G. Kalyana Sundaram Speech at Thiagarajar College of Engineering

Thanks for inviting me for this function; I am greatly honored to be with you today.

It has been 6 years since I graduated from this institute back in 2003. I still remember sitting over there in this very same auditorium as a student for my valedictory function. I assure you that I will not lull you by any means, hopefully.

I am here to emphasis on two things - just two things that might be of some importance to you at this stage when completing your graduation. I am not that old enough to offer you valuable advices, so I will tell my message in relation to how I faced them in life and conquered.

First is about "Education and its value". It really astonishes me to see the kind of infrastructure changed the institute has undergone. You are all very fortunate to enjoy these facilities - I envy you that we had missed these facilities and hopefully you all made good use of these facilities. But I can proudly tell the quality of education that I received has always been the same and had a great impact on my professional success.

A trio of inventions – the personal computer, the mobile phone and the internet has done great changes to our life and almost everything. I have always been fascinated about these technologies especially mobile – though my under graduate degree here did not directly impart knowledge on mobile, but it helped me understand the fundamentals of it.

Learning is an endless process: to add more value to my knowledge, I went to pursue my higher education to learn more on mobile computing. Found BITS, Pilani which offered a quality course thus proceeded to do a post graduate degree – where I learnt great things about software, internet and specialized in mobile technologies, which earned my first job and later start up my very own company.

The knowledge I learnt helped me to pioneer as a leading mobile consultant as I stand now consulted 4 Fortune 500 companies and 28 other companies on mobile tech. So always value your education, though it might not be of immediate use to you, it will sure lend a helping hand at some point of your life mostly always.

The Second thing that I want to speak today is about "Entrepreneurship while young"

Before I proceed I would like to see those that have won their job already on campus, please raise your hands.

Good to see a great number of placements, but I am sure there would equally be students that are yet to make their first job – I don't want to ask them raise hands and put into embarrassment.

Even for those who have made their job, this season is a windy one with recession globally affecting every single business out there are struggling to survive. So instead of waiting for a call letter, I would request you to start looking for alternative opportunities today; at least until everything is back to normal.

In India not many consider setting up their very own business as an option, blame our culture for it. No one is going to grade you after the college, literally as Jon Stewart would say: College is something you complete; life is something you experience. Youth gives us the ability to learn and risk. It is not much important that if it succeeds or fails, but it would be learning experience that will come for ever in our life.

We are already light years ahead of what our previous generations are in terms of technology and are still in that fortunate position to realize it so early. You cannot risk yourself starting up a business at your 40's or later when you have a family that is dependent on you, karmas save for your future generation too, so you will get very little chance then. Take as much risk as early as you can, try out all possible crazy ideas that might benefit or solve a common problem that will make your entrepreneurship venture a success.

To me - I just had one single idea, a voice memo tool for mobile that is so easy to use and make quick voice notes. I built a great team that architected the software in such way it was so simple to use, yet packed with features, sold it at an affordable price, today more than Half million downloads of it has been done and made us a pioneer in mobile. This success also helped me take even more risks of venturing into internet with the so called Web 2.0 technologies, we built several social networking services, web apps and now pioneer in that area too having worked with over 200 clients on their web development needs.

What just started in a small room in my house; today has its own office space and made us enjoy creating things that change the world with stuff that we daily use. The recession has put large companies into hibernation in order to survive and most innovations are now with the small startups that can experiment and conquer the niche markets to become the legends sooner. Consider the small example of how Google was back in the dotcom era in a small dorm room; today a web pioneer. I would request you to use this opportunity to experiment with entrepreneurship and consider entrepreneurship as a career opportunity.

I hope I have delivered a message that will help you and I assume that those guys that have their eyes close now are dreaming of their prospects- hopefully. Always try to add value to your education and also consider entrepreneurship as an opportunity to become your very own Bill gates and your very own Narayana moorthy than make an already large corporation even richer. Start experiencing your life when you move out of your college.

I wish you all a great successful future ahead. Thank you.