Chagrin

Chagrin probably is the word for this.

It happened while I was trying to negotiate a package for campus recruitment in PEC this year by my company, Evalueserve (http://www.evalueserve.com)

At IITs we offer an amount, say x. At BITS-Pilani, ditto, at IT-BHU ditto again. But at PEC, it has been decided for 0.82x. Though this isn't less, per se, but my point was to negotiate the disparity away. But I failed.

And among the reasons which I could gather is the severe lacking of brand. I mean look at the website, Late Ms Chawla going to space is the bleeding news at http://www.pec.ac.in

The discussion (or debate, if you may) then was directed to, "I beg, you please, at least keep a parity between BITS-Pilani ("a non-IIT", just as PEC) and PEC. But they disagree, rightly so, I now realize.

Came back to my seat and with a bruised spirit started looking at BITS-Pilani and IT-BHU presence on the web vis-à-vis PEC and man, I feel like a fool at even having the thought of going for that discussion.

Who or what is PEC, one can't know. Probably, it is Pondicherry Engineering College, for all they know. Just search for BITS and you come across pages talking of the "highest paid guy in the Indian Corporate" -- Vivek Paul - a BITSian, proudly says the website.

Man, I thought we had achievers too. I thought, Vivek Mehra who sold Cobalt Networks to Sun for $ 2 billion was from PEC. His wife, Sonia Bhanot, alumni of PEC, is a CEO of Verano, some Mr Paul Singh, PEC again, is a multi-billionaire. These achievers and many more, but these achievements don’t get fed back into the PEC brand.

But then why the heck isn't any brand there? I don't know. For now, I'm sitting here, chagrined.