Convocation 2024 was held in the magnificent auditorium of BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa, on Sunday, 21st July 2023, at its campus in Zuarinagar.

Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, was the Chief Guest at the convocation.  Convocation was held in the august presence of Prof. V Ramgopal Rao, Vice-Chancellor, BITS Pilani; Prof. Suman Kundu, Director, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus; Col S Chakraborty (Retd), Registrar; and other dignitaries from BITS Pilani.

In his address, Prof. Rangarajan advised graduating students to leverage the learnings from your Alma Mater to take advantage of the opportunity presented by every crisis, be novel and be innovative.  He highlighted how building deep human networks, face to face human connections and relationships that will stand the test of time, are important for them.  Prof. Rangarajan further encouraged students to advance the ability to think critically and empathy to fellow beings.

In his report, Prof. Rao counted the achievements of BITS Pilani’s talented students and faculty members spread across all campuses and various collaborations with reputed institutes in India and abroad. In his advice to the graduating students, the Vice Chancellor stressed the need to embrace lifelong learning and to see the education that they received at BITS Pilani, not as an endpoint but as a foundation upon which to build. He concluded by saying to them, “Stay curious, stay open-minded, and never stop seeking knowledge”.

In his report, Prof. Kundu highlighted the significant achievements of the faculty members and students of K K Birla Goa Campus.  He underlined the contributions of its faculty and students in seeking research funding, undertaking research publications, internationalization, etc.  Prof. Kundu congratulated the graduating students and wished them the best in their future endeavours.

The medal winners from the Bachelor’s degree programs include: Mr. Dixit Dwij Nithin (Gold Medal), Mr. Rijul Radhu (Silver Medal) and Mr. Sushil Nayak (Bronze Medal). This year, 1059 students were declared eligible to receive their degree, of which 66 were Doctoral degrees, 138 were ME, and 855 were BE and MSc. Around 88% of the students received their degree in person at this convocation while the remaining students were dispatched their degrees to them.

Eight BITS Pilani alumni were presented awards in the respective categories mentioned below: 

• The Young Achiever’s Award (YAA) was conferred on Ms. Sanskriti Dawle, Mr. Aman Srivastava, Mr. Dilip Ramesh and Mr. Saif Shaik – the founding team of Thinkerbell Labs Pvt. Ltd.
• The Distinguished Alumni Award (DAA) was conferred on:
  1. Sanjay Nath, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Blume Ventures.
  2. George Jacob, President and CEO of Bay Ecotarium.
  3. Gunender Kapur, Investor CEO of Vishal Magamart Pvt. Ltd.
• The Distinguished Services Award (DSA) was conferred on Mr. Sudeep Jain, Additional Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Government of India.