Noida  : “Accept failure as a part of life. Fear of failure limits one’s activities. Accept it as an opportunity to begin afresh after imbibing lessons from failure’.

The 403 management graduates of the Birla Institute of Management Technology start their corporate journey with these words of wisdom spoken by Mr RS Sodhi, Managing Director of Amul, at BIMTECH’s 27th Convocation held here late last evening.

“Be passionate about your work. Shed impatience to focus on long-term goals and follow a value system built on integrity,” said Mr Sodhi exhorting 403 young management graduates to adhere to strong work ethics from day one on the job.

He urged the youth not to despair, if they are not successful in the short run, as the experience gained out of failure is equally valuable, citing lessons learnt while working closely with Dr Varghese Kurien who founded Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation.

Mr AK Agarwala, member of the BIMTECH Board of Governors, shared that with this batch of graduating students the BIMTECH alumni has now crossed the 5000 mark.

In a digital world where terms B2B and B2C are common Mr Sodhi said that Amul was in the C2C (from Cow to Consumer) business where strategy and execution were equally important. Called the ‘Doodhwala (milkman) to the nation’, a sobriquet first used for Dr Kurien, Mr Sodhi said that leading a Rs 31,000 crore cooperative owned by 3.5 million farmers meant sourcing milk at ‘as high as possible’ prices from the famers and serving it to consumers at the most reasonable rates. This is a paradox in the corporate doctrine of success.

He recounted how as a school boy in the 1970s he had to queue up to buy rationed milk in Delhi. Today India’s milk consumption has tripled despite tripling of population, thanks to the white revolution initiated by Amul.

Mr Sodhi who transformed ‘Amul’ from a trusted Indian brand to a preferred global brand paid a tribute to the late Dr Sarala Birla, who founded BIMTECH 27 years ago and established it as a center for management studies and research.

In his report director Dr Harivansh Chaturvedi said that currently, 61 research scholars are pursuing Ph.D. programmes and 16 are undergoing Fellow Programmes at BIMTECH.

Congratulating the 2015 batch he said, “From now you will be part of our global alumni community and we shall take great pride in your future achievements, big and small.”

Seven high achievers — Jigyasa Gautam, Mahima Kapoor, Dibyanshu Tripathi, Devanshi Pathak, Ritika Jain, Aggyapal Singh and Shruti Singh—were awarded gold medals.

The packed hall had over 750 students, academicians, recruiters and alumni.