Monday, August 18, 2008

An Amazing story of Non-IITian Who Made More Than IITian

K Prasanna From Kongu Engg College Is One Of Two Non-IITians To Make It To Auto Giant’s Open Recruitment This Year, Offered $92,000/Year

“I SAW the advertisement in the company website and applied for the same,” says K Prasanna, a 22-year-old final-year student of a rural college in Tamil Nadu. This smalltown guy has attracted none other than the iconic auto giant Rolls-Royce. After nine gruelling rounds of technical tests, the student of Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai, has been offered a package of $92,000 per year. This pay package tops even that of IIT Madras, where the highest offer of $90,000 was made by German oilfield services provider Schlumberger last December. Prasanna has inked a five-year bond with Rolls-Royce, during which he is permitted to pursue Masters and Doctoral programme alongside his job. Moreover, he can also apply for patents for the research he does. Rolls-Royce is into manufacturing of gas turbines, power plants, cars, marine engines, aerospace engines and rocket propulsions. It may be noted that Prasanna had failed to get through any of the campus interview conducted by software companies this year. “Research and development is my interest area and some day I would like to take up teaching,” he said adding this Rolls-Royce offer is an opportunity to improve his knowledge in the field of engines, fuels and combustion. “I am interested in pulse detonation engines, which are used in aircraft and I would like to master in this area,” he said. A native of Periyanaickenpalayam, Coimbatore, he has been selected as a graduate trainee. Interestingly, Prasanna is one of the two non-IITians among the 120 selected from India by Rolls-Royce through an open recruitment this year. The other non-IITian is a student from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), Mumbai, (earlier known as Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute). When ET met Prasanna, he said of those shortlisted, only 22 are pursuing engineering. “The rest of them have either completed their Masters or Doctorate and few are even working in industry,” he said. Moreover, 14 girls have made it to the list, in which one 36-year-old woman with a doctorate in turbo engine has also been selected. “Basically, there is no age-limit and any qualified and knowledgeable candidate could apply,” Prasanna said. Annually, the company usually recruits around 300-700 candidates globally. But this year it had planned to increase the intake to 2,000 candidates and thus turned towards India for the first time. Though this is the maiden recruitment initiative in India, 3.42 lakh Indians were selected to take the tests after the initial filtration process by the company. Then came the sequence of nine technical tests, where a minimum of 5.33 aggregate was required to qualify for the next level. Prasanna made it to the final list with a total aggregate of 6.98. The questions were mainly technical and pertained to their industry. For example, Prasanna was asked to calculate the extreme power attained by a turbo dyne DC engine and the engine is yet to come into market. “The engine is still in their R&D stage and I was asked that question. So my extra knowledge and interest apart from curriculum helped me to solve such problems,” Prasanna said. Moreover, Prasanna said it is easier for IITians as they are given more liberty to specialise in their area of interest rather than attend classes regularly, whereas in Anna University, students are expected to have a minimum attendance. So far, Prasanna has presented 30 papers and also attended 13 conferences. “I have made Rs 68,000 from paper presentations,” he said. In fact, he had cleared the IIT and got a seat for BTech IT, but chose not to join, since he wanted to specialise in mechanical. He even got an opportunity to do internship with IIM recently, but voted against it as he was not interested in management either. His college encouraged him by giving access to their Technological Business Incubater (TBI), where research can be carried out. Prasanna has applied for three patents and he hopes he would get copyright for at least two. The previous year students of his college had won 19 copyrights and this year 122 applications have been sent.

Source-Internet World !! 

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