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The annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur, had a fantastic kick start to its 28th edition in the last two days. Today entire IIT Kanpur witnessed the final day, the night of revelry. The theme for Techkriti is "Transcending Origins." Thriving all these years, Techkriti has approached and now stands on the edge of the technological frontier, which describes the fundamental structure of being, not as an ontology, but as a framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. Let it be affirmed that we may transcend our scientific and cultural roots and redefine our identities, individual or collective. Transcendence opens the door not only to personal transformation but also to confront ethnic stereotypes and prejudices. This edition of Techkriti, the three-day annual festival of IIT Kanpur, is scheduled from 24th to 27th March.
Day 3 of the festival started with a great enthusiasm with Tech Talk by Robert Metcalfe, Father of Ethernet. The talk started with a brief introduction of Robert Metcalfe, followed by a question from the host about the topic of connectivity. His inspiration for a new dissertation came while working at Xerox PARC when he read a paper about the ALOHA network or Alohanet at the University of Hawaii. The ALOHANet used radio waves instead of telephone wire to transmit data. The main problem with using radio waves as a medium was that if two packets were sent out at the same time on the same broadcast channel they would interfere with each other and effectively cut off the transmission. He identified and fixed some of the bugs in the AlohaNet model and made his analysis part of a revised thesis, which finally earned him his Harvard Ph.D. in 1973. He told that today’s Ethernet standard bears little resemblance to the one created by Metcalfe back in the 1970s. Access speeds have increased from 2.94Mbps to 800Gbps, with the number of connected devices now exceeding the number of people on the planet. Mr.Metcalfe touched on the topic related to technological changes in connectivity. He said that the rate at which technology improves is remarkable and provided the example of computers. He concluded the talk by advising the students that the essential value they can have to understand the technology and how to apply it is to have a clear vision and know-how to use the available tech effectively. Having such a quality, one can have a successful career in the tech industry. The second talk commenced on the same day at 11 am on “Improving Healthcare performance through digital transformation” by Mr. Gautam Khanna - the CEO of the PD Hinduja hospital andalso the alumnus of IITK. He started the talk by saying that the day's topic is very appropriate for all of us. Healthcare is the largest ethical industry in the world. Many students from prestigious institutions did not pay attention and only the medical students were involved in the Healthcare industry. As Indian healthcare is growing due to many reasons such as urbanization, population, change in lifestyle, reduced physical activity it is important to bring out the technological changes needed for Healthcare. Healthcare is one such sector where it impacts all of us irrespective of who we are. Also, the pandemic was one of the reasons for the growth of the Healthcare industry. The industry is to reach $112 billion arriving by an increase in expenditure, insurance, and expansion of healthcare infrastructure but restricted by the availability of clinical and nonclinical talent. The government has increased the number of medical colleges, PG seats. Despite this, we need technology and a different approach. Mr. Gautam threw some light regarding the history of technology in healthcare. He said that there are many opportunities for innovation. They were regarding the sensor-based devices, Teleconsultation, Online payment, Analytics, Online reports. Few of them are already innovated and there is a need to develop them. He said that presently healthcare is sick care and it's very important that it becomes Healthcare. It is also supported by the government services such as ABDM(Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) creating the need for a new business model and capital for digital transformation. He also shared a few examples of the latest research in Health Tech. Health care is a very conservative field. We can't stick to something unless it shows a significant benefit. He said that it's a bit tough but not impossible. He concluded the talk by advising the students that there are many ways through which they can make a difference. It's all about passion, energy, and the attitude of help and services which give success. The third talk was about “Technology and Magic”.The talk started with our guest, Mr. Sahej Rohan, who gets introduced to the audience. He then starts his presentation with a quote “When we understand stuff, that is technology. When we don’t, it’s magic.” He continues by introducing his exhibition called Ancestor/Purvaj. This exhibition stages a futuristic cryptic after humans have left the planet. It showcases how a future generation of archaeologists interpret the past using the artifacts available. For example, Ritualistic objects, stone houses, books with drawings, rocks, flora, fauna, and buried bodies. We encounter them as “rituals” of magic because we don't know their use. He shares a real story from his side. Before the pandemic, he was researching a burial site in Inamgao from 1500 BC, 90km outside Pune. The civilization was burying bodies by first laying them outdoors like compasses, and some had their legs chopped off. Some bodies were buried indoors inside urns made of terracotta, comprising mostly children. Why were there 2 different burial practices? Perhaps they imagined the afterlife in 2 diff ways or perhaps had 2 different cultures. A similar custom was followed in South Korea, wherein the bodies were stored inside copper urns. In fact, many civilizations in the copper age followed this custom. So how did they communicate and spread their customs and rituals across different civilizations? Sahej’s speculation is that perhaps they were “nomads” wandering different places and leaving behind signs of their customs. He continues by elaborating one of the themes of the exhibition, ie. that the urns are time capsules used by the civilization to preserve themselves and “travel” through time. He also talks about a video game developed by him on Unity, which is programmed to respond to audio input. The program rigs the animation according to different audio inputs from the user. The user can also befriend the creature inside the game, and observe how it scales the map by observing its motion. The fourth talk commenced at 3 pm on the topic - Consciousness and AI by Susan Blackmore. The panelists were Arnab Bhattacharya, Narayanan, Nisheeth Srivastava, Devpriya Kumar, the moderator. Something exists the word illusion if you look it up in the dictionary which she did when she got upset with people telling her that she didn’t think consciousness exists it’s something that’s not what it seems to be so that’s the point that she would be making consciousness, does that make any sense? Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of internal and external existence. Despite millennia of analyses, definitions, explanations, and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, Saying that consciousness is wholly an illusion borrows apparent credibility from the fact that some of our beliefs are illusions. We may believe that the home team is the best in the league only to be disappointed by published scores. But what causes us to have the illusory belief is not itself an illusion even if we do not understand how it works. And we do not, in fact, understand how it works. That’s the Hard Problem of consciousness that continues to bedevil the smartest philosophers and scientists. For example, if you try to raise a very simple example, you try to hit a robot and it will move away right at the hit of penny although it may not, it doesn’t matter, but it gives you an illusion that it is emoting it has emotions it has pain suffering he thinks about itself as a body representation. The Crux of the discussion was to fetch the similarities and dissimilarities between consciousness and illusion making its contribution towards the development of AI for the betterment of the tech. The fifth talk commenced at 4 pm today by Mr. Sankar Kumar Pal (Ex-Chairman ISI) who talked about Granular Mining in Video Analytics: a Shallow Learning to Deep Learning transit. Granules are clumps of indiscernible identities with respect to specified attributes. The phenomenon of the organization by clustering and segmentation by drawing together by similarity, proximity, or functionality is known as Granulation. Clumps are bound by non-precise boundaries. Information is abstracted while granulation and processed further by replacing coarse granules with finer granules. Granular Computing is a nature-inspired process used for mining large data sets. The last talk commenced at 6 pm by Bjarne Stroustrup who is a Technical Fellow and a Managing Director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a Visiting Professor inComputer Science at Columbia University. He has designed and implemented the C++ programming language. He talked about how impactful C++ has been to this digital boom. C++ is known to be a very powerful language. C++ allows you to have a lot of control as to how you use computer resources, so in the right hands, its speed and ability to cheaply use resources should be able to surpass other languages. Talks of day 3, overall, saw great two-way feedback, the enthusiasm in the audience to listen and in the spokesperson to deliver were extraordinary. We concluded day 3 of Techkriti'22 with an overwhelming response. Shaan is one of the few playback singers who has sang multiple IIFA Award-winning hits including Chand Sifarish from Fanaa, Behti Hawa Sa Tha Woh from 3 Idiots and Jab Se Tere Naina from Saawariya.Popular singer Shaan, danced and sang the night away with infectious zest. The crowds grooved along too, as they crooned to all their favourites—Woh pehli baar, Hum jo chalne lage, Mussu mussu hasi and Chand sifarish. The singer was as endearing and unassuming as ever as the crowds cheered him on madly, with groups of girls screaming their undying love for him. A very preppy and upbeat version of Tanha dil—the most awaited song came right towards the end and was received with a roaring applause by the crowd. Next, it was Bhool ja that left the audience begging for more. To know more, visit: https://techkriti.org.
Day 2: Techkriti’22 Techkriti, the annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur, had a fantastic start to its 28th edition yesterday. The theme for the current year is "Transcending Origins." Thriving all these years, Techkriti has approached and now stands on the edge of the technological frontier, which describes the fundamental structure of being, not as an ontology, but as a framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. Let it be affirmed that we may transcend our scientific and cultural roots and redefine our identities, individual or collective. Transcendence opens the door not only to personal transformation but also to confront ethnic stereotypes and prejudices. This edition of Techkriti, the three-day annual festival of IIT Kanpur, is scheduled from 24th to 27th March.
Day 2 of the festival started with a great enthusiasm with Tech Talk by Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google cloud. The talk started with a brief introduction of Mr.Thomas Kurian, followed by a question from the host about Google cloud and how cloud computing evolved over the years. He explained that Cloud computing had evolved much over 20 years. Cloud computing was used more as a software delivery system in its early years. It was made for the convenience of companies, reducing their need to maintain a high-end technological infrastructure. The second generation of cloud computing was based much more on infrastructure. On being asked about what is to be needed to lead a business, he believed that the necessary quality for a leader is the ability to lead their team in one direction as if the team members work without sync or work in different directions, it would reduce the efficiency of the team, even if the members are giving their maximum efforts. To work in a single direction, one would need to have a well-defined focal point or goal. To do this, the leader should have clearly defined priorities. Mr. Thomas touched on the topic related to technological changes. He said that the rate at which technology improves is remarkable and provided the example of computers. He concluded the talk by advising the students that the essential value they can have to understand the technology and how to apply it is to have a clear vision and know-how to use the available tech effectively. Having such a quality, one can have a successful career in the tech industry. The second talk commenced on the same day at 11 am about "How to keep India's Unicorn boom going?" The talk started with a brief introduction of the panelists, Amit Agarwal (NoBroker) and Rizwan Koita (Citius Tech). It followed by a question to Amit about what were the complexities of converting simple ideas into reality and what were his struggles. Like every IIT/IIM graduate, he replied that he hyped-up jobs. He chased consulting firms, got into it, and continued in it for a decade. He and his friends from IITB had to rent a house and pay brokerage. They were perplexed as to why one needed to involve mediators in this process. So their idea came from this experience. However, such an idea was never executed globally, which made the VCs worried and skeptical.
On Rizwan being asked about how his journey was in CitiusTech, and how important it is to invest all resources into one company rather than different ideas, he replied that like now, there was no craze for entrepreneurship in the mid-90s. He worked in Mckinzie for five years, and then in 1999, he started up his first BPO firm, Trans works, and later sold it to Aditya Birla group in 2004. He then started up CitiusTech with his batchmate from IITB and ran it till 2021. And recently stepped down as a CEO and is an advisor on the board. There was a question to both the panelists about the policies and challenges upcoming entrepreneurs must know. Amit answered that If a person has no idea or interest after passing out, they may take up a job and discover over time. One might then work in another startup or startup on his own. One needs to make sure that s(he) comes for the right reason and have a financial buffer for at least a year, Rizwan added that opportunity in India takes time and effort to happen because it is not easy. One can look at this toughness as a problem or an opportunity. The next talk was about "Gamifying online courses - Response Expected" by Ali Lemus. Mr.Ali Lemus started the talk by introducing himself. He threw some light on the fact that children and adults are interested in playing games by putting forward that the average age of gamers is about 40 years. He also added that there is no gender discrimination as 47 percent are women. When we teach students video games, they feel involved and understand it better. Psychologists and teachers did a standardized test on students in which all kids were invited in a lab to play video games related to study, and we found that after learning from these games, their IQ and grades improved. He concluded by saying that the right time to include the use of gamification in studies is "Anytime, As soon as you can." The fifth talk commenced at 2 pm on March 26th, 2022 , on Kanpur smart city and its various developments . The speaker was Shri Shivasharanappa G N, IAS-KSCL and Nagar Nigam . He started the talk by pointing out the how a lot of services of municipal corporation have gone online and have been enhanced to help people in improving their standards of living like Public Wi-fi, Emergency Call services, Integrated Traffic Management System, Citizen Grievances Portal, CCTV cameras and like these many application have been developed where all such facilities can be accessed and through that website people were helped in tough times like COVID also. The next talk of Day 2 commenced at 3 pm on day 2. The topic was - "Entrepreneurship In and Out of the pandemic." The speaker was Hardika Shah, founder of Kinara capital. Kinara Capital is at the forefront of driving the financial inclusion of small business entrepreneurs in India. She started on the note, "Entrepreneurship is not an even playing field. To survive in tough times like covid, a business must be agile." She marked some of the many difficulties that she and her company faced during the pandemic. She highlighted the problem in arranging funds during the pandemic. Although she also believes in the positive impact of the pandemic, she believes Technical transformation has revolutionized the Indian market. It has been driven by public-private firms' interaction, which has led to the democratization of many essential services like the education sector, finance sector, and many more. In the end, she also said to young entrepreneurs to have broad goals like positively impacting the lives of others and improving the GDP and economy of the nation as a whole. The next talk started at 4 pm with Ankit Prasad on the note. There are many points in the entrepreneurial journey when you feel lost when you will feel afraid when you will feel that there is nothing that can be done to solve the problem and if you look at people if you ask yourself whether losing that game will give you any happiness or satisfaction or whether winning that game despite losing you know scenario to provide you with more motivation and learning in joy you need to make a choice need to make a call right sometimes people take a more safe call which is also acceptable, which is also correct in their context but one who takes a hard call does not lose because they figure out that there are enough factors in the ecosystem there is enough support in the ecosystem to help you come up come beyond those challenges and situations. It's a life within you instead of you know the market scenario the product situation it is all within you whether you decide to take a hard call in taking that situation head-on instead of dodging that situation and trying to create a new mentality leaving this entity behind or trying to get into a jump into a new idea quickly I think there's merit in doing a deep dive onto the existing situation and understanding its proper depth and solving every problem has multiple solutions you need to figure it out when there is a will there's away. The next talk commenced at 5 pm on Day 2 on the topic - "Think Big and Think Multidimensional. The speaker was Mr. Pankaj Agarwal. He is a founder of Taghive. Taghive provides user clicker-based smart school solutions and an AI-powered self-assessment solution. His words were really motivating for the youth, which highlighted the power of Education in enriching students' lives. His ideology was based on his desire to give back to his roots in India. Another exciting session was the Tech Talk on the "Evolution of Programming Languages," which commenced at 6 pm on Day 2. The speaker was Mr. Viral Shah, the founder of Julia Computing and acting CEO. In the session, he emphasized the growing significance of Programming in today's world. He also explained how the programming language evolved to the level that it is right now. Our Tech-loving audience was enthusiastic for the session, there was a long round of QnA, and a large number of questions were asked from the audience and the knowledge-seeking students. Last but not the least the most awaited comedy night was conducted in the auditorium at 8pm. There was a lot of ardor in the audience. The craze of the comedian, Sahil Shah was frenzy. Students and faculty enjoyed a lot and were applauding and hooting throughout the event. Day 2, overall, saw two-way feedback, the enthusiasm in the Audience to listen and in the spokesperson to deliver were extraordinary. We concluded day 1 of Techkriti’22 with an overwhelming response and are looking forward to an exhilarating start of Day 3. To know more, visit: https://techkriti.org. Day 1: Techkriti’22 Techkriti, the annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur, kicked off with an amazing start to its 28th edition today. The inauguration of Techkriti'22 was graced by the chief guest for the evening, Dean of Students' affairs IIT Kanpur, Professor Siddhartha Panda. This year the theme is "Transcending Origins." Thriving all these years, Techkriti has approached and now stands on the edge of the technological frontier, which describes the fundamental structure of being, not as an ontology, but as a framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. Let it be affirmed that we may transcend our scientific and cultural roots and redefine our identities, individual or collective. Transcendence opens the door not only to personal transformation but also to confront ethnic stereotypes and prejudices. This edition of Techkriti, the three-day annual festival of IIT Kanpur, is scheduled from 24th to 27th March.
The day 1 of festival kicked off with an incredible entrepreneurial talk, and The topic for today's talk was "What makes a Venture Capitalist: fit, success as a VC." We had Mr. Anant Vidur Puri, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Mr. Sandeep Singhal, Senior Advisor Avaana Capital. The talk started with a brief introduction of the panelist present, followed by a question to Swati, asking her the difference between an Angel Investor and a Venture Capitalist. Her viewpoint is that the primary difference is how one looks at startups. Angels look at them superficially with not much depth and heavily rely on the experience of people around them. Contrary to this, a VC looks at startups in a more structured manner and gets him/herself involved in the hustles and challenges of the founder and startup. The latter is what she likes most about being a VC. The talk was followed by a question to Anant, asking him why he switched to Indian startups after his experience in the States. He replied by saying that the US is a 2% growth economy, compared to India being a 5-6% growth economy. India also has a lot more potential and a lot more things broken. One can focus on a myriad of problems over here than a mature economy, but with a higher risk, which is just a part of a VC's job. On being asked what the future of VCs is and what challenges are there in India, demographically and with respect to policies, Sandeep replied that India is one of the most attractive markets to invest in. He adds that India is a higher growth market. He also adds that the govt is supportive in the last 5-6 years. No regulatory hurdles as such. However, he too believes that many unicorns might not remain unicorns in the future. The second talk commenced at 3 pm on March 25th, 2022, on Technological changes in banking. The speaker was Mr.Sanjeev Kumar - Regional head, Union Bank of Kanpur. Mr.Sanjeev Kumar expressed his gratitude for including him in such a great event. He also started by saying that the role of technology in banking is not inclusive or exclusive but a part of it, and he can't think of banking without technology. He elaborated on gradual changes that took place from the '80s and '90s when economic growth took a leap and also explained how the Public sector banks adopted to technical changes He touched many points as how the banks used technology to develop the system like MICR - a technology used to identify and process cheques, E-Banking - use of electronic devices for banking, Whatsapp banking, Financial Inclusion- equality of opportunities to access, financial services. With an enthusiastic audience and knowledge-seeking students, there were many questions asked during the talk by a bunch of enthusiastic students to be answered with great words by the speakers. Day 1, overall, saw great two-way feedback, the enthusiasm in the Audience to listen and in the spokesperson to deliver were extraordinary. We concluded day 1 of Techkriti'22 with an overwhelming response and are looking forward to an exhilarating start for Day2. To know more, visit: https://techkriti.org. |
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