Three of my classmates apparently organized an event in 2020.
Sanjay Bhargava
Towards the end of 2020 a whatsapp group related to hostel 7 became active all of a sudden. We were about 65 years old, the age at which we have financial assets at their peak and risk tolerance low, Therefore for our benefit Sanjay Bhargava had organized this event. Sanjaya Bhargava is the gold medalist from the prestigious IIM, Ahmedabad. worked with Musk at PayPal, plus plus.
Sanjay had a free tutorial on options and its use for portfolio return enhancement. He had 2 free memberships. Later he was very open about his financial situation. He informed us that however wealthy he was he could have been one-third better if he knew options better. Later he declared that his previous month’s interest income was rs 4 lakhs. Rajesh Gupta signed up for the free trial and magically an email was sent to all informing us of that.
When offering the options course Sanjay assured all of us that it will not have any maths. That started me thinking. On the option pricing CFA treatment had minimal quant coverage, SOA’s actuarial course had some decent coverage, UC Berkeley’s Stochastic Process course which had the most vigorous treatment. there were no MBA students.
His son is a graduate of University of Chicago’s MBA program.
My evaluation of his abilities is quite generous. Quantitative: 75%ile, Verbal: 95%.
I won’t be surprised if some King is his grandfather.
Rajeev Bhateja
He obtained his PhD from prestigious UC, Berkeley. He has been involved in 17 start ups in Silicon valley. He complained about a single test, JEE, where his poor performance, forced him to study Civil engineering at IIT. (Sunder Pichai might have similar complaint.)
When I saw him in IIT he seemed like a 20 year old average Civil engineering student. His English was excellent. He seems to be shy about that but somebody at IIT had told me that his mother owned the biggest hospital in Bangalore. Her donations to UC, Berkeley and Silicon Valley and contacts might have carved out his career. I remember once I asked him about the school he attended in Bangalore he replied “Bishop Cotton” and I had answered “oh, Nandan Nilekani was in the same school, he became silent. I thought they had some personal issues. But if they went to totally different schools, I was wrong in my “personal issues.” Good now I know. Once I asked Nandan Nilekani about Rajiv Bhateja, he had become silent too. Older I become the more I remember.
GRE V: 95% Q: 60%
Vivek Govilkar
His outsourcing company, Iflex, got bought out for a huge sum by Oracle. Amol Gokhale informed me that his book on that was published by the prestigious Penguin. I knew that Penguin has a branch where for something like less than a lakh rupees it lets self publishing authors publish under its banner. I considered to be a waste of money it may for different for Vivek Gopilkar.
He also has an expensive apartment at Hiranandani next to IIT. Amol Gokhale was scheduled to live the next two years there.
Amol told that he is found often in hanging around in nearby 5 star hotels drinking coffee etc I guess Prakash Modak, Shyam Maniyar etc accompany him on those occasions.
Most likely tiny brain. but RICH dad.
GRE V: 30% Q: 60%ile (generous estimates)
Note: My big problem is that iitians are very shy about showing their GRE or GMAT scores. My fair guesses, if off a lot, please let me know. I will happily change them. Sanjay and Rajiv had stopped talking to me a few years ago for something I had written about them, I have my biases but try to be fair to them.