Meet the CEO - 'Shikshu' @ IIMB

"IIM B has come up with a programme called ‘Shikshu’ (apprentice in Sanskrit) specially for the one-year MBA participants at the B-school. As per the B-school, Shikshu, which is now in its second year, is a unique engagement initiative, between IIM B Alumni & IIM B’s one-year full time MBA (Executive Post Graduate Programme) students.

The programme gives EPGP students an opportunity to experience first-hand how a CEO’s office works..... "

 

More information on this initiative available here:

http://www.oneyearmba.co.in/internships-one-year-mba-epgp-students-iim-b-finds-way/

Prayaas Day - We tried and made the Difference



Jaipur Foot Camp at Work

Nine-year old girl Ayesha has come from Bijapur with her parents to this camp. As she was walking back after getting the calipers, she was literally running. I saw glitter in her eye and her happiness was there to see. Alternatively, take the case of 30-year-old Rajanna from Tumkur who went with a belief that now he can go back and support his family again. At the eye camp on other corner, many patients would get treatment for cataract soon and would be able to work. These are some of the moments that made us believe that we did our bit and made the difference.



Lets do our bit

 

EPGP students at IIMB started Prayaas initiative 4–years ago and its activities are synonymous with its tagline, let’s do our bit. As part of its annual event, Prayaas Day, it organized two medical camps in the institute on 27^th Oct 2013. One camp was to provide artificial limb or the famed Jaipur Foot for amputees and callipers for Polio ridden patients or those with weak limbs. The other was to diagnose and treat eye related ailments ranging from simple vision defects such as refractive problems to cataract and optical nerve damages. The camp was a major success and attracted participants from people as far as Bellary. Fifty patients will get benefit from Jaipur Foot Camp of which 41 were beneficiary on the spot. The daylong eye camp benefited 130 patients of which 26 patients will be treated for cataract and 31 will be provided glasses. The complete cost for camp and treatment will be borne by Prayaas (T) that runs mainly with contributions from EPGP students.



Camp Inauguration

Our Director and Dean (Academic) Professor Devanath Tirupati inaugurated the event

in atraditional way by lighting the lamp and handing over the first Jaipur Foot, calipers and crutches. He congratulated the EPGP students for continuing with the tradition and finding ways to expand the volume and scope of its activities in providing ground level help to the needy.  

T S Guruprasad visited the camp from Bellary; he had lost his limb in an accident 2 years back and he had come to the camp back for a limb replacement. Story of his will power and the transformation in life brought by prosthetic limb was a source of inspiration to the students as well as other patients.


Lending a helping hand





Complete IIMB community supported the camp with volunteers from every program of the Institute. Everyone including Professors, students of EPGP, PGP, FPM, PGPPM, exchange-program, spouses of students, EPGP office and staff, contributed towards making this camp hugely successful. Kajal, wife of an EPGP student and a physiotherapist, helped lot of people with medical advice.

 

PGP students said that it is a small industry that has been set-up in campus for this camp and was a good learning experience too. For Valentin, Alice and Johanna, who are here from universities in Europe on exchange-program, this was a unique experience. Alice, student from Italy, was amazed with scale of camp and said, “It’s good to see people walking on new leg and the way you are putting effort to provide this for free to them”. In my words, “The joy and satisfaction you get when you bring smile to someone cannot be expressed through words. You have to feel it when people who came to camp on wheelchair, walk back on their own”.

Truly, sometimes the little tears of joy make a difference.  



Eye Camp

Singapore Diary - Part V (and last)

Merlion Statue

Day 11 at NUS revolved around Real estate market and Prof Lum Sau Kim from NUS gave insights to the real estate is market growth in APAC which is expected to be twice the size of Europe market by 2031. Singapore government is a major player in providing housing to most of the population. Most of the people just buy property here and keep it as safe investment rather than putting it out on rent. On a side note, the estate brokers or developers make the money the same way as they do in India (by offering attractive interest rate at appreciated property price).

Next session was on Integrated Media Communications by Prof May Lwin, NUS. I was always amused how a child identifies chocolates so quickly and here I learnt that children have 200% more identification and sensory powers than normal adults which explains the behavior.

The last session of day was quite interesting where Mr. David Shaw talked about the challenges in marketing communications, how things can go wrong and how simple mistakes can lead to major implications. He revealed interesting marketing campaigns which went wrong and what should be done to prevent it. For example, an advertisement on Van for 'STARBUCKS' is displayed as 'SUCKS' when the van door is open :) or a Turkish Airlines advertisement on escalator looked like a plane falling down or how taking the customer for granted lead to loss of millions of dollars when that customer released a music album highlighting the incident on YOUTUBE.

Day 12 began with talk by My Anshuman Gupta, CEO, Strontium who talked about his journey, the challenges he faced in setting up a company, and how he created a space for himself in a market dominated by big players. He talked about some innovative marketing like putting logo instead of brand name, packaging in yellow color, targeting products for cars etc. Lesson for any start-up is to find fortune at bottom of pyramid. Next we had interaction with Prof Nitin Pangarkar who talked about strategies of Asian companies. How Kodak failed to capitalize on its competency with the introduction of digital cameras or how FAVNE has captured more than 60% of market in Robotics. In the evening we had meeting with Prof Sekhar for delivery of Smart City Project and he was very impressed with the work done by us. He also put forward the opportunity to continue working on this project after the immersion program and we gladly accepted the proposal.

Day 13


EPGP V Cohort

All Smiles

Last day of our exciting international immersion trip began with a photo shoot (required for brochure ;)) for the whole batch at NUS campus. Afterwards we had an interesting chat with Mr. Cecil Leong on challenges in business Environment and strategies which should be adopted to mitigate them. We also had pep talk by Mr. Ajay Jaiswal on wealth management and Christina Lim from Ocean Health on her journey to entrepreneurship. Our journey at NUS culminated with certificate presentations and a small gift by NUS. Afterwards, we went to Siemens building to see the advancement and research they have made in smart cities. We also had some fun with a working model towards building Smart sustainable city.


With this our journey to this interesting land of opportunities came to an end. It is really a wonderful country with so many opportunities and which has become a financial center without any natural resources or good weather. They do face challenges but those are anticipated and are dealt well. During the night went for shopping for some toys at Mustafa center, which is only place in Singapore which run 24*7. Its journey towards becoming shopping hub for locals is one of the many success stories hidden in streets of Singapore.

Some memories....



 

Ice Kachang - Expression says it all :)

Let the race begin

The tour ends

 

Singapore Diary - Part 1

Start of Journey

Waiting for boarding pass

As soon as we got breather from Term II exams on 16th August, the focus shifted to the 2 weeks international immersion program in Singapore, one of the top ten financial centers of the world. The enthusiasm of the batch was there to see and it reminded me of my school/college trips. Even though I have had numerous trips to Americas and Europe, a trip to East Asian was a first to me like to many of us and probably first trip outside the country for few of us. We boarded the 12:45 AM flight to Singapore to begin our 2 weeks journey at NUS. Once at the Singapore airport, most of us bought some stuff at duty free shops to take care of essentials for next 2 weeks.

 

Singapore, we are here

As we stepped out of airport, I was reminded of the sticky weather of Chennai or the hot summers of Delhi. It was totally different from the pleasant weather of Bangalore I have been enjoying for last 5 months. Once we were at our hotel, most of us dozed off to catch the lost sleep of previous night, while the higher mortals went to take a dip at the swimming pool. In the evening, it was time to browse the happenings all around. We went to Bugis mall which was quite close to our hotel. The first day itself, I realized that it is going to be challenging here to satisfy my vegetarian appetite, though my friends with taste of meat loved the variety of delicacies on offer.

 

 

First Day at NUS

 

Next morning, we started our first day at sprawling green and splendid NUS campus. It is lush beautiful and very well maintained. At the university, we were welcomed by Professor Tilak from Department of Economics, NUS. With that we kick started our journey to understand ASEAN economies. The first lecture by Professor Shandre provided invaluable insights to the ASEAN countries, their distribution and economic progress. We also learnt about how ASEAN countries have progressed from 2000 to 2011 after the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and also the impact of recent financial crisis of 2008 on the progress in these countries.

 

While in India, we keep on hearing about China and its fast paced growth, and it was no exception here. We also learnt that though China can play strong role in US, European economies etc. but they do have big challenge of managing social unrest. This blip aside, China is in fact a major player in ASEAN economy and the impact of growth in China is clearly visible here. An interesting aspect to know was that growth in Australia is directly influenced by growth in China as it exports most of the minerals to China. After that we had discussion on how India fits into the scheme of things at ASEAN and the trade pact, AIFTA, which India has with ASEAN. The drivers for growth in both regions were elaborated as India is a supply driven economy while ASEAN is demand driven economy. As mentioned by Prof Shandre, India has to improve on its policy making, Infrastructure and Innovation in its vision for 2020 and to have big impact on this region.

 

Later we had superb business insights by Mr. Sameer Arora, founder and Fund Manager, Helios Capital Fund. The discussion was very candid and he had a story for every situation. One interesting question was on the depreciation of rupee if exchange rate changes from 50 to 60 for a dollar. Most of us were caught at wrong foot as all along we have been calculating dollar appreciation and not rupee depreciation. Another takeaway was that there are cyclical changes in the equity markets and we should not be afraid of it. The best time to invest is when the market is slow as then you can get larger returns in long run.

 

Post Lunch we had meeting with Prof Sekhar for the project on Smart Cities. This is part of our international group project being driven by ITU for United Nations. We discussed the plan and deliverables for the project. With that we ended our first day at NUS.

Doing our bit for the community - the EPGP way

“Do you see those Twinkling eyes? PRAYAAS is all about keeping that hope alive & help build the future!!! A Small Nutrition related initiative by PRAYAAS in Magadi..."
 
Prayaas, as the name explains, is the small initiative by IIMB EPGP students to do their bit for the society and contribute towards making this world a little better. One of the key drives started in 2012 by Prayaas team was 'Project Nutrition' at Rajeev Gandhi Colony in Magadi in district Ramanagara. This project nutrition was started with the aim of creating a sustained activity and was very close to EPGP 2012. As part of this, children from the age group of 1-5 years are provided milk enriched with nutritional malt. This provides children with necessary supplements and aids in normal growth. 

Prayaas Team with NGO workers

Eleven of us (Chithra, Hari, Kiran, Partha, Krishna, Rahul, Nilesh, Vishal, Sampath, Ravi and myself) went to Magadi Village after our classes last Friday immediately after lunch. Enroute we saw the hills where blockbuster movie Sholay was shot. However, Chithra was not convinced despite sufficient evidence. We reached Magadi at 3:30 PM and were fortunate to reach at the same time when the nutritional milk was being served to the children. The children seemed to be quite happy with the enriched milk being provided to them. We met Saroja who is helping us in making this project successful and overseeing all the activities related with this. Saroja works with a Chiguru, a NGO, and is actively involved in the activities at Magadi. She mentioned that Rajeev Gandhi Colony is a designated slum and the inhabitants are the migrants from a small village in Tamil Nadu.
 
Government has done their part by opening a primary school and providing mid-day meals as part of Anganwadi project for children less than 5 years of age. During the talks it came out that parents of these kids are spending their earnings in alcohol and do not provide milk or any other additional nutritional food to their children. We felt that children are being deprived of necessary nutrients because of this ignorance by their parents. This was key reason for need of such a project and where we are making a difference. The malt is being prepared in house by NGO as it is very costly to purchase readymade nutritional supplements. The project runs throughout the year except for 15 days in June when the school is also closed and most of the families go to their native places.


Project Nutrition bringing smiles

 
We had some questions on how the success of the project is evaluated and the logistics involved. Normally statistics like weight and height are evaluated every couple of months which gives an indication of health of children. This project is helping in improving the health of around 50 children where 15 are in age group 1-3 and 35 are in age group 3-5. The total cost involved is ~Rs 10k to 12k pm including cost of milk, malt, the salary of person coordinating it. The total cost of project comes to ~Rs 1.3 lakh that is totally funded by Prayaas.
 
After going around the colony, we felt that there is still lot which can be done here. The Anganwadi teacher rightly pointed that lack of family planning is the basic reason behind most of the troubles. The parents do not give sufficient gap between births leading to malnutrition in these kids. We felt that these parents need to be educated probably taking the help of an NGO. It seems that they need easy access to medical facilities. Though there is a government hospital but the situation is not good. We are planning to collect toys and clothes which can be distributed to these kids and will help in bringing more smiles. We are also planning to organize some fund raising activities which will help in sustaining these activities and in doing more.
 
Every single smile brings more happiness in this world.


P.S. While returning back, we did made a stop to buy some vegetables to carry forward another legacy initiated by previous batch.

Much Needed Breather and Happy Time With Family

 

Finally the 1st term exams concluded and it was such a huge relief. It felt like we have been released from prison. I must admit that this was even tougher than mid-term as it required quite a bit of commitment and dedication to remain connected for 1 whole week at a stretch coping with vastly diverse subjects. The end term party came as a good breather. Kudos to all the organizers Dinkar, Hitesh, Puneet, Tamanna, Archi, Jaya, Sarita, Poornima etal for organizing such a wonderful event during a period when each one of us was struggling to find time for studies. The retro theme was synonymous with what we all have been experiencing so far at EPGP and reminiscent of earlier college life.

It was a double exciting moment for me to meet my family after 2 whole months. Anshu and Arnav landed in Bangalore at the same moment I came out of examination hall after last exam. There were few more whose family arrived around the same day and I must say that it has not been easy for our families to stay away. It is their support and wishes which is keeping us going and helping us to cope with this rigorous program. Such is the rigor of this program that exams finish on Saturday and new term starts from Monday. It was apt that my family was here for a week.

The workload was very light during the start of term and I was able to have some good time with Anshu and Arnav. The weather has become much more pleasant during this 1 week. Besides, I tried to have some time off from my impending project assignments. We made a trip to Bannerghatta National Park along with Kiran and his family. Had heard a lot about the safari and both the kids enjoyed a lot there. For Arnav, it was the first time he saw all those wild animals so closely and a memorable trip for him. Both Arnav and Loukya were very excited when we visited the zoo later. Alas while coming back it rained very heavily and it was good exercise for me and Kiran to run towards the parking area.

Anshu was particularly impressed by the weather here and she is now tempted to stay at Bangalore. I might be shooting in my foot but I might be inclined to start another innings in this lovely city. The last week has been quite satisfying for my potbelly too with likes of paranthas in breakfast and dal makhani or shahi paneer in lunch/dinner.  I have been telling my wife so much about the delicious Italian food at 'Little Italy', and she really wanted to have a go at it. I was fortunate that restaurant did not disappointed and it is still up to the mark. Needless to say, after all this full week of good dining, the paunch only made its way back :).

Overall, it had been a one week full of happy family time and even though I wished that they should have stayed more, flight for Delhi was waiting for them at the airport and my assignments and submissions were shouting at me for some attention.

Individualistic Behaviour During Term I Exams

With the status being 'back to college', how can examination be far behind. It is a demon which we all thought has been exorcised, but it is now part of life for next 1 year. It brings back some-fond-some-bitter memories. Some interesting experiences from term I exam season -


1. Suddenly, all the nerds with whom you never have gone beyond regular 'hi' become your close pals

2. The weather becomes all the more pleasant to tease you.

3. The atmosphere becomes all gloomy. Point 2 has a ripple effect.

4.  Having got used to QWERTY, its now back to basics. Pens, pencils, eraser, ruler etc are the tools being used to put our thoughts on sheets of papers. The only hope is that a chemist is helping the Prof to decipher.

5. Not matter how much you decide to not talk about exams,  its the same old story as soon as you are out of the hall. If there was ever a happy face, the reaction is 'oh sh*%' or 'f*^&'. A sadist delight indeed.

6. Open book exam has its own benefits. You learn lot more during the 3 hours in exam hall than what you prepared or what you learnt during whole term

7. You have a realization of the total course content just a day before the exam. It adds up to the point 3 above.

8. You take loads of print-outs but never understand what exactly it contains



9. What once used to be a party place turns into group study area, with scribblings all over the place.

10. Tastes and preferences change, a cup of tea is welcomed by even those who do not savor it

11. People keep on moving from one place to other in search of 'gyaan' or to find shortcuts

12. Last but not the least, you always make resolution to study from day 1 of next term. Amen!!!

Reflections... The Term It Was

Essence of Strategy

The first chapter of my journey at IIMB EPGP is just about to get over. It is probably some tiny monsters called exams which we will be fighting off next week, barring those the term is as good as over. Today was pretty hectic(?) day with most of us in race against time to submit projects before the deadline. In the end we made it and 'Nothing else matters'. We have finally got a two-day weekend with Saturday a holiday, but it is a far fetched dream to enjoy over the weekend when we have our first terms EXAMS starting from Monday. 



e-chaupal

I was wondering what exactly this term was and what has been my takeaway from this. Consider this, for a person who is used to sleep at least 8-9 hours a day, a 5 hour sleep is now a luxury, discounting the thoughtful process thinking during lectures. The good part is that I have learnt the nuance of power naps. I was used to eating 5-course meal at Amdocs with dollies being dished out during the day and  here I am paying Rs 300 for rasam. I felt gratified with the sight of so many books in my shelf considering that last time I read any sort of book was 8 years back and I left even that halfway. 


Anusmaran 2013

I guess these are just few steps which I took towards attaining 'nirvana' during this term. But the real enlightenment was something else. Before this, I never realized that it is an art to understand the structure of an organization and it has to be carefully designed considering lot of factors. Earlier I used to invest in equities just by sixth sense, which explains the losses I have incurred over the years. I hope to use grey cells efficiently after the understanding I have gained to interpret financial report. Probability of my understanding has always been zero and regression interpretation have always been at lower end of the curve. Hopefully it should not be the same. Besides these, the case discussions made me ponder on how some companies have been successful while others have failed. I still have my doubts open but it is immaterial. Of course learned lot of facets of business law and hoping to cash on it. I would add that Eco had been an uncertain identity.


entrepreneurs in making

Apart from these sometime-interesting-sometime-exciting(?) courses, there have been number of seminars and leadership sessions happening around. Getting a chance to sit with likes of CEO of Himalaya, Mr Philip, or with Bally's Gaming Czar, Mr Srinivasan has made this EPGP journey even more exciting. In addition, the tips from speakers with as diversified profile as a Hindi literature professor or from IIMB alumni entrepreneurs, will be helpful in some point of time. Nonetheless I am enjoying the time here. On a regular day the time I get outside this course is inexplicable, but I have managed to squeak in some of the things. Be it swimming or swinging the baddy racket or burning the accumulated layers of fat at gym, I am giving shot to everything. One does not get another opportunity to be back at the college and the time here should count. The only regret so far, I have not been able to take out time to enjoy this lovely city of Bangalore, but I hope I can try something out in next term.

It was a deliberate act on my part to omit any references to the socializing activities over the weekend, but that's what MBA is all about. Some things are better explained unanswered.

C&S Discussion

Many a times I have wondered how does experience matter in a classroom. What difference does it makes to the discussion. Today this experience dynamics was in full force in C-21. As more and more cases are being disposed off in competition and strategy class, e-yumbiez are becoming more and more intellectuals. The best part is that each one of us have started to question established theories. What it means is that we are analyzing deep into any aspect we are being taught and would not accept anything easily.

Had Mr Porter would have been in our classroom today, he would have had a really tough time. e-yumbiez are challenging his panchtatva theory and contesting that it does not have any weight in today's world. During the case discussions too, the claims are being contested and disputed amongst peers. At times these do turn into heated arguments (thank god we are not allowed to carry guns or missiles in the class), but it is expected. All of this is part of steep learning curve of our course.

On a side note, couple of results are out from mid-term and class dynamics is taking a turn. While we are still waiting for QAM and ME results hoping for Gods to smile on us, there is added weight to dispose off pile of projects and assignments we have in our basket. And by the time we submit these, we will be right at the doorstep of first term exams. May we be able to survive this. Amen!!!

Essence of Mid-term exams

It was not even a month into the course and we found ourselves in a midst of a storm called 'Examination'. This is something which have frightened even Einsteins and Newtons since the start of civilization on this planet. Some of us have been in fact giving 'gyan' to their children to tackle this, but to give motivational talks is one thing while to tread on that path is other. None of us would have ever sat for exams in last few years except probably for the GMAT.

First and foremost of the task was to find out from where to start. Then with tons of material at our disposal, we had to figure out what to study and what not to. For many years, late nights has been synonymous with parties or booze and studying till late nights was a abnormal deviation from this mean. The clan culture which has developed at Ajmera was not able to save us as from this expected uncertainty. We essentially tried hard to devise strategies to grapple with wave of countless yawns and power naps during the lectures in the morning. But it seemed that all fundamental rights were violated during this past one week.

Fortunately, we had managed to scrape through this unhurt and in the end everyone was happy go lucky. Though some will be anxiously waiting for results, though it is trivial those who have attained absolute enlightenment. During the exams, couple of folks had a debit of one year to their age account and we innovated a new way of celebration to save costs.

Immediately after the exams, we had a alumni meet 'Anusmaran 2013' at IIMB and it added a new dimension to learning curve. Motivational talk by keynote speaker and former Microsoft India head - Ravi Venkatesan - on leadership was great and then there were series of interesting experiences shared by successful entrepreneurs from our institute. These expereiences makes one rethink about the career choice which he/she should make. Of course it goes without saying that we had a long night as well, but it is nobody's guess on what would have transpired.

journey is getting interesting

Contrary to what I mentioned
in my earlier post, the time is now flying at EPGP program. It looked like that we joined the program just the other day and we are staring at the mid-terms next week. This little mind of mine is being challenged to maximum by the grinding schedule. They say that Rome was not build in one day, but it seems this is true only for lesser mortals. We are actually being trained to challenge this perception. So much has been covered in wide range of topics. Beside there is so much load of project work and assignments to be completed. Either we will adapt to it or I will become insulated or immune (whatever you call it). It will be fun either ways.

In addition to study or work, wide range of activities are happening on and off campus. CR election has been very interesting. It was a conscious decision by me to withdraw from election process despite protests by my numerous fans ;). There have been few photo shoots in last couple of weeks in preparation for the D-day November onwards. It was also required to be in formals with strict dress code. It has been ages I have been in 'formal' wear. Except for
probably couple of interviews or to solicit my presence at marriage ceremonies, there was never any need. But it also gave us chance to capture the beauty of the campus. Luckily I got a breather from formals for the next shoot with some strategic planning.

Then there have been quite a few celebrations already at Ajmera. This Saturday was my anniversary and first time I was away from my 'biwi' on this day. Just so that I do not miss her, she sent a cake directly at my residence. A small celebration followed it at my place. Then there have been birthday celebrations of Prem and Poornima with belated B'day of Chirag on both occasions. Few new members added to the EPGP already -  birth of twins at Sampath's and lil' one at Martand's.