Balaranjth T (1996 – 2000 batch)
Hi there, my name is Bala and I was part of the 1996-2000 batch of Computer Science at SCT (second batch). During my time at SCT, the college infrastructure was still being set up. We had one computer lab with around 30 desktops, and in our first year, we learned Pascal language. Throughout our coursework, we also learned C language and Assembly language.
In three of the seven semesters (the first two were combined), we had our class in the existing CGPU office. There was no big compound wall as we see now, and we could see the entire traffic flowing through National Highway from the class.
During our time at SCT, we established the Computer Society of India (CSI) student branch in 1997. We also organized the first-ever external exhibition called Meet 97 in Kanakakunnu Palace in partnership with CSI.It was a fantastic experience for most of my classmates, from reaching out to companies for sponsorship to printing and pasting advertisement banners across Trivandrum city in the middle of the night.
In June 1999, a few of us participated in an off-campus recruitment event conducted by Infosys in Kochi. Three of us got selected to Infosys, which were the first campus recruitment hires from SCT. In the next six months, we got selected by a variety of companies, such as Wipro, US Tech, IBS, Sun Tech, etc.
Even though we had a minimal infrastructure, the bond between the staff and students was excellent. This helped us to keep in touch with SCT even after 23 years of leaving college. Some of our best memories about SCT life came from the four college tours (Kanyakumari in 1996, Kodaikanal/Munnar in 1997, Ooty in 1999 and Kanyakumari in 2000).
During our 5th Semester, we lost two of our classmates (Arun and Aneesh) on Aug 15th, 1998, while on a leisure trip to Kulathupuzha. This incident had devastating effect among our classmates as many of us went through a season of depression. But this also helped us to bond together closer than ever before and helped establish long standing friendship among most of us. In their memory, my classmates and the Alumni Association established the Arun-Aneesh Memorial Scholarship. Since 1999, we have been giving awards to toppers of each branch in the 5th-semester university exams on August 15th at a function hosted by the Alumni Association in our college. My classmates have been attending this function every year, which also helps us to stay connected with SCT.
After graduating from SCT in May 2000, I joined Infosys in their Enterprise Solutions group in Sep 2000. After working across different locations in Europe and the USA, I resigned from Infosys as a Technical Architect in Sep 2006. After a brief stint with KPMG Consulting, I joined Yahoo! in Sep 2007 as a Principal Engineer. I left Yahoo! and joined a chemical manufacturing firm called Atul based out of Gujarat in Jan 2010 as the Head of IT. I left Atul in Jun 2014 and joined Amazon in their Hyderabad office with their E-Commerce foundation group. Currently, I head the Product, Program, and Tech teams that manage payments to Amazon's third-party sellers. In 2022, my systems processed payouts worth US$ 307 billion to 2.5 million sellers worldwide. We use a plethora of AWS technologies ranging from ECS, DynamoDB, Sagemaker, Lambda, Redshift, S3, SNS, DocumentDB, Kinesis, to ElasticCache, which helps us handle the scale of Amazon's transaction processing.
Reghu M (2009 – 2013 batch)
It is a proud moment to celebrate twenty-five years of our esteemed institution and the stellar role that it has played in moulding young minds. The supportive faculty and the nourishing peer group in the SCT cohort makes all dreams possible. For me personally, SCT has been a turning point in all dimensions, expanding my mind to opportunities that I never knew existed. While completing my Computer Science Engineering under- graduate course, I was placed in a leading data analytics company, as well as got the chance to do research in the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. Both these opportunities materialised due to the robust education that I received in SCT. But, for me, the paradigm shift in my life, was the inception of the idea to pursue the Civil Service Examination and my final placement in the Indian Revenue
Service. This ambition, which I would have thought beyond me, came within my grasp due to the guidance of my peers, seniors and faculty in SCT. I am forever indebted to my alma- mater, for teaching me to dream, and then on, to translate those dreams into reality. My heart-felt gratitude and wishes to my college, for this landmark milestone of twenty five years, and onwards for a century more !