common entrance examination is getting fiercer. Despite the “unanimous agreement” of the respective councils of IIT, NIT (National Institute of Technology) and IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology), human resource development minister Kapil Sibal is finding it difficult to put in place ‘one nation, one examination’ system. The IIT faculty and alumni have stepped up their opposition.

The loud protests from the IIT faculty and alumni against the government’s education reform efforts come at a time when the beleaguered Manmohan Singh government least needs it. Friday’s rejection of the common entrance examination by the Senate of IIT-Kanpur has been followed with rumblings among the faculty members of IIT-Kharagpur that they too are opposed to the common entrance examination.

Faculty members at IIT-Kharagpur claim that their objections to the common entrance examination have not been properly conveyed to the IIT Council. IIT-Kharagpur Director Damodar Acharya denies this. “This is totally wrong. The resolution of the May 2 meeting of the Senate was widely circulated and I have received no complaints. Moreover, on May 30, I held a meeting of the Senate to convey and explain the decision of the joint councils of IITs, NITs, and IIITs on the common examination. There were no murmurings or objections,” Acharya told ET.

The IIT-Kharagpur director explained that the Senate had at its May 2 meeting said that “a minimum of a two-years lead is necessary for examining the effect of the Board result on JEE ranking and the availability of the Board results in time.” An IIT-Kharagpur faculty member said that this does not reflects the views of the majority of the senators and faculty present at the May 2 meeting. They were of the view that during this lead period, the present IIT-JEE system should continue.

Acharya says that for now the board results will not impact the IIT ranking. “This is what was agreed to at the Council meeting of May 28. For the next three years, the IITs will admit students on the basis of their own examination, the JEE advanced. The Board results have no bearing on the ranking for admission to IITs. We will observe and study the common system being used by the NITs and IIITs during this time,” the IIT-Kharagpur director said.

In a statement, the All India IIT Faculty Federation secretary AK Mittal said that the Federation “is shocked to learn that the director of IIT-Kharagapur has made public statements which are in contradiction to the resolutions made by the Senate of IIT-Kharagpur. Resolutions of the IIT-Kharagpur Senate did not recommend inclusion of board marks, and conduct of JEE by a third party. IIT-Kharagpur Senate categorically said that till 2014, no change should be made and status quo be maintained.” Stressing that the fear about quality raised in connection with the normalisation of State Board results was not tenable. He said that at present about 52% of the students are getting into IITs from various State Boards.

Source: The Economic Times, June 11, 2012

IITian head of Cornell wants stronger ties with India

Soumitra Dutta, who will assume charge as the new dean of Cornell University’s management school on July 1, takes pride in being an IITian. Although opening a campus in India does not figure in his immediate plans, Dutta wants to build stronger links with researchers and thinkers in India as part of a grand strategy to take Cornell to the world, and bring the world to Cornell.

With this, Dutta will join a growing club of Indian-origin academicians who head prestigious universities in the United States. He will probably be the first person from the country to head Cornell University. Stating that Delhi’s IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) helped him develop his true potential, Dutta said: “The excellence of its faculty and curriculum helped me develop critical thinking and analysis skills.”

Speaking on the confrontation between government and IITs over the change in JEE (Joint Entrance Exam), he said: “The faculty and alumni of an educational institution are best placed to make decisions on the format of academic programmes and their entry criteria. The government is an important supporter of the IITs and has an important interest in seeing the institutions grow stronger. However, this is best achieved by working in partnership with IIT faculty and alumni, and developing a common understanding and framework for action.”

For now, Dutta wants to expand the reach of Cornell, and bring it closer to India – among other countries. “Cornell is fortunate in being able to attract some of the best Indian students and faculty to its campus in New York. There is a lot more that Cornell can do in India, and I will focus on bringing Cornell’s excellence in faculty and educational programmes to India.”

Even though India has pockets of excellence in education, a lot more needs to be done, Dutta said. “I am especially concerned about improving the level of research excellence within Indian educational institutions. I will aim to develop stronger links with India with the goal of improving research norms and culture in Indian institutions.”

Source: Hindustan Times, June 10, 2012

Common test: IIT-Kanpur to go it alone, IIT-Delhi likely to follow suit

After Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur rejected the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal and decided to conduct its own entrance exam from next year, IIT-Delhi Alumni Association is pushing IIT-Delhi to follow the suit. A decision is expected to be taken next week when the Senate of IIT-Delhi meet here next week.

“In all likelihood, IIT-Delhi Senate seems to be geared up to follow the suit of IIT-Kanpur Senate,” IIT Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti told PTI. In its yesterday’s meeting, the Senate of IIT-Kanpur had said the IIT Council’s recent proposal on admissions is “academically and methodically unsound”.

The Senate, while deciding to go it alone, had also said the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal was in “violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and IIT Kanpur Ordinances (Ordinance 3.2 (Admissions)”.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on May 28 had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under a new format of common entrance test, which will also take plus two board results into consideration.

Sibal had claimed it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). “The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” the minister had said.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 9, 2012

IIT alumni write to PM, Kapil Sibal claims senates’ nod

A section of the IIT alumni wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday opposing the common IIT-JEE (Indian Institutes of Technology-Joint Entrance Exam) from next year even as the government said that facts were being misrepresented.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal said that the decision had been taken by the joint council of the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology) and had the support of four of the seven IIT senates.

Sibal said that he had categorically said at the IIT Council meeting that if “there is a single dissent” he will not go ahead with the proposal. “The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” the minister said. “I had also said the views of the senate would be taken into account. And will not move forward till their views are taken into account. Their views were taken into account,” he said.

Last week, Sibal had said that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under new a format of common entrance test which will take plus two board results into consideration.

This was not a government decision and all directors of IIT, NIT, and IIIT sitting together said that “this was a right decision”, Sibal said. “There is a statute. Under the statute, there is a council. And a decision is taken under the statute by the council. I, as the minister, happened to be the chairman of the council,” he said. Sibal said out of seven, four senates agreed to the decision. Senates points were taken into account.

“[IITs in] Guwahati, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkie were the four supporters of it. Incidentally, as far as Bombay is concerned, they also supported,” he said. IITs in Delhi and Kanpur are opposed to the move. Incidentally, over 50 senate members from IIT-Delhi have written to their director asking for a special meeting.

Source: The Times of India, June 7, 2012