MBA GYAAN @ the speed of BLOG

Running through Chennai

2012-01-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

Running was something i discovered during my stint at SP Jain; we had formed an SP runners group and one of the bigger achievements was when we were featured in TOI for our charity run at SCMM-2009. Though lately have gone totally off-track(pun intended) and as resolved to get back to the lifestyle for this year.

After running for 15 Kms last week; I was looking for a running group to ensure i stick around the goal of 600-1000 km for this year. Luckily DailyMile site offered a chance to hook up with folks with common interests and even an invitation to join them. The plan was to catch up at 5.00 AM at Elliot's beach opp. Planet Yumm with the Dream Runners gang (Don't ask me why they named themselves so - my guess is whenever they don't wake up so early they simply run in their dreams).

The alarm went buzzing at pre-dawn 4.30 Am - the next 5 mins were spent in pure terror - as my brain simply froze; first at the shock that i actually managed to get up so early (instead of simply throwing the mobile below the pillow) and later had to do a CPR to figure what next. Luckily i had planned the previous night - reached out to my running shorts & tees; and after freshening up went to the kitchen to make something that i do best : Boil water, drank 2 glassful with Honey and then made a dash for the beach.

I suppose i missed them by a whisker (3-5 mins) but then luckily i had managed to remember their running Map - Thanks to Shahul's post; but didn't want to risk going all the 10 Km and modified the route for a shorter 8 Km run(Gmap). The wind was really blowing from the Elliot's beach and as i made inroads into the residential area, enthusiastic kids were drumming over mini-fires (My initial assessment was a funeral ceremony till it stuck me that today was Bhogi*). The roads were almost serene with a few exceptions of milk-men and paper-boys.

Today was going to be a slow jog focusing on distance rather speed. Post the first km; i started getting the usual pain on the front side of the legs (Anterior shin splits) this usually lasts for 5 mins after which i get back into my rhythm. The Gandhinagar area was waking up when i was cruising through and really one of the better running routes in the city. It was pure exhilaration when i reach the beginning of the Canal bank road passing through Vidya Mandir - I had covered 4 Kms without a burn-out.

The rest of the journey was covered in a mix of run & walks; especially when i encountered street dogs - I still have reminiscence of my childhood incidents with them. But one of the best views of the day was undoubtedly the Siddhi Vinayag Temple which was literally glistening with beauty and for some moments I simply forgot all about my run and stood admiring the pongal decoration glory which was heightened due to the significance of Marghazi ending and the birth of the Thai month. My throat had gone totally dry; and even my usual coconut vendor was celebrating his pongal holidays. Increased my pace a bit towards the end to ensure fully stretching my legs (the heel should touch the rear) and finished the entire 8.48 kms within 1 hr.

Managed to clock a decent 24 Km run for this week with the longest run for this year, so far. Do share your feedback and encouragements at my DailyMile profile

*Bogi festival or Bhogi is the first day of Pongal(South Indian festival for dawn of a new year) and is celebrated in honor of Lord Indra, "the God of Clouds and Rains" by burning all old items.

An Update : It seems that the Dream Runners had started at 5.15 and i was just being a little over-enthusiastic to have started much early all alone.

Time for a Hair-Cut / Time for a Change

2012-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

I must say that Ogden Nash got it all wrong; there is no more a vicious circle than a saloon appointment. One can easily freeze in pure terror as the barber snicks the lips of his scissors uprooting all the near & dear ones with disdain.

Specifically in my case; since i come from a genetically challenged family of high-foreheads - Both my grand-dads were mirror images of Agassi by the age of 35; get-together would have my darling aunties warning "Get married before you lose your asset"; the week-end pastime of nephews is to count the remaining strands on their dad receding plates and Dr.Batras is actually our family doctor.

Even if you continue hoping without hope; you still cannot avoid the inevitable journey that happens every periodic interval to perform last rites at the Spa nearby.

But the real irony is the fact that though everyone of us spend so many $$ and effort taking good care of our Hair we actually do not do the same for our own self !!!

Just like Hair; many of us have Habits or practices which have grown well beyond their limits and in fact cover us entirely to the effect that our identities have become defined by these Habits or have made us slaves to the daily routine.

It's time to wake up and start planning for that Hair -Cut or metaphorically speaking for that Change of Habit. More about the same in the next blog...

Track your Resolution - Is there an APP for it ?

2012-01-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Post my earlier Blog; I am currently in search of Apps/Tools that would help me keep track of my resolutions on a day to day basis(& thus increase my daily stress)

The requirements are pretty simple :-

I should be able to enter the details of my resolution; my contact details (email/mobile/facebook profile) so that it can send me reminders in case of indolence
I should be able to store details of my close friends who would be notified of my achievements and also be able to encourage me whenever possible
It should allow me to numerically track my progress on a daily/weekly basis vis-a-vis a measurable target

The last point actually the tricky part; but we should be able to work-around with using Effort Hrs (or) Null values whenever applicable. Ex: If you are learning a new art/sport then you can use the time spent on the activity as a measurement since the outcome may otherwise not be quantifiable; and for addicts they can celebrate every "ZERO" day.

In terms of revenue potential of these Apps; I can definitely bear some non-intrusive advertisements but even more is the interesting is the ability for delivering contextual products right at my doorstep. A runner can get specific promotions by Nike depending on the number of Kms he has tagged and if your resolution is to read "N" number of books - Amazon can readily support your demand.

But more than any of these features the key ingredient lies in the graphical display of the Tracking; the more intuitive it depicts the progress across every resolution more would the end-user be tempted to continue. Taking this a step-further having virtual points for the achievements seems to be a great idea (of course; this might involve some sort of monitoring)

In fact i can definitely visualize the app as a true social-gaming phenomenon - tagline "Track your real-life activities in the Virtual life"; Everyday as you login to your facebook account (which I must say happens multiple times/day) it would ask on your activities pertaining to the resolutions and immediately once you achieve the threshold notifications would be sent to your friends to tell them "How cool you are" and your friends shall respond with a "Like" or "Check my achievements" sort of comments. Overall; you are building an entire community based upon what you have set to achieve for this year.

Do you think that such as game would become popular ?

Let me know what are the relevant features you would want on such an APP (or) Social Gaming phenomenon ?

Or better; let me know if something like already exists :)

Welcome 2012 - Quick Guide to make your resolutions WORK

2011-12-31T03:32:00.000-08:00

It is that time of the year - when Santa takes his much required break(after a mammoth logistical operation); the Indian teams get thrashed by the Australians(OK! that happens everyday) and the doomsayers would be slinking within their bunkers.

Yes – It is the eve of New year; and as a traditional practice many of us as true optimists (or due to memory loss) believe that regardless of the previous year's bunglings there is always a scope to achieve beyond the ordinary for the coming year despite what FATE truly decides. Over the clinking of glasses and loud cheers as we realize that a new era is going to dawn come up with a set of resolutions

With that note; allow me to present 5 pointers to ensure that all your New-year resolutions do not get washed along with your party hangover (esp. if it was to remain sober for the YR 2012)

1) Wants or Needs : The first need is to rationalize your resolutions and filter only the Absolutes Vs Wish-lists. A chain-smoker's need is to quit smoke; A Sales-person's need is to meet his targets(pragmatic targets); An athlete's need to keep winning medals and an IT professional's need to meet deadlines.
But then the next question that pops into your mind is "How do i identify which are my needs"; after all my DIL mange More...
You can always perform a sanity check on your resolutions by ensuring that they play on your unique strengths and validate with your close ones if they would actually support you on this initiative.
Of course; if your goal does not meets this rule; you have a ready-made tweet #kimKmarriage lasted longer than

2) Are they A & M : Is your resolution both Actionable and Measurable. I am sure you can come up with better resolutions than "I shall become kick-ass on 2012"; spare some thoughts to unravel what is the awesomeness that you really want to achieve for the year 2012 - Is it to learn kick-boxing; travel across a country for 14 days or buy your own Harley Davidson ?
Actionable means to make your resolution very specific; and Measurable would enable you to track your progress on a daily/weekly/monthly basis
When I wanted to buy my own house; i first made sure I was decided on the budget and the location details; then scoured the entire market for almost 6-8 months with friends/relatives to zero in on the property and waited another 5 months to get a go-ahead from my wife & family to purchase it.
Remember when you miss to plan you are simply planning for missing your resolution.

3) Are they Square : As a pun for having everything well-rounded; my suggestion is to have goals pertaining to each of these 4 corners :
a. Physical : Travelling to an exotic location; learning a new sport; finish the marathon
b. Mental : Learn new skills to exercise your grey cells
c. Professional : Yearly Goals need to be set with your managers
d. Social : Plan on giving something back to the society which gave your everything else.

4) Prepare for Failures : One of the recurring themes with addicts; is that though they successfully abstain for a few days the moment they succumb they find themselves flushed down the spiral into harming themselves even more.
Learn to celebrate & share with others each steps you take towards achieving your resolution; and set a threshold which would help you ensure that you feel satiated by the accomplishments that you have made even if you do miss to reach your over-arching goal.
After all; even Tiger Woods couldn't manage to remain #1 throughout year 2011

5) Write them Down : Though the last, this is the most definite part of ensuring the success of your resolution. Research has proved beyond doubt that writing things down provides a positive enforcement to help people achieve their goals. Also remember that though it might be your individual resolutions only through support from others around can you truly achieve them.

So; going with the flow my resolutions for the year 2011 :-

Clock 600-1000 Km in Running (remember the threshold)
Take up Chess (1-3 hrs/wk) & Blogs (4-6 hrs/wk) seriously
My professional goals would be discussed with my managers and also with my peers
Provide scholarship to 1 student (10-12 std) and ensure 20-40 hrs of Social service

To all those who managed to read till the end; wishing you a great New Year and considering this blog as my new-year gift do let me know what your New year Resolutions are ?

And in eventuality of an Armageddon; my due apologies to all those believers - may you truly inherit what is roasted behind.

The Accident Circa 16th June'11

2011-07-11T04:16:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps the Boon of the software engineering profession; that everyday stretches beyond the proverbial mid-night. Post discussions with those who live on the other sweep of the Dial(U.S/U.K). But with the end of everyday as you wipe your sweaty brow with the feeling of somehow surpassing another day at work the feeling slowly masquerades when you approach your bike for the journey back home into your alter-ego a.k.a the Knight Rider - adequately armed with ears throbbing with music from the Ipod, Face masked with a la-zorro type bandana and the feet kicking the first gear as the wheels spin in resonance with the growl.

Or maybe perhaps it was my Bane as I discovered on 16th June 2011; when my tyre spilled the gravel on the OMR road at 11.30 pm. Statistically speaking almost 90% of Chennai would have hit the bunk - including (as i discovered later)my own Guardian Angel.

I have been doing this routine for more than a year; and as they say with practice your enhanced senses can negotiate every pot-hole even with eyes closed(a pre-requisite due to the in-adequate lighting in most of the route). But there are certain in-built safety rules programmed into my bike - never speed more than 60 kmph; and i stick to the right-side of the road (since the left is mostly abut with pedestrians walking and also it is effective in avoiding Traffic constables ;0)

On the day as i had eased into auto-drive; and my thoughts were zig-zagging on the activities for the next day.... BAAMMMM !!!

A sudden adrenalin rush pumped and everything around me went across in a slow-mo matrix format(I recount this feeling repeated twice in my life; the first on my Tallest Bungee Dive in NewZealand and next when I had proposed to my wife)- the wheels skidded, the bike careened uncontrollably on the left, I hit my left-shoulder on the ground and the impact caused the handle-bar to slam on my right shoulder, almost for the next 10-20 mts I was given a 180 degree perspective with the bike dragging me and sparks eminating from the friction with my helmet - This was indeed one of the longest minute in my life.

Somehow i managed to crawl out of the mangled mess which was earlier my bike and stood up. I kid-not; my first feelign was of relief - WHOW!! I can still stand and then slowly i turned luckily the road was bereft of any vehicular traffice. But just as i took a deep breath pain enough to paralyze me hit both my shoulders. Luckily a few road-side workers gathered and accosted me to the pavement provided water, a seat and the anecdote behind the accident.

Apparently some drunkard; had just jumped over the median on the right-side of the road and slam-dunked directly on my bike - He escaped with minor fractures; while i was left back with the mangled remains of my bike, a skin-less left leg, left-collar bone fractured and my right shoulder screaming with injury.

Today marks 3-weeks since the incident; and it has been quite a roller-coaster ride. First it was performing the cermonies for my sister's marriage in a sling and later undergo a painful Surgery for my collar-bone fracture where a 10-cm rod was inserted to join the bones along with the splinters.There is still 6 more months of healing left and loads of pain to endure.

A heart-felt thanks to all my close friends and relatives without whose assistance I would never have been able to pass-this terrible phase in life.

Love you all.

Radio - The Tipping point of Success

2009-05-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

Adapted from “The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell “
What can make Radio rise above other media?
What are the chief factors that can provide Radio (BIG 92.7 FM) the winning edge?
I just now finished reading this wonderful management book which outlines the entire philosphy of how "little things can make a BIG difference".
Malcolm in this book explores how social epidemics caused by a few simple factors acting in unison by actively looking into various phenomena such as the drastic reduction in crime rate in New-York during the 1980s or the rapid increase in sales for Hush Puppies.

Reading his theories, prompted me to explore how these same factors could help RADIO become the next tipping point of success.
The rule of epidemics as explored in the book (in context of RADIO):-
1)The Law of the Few : The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.
In the context of radio these people would be :-
• Connectors : These are people who "link us with the world" .
a.k.a the AD AGENCY which links sales with the end-client (product/marketing
managers).
• Mavens : "Information Specialists". These would be industry experts; whose opinion
might change the course of how the general public understand the effects of radio.
For ex: A.C. Neilsen who’s RAM reports are used industry-wide to showcase the
success measure of Radio.
• Salesmen : "Persuaders". This category of people who are indeed passionate and
involved about their product. In the context of radio I would include Programming,
scheduling, Traffic and creative teams along with the Sales/Marketing folks.
2) The Stickiness Factor : the specific content of a message that renders its impact memorable.
Radio being a sublime medium (or as Andy mentions "Theater of the mind") we can easily project the stickiness factors either in terms of CPT (Cost per thousand), low-ad avoidance ratios, and even more as a medium of direct marketing.

3) The Power of Context: the environment which influences human behaviour.
Currently, the cheif environmental factors/requirements would be :-
• Recession : Radio can be pitched as a low-cost medium.
• Improving Product Awareness; which would otherwise not be possible in Print (due to blind-spots) and in Video (Clutter)
• Amplification of Product launches : Radio as a medium of mass-consumption (listenership ratings) can be effective amplification medium
• Rural Markets : How can we tap into the BOTTOM of the Pyramid phenomenon

The CONVO

2009-04-26T02:59:00.001-07:00

Drum-rolls ....
2 years after i got the letter of admit; here is the invitation of the convocation ceremony

Pappu ban gaya MBA

The importance of being a Brand Name..

2009-04-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Would you in your sanest mind
a) Set up R&D worth at least 1 Bn
b) Create a product and spend around 50 Lakhs/year in marketing
and yet name your product literally "UNWANTED" ??

Well, that was my first thought when i came across this :-
But a few moments later it didn't seem such a bad idea for an emergency contraceptive pill; it conveys in a single word what the medicine is all about; and does not hide behind almost obtrusive first-cousin medical names... (Though i would still go with I-pill as a cooler name)

So, what is the importance of having a brand-name ?? well lets talk about the xerox, nike, google and FedEx of the world how their naming has risen beyond just a brand to signify an emotion... in the case of Google it signifies single source compendium; FedEx stands for delivery at the right place and right time; Nike stands for everything cool while Xerox has almost become a key-word with which any copier machine is called irrespective of the brand.

In my observations I have come across the following types of Brand Names :-
1) Patriachal "Egotist" Brand Names :- These are products who get their names are derived upon the names of their designers/financiers. Baskin & Robbins is a very good example; and so are the hundred odd Colleges which adorn the skyline of any Indian city (SPJIMR also being named after late Shriyans Prasad) or be it those now burgeoning Vasanth & Co.
These typical brand names have been the staple diet of the germans.. in fact SAP is the only non-confirmist to this rule.
The characteristics of these products would be that they would have essentially blossmed from a small-scale catering to a niche audience to a multi-million $ business.

2) Direct-to-the-point :- Similar to the "Unwanted Example"; you can include my favorite Reader's Digest or Blogspot as prominent examples.
These products would essentially be monopolistic in nature (or would evolve to become monopolistic) and would essentially be the plain vanilla versions.

3) Zany Creative Masterpieces :- Sony, Macintosh, Twitter, Yahoo are just examples of products which have accentunated their value just because of their cool sounding brand-names.
These products have essentially their own Hatke-effect which has not been even thought off... and hence essentially require Cool Names to showcase themselves to the external audience.

4) Misguided Orphans :- In the quest of becoming Option (3) there have evolved at least 100s of these brands who have gone out of the customer radar simply because of their rather un-emotive (or) un-related names. Chief examples would be the ZUNE, Vivaty or car names such as Tiguan (Volkswagen).
Mostly it would be issues with the product that would have caused the down-fall rather than the brand-name. Then it becomes a case of product re-launches ;)

Further reading Seth Godin's DUMB BRANDING STRATEGY

The movie bible for Salesmen

2009-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

The title of the movie sounds like some autobiography - "Glengarry Glen Ross"
but what it is ... is definitely a delight and more-so a grim reminder of the ways of any salesmen
The Story ( source : Wiki); occurs within a span of 2 days (in fact 1 day and 1 night) and explores almost all possibilities of deception, ferocity, anger and in fact vulnerability across any sales reps life.
Though the movie is jam-packed with powerful performers; including Alec Baldwin who steals the thunder within under 5 mins of screen presence; I really fell in love with the character of Jack Lemon.

Do check out this YouTube Clip and also the movie if possible. Though it might be depressing; it is extremely honest in the portrayal.

Joke of the Day

2009-04-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

What are the top 5 emotions that hit you first when you see the below pic :-

That's exactly how i felt when i read the below news :-

http://www.afaqs.com/cgi-bin/re.html?u=http://www.afaqs.com/perl/news/index.html?sid=23822

DD is going to host it's own Reality "Fair & Lovely Chhoo Lo Aasman", promises to bring the best out of these participants by putting them under the spotlight on the national channel. The show is a 26 episode weekly reality series aired every Wednesday at 10 pm on DD National and debuted on March 25.
Forget the fact that the Endemol India a veteran in the reality show series already credited with BIG BOSS, Fear factor and also the great indian laughter challenge is at the helm... the DD factor really reminds me of our classic premier padmini competiting against the Mercs .

Tricks of the Trade - Fast food outlets

2009-04-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Barring the recession it has been the MALL-story that has been hitting the headlines these days.As according to statistics there are over 575 Malls catering to over 10 Mn urbanites; with an average foot-fall of over 4000 people/day.
And it has been the restaurant business which has piggy-banked under the guise of food-courts across these Malls that have been hitting the cash-registers (or have all of them really been doing good ?). So here i am to talk about the story of the tortoise and the hare of the fast-food outlets :

To begin with; there are many similarities b/w both the fast-food chains & book publishing; just as you would not buy a book unless you believe the flashy (mostly mis-quoted) back-page reviews in the similar vein you would with a higher probability visit a food outlet already crammed with customers rather than try out something which is both obscure(far-eastern dishes) or un-touched.

This was what i observed when i went to a nearby Mall :-

If you can notice how the McDonalds is brimming with customers while other outlets would still be catering to the occasional bugs and ants.
This was an eureka moment for all the marketing junta patting themselves on their back for their 300 Cr of advertisement budget well spent....

But once again i did notice a nearby stall across the corner also brimming with salivating people across the counter; and ended up ordering a mini-thali from this Dosa-Plaza :

In fact only these two outlets (McD & DP) were actually doing business across the 30 odd food-stations; and i felt so compelled to start a david .vs. goliath story until i discovered their modus-operandi
The mini-thali that i ordered took almost 20 mins to be delivered and until that time i had to wait across the counter maintaining my gentlemanly poise; and most of the people waiting across the counter were those afflicted with similar delays.... and since there were so many of us waiting across the counter this in-fact brought in more customers to DP ???

So here is the learning for the day :-
Why spend your money on marketing when you can accomplish the same with lousy service ???

what really mattered...

2009-04-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

As the day winks to take it's 8 hour break; my 2 years of MBA at India's premier b-school comes to an end.
When the farewell ended i had almost accomplished what i had set out for in an MBA; well even danced and acted in a skit (god save the audience) but recounting it now after sending off all my close-pals to their homes makes me want to do a laundry list of things i would miss of my MBA (Why 12 ?? cause of this)

1) Foremost are the 164 junta of 07-09 ( or maybe 2 years is quite a long time to develop stockholm syndrome)
2) Early morning Jogs and swimming laps.
3) Free copies of Eco-times and Harvard Business Reviews
4) 1 TB of movies (LAN & P2P - the combo pack)
5) The lake , 10 min walk from hostel to college (almost everything about Bhavan's campus)
6) BISTRO
7) The free cultural movies & shows (courtesy Bhavan's cultural center)
8) The 12'0 clock idli & coffee cycle canter.
9) Endless gossip nights (filled with booze and all the discussions that arrive when you are in the inebriated stage)
10) Library
11) IP messenger
12) week-end treks

oh yes... case-studies, assignments, subjects do not matter much after MBA.
If there is one great thing that makes an MBA worthwhile then my vote would be for "linkedin" a.k.a networking.

The Religion of News Channels

2009-03-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

Pearls Broadcasting launches Hindi news channel
" MUMBAI: Pearls Broadcasting Corporation Ltd has launched a national Hindi news and entertainment channel christened P7.
The Noida-based Hindi news and entertainment channel promises to offer public news, information and entertainment dedicated to common people irrespective of colour, caste, creed and religion. Formally on air from 27 March, P7 has the tag line ‘Ek Umeed’ (A ray of Hope). "

Till now i always believed that News had only one religion - POLITICS
At least, across regional TVs each political party has a telivision channel and each channel airing propaganda messages for the particular party (Ex: Jaya News - AIDMK) .
The primary POD (Point of differenciations) across news channels have always been upon "Latest News", "Citizens News", "Juicy News(bollywood Gupshup) and stuff..
This categorization of creed,caste & color does leave me wondering about their content ?? would they censor out all the religion based skull-druggery news (Mass conversion, attacks against NUNs, etc) ... but that would be de-glamourising !!
Well... just keep on guessing.

The Magic of Fairness

2009-03-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

Came across this brilliant report (both accurate and thought-provoking) while doing research upon fairness creams.
Black, White and various shades of Brown
What's accurate is the various sources that have been considered for understanding the Indian mentality including the likes of Matrimonial Sites, News articles and local behaviour and what's repelling/thought-provoking :-
" There are two popular brands selling fairness products in the local Indian market - they account for most of the market share. Of these two, one is actually a bleach, (we can stress this point in our ad campaign and run the company out of business) and the other is a cream similar to ours.(Annexure I contains copies of press advertisements of these products as well as statistics regarding their sales and market share)"

Well, coming to why would i be researching about fairness creams ??? shall update later ;)

AAROHAN - Panel discussion about MBA: Why, When & How

2009-02-02T22:23:00.001-08:00

A panel discussion on life before, during & after B school featuring top industry professionals, esteemed faculty, education experts, current & aspiring management students.
Is my career moving in the right direction? Should I start preparing for higher studies? Well, GRE sounds great and coherent with engineering, but at the same time CAT will also lead me to the Business School of my choice? May be I should take up a job. I’m confused; I think I should talk to somebody. But, there’s too much information around and I don’t know whom I should be talking to ?
If any of these questions are crushing you to death, please come to have an interaction with Aarohan. Aarohan, a non-profit initiative run by IIT/IIM alumni, will host a panel discussion to create awareness and inquire into various aspects of management education in India. It aims to address questions like - Why MBA? What is the right time to do an MBA? What happens during MBA? and What to expect after MBA? - through discussion, debate and Q&A between current & prospective students, MBA faculty, industry professionals, experts and top B-school alumni representing a broad cross-section of careers ranging from investment banking, strategy consulting, marketing, and media to entrepreneurship. This discussion will help you solve the initial conundrum of career planning, as most of the panel members have an engineering background. We will also discuss about the aspirations and expectations of students and the realities of B-school. The discussion will also touch upon the impact of the global economic recession on careers post MBA to ensure that you make an informed choice before taking the plunge.
Panel Profile:
The panel will mainly consist of IIT/IIM alumni working across different industry sectors like Strategy Consulting (Mckinsey, BCG), Investment Banking (Merill Lynch, UBS, Citibank, HSBC), Marketing and Media. To provide a unique perspective, we are inviting top management from HR Consultancy firms. There will also be representation from niche sectors like Private equity (NV Capital) and Entrepreneurship. Current students from top Business schools in Bombay like: SP Jain, SJSOM along with students pursing PhD post MBA will also join the discussion. Furthermore, efforts are on to get career counseling experts associated with various media house on the panel. The discussion will also have representation from the MBA faculty, as they are the ones who help transform students into leaders of the future.

Date : 1st Feb 2009, VJTI Mumbai
Timing : 3.00 PM

Request for Financial Support - Help Gaurav

2009-02-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

Mr. Gaurav Tandon, an alumnus of Batch of 1999-2001/ Marketing Specialisation at SPJIMR.
He is suffering from Leukemia (Blood Cancer/ AML type).
Gaurav was recently diagnosed with Leukemia (Blood Cancer/ AML type). He is currently admitted at Hinduja Hospital, Bombay; undergoing Round 2 of Chemotherapy. The doctors have advised Bone Marrow Transplant as the only possible solution to his current predicament.While the doctors are working on finding the matching bone marrow donor for the said operation, Gaurav and his family are working on raising the relevant finances.
The latest update on Gaurav’s health is that the sibling bone marrow test results came out last Wednesday. Unfortunately, these don’t match, i.e., Gaurav can’t receive the transplant from either of his two sisters. The only plausible solution now remaining is to find a neutral, un-related allogenic transplant donor. While there are a few, small bone-marrow banks in India , the serious and credible options reside in US, UK and Singapore .

Gaurav’s current doctor at Tata Hospital , Bombay will soon start the process of registering his request for a compatible donor at these overseas banks. The cost of retrieving the overseas bone-marrow and subsequently conducting the operation is c. INR 15-20Mn (c. USD 300,000-400, 000).
Please note that out of a target of Rs 1.5 crore for the operation only 31 lakhs have been collected by 25th Jan, 2009
The target date to collect the full amount is 15-Feb-2009
You can update yourself about Gaurav’s condition in http://www.helpgaurav.com/index.asp
Requesting people to either spread the message or to contact the relevent people for sending the donations throught the web-site.

We Ran, We Pledged and finally we conquered...

2009-01-27T10:40:00.000-08:00

Context :- Running the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon' 2009 for raising money for Teach for India's operations.

Action :-
(a) 57 students from SPJIMR joined together for this marathon escapade.
(b) Trained for around 2 months.
(c) Raised awareness and contacted corporates/family/friends for pledging in our favor towards Teach for India.

Achievement :-
(a) Pledges raised for the tune of 42,000 INR. from the SPJIMR family. This shall further be matched penny to penny by corporates from Bain Capital.
(b) Times of India Exclusive Coverage
(c) Pics of our Marathon achievement

A special thanks to everyone who contributed and helped us achieve this feat.

From Mumbai Marathon-2009

From SWITCH to WHICH

2009-01-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

How many of us knew that SATYAM was honored for their corporate Governance :-
1)UK Trade & Investment India (UKTI) Business Award for corporate social responsibility awarded by UKTI

2)Golden Peacock Global Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance awarded by World Council for Corporate Governance (WCFCG)

But as houses made of cards we have a 2.1 Bn $ company heading for 77% drop in the Market value. Though you must have already been bombarded with various facets of the news these days; here are a few questions that in my view remain unanswered especially considering the time-frames of the events...(Click on the pic for a better view)

A few pointers :-
Dec 15 : The prices fall due to large FIIs taking away their investments and then the SATYAM MAYTAS deal is released to newspapers. (Though logically, since Ramalinga Raju had only 5.3% share-holding and Institutional investors accounted for 61%; how could they go ahead with the deal without majority?)
Dec 22 : Satyam announces Buy-Back deal and thanks to the recommendations floating across various web-sites many ill-informed investors got the prices up.
Dec 23: World Bank bans satyam.
Dec 30 : 3 Independent directors resign (This is where things really go murky, since I haven't heard of any directors quitting due to wrong decisions.. my belief is that these directors got access to the insider information of incorrect valuations.. which would further doom Satyam later)
Jan 7th : Ramalinga Raju resigns and announces of the 5000 Cr deficit. (Suddenly Merrill lynch washes their hands and PWC is caught with their standard "No comments" remark)

Here arrives India's ENRON
But a few questions that shall go unanswered :-
1) Role of the Auditors (would we also expect a Arthur Anderson kinda backlash)
2) Hierarchical Flow of information (First the FIIs who pulled out in Dec 12, then the Directors resigning and then the world bank and only later on jan 7th almost a month later does the retail investor (Aam-Admi) who would have untill then lost his savings comes to realize his folly.
3) How would the valuations be for the take-over ?? Since after the fraud not only the investors, employees but also customers would run helter-skelter.

Well... as of now i shall let the questions plague my night and hopefully SEBI might use this as an oppurtunity to introduce any semblence of Sarbanes Oaxley into our indian system.

Breaking my break.... for the new years

2009-01-02T01:01:00.001-08:00

What's with new years and resolutions; or even better sayings about new-year resolutions ...

"May all your troubles last as long as your new year resolutions" - some wise guy

As an impartial writer i shall leave you to conjecture upon the same...

Now back to the topic... What would be my Top 5 resolutions for the FY 09-10 ? But before that a small recollection of my previous year achievements, Social Project and those innumerable treks (including the NZ trip) I just can't get over the euphoria of last year's experiences. But unfortunately I have always suffered from amnesia and still looking out for the next big thing.... after all I believe that "I am an just an ordinary person in extra-ordinary circumstances"
So a few things that i shall be looking forward in this year; is a drastic change in my professional (back to corporate life and end of academics) and personal (3 year long wait for the union) life.
My Top 5 resolutions for FY'09-10 :-
1) Publish an article in a national newspaper.
Apart from a few articles of mine getting published in a few magazines, I have really been procrastinating. So this shall be one of my first goal.
2) Review 20 out-of-the-world books :-
Reading books has always been a passion, but one-fine day i just thought what if i can read and review around 100 books through-out my lifetime ?? Here was the beginning of my attempt.
3) Travel to atleast 5 new places :-
Travel-for-work not included :) and priority for budget and team would always be retained.
4) Initiate and involve people in a social venture :-
Well, I can definitely be crossing this out of the list ... courtesy Marathon
5) Learn something new :-
A few top things on my mind are either squash or pencil-sketching or atleast salsa

So wish me good luck... cause i really do need them in loads and definitely all of the above would definitely keep the posts-count of this blog mounting .

HR Openings for Lashkar-e-Tayiba

2008-12-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

I am sure that there was an MBA behind this one ....
"Art of Recruitment: How to become a complete jihadi" Talk about professionalism in Terrorism

here are a few addendum i could think of as the Terrorism Pvt Ltd. grows :-
1) Annihilation Outsourcing : 24x7 service
2) SB Head-Hunters : We hunt heads which shall roll .... (literally) p.s: SB - Suicide Bomber
3) BombStone M&A : We shall give you a deal which you can't refuse (Ex: LeT takes over smaller players)
4) Kasab Lynch : We deal with instruments apart from derivatives/bonds
5) JIC (Jihad Insurance corporation) : It ain't Blackmail only insurance

But a final question that pops into my mind is, what is pak still hiding behind "no hard-core proof" ... couldn't these clearly point out the role of LeT in terrorism ??

Staturday Startup - Startup's during the economic slowdown

2008-12-13T03:27:00.000-08:00

Schedule
* Date: December 13, 2008, Saturday
* Time: 3.00 - 6.00 pm
* Venue: DOME 1,S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Munshi Nagar, Dadabhai Road, Andheri(W) Mumbai - 400058. Map, SMS address to phone

Agenda
* 3.00 - 3.30: Librarywala demo by the Co-founder Hiten Turakhia
* 3.30 - 4.00: AdoRoi demo by founder & CEO Mitesh Thakkar
* 4:00 - 5.00: Panel discussion on "What should a start up do in a slowdown"
o Mahesh Murthy, Seedfund
o Hemir Doshi, IDG Ventures
o Rohit Nalwade, Ex-CEO of Consumervision
o Gopal Krishnan, Hanin Global. Ex Founder & CEO Mobile2Win
o Moderator: Aditya Mishra, Co-founder & Director, Headstart

A key take-aways of the session :-

Librarywala.com : if you haven't checked it out do see this online library model which charges you around 139 Rs for 3 books/month.

A few pointers for the panel discussion :-
Starting up a start-up during a recession would prepare you to survive for the rest of the good times.
Start-ups would be a good time to start up; cause anyways now people would be joining for Jobs rather than for money.
Guy Kawasaki's Rules for boot-starts in the time of recession.
Recession for start-ups is infact a Boom time :)

After the Crisis - Parody of Logos

2008-12-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

Check this Link
for more of such newly arraigned companies

SPL - Spjain Premier League

2008-12-11T07:02:00.001-08:00

All Good things they say finally come to an end... and so did the Mega-Cricketing bonanza of SPL (SPJain Premier League) conceptualized and implemented by the students (our lalit modi - Lokesh Daga) with 6 teams battling out in awesome knock-out matches with the girls also throwing their punches in the games .... It was something to watch out for the past 14 days (early morning sessions)Finally it was the Chennai superkings who battled out the finals with the Kolkatta knight riders (Click on the pic below to view)

To note, it was not just the fact that MBAers could also bat & bowl, but also the enthusiasm shown by everyone on the field that was really fun and memorable through-out the tournament.
It was innovation through-out as the gals were also given overs to bowl and bat called super-overs. A few of the gals even ended up as match winners in a few cases :)

Pics : Courtesy Srikanth Kulkarni

The parkinson's Law for an MBA

2008-12-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Parkinson's law in IT states :

"Data expands to fill the space available for storage"

the corollary in the life of any Typical MBA would be stated as :

"Idleness expands until it fills all time available"

While most of the out-side world would have been fantasizing about an MBA doing multiple roles with his single hand; solving case studies, attending CEO guest lectures, working on strategic assignments (I love everytime i use the word strategy), preparing Business plans, growth road-map for companies which have long bitten the bankruptcy dust... here is a lil bit of truth from my a typical MBAer.

Unfortunately this is how it works for me :-

The Green Board - Uniquely SP

2008-12-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

In the midst of every renowned institute of education lies a symbol unique not only architecture but of a nature so hallowed that it represents the entire livelihood of the institute, it becomes the life-line and even could be argued during momentary status of inebriation to represent the entire institution.

Harvard for example have their Steps :
(Photo source : flickr )
And here at SPJIMR we have the Green-Board
The ubiquitous communication channel.....which updates itself as frequently as every hour
The Harbinger of all ........ Surprise Quizzes
The instant marketing Board... for all the events that happen at SPJIMR
The notice board...issuing threatening messages to those who err their ways (or score below 2.4).
The flat-screen monitor for everything that happens here at SPJIMR.

Banking and the Marketing Paradox

2008-12-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

SBI, the largest PSU bank has over 2,000 ATMs all over India. ICICI Bank has around 1,700 ATMs while HDFC bank has 830 ATMs.
ICICI introduces Mobile banking services including fund transfer.
Almost all banks currently support Internet/Phone Banking. Remember the branding efforts of Canara Bank.

The main reasons for the introduction of these extra channels of service for each of these banks would essentially include
1) Reducing Transaction Costs (Approx. Transaction in Branches : 5-10 $; Transaction in ATMS : 1-2 $; Transaction in Online : 0.5-1 $).
2) Enhancing Customer experience.
3) Competitive edge.
4) Scalability of operations.

So, what would be your reaction when an eminent banker says,
"The Banking sector is digging their own grave; if they continue expanding with only ATMs or Internet/Mobile banking "

Personally, I was a bit-shocked esp. being a hard-core addicted user of all the above additional services offered by my bank I was definitely trying to find the truth(or)fallacy in the above statement.

Back-tracking to understand the logic behind the statement let me bring across another lesser known fact in the banking sector ...
The Revenue potential for the Banking sector these days :-
a) Personal Loans : 30-40% (including Auto & Home loans)
b) Credit Card services : 10-15 %
c) Investment Banking : 15-20 %
d) Other services

As can be understood most of the revenue for the banks of today is not restricted to Loans and to realize the growth potential they need to advertise their newer services to their existing customers or to rope in newer customer base... But why aren't they able to do this ???

The ATMs/Mobile banking facilities has if-you-had-not-noticed successfully pushed the customer away from Branches; and in the case of banks such as ICICI banks have removed the necessity of having Brick & Mortar branches.
So banks not only lose the pulse of the customer but also invariably create a gap to market their services to their potential customers.. thus in the end restricting growth in the future.

Traditionally, my dad would go every week to the bank have a rapport with the manager see if there was any funds/services that the bank offered he could invest in.
Fast forward to my generation.. I hardly step outside the vicinities of my home, delete any sms-alerts of the bank, go across to ATMs only to perform dumb operations of withdrawing/checking balances... and an idle corpus lying in my savings account.

Have the Banks drunk the Nectar of technology pretty early without understanding the true benefits ?

The next imminent issue for the banking sector is to develop newer channels of marketing for their future. Any suggestions ??

Mobile Idly Shop at 12.00 PM - Uniquely SP

2008-12-05T21:36:00.000-08:00

Being a hard-core Tamil, there are a few things that really distinguishes us :-
1) First day First show of RajniKanth
2) Getting excited over Asin's Debut with Ghajini
3) Slap-Stick comedy of Vadivelu
4) Drinks Mixed with old & gold Tamil Songs (engirrudhalum varzgha)

And finally IDLY-WADA (Sambar Dalkey)

So here is what a bunch of hungry tam guys @ SP Jain do to satiate their palate with a bunch of piping hot idlies tossed in fiery chilli chutney and pakka Filter-coffee

A truly Mobile shop which opens exactly at 12 PM near the signal outside the Boys hostel; this guys peddles everything from Gutkas, Cigars, Idlis and Filter-coffees.

70-70-70 Rule of Outsourcing

2008-12-05T21:26:00.001-08:00

The world's most revered chief executive Jack Welch has introduced a new rule. It is called the 70:70:70 rule. Apparently, it has also been e-mailed to GE employees across the world. Welch has decided that 70% of GE's work will be outsourced. Out of this, 70% will be done from offshore development centers. And out of this, about 70% will have to be done here in India.

This ultimately boils down to about 30% of GE's work being outsourced to India.

A few moments before CAT

2008-11-25T22:25:00.000-08:00

CAT- the final few steps

The time has arrived for which more than 2 Lakh students & professionals across India and abroad awaited and prepared. The time has arrived for one of the most hyped up objective choice examaniations – “the CAT”. Personally, this exam had consumed almost three years of my lifetime before I could finally conquer it; and may be this walk through the fire does grant me a few insights which I would like to share with everyone attempting CAT this year(or for that matter any year)

It is after all an EXAM, or IS IT ? Contrary to what all of those CAT-preparation institutes would have coaxed you to believe, CAT is after all a more advanced version of KBC(kaun banega crorepati) where it is not your GK-General Knowledge that matters but only requires the culmination of the trinity – Alertness, Speed and Accuracy. And unfortunately all the above three instincts would be affected if you get overwhelmed during the exam. Believe me, many people have lost CAT due to being over-whelmed rather than being un-prepared. Let your instincts guide you.

Conditioning the Mind – Every year, the pattern of the CAT does keep on changing but what does remain constant is the Time schedule and the duration of the exam. Being a smart person, we must realize that it is of prime-importance for us to keep our minds active during these exact moments of the exam. I myself had taken a week’s time off from office, and everyday during the timing of the CAT exam would attempt a Mock-CAT just to make sure that the activity cycle of my brain gets kicked at the right time.

Chocolate Anyone – Chocolates as I have found out would not only be able to stimulate people, rejuvenate harry potter after an death-eater attack but can really help out but acting as a combo of an energy bar and a relaxing agent. As I would say, a chocolate a exam keeps failures away.

Here’s wishing everyone to do their best for the exam of their lives and remember every year around 0.01% of India’s population attempt CAT, and only the top 10 percentile make it. This is an opportunity for all of us to surge forward and not get caught within the remaining 95 Percentile.

The Market Crunch

2008-10-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess this post would seem to belabor the Financial Crisis.. but a few remarks in the lighter vein wouldn't harm anyone i suppose.

Recently a Software company awarded it's employees ICE-CREAM for continuing work with the company despite the Market Crash (Wow... the HR should seriously have been on drugs to think of such a brilliant retention-formula)

Another after-effect concerns the recent free issues of Wall Street Journal Newspaper(Dubbed as the Future Leadership program) to our college campus and to our Mail-boxes.
Check out the difference between these two pics
Before the Market Crash
After the Market Crash

(Thanks to Swapnil for this one)

And finally one another hilarious postings
Investment banking groom valuations fall in Wedding market
Hyderabad : The subprime crisis in the US has made its effects felt in India as well, this time in the highly lucrative weddings futures market in Andhra Pradesh. “An IIM passout at a US investment bank like Lehman Brothers was as good as it got, a few weeks back. But now parents of brides want to stay as far as possible from such profiles”, said Dr Rajan, an expert with over 20 years of experience in the matrimonial industry.

The first visible effects were noted in the online space yesterday with scores of investment banking profiles being “blocked” by women across matrimonial & social networking sites. Apparently the average “Be my friend” request index from 20 - 26 years old women to investment bankers have dropped from 24 to 2 in a period of three weeks. “As Indians, we have always been trained to think longterm”, said an unrepentant Sophia after deleting 6 investment bankers from her Friends list.

Mrs Narayani, head of the Old Wives & Aunts Network, the most powerful lobby working in this industry said that the offline impact will also be felt sooner than later. “As of today, we are downgrading Financial services, Investment banking & Outsourcing from ‘Marriage Material (MM)’ to ‘Ignore Politely (IP)’. But we stand committed to all deals that have been mutually agreed upon before Sep 15th, provided the groom can present evidence of fresh employment & adequate capital reserves”, she said.

Raj Malhotra, a Lehman Brothers investment banker who was holding out, hoping for a better valuation said “Maybe I should not have waited so long & should have accepted the buyout offer from the Mysore based girl”. Utopia has also learnt that a number of investment bankers have lowered their next quarter projections and are now ready to marry any girl who will let them.

It is also reported that the worst fears of any banker - the girl insisting on a sense of humour - might also come true as the market prepares itself for a long winter.

So.... what's next ??

Top 3 things that i learnt at Microsoft

2008-09-28T06:34:00.001-07:00

Well, it has been three weeks of a roller-coaster ride at Microsoft for my internship and i guess, it is time to come up with the Top 3 list :-

1) Be independent but also keep in touch :-
As you might be wondering what was that philosophical rant ?? well, to begin with my internship with microsoft is with the Sales division (Well, technically Sales is not what i should be calling it.. but that shall be the topic of a different blog entry) and in sales there are only 2 things that really matter .... "Numbers" and "Numbers".. and esp. if it is quarter-end people are literally running after getting results.. So, this placed me in a unique situation of starting off a project without any proper project scope and guidelines.
So what would you do if you are in boat as me ??? well, instead of rowing furious in the opposite direction you first set your own goals and targets and communicate this with your mentors. This way, you would really be saving both yours and the mentors time (Which they really appreciate)

2) What's my PIE is YOURS as well :-
Well, i don't know if Sun Tzu would have written about this.. but i would prefer calling it as the stake-holder phenomenon. When i was setting up my various project goals, i also got the buy-in from the various team-members saying that for "this part" of the project i would be needing their help... forming liasions and more importantly making sure that my work would in-fact be helping these stake-holders.

3) Net-work-ing:-
I have always been viewing microsoft as a long term vehicle; more in terms of permanent employment after the internship; and with that in view i have started going around the organization with a Student tag and requesting ten mins from people across groups and finding out about their work and more importantly "what would i be assigned if i joined this part of the organization"... Word of caution : Utilize utter subtleness and formality

Adios from me for now.. shall be coming back to the same black-board to talk about other aspects of my MBA life ...

How to revive the American Economy ... LOL

2008-09-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Check it here to find out Marc Faber (Don't know who's this guy) comment on the ONLY way to solve America's Crisis :-

”The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I’ve been doing my part."’

Coming up a Post on the past 2 weeks at Microsoft .... (Mostly within the next 2 days)

Kaun Banega Crorepati ??

2008-09-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

Well.. from the latest news it does seem "The National Consumer Commission".

As reported by the Hindu :

"New Delhi: The popular game show ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ was on Thursday adjudged unfair in certain aspects by the National Consumer Commission, which imposed a fine of Rs. 1 crore on broadcaster Star TV and the sponsor Airtel."

The irony of the situation is that the fine was an exact "1 Crore" ... That's seriously wicked.

How old are you ?

2008-09-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

I am old enough to know that :
When people assign you a Job with a SMILE, you have more reasons to be wary about it.
And if they assign you a work with a FROWN, then you must take it happily.

Just some random quote which was reverberating in my mind.

First Day at Microsoft

2008-09-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

I am as excited as a little kid's first time at DisneyLand.....

Got my Autums internship offer from my Dream company a.k.a Microsoft, and after the initial excitement died down, here i am getting my next set of nicotine boost right at their bangalore signature building(Embassy Golf link).
Here for the next 2 months working with their SMB and partner development program (Not only did i get my dream company but also my dream project... how lucky can i get) ^-^ .

Now lets get talking about this Microsoft heaven workplace....
The entire building reeks of microsoft's trademark :-
(a) Passion for Microsoft
(b) Passion for Technology
At every nook and corner you find one of those really cool Microsoft Banners and advertisements; and almost everything is tagged with M$ ranging from Paper Cups till Ceramic Plates.

As far as technology is concerned, you have devices you only imagined... for example the conferance room is equipped with a funky piece of H/w which has cameras mounted giving a 360 degree view of the entire room and as soon as it hears a voice it can zoom in on the particular person.... ULTIMATE technology; and just going around couple of floors there are seriously sci-fi objects whom i can't distinguish if they are there for Interior deco or actually serving some cool technical purpose.

All i can say right now is "I am Loving it"

Just to give a small overview of what's gonna happen :-
Day 1 : Arrive at campus, Get a Lappie (Yipee) just for the 2 months period
Day n/2 : An interim review along with getting to know across the various divisions of Microsoft.
Day n : Our pockets jingling with the internship salary :)
I really don't know if we can ask for any more ( a la oliver twist)

Commodization of Luxuries...

2008-09-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

Picture these News Items :-

a) Volkswagen Beetle set to roll out in India
b) India Among L'oreal Top 5 Markets
c) DLF setting up India's first LUXURY MALL DLF LUXURIO
d) LG launches their 43K worth TVs Scarlett TV

Modern India has show-cased that it has an appetite not only for low-cost deccans , discount offering Big Bazaars or forward thinking Tata Nanos but also for upmarket luxury products. Just as a note the luxury retail market, which is currently in a nascent stage, is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore and expected to grow at 20-30 per cent in the next five years in India.

Under the deluge of such luxury items hitting the Indian Market, one must ponder “HOW WOULD THE MARKET RESEARCH for these products be done to inspire all of these companies to enter via the silk-route to India?”

As an MBA graduate I would be prompted to jargonize that the Market research would drive to provide a detailed report analyzing trends on the market, major and niche distribution channels description, detailed profiles of major marketers including their financial data, product analysis as well as an outlook of market development in the next 5 years.
But as of the moment let us just hold the reins…..

The existential question we must address first "Is Market research truly the HOLY GRAIL, which shall guarantee the success/failure of products??"
I guess there is a lot to learn from the COKE CLASSIC Example about the caveats of taking Market research analysis on the FACE VALUE.

In order to present some fresh perspective on this issue, let me first bring to your notice a glaring change in the Marketing promotions of these luxury products:
These products are currently marketed out in the traditional open market (T.V Commercials, Radio & newspaper Adverts) rather than be restricted to couple of Life-style Magazines or jazzy club-house shows as in the yesteryear days.

This change not only means that the Armanis are viewing the wider audience apart from the rajas and maharanis of India, and for that effect these same luxury products are currently being marketed similar to Tooth-pastes and shampoos. Hence the reasoning of “COMMODIZATION OF LUXURY PRODUCTS”

So what are the exact reasoning behind this trend, apart from successful market research reports which would have suggested the Armanis & Hillfigers to follow the toothpaste way ?

Here are the top 2 points that would make a sizable dent :-

1) Widening Wallet size (or reducing economic disparity): Companies have realized that a massive population, or a higher GDP alone would not suffice for the success of any product but what really would matter would be the PCI (Per capita income factor) and similar to the demographic advantage that India has (i.e 60% of our population consists of people in the age group of 20-30) the average Indian has risen from a middle class to the social nomenclature of a upper-middle class.
The 2007 Asia Pacific Wealth Report, released by Merrill Lynch and CapGemini, says India has recorded the world’s second fastest growth in the number of high net-worth individuals (HNIs) at 20.5 per cent, making it a lucrative luxury market. The likes of Armani, Versace, Cartier, Marks & Spencer, Salvatore Ferragamo, Canali, Mont Blanc, Lladro and Tommy Hilfiger have made inroads into India.

2) Consumerism as a core value: Someone rightly said, “Luxury is not a product but an emotion”Rising from the austere money-saving thrifts, Indians have indeed graduated to develop the consumerism-savvy profligate attitude. One of the chief motivator was that these objects have been presented not only as status symbols but rather as also as an investment option (This ideology can be seen as a fore-front during the massive realty boom in India).
This rise in consumerism can be reflected in the Aspiration level index being very high and 48% Indians aspire (ref: Nielsen survey)

With these two prevalent factors, the Armanis and the Hillfigers of the world indeed view this multi-casting of their products across the entire Indian diaspora as a win-win situation so that even if they are not able to sell their products right now, at least they can create the notion of a status symbol across the Indian mindset and exhort them to during their frivolous moments.

*********An update for this post***********
After a few comments from my friends, i must mention that i am not playing down the role of Market Research, in fact one of my earlier posts indeed do glorify their impact.
My sole purpose of this post was to provide top two reasons "WHY would the Market research for Luxury products showcase India as an enticing market" and also to bring to light the new Marketing approach for Luxury products(Commodization) and the benefits of the same.

Value for Money

2008-09-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine you are an Alien; all alone on a planet you cannot communicate with anyone ... now the question is "How to identify the economic status of this place?"

I am using the term economic status rather than technological, psychokinetic nor humanistic pedestals since these other fields of advancement may not be perceived so easily

Coming back to the topic of discussion... this was one of my observation during my ill-fated trip to Uganda; here i was handling Lakhs of Shillings just to buy a basic telephone card (converted around 30 Rs); and just as i was handling down the cash i suddenly felt a huge guilt of being spend-thrift (though i was well-aware of the exact value).

Now the situation of most of these african nations could have been explained by any economist as the ultimate mis-fit between inflation, unemployment and political mis-management. Just to prove a point, Zimbabwe has a inflation rate of 35,00,000% and here we are in India troubling the entire population of rag-pickers and heavy duty industrialists when the speed-o-meter touches the unimaginable 12%.

But for an alien, we cannot obviously explain with our complex models of economic indices but rather with a simpler concept of "Value for money"... so would be my explanation that any country where they really value their smallest denomination would be the one which is the most advanced economically, socially and even technologically.

I know that putting into simpler terms does offset the aura that the economists have pain-stakingly developed, but of course you always have DILBERT to prove your point.

Another Presentation which i came across explaning the situation in all of these African countries.

Do you need a Branch to become a Bank ?? ( service delivery pyramid )

2008-08-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

We don’t need Banks but only Banking Services

But the hell, how can you prepare the Magic Formula without the secret ingredient ???
This was a statement made by one of the KPMG consultants during our conversation and seriously I never knew that a single sentence could flame of an entire philosophy of service-delivery pyramid (maybe I must be copyright this keyword).

Picture this modern day paradox; “you walk into an empty Icici branch office walking past an adjacent ATM which is brimming with more people than the money it can disburse”; and then you wonder what happened to the age-old-mahabharatha days tellers within these bank terminals?

Notice carefully, and you find that there are more number of seats for relationship managers (a.k.a colgate smiley MBA grads) rather than those paleontologic meshed/barbed counters.

To understand this transformation let me present an analogy with something i am really good with - FOOD. Modern-day banks(a.k.a retail banks) have structured their service operations similar to a fast-food restaurants. Banks are only meant to buy coupons i.e open accounts, get expertise on their services and take loans but ultimately you have to get your own food i.e activities such as daily transactions, money transactions, bill-payment, etc would be done at your own leisure either at ATMs or Internet Banking facilities.

To further understand this transformation(Process) of these retail banks, we must first classify the entire set of services and then look at their delivery models... hence constructing what i shall term for the current moment as "SERVICE-DELIVERY PYRAMID" (c)

How to Draw your own Service-delivery pyramid :-
As you can notice, first we organize all of the services offered by the bank based upon the frequency of operations (higher frequency means it figures down the pyramid and vice-versa) and see the Value offered by these services. Obviously HNIs (High Networth Individuals) would contribute to a large margin of funds while daily operations such as money transfer for retail customers though would be costly for the bank would be provided for free.

Strategic decision making based upon the SDP :-
Based upon the output you get, now you decide on the Delivery stream-lining you would want to undertake; as as in the case of retail banks they decided to reduce the cost for these high-frequency but no-value services making them being done offline across ATMs and i-bankings.

On a note about this strategic model, we can also label the services being offered by any vertical (banking, telecom, OnG, etc) in any desired logic(a few examples)

1) Frequency of operations
2) Degree of Automation possible
3) Value (Cost/profit) of the services
4) Business Impact of the services.

Hence we can observe how the movement of brick and mortar settings of these banks into click and mortar have enabled their operations into the next innovative phase. As you could now observe by other trends also, how banks such as ICICI and HSBC refer to innovations as process-innovations and not merely product changes.

Of course, talking about secret ingredients and magic formulaes; here is another googly by the business world

If ever you thought it were not possible to provide service without owning any infrastructure, then THINK AGAIN... esp; when it is a player who's a virgin

A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a company that provides mobile phone service but does not have its own licensed frequency allocation of radio spectrum, nor does it necessarily have all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service.

This news of even more relevant in the prime-time with TRAIs (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) nod for MVNO operators in India.

If there is something to become inspired of...

2008-08-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

If there is something to get really inspired of .....
Then here is my top 5 :-
1) Randy Pausch's "The Last lecture" on really achieving your childhood dreams

2) Warren Buffet on MBA (part 1-6) .. courtesy youtube

3) Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30 Presentation Rule

4) Guy Kawasaki in Stanford Alumni meet (Rules for revolutionaries)

5) The Inimitable Richard Feynman

Via: Video Blog

I don't know if the links shall play.. but they are more of a direction

Spread them ...

Twitter and Business Bollywood ....

2008-08-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here is my Eureka Moment !!!
Here i was trying to tweak the usage of Twitter (The latest online messenger tool) and just across couple of seats were my colleagues getting their hots on the latest Bollywood tits and bits.

"EUREKA!!!"

Combine the two and you have a latest Bollywood News web-site which gets you the sensational Twitter News....

News : "Rakhi Sawant to join the Bacchans in the Unforgettable Tour"
Twitter News : "Rakhi Sawant dance with Abhishek bacchan", "Rakhi to replace Aishwarya and dance with Abhishek", "Rakhi's sensational dance and kiss rock the community","Rakhi announced as the next hot sensation across the AB tour","Ticket sales increase","WHERE IS AISH??","The Triangular Love Story... latest developments in the Rak-Abhi-Aish episode".

Going by the logical analysis :-

what sells better than news ?
Latest News ...
What sells better than Latest News ?
Sensational News...
What sells better than Sensational News ?
TWITTER NEWS...

and finally
What sells better than TWITTER NEWS ?
Rakhi Sawanth on Twitter News obviously :)

And if you that I am NUTS... well think again after reading about VODKA PANIPURI

I am Addicted (The story of a quintessential GReader)

2008-07-31T23:43:00.000-07:00

Wow Wow Wow....
Is there anything that can absolutely make me spend almost 5 hours online; and still not make me feel guilty about senseless waste of time (of course, Intellectually speaking else orkut, yahoo games and dilbert are a few of my sweet vices)

I have been badgering all my other intellectually driven colleagues to share their feeds (mostly at Gun-point though) and finally manage to compile a decent enough list to further my knowledge mine.

And of course as a dedicated user of Open Source services, here i am listing across my LIST (in case there occurs any liability if i don't share the list)
DEEPAK's GREADER LIST

Call for better Feeds / Offline Feed Readers

Do you have a Business to Interest Mr.Berkshire hathway a.k.a Warren Buffet

2008-07-27T02:18:00.000-07:00

The more that i read about business legends, the more i am amazed by their ability to put their entire business approach into simpler words (that even morons like me can appreciate).... It is so-unlike the earlier quotes which i always hear, "The Higher Up the Ladder, the Bigger the Shit"

Warren Buffet, a legend beyond compare purely for his strict investing principles (frugal as the man himself).

Just to get a dose of this legend do read "The Chairman's letter - 1994" don't know if he still writes much to the share-holders but this is a true gem for investment advices.

And of course, coming back to the title of the Post... if you really have a business plan that interests Mr.Buffet here are the criteria (So succinct yet so filled-with knowledge)

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.
ACQUISITION CRITERIA

We are eager to hear from principals or their representatives about businesses that meet all of the following criteria:

Large purchases (at least $50 million of before-tax earnings),
Demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of no interest to us, nor are "turnaround" situations),
Businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt,
Management in place (we can't supply it),
Simple businesses (if there's lots of technology, we won't understand it),
An offering price (we don't want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown).

The larger the company, the greater will be our interest: We would like to make an acquisition in the $5-20 billion range. We are not interested, however, in receiving suggestions about purchases we might make in the general stock market.

We will not engage in unfriendly takeovers. We can promise complete confidentiality and a very fast answer -- customarily within five minutes -- as to whether we're interested. We prefer to buy for cash, but will consider issuing stock when we receive as much in intrinsic business value as we give.

Charlie and I frequently get approached about acquisitions that don't come close to meeting our tests: We've found that if you advertise an interest in buying collies, a lot of people will call hoping to sell you their cocker spaniels. A line from a country song expresses our feeling about new ventures, turnarounds, or auction-like sales: "When the phone don't ring, you'll know it's me."

* Source : http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/1999ar/acq.html

Book-a-thon ( 1 week & 4 Gems of Books)

2008-07-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Well, i can definitely come up with lot of "Struck in an elevator without electricity" excuses for not blogging for a while. But unfortunately we have three things
a) I am no TOM Hanks (b) I don't need to impress upon anyone and (c) i already have a much better answer for that...

1 Week, 4 Books .... that must be a true tribute for all the above gems; or an indirect reference to those lectures which were boring enough for me to give full-force concentration to the above value-add books.

Now immersed in yet another riveting book, for the modern day Indian..
Clue 1) This book talks about how as Indians we are Privately Smart and Collectively Dumb.
Clue 2) This book uses Game theory (yeah the "beautiful mind" Nash guy's theories) to explain to us about the Indian Mindset.

IBM & SPJIMR Launches their Center for Services Managment Engineering

2008-07-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

What is SSME?

Service Science or Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) is a growing multi-disciplinary research and academic effort that integrates aspects of established fields like computer science, operations research, engineering, management sciences, business strategy, social and cognitive sciences, and legal sciences.
Global markets are increasingly service-based economies. Employment growth will be concentrated in the service-providing sectors of the global economy. Service innovation is needed to maintain profits.

Couple of news articles for this amazing venture :-
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/IBM_India_ties_up_with_S_P_Jain_Institute/articleshow/3241973.cms

http://www.networkcomputing.in/HomeJune22-07IBMPartnersifNIDSPJIMRandNIMtoDevelopSSMECurriculum.aspx

Games Numbers Play !! ( 80-20 Pareto Principal)

2008-07-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

One of my articles for a HCL Magazine.... feel free to send me your comments .

Games Numbers Play !!

Mathematicians have their pie (π=3.17) and eat it too; while physicists just can’t stop raving about their g-force (‘g’-gravitational acceleration=9.78 m/s²) and chemists can only see things as a consortium of Avogadro Numbers (6.023 x 10²³); it is but unfortunate that poor management gurus are deprived of their own Justice League of Super-Numbers.

But fear not denizens of the management world for hope is just around the corner.

The heroes of the hour are none other than our next-door-neighborhood numericals 80-20; donning secret identities they might appear civil and dutiful in the broad-daylight while meta-morphing into ubiquitous and all-powerful magical beings when the situation demands.

Just as any good adventure movie begins with the first freak bio-chemical reaction; let’s get into flash-back mode to understand the tremendous implications of the 80-20 principle on the management universe.

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto eureka’d his way into glory by remarking, “20% of the people in Italy own around 80% of the wealth”; little realizing how his statement on income-disparity would later on spark into a global phenomenon ignited by brilliant management thinkers of the likes of Joseph.M.Juran (Father of Quality) who expanded the Pareto Principle to a more profound level, “80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes”.

Though Juran’s statement might have called for lack of clarity; it actually snow-balled into an universal law termed as “law of the vital few” or “The principle of factor sparsity”

A few examples of how relevant the 80-20 principle is in the current day scenario…

Bill Gates: “The Typical company has made 80 percent of the investment in the technology that can give it a healthy flow of information yet is typically getting only 20 percent of benefits that are now possible” in his book Business @ speed of thought.

Ethan M Rasiel in his book “The McKinsey Way” dedicates an entire chapter to the 80-20 principle as one of those universal tools applied in McKinsey.

In fact right through my experiences as a software engineer, I have been exposed to a techie-version of the Pareto principle, namely “80% of the Software Bugs are caused by 20% of the Code”

Allow me to demonstrate the profound impact that the 80-20 principle has had on the lives of countless management graduates :-

· Group-Works : 80% of the work in any group-assignment would be done by 20% of the groupies.

· Time to Study : It is always the last 20% of the time that really counts to understand 80% of the facts. As calvin says, “Panic is the mother of all understanding”

· Examination Answers : 20% Stuff and 80% Gyaan/Gas.

Finally the most important lesson into any M-grad’s life :

· Corporate Presentation : 80% Style and 20% Content.

The Global Nokia Event

2008-07-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

Just as a epilogue of my previous post ; here were all of us bunking classes going out to The Taj Mahal Hotel representing SPJIMR (Wee.... fun ...) attending a session with the Nokia Global CEO.

The entire event from the word "go" was handled with amazing professional precision, right from timing, invitations, et all all the more since it will be a televised event (6th July NDTV PROFIT's Gadget guru)

The entire show was divided into 3 phases; initially the anchor Rajeev Chandra invites both the Nokia India VP Mr. D.Shivkumar and Nokia Global CEO Mr.OPK (both really dynamic people) and has a initial round of Q&A.

Phase II, when the ground is open for questions from the nominated B-school Grads. Rahul immediately got into action, and asked his first question about "Nokia's SYMBIAN strategy"; and then Sachin mentioned about the Import of cheaper chinese mobiles affecting the existing nokia market. Questions came and went, each of them caressing the shores.

Phase III, now this was a surprise part.. when the CEO actually asks us about what we should expect in the next range of Nokia hand-sets; luckily i got a chance to air my views about how mobile handsets are becoming more of an extension of one-self; more like alter-egos of each persons.. and so apart from really cool applications i would really be interested in next-gen security(like biometrics), more-so-the-reason since with the advent of m-commerce.

Finally, as the closing remarks both the CEOs were asked for their take-a-ways from the show and to my shock both the Indian CEO and the global CEO mentioned my points .... leading to the anchor pointing out to me and remarking that i should send my CV immediately ;)

Date with Nokia GLOBAL CEO Mr. OPK NDTV's Gadget Guru

2008-07-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Just the other day, i was rambling on to my poor roomie about the absolute lack of anything interesting happening in the second year; and seems that the guy on the Top floor did listen....

Been selected among 8 students representing our college on a date with the Global CEO of Nokia Mr.Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo a.k.a Mr.OPK

And of course, the best part is that our interaction would be aired on NDTV Profit's Gadget Guru

Ohhh.. venue ... THE TAJ MAHAL Hotel (The one opposite the Gateway of India)

The Lucky few.. Ladies and Gentlemen :)

The Year that it was .... '07-08

2008-06-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

This June 18, 2008 we have officially completed one entire year at SPJIMR ;) the entire journey so far has been wonderfully encapsulated by my colleague Krishna Danda

June 18, 2007: Registration (Officially we became PGP 1)

June 22, 2007: Foundation Begins

June 27, 2007: First Quiz at SP

June 29, 2007: First Paper Distribution session

July 3, 2007: First Feedback session

July 10, 2007: First ADMAP session

July 11, 2007: Freshers

Week 4 at SP: 5 quizzes

July 18, 2007: Committee Formation

July 22 – 25: PG Lab

July 27, 2007: Trim 1 Begins

August 5, 2007: First ADMAP Movie: Wall Street

August 22-23: Autumns for PGP 2

September 4, 2007: First Mid Term test

September 11, 2007: Nadira Babbar’s play

September 12, 2007: Chak De

September 16, 2007: First Introduction lecture to ADMAP Project

October 5: Trim end BISTRO Party

October 5, 2007: Trim 2 Begins

October 8, 2007: First mail from Sunita with Grades (Foundation)

October 8, 2007: Dance Inc. declared open to the batch

October 10: Sportscom organises Yoga sessions (Record break as to how long it lasted)

October 15 -18: Anandvan

October 11: Infracom gets our eyes checked for free

October 12: Do away with paper; First Online Feedback - Academic

October 21: Crecer capital declared open to the batch

October 23: Inauguration of open amphi; Anisha, Diksha and Jo dance

October 25: Dandiya Night

October 29 -30: Sangraha; Book exhibition

November 1 -15: Diwali Vacation

November 18: SD sends a mail with subject “Kweezzes…”

November 20: Business cards given by PRCom

November 28: HSBC CSR Seminar

December 2: Sprintzone by PR Com

December 13: Batch snap taken for brocure

December 15: SPANDAN

December 20: TBLA

December 20: PGP1 defeats PGP 2 in Cricket match

December 23: Marketing Meet (Remember this one !!!!)

December 25: PGP 1 celebrates Christmas in Bistro

January 4, 2008: Trim 3 Begins

January 4: Leadership Seminar

January 11: GASP Promo released in the auditorium

January 12, 2008: Khoj

January 19, 2008: LST

January 20, 2008: GASP

January 26-27: SPrint

February 2: VINIMAY

February 9: SMEC

February 14: Uddayam

February 18: Eshaas

February 29: Union Budget in Audi

March 1: BhavITva

March 8: Acadcom sends first SMS alert

March 18-20: Comprees

March 20: Farewell to PGP 2

March 21: Holi celebration

March 22 – May 12: DOCC & Vacation

April 8: Boom Shankar performs at HRC

April 30: Graduation Ceremony, PGP2

May 13: Trim 4 Begins; We become PGP2

June 4: Boom Shankar at Not Just Jazz by the way

June 18 2008: PGDM 2007 -2009 turns a year old; Birthday BASH all night long

All this along with Eco Ganesha, Dance Inc, Musig, Radio, GASP, Cresendo, freshers –farewell, 20-20 in audi, birthday celebrations, BH parties, GH parties, Bistro parties, KT sessions, GOG, PGP 1 production songs and videos, multicasts, group works, committee works, guest lectures, workshops, Special sessions by the CAs, making videos, writing testimonial, DC++ we seem to have done it all….

As a batch we have travelled the year with Trouble and adversities 100%; Fun 150%.

Hip hip hurray to this batch that doesn’t believe in majority but instead achieves 100% Consensus on any decision.

The batch that can create new traditions at SP; the batch that can challenge the history of SP and make it a better place.

Wonder what we will do in the next 1 year????

Have you NENed...

2008-06-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

i guess this post is quite out-dated.
NeN short for National Entrepreneurship Network

Founded and supported by the Wadhwani Foundation and its institutional co-founders are IIT Bombay, IIM Ahmedabad, BITS Pilani, IBAB Bangalore and SP Jain Institute, Mumbai. It connects new and future entrepreneurs; small business owners who wish to grow their companies and students to a full range of resources to help them achieve entrepreneurial success. The resources include networking events, workshops, courses and mentoring. NEN’s advisory board offers it active support and includes some of the most respected names in different fields.

Being one of the founding members has definitely given us key links within this organization, and mostly exploited by us whenever we need to organize any Guest Lectures/panel discussions with Entrepreneurs/Venture Capitalists... such as the International event Lock Stock & Trade, and the E-BOOST Series; but what i really wanted to stress upon was the amazing amount of information which has been accumulated since yester-year in their website www.nenonline.org

One of my favorite Clicks would be their "Weekly Startup profiles"

Of course, you could also check another Networking Forum, TIE

All Hail Entrepreneurship

Quality management & SEX

2008-06-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Well... i really would give credit to the master-mind behind the above Quote - Roger Pressman in his book, "Software Engineering : A Practitioner's approach"

Here i was thrust upon yet another presentation to be made within the next three hours upon such mundane topics such as Quality management(which forms the internal part of any MBA education), and with nothing more to refer than to the ultimate guide on such topics, Mr.Roger Pressman.. i was indeed delighted to come across his initial Quote for Quality management

"The various aspects of Quality management almost resemble SEX"
Everyone needs it, Everyone wants it .....
of course i meant Software Quality management
No-one believes there is more to it than natural instincts.
And the best part .... if ever there occurs some Fault
Blame the other person.

Bloggers from Hindustan....

2008-06-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

The news media is going to be history ....
The initial phase of Media was reporting News
Then it transformed to reporting news Live
Then it quantum-jumped to creating news

Now it shall be going back to "Consolidating news"

The chief reason behind this claim is LALU prasad's BLOG ...

I shall wait the next few minutes for this thought to actually sink into your mind (of Mr.laloo prasad yadav sitting in front of the computer and asking "Arrey Babua Yeh kya Hui Gava")

Now, let me explain the funda ... Blogging as the term would imply has provided access for celebrities such as the Khans, Bachhans and the Lalu's to actually showcase their part of the world to us; and the best part about such a medium is that these celebrities would have total control over the story and can easily employ amazing spin-doctors to synthesize a jesus-is-born version whenever they want it...

Considering the Impact on the News Media, this would dry up the vast reservoir for News Channels, who until yesterday thought of a "Celebrity-Bashing per day for 365 days" concept as the Mona-lisa of reporting;
just to add to their active discomfort their customers (prime TRP boosting junta) would actually log onto the internet and get their fair share of bollywood & politi-wood gossip and latest raving pics (which right now they discover can also be put up as screen-savers, much akin to the various posters hanging on their walls) and the only strategy they can do to counter this decline in their revenues would be to wait for the next india-pakistan Battle; and until then they should be happy with reporting "John Abraham has a new girl-friend online" kinda news....

And as Lalu puts his final key-strokes to his next article; little would he realize that this in-fact would be the final Strokes of Indian News Media (as we know it)

IT BUG BITES LALU (Economic Times)

News at the Top Companies

2008-06-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

It's live playing cards in action, when one topples over the rest just follow in quick succession ....

I am really not so sure of what to imply that.. first it was Microsoft India and then later it was Oracle; in fact i had couple of news from HP that things were a bit down-ward too in the future; it just looks like all of the companies have bitten the Asian Flu.

Somehow for the past few days, i have been hearing only news of bad omen, even the stock markets no matter how deep they are sinking are just crossing newer thresholds of bottom-stocks.... suddenly it just sends deep shivers down the throat of a yet-to-be-placed MBA grad

Couple of Stories which you can read as get-well-soon stories for the indian corporate grounds

Oracle top India Execs exit
Whats up with Microsoft (remember this one is the development center and not the sales division.. or i hope not)

Talking about cards, i totally recommend watching of "21"

Change Management

2008-06-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

5 Steps for a Manager to counter poor quarterly results :

1) Reach Down below
2) Noooo.. I meant below your seat
3) If you see/feel a RED SHINY BUTTON, then press it damn hard
4) yell "CHANGE MANAGEMENT"
5) Go back to sleep

Listed among the top 30 Management jargons which can be reeled off during any opportune moment, "Change Management" is the next hottest thing after "KHALI - pehelwan, bhudhiwan & bhagwan"

In the evolutionary process of key words i suppose Change Management(CM) would be considered as the great grandson of "centralization", nephew of "de-centralization" and half-brother of "Mergers & Aquisition".. in fact it took IBM to connote an evil-jedi other half of Change Management which exists in the parallel universe of IT (IT- the evolutionary process of this management term itself can be detailed after much chutzpah)

Almost every other Management course/chapter/page has a small offering dedicated to CM and case studies of prominent business entities such as Wall-mart, Microsoft, South-west Airlines, Hersheys and even our local pan-baniya have registered their process as trade-marked CM.

But, the question we must ask ..... Does it hold any GAS ?

During my 3 years of work-experience at prominent software industry which is labelled as the pinnacles of CM i rarely found an example where people actually looked joined together to implement any prescribed process or technology for CM. In fact, there was always open-resistance to even the word CM, which was viewed as much a extra-burden as would VAT to our shop-keepers (they would always shift the burden on the other person).
And if this is the situation in a IT firm, then imagine automobile work-shops, or the textile industry or even the pristine oil-gas firms (whose processes are as old as the Crude they extract).

In fact, the more i read about CM the more examples i have found of it's failures (Primarily due to human incompetence to adapt rather than technological failures) than successful implementation.

Judgement :
CM according to ME is nothing more than plain survival instincts

of course, the only Change management worth it's effort would be "CHANGE" management

p.s: The last joked is based upon my senior's comments

Rosetta Stone

2008-06-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

Mein Name ist Deepak Bhaskaran

Das ist mein Sieben veir post

Auf Wiedersehen !

It's all about Money.....Honey

2008-06-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

"Ingenuity is perhaps the name of the game, but what is more important is sustaining momentum"

During our first year course at SPJIMR, there was a sudden announcement of a "Practical Workshop"; just before i assume that it was just another run-of-the-mill stuff such as a guest-lecture or something.. the following instructions followed
Students are requested to take not more than Rs 50/- and access to mobile phones would be restricted; you would have to dedicate an entire day for the work-shop

Things were getting interesting. When we all assembled at 3 PM, the task was laid out as follows

GO OUT AND EARN MONEY..... (be back by 10 pm)

Crisp as a 500 Rupee note, we all got up and left the campus (after enduring the initial shock)... not knowing what to do and with a zest to explore Mumbai i thought of Plan A
PLAN A : Go over to Gateway of India, rent a Camera and try to earn money.
Almost all my other plans were replete with "Go to {Some exotic place} and earn money", unfortunately the chink in the armor was the short time period.

Settling with my friends we decided to go over to MacDonald to see if we can get some job for 5 Hours... only to return back after speaking to the head of MacDonald in Mumbai who mentioned the two facts (Sunday and no-temporary employment).

Just as we were to lose hope, i just saw a huge building which housed many training institutes.... The three of us decided to pitch in individually, but just as we were destined all of us ended in front of the one last company in which we had not been rejected by "STG" which offers red-hat Linux training.
Maybe it was utter desperation or pure conviction that showed in our eyes, as i made a pitch of technical competence (I myself was a red-hat certified) the manager relented and gave us an entire batch to train on both technical and skill-building.

The rest of the day was perhaps a bit too magical, we started off with a half hour long session but instead kept an entire class in rapture for 2 hours (even the manager and their instructor joined in on the fun)

Of course we also did earn our tution fee.. but i guess nothing really encompasses the experience we had interacting with all these students and making ourselves seem worthwhile to others.

Snapshots from Hell - Book Review

2008-05-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

You remember Murphy's Law "When you want something bad, you sure would not find it "

Well, that was exactly the case with how i read SFH; Pre-MBA days was when i was highly recommended this book as a eye-opener to MBA life, but somehow this book was never the ones to be found across the Land-marks or the cross-words and hence this tale of a fabled Stanfordian poet had eluded... until till last week, when i just chanced upon this book (with a BLACK binding) when i was aimlessly perusing through the book list in my college library.

Serendipity or cosmic connection, i must say one thing.... this book makes a lot more sense if you read if after you experience an entire year of slogging in a typical B-School, for couple of reasons; Mostly for the part that the book does get a bit technical in a few portions and you really don't want to doze off reading something arcane even before you understand their depth; later on another advantage to read as a post-MBA is that you personally emote with P.Robinson's narration when you read the experiences of many of his characters who get lost in the rigmaroles of the B-Schools; and finally the real reason why i would suggest that you read this book after you finish your first year at any B-School so that you can Mock-Pump your Hands in Victory feeling that even Standford students grow the same misery and pain as good old self in a B-School.

In the irreverent and entertaining tradition of Liar’s Poker, Peter Robinson’s Snapshots from Hell is a hilarious and enlightening insider’s answer to the paramount question every prospective student asks: what is business school really like?

During his first frenetic year at Stanford Business School, Peter Robinson began keeping a journal of his day-to-day impressions which evolved into this book, the writing of which he came to see as a "simple act of decency, like going back to the last calm bend in the river and nailing up a sign that reads ‘Waterfall Ahead’." From his first harrowing days at "maths camp" through the dizzying phalanx of core courses, the frenzy of exam week, the pitfalls and triumphs of the interview process (including a surreal interview with Robert Maxwell!) to being wined and dined by some of the most prestigious companies in the world, Robinson’s story is witty, candid and peopled with a remarkable cast of characters.

A must read for all aspirational "Masters of the Universe" as well as MBAers, Snapshots from Hell is a fast-paced, first-hand account of the nightmare world of getting a top business school MBA, one of the glittering prizes of the ‘90s.

Do check out these links about the Author (who himself was a speech-writer for President Reagan before joining Stanford University) PETER ROBINSON

Couple of articles : Book reviews

SP Jain - In Black & White

2008-05-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

Couple of really awesome pencil sketches of SP campus by i guess one of my super seniors; couldn't catch the name.. but since they really are brilliant uploading them with due credit .

And the original for reference

The Peaceful warrior...

2008-05-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Top Three reasons why i abhor SELF-HELP books !!!

Point a) They are really cloying and don't have a bit of reality in them.

Point b) They preach you practices that would otherwise be symptoms of Schizophrenia (Talking to yourself a 100 times that you are "The BEST" and stuff)

Point c) Ultimately they are hinting that you life until now has been a total useless waste of time (Why else would you buy a self-help book ... Duuhhh )

Apart from the fact, that today's modern self help books are a packaged deal selling stories from panchtantra, amar-chitra or the Gita i really don't suppose they would give you anything better than a pleasant good read.

At least that's what was my opinion till i kept on reading the likes of Shiv khera or Anthony Robbins; who would have mis-used the term "POWER within" to make it sound as if each of us are living-walking ATOMIC Bombs.

Everytime i finish any one of those books, i always end up asking myself, "All that is great.... now what should i really do ??" and it always ends up with those diet fabs, when you start with purely salads the first day and end up with Beer in the nights.

But one thing that has really made me wonder is the enormous business potential about the entire stuff; and that's when it all started to make sense... Lets talk of theirs as a Business PLAN

Mission : "To make buffoons of the billions of people around them to believe that they are currently plain Zombies and are not really worth their lives and only WE can change their lives, provided of course they buy our Books, Cassettes, CDs, DVDs, Tickets to the monthly shows, membership charges for the private clubs, host dinner parties, et all"

COMPETITION & Threats : The existing spiritual networks such as GOD TV, saints and celebrities who suddenly have realized about the money in this.
(Just think for a while... the modus operandi of a self-help guru is nothing different from those of a spiritual guru... Both offer to realize your life's worth, and both would give you WISDOM if you give them your money, and both talk in strange conundrums as if we were all in some "Matrix Movie")

Business Potential : If you count the entire Population of the world - themselves and other spiritual gurus - third world countries (who cannot pay) - myself

Marketing Strategy : With the advent of modern technology; their marketing knows no bounds... perhaps a few unique ideas that have till now not been explored
1) Advertise in those 1800-helpline numbers (well, a life saved is $$ earned)
2) Sponsor the annual Ozzfest or other heavy metal bands ( All the wayward youth are HUGE money)
3) Advertise in every Tooth-paste Tubes (Change the title from "Did you brush today" to "Did you listen to me today")

Now that i have given you lot to think about, you might want to mull them over these couple of seriously life-changing books and movies.

Impact Assessment of CII's GLSDI (Grass Root Level Skill Development Initiative)

2008-05-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have been spent roaming around villages in and around the kancheepuram district, which include the tsunami-hit while NGO-rich areas such as Marakkanam or areas such as Lathur & Thirukkunakundram traveling around 3 hours in either state-transport buses or clumsy share-autos (across bumpy village roads) doing
the Impact Assessment of their GLSDI (Grass-root level Skill Development Initiative) program, which has been successfully implemented across 20 villages and trained around 3000 and odd rural youth; training them upon aptitude and job skills to make them industry-worthy.

And let me assure you, neither the travel nor the TN heat which show any signs of relenting have made it an easy assignment... but as always it is the warmth of the village folk, their simple ways and smiles which have always given us reason to believe in this assignment.

To cut it short, CII's SR (Social Responsibility) wing has started this skill development initiative; wherein it has developed an industry-standard training module to enlighten the Rural folk about the industry-trends and requirements and also provides them with aptitude and attitude skills development. This course typically runs for 10-15 days and NGO's such as Hand-in-Hand are hired (since only NGOs have easier accessibility to the rural folk and better credibility) to in the first phase command all the village folk and provide them the training.

We did our Impact assessment over three phases
Phase I : Visiting all the NGO's and then taking up the initial data of the rural folk being trained; this data would then be used for sampling.
Phase II : Developing a Questionnaire and also questions for the focus Group Discussion.
Phase III : Visiting the training centers and getting data from the trained youth, the current batch and the trainers.

Overall, our assessment proved to be really worthy for the CII cause it answered many of the questions that had been plaguing them (more so, with regards to the mentality of the Rural folk and how did they perceive to be the actual effectiveness of the course) and it was also a real eye-opener for us when it came to the workings of an NGO, rural mindset and the actual truth behind industries.

We first made our presentation across to the CII director Mrs.Stella and then were slated to present it to the Chairman himself.... the presentation will again be showcased in their industry meeting.

Our Presentation to CII can also be viewed here Presentation to CII.ppt (Be patient..)

Pic : Conducting the Focus Group Discussion in Lathur

Pic: In Marakkanam and Lathur

CII's Rural Job Fair - Providing 450 rural youths employment in a day

2008-05-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

It was almost weeks of effort that finally paid off.... the mission was to conduct a Job Fair for the Rural youth in and around the villages of kancheepuram dist in Tamil-Nadu; but the tasks were multi-faceted ranging from converting a barren land to a mandap which can fit around 3000 village folk, contacting and convincing corporates to participate in this as a Social responsibility venture, arranging the collaterals and the processes for smooth functioning and last but definitely not the easiest would be to get all the rural folk to the grounds.

To begin with, the barren site which we had to convert to the fair (16th April,2008)

And as the magic wand waved(19th April 2008)

And then the village folk arrived in numbers reaching 2800 and more, consisting of around 600 unemployed rural youth and the remaining were their families.

And then came the chief guests

(From L to R) : Mrs.Stella (Director, CII), Mr. B Santhanam(Chairman, CII), Mr Manikam Ramaswami (Chairman, Tamil Nadu State Council), Mr Santosh K Misra, IAS (Collector, kancheepuram), Mr G R K Reddy (CMD, Marg) ,,Mr Desh Raj (Deputy Director General, Ministry of Employment & Training)

And that's me sharing some lighter moments with Mrs.Stella and Mr.Santhanam who were also incidentally our guide for the project :)
The Execution team (SPJIMR students with CII team)

And with all the corporates (15 of them including L&T, Upasana Engg, Reliance Fresh, Unicorn services, etc) who did participate recruiting 450 of the rural candidates.....

For a few more news updates new india press , The Hindu , Business Standard

Invitation to the Rural Job Fair - 19th April 2008 @ Cheyyur

2008-05-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Urinal Theory

2008-05-16T04:04:00.000-07:00

These are troubled times indeed.... inflation is showing it's apogee; economic growth has almost grinded to an abrupt stop; and madonna has released her latest but definitely not the last album. But this post is not going to address any of these issues !!!

Very recently during my tenure as a software professional, i had been witness to this modernized version of "cattle farming". YES, you read it right... just as in those days, cattle were brought together in a congested market place, bartering/bargaining of the prices (The concept of settling prices is such a complex logic, that even share market pundits fail to grasp) and later on brought together and stuffed into a already congested coup.

Times have definitely changed, the earlier market place has been re-defined as a job fair, while the pricing is currently based on concepts such as CTC (whose logic still beats me) and later on they are all dumped into a single spot of recreation, named "CUBICLE"

And here is where the urinal theory comes to play....
In my initial days, i was under the impression that the HR folk understood the need-gap analysis and could load up only as many number of people as the number of cubicles... but as an understatement i was wrong.

Not only did the number of people per Cubicle increase (From what was an acceptable number of 1 person per cubicle to the current congesting 7 people per cubicle and the numbers are rising as a trend) and to add further discomfort the size of each cubicle decrease(citing reasons of un-utilized potential of around 21% air in each cubicle);

Until ultimately they even started laying off people who do not "fit in" (for the verbosely challenged people... "fit in" is a pun used for both fitting into the organization as well as fitting into the cubicle). So i did find out much to my own chagrin of fitting into a single cubicle with 6 other IT engineers, that the maximum number of recruitment neither depends on the project requirements nor on the cubicle limitations.

But finally, after truck-loads of research and intense brain-storming i have arrived at the ultimate formula of predicting the recruitment numbers
Deepak's formula for HR recruitment a.k.a the Urinal Theory :-

"The maximum number of recruitment that would be provided by the HR officials was be based upon the number of urinals available in the office, roughly around 8.75* per urinal"

The advantages of using the urinal theory is that :-
1) It explains the huge intake of software professionals in any project.
2) Unlike Cubicles, Urinals can neither be overloaded nor shrunk.
3) You don't need to worry about employees covering up the urinals with their personal memorabilia (just as they would crowd up the cubicles with photos and stuff) and hence laying them off would be much easier

p.s: The Urinal Theory is a dedication from my end to Scott Adams who has always enlightened me with the actual knowledge of management through Dilbert.....
*: The number 8.75 is actually corroborated with another theory called BS theory.

A Day's meet with L&T Head - April 4th 2008

2008-05-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

It was the Chennai Job Fair that gave us a unique opportunity to talk across to various CEOs and corporate HRs about our rural employment model; and it also landed us with invites from them to actually help implement the model.... but it was L&T's Vice President Mr.G.D.Sharma who really interested in a very similar system in place at L&T, inviting us to visit their skills development & excellence center and if possible take inputs for the model, that we shall present to the district collector, kancheepuram.

So here we were, all bound over to Porur to meet Mr.S.Natarajan (Head Construction Skills training, L & T) for an entire day, not only to understand L&T's recruitment procedure but also to incorporate our rural employment model to scale their existing system.

There were around 3 hours of mutual cross-talk explaining our concept and understanding where it can be incorporated in L&T's existing systems; just to provide with a few points on how critical these issues are for L&T we have state a few statistics :-
1) Every quater (3 months) L&T requires around 900 equipped workmen.
2) But lack of availability they recruit only 300 who are in-turn given training for the next 2 months.
3) During the Training 20% leave within the first 2 weeks.

L&T is almost pursuing their recruitment process as a social responsibility model to give livelihood for the rural folk; when you come across the annual costs for these process... but still they run it in-house rather than out-source their staffing to any external third-parties; mainly cause they have to provide the training...

During our brain-storming we suggested a few points that was taken with great interest
1) During the training they must have a aptitude/attitude module, wherein the trainees are shown about the advantages they had in L&T and why they should continue working here (To decrease their attrition rates).... In fact this is a practical Business Plan venture!!!
2) Recruitment drives to be conducted on a monthly basis rather than quarterly across village centers, ITIs and diploma colleges (of course, right now these drives happen unsystematically)

The PPT that we presented to Mr.Natarajan.
To end with a astonishing note (Couple of buildings in their head-quaters)

TN Vision Summit @ Taj Coromondel April 12th

2008-05-10T10:25:00.001-07:00

Working for social causes has never been so much rewarding .... Not only we are able to meet top corporate Honchos, HR Heads and VPs; we are able to involve with them in serious discussion at the same plane of thought... It really amazes me at most of the stages that these profit oriented people are even more dedicated and enthusiastic when the topic veers towards social upliftment... and i must add that this enthusiasm has definitely rubbed more often than not at our tyro arms.

What could be even more great, is when you are invited to a corporate summit which houses the who's who of the industry for a day long event along with great food at the TAJ.... of yeah Free !!!
It was really an eye-opener at the TN Vision summit organized by CII, at the TAJ on 12th April...

It started off indeed well with M.K.Stalin's trademark address (I really am beginning to get an affinity with him, since he has been presiding over most of the Top shows in town these days), but what happened afterwards was seriously food for thought... and it was not only industrialists who were talking about Rural development, Healthcare and the ubiquitous vision & mission statements but they were rallied on the stage with various Ministers of the state showcasing their achievements, roadmap and development for Tamil-Nadu.

Each panel discussion had members of the Industry sitting side with various ministers of the same field and each giving their view-point of how the next phase of developments should happen.

Of course, the first discussion revolved around the summit's moot point - TN Vision 2025 chaired by PWC(Price Water Coopers) with their Presentation on what should be done across the state of Tamil Nadu, which included from the inane promise of delivering one Noble prize winner to understated activities that have to prolonged on a sustainable basis for education in TN. But, personally i really could not relate much to a PPT ; more so as it was after all just a presentation and not a concrete effort in jumpstarting TN to the next decade....

The real show-stealers of the entire day were these two gentlemen ... Minister Arcot N. Veeraswamy (TN Electricity) and Mr. K.V.Kamath (CEO , ICICI)
I really admire the presentation skills of any politician, even though there is much to be said about their promises, but they can convince even the pope to become an atheist. And Mr. Arcot Veeraswamy was really brilliant in the way he started talking about the various initiatives that have been taken, talking about initiatives did you hear about the concept of "Staggered holidays"

Well, it goes like this the TN electricity board used to waste around 300 Kw of power every sunday cause all the companies were on holiday, so they decided to consort with the industry in a particular belt to give holidays on Tuesday and the other belt on thursday and so on... as a result they waste only 60 Kw... that is what i really would say "POWER OF SIMPLICITY"

Mr.K.V.Kamath's topic actually threw light about how civilizations evolved; sprinkling his ideas on couple of topics such as the dissemination theory & culture synthesis... of course, this was more so beyond the purview of the summit.. but i found it really interesting !!

Of course to keep the story short and sweet.... here is a pic of the Yin-Yan Dessert at the luncheon....

The Chennai JOB Fair (March 29th)

2008-04-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

It was sure having a serpentine Queue of Job Seekers, which candidly the organizers had not anticipated at the Chennai Job Fair conducted by IFA consultants (albeit under the political aegis of DMK), but despite the political cloud surrounding the entire area there were a few things that you get to learn and appreciate being part of the on-the-day coordination.
1) Dream BIG and also anticipate Bigger
What ever be the flaws of the entire show, what should be appreciated is that it brought together 24 companies and a minimum of 3000 deserving candidates in a single platform.

Bringing across companies across the diaspora such as L&T, Hyundai, Orchid Pharma & Sutherland.. but this indeed was their Achilles heel as they did not categorize the companies and as a result the candidates were at total loss to decide where to go....

2) The business of Politics
As the minister M.K.Stalin started his speech i could really appreciate how similar are the workings of both a politician and a businessmen; while his speech peppered with lavish praise on his own accomplishments was met with rapturous applause of his party cadres but it was quite insightful as the politicians play the role of the pied piper luring all Companies into Chennai

3) The forbearance of a south-korean
This was the position of the Hyundai Chief right from the beginning till the ceremony ended.... frightfully rigid.

4) The power of networking
We utilized the entire oppurtunity to speak to all the head HR and VPs of the 24 companies and show-cased our model for a sustainable & scalable rural employment; and it really gave us lot of key insights from the corporate perspective on their requirements and their commitment to their employees as a responsibility.

Now we have deep insights from 24 top companies, formulation of a process for organizing the Job Fair and a full-day appointment with the Vice President of L&T...

For the Press review of the Job fair click here HINDU

Lock Stock & Trade'08 (Jan 19th 2008)

2008-04-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

Pretty late Commentary but neverthless... LST has been a special event for me as the chief co-ordinator and with the legendary Capt. Gopinath as it's key note Speaker

"It was international currys with India flavor at SPJIMR's Lock Stock & Trade'08; the biggest mock IPO event this side of Dalal Street. With teams from across the globe from Thailand to Dubai competiting with teams across India, showcasing real-live business ventures ranging across Bikaji bhujias, Siyaram Silk Mills Ltd, Maharaja Appliances Ltd and Aeropharma Group along with their respective industry representatives to raise the maximum IPO bids.

The event kick-started with a key note speech from the legendary Capt. Gopinath who took the entire audience on a spell-binding ride across his entire entrepreneurial ventures from childhood to the latest Air-Deccan boom; later on as he graciously answered questions the stage was being set for a much bigger battle.

On this one day event the SPJIMR student teams representing the entrepreneur and investment banker present selected real life entrepreneurial businesses to the audience. These businesses are open for evaluation and trading by the audience who acting as investors mock 'invest' in shares of their choice. The stocks are allotted through bidding and the ultimate stock prices are determined by the market forces. At the end of the day the winning 'investors' are those with highest value portfolios and the winning 'company' is that which has the highest market capitalization. The game provides opportunity for many a player to bid, trade and build their portfolio, and experience…the Dalal Street excitement.

Later on to quench our thirsts we had an intellectual panel discussion on the topic, "From Idea to IPO" peppered by eminent set of V.Cs, Entrepreneurs & corporates such as Mr.Devand Neralla(MCX), Mr.Jinesh Shah(Nexus India), Mr.Ajay Kapur(SIDBI ventures), Mahesh Choudahry(Microqual) and Mr.Namit Malhotra(Prime Focus) and moderated by Ms.Priya Srinivasan. The event winners were the joint team of SPJIMR & Hindustan Tin Works Ltd; while the team from Thammarsat BSchool, Thailand won the jury's special award."

Mentee Mentor Meeting ... Full Swing

2008-04-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

It was a very bustling day... amidst friend's marriage celebrations, shuttling across towns i really squeezed in an appointment with Mr.J.Sreenivasa, Manager for the BPO division at Accenture, Bangalore and a SPJIMR pass-out of 1998.
It began as a meeting to add a name to the face, but later went across into a warm meeting of college days (incidentally Mr.Sekar had set up our college's Intra-LAN facility as his summers) and loads of fun-filled reminiscences.
I got an opportunity to find out more about his career-choices, roles as a division manager; but a few sagacious wordings that really did strike my brain
1) Get into any company which is in the growth phase. (His own choice of getting into Accenture)
2) Summers is an opportunity to experiment, rather than a career-choice.
3) Networking among people who are in my dream profile (Marketing & Sales- IT) would be a great idea.

So, i am going to get back to my phone book and start dialing the list....

DOCC at Kanchipuram

2008-04-06T04:57:00.000-07:00

As part of our Academic Curricula, summers in SPJIMR are not done in plush A.Ced Corporate offices, but rather across rural village land-scapes....
We call it DOCC (Development of Corporate Citizenship)
"The Centre for Development of Corporate Citizenship (DOCC) was established in the year 2001 with a view to mould management education in tune with the Indian context.DOCC works closely with NGOs and corporates by undertaking various consultancy and research assignments. It also works as a medium between the Corporate and NGOs and strives to bring them together in contributing to the society."
Frankly, this is one of the best part of my learning... and i am really looking forward for it...

My DOCC Project details :-

(a) Job Fair for rural youth- Drawing strategy -Synergy between different corporate, HR consultancy firms, local administrator (collector), and job fair

India lives in the village and without the development of village the country can not achieve the dream of becoming developed country. There is need of shift focuses on the village and rural youth and booming economy must involved village also as active partner. In Kanchipuram district there are more than 100 of industries working in different field but rural unemployment rate is quite high here. An approach is needed bring the industry together and initiating a step to increase the intake of rural youth in corporate.

Possible approach & objective

à Coordination and liaison with Local Administration (Collector)

à Coordination with leading HR consultancies and Corporate in Chennai

à Prepare and discuss the concept note to corporate explaining the need of bring rural youth forward.

In Brief :
I am going to working with the district collector, kanchipuram District to organize a JOB fair for the rural youths; facilitated by Orchid Pharma's NGO wing

lets see how things turn up :)

Memoirs of an 0.5 MBA

2008-03-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

“The Story doesn’t end here my friend, Picture abhi bhi baki hai”

Almost a year (well academically speaking i.e) into the rig morale as an MBA grad and here I am tonight burning the mid-night oil once again just trying to relive the entire year.

1) Champions of Nasscom’s National Case study on IT enablement.

2) Reaching the top of the International Thought challenge at IIM-L and memorable interaction with various IAS officers, top-notch CEOs.

3) Those 14 days on an unforgettable journey beyond India to the Never-Never Land.

4) Working with the BMC for their Clean-up drive (albeit done internally)

5) Chief co-ordinator of an International Mock IPO event, LST’08 with the legendry Capt. Gopinath chairing as the key-note speaker.

6) Winning the BMC case study for SLUM participation for solid waste management system.

7) Judged by the Indian Kotler “Mr.Mithileshwar Jha” as the finalists for John Deere (the tractor company) Strategic marketing case study.

8) Interacting with various entrepreneurs including Mr.Sriram(Crosswords), Vishal Gondal(India-games), the vada-pav guy and creating a forum to encourage entrepreneurship in SPJIMR.

9) Fun-filled GOA holiday with bosom buddies.

10) Grass-root level innovation expressed best only when organized with National Innovation Fund, when we conducted Uddyam.

11) Mingling with the mentally challenged kids at Ehsaas.

12) Winners at the Global Forum, Konflux’08.

13) Spearheading a team along with the Dean to evolve on his thesis on leadership.

14) Working with a startup company and trying to evolve an entry strategy into the Enterprise Segment.

15) Academically ranked 7^th in college (Seriously… don’t ask me how !!!)

16) The Icing on the Cake, when my team got mentioned in the Newspaper as I finished second runner’s up in Economic Times & CitiBank’s GrandMaster.

And these exclude those moments which I shared with all of my colleagues, such as the Binding Lonavla trip, innumerable knowledge sessions, lectures from top-notch industry leaders, once-in-a-blue-moon night out party, endless movie sessions(thanks to LAN), Atta-Maggi & Horlicks at 2 AM in the morning, pre-reads which were never read despite when they came with a do-or-die Tagline, besotting Anandwan visit to meet the legendary Late Baba Amte, Gita Shibir, endless IPs, refreshing Music DJs, Group Studies(Technically called so), Bistro-Banters and library brawls….. The Story really doesn’t end there !!!

But what did I really do cherish in an MBA life …

‘Talented Colleagues, Brilliant Seniors (You guys rock) and an entire bunch of friends outside of college’

This is my Gyaan as a 0.5 MBA :

“ There are only two things that you really learn from an MBA, how to work as a GROUP and the power of networking… the rest are all add-ons”

The first year at college was more towards experiencing different things; while I believe that my next year would be more focused towards my actual career plan; to sum it shortly first you become the Jack of all Trades and then become the Master of ONE.

Wait further as I come with my wish-list for the next year .

p.s: I totally forgot to add the Mumbai marathon.. my first Half Marathon (21 Kms in 3 Hours) and definitely a pre-cursor to many more yet to come.

The "You know when" series ... MBA

2008-03-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

Something that struck out when i was having a conversation with couple of my colleagues and right now expanded after a bit of brain-storming...
And yeah.. all are welcome to add on to the list :)

You know you would be dining with an MBA,
when he quotes Subprime Crisis in the US as a reason for his not Tipping in India.

You know you would be married to an MBA,
when your honeymoon would have a performance review.

You know you would be hunting with an MBA,
when he blames Global warming for his lack of any catch.

You know you are chatting with an MBA,
when he creates his own abbreviations and gives his own expansions.

You know you would be traveling with an MBA,
when he takes the window seat and says he has been strategically positioned.

You know you would be reading the book of an MBA,
when it says "All time best seller" though you might have been the first person to buy the copy.

You know you would be selling a product to an MBA,
when you end up buying whatever he is selling.

You know you would be in a literary club with an MBA,
when he would claim to have read all the books by only scanning through the book reviews.

You know you would be talking to an MBA,
when every word would be followed with "Strategy" "frameworks" or even better "Strategic Framework".

You know you would be studying with an MBA,
when he says Groups works are to be done individually(other than him of course) and individual assignments are to be done by a Group.

You know that the door-to-door salesman is an MBA,
when he asks if he brings out his laptop and a Multimedia presentation.

You know you would be working with an MBA,
when he gives you all the credit but takes away your Hikes.

Which is the most important Course in Management ?

2008-02-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

This was a story from one of my friends .... a 4 year experience with the manufacturing sector, Deputy Mgr, excellent acads and with a better than average CAT score; and a call into the Top notch B-School ..... and the question he gets in the interview
"What are the various facets of Management Studies?"
He does a good job stating Business Strategy, International Business, Policy, Administration, Zoology, Gyaan Inc., Kotler's thumb rules (which essentially covers marketing) et all....

Unfortunate for him his luck was as great as this guy (getting killed by Air-plane Poop can never be a good sign); and the prof turns out to be a HR guy, and Human technology was conspicuously absent from his list....

Well.. So what is the correct answer, if you ask me i would say "IT DEPENDS" .....

US Subprime Crisis - In Graphics

2008-02-12T11:16:00.001-08:00

Well, this is something like SubPrime for DUMMIES

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7073131.stm

Marketing Research Methodology - A Sublime art

2008-02-10T05:11:00.000-08:00

We all remember the Cute yesteryear "I Love you Rasna" advertisement
But would you have ever wondered about the massive undercurrent of research methodology involved for designing and coming up this simple commercial. Frankly, if you had asked me i would have scoffed if anyone had told me that to even come up with the orange color on the pack of Rasna was after a meticulous round of focus group discussions.
Well, was i wrong.. it was prof. Rajiv Bagayatkar Associate Director, ACNielsen ORG-Marg who introduced us into the various levels of research that happens for every product branding decisions and with the Rasna case it was proven without doubt that it was not just a stroke of luck that the decisions of the Rasna commercial proved to be a track record.

Starting from how the first commercial was conceived, in order to create a niche in the SDC (Soft Drink Concentrate Segment), to target Moms as the primary buyer and kids (age 3-5 yrs) as the primary influencers, he went on to tell us about how difficult it is to target children because of their extreme associations with color, taste and all the other senses but also lack of proper existing data on the same target segment.

The more he described the world of Marketing research methodology, the more i began to believe that all marketing research involves is to get your basics right. The more basic is the thought process of the advertisement/marketing honchos the better would be the reach across all the segments. It is really not about shattering technological innovations but more about finding how do humans react to specific signals such as the bikini-clad babes or the colgate smile grand-moms. Marketing research is hence why i would say is a sublime art of understanding human psychology.

Few of his other insights; to categorize the behaviour of the people across the borders in India
1) North : They are more external show-offs. All of the products such as T.Vs or T-Shirts which would be visible to others (neighbours,family) would always be branded; while products which would rather not see the light of others; such as washing shampoos or toothpastes would be the cheaper cousins.
2) South : They are more rational people. For ex: in case u have the Heads & Shoulders shampoo commercial, in the north if it shows only that your hair gets clean and gals flock you it shall sell, but in the south you have to show pictures of ZPTO molecules doing the actual cleaning.
3) East : They are more tradition oriented. They would stick on to any old product and are very wary of changing their preferances.
4) West : As a nature of the people, the west is a mix of all the above three characteristics.

Go ahead and explore... Marketing research might just be the field for you

E-BOOST III - An evening of BOOT-Strapping

2008-02-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

I had organized the third leg of our Entrepreneurship Workshops, titled E-Boost III upon the topic "Boot Strapping", as we had got an amazing repetoire of guest speakers both of 1st generation Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists. Refer to the guest list

Mr.R.Sriram started off the lecture series by pointing out that entrepreuners need a "CAN DO" attitude, and quoting from an example these days Indian V.Cs though have started funding it is pretty less (in the past 24 months a prominent V.C fund had invested in 14 companies after going through 800 B-plans). He shared across a few experiences mostly about how to manage a business without any capital; and later on went ahead to give us a 1-2-3 (or) step-wise plan for the same :- (a) Look for specific customers (b) Work in the industry (c) Define the exact problem.

He was followed by the prolific Vishal Gondal (India Games) who started from NOTHING TO NOTHING, which was incidentally the topic of his presentation. His presentation was pretty candid and shared across his personal experience of how to garner a V.C and how to go ahead with just your plan. He gave us examples of how to THINK BIG while walking on a tight-rope.In the end he finished with saying, "The Management Principle which really works to start your own business is -JUGAAD"(a hindi slang for boot-strapping)

Next on the menu was Mr.Manoj Gupta (VP , Nexus india Capital) his presentation was mostly peppered with the takings from the previous two speeches and a lil bit of Q&A.

Followed on was Mr.Jay Gupta (Founder, The LOOT retail chain) who talked all about his experience with starting the entreprise.

Definitely a evening of lot of takings. Couple of pics ...

E-BOOST III - Part of NEN's Entrepreneurship Week Celebrations

2008-02-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

Profile of the Speakers:

Vishal Gondal (Founder & CEO of Indiagames)
Vishal started his first company – FACT at the age of 16.
Today he leads Indiagames's global operation with over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. Indiagames under Vishal's leadership was featured amongst Red Herring (magazine) Asia's Top 100 companies in 2005.
He was part of The Nokia Advisory Council for Games.
He was featured among the top 40 Indian entrepreneurs by Business Today magazine in 2001.
E&Y Indian Entrepreneur of the year award nomination in 2004
Vishal also features among the 20 Fab Indians to watch out for in 2006 by The Week magazine.
Manoj Gupta (VP, Nexus India Capital)
Prior to Nexus, Manoj has been involved with entrepreneurial ventures in the semiconductor/communications field for six years. Initially with Siliconwave, a Bluetooth startup (acquired by RFMD) and then with WIT, a Digital TV startup (acquired by Chrontel).
Manoj has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, MS from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and PhD (Expected) from University of California, San Diego.

R. Sriram ( Co-founder, former CEO & MD Crossword Bookstores )
Establish various bookstores - starting with Landmark in Chennai, Walden in Hyderabad, and lastly Crossword. He co-founded Crossword with Ms. K. Anita in 1992 and helped build it into India's leading bookstore chain.
Sriram stepped down from Crossword in August 2006 to co-found "Next Practice Retail" to innovate and incubate new retail businesses.
He is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Mumbai and is an Independent Director on the board of Gini & Jony Limited.Sriram is a visiting faculty at IIM A and a guest lecturer at IIM L .

E-BOOST III

Raising funds for new ventures "Bootstrapping"

8th February, 2008

4 p.m. to 5.30 p. m

S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research

So where shall you be….

Xmas ----- Exams

2007-12-27T13:45:00.001-08:00

Well it is a sight to behold management grads being led from one festival to another within the shrouds of exams; completely unaware of the dates and days that their current hobby involves betting on which day it currently is based upon the MESS menu (which also unfortunately revolves something like - Orange color curry = Monday while a White colored = Wednesday and definitely the Yellow colored liquidish thing = Tuesday (reason ==> Orange + white = Yellow; and in between Monday and wednesday we only have tuesday))

Leave it to an MBA to really befuddle you with his own round-about logistics and on top of it making you pay him all of your dough for the process improvements which he had forseen in his mental crane but unfortunately implementation had totally mis-aligned the goals.

Nyways, coming back to our agenda for cribbing - Exams that too on a merry christmas day; while cherubic santa would have been singing christmas carols and howering over chimney's belching out HOHOHOs and loads of gifts, here were a bunch of kids who weren't even affected by the spirit of joy nor the Holy Ghost....

Praying for Phantom (cause he is the ghost who walks) at least to come save us from this definite recipe of disaster called Exams

To the only SANTA that did visit our Campus ;)

Confessions of a graduating MBA student

2007-12-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

If you always wondered how much should an MBA student should be paid for an ability to prepare Power-point slides... well this article clearly resounds very similar feelings ;)

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/dec/26mba.htm

The best part was the discussion of the case study in the end of the article, enclosing this for a quick read

"For one of my final electives we read together the tale of a new MBA graduate who runs into trouble when hired to establish a local mobile phone franchise. We were full of advice for his bosses, including the inevitable demand for more training and mentoring, but strangely short on tips for dealing with the nitty gritty of rolling out a phone mast network or placating local politicians.

Our hero works hard but makes bad decisions, misses deadlines and is sacked. The shock in class was palpable. He can't fail, can he? His strategy seemed sound. He had an MBA from a good school (not as good as ours, but never mind). Surely he can't just fail? No one ever mentioned that while recruiting"

I believe this article would definitely make more sense to an MBA pass-out who realizes the exact value-add on-the-job

Another lenghty but pleasant read is Bill waterson's commencement speech at keyton college :

http://bridgerack.com/index.php/Brain_Rain/bill_wattersons_philosophy.html

Both the reads are courtesy my seniors ...

Shortlist for SPJIMR Batch 2010 PGDM course Announced

2007-12-24T05:20:00.000-08:00

With Moments of Deja-Vu, as i check across the first short-list for Admissions Interview for the 2 year PGDM course for 2010

RESULTS

First shortlist for Admission Interview for 2 year PGDM Program for the year 2008-10

Shortlisted candidates need to fill in and email to us the Profile sheet by 5th January 2008 The profile sheet can be downloaded from the website.

The interview will be conducted at Mumbai starting from 14th Janaury onwards. The shortlisted candidates can select their own slot of date and time on the link that will be provided at the website from 27th December 2007. The slots booking will be on first come first serve basis.

There will be a second round of interview for candidates selected from the first round. The second round will be held on same day and place.

NIPPLE-ing effect

2007-12-23T20:47:00.001-08:00

Brief in-between one of those soporific operations class (in-fact most of the first lectures of the day have been degenerated to HBL (Heads behind Laptops) periods); as all of us were amidst completing the much-required 4 hours of sleep/day; and i was doing the usual nodding position (Eyes half closed and brains already drifted into sleep) and then suddenly everyone awakes as the prof says :

"NIPPLES"

Naturally, for all of us sex-educated (read perverted) minds; this was like a caffine implant and right it shot all of us out of our stupor.... and then all of the sudden, the prof says, "let me draw a picture of the Nipple for all non-engineers"
Suddenly Operations became such a awe-inspiring subject; everyone closed their laptops and for the first time in their lives drawed their eyes upon the Black-board avowing their renewed interest for SCM.

More about NIPPLES ;)

Rocked Konflux'07 : Global Forum organized by IBS, Mumbai

2007-12-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

Yet another show-stealer, myself and Jagnoor singh had gone across to Reliance Business School, Mumbai as the finalists for Konflux'07, the global forum organized by IBS, Mumbai.

The theme this year was BRIC, and each of the finalists had to represent one country among Brazil, India, China, Russia, US & South Africa perform a detailed analysis on the country and present it before an eminent panelists of economists showcasing the merits and strategy growth-plan for each of our country; and then there was a intense debate session among all the finalists.
Unfortunate for us, we were the first team to present and had a really intense gruelling Q&A session with almost everyone of the audience brimming with questions about Brazillian economy and stuff; but the applause from them also thundered as we kept on answering all of the questions brilliantly. I distinctly remember one of the questions from the judges which quizzed us about Brazil having a declining sugar export trend for the past two years; and suddenly something quizzed in my mind and i somehow related it to the ETHANOL manufacturing of Brazil and how this affected the production of Sugar; and immediately the entire crowd went brimming with applause.
We also had a brilliant stance during the debate session thanks to jagnoor's resounding voice and clairvoyant thoughts .
Overall, this was a day we made great friends and also great prizes.

The Top Two winners of the event

Winners of the NASSCOM IT Case Study, FMS Delhi

2007-12-15T14:56:00.001-08:00

Freezing in the delhi cold blast, chugging along in a cycle-rickshaw with hardly any break-fast little did i know that this would be one of those days which i would remember for long.
It was as finalists of NASSCOM's IT case study on "IT enablement in the Auto Ancillary Sector" that made myself and Anindya Gupta knock on the doors of FMS, delhi. Reaching there a day earlier, we enjoyed the hospitality of a single bed-room and amazing night-canteen food (all thanks to Arvind, my childhood mate there); we almost finished our PPT during the entire night, and myself had to brush through my presentation just 4 hours before the final presentation in front of the judges.
The CASE study given to us can be accessed in this link
Briefly speaking, the case highlighted the need for IT enablement in the Auto Ancillary sector (or as u might add almost every other sector in India) with elaborate Charts and Graphs of the current scenario. And then we were asked to prepare a IT budget for the Auto Ancillary Clusters and forecast how this should be implemented.

We took an altogether different path in our Presentation, and instead of presenting the boring IT budgeting we went ahead with detailed analysis of the Auto Ancillary sector, their actual requirements (and not as formulated in the PPT) seeing if there was any ROE for these IT enablement and then predicting the formulation of a perfect IT spending across the Auto ancillary sector, separately for LARGE and later for Medium size companies.

And Glad that i must mention it paid off, and we won first prize in the competition; surpassing IIMs, XLRI, FMS and IMT-ghaziabad.

Later on, in another on-the-spot event we once again rocked the show and won the first prize..
I must add, "LIFE is HAPPENING"
Couple more of our chauvinistic pics

Nick of Time

2007-12-15T14:55:00.001-08:00

It doesn’t happen every morning that you wake up directly into the class-room, finding yourself facing the entire 160 odd people who are still into their phase of REM sleep and a professor who is determined to make you sweat it out; but that was exactly what happened today.

4.30 AM – managed to finish the PPT slides for DAS (which stands for Decision Analysis Simulation) which were supposed to be presented the same day.

After finishing the formalities of morning ablutions, reclined back into oblivion or sleep as few of the MBA folk experience for 3-4 hours in a day.

8.30 AM – Get a call from my team-mate whispering “WTF are u ? presentation has started and your slide is coming up next *&^#$*&^#@$*@#&^$” along with a equally exciting sms in-case I hadn’t listened to his obscenities appropriately.

8.31 AM – Jolted from Xanadu back into reality, jump from the bed and rush across (luckily managed to put along the right combination of Shirt and Pants)

Reached across the Presentation room with six-sigma efficiency level as far as punctuality is concerned, exactly as my slide arrived upon the team’s presentation. (IF only it was a operations lecture, I am sure that the prof. would have given me full marks for utilizing JIT (Just-in-time) Toyota methodology to practical demonstration)

Unfortunately it was our Fin. Prof and his temperament and attention to details were as sharp as Rajinikanth’s punch lines.

Somehow, my over-efficient team mates sensing my punctual past has foreseen that I would have given the presentation a miss and had relegated my slides to the end of the presentation and with only 1 minute of time left, they reasoned they could put across general GYAN across them.

Unfortunately, for me and equally so for them I reached across…. Thankfully, just as I got on stage from my entry through the door; our prof. mentioned the lacunae of time; condescendingly (rather thanking god) I descended and our PPT just ended.

That was quite a quick entry from the Door to the Stage and back to our seats ;)

Thankfully, the Q&A session provided the much required grace, and sure I would get something above “D” grade.

p.s : Reclining on my thinking chair later on, I suddenly get a brain-storm of how a “REMINDER service” would be an excellent B-plan targeted towards B-Schoolers and also to over-efficient CxOs .

Couple of my Debate Topics

2007-12-02T07:12:00.001-08:00

Was trying to clean up my virtual room (i meant my lappie's Desktop) and then suddenly came across a few points i had noted as a preparation for my debate....

Topic One : Branding , "Branding is Dead... Long live Branding" - we were asked to speak against the topic.

Topic Two : Compensation, "An Employee chooses a company only for its compensation" - for the topic.

Storing them here, for historic reasons ;)

How to write that Winning Case Study presentation...

2007-11-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

4 months, 8 case study competitions, 4 finals and one win.

And my key learning “Facts and figures in an MBA life are much akin to Shahrukh doing the Lux commercial, great Face value but not exactly what you came for; all that really matters is an idea that borders on ingenuity and simplicity and truck-loads of hardwork”. I shall explain this final thesis of mine, with an elaborate hypothesis on what exactly is the fundamentals behind a case-study competition, why should you waste your time upon it and the most important of them all how can u actually write a winning case-study.

Fact No 1: If someone as Dumb(Dumb enough to share this secret with everyone) can do it ….. why can’t the guy/gal sitting next to me ?

Fact No 2: Case studies are nothing more than extra assignments ( I know you must be smiling after reading this fact; as if I am not over-burdened with enough). But consider this tiny case illustration :
During my past 4 months I have tried to analyze the average time spent on doing an assignment and believe me or not it doesn’t exceed half hour/day; and the rest of the day we end up procrastinating about the load upon our tiny shoulders (Wish I had a dilbert illustration to prove my point)
(Click to enlarge)
Fact No 3 : Case Studies are excellent pedagogy to learn, have fun, network and at the end also make some extra money.

Fact No 4 : The most obvious CV point (or) as most of us would refer it to a SPIKE in your resume.
Now if I have somehow instigated the curious nerve amongst you.. read on further

So what is the exact funda behind a case-study competition:-
Mr.Nikhil, managing director of CSS corp (a typical MBA) is luxuriating under the shade of his money-tree when suddenly, the occurs a serious administration issue and unfortunate for him he did not do ADMAP in India’s top ten B-schools and hence is at a fix to find a practical solution to his current scenario.
Immediately a light bulb shines and he plans to release this current problem of his as a live case-study to those hundreds of MBA students who are immersed in RIP-VAN-WINKLE case-studies. And just to prove his MBA degree he shall showcase this brain-storm to his boss as the “3B Approach“
Brains(getting access to virgin MBA student’s ideas)
Brand(increase the brand-image of CSS corp) and
Bucks (instead of spending a million dollars hiring a consultant they could do away with a few lakhs on sponsorship money)

So, we come to the next agenda of our discussion … how would you approach a case-study

First on the agenda, find someone who would do the case study for you (LOL .. jus kidding) but one of the really great things about case-studies is that you can really work with the brainiacs sitting next to you, rather than upon mundane assignments.

Next, approach an appropriate Staff and make sure you carry a hard-copy print-out of the case study ( of course, given the fact that paper could have been put to better uses such as the ubiquitous toilet paper). I have seriously, found amazing insights from my profs whenever I have begun working upon a case-study and this essentially provides you with the much needed focus plan. Professors, have the inherent advantage of having practical exposure and also a sharpened edge of exposing the true issue beneath the truck-loads of data and text in any case-study model.

Then comes the exciting work of brain-storming… typically, this is a true simulation of a corporate scenario albeit sans the conference rooms or free coffee. One piece of advice is to indulge in a bit of free-wheeling before you actually discuss core-aspects of the case study. For example, during a case study to develop a marketing model for Hindi Layout Keyboards, the entire case focused on needs of a Rural segment but during our free-wheeling exercise we were prompted to believe in a higher potential among Urban customers such as DTP, Government offices & Institutions, et all; you either come up with ground-breaking revolutions or that single-edged evolution.

Presentation, the next and the most important phase of your initial case study analysis. Naturally, this is also the most-time-consuming exercise, wherein you have to express your analysis within the boundaries of the guidelines. One real way to nailing your way to the finals is to understand the person who is going to evaluate your solution; he shall definitely be hard-pressed for time and would hardly have 5 mins to read a 10 page report for which you have spent around 4 hours. Be inspired by Comic Strips, keep them short, colorful, informative, picture-oriented and make sure you have a great Tagline.

Then keep your fingers crossed until the D-day announcement comes and you get selected with a Sleeper Class re-imbursement fare to present your concept at the Finals

Now here comes to tricky part, first thing that I learnt after the case study presentation for BMC’s Sanitation and Slum participation was that the judges are the essential Mr.Nikhil who have come to identify their much-sought-after solutions and unless you provide with a practically viable plan .. BEEP(wrong answer)
Here is how you can really showcase your solution:
1) Primary market survey : During our final presentation at IIT-Bombay for our paper presentation for IT for SMEs we actually got a SME and got a proper field report (Within a span of 2 days).
2) Understand the true Question : This was an essential learning we had in IIM-Bangalore when we were presenting our final presentation for John Deere (The Tractor company) and we found that though we had presented the judges with the three customer segments (or) product portfolios John Deere should target, we hadn’t covered much on the Marketing proposition, which was exactly what the judges were looking for. This is not as easy as it sounds, since the case study only mentioned the product portfolio.
3)Presentation skills matter : Get a couple of Hard-copies Xeroxed and put them in front of the judges (esp. if u have any diagrammatic representations or hard-core technical graphs) and as the old-thumb rule presentability would be the most important factor for marking.

Last but not the least, go with my metrics …. 8:4:1 ( I am sure you can definely beat that)

Barcamp 2 : Un-conferance Un-limited

2007-11-17T22:32:00.001-08:00

Where would you find :
* A 22 year old who has 5 startups to his credit...
* Truck-loads of Start-ups such as Aggregatorz.com,Novix,realAcres.com
* CXOs of companies such as iXiGO.com, Creative Commons
* Have a cup of coffee with the Business Heads of SUN and IBM
* Angel-Funder's such as Mahesh Murthy giving an introduction on what they look in a company before investing
* Junta talking about their crazy ideas and how they won an Apple IPOD cause of it.
* Sessions on Jumpstarting your startup.

everything in only one place ... the Mumbai Barcamp2 recently held at IIT-Bombay.

If you are those kinds who say "what the hell is BARCAMP" ... refer to the site Barcamp before you read ahead

Myself and my friend had gone over there to research for our topic upon ISVs and the SME sector (in the IT industry of course) and i must say that we were as surprised as Ali-baba after he mumbled "open sesame".

Not only did we get to have a lively discussion with Mr Bakshish Dutta,the marketing manager for SUN's start-up essential program(the event sponsorers too) how they could forge across newer contacts with startups and ISV(Independent Software Vendors) who would later on decide on a required collaboration with SUN; but also came across many IT employees who were looking forward for such conferances to get a feel of the latest technologies and in the end also decide if they want to join any of the startups.

So how is everything in this un-conferance as it is named ORGANIZED ??

The moment you enter into the halls (there are 4 concurrent sessions happening) and you shall be greeted with this Board, riddled with Stick-ons announcing the speaker and his topic...

if you like it you go ahead and involve yourself in the brain-storming else you simply go ahead to the adjoining parralel session.

Also, this open format means that if you have an idea and want to thrash it out.. then go ahead take out a Stick-on and write your name and idea and utilize one of those free spaces(if any)
For those who believe in out-doors we also have a coffee table, wherin people just hang around (in a circular fashion) each holding a cup of coffee and a brilliant idea in their brain and voila you have a great conversation.

A few things i really loved : The totally informal methodology of brain-storming, there is absolutely no issue of patents or information rights which are discussed. Everyone comes with an open problem or idea and others simply add on their suggestions and opinions.

A few things i think can be improved : The entire conferance was essentially IT based; given the fact that most of the start-ups are web-related and the entire show was over-whelmed by 200 IT junkies looking for the next happening thing.. there wasn't even a glimpse of other fields.

So the next time, some one says "BARCAMP" do not raise your glasses and says cheers but rather put on your thinking hats and hop on to this discovery channel.

Other links :
http://startupcentral.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/barcamp-mumbai-2/
http://www.livemint.com/2007/10/15234644/More-on-entrepreneurship-less.html
http://barcamp.org/BarCampMumbai2

WHY GO TO B-School

2007-11-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

Came across this interesting read after being forwarded by a friend.

WHY B-SCHOOL

This is more of those initial questions which arise across the minds of every potential MBAs, or people (as in the case of the author himself) who are currently fed up with their current profile and need a booster in terms of Learning curve.

12 Angry MEN

2007-10-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

         Among the varied incentives of being in a peer group is that you shall be exposed to different experiences, different outlooks, different ideologies and the most importantly a varied set of movies. Vague, but true… when you are battled down 24x7 with assignments and hardly find any time or space to go out and enjoy your life, and the Laptop being your sole companion who accompanies you for almost every thought process. You figure out the entire way to exercise your emotional self would be to get exposed to artifacts in the form of news articles, documentaries, novels and abundant resource of movies that shall be available thanks to a few benevolent souls who cram it right up to their external HDD with a collection that boasts of almost all titles in the IMDB repository.

        Unlike my fellow MBAers, I would rather be on the left-end of the median curve as far as the numerical representation of the movie count.. when others boast of an average 2-5 movies in a day, I can hardly mutter out 5 titles which have been seen till the end for the past 3 months, and seriously this is a deficit I really need to work upon.

        A deficit that can only best illustrated best by the movie “12 Angry men” which had been sitting complacently upon my drive for almost 10 days. This movie has also been the chief inspiration for another hindi classic, “Ek rukha hua Faisla” starring pankaj kapoor.

        The entire movie, as the title suggests revolves around a single room, wherein 12 members of the Jury sit to decide the fate of a 18 yr old kid who has been accused of killing his father cold-bloodily. Despite this physical limitation of the room, the movie infact soars beyond within the limitless rationales of the mind.I must say, that this was the first movie that has made cringe every set of emotions without being overly made in any sense.

        When many of the movie reviews type-cast it as a typical “Achilles against Troy” syndrome, wherein one jury member who must try to persuade the other 11 members to acquit the suspect on trial on the basis of reasonable doubt.True that they may be on their definition, they however cannot illustrate the beauty of the movie by this single claim, and neither do I suppose I can also do entire justice to the beauty of this movie.

        Jury duty may or may not remain… but the relevance of this movie “12 Angry Men” shall definitely echo the many portals of corporate life across thy hallowed portals or board-rooms. The entire movie is a beautiful case-illustration of negotiations, influences and a perfect mixture of all the components that go along in a high-profile board-room meeting of today. More than how one Jury member convinces the others, it is a matter of how rational thinking can overcome personal prejudices.

        One of the quote that still reverberates in my mind after watching the movie is the one that Henry Fonda makes after he shows how the other Jury are making decisions on blind emotions rather than actual facts,

        “It is always diff to keep personal prejudices out of it
        Wherever u run from it; prejudice always obscures the truth”

        The movie has been used in management seminars as a case study in team building and leadership. The resolution-of-conflict techniques presented in 12 Angry Men have been analyzed and applied to employee efforts to collaborate among themselves to handle issues. The goal is to minimize or eliminate the inefficient micromanagement by company executives in areas in which they are unskilled and/or unknowledgable. This use is most widely seen in the Total Quality Management system used by the U.S. government as well as numerous private sector corporations.
        In a May 26, 1999 piece in the New York Times titled "Importance of Being Persuasive; Daimler-Chrysler Merger Made an Art of Making a Case" by Youssef M. Ibrahim, Jurgen E. Schrempp the ex-CEO of DaimlerChrysler who oversaw the merger of the two companies stated about the movie: 'It helps me put my arguments into words, focus on people'.

Need I say more ?

-Deepak

INDO-PAK finals @ SPJIMR

2007-09-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

This is what happens at SPJIMR ...

It is sure BETTER Watch a cricket match than do mundane Assignments and prepare for Surprise Quizzes.
It is definitely GREAT to watch a cricket Finals between India and Pakistan than any other match
It is almost AWESOME-O to watch the same with the entire college junta with the sound effects within the AUDI itself ....

Personal Selling workshop - Selling DimDIMA (Actual sales)

2007-09-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

In response to the last exercise , all the students were organized into groups of 3 to sell a children magazine called DimDima, published by Bhavan's (Which also apparently under whose purview SPJIMR runs) .
The magazine as such, is definitely a hot seller in terms of content, marketing segment choice (Kids within the age group of 6-10 yrs) and also in terms of presentation. All that was left of this magic ingredients were us, a bunch of Marketeers.

Our Location : VileParle (East) - Near Railway Station
Our Target : 5 subscription copies worth 240/- each.
Our Strategy : Formally dressed, we shall get over to all the schools in those areas around 4-6 pm and sell it directly to the mom's waiting for their child.
Implementation :
We reached Vile-parle around 6 pm, much behind our schedule and dressed in half-formals .. There was much more than a disaster awaiting us. With the schools already closed, we first went on a round asking in the surrounding shops about the prospective customers in the area.

One of the Shop-keepers was kind enough to let us on the truth,"Here we have all Gujjus and Jains, you shall hardly find a single customer" and seriously he was right to the word.
We went across Apartments, and under each of them we were scootered off with strangest comments, "We have kids, he is studying in the 6th Std but he cannot read" so on and so forth.

One of the practises that helped us was, whenever we went to any apartment we approached the watchmen and asked him to direct us to the secretary and then explained our proposition to him directly. Most of the building secretaries were more than glad to help us and even gave us the exact details of the houses with children; but failed to mention that they were also run by tight-fisted moms :) Overall we had major fun, marketing to all those kids and moms and ultimately when we did sell of a couple of the issues all our frowns were turned into smiles. And not to forget the shopping we did after the episode and those endless Pani-puris :)

Lesson's learnt :
1) Know the market you are going to sell to (Here, Gujjus and jains are not great prospects)
2) Stick to your game-plan (Schools would have been a great sell)
3) Display complexity (one of our batchmates, went with their open laptop and utilized it as a show-piece attracting more customers)
4) Know the U.S.Ps
5) And last but not the least... You are not "Selling" a product but rather taking a market survey and in case the person wants to, he can buy the product as well
6)Take risks. We gave a couple of Sample issues to a few children as a freebie and most of them turned out potential customers

Monotonous Ramblings of the MBA head - PART I

2007-09-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

        As the sliver of light enters through the flickering eyelids, the beam transports from the iris to the synaptic nerve creating a symphonic reverberation with another whisper of an mobile alarm; this cosmic serendipity acts as a cheap substitute of a shock wave awakening the senses of urgency, bedlam and chaos.

        As he slumbers across and tries to find out more about the hazy bearded picture staring across him with similar disdain in the mirror, he feels vanquished as if being captive of an sci-fi Asimov novel, struck between the parallel planets of yesterday and tomorrow within the confines of today with his brains fried clean of any other memories which he tries desperately to weave together but in the end the same questions float around him like jetsam. His only console is the adjoining zombie standing next to him trying to figure out the same as his other counterparts who have been queuing outside the hostel bathrooms.

        But he doesn’t get much time to figure out the answers to his global questions as the entire cosmos reverberates with the rhyme:

FE-FI-FO-FUM
         If you don’t want to come late better RUN
FE-FI-FO-FUM
        Either down-grade or follow the rules of the COC* Kingdom.

         Leaving everything to the same disorder within which it earlier existed, he grabs his essential items including the Laptop and the LAN cord he runs the last leg of marathon between 8.25 till 8.30 pm almost killing himself twice he launches himself as the doors shut down-BINGO he says, and then it hits him “What am I supposed to do today?”

         The healthy body it is said needs a minimum 3 Alpha stages of REM sleep cycles per day; the first of them during midnight 12 till 8 AM and the remaining two can be apportioned between 8.30 AM till 6 PM, depending on the GAS** quotient being liberated at any of the lectures.

         As he exercises his left brain, to synthesize a practical demonstration of the case study at hand he does an inventory check of his glasses and laptop, and later deciding on the exact opportunity cost decides to utilize the open frame of the laptop as the barrack behind which he could snooze off. ZzzzzzZZZZ !!!

         Within his dreams he once again goes into the land of oblivion; it has almost been 2 months of his existence in this similar state. Almost degenerated into a mechanical monster, his entire life revolves around pre-reads, quizzes, assignments and presentations; Quality seems to have lost the battle to quantity. Everyday he fights a lost battle against endless assignments armed with only the power of “Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V”

        His sporadic attempts to understand the pulse of the lecturer only ends up with strengthening his belief in the theory of parallel thought process “Two Parallel thoughts never intersect” and as these same thoughts from the profs whiz past him he can only claim ignorance.

        Even the concept of pre-reads does not come to his rescue, as with all other protagonists he lacks any time-machine to get back into the past to finish them on-time.
        Frustrated, flabbergasted and constipated his only recourse is to drown himself into the barrage of IPs, Road-Rash, FIFA and those endless GBs of movies.

         Rewinding past almost 3 months earlier, here was the same person who would read almost 2 newspapers a day and then smack off his knowledge gain with another magazine and then reel across figures of GDP and GNP. Fast forward to the current situation he can only count one figure GGP (GROSS GAS PRODUCT)

         Here dozing before you amidst the din-dain of a class is a perfect example of an MBA grad down 2 months into the production line of India’s TOP-TEN B-School.

To be continued....

        p.s: This is a part-I of my series jotting a different perspective into the much coveted MBA life. It should not be mistaken as a direct demonizing of this life; but rather to retrospect about our givings and takings and the quest to utilize every opportunity to the maximum and perhaps find out where are we going wrong in this entire rat-race.

COC* : This is a direct reference to the Code of Conduct committee which regulates the draconian rules of attendance and delay .
GAS** : This is special vocabulary that signifies the very essence of MBA ( It can only be felt, neither explained nor understood)
+ No Animals were hurt in the making of this article, but the same cannot be guaranteed with the sentiments of the MBA junta

SP's Alumni Magazines

2007-09-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

Check out on our illustrious Alumni, through "SPANDAN" SP's Alumni Magazine

http://www.spjimr.org/alumni/emag.asp

Mr. Arun Agrawal (Country Head - Financial Institutions and International Banking at Yes Bank) will be interacting with us on Sunday(Sept 23) evening 4 pm, on ...

So many assignments, group works, presentations, quizzes and no time...
Are we missing out on learning and doing important things that really matter when we enter the corporate world?
Are we focusing too much on short term activities and losing our long term focus?

What should we be doing now to succeed in the corporations we are going to take up in a couple of years?
What should we really learn in a B School for our success in life?
What the corporate needs from a management graduate?

Just exactly what we need :)

A Relevant Management Adage... of monkeys and *&%#

2007-09-19T01:18:00.001-07:00

Personal Selling workshop - Selling DimDIMA

2007-09-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Class,
Dimdima is a children's magazine targetted at a certain age group. Please look up their website for more details on the magazine.This is what you are rquired to do:

All have been divided and areas allotted, so stay with your area lest you approach the same customer.

Please visit the allotted area between today and the 24th of September and sell subscriptions on Dimdima (target - 5 subscriptions each). Each group will be given a set of the Magazines.

For each sale made, you are required to write out a receipt (serially numbered receipt books will be given to you), to hand over to the customer and one copy remains with you Utmost care has to be taken care of the receipt books. Each and every single receipt in the receipt book has to be accounted for. All the receipt books have to be returned, whether used, unused or partly used. There are two copies of each receipt. A carbon paper has to be used for preparing the receipt. The first copy has to be given to the customer while the second copy has to be preserved in the receipt book itself. In no case, the second
copy of the receipt is to be detached from the receipt book Each and every subscriber has to fill up the subscription form in legible handwriting and to be given the receipt. The receipt no. issued to the subscriber has to be entered in the subscription form in the box
provided for office use only. That way we will have the record of the receipt issued to the subscriber. For the convenience of the subscriber, (s)he has to be told to refer to
the receipt no. in all future communications with DIMDIMA.

Cheques have to be collected in favour of "Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan", payable at Mumbai.

The subscription forms do not provide rates for international subscriptions. However, the same form can be used for collecting international subscriptions. The rates are Rs.1000/- for 1 year anywhere in the world.

All subscription rates (Domestic and International) are inclusive of ordinary posting charges.

An excel sheet (attached) needs to be filled and submitted with the unused receipts.

Finally each of you has to fill in the attached Word Doc, your experience
and let me know how it went. Please restrict your writing to the format and 2
pages or maximum 3 pages.

Initial review : This is a very good example of having a winner product, but only marketing is in the quandry. The magazine DimDima is targetted towards kids in the age group 6-16 yrs and in fact for all it's worth (20 bucks per issue) is in fact loaded with inspirational and knowledge oriented material; as i would say, "Toned down version of Tinkle" .

Getting into the market and selling this on a direct selling basis would be fun..Luckily i have got myself into a gang of localites and should not have any problems.. esp. when backed with a self-selling product.
As they say about selling ciggarrettes " It is cool, it is happening and it is addictive; what more do you need?"

MusiGally : A Musical initiative by SP Junta

2007-09-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a group of four overworked B-Schoolers...
They heard Floyd, Mohd. Rafi, L. Subramaniam, Jay Z, A R Rahman, Jim Morrison, Lennon and even a bit of Reshammiya.
And as melody took over their bodies and rhythm filled their veins, one of them said, "Let there be MusIG!"
Presenting

THE Music Interest Group @ SP
here to promote anything Musical!
From the Veena to the Violin
From quizzes to RJs
From workshops to performances
From updates to shows in SP to concerts in & around Bombay
From discussions online (MusIG.blogspot.com) to discussions in the Bistro (first left after gent's loo)
And of course our own Crescendo!
We promise to bring more music to our campus than ever before! Check out www.musig.blogspot.com for futher updates

SPJIMR HRM Conclave - 8th September

2007-09-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

Advocacy Vs. Dialogue

2007-09-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

        It definitely has been quite a while since my fingers had singed being a GRE frentic;or rather Engliophile (Trying to bring out various nuances between very similar sounding words)as a few might clarify. After all which girl would have been interested going out with some walking-talking thesaraus who would rather confabulate rather than plain talk, perambulate more so than walk, fornicate if not f*&*k; it rather did lead to a lot of estrangement.

        So, when i suddenly came across one of our Profs explaining the differances between Advocacy and Dialogue... i was simply astonished, awestruck, fascinated, flabbergasted and marvelled.

here's quoting our Prof.
I read in the book a chapter 'From advocacy to dialogue and find following table

a. In advocacy the concept of decision making is a contest whereas in dialogue it is collaborative problem solving.
b. In advocacy the purpose of discussion is persuasion and lobbying whereas in dialogue it is testing and evaluation.
c. In advocacy the participants role is of spokespeople whereas in dialogue it is of critical thinkers
d. In advocacy the pattern of behavior is to persuade others, defend your position and downplay weaknesses. Whereas in dialogue it is balanced arguments, open to alternative and accept constructive criticism.
e. In advocacy the minority views are discouraged or dismissed whereas in dialogue they are cultivated and valued.
f. In advocacy the outcome is of winners and losers whereas in dialogue the outcome is of collective ownership.

        I am sure, that the above dialogues might not strike a chord with many of the readers, but i really urge everyone to give it some time to sink in.

        It has been observed that in general life, we come more across people who feel themselves deemed superior to be involved in Advocacy; but these exact arguments showcase how a dialogue is the right platform to be used if we have to propogate as a group.

        Maybe that's why we utilize these terms, "Diplomatic Dialogue and Political Advocacy".

        Leaving everyone with some thoughts for their own.

-Deepak

Another event, Another Day.. but the same old Blazer

2007-08-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

Once again i have found another day for my Blazer to be used for, after all when this heirloom of mine was passed across generations atlast from my uncle unto me; we swore upon this piece of FABRIC that it shall be used by each of it's besotted personalities the same number of times as much as it's cost then. So here is one more down crossed down, and a lil over thousand days left to go.

Been selected among the finalists for TISS's Anvesham, resembles the Best Manager event which happens across many culturals.

It has definitely been quite a hectic week here at college, all of our assignments are getting post-poned due to the existing load, and exams are but only adding on to our burden. It definitely becomes close to sychophancy when we end up studying from 8.30 Am till 6.30 Pm in the class-rooms and then till 11 pm just doing group-works.

And the worst to get affected are my entries for the various inter-college events; the last two to go down the drain were NITIE's Markfest(Paper on Indian Bank's Marketing strategy) and UDGOSH (Business Plan competition). It also didn't help that i had earlier taken time out of my academic schedule to finish the preliminary papers. Things are definitely Hotting up this Trim-1 and only time shall show, about the after-effects if any.

Till then, Life is merrier than Robin Hood's Band.

Anvesham (Event Details) , Preliminary Questionnaire.

-Deepak

ConsultCOM : Lecture series by Mr. Apurva Mehta, KPMG

2007-08-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Consulting Committee presents a Guest Lecture by Mr. Apurva Mehta, Associate Director, KPMG.

An MBA from JBIMS, Mumbai University and a Masters in International Finance from Thunderbird, The Gavin School of Management, Arizona, USA, Mr. Mehta has over 12 years of experience in Investment Banking and the Financial Services Industry. He has earlier worked with Morgan Stanley and ICICI Bank in Singapore and the U.K.

The topic of the Guest Lecture is: "Consulting World: A Practitioner's View"

Mr. Mehta will be sharing his experiences as a Consultant in the industry. He will also be talking about the skills required and profiles available in the field of Consulting.

Please visit www.kpmg.com and www.in.kpmg.com for more information on KPMG.

The lecture will be of 45 minutes' duration, followed by 15-20 minutes of Q&A.

Request you to be seated in the auditorium by 3:40pm.

Regards

Consulting Committee

Speech Review :

Mehta's Profile

His speech was structured into providing the following insights :-

Emerging Consultancy Opportunities
Approach & Methodologies
Industry Trends
Career Opportunity

Overall, though the presentations were a bit over-crowed with details it was a very nice lecture, esp. when it came to career opportunities in the Consultancy world.

EntreZine-August’07 – Newsletter presented by EntreCom

2007-08-24T03:20:00.000-07:00

Dear All,
Greetings from EntreCom'07 on the eve of India's 60th Independence Day.
We are pleased to launch the first issue of our newsletter EntreZine for this season.

Also check out the Quiz section and win exciting prizes.

We expect your continued support to help spread the free spirit of Entrepreneurship.

If you wish to share any feedback or suggestions, kindly mail us at entrecom07(at)spjimr.org

Regards,
Deepak Bhaskaran
On Behalf of EntreCom'07

AdvancEdge B-School tour - Demystyfying SP JAIN

2007-08-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Advanc’edge MBA, the monthly magazine from the IMS Learning Centre, is organizing ‘The Advanc’edge B-school Tour’ across 8 cities in the country.

B-School Tour Schedule LINK
Pune- 19th Aug
Hyderabad-26th Aug
Delhi-02nd Sep
Ahamedabad-09th Sep
Kolkata-23rd Sep
Bangalore-07th Oct
Chennai-14th Oct
Mumbai-04th Nov

SPJIMR has also launched its "Demystifying the MYTH- SPJIMR way" which shall be showcased across these tour locations. So in case you are in any of these Locations, you would know where to get to get all your doubts clarified, you sure know where to head across... and pretty sure you shall be guided by these able minds (all of my colleagues here at SPJIMR)
Additional LINKS : AdvancEdge