EVENTS & INITIATIVES
PANCHAM: FIVE YEARS OF BITSOM, AND A VISION FOR WHAT COMES NEXT
On October 5th, 2026, BITSoM celebrated its fifth anniversary with Pancham, bringing together more than 600 alumni, students, faculty, academicians, and industry leaders, alongside Deans and Directors from across BITS campuses. The milestone was both a celebration of how far the school has come and a milestone of what it aspires to become.
At the heart of the next chapter for BITSoM is a growing technological ecosystem that connects management education with research, entrepreneurship, and industry. AI is being woven across BITSoM’s curriculum, while initiatives such as BRAIN Lab and BITSoM Vertex are creating new opportunities to translate ideas into research, innovation, and real-world impact.
The BRAIN Lab brings faculty, students, and industry partners together to develop use cases and solutions to real-world business challenges.
The school also launched BITSoM VERTEX, its AI venture incubator with Silicon Valleybased innovation studio, LENZ. VERTEX will bring founders and BITSoM student teams together to build and test enterprise-ready AI solutions.
As Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chancellor of BITS Pilani, reflected, “The value of management education can no longer lie solely in teaching what is already known.” The ambition, he emphasised, is to prepare graduates to solve complex problems and become builders.
BITSoM has now graduated 579 students from 21 states and 123 cities across India. Its alumni have gone on to build careers across leading global organisations, including Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, BCG, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Nestlé and Pidilite. Five years on, its new mission is to sharpen its position at the intersection of management, technology, and entrepreneurship – creating new opportunities for students and the wider community and laying the foundations FOR WHAT COMES NEXT.
ALL INDIA DEANS CONFERENCE: RETHINKING THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION
How should business schools prepare students for a world being reshaped by AI? BITSoM brought this question to the forefront at its inaugural All-India Deans Conference on 8-9th October, 2026. The event convened academic leaders from over 30 Indian business schools and distinguished global institutions, including Cornell, USC Marshall, Johns Hopkins, Durham, and Nanyang Business School.
The conference also saw the release of the EFMD x BITSoM Global Perspectives Survey Report, based on insights from 22 Indian deans and academic leaders. Its findings underscored the scale of change ahead: 73% expect AI to substantially or fundamentally transform management education, while 59% identify evolving employer expectations and graduate roles as a major concern.
Across keynotes and panel discussions, leaders explored how business schools can respond – not simply by introducing AI tools, but by rethinking learning itself. The conversations highlighted the importance of critical thinking, ethical judgement, and interdisciplinary problem-solving, alongside more experiential learning, live industry projects and deeper global research partnerships.
Prof. Saravanan Kesavan, Dean of BITSoM, noted that business education is at an inflection point, shaped by technology, changing industry expectations and the need for leaders who can navigate complexity with rigour and responsibility.
For BITSoM, the conference was an opportunity to contribute to a national and global conversation and to bring these perspectives into the way we design our curriculum and student experience. It marked the beginning of a sustained dialogue on building a more relevant, collaborative and future-focused model of management education.
BITSoM VERTEX: BRINGING AI FOUNDERS, MENTORS, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS AND INVESTORS TOGETHER
What does it take to turn an AI idea into a solution that businesses can actually use? BITSoM VERTEX is setting out to help founders answer that question.
Launched in partnership with LENZ, a Silicon Valley AI Innovation Studio, VERTEX hosted its Builders Pitch Fest Grand Finale at ICICI Bank’s BKC Service Centre in Mumbai on 27 September. The nationwide programme attracted over 2,300 startup registrations. From 150 ventures participating in the campus BUILD stage and 50 advancing to the PITCH finale, 35 startups were selected for the incubation programme.
The selected ventures span areas including enterprise AI, sales automation, vertical AI, multilingual AI, ed-tech, and financial AI. They will receive venture-building mentorship, access to enterprise pilots, investor networks, and AI infrastructure, alongside dedicated BITSoM student venture teams.
Industry partners are central to the model. ICICI Bank will provide BFSI founders with domain expertise and mentorship, while partners such as Straive, Blue Ocean, and Frontier will help startups work on real business scenarios. Technology partners such as AWS and Google Cloud will support their development with infrastructure and tools.
At the finale, Dean Prof. Saravanan Kesavan captured the idea behind VERTEX:
BITSoM Vertex aims to graduate 100 enterprise-ready AI ventures over three years. For students, this means opportunities to work alongside founders and experience venturebuilding firsthand. For the school, it is a chance to connect management learning with the real work of creating, testing, and scaling new businesses.
