VENIX 2026: IIM Bangalore's Nexus of Possibilities Opens with a Call to Build Holistic Entrepreneurs
Three-day festival brings together students, corporates, innovators and policymakers on one platform
7th August, 2026, Bangalore: IIM Bangalore today inaugurated VENIX 2026, the Institute's international business and entrepreneurship festival, marking the start of a three-day gathering from 7th to 9th August 2026 on the IIMB campus. Born from the merger of IIMB's international business summit Vista and its entrepreneurship summit Eximius, VENIX brings together students, corporates, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers on a single platform to exchange ideas, address contemporary business challenges and foster collaboration this year, under the theme ‘Nexus of Possibilities’.
The inauguration opened with a formal lamp-lighting ceremony, a recap video of VENIX 2025, and a classical performance by a PGP student, setting a reflective tone for the proceedings that followed.
Director’s Address: Ideas Must Go Beyond the Campus
Welcoming the gathering, Prof. Dinesh Kumar, Director-in-charge, IIMB, underlined the responsibility that comes with hosting a festival of this scale, noting that events like VENIX exist to do more than build networks. The ideas generated through them, he said, must feed back into nation building. He urged participants not to let those ideas stay confined to campus, but to carry them forward into the world beyond it.
Chief Guest Address
Dr. John Ebnezar, Padma Shri awardee and orthopaedic surgeon, delivered the Chief Guest address, built around a formative exchange with his mother when he was 17.
Dr. Ebnezar recounted that when he secured a top rank in his board exams and a government medical seat, his mother, a nursing tutor, did not congratulate him. Instead, she told him that academic excellence was proof that he was good at academics, nothing more, and challenged him to excel not in college, but in what she called the “university of life.”
His mother's response reframed his path entirely. She set a different bar altogether: if he wished to become a doctor, he should aim to achieve even 1% of what humanitarian figures like Mother Teresa or Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, founder of Christian Medical College, Vellore, had achieved in service to others, and if he couldn't commit to that, he should drop the idea of medicine altogether.
Dr. Ebnezar told the audience it took him roughly 50 years to fully understand what his mother meant that day. He used the story to press the same question on the young entrepreneurs into a room: why do you want to do what you're setting out to do, and is your answer about a paycheck, or a purpose?
Dr. Ebnezar's central call was for India to build ‘holistic entrepreneurs’, individuals who are intellectually, emotionally and spiritually stable, grounded in both mental and physical health, and driven by a clear sense of purpose.
Guest of Honour Address
Mr. Prasad Gantasai, Senior Vice President and CHRO, Technology Services, Wipro, built his address around a provocative question: what makes you replaceable? He pushed back on the narrative that AI will simply wipe out half of all jobs, arguing instead that it is redesigning how work gets done. He pointed to Amul's AI system in Gujarat, which today serves 36 lakh farmers and 3 crore cattle, as proof that the real value of AI lies not with those who build the models, but with those who put them to work solving real problems.
He offered four questions he said every hiring manager is now asking. First, can you direct AI in your day-to-day work, and challenge it when it's confidently wrong? Next, can you solve real, messy problems that don't come with a clean prompt? Then, can you take ownership of your work in a fast-moving, equally informed world? Finally, can people trust you?
Looking ahead, he named judgement, curiosity, collaboration and character as the traits that will separate those who thrive from those who don't and, addressing whether an MBA still matters in the age of AI, argued that a degree's real value now lies less in what you know and more in the confidence it builds to walk in and contribute.
Vote of Thanks
PGP’27 Yash Mehnawat, Head of VENIX 2026, formally welcomed all participants and thanked everyone who contributed to making VENIX 2026 possible.
VENIX 2026: IIM Bangalore's Nexus of Possibilities Opens with a Call to Build Holistic Entrepreneurs
Three-day festival brings together students, corporates, innovators and policymakers on one platform
7th August, 2026, Bangalore: IIM Bangalore today inaugurated VENIX 2026, the Institute's international business and entrepreneurship festival, marking the start of a three-day gathering from 7th to 9th August 2026 on the IIMB campus. Born from the merger of IIMB's international business summit Vista and its entrepreneurship summit Eximius, VENIX brings together students, corporates, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers on a single platform to exchange ideas, address contemporary business challenges and foster collaboration this year, under the theme ‘Nexus of Possibilities’.
The inauguration opened with a formal lamp-lighting ceremony, a recap video of VENIX 2025, and a classical performance by a PGP student, setting a reflective tone for the proceedings that followed.
Director’s Address: Ideas Must Go Beyond the Campus
Welcoming the gathering, Prof. Dinesh Kumar, Director-in-charge, IIMB, underlined the responsibility that comes with hosting a festival of this scale, noting that events like VENIX exist to do more than build networks. The ideas generated through them, he said, must feed back into nation building. He urged participants not to let those ideas stay confined to campus, but to carry them forward into the world beyond it.
Chief Guest Address
Dr. John Ebnezar, Padma Shri awardee and orthopaedic surgeon, delivered the Chief Guest address, built around a formative exchange with his mother when he was 17.
Dr. Ebnezar recounted that when he secured a top rank in his board exams and a government medical seat, his mother, a nursing tutor, did not congratulate him. Instead, she told him that academic excellence was proof that he was good at academics, nothing more, and challenged him to excel not in college, but in what she called the “university of life.”
His mother's response reframed his path entirely. She set a different bar altogether: if he wished to become a doctor, he should aim to achieve even 1% of what humanitarian figures like Mother Teresa or Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, founder of Christian Medical College, Vellore, had achieved in service to others, and if he couldn't commit to that, he should drop the idea of medicine altogether.
Dr. Ebnezar told the audience it took him roughly 50 years to fully understand what his mother meant that day. He used the story to press the same question on the young entrepreneurs into a room: why do you want to do what you're setting out to do, and is your answer about a paycheck, or a purpose?
Dr. Ebnezar's central call was for India to build ‘holistic entrepreneurs’, individuals who are intellectually, emotionally and spiritually stable, grounded in both mental and physical health, and driven by a clear sense of purpose.
Guest of Honour Address
Mr. Prasad Gantasai, Senior Vice President and CHRO, Technology Services, Wipro, built his address around a provocative question: what makes you replaceable? He pushed back on the narrative that AI will simply wipe out half of all jobs, arguing instead that it is redesigning how work gets done. He pointed to Amul's AI system in Gujarat, which today serves 36 lakh farmers and 3 crore cattle, as proof that the real value of AI lies not with those who build the models, but with those who put them to work solving real problems.
He offered four questions he said every hiring manager is now asking. First, can you direct AI in your day-to-day work, and challenge it when it's confidently wrong? Next, can you solve real, messy problems that don't come with a clean prompt? Then, can you take ownership of your work in a fast-moving, equally informed world? Finally, can people trust you?
Looking ahead, he named judgement, curiosity, collaboration and character as the traits that will separate those who thrive from those who don't and, addressing whether an MBA still matters in the age of AI, argued that a degree's real value now lies less in what you know and more in the confidence it builds to walk in and contribute.
Vote of Thanks
PGP’27 Yash Mehnawat, Head of VENIX 2026, formally welcomed all participants and thanked everyone who contributed to making VENIX 2026 possible.