Varsha Bhargavi, a young entrepreneur from Hyderabad, scales new heights in her travel and tourism venture.

1. The foundation
of every state is
the education
of its youth “ HYDERABAD | FRIDAY 10 OCTOBER 2014
OUR BUREAU
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Hyderabad: The Telangana
State Council of Higher Edu-cation
(TSCHE) urged the
Andhra Pradesh government
to speed up the bifurcation of
Andhra Pradesh State Council
of Higher Education (AP-SCHE)
staff, infrastructure,
and finances.
Speaking to the me-dia
after a meeting
here on Thursday with AP-SCHE
chairman Prof. L Venu-gopal
and officials of AP-SCHE,
TSCHE chairman,
Prof. Papi Reddy said that
Rashtriya Uchchattar Shiksha
Abhiyan (RUSA) funds have
been temporarily stopped by
the central government.
“If the council is bifurcated,
a good amount of funds would
be received under RUSA
which will be helpful to stu-dents.
A file was sent in this
regard by Telangana govern-ment
to AP government to bi-furcate
APSCHE on 42:58
bases, so far there has been no
outcome. I request the AP gov-ernment
speed up the
process,” he added.
Reddy said that both the
councils were under severe
staff crunch. “Once the bifur-cation
process concludes, of-ficials
from other gov-ernment
offices or
universities would be called
on deputation for TSCHE.
Apart from that the council
has fund crunch also. It re-quires
vehicles and infrastruc-ture,”
he added.
Reddy stated that APSCHE
officials responded positively
to their request and they
agreed to share the staff.
YUVRAJ AKULA
Hyderabad: It seems like there
would be no end to the suffering
of students in Telangana and
Andhra Pradesh, thanks to the
common admission clause intro-duced
in the AP Re-organisation
Act.
The Act which has already
dented careers of several engi-neering
aspirants in both the
states, has now cast a shadow of
uncertainty on 20 lakh Interme-diate
students.
So far either AP or TS govern-ments
or Board of Intermediate
S Uncertainty looms over scrapping first year exams
Education (BIE) did not make
any headway for the examina-tions
which are scheduled to be
held in March, 2015. Both the
governments and the board were
unable to take a call on scrapping
the Intermediate first year exam-inations
this year.
The exams now will be de-layed
by a month and will be held
in the April, which will likely af-fect
the students appearing for
national level competitive exams.
“There was no development in
the process till date which led to
confusion among students.
Scrapping the examination is not
the correct idea. If they want to,
they should do it at the beginning
of the academic year. If it is done
in between, it will have adverse
effects due to the common ad-mission
clause. Officials of both
the states have to sit and resolve
the ongoing crisis, fail-ing
which it will leave
lakhs of students in the
lurch,” P Madhusudhan Reddy,
president, Government Junior
Lecturers Association, said.
The idea of scrapping first year
exams was mooted by the AP
government. It is said that, on the
behest of the AP government, the
board had made proposals for the
scrapping the examinations.
The Telangana government re-jected
the proposal as it would
affect students badly. However,
it is the board that has to take a
call on scrapping the examination
in consultation with the board
members.
While a senior official of BIE
said that there would be a board
meeting to discuss the issue, so
far no such meeting has been
held. Due to indecisiveness on
the first year examinations, stu-dents
are worried.
According to an official of the
board, the board had already lost
two crucial months for making
schedules. The official also said
that by August first week exami-nation
schedule, the committee
for setting up question papers,
purchase of white papers, print-ing
of papers, should have com-menced.
However, the process
has not started till date.
“For 20 lakh students in both
states, the board would require
at least one crore answer sheets
which have to be purchased.
Tenders have to be called for
printing answer sheets. The
printed sheets should be distrib-uted
in all districts in TS and AP,
which have to be supplied to
3,000 centres. This process
would at least take two months.
For examinations to be con-ducted
in March, the officials
work day in and day out from
August. Now, that we have al-ready
lost two months and it
would not be possible to conduct
exam in March,” Madhusudhan
said.
Meanwhile, the board has ex-tended
the date for submission
applications for intermediate ex-amination
to October 17 without
late fee.
“
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Campus Khabar
US varsity names
school after Indian
Washington:
Rockford Uni-versity
an-nounced
the
creation of the
Puri Business
School in
recognition of
a USD 5 mil-lion
contribu-tion
to the var-sity
by First
Rockford Group Founder and President
Sunil Puri, 1982 alumnus and 2013 recip-ient
of an honorary Doctor of Humane Let-ters
from the university. Puri Business
School is the first named school at the
University. University President Robert
L Head said, from the minute he stepped
on this campus as an undergrad more than
35 years ago, a fire sparked inside him
that still burns bright." The new business
school will include economics, business
and accounting (EBA) programmes, along
with ancillary business related activities
of the University, a media release said.
Born in Mumbai, Puri immigrated to the
US in 1979 to attend what was then called
Rockford College, where he graduated in
1982 with a Bachelor of Science in Ac-counting.
UG programme at
Azim Premji varsity
Bangalore: Azim Premji University,
Bangalore, declared the launch of its un-dergraduate
programme from July 2015.
The autonomous university is recognised
by the University Grants Commission.
The varsity will offer a full time, three-year,
residential programme for degrees
in Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor
of Science (BSc). There are also some
specialisations courses for students in the
field of humanities (literature, philoso-phy
and history), sciences (physics, bi-ology)
and social sciences (economics,
politics).
― Diogenes
Inter exams
to be delayed?
National ranking system for all central varsities Hyderabad: The Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)
VENU K KODIMELA
Hyderabad: Career is a crucial de-cision
for any youngster. Some fol-low
the footsteps of their parents;
some look for entitlements attached
to a job while a few chart out their
own course of life. Varsha Bhar-gavi,
the top luxury tourist operator
from Hyderabad is one among
them. She set up her own firm –
Concept Voyages in 2003 with a
little investment of Rs 25,000 and
soon her company’s turnover
crossed the magic figure of Rs 1
crore.
Here are excerpts from the in-terview.
What made you to choose the
beaten track as your family mem-bers
are into engineering?
My father was a scientist in Na-tional
Remote Sensing Agency and
my brother is a mechanical engi-neer.
I enrolled into polytechnic to
study computer engineering in
Medak. But those three years away
from home gave me enough time
to reconsider my career options.
When HCL offered me an intern-ship,
I requested them if I could
work in their market research de-partment.
However, they referred
me to their associate. I was barely
18 years old then. I was happy to
take it up though it
involved lot of trav-elling
around
twin cities col-lecting
data. The job honed my
communication skills. My reports
were much appreciated and used
by sales and marketing team. That
was the first lesson I learnt about
the importance of market research
for any business.
How did you land up in travel and
tourism sector?
I took up a sales job in Dubai
where I worked for an e-commerce
firm. I was put on a product team
where we designed a B2B travel
reservation system. The system had
several complex modules. I did the
end user documentation and accom-panied
the sales team to do product
demonstrations. Eventually I was
made the marketing manager and
presented the system to travel trade
in Europe and Asia. Later, a busi-ness
house bought the firm and I
was offered a job in London. But I
had the urge to start something on
my own. So I headed back to India.
How did you start your venture
in Hyderabad?
I did market research on travel
and tourism sector in
Hyderabad. I found that most
agents were busy with the flight
tickets and did not have non-air
products. I found my entry. I had
little money with me to take up a
fancy retail office to start my
business in 2003. All I had was a
computer, a telephone line and an
internet connection to start. My
total investment was Rs 25,000
to start Concept Voyages. I trav-elled
by bus and auto to meet
agents and sold them the pack-ages.
Things worked well when I
started retail operations weaning
out B2B business and focussed
on my direct clients. I had a
choice to suggest new destina-tions
and started using my web-site
and social media to promote
sales.
What is your company's USP?
I started with leisure travel
products and stayed put with it. I
did not bother getting into ticket-ing
business. I knew the technol-ogy
used behind airline reserva-tions
and my experience in Dubai,
it was only a matter of time for
airlines to go completely online
for sales. And my perception was
right. With low-cost airlines for-aying
all over the world and inter-national
airlines gunning for zero
commissions, I knew selling holi-day
packages is more lucrative.
IIT JEE Advanced on May 24
How tourist’s itinerary planned?
Preparing a holiday package is
complex and varies from destina-tion
to destination. It involves
presence of mind in drafting an
itinerary keeping the time frame,
client’s preferences, places to be
covered, budget, duration, climatic
conditions distances etc. Apart
from that a tour operator should
also have a thorough knowledge
of political conditions which in-fluence
the decisions of the trav-ellers.
Recently, we stopped all our
confirmations for Hong Kong ow-ing
to the democratic protests.
How you handle crisis while cus-tomers
are on vacation?
Like in any business, there are
challengers and crises. But thank-fully
we could address them in time
and gained the confidence and trust
of our clients. The biggest challenge
was when some of our clients were
in Singapore and Thailand in De-cember
2004. Luckily, they were not
in the directly affected areas where
the tsunami struck. We made calls
at late hours to ensure that they are
safe and rerouted their trips so that
they could go home safely. In 2006,
a honeymooner had a fracture while
skiing in Himachal, we arranged for
a doctor and a trip to the local hos-pital
and brought the couple back
home.
What are your other interests apart
from travel?
Being an entrepreneur gives me
enough time to pursue my passion
in arts. I am student of Andhra
Natyam, an ancient temple dance
tradition followed by Devadasis in
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. I am
writing a book on the temple dance
traditions of our state which will be
ready for publishing next year.
S Examination process makes no headway
S Oct 17 new date to submit exam applications
Charting new pathway
YOUNG ACHIEVER
APSCHE and TSCHE
to share staff
If the council is bifurcated,
a good amount of funds
would be received under
RUSA which, will be helpful
to students
- Prof. Papi Reddy
New Delhi: A primary draft for developing a frame-work
for a national ranking system for all central
universities in the country has been prepared, a
Delhi University official said.
"Delhi University hosted a conclave of Vice-
Chancellors for developing a framework for a Na-tional
Ranking System and a draft containing the
ranking parameters has been prepared," Media co-ordinator
and Joint Dean of Students' Welfare, Delhi
University, Malay Neerav, said.
The conclave saw exchange of ideas and a broad
consensus was reached on six parameters for the
national ranking system, DU sources said.Two com-mittees
were constitute by the HRD ministry post
the two-day Vice-Chancellors retreat in Chandigarh
last month and the two working groups were di-rected
to submit their report within a month.
The VCs of the seven central varsities, are serving
on the two committees, to deliberate on the dual is-sues
of evolving an India-centric ranking system
for all central universities and recommending a com-mon
entrance test and curriculum for them.
The VCs also deliberated upon certain guidelines
on common admission tests and curriculum, student
and faculty mobility and a national system of credit
transfer.
The conclave was attended by the VCs of the
Jawahar Lal Nehru University; Central University
of Gujarat; English and Foreign Languages Univer-sity,
Hyderabad; University of Kerala; University
of Jharkhand; Tripura University and Pondicherry
University.
Advanced for the next session is scheduled to
be held on May 24.
The test would be conducted in two sessions.
The first paper would be held from 9 am to 12
pm and the second paper would be conducted
from 2 pm to 5 pm.
The HRD ministry along with the IIT council
released a notification for a change in the eligi-bility
criteria for IIT- JEE advanced.
Candidates can now apply for IIT-JEE on se-curing
75 per cent marks in Class XII examina-tion.
The test is conducted in two parts, JEE-Main
and JEE-Advanced. Aspirants who clear
IIT-JEE mains are eligible to appear for IIT-JEE
advance, which provides an entry to IITs. The
new relaxation now would allow more students
to register for test.
In the last session around 13 lakh candidates
appeared for the test about 88 per cent aspirants
cracked the exam in the first attempt. Aspirants
can appear for JEE Advance examination for a
maximum of two consecutive years.
Sunaina Singh VC of English and Foreign Languages
University also participated in the conclave
S Varsha Bhargavi,
a young entrepreneur from Hyderabad,
scaled new heights in her travel and tourism
venture
S With a start-up investment of Rs 25,000 the
firm currently has a turnover of `1 crore
Varsha Bhargavi
Sunil Puri
Papi Reddy