ITM

Know the woman who bakes your daily bread. She is none but Meeta Walawalkar-Hattangdi – ITM alumni who started Soul Bakers a new venture in Organic Baking four years back in Bangalore. The enterprise is own and run by women. In true sense…Woman empowerment to be reckoned with!

Meeta is PGDM 1999-2000 batch pass-out from ITM Navi Mumbai campus. She was campus placed in Shaw Wallace as a MT and was the first and only female sales officer in entire liquor industry, when she took over as corporate sales executive in the year 2001. She further worked with MNCs like Reliance and Hutch and headed marketing in YLG.

She is a “Serial Entrepreneur”. Prior to Soul Bakers, she was a wedding planner (Shubh Muhurtam) for a stint of 3 years. Parallelly, she was running a marketing consultancy firm called “Mango Tree” then.

Soul Bakers is a social initiative to encourage healthy eating. Meeta says, “The entire foundation of existence of this initiative is to prove that healthy can be extremely delicious too”. At Soul Bakers, a variety of breads that are made with healthier substitutes like olive oil instead of margarine, organic jaggery instead of refined sugar and organic flours. The slogan is, “Eat Healthy, Be Happy. Because You Are What You Eat!”

Meeta is an individual with more than fifteen years of work experience building strong brands and products for India’s companies, Meeta knows how to get into the minds of the consumers coupled with the passion for catching the right pulse of the market, which has led to interesting market discoveries and product innovations, that have carved out a niche and been disruptive to large extent.

Meeta advocates and practice, Organic Food making. She says “Organic is a way, a habit and a practice all rolled into one”. Soul Bakers delivers the healthy bread to your doorstep. From milk to tea, pastas, or pizzas, bread goes with everything. There are hundreds of options available in the market: the bigger challenge is to choose the right type of bread for your family.

Meets did this from her basement at home for 2 years (2011-13) but the product demand far outgrew, what she could produce. A small unit set up in December 2013, today meets the demand, and she is firmly in business. Meeta is the owner, chief baker, accountant, marketing executive, purchase manager, and part-time delivery person all bundled up in one. Her staff members help her bake, clean, and deliver. Meeta – a baker with soul - says “She is proud of social initiative to hire local unskilled women who knew nothing about baking and taught them a life skill. In the future, even if they do not want to continue with me, they do not have to go back to cleaning utensils. They can stand on their own two feet,”

Going beyond just ingredients, Soul Bakers is making an effort to turn the entire chain green; they use reusable paper bags for packaging, thereby reducing the plastic usage and further they are also in the process of installing renewable energy source for their bakery. They are the only bakery in town that makes breads with organic ingredients with an FSSAI certification, based on food safety standards at a national level. They also make special breads for oncology (cancer) patients. She says “This is very close to our heart and we make it with all the love and hope that people consuming our breads will get better soon and pray for the good health of our consumers”. Currently, ‘Soul Bakers’ products are available at various organic stores across Bangalore.

Meeta wants her products to be affordable and take away the notion that organic food is expensive. Therefore, the products are not very highly priced. With innovative business strategies ‘Soul Bakers’ brand is having consumer base of over 100 thousand, it is the most popular organic bakery brand in Bangalure and Chennai.

As Swami Vivekananda said:

“Always walk the middle path.” That’s exactly what Meeta is doing.

Mr. Keyur Shah, is pass out of ITM PGDM Batch 1999-2000 and is currently heading Precious Metals Business of Muthoot Pappachan Group as a CEO. He is with Muthoot Group since Oct 2012. He is CEO of Muthoot Exim Precious Metal division, a newly formed vertical mpg,which specializes in developing and marketing of precious metals related products and services. His role includes development of new business verticals for the group that caters to the Indian consumers via strategic initiatives and customer friendly precious metal solutions and product offerings.

Prior to this assignment, he was director (investment) at world gold council where he was instrumental in development and implementation of world gold council’s investment strategy in India that included the gold retail programs via banks @amps, post offices, gold link micro finance program, gold accumulation plan etc.

Keyur has more than 20 years of experience in strategic business planning and amp implementation, product development, brand management and communication and business activities. His career has spanned various geographies like USA, Middle East and India in organisations like World Gold Council, Motorola, Saatchi, Leo Burnet.

Over eighteen years of strategic planning & implementation, market development (consumer segmentation), new business development, product development, communication (brand management, event management, product management, advertising) and sales experience in gold, automotive, energy, telecom, and information technology industries in India, USA and UAE.

• CEO - Precious Metals Business at Muthoot Pappachan Group for 5 years
• Director at World Gold Council for 7 years
• Group Account Director at Leo Burnett for 1 year
• Marketing Managers at Motorola - Chicago, USA for 3 years
• Account Manager at M & C Saatchi - Dubai, UAE for 1 year
• Senior Account Executive at Leoburnett for 2 years
• Marketing Manager at Motorola

Keyur’s expertise is in strategic planning & implementation, market development (consumer segmentation), new business development, product development, communication (brand management, product management, advertising, events) and sales. Keyur with his innovative thinking and hard work is continuously taking the company to greater and greater heights.

At ITM Business School placement team with professional background and industry experience takes complete ownership of this most critical task. They are supported by a team of experienced faculty members to prepare the students for facing the interview. At ITM we ensure that our students are

The placement season in ITM last year started from October 2016 and till end of this academic year (2016-17).The final placements were quite satisfactory across all ITM b-school campuses in the country.

The highest package this year is offered by Amazon and they selected 3 students.Deloitte selected 10 students from Kharghar campus based on the performance of the students from earlier batches. The others amongst frequent recruiters are, ICICI Bank who selected 17 students, Kotak Securities who selected 12, Lodha selected 11 students; Yes Bank selected 10, AGC Networks selected 15, ITC Ltd selected 7, Aptech selected 7, Capgemini selected 7, Asian Paints selected 6, Cadbury selected 5, Airtel selected 5, SBI selected 4, Federal Bank selected 4, L & T Realty selected 4, Croma selected 4, Idea selected 4. For international placements AGC network selected 1 student, Lexi pen selected 2 from Kharghar campus.

The overall placement scenario in 2016-17 was:

• Total number of students placed: 750
• Total Number of Companies on all campuses: 291 Companies
• Highest package offered: Rs. 14 L p a
• Average No. of Interviews: 8.5 per student
• Sectoral Highest Placements: BFSI (28%) followed by IT (12%) & Real Estate (7%), FMCG (5%), Manufacturing (5%)
• International Placements: 3 students

Internship in Europe: Under the MOU with ESSCA and EM Normandy B-Schools in France, this year 58 students from PDGM-Internaltional Business stream are spending 10 weeks together in France and Hungary as a part of their PGDM curriculum

Students Leader of Engineering Education, Mr Akashay Yadav, B.Tech third year student of ITM Vocational University, Baroda selected as student leader of Engineering Education in India and also key member of the global student organisation to attend the 12th Global Student Forum of SPEED in Seoul, South Korea from Nov 4th to 6th, 2016.

International Conference on “Business Excellence in Turbulent Times (ICBETT)” was organised on Feb 18, 2017 at RCF, Mumbai by ITM This conference was partnered with QCFI (Quality Circle Forum of India), which has successfully implemented Quality concepts under the TQM umbrella in Indian industry.

Partnership with Free Ophthalmic Society: MOU was signed between ITM – Institute of Health Sciences and Free Ophthalmic Hospital’s Society (K.B. Haji Bachooali Charitable Ophthalmic & ENT Hospital) at Mumbai to provide free eye care services such as cataract surgeries with intra-ocular lenses.

Siemens Collaboration: ITM College of Engineering, Nagpur, partnered with Siemens India, under which Siemens will further develop State of the Art Laboratories on campus and provide training to faculty and students.

Incubation Center: A Start-Up Business Incubation Centre is set up on February 16, 2017 at ITM Khraghar campus to promote innovation and entrepreneurship for commercial and societal benefit.

Business Chaupal: A simulation to sell goody bags, accessories and selling clothes by ITM PGDM students. Held in Dec, 2016 at Glomax Mall aiming at developing entrepreneurial, communication and marketing skills of management students.

ITM Skills Academy, Mumbai founded in 2013 is working on a unique SourceTrain- Deploy model to provides skilled resources to its partners. Since its Inception, ISA has successfully sourced and trained over 30000+ candidates, who are working in BFSI sector.