Dr. Palle Kishore Reddy is the Chairman of P.V.K.K. Institute of Technology. With a B.Tech in Computer Science, an M.S. in Computer Science and a PhD from Central Christian University, Florida, he has been associated with the industry and academia for a long time. He has been on the board of the institute for over two decades before taking up the position of Chairman of Sri Balaji Educational Society. He is also a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, a Certified Solution Developer from Microsoft and a Six Sigma Certified Professional for Process Management. He also plays an active role as the CEO and Vice President – Technical Services in i-VERSA Inc. and i-VERSA Pvt. Ltd. His other international ventures include VanVia Group a Holdings Corporation with an extremely diverse portfolio of four private limited companies.

Before venturing into other verticals, Dr Palle had been a technical expert in the IT field for over 18 years in the US working with major corporations like Microsoft, Kraft Foods, Volvo Automobiles and many more. Dr. Palle’s work experience and exposure included a variety of roles from a software engineer to Solutions Architect to Team Leader to Senior Vice President where he led a team of over 2,500 engineers working on hundreds of project deliveries.

Dr. Palle’s multifarious exposure to various international projects has helped him use his innovative ideas to streamline the opportunities into more prolific and prospective ones to augment the progress of students at SBES. With a penchant to serve society, he has established a Trust in remembrance of his mother, “Sri Palle Uma Memorial Trust,” which adopts villages and students who are economically disadvantaged to provide for them and care for them.

P.V.K.K Institute of Technology

You have held key positions at educational institutes throughout your professional career. What are the key factors that keep you connected with the educational sector?

This is my first time taking up a position in any educational society or institution. My forte has always been IT and I have never worked in any other industry. I used to work outside of India but had to come back due to an emergency and took up this opportunity. In the last three or four years, I have experienced immense satisfaction in working in academia when an engineer is rolled out. We are an educational society, with over 46 institutions under our umbrella. The pleasure that you would get when the alumni come and meet with us or when the parents leave is immeasurable. To see them from where they are to where they were is moving for me. It fills us with immense joy. It's a tedious and extremely demanding job, but also extremely rewarding. The learning curve was quite steep when I joined because I was not familiar with the nuances of how to run a business back in India. Now, I'm quite familiar and I certainly hope we have made good strides in the last couple of years. We are blessed to have an excellent team to give us the right input and guidance.

The education systems in India and other foreign countries are structured very differently. In your experience, what can an inbond student gain from studying here in our college?

This is in line with what I've seen firsthand due to my education and work experience. I have the good fortune of comparing myself to other chairmen who run educational societies. It's a blessing that I have exposure to a global platform. I've worked in six different countries and I have completed my master's and my PhD in the USA. Right now, I am working on my MBA from India. I'm not trying to take anything away from our scholars or from our education system in India. But there are certain things that, if given a chance, I'd change. Here, every student is judged on their intelligence based on the marks that they secure. It is a rat race here and you have to make sure that you secure your first position here. Skills are more important than marks. You shouldn't put a student in a structured frame where he is not able to express himself creatively. What I brought to the table after I took over is that we work within the confines of the university regulations, which govern the way that we conduct our academic matters. But within that itself, we are trying to make sure that we give our students a little edge. Like for our second-year students, we implement mini projects wherein we want people to get hands-on experience. Our PVKK sign was designed by the mechanical engineering students, while our reception area was done by the civil engineering students. This is something that we take pride in and something we do differently from other institutes.

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How does the curriculum of the college ensures the best practice for the students?

We are confined by the regulations that govern us which are set by our affiliating body JNTUA. The academic programme, the curriculum, the teaching course curriculum and everything is set by them. We follow that but we add our own flair to it. We bring in industry experts to teach us what the market actually demands and to deliver additional courses. We have MOUs with Infosys and TCS, wherein we get input from these companies and we pay them to train our students. The training sessions they offer last around 45 to 60 days and take place on campus. Students who complete this training are picked up for placements, which is a win-win proposition for us because the moment the student is picked up here from our campus interviews. He will not be able to put him on a project directly; he still needs some polishing. With this model, they receive the training they need to work in the industry from the industry experts themselves.

What do you think should be the university's top priority over the next 10 years?

The only thing that I usually insist on is to ensure that what is asked of a student once they hit the market is to be transformed and juxtaposed into the course curriculum. That will help our students get placed. We are not equipping our students with the right kind of knowledge, motivation and direction for them to understand what happens when they hit the market. We should make sure that they get to learn from industry folks. This is one of the things that I would recommend the institute focus on over the next decade. I also want to work towards encouraging the community, especially the farming community around us, to send their students for higher education. Most students from these families tend to work on the family farm and do not enroll in college due to the high costs. They tend not to communicate with their parents about what they want and desire for fear of retaliation. However, that should change along with parenting styles, which begin with the right teaching in the institute.