Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho Corporation, handing over degree certificate to a student at SASTRA University near Thanjavur on Saturday. Vice-Chancellor R. Sethuraman looks on. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT more-in “Universities must follow the German and Japanese models of creating economically empowered industry clusters in small-size towns than sucking local talent and funnelling it to global market place with very little value addition” observed Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho Corporation, here on Saturday. Delivering the convocation address at the SASTRA University after awarding degrees to over 1,000 graduates, Mr. Sridhar counselled the graduates and the university to nurture the experimental flavour in their pursuits and not remain mere exporters of talent and importers of technology. Mr. Sridhar highlighted the ‘talent funnelling’ model of universities’ education, which filters productive talent from localized business eco-systems into metropolitan agglomerations thereby increasing entrepreneurial void in localized businesses. Mr. Sridhar traced the functionality of the current economic and entrepreneurial discourse to the Anglo-Saxon model and distinguished it from the Germanic and Japanese models which worked on job creation, rather than theoretical explication. R. Janani and Manju Bhargavi were awarded the Founder-Chancellor’s best doctoral thesis award in Sciences and Engineering respectively carrying a cash award of ?25,000 each and a citation. R. Madhumitha was adjudged the Best Outgoing Student of the 2017 engineering batch. Chancellor R. Kandaswamy presided and Vice-Chancellor R. Sethuraman spoke.

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