daan khabar vol 5 september'14 · the final khabar team is as follows:-1. sumit malik (iit...

12/5/2014 DAAN KHABAR VOL 5 SEPTEMBER'14

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DAAN KHABAR VOL 5 SEPTEMBER'14

Introducing Team Khabar

DAAN is very happy to announce that this year KHABAR team has set an aim of

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publishing KHABAR every month as a monthly Newsletter.

The selection process for the Editorial team started with posting Google forms onour Facebook DAAN group. Surprisingly we received more than 60 entries not only from1st, 2nd and 3rd year members but also from those who have already graduated from

college and are working at full time jobs. Applications from 1st,2nd and 3rd year wereevaluated based on the article written by them in the first round and they were latertelephonically interviewed by Smriti and Greeshma.

The final KHABAR Team is as follows:-

1. Sumit Malik (IIT Roorkee, Class of 2014) - KHABAR Mentor

2. Smriti Nisha (NIT Raipur,3rd Year)- KHABAR Coordinator

3. Greeshma Balabhadra (IIT Guwahati,3rd Year)- KHABAR Coordinator

4. Nishant Singh (IIST Trivandrum,2nd Year)- Team Member

5. Ashish Kumar (MNNIT Allahabad,2nd Year)- Team Member

6. Ayush Sharma (MNIT Jaipur,2nd Year)- Team Member

7. Rohit Raushan (IIT Roorkee,1st Year)- Team Member

DAAN is very happy to hand over reins of DAAN Khabar to Smriti and Greeshma. DAANcongratulates and welcomes the all new Khabar Team members to this creative task ofpublishing our newsletter.

With a well-structured and fully potential team we expect them to carry DAAN KHABAR toa new level and keep alumni informed about the latest developments at Dakshana.

Dakshana Buys Ananda Valley

A Step Closer...



Taking a step closer to the dream, Dakshana is buying a 109 acre valley in Pune Districtfor $10 million. And with this we are very close to Mohnish Sir’s vision of 2020 Dakshanascholars into IITs by 2020. Nestled in the foothills of the Sahyadri, in village Kadus, nearRajgurunagar, is the beautiful and evergreen Ananda Valley. Ananda Valley features thebeautifully landscaped flora & fauna on the banks of river Bhima. The amazing Valleyspread over 109 acres, surrounded by hills is an amazing property comprising of fiveseasonal lakes, and over 40 acres of drip-irrigated mango and chickoo orchards – simplyan incredible backdrop for cranking out thousands of engineers to serve India and theworld. Approximately 20 acres of this property comprises of the present resortinfrastructure of over 100 guest rooms, and extensive banquet, kitchen and diningfacilities. After renovating few rooms as to convert them into classrooms, Ananda valleywill be ready to welcome the first batch of Dakshana scholars with a capacity of around400 scholars by 2015. When fully built-out, Ananda Valley will accommodate over 2000scholars. Dakshana will be coaching scholars at Ananda Valley after they finish highschool and they will be with us for just one year.It gets us a long ways towards the goal ofhaving 3000 Dakshana Scholars take the IIT entrance exam every year. With this stepDakshana’s growth will no longer be restricted based on how fast our partner, theGovernment of India, decides to move. Instead of having all our eggs in one basket, wewill now have an independent second basket. This second basket,unlike the first-one isgoing to be a fully open system. Until now,Dakshana has restricted the scholar pool tothe Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti; however, when Ananda Valley becomes operationalDakshana intends to accept scholars from outside the JNV system as well. They canbelong to any of the tens of thousands of government-run high schools across India.With the purchase of the property, Dakshana is likely to end up with an incrediblyvaluable asset that will offer interesting options to its future leaders in the decadesahead.

Mohnish Visits Scholars' Home

"All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop

our talents." These are the words of our former President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, and in

a way Mr Mohnish Pabrai, our benefactor and catalyst of Dakshana has been crafting

these lines into reality. His idea of giving back to society has helped so many kids shape

not only their lives but hundreds linked to them and one among them has been Niranjan

Biswas. Every year, Mr Pabrai takes time from his busy schedule to visit India, and meet



families of some Dakshana Scholars.

This year, he chose to visit a few scholars in rural West Bengal. One of these scholarswas Niranjan Biswas, who was a Dakshana scholar at JNV Kottayam in Kerala during2011-13. He retook the IIT entrance exam in 2014, did not make it, but did well enough tobe eligible to join NIT Calicut, which is a wonderful institution.

Niranjan lives in the village of Satyanandapur in Bardhaman district. The inhabitants ofthe entire village belong to thescheduled caste. Most of them are landless or have tinypatches of land under cultivation. Somehow they manage to survive. No one in thevillage, except Niranjan and one elderly gentleman, speak anything but Bengali, no oneexcept Niranjan has studied past 9th grade. And Niranjan is the only person from hisvillage to ever crack the JNV entrance test and attend the JNV in his district. Needless tosay, Niranjan is now fluent in English, Hindi and Bengali. Dakshana gave him a stage andthis help is now going to help a whole village. Besides Niranjan, Mr Pabrai visited TapasMondal and Suparna Biswas. “These scholar home visit days are some of the best daysof the year for me”, is how he describes it.

Another important part of these visits is meeting the current Dakshana scholars. Thisyear Mohnish along with his daughter, Momachi Pabrai, visited the Dakshana scholars atJNV Pune. These students will be taking the JEE in 2015. During his visit to thesescholars, Mohnish explored his ideas and shared his experiences with them. We allexpect that this visit must have boosted the spirits of the scholars and they will surelycome out with shining colours. Dear Mr Pabrai, your visits are a great motivator to all ofus, and we are waiting zealously for your visit to our own homes.

Dakshana 2014 JEE Results

Efforts made by Dakshana Foundation and its scholars achieved another milestone thisyear - a success rate of 64.4%! Yes, out of 259 students, 167 qualified in JEE merit list.They did extremely well and made all of us feel proud of being a part of the DakshanaFoundation. We congratulate all of our scholars on their successful clearing of JEE 2014,and thank them for their hard-work. Only 1.5 lakh aspirants out of 13.5 lakh appearing inthe JEE Mains exam get a chance to appear in JEE Advanced; and there are only 9784seats, hence, overall around 1 out of 150 students finally makes it to an IIT.

This year, we have six scholars in the top 1000 ranks:

1. Kaushal Agarwal, JNV Kushinagar (U.P): AIR 181 (Coached at JNV Rangareddy)

2. Shubham Kumar Pandey, JNV Kushinagar (U.P) – AIR 578 (Coached at JNV Lucknow)

3. Abhijeet Kumar, JNV Rewar, Nawada (Bihar) – AIR 693 (Coached at JNV Rangareddy)

4. Suraj Kumar Jha, JNV Supaul (Bihar) – AIR 837 (Coached at JNV Rangareddy)

5. Aravind Srivastava, JNV Gauriganj, Sultanpur (U.P)- AIR 920 (Coached at JNVRangareddy)

6. Rashmin Patel JNV Dumra Kutch (Gujarat) – AIR 931 (Coached at JNV Bundi)

Other than this Dakshana bags ranks in Top 50 in three Categories:

1. Pawan Kumar Patel – AIR 4 (OBC-PD)

2. Abhijeet Kumar – AIR 12 (SC)

3. Arya SV – AIR 50 (ST)

Currently, Dakshana provides intensive training at seven centres: Hyderabad,Bengaluru, Kottayam, Pune, Silvassa, Bundi and Lucknow. Out of these, Hyderabad and



Bengaluru centres have faculties from T.I.M.E, Pune scholars are coached by PrimeAcademy, Silvassa scholars are coached by Rao IIT Academy, whereas Lucknow andBundi have faculties from Resonance. With the sincere efforts and regular guidance ofTeam Dakshana, Dakshana scholars are on the way to fulfill their dream.

Since inception in 2007, Dakshana is committed to provide a chance at quality educationfor underprivileged youngsters. It is Dakshana’s driving theme to act as a provider of alevel playing field for students who cannot afford the expensive education at thecoaching institutes. We proudly say that “Talent needs opportunities, not Money!” That iswhy Dakshana is focused to provide opportunities and intensive coaching to thepromising students of rural background of India.

Efforts of our benefactor and catalyst, Mr Mohnish Pabrai, CEO Col. Ram KumarSharma, COO Ms Sharmila Pai and many kind hearted people are the most precious giftfor all Dakshana Scholars.

Alums Coming Back To Dakshana

The 2012 Dakshana Annual Report (http://www.dakshana.org/AR12.pdf) saw MrPabraiciting an example of ‘Aravind Eye Care Centres’ mentioning how the approachused by the social firm helps it prosper even with no fundraising or donations. He furtherstressed on the possibilities of making the entire Dakshana Scholar program self-fundedby-

(a) Preparing our own chefs! Groom our own passionate alumni to be the JEE faculty,and

(b) by scaling up each location to 360.

Management Team at Pune:-

This year, Abhishek Rai (IIT Kharagpur 2013, and currently Senior DAAN Fellow) andVarun Thopucherla (NIT Warangal 2014, and currently Dakshana Fellow) have joinedTeam Dakshana. Both of them have been very actively involved with Dakshana in lastseveral years and have contributed to the organization in several capacities,before, andafter DAAN was formed two years ago. Currently, the duo works with the Dakshana



management team, helping more and more scholars to crack the JEE and to team upwith all the alumni to make the DakshanA Alumni Network stand.

Teach @ Dakshana:-

Apart from these two very prominent alumni, in another big change, Dakshana openedup the opportunity for its alumni to apply for the JEE faculty positions. A very warmresponse was received. Finally, seven DAAN members were selected to fill up the vacantpositions. The selected alumni are:-

Physics Faculty:-

1. Satyanarayan Rajput (ISM Dhanbad)

2. Rohit Kumar (ISM Dhanbad)

3. Shreesha Chatra (IIT Indore)

Chemistry Faculty:-

1. Bahadur Prasad (IITD)

2. Nitin Saini (IITR)

Mathematics Faculty:-

1. Amit Kumar Dwivedi (BIT Mesra)

2. Dinesh Godara (IITK)

Selection for the Dakshana JEE Faculty position is based on two important criteria:

Passion for teaching

Passion towards Dakshana

The selected members are currently being trained for teaching JEE aspirants by ShriAnand Kumar of Super30 fame who is exceptionally popular for his methods of teachingamong his students.Teach@Dakshana also encapsulates the overall development of aDakshanaFaculty in terms of soft skills, management skills and more.

To add more to the alumni names, IIT Roorkee graduate Annu Malik is engaged withDakshana as a civil engineer. He overlooks the construction work of Center of Excellenceand Charles T Munger Hall at JNV Bangalore (Urban).

We thank the efforts of these alumni to make the Dakshana model self-sustainable, andinvoke other alumni to contribute to the same.

Dakshana Summer Internship 2014



With the aim of providing the Dakshana scholars with experience in a real life worksituation, the Internship and Placement cell of DAAN invited applications for DakshanaSummer Internship 2014 at the Dakshana Office,Pune.Dakshana received a large

number of entries from 1st and 2nd year DAAN members.Shortlisted candidates wereinterviewed by senior DAAN council members Mr Varun Thopucherla(Board member)and Mr Siva Prasad Reddy(Vice President).Based on their performance followingscholars were selected for the Dakshana Internship Programme:-

1.Abhishek Srivastava(2nd Year)IIT Kanpur

2.Smriti Nisha(2nd Year)NIT Raipur

3.Sunil Kumar JS(1st Year)IIT Madras

4.Aditi Gupta(1st Year)NIT Warangal

5.Neha Gupta (1st Year)MNNIT Allahabad

The working hours for interns were from 09:00 hrs to 17:00 hrs from Monday toFriday.Internship was done under senior DAAN fellow Mr Abhishek Rai and under theable guidance of Team Dakshana at Pune. Regular funda sessions were organised byMr Abhishek Rai.

Abhishek and Sunil were assigned to develop a performance monitoring system forevaluation of performance of Dakshana scholars.Dakshana is aiming to implement thisperformance monitoring system on the DAAN website.The interns also designed the QAsystem.This task of website development has been assigned to the DAAN Council Boardmember of Mr Subramanya Th(IIT Madras).

Smriti,Aditi and Neha were given the task of developing the QA manual. QA manual isaimed to motivate Dakshana scholars and guide them to follow the best study planstaking the feedback from our successful scholars. Besides this, the QA manual alsoincludes special section for Various IITs,NITs, facilities available there, counsellingprocedure,cutoffs,section about various streams etc.All these sections have beenprepared after a lot of discussion,research and taking feedback from students.It alsohas a section for DAAN to make them aware of their responsibility after they finish their

12th grade. The QA manual is a complete package to outsource an intelligent,smart and



knowledgeable Dakshana scholar.

Interns were asked to do group discussion before reaching to any conclusion.Apart fromtheir main task Interns were also assigned the work of website update,databaseupdate,communicating with Dakshana scholars and doing various data analysis usingMS Excel.

Dakshana took extra care to provide the best accommodation and transport facility to itsinterns.

Dakshana is looking forward to provide more such opportunities in other disciplines aswell in the future.

Post-JEE Counselling by DAAN Members

This year after receiving a very encouraging success rate of 64.4% including 6 ranks intop 1000 (open category) the DAAN team came up with a new idea of guiding Dakshanascholars for IIT counselling process. This idea started under Dakshana Fellow Mr.VarunThopucherla and several DAAN members gave their inputs to take it towards its finaldestination.

The main purpose for this mission was the learning from the past failures. Every year weused to have 3-4 scholars who missed the chance to study in an IIT by just filling wrongchoices during their counselling procedure. This lack of proper guidance cost them achance of a lifetime. This time the idea was to send 100% qualifying scholars to IIT bymaking them fill the choices under the guidance of DAAN members, so that no candidateloses a chance at a good seat at an IIT just because there wasn’t sufficient guidanceavailable to them.

Hence, each volunteer member was asked to guide 3-4 scholars right from the filling ofchoices to locking of the choices. The counselling procedure now, including the feepayment, is all-online. The qualifying students have difficulty because of lack of familiaritywith the online platforms used during the procedure. This is a very crucial step in one’scareer, and with correct advice, we can make the best of the wisdom our alumni acquiresduring their stay at the reputed colleges. On this mission, this year, we got maximumnumber of qualifying scholars enrolled in IITs. The following DAAN members gave theirbest to guide their juniors:

1. Hari Prasanna Das

2. Pawan Kumar Yadav

3. Greeshma Balabhadra

4. Meghlal Tudu

5. Naveen Kumar

6. Mohammad Amid

7. Vikrant Kumar

8. Mukesh Kumar Meher

9. Ashok Barsangde

10. Sujit Pathan



11. Sudhir Yadav

12. Yeshwanth Venkatesh

13. Anoop Kumar

14. Sanjeet Kumar Yadav

15. Amresh Bind

We thank our alumni who took the valuable time from their busy schedules to help theiryounger brethren. We also hope that this motive of selfless giving by DAAN memberscontinues forever, and more members participate in future so that not a single dream tostudy in IIT can die just at the threshold after crossing all the hurdles to crack the exam.

Orientation Programme

Going by the trend, this year the DAAN chapters at various colleges took the initiative of

organizing the Orientation Programme for 1st year DAAN members at their respectivecolleges to give them a warm welcome and to make them aware of various dimensions ofcollege life. We express our sincere gratitude to all our college representatives andDAAN members who contributed in various ways to continue the tradition of DAAN to helpour beloved juniors to meaningfully handle all the odds of new college life and to polishtheir personality with the opportunities available to them.

A Glance on the Orientation Programs organized at various colleges….

1.IIT Kanpur:-

Number of Dakshana scholars joining IIT Kanpur has doubled this year and has reached14. DAAN members at IIT Kanpur gave a warm welcome to the freshers and guided themabout the numerous opportunities available to them and also shared their experience atIITK.

2.ISM Dhanbad:-

This year 13 Dakshana scholars joined ISM Dhanbad and now we have total 21members at ISM. A warm welcome was given to all the freshers by our dedicated DAANmembers at ISM Dhanbad. They made them aware of various dimensions of college lifeand clarified all their questions in the orientation programme.

3.IIT Guwahati:-

Under the able guidance of senior DAAN members of IIT Guwahati, the Orientationprogramme was organized successfully. This year 14 scholars joined IIT Guwahati andnow we have 41 DAAN members at IIT Guwahati. Our DAAN members at IIT Guwahati

provided guidance to all the 1st year students to sort out their basic problems.

4.IIT Delhi:-

This year 11 Dakshana scholars joined IIT Delhi and the number of DAAN familymembers at IIT Delhi became 33.All the DAAN members gave a warm welcome tofreshers and had aenthusiastic interactive session with them at the Orientationprogramme. They were told to improve their skills and participate in each event of IIT.

5.IIT Roorkee:-

DAAN chapter at IIT Roorkee witnessed the highest number of entries of Dakshanascholars this year.16 freshers joined IIT Roorkee this year indexing the total number ofDAAN members at IIT Roorkee to 63 till now. Our enthusiastic DAAN members at IIT



Roorkee organized a great orientation programme for all the 1st year students. Theyshared their experience with all the freshers and guided them about college life.

6.IIT Kharagpur:-

14 students joined IIT Kharagpur this year making the DAAN family at IIT Kharagpurmuch bigger. The DAAN family at IIT Kharagpur now has 90 members includinggraduatedmembers. A well-attended Orientation programme was organised by DAAN

members there. All the 1st year students had a great time at their OrientationProgramme. Seniors interacted with them on every aspect of their college life and thevarious opportunities available at the IIT.

7.IIT Bombay:-

DAAN members at IIT Bombay gave a warm welcome to 10 Dakshana scholars thisyear.Including alumni we have total 41 DAAN members at IIT Bombay now. TheOrientation programme organized by our senior DAAN members at IIT Bombay turnedout to be a solid platform for sharing the experience for seniors as well as juniors. Our1st year students learnt a lot about college life from the experience of seniors and at thesame time experiences of juniors about their journey from school to college turned out tobe a nostalgic moment for seniors.

8.IIT BHU Varanasi

9 new DAAN freshers have joined IIT Varanasi this year and now IIT BHU has 24 DAANmembers. Duringthe orientation programme, freshers got information from senior DAANmembers about the new environment of the IIT. They shared their experience about thehappenings in college.

9.IIT Madras

This year 7 DAAN members have joined IIT Madras and the total count at IIT Madras isnow 23.A great interaction session was organised at IIT Madras where freshersgot inspiring lecture from the seniors. They were encouraged to decide their goals andfreshers also shared enthusiastic initial moments at IIT.

10.NIT Surathkal

As is DAAN tradition, this year too a huge number of 14 DAAN members joined NITSurathkal and hence at present we have a total strength of 54 DAAN members at NITSurathkal. Freshers got a warm welcome from their seniors where they got knowledgeabout various dimensions of college life. The seniors made them aware about variousopportunities and encouraged them to interact with them for any kind of help.

11.NIT Allahabad

DAAN community of NIT Allahabad welcomed 6 freshers from various centers ofDakshana including 1 girl this year. A warm welcome to all the freshers was given.Ameeting was organized to decide further plans for DAAN Society and introduction aboutthe numerous opportunities at NIT Allahabad was given to freshers. Now DAANcommunity has a total strength of 13 members at NIT Allahabad.

12.VNIT Nagpur

2 new DAAN freshers have joined VNIT Nagpur this year.DAAN members had a goodtime interacting with juniors.They introduced themselves and discussed the objectives ofDAAN. They shared contact information and encouraged juniors to interact withseniors.Finally a small party was organized.Including alumni there are now 21 membersat VNIT Nagpur.



Photo Gallery...

DAAN @ IIT Kanpur

DAAN @ ISM Dhanbad



DAAN @ IIT Guwahati



DAAN @ IIT Delhi

DAAN @ IIT Roorkee



DAAN @ IIT Madras

DAAN @ IIT Kharagpur



DAAN @ IIT Bombay

DAAN @ IIT-BHU



DAAN @ NIT Surathkal

DAAN @ NIT Allahabad



Thanks...

KHABAR TEAM-Sumit,Smriti,Greeshma,Nishant,Ashish,Ayush and Rohit

KHABAR EDITOR-Mrs Sharmila Pai (COO Dakshana)

Please send your feedback and suggestions at [email protected]

Mailing address: Dakshana Alumni Network (DAAN), C/O Dakshana Foundation,Crystal Castle-Phase II,Wanowrie, Pune,Maharashtra, 411040, India

daan khabar vol 5 september'14 · the final khabar team is as follows:-1. sumit malik (iit...

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