ASPIRE

Ever heard of Neal Mohan? In 2011, Google offered him a staggering $100 million – approximately ₹ 450 crores – just to stop him from defecting to Twitter. Today, he leads YouTube as its Chief Executive Officer. His parents belong to Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. His father, Aditya Mohan, is an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus who moved to the United States in early 1970s to pursue PhD in Civil Engineering. Neal was born in Lafayette (Indiana State of USA) on July 14, 1973. He spent majority of his formative years in America. Later his parents returned to India in 1985. Neal was enrolled in St. Francis School in Lucknow in 1986. It was a dramatic change for him. A kid brought up in USA struggled to speak and learn Hindi. He studied there till Class XII before joining Stanford University for a BSc in Electrical Engineering. At St. Francis, Neal Mohan met some of the best friends of his life and he had a little software start-up which built software for other high school kids and teachers. That...

  Vaibhav Taneja sent shockwaves around the globe after he earned approximately Rs. 1195 crores as the total compensation from Tesla in 2024. This record-breaking salary has surpassed the high-profile tech leaders like  Satya Nadella  (approx. 680 crores) and  Sundar Pichai (approx. 92 crores). He currently serves as the CFO of Tesla and earns more than Rs. 13 lakh per hour. His journey from Delhi University to become the CFO of Tesla is both surprising as well as inspiring. It is the symbol of excellence and global achievement. His pay package includes the stock options and equity grants that he received after his promotion as CFO in 2023. Born in 1977 and raised in Delhi (India ), Vaibhav Taneja comes from a middle-class family. He doesn’t even have an Ivy-League degree. But he loved numbers. His methodical mind and his disciplined approach changed his fortune. Vaibhav Taneja earned his B.Com from Delhi University in 1999. He later became a Chartered Accountan...

Life, at its core, is a tapestry woven from the threads of our decisions. As Satya Narayana Nadella, the chairman and CEO of Microsoft, wisely puts it, "Life is a matter of choices, and every choice that you make….makes you.” Born in Hyderabad on 19 August 1967, Nadella hails from a Hindu family. His mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecturer and his father Yugandhar was an IAS officer. The family's roots are traced back to Nadella village in Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district (now Palnadu) from where Sayta’s grandfather had migrated to Bukkapuram. Nadella attended Hyderabad Public School in Begumpet. Interestingly, he failed to secure an IIT seat and did his BE in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka instead. He went on to earn an MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Nadella still serves on the board of trustees to the University of Chicago. Before joining Micr...

  Sundar Pichai: CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google Sundararajan Pichai was born on June 10, 1972, in Chennai. Raised in a modest two-room apartment of Ashok Nagar neighborhood, Pichai’s early life was simple and disciplined. His father (Regunatha Pichai) worked as an electrical engineer and his mother (Lakshmi) was a stenographer.   Sundar’s earlier studied from Jawahar Vidyalaya and later from Vana Vani; both of which are respected schools in Chennai. His academic brilliance earned him a place at the prestigious IIT Kharagpur, where he graduated with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering and was awarded the institute’s coveted gold medal for academic excellence. Following IIT, he won a scholarship to Stanford University. There he completed his M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering. Sundar earned his MBA from the Wharton School. Sundar Pichai’s professional journey began with McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. In 2004, he joined Google. In 20...

  Divya Narendra is best known for his role in the early development of Facebook and his later ventures. While this entrepreneur and technology innovator is not as widely recognized as some of his contemporaries, his influence on the social media landscape is undeniable. Through his work and determination, Narendra contributed to the creation of one of the world's largest social networking platforms, and has since embarked on various other business endeavors. Born in 1982, Divya Narendra grew up in the United States, where he attended prestigious institutions. Narendra was known to be deeply interested in technology and business right from his formative years. He went on to study Computer Science at Harvard University, which is where his entrepreneurial journey actually began. In 2002, while at Harvard, Divya Narendra co-founded a social networking platform called "HarvardConnection" alongside his fellow students, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. The platform ...

The story of Shri Thanedar could well be a story of a Bollywood movie. His rise from poverty in Belgaum to become an entrepreneur in Michigan and then becoming a Congressman in US is nothing short of a fairytale. Shri was born in 1955 in a village called Chikodi near Belgaum (Karnataka). Like any other lower middle-class child, he did some odd jobs to manage his family expenses. He managed to score only  55% marks in his std-10 . After getting a bachelor's degree in chemistry, he went on to do his Masters in the subject from the University of Bombay. He then had a brief stint as a scientist at Mumbai's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. In 1979, Thanedar left for the US when he was 24. He studied for his PhD from the University of Akron in US. He got a doctorate in polymer chemistry. Additionally, he completed his Masters in Business Administration from Fontbonne University.  After working as a scientist and a scholar for some days, Thanedar decided to pursue entrepreneurship. In ...

Liberal Arts has turned out to be one of the popular and emergent option among Indian Students when it comes to higher education. Apart from being a flexible curriculum, it also offers students a chance to study subjects that one would normally not get a chance to study together. Liberal Arts study sounds like an answer to many problems students face with respect to their subject choices and career.  Some universities in India offering undergraduate programs in Liberal Arts. Following five universities in India offer undergraduate programs in Liberal Arts: 1) Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts, Pune. Admission Procedure:  Admission is done in two ways Option A – candidates have to appear for the  Symbiosis Entrance Test  (SET) or Option B – Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). Candidates need to first meet the eligibility criteria as set by SSLA. Eligible candidates will have to register and apply. Once the application process is completed, candidates will have to appear ...

Quality human resource is the capital of knowledge-based economies. The western countries understood this long before and changed their educational system accordingly. We in India will have to do a lot of catching up. We should be teaching the curriculum of the future and not just the curriculum of the past. Curriculum that is relevant and responsive to the rapidly changing ecosystem. We have to re-design our schools and its learning pedagogies.  We will have to learn, adapt, and constantly evolve this design. We will have to re-design our curriculum in such a way that it will impart skill-oriented training which will help the graduates and post-graduates secure jobs in the future. We will have to shift our focus towards experiential learning and imparting broad range of skills, including cognitive and meta-cognitive skills (e.g. critical thinking, creative thinking, learning to learn and self-regulation); social and emotional skills (e.g. empathy, self-efficacy and collaboration);...