MUMBAI: Lintas' management school Northpoint Centre of Learning has rolled out its first bunch of media planners/buyers. A group of 25 received their post graduate program in advertising media management (PGPAMM) degree yesterday.
A point to be noted here is that all 25 students have been placed in media agencies across the country and the minimum package they have been offered is Rs 250,000 per annum. (Any agency that offered less was not entertained.) The certificates were given out by Madison Communications CMD Sam Balsara, who was the chief guest for the evening.
Four special awards were given out to the brightest students of the lot. Three of them were sponsored by NDTV and one by Lintas. The Northpoint-NDTV Award for academic excellence was given to Akanksha Sanwal. The Northpoint-NDTV Award for strategic excellence in media was bagged by Priya Deshpande and the Northpoint-NDTV Award for consistent all round performance was given to Preeti Ramachandran. All three winners received a cash prize of Rs 50,000 each from NDTV, given away by NDTV Media vice-president strategic planning and marketing services Avinash Kaul.
On the other hand, the Northpoint-Lintas Award for innovation and thoughtful leadership went to Sameer Khandelwal, who received a cash prize of Rs 75,000 from Lintas.
Other professionals present from the media frat were Lintas chairman and managing director Prem Mehta (whose brainchild the Northpoint Centre of Learning is), Tam India CEO LV Krishnan and MRUC technical committee chairperson Roda Mehta, amongst others. The entire team of Lintas Media Services comprising Lynn de Souza, Raj Gupta, Sudha Natarajan, Kartik Iyer and Premjeet Sodhi were present at the convocation.
Addressing the students, Balsara said, "India is the focus of the world at present and for all the right reasons. There has been a tremendous growth in the GDP and it is you who will maintain the eight per cent consistent growth rate. There is no other more exciting place to be in other than the media today. When I started working, the entire media business was worth Rs 100 million. Today it is worth Rs 120 billion. We've added a zero to our industry every decade and it is now up to you to take that forward."
Prem Mehta on the other hand, urged the students not to forget the institution that will make them big in the world. He also made a special mention of his colleagues Chetan Maniyar, Shahrukh Mundse, Sunil Thakur, Allan Rebello and in particular de Souza, who headed the entire initiative.
"The idea to start this school was so that we don't beg, borrow, steal from other agencies and vice versa. There is so much of job hopping going on that it is really difficult to find good people and retain them as well. My conviction is that what makes a difference is knowledge, skill and hard work and that was the reason why Northpoint was set up," Mehta said.
Highlighting the promise of the program de Souza said, "It has been created with the objective of providing a rigorous academic platform along with industry exposure. And is a unique initiative to build talent for the media service industry."
The Northpoint Centre of Learning is located in the verdant hill station of Lonavla which lies between Mumbai and Pune.
