A very happy new year from chennai to all of you!

Busy with interview prep and meeting good old friends :)

Back home after 8 months. Enjoying my time at home. Updates can wait :)

Year end break...

The one week year end break is coming up... tomorrow is the last day of exams and then, for the first time since we walked into this campus, we are off, for a whole week, through chirstmas and new year before we come back on the 5th of Jan for term 7.

Term 7 has been the most looked forward to term, though the reason is not the fantastic line of courses and professors that it offers. Its of course the interviews term, with a majority of the job interviews happening during the 6 weeks of this term. Its all going to be a blitz with people praying that their dream job becomes theirs as soon as possible, so that you dont have to smart with the tag of "not placed yet"...

The course line up for term 7 is such that, if not for the placements, everyone would have opted for the maximum 5 allowed... check this out...
Customer Focused Product Planning - Seenu Srinivasan (Stanford)
Advertising - Ajay Kalra (Carnegie Mellon)
International Finance - K John (NYU) & Ananth Sundaram (Thunderbird)
Commercial & Investment Banking - Greg F Udell (Indiana)
Information Technology Infrastructure - Saby Mitra (Georgia Tech)
Managing Strategic Partnerships - Phanish Puranam (LBS)
Economics of Strategy - Ram Shivakumar (Chicago)
Strategic Profitability Management - Bala Balachandran (Kellogg)
Logistics & Supply Chain Management - Narendra Agrawal (Santa Clara)
Capital Raising Strategies in Corporations - NR Prabhala (Maryland)
Negotiation Analysis - Madan Pillutla (LBS)
Creating Value from Technology: IT-Enabled Services and Strategies - Ravi Aron (Wharton)

We here are almost at the level of complaining to the acad office that they never should have lined up such terrific courses during the placements season but then, its a tough proposition adjusting them in other terms anyways...

For now, I am looking forward to finishing my Consumer Behaviour final exam tomorrow and leave this campus to go back home for the first time since I came here... I will be in chennai from the 27th through to the 2nd... If anyone reading this will be in chennai, drop me an e-mail at r_sankaranarayan at pgp2004 dot isb dot edu and I will be happy to meet or talk.

Biswajit's prophecy comes true ;)
http://in.rediff.com/money/2003/dec/22sld1.htm

Random thoughts...

Sitting in the LRC, I am trying hard to concentrate preparing for my "Pricing" finals tomorrow... I am beginning to get the feeling now that I am going slightly off the boil... I dont know if its placements thats distracting or its just the amount of work built up over time... I hate to think it is the amount of work, for in my belief, to some extent at least, it is hyped up, thanks to the mass of 200 of us saying the same thing again and again... its a mindset you cannot escape once you are in here but would do well to escape if you can...

I havent written about many things that have happened in the last two weeks... One, was Raghuram Rajan's visit... I had to drop his course midway through as I simply could not take the load, given the leadership summit work that was going on simultaneously... But he did address an audience comprising us, alums and some business folks from hyd about the future trends in global economy... Some recollections:

The US economy is recovering but we do not see a corresponding increase in employment... Why? Because there has been a structural change in the emplyoment scenario in the US... What typically happens in an economic cycle is that, during the downturn, industries, especially manufacturing fires labor and when the economy recovers, hires them back... But of late, manufacturing in the US has become do high tech that, these fired workers are no longer need to be hired back, even though the economy is looking up... In short, the lack of rise in employment in the US is more attributable to this than to the job flight to India. Japan is showing signs of recovery but its estimation of deflation, or for that matter, inflation is not perfect due to which, the signs of recovery have to be read with caution. There is a likelyhood that we will see personal consumption going up, which is certainly a positive sign of growth and recovery... Japan has tradionally been a export strong economy and will continue to be so... Europe is yet to get out of the slump and is probably going to find it the toughest, though the EURO is showing strength... The US dollar is weakening and the US deficit is a worrying factor in the long run... Given this and the fact that the returns on US treasury bonds is hoveing around 2%, it is quite possible that countries, which are still saving in the greenback may shift to the Euro or other currencies... This will be an interesting observation with potential trouble brewing for the US... But US personal consumption is going up and we may also see the deficit being serviced by the economy improving with the phase of personal consumption going up being followed by investments... For India, the primary focus area has to be infrastructure... China spends approx 40% of gdp on infrastructure and we here spend 2% (if i remember this right)... The focus on infrastructure is critical to the future of the India... Also, consistency in regulations and policies is also required to improve investor confidence, which is positive now... Its can be grown to higher levels by consistent policy statements from the fin minister... For infrastructure development, one or two projects like the golden quadrilateral will not suffice... Rural infrastructure is in bad shape and the government can use innovative methods to tie up with the private sector to finance improvement of the rural infrastructure... While the money can come from the private sector, the risk accompanying such investments can be covered by the government through consistent policy...

There were also interesting discussions on what to do with the huge forex reserves in India and what will be the implications of a currency deregulation of the chinese Yuan... Overall, it was two hours of great "Gyaan" :)

Today Im in the mood to blog... Im in some very good mood... :)

Just listened to "The Warriors of Heaven and Earth", the chinese movie for which A R Rahman has scored music...

First impression (from a die hard fan): Impressive as usual :)

AP First...

The state of Andhra Pradesh has been progressing rapidly and many give credit to the Cheif Minister, Chandrababu Naidu for that... Sure he deserves all the credit, but there have been an army of brains working behind him to ensure that AP becomes a leading state in India... One of them is Randeep Sudan, special secretary to the chief minister. He runs AP First , (Agency for Promoting and Facilitating Investment in Remote Services and Technology)

AP First's mission is to make Andhra Pradesh the world's preferred Business Process Outsourcing / Information Technology Enabled Services (BPO/ITES) destination. This is one of the pets of the dynamic CM...

Now what if I said they recruit MBAs to help develop the state, you can get to work with the top brass and the CM himself, you can get to play a part in improving the infrastructure in the state, promote destinations in AP to MNCs looking to set up base in India and do some good to the people of AP... Well, one of our alums is doing exactly the same with AP first and they are so happy with him that they are here again, to recruit from ISB...

Personally, I have always wanted to do good to the people but politics always put me off... I was never one for IAS but an opportunity like this, to work under some like the CM, well, very interesting...

Randeep is here in campus today, presenting the pre placement talk for AP first... I am part of a few invited to have lunch with him. Im looking forward to this...

The deluge of ppts is so excruitiating on the available time now that I missed the Wipro PPT yesterday... its kinda tough keeping track given all the end term work, assignments, project and the final exam prep... Somebody spare me! :)

And here some responses to some comments:

Where is this school you go 2?
Sahithi

Indian School of Business is in Hyderabad, India. Please visit www.isb.edu.
I had actually linked all the pictures and the logo to the website but somehow they have disappeared!! Blogger is playing games? Anyways, there is a link now. Please do visit when you find time.

I am guessing I am not the only one who wants a RSS feed of your blog - so here it is:
http://feeds.blogstreet.com/27763.rss

I created it at Blogstreet.com.

Nice blog Ramki. All the luck.
Prakash S

Thanks a ton, for the rss and the luck :)

Happy Birthday!Congratulations for winning a fortune ! And thank you for the LS updates.
Biswajit

Updates wanted on a regular basis ! Insider info :Rediff is going to carry out a slideshow on the ISB leadership summit + an interview with SB Mittal.
Biswajit

Thanks and yes sire! you will get your updates regularly from now onwards, given all the hectic work of the past few days are past us... Given that placements are approaching, you certainly have interesting info coming your way over the next couple of months...

Thanks for the comments guys.

Placements...

Placements are in full swing with Job postings coming in by the day... Everyday is a pre placement talk... today we had ICICI, Wipro and Colgate... Thus far we have had nearly 45 job postings, of which round 6 have been international... Goldman Sachs has posted a few openings... All the big names are there are in the pipeline...

And so, accompanied with this is the process of submitting Resumes and EOIs... The McK shortlist of 25 people was out today... that was 25 out of 111 who applied... there was a distinctive bias towards high CGPA and and IIT background or a CA background... Every nigh of mine here now goes in submitting EOIs, resumes etc etc... Researching companies, interview prep are the talk of the town... the Colgate GDs are happening tonight and possibly some interviews as well... they may be the first few offers on campus, though the real interview process starts only in Jan

Off to meet some EOI deadlines around midnight... Placement updates will come in thick and fast and I hope I will keep up with them in this blog... Life is rocking!!!

Finally...

Finally, I find some time for an update... the week gone by has been beyond words... The leadership summit followed by the alum reunion, "Solstice"...

Leadership Summit - Day 1: Wednesday

This was the day almost everyone in the campus has contributed for, for the past 4 months... Bright morning, beautiful day and participants from other schools were ready to take us on. The day started with the inauguration in the first event of the day and the summit, "Interface", a technology paper presentation competition. Organised by the Business Technology Club, in which I play a part, we had been working tirelessly, with dry runs until the day before, to ensure everyone, from the sponsors, to the judges to the participants were happy all the while. After a short inauguration the event kicked off with presentations by the 6 finalists, 3 from NITIE, one each from IIM A, C and ISB. The team from ISB won the contest, much to the delight of everyone around. Arti Gupta and Saurabh Khanna, both good friends of mine, were excellent in the way they covered the topic, the number one reason why they won according to the judges. The teams from NITIE and the one from IIM C were excellent to say the least and the presentation of the topic by IIM A was beyond words. It was a fitting start. The evening was reserved for the Entrepreneurship Case Writing contest, won fittingly by IIM A, followed by ISB. This was followed by some informals and good dinner.

Day 2: Thursday

This day also happened to be my birthday :) Morning was Brasstacks, a very interesting concept that Abhimanyu and Tushar from ISB conceived. We for students from different schools to team up and work together. So we had teams which had IIMs, ISB, XLRI. Pretty interesting. Combined with this was a stock market game, for which entry was thrown open in the morning. I was dragged into this and lo behold, ended up winning the game and 5000 bucks. The investment game required us to invest in the five teams participating in Brasstacks and live NSE stocks. The Nifty was going down and there was no money to be made in the two hour window we had. So, we took a gamle and invested all the money we had in the teams we thought would do well given intermediate financials in Brasstacks. This gamble worked. By birthday treats were paid for ;) The day ended with the Finfest, a divestment game devised by the Finance Club. In this one, I felt, the IIMs were far ahead of the ISB teams. IIM A and B won first and second respectively.

Day 3: Friday, the big day

this was the day when all the big honchos of the corporate world landed at ISB for some interesting panel discussions, themed "Think Asia". The focus was the emerging Asian economy, with topics varying from emerging industries, bottlenecks, nuances and advantages of doing business in Asia. The impressive list of speakers, lined up thanks mostly to some hard work by some of my mates here, made the day for the many delegates, media and alums who had wonderful takeaways from the four panel discussions. I wish I had all the time in the world to write pages and pages about all the takeaways :)

Solstice: The past two days have been a wild wild party at ISB, with alums from all over the world landing up here for our annual reunion... More about that tomorrow, for I am dead beat but have lots of assignments for the classes resuming tomorrow..

Have a class at 11 in the morning tomorrow and its back to the routine submissions, placements, EOIs and resume building... Oh what a depressing thought, after a rocking 5 days! ;)

A week to go for the leadership summit...

Its a week to go for the leadership summit and everyone associated with it is on overdrive... Calling up delegates, fixing up travel plans and accomodation, arranging pick ups, sending out mailers, confirming schedules of judges, students, speakers and visitors, dry runs of events to ensure time management, media arrangements, food, accomodation details, advertisements, sponsors... i can go on and on and on... immediately following the summit will be "solstice", the alumni reunion, for which many alums have confirmed participation... its going to be one big wild party for those two days... and lots of networking for openings as well... in between all this, the ppts keep coming... latest additions, TCS and Infotech Enterprises...

exciting next few days ahead... expect lots of interesting info...

Ppts galore...

Its beginning to drizzle ppts... Around 160 companies have everything but landed up on campus... Another 50-60 are still being talked to... The first set of shortlists, from J D Power, singapore were out today... Suddenly, the focus of the whole campus is shifting... the only interesting thing in acads is we looking forward to raghuram rajan's arrival for the second part of the "cases in corp fin course"...

So much more to write... so little time!!!

PPTs hot up...

Mck was here last week and this was probably the most popular pre placement talk... the lecture theater, that can hold 100, was brimming with more than a 130 of us, all listening to what the folks from McK had to say... This one is going to be an interesting outcome...

the leadership summit is almost here and frantic last minute loose ends are being tied up... its hectic work... amidst all this are some of the most demanding courses of the year... the courses this term have been outrageously demanding... assignments, submissions and some real tough classes! Its been tonnes of learning...

But that doesnt stop us from having fun can it? We had a volleyball tourney starting today... i played in both the matches today and lost both... lack of practice I must say... but we are still in the hunt and its going to be fun as the week goes by, adding to the great schedule we already have!!!

Some more updates coming in the days to follow... too sleepy now...

Placement process starts...


This one was a bang from the blue... Here we are absolutely immersed in corporate finance, pricing and marketing and suddenly this mail from CAS... the first job posting... we thought they were testing the site when it hit us... this was for real... Crisil and Kanbay came first... and then an international position from singapore... We have to submit our expressions of interest soon... deadlines are close... interviews happen only in Jan but job postings will begin to flow in now... I really dont know if I can give out the names of the companies but certainly cannot give out details about the roles, salary figures... The first three have been somewhat attractive... There have been a couple of pre placement talks as well, and the figures quoted in them have been very very attractive... If this were any indication, the coming months can prove to be good... more updates soon...

Help!!!

To all those who have flown Jet Airways in India, a sincere request to spend a few minutes, filling out a small survey... this is a student project of mine for one of my courses... Please consider taking 3 minutes off your precious time for this... I will really appreciate the help...

www.geocities.com/rsramkee/jet-survey.htm

Rajat Gupta, Pramath Sinha and M F Hussain...

Those are the people we at ISB have seen in the past 3 days... Rajat Gupta was here, teaching us Leadership and Transformation... He has chosen cases from companies that went through major transformation and where these transformations were done by ex-Mck employees... He first discussed IBM and Lou Gerstner... Lou was Rajat's next door mate at McK and Rajat quoted extensively from his experiences with IBM and Lou... It was fascinating indeed... He then discussed Harvey Golub and Amex... Harvey was Rajat's mentor when he joined McK... Again, Rajat's insights, given that he had worked with both Robinson, who was the Amex chief before Golub and then Golub, were very interesting...

Pramath talked to us about Mck, consulting in general and the everyday life of a consultant... he spoke extensively about the profession, the pressures, the rewards etc. He gave a lot of useful tips about interviews, resumes and career choices... It was indeed wonderful listening to him describe problem solving and approaches to problem solving... his description of leadership, in terms of trade offs, tough decisions, sacrifices and the ability to make a difference rather than hold a specific position...

MF Hussain was a surprise from Rajat. He suddenly called us all for a talk and disguised the talk to surprise us with the great painter... Hussain saab painted a wonderful little piece for us, right in front of us... I have never seen a painter do one right in front of my eyes... it was a very interesting and novel experience...

The past 3 days have been extremely hectic and eventful too... Hectic because of the workload in the courses... Eventful thanks to all the people who have visited us... Its been an absolute non stop show, with hardly any time to breathe... Now, its easing up a bit but will pump up again when the leadership summit comes through... In the meanwhile, a big team from ISB is in IIMA for the confluence events... Lets see if they can beat the best and win a few prizes!

Etceteras...

If someone thought it was Sachin and Sehwag who busted the kiwis yesterday, well, I thought Dravid was the one who broke their confidence completely... Sachin was brilliant and Sehwag was responsible (a pleasant surprise)... But Dravid was demolishing (ever associated that adjective with him?)... Take this from me because I was in the ground yesterday, watching Dravid put that ball away with disdain... One six, over square leg, off Oram, will remain etched in my memory forever... Flat and hit with tremendous power, it did not even cross the height of the stands in the small LB stadium before hitting the roof of the square leg cameraman's elevated platform... what a shot... the speed with which that ball travelled was a sight to see... whoever called dravid a wall, please rechristen him as the "bouncing" wall... for whatever the kiwis threw at him came back with twice the speed... long live this unsung, underrated genius of indian cricket...

term 6 starts tomm... Includes a couse called "Courses in corporate finance" by Professors Bhagwan Choudhry and the latest IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan... I am waiting for Raghuram Rajan to start teaching us... :)

response to a comment

One issue on which I always wonder is the usefulness of courses like these. Business models and the Internet, sounds too good to be useful man.
High technology is always emerging and one with good business fundamentals would understand net business models in a giffy. Other hand, people with poor basics in economics and finance are very vulnerable when it comes to doing business in the Net, because they dont understand the core concepts of value addition, transaction costs and resources. In this context, dont you think b-schools should concentrate more on fundamental economics/finance/marketing etc? I wonder how you guys manage to grasp the fundamental theory and learn to apply it also, in just one year of the course.. Amazing indeed.

I had the same scepticism when I saw the course name, but then decided to audit it, given it was being offered by a top class faculty from Wharton... Im glad that I did for I realised judging a course by its name is like judging the book by its cover...

The whole concept of an elective is to build on your basics into something you want to explore more... "Business models and the Internet" was exactly that... It was building on the basics in Microeconomics, strategy, marketing and operations... the concept of the course was to build on what we had learnt in the core courses and see how these change and can be exploited thanks to the arrival of the Internet...

The course was hardly about technology but all about strategy on the internet, marketing and operations...

marketing was primarily dealing with price discovery models afforded by the internet, like auctions, reverse auctions, dynamic pricing and how traditional business models can benefit from these, in both B2C and B2B, and under what situations... (numerous examples)... without the basics of microecons, like revenue equivalence theorem and vickery auctions, degrees of price discrimination, we could not have made head or tail out of this stuff...

strategy was dealing with revenue models, like revenue sharing (classic example: rentrack in the US) and evolution of revenue models in B2B transactions (tracking priceline.com's model) etc.

operations was dealing with transactional efficiences, market efficiences and supply chain efficiencies and the varying degrees with which these can be implemented and used to add value... The reasons why "click and mortar" is useful than a pure play internet model and how it should be used...

It was indeed a takeaway to know that while many in the world are trying to improve only the transactional and market efficiencies, which are easier compared to improving supply chain efficiencies, maximum value is obtained by improving the supply chain's efficiency... So was it when one of our class presentations brought out the point that in "click and mortar" strategies, the value offered by "warehousing" is more in immature markets and value offered by "store picking" is more in mature markets... Now, it may seem a simple case of demand aggregation, but then, the counter intuitive point is that being tempted into a pure play internet strategy in an immature market with tie ups with established suppliers is a mistake... u may like to circumvent the demand uncertainity but then, the value offered by just the transactional efficiency and the downside of supply chain inefficiency result in a net negative effect... it was reassuring to see all this with a activity based cost breakup...

I guess it is critical to know how and when to apply which of these strategies to your business when it decides to adopt the Internet or is already doing so... I have a starting point of thought and an intuition about what leads where before I can decide my marketing or operations strategy will be... If u still think all this stuff is pretty obvious, the force is with you...

In fact, there were occasions when I felt my years of work ex was playing a part in the learning... I completed my engineering in 99, the time when the Internet was growing in India and was every techie's fascination... I worked my way through the dot com boom and bust and read a lot about all these dot com business models, primarily becase the bust hit my company hard and I wanted to know what actually happened... apart from the fact that the stock market and the snowballing scepticism among the VCs had a part to play, many of these models intrigued me... I have thought and thought and thought so much about pure play Internet businesses and came to my own conclusion that atleast a click and mortar strategy is needed to succeed... it was indeed gratifying to see all my thoughts discussed. I was actually developing on those thoughts in the class discussions and it was indeed enjoyable...

Now, if the question is how someone can manage to do the fundamentals well enough and then apply them as well in one year, I guess its just that we slog it out that much more given the short time...

Finals... 2 down, 3 more to go... Tomm is the final for the "Business models and Internet" course... the second best course I went through here in ISB... its all about auctions, e-procurement, click and mortar vs brick and mortar, revenue sharing, B2B interactions, transactional/market/supplychain efficiencies provided by the internet... extremely interesting stuff...

Today's finals were write-a-thons... made me realize how long I had been away from continuous writing and how i no longer have the stamina to write for 3 hours on the trot... today I had to do it twice in the same day... tough go...

somehow, the number of exams, tests, assignments i have given here have been so many that, i am tired of these now... the motivation to push yourself to go for it seems to be waning a bit... i do not know if its (over)confidence, having done all the work through the term or its just plain tired feeling...

im just looking forward to the term break, and the 15th for the ind-nz match in hyd... ISB will be there in good numbers I guess given the cricket fanatics that we are...

its finals time and the end of term 5... now, thats just 3 terms to go! and the course is over... yesterday, I received a mail from the academic affairs office about planning for the orientation week for the next batch... and thats when it hit me... its only seems yesterday that we were here, wide eyed aspirants... and before we realize, the placements are round the corner... interview prep is on... alums have been helpful and many of us are banking on them... fellow students talking about life after ISB already!!! Its been a rolicking 5 terms... from term 1 to ELP.... There is this temptation to sit back and recollect all that transpired... maybe I will this term break...

The other day, an interesting discussion happened in the "Business Models and the Internet" class, something worth thinking about... baazee.com, the india eBay if u may call it, has introduced MaxBid, a scheme where you get 90% discounts on stuff like bikes, Television sets etc... Check the site out when u find time... on the face of it, seems a damn unbelievable deal... so we decided to cut deeper... read carefully... its a pretty smart idea that can easily fool you...

MaxBid rules are that, every item on offer in the MaxBid auction has a max price you cannot exceed while bidding... for example, a bike worth Rs.55000 is offered at a Max price of Rs.5500, that 90% discount and you CANNOT bid higher than 5500!!!

There is a limit on the maximum and minimum number of bids... meaning, the auction can take only the set maximum number of bids and will become void if there arent the required number of minimum bids...

So who wins? not the guy who bids 5500... its the highest unique bid that wins... meaning, if two bidders bid 5500 and I was the only one who bid 5499, then I win... now thats cool aint it? people can win stuff at 5% of the original price, if thats the way the unique bid goes!!!

The first catch: the qualification to bid for these products is that you have to have a particular set of "baazee points"... You can collect these "baazee points" by successful bids for other products at Baazee... These "baazee points" expire in 6 months... Now, the moment you read that you may think, ok this is like a frequent flyer program... third degree price discrimination??? there is more to it... read on...

The second catch: You may think how baazee makes money out of these auctions... here it is: You get "baazee points" are approx 10% of the worth of goods you successfully bid to collect these points... and lets say that the minimum number of bids for an auction is 300 for the bike... and the qualification to bid for the bike is 1500 points... so, for the auction to be valid, there have to be atleast 300 bids... meaning there will be 300 bidders with 1500 points... thats 450,000 points... that means 4,500,000 worth goods sold (10 times the points value is the goods sold for bidders to collect those points)... So baazee has sold atleast that much before it decides to give away a bike worth 55000 for 5500... even if I assume a 5% commission for baazee for selling 4,500,000 worth goods = 225,000, the money that baazee makes out of this deal is (225,000) - (55,000 - 5500) = 175,500... meaning, baazee auctioned a bike worth 55000 for 5500 and still made 175,500 :)

The third catch: Why have minimum and maximum no. of bids? interesting logic... the minimum number of bids is obviously to ensure there is a big enough number of bidder population with the number of points that qualify them before you auction the bike away... the maximum number not only brings the auction to an end, it also in a way accelerates the bidding process as the count of the number of bids is displayed all the time, affecting the risk aversion as well as the urge to bid all the time...

The fourth catch: Why should the highest unique bidder and not the highest bidder win? Simple... someone will simply bid 5500 to start with and win... the highest unique bidder keeps the interest of the bidders going... given the cap on the upper limit of bids, this strategy ensures that until the maximum number of bids is reached, every bidder is kept interested...

The final big catch: Is this an auction at all? Think about it... has the highest unique bidder "won" anything in auction terms? nope... this is not an auction... this is just a simple random number generator... baazee has already got the money it wants in terms of making people collect bidding points... it accelerates that process by introducing maxbid and the urge to bid in maxbid... it ensures that the baazee points expire in 6 months, so the momentum of collecting points is kept going... then it calls MaxBid an auction where it basically masks a lottery of product at 10% of its cost as an auction and seemingly gives away a product at 10% of its cost, but in the process making people feel they have got a great deal... sure the guy who wins the bike gets the good deal in terms of getting it for 5500 but then, collectively, 300 people went about collecting 1500 points and took a big risk doing so... they do not enter an auction in MaxBid but a lottery, where the numbers they bid between 0 and 5500 are random numbers generated, with the highest unique random number generated winning the lottery...

Now, if you thought all this was obvious, read the comments about MaxBid by bidder at baazee... shows how smart people can always make money... baazee will succeed only if it gets the critical mass collecting points but then, for a site as big as it is, it should be able to...

if you want to pursue these ideas into the psychology of humans in lottery, auctions and associated risk aversion and risk taking theories, there are a lot of interesting papers to read...

here is another one... they are just rolling in...

Last year, CNBC and Smartmanager conducted a national level case contest for b-schools and every well known bschool participated... the team from ISB (now alums) has won this one... the class of 03 rocks!

the winning streak goes on and on and on...

this time it is international...

check out, http://www.innovationchallenge.net/top_20.htm

ISB is the ONLY non-US school to be in the Top 20. Also, the order below is according to 2003 US rankings, which is why ISB is at the bottom of the list – the ordering is NOT a reflection of the quality of the innovation proposed.

The ISB team consisted of:
Karthik Jayaraman
Kalyan Chakravarthy Tadimeti
Sunder Balasubramaniam
Chaitanya J Reddy
Badri P B

A total of 52 MBA schools and 154 teams with 748 MBA students enrolled for the contest. The contest spanned 6 countries.

Now thats the way to go!!!

By the way, noticed that there is not even a mention of my name anywhere here... so added a link in the sidebar to a silly website I created sometime when I joined ISB...

Also, the ISB leadership summit's web site has been running for sometime... www.isbleadershipsummit.com

The winning streak continues... ISB's team won the first week of the IIMA fin quiz... I met karthik and ashish, back after winning from IIMB... in their words, the difference in the teams was not much but we scored a lot in the way we presented the paper... the guys from IIMA who came second had PPOs with Lehmann... ISB is right up there! Only hope Lehmann is watching...

Everytime I write "this week has been the busiest since I came to ISB", I am forced to eat my words after a few weeks... so here I go again... the coming week is unimaginable loaded with submissions, assignments, project reports and presentation, with my ELP presentation's dry run to boot... this is truly crazy is what I thought but then, I now know not to think so... for once I am thru with this, I know few weeks down the line there will be another week which will be even more unimaginably tough...

Today, there was an ISB relay conducted by the sports club... It was fun and competitive... some real good long distance runners... Attendence was not really good thanks to all the submissions, but the little crowd that turned up, including alums had good fun...

Im in the process of writing the book review and its been an interesting experience... to critique is easy they say, but to back up your criticism with solid reason, that too about a book that is considered an amazing success story is not easy... We all read lots of books but writing a solid book review is no joke... just realized...

amidst all this, if there is still something that brings the whole campus to a standstill, it is sachin.. yesterday, the cafe was a sight to see, until sachin was batting... people glued to the TV not blinking an eyelid even as food was getting cold... and then sachin gets out, and the place is half empty... including me... i thought he was literally toying with the bowling when he got himself out... i wonder what india wud have been without sachin... how we all wud have seen cricket without him... he is larger than life!

Truth about placements

One of the comments for the post on Oct 29th asks for the true picture about placements. I am happy to first note that the post on oct 20th, which had an alum's comments on ISB, sounded rosy...

That post had an extract from a mail sent by Kanishka Sinha. He was in the placements committee last year. He knew every bit of campus placement activity that happened last year. Plus, having met and interacted with him during the orientation at ISB, I can tell you that if you wanted a ever wanted an honest opinion about ISB from an alum, you can believe him...

Read his blog when you find time... He is streets ahead of me when it comes to writing... especially interesting long posts and mails...

Today we got info that at the IIMB Vista competitions, where ISB was selected for the final rounds of the Strategy and Finance paper contest, ISB won both handsomely... Kudos to Karthik, Ashish, Anuj and Atul for a stupendous performance... We all await their return to the campus for a party... they havent won 30K for nothing ;)

Wharton GCP...

The Wharton GCP shortlists were out today... This year, the GCP is for an Indian Pharma company, that wants to enter the healthcare outsourcing market in the US... Anyone who had consulting or health care or pharma experience or had worked in the US and could highlight knowledge of the US outsourcing market was in with a chance... grades mattered too... and the shortlist reflected that...

In the lunch break between classes today, the match between australia and new zealand was drawing to a close... so, I sat just below the TV in student dining... I was amazed at the number of ads DD was trying to cram into the available time... The commentator had no clue what was happening as the moment the last ball was bowled, the ads were on, often cutting him off as he tried to even announce the score... one enlightened sould sitting next to me said, this was probably because the match ended sooner than expected and they were trying to fill in a whole "one day's" ads... I was wondering, does anyone here, whether the advertiser whose ads were creating more irritation than publicity or DD cared about the guy trying to watch the match... At one point, between overs, the ads came on and when the live feed resumed, probably the guy showing ads at DD noticed that the players werent ready yet. So he decided to insert a small ad inbetween and the over started right then... so, to the delight the innocent spectator, DD produced a unique piece of advertising... the music was from the ad, but the pictures were cricket... talk about leveraging cricket for promotion... maybe the "its the money, honey" ICC can take a cue from here...

Today, I got a mail from my ELP client, stating that they will be flying down to hyderabad to meet us and attend our presentation... Puts that much pressure on you to ensure that the presentation goes off well... have to get back to work on it now... plus 2 cases, another presentation and one submission to do before i hit the bed... its only midnight!

busy days...

Over the past two days, the number of things I have done, with just four hours of sleep all together, makes me feel like a superman... touchwood... but I am beginning to get used to this punishing schedule I guess... I even managed to sneak out of the campus inbetween for a couple of hours to watch the india pakistan hockey match at the nearby gachibowli stadium... ive wanted to watch a hockey match, live, for a very long time and yesterday was the perfect setting...

what better than watch a match between india and pakistan, amidst 3000 odd mad fans, cheering for india... and even better when India scored the winning goals... For those that saw the match on TV, the third goal by India was simply superb... artistry in hockey... the speed, verve and skill of the teams was amazing... though the new stadium had some rough edges, overall, it was a much needed break from the usual campus grind...

All the courses this term have a project, to be completed towards the end of the term, culminating in presentations... the next one week will go in just ELP and course project presentations! Add to that the end term submissions and its a real busy two weeks ahead

today was our first gyaan session regarding resumes and interviews from alums... 5 alums, from Infy, MS and other IT companies in hyd dropped in for a 2 hour session on IT jobs, IT company interviews and some general gyaan on resumes, cover letters, EOIs, handling stress, being focussed and searching for a job... It was extremely useful... Many more alums will begin visiting the campus hopefully to give us such guidance...

Another mixed bag...

This weekend was like a term break. Many had gone home for diwali and many others for ELP related travel. for the rest of the crowd its been diwali in the campus... I got a call from one of my long lost friends living in hyd and it was nice catching up... talking about Motorola's recent acquisition and how things arent going all that well after the acquisition... also talking to another friend of his working in ICICI... interesting talking about the home loans market in India... pooja, crackers, dinner and cards completed an evening that was much better than any other in recent times... sometimes it becomes absolutely essential to escape from the campus, see new faces, meet new people and interact... given the hectic lifestyle, one can easily get mired in all the trappings of busy campus life... and you do not even realise until you go out, meet people and yap... in a way, it was good that I did it, even if it was at the cost of putting my schedules out of order...

talking of schedules, there have been so many meetings, so many groups that we have been literally forced to handle meeting requests, check up on each others calenders and ensure that everyone is free before calling a meeting... also, such a situation ensures that you think twice before requesting a meeting... having worked for four years, I have seen the way meetings are conducted in many places and the amount of man hours wasted discussing issues which may not concern half the crowd in the meeting... here, because there is so much to do and so many people are involved, you tend to rationalize, think and decide the agenda of a meeting and keep it as short as possible... I personally am working out of e-mail and have learnt managing a team completely through e-mail... delegation, follow up and completion, which never happened without a meeting at the workplace happens smoothly through mail here...

its sunday night... a new week starts tomm... im only hoping that i stick to my readings and schedules for the rest of the term like how I have been doing for the past 2 weeks... im sometimes amazed at the way i push myself to get things done, leaving all my laziness behind... touchwood, i wish i cud continue to be this energetic and more organized throughout my life...

happy diwali

ive hurt my finger while closing the door, so please excuse typos... Its been extremely busy the past few days that i have literally slept 2 hours each day... finally when i got the diwali off, i slept like a log... now im happy to be back doing something different...

its been a great diwali day today... good sleep to start with :) then some good food by sarovar for lunch... 4 games of volleyball, a small project meeting, pooja in the campus at 7, a special crackers show for ISB, then great food again for dinner (did not even count how many! just hogged) and then a great choreo by some of the girls, followed by a dance revelry until midnight... the campus is still awake as I write this at 4 int he morning... some of the groups are boozing, some are partying with music, some are playing cards and chatting... its been an unforgettable evening... lotsa snaps that I will upload... next door, at the gachibowli stadium, the afro asian games started with a wonderful opening ceremony... some unbelievaly good color in an opening ceremony in india... i thought the event was fantabolous... the laser show meant that the sky over gachiblowli was glowing with the laser beams reflecting off the clouds... u wud have been excused if u thought it was a cloudy day rather than an amazingly lit night... the sky was glowing... appropriate for diwali... all in all, good compensation for a hectic punishing week...

All the hockey teams pacticipating in the afro asian games, including india, pakistan and South africa are staying in the faculty housing complex... we had the ghanian hockey team visit us for the diwali celebrations and they had a gala time... it was nice to see them dance and have fun with us, though it seemed they could not speak in english... the indian team has been difficult to spot, spending early mornings in the gym and then disappearing altogether afterwards...

ELP fever is reaching a high with many teams beginning to do some primary research, expert interviews, focus groups etc... Karan, from my team is in delhi interviewing people... and almost all the course this term have tonnes of readings and amazing amount of project work to do... Nonny Chawla for marketing services, Arvind Sahay from LBS for Marketing high tech products, Naresh Malhotra for Market research, Krishnan Anand for Business Models and Internet and Anand Swaminathan for Managing organizational change have all indicated their expectations from us, including the projects... thats had us all worrying... its been too tough for people who have chosen to do 5 electives... i am on of them and I am desperately seeking the end of this term!!! its been tough work...

interview prep has also started among students... we have been given some indicators about interviews by companies last year and every one is preparing from them... placements fever is picking up slowly.. the shortlist from MS came through and I did not make it... big disappointment... have to check my resume to see if I am not really projecting myself properly...

Here is a biiiiiiiiiiiiig post... and entirely borrowed... I was going through some mails alums had written to us and this one caught my eye... now, this is strictly personal but very honest and informed opinion of an alum... just thought it made interesting reading... especially if u intend to attend ISB...

"Hey guys,

I've got one or two emails from worried students asking me whether I really think ISB is a good idea for them. Here are my opinions for those of you who have concerns about coming here (placements details given at end for those who prefer to go straight for the bottom line). The questions you should be asking are:

1. Should I do an MBA?
2. Should I do an MBA at ISB?

1. Should I do an MBA?

My feeling is that an MBA is definitely worth it if you use your time to develop yourself PROACTIVELY (and I really really don't just mean study all day and night - there's been almost no correlation between marks and placements for our batch). If you sit back and just let the year go by then you won't add anything to yourself and your salary going out will be only slightly higher than your salary going in. On the other hand if you really take use of this opportunity, when you start working in a company you will do better than your peers and you will rise to the top faster. That is where the real benefit of an MBA will really kick in. So don't take your starting salary at your job immediately after an MBA as an indication of whether it's been worth it. If at the end an MBA you can sense that you have changed as a person then you've really done well.

2. Should I do an MBA at ISB?

Enough Gyaan. You guys have more practical concerns. Forgive me for meandering for giving you my views on the above. I'm going to compare ISB to US MBAs and the IIMs. At the bottom I'll talk about placements.

Foreign MBAs vs ISB

I think if you want a job abroad or haven't been abroad before then going to a foreign college makes a lot of sense. It costs a lot more but you also have a much better chance of getting an international job and being able to pay it back quickly. For your batch international placements will hopefully be better than they were for our batch but you still cannot be ensured of an international placement at ISB yet (or any other Indian MBA for that matter). Having said that if you do get an international placement then because ISB is a LOT cheaper than any US MBA school your return will be amazing.

I honestly do think that the academic education at ISB is as good if not better than at the Harvard's, Wharton's, etc. Our curriculum was initially designed by Wharton, Kellogg, LBS and the top colleges provide most of our lecturers. We get the best lecturers from each of the best American and European colleges and so our overall quality of course is absolutely top notch. The GMAT average at ISB for your batch should be second highest in the world after Stanford (maybe even the highest) so you will be having an academically pretty bright bunch of people with you and the facilities and infrastructure at ISB is perhaps the best in the world. For those of you who haven't been to the campus - you will fall in love with the place.

If you get into a Top 10 US MBA, INSEAD or LBS you might want to go there for prestige reasons and also the fact that your colleagues will be older and would have achieved more than the students at ISB (average age at ISB around 26 compared to average age of 29 for the US MBAs). Although academically ISB can compare to any of these colleges, the quality of these people in terms of leadership abilities, etc will be higher than the students of ISB on average at the moment (Having said that - I have seen a lot of LBS students and I can tell you that I think ISB is definitely on even footing with the students there at any rate). Although I don't know much about the Asian MBAs my uninformed opinion is that there really isn't much comparison. ISB is miles ahead of those places in terms of student quality and education. Again if you want to get a job in Singapore, Manila etc it may be better going to those places. I would also rate ISB over any of the European MBAs like Oxford, etc.

Overall I think ISB is a better option if you want to settle in India in terms of cost, education, etc. However foreign MBAs are better if you want to give yourself the best chance of working abroad. You will need to stay there for a few years to repay the loans.

ISB vs IIMs

IIM is probably the safer bet if you're interested in Investment Banking. In terms of placements for other things there is very little to choose between them for people with 2 years work experience. Sometimes ISB will appear to have bad placement figures according to certain articles you may read but the profile of ISB is just that most of the students have a large no of work experience and so it just takes them longer to find the right job. The final figures will be fine.

To give you an idea of the age profile - 1% has no experience, 5% has 1 yrs, 15% has 2 yrs, 14% has 3 yrs and the remaining 65% has 4+ yrs. Most of the IIM students are straight out of college or have a limited number of years. That is a big difference between the two.

The IIM MBA has the advantage that the money you have to raise upfront is only around Rs 3Lacs compared to Rs 11Lacs for ISB so if you don't like the idea of taking a loan then an IIM is safer. However the cost over two years is actually the same because although you pay Rs 3 Lacs at an IIM you lose out on an extra year of earnings (average salary at ISB is around Rs 8 Lacs) so the total cost of an IIM is actually Rs 11Lacs as well.

The IIM MBA has the advantage that in a two year course you have more time to really get into the depth of a subject. Although ISB has the same number of lecture hours as a typical 2 year American MBA the time in between lectures is less and you have less time to absorb the data. Sometimes the material flies by you. Again the advantage is that you have one more year in industry so if you start your MBA at the same time as an IIM guy you've already finished and had one year work experience (and hopefully one promotion) before he even starts work. I personally think that you'll learn more from doing an admittedly slightly rushed one year MBA + 1 year work experience compared to a slightly stretched 2 year MBA. Also from alearning point of view if you leverage the knowledge from your fellow experienced students there's a lot to learn from them that you won't get from the younger IIM students.

The ISB education as I said does have the best Profs but this is balanced by the fact that sometimes the syllabus becomes too American based and if you'd like a job in India then that's not the greatest. You might get more ground realities from more India centric cases taught at IIMs.

ISB takes more rounded people after interviewing them, looking at their academics, looking at references, etc. The admissions team is specifically told not to pick people just because they have 750+ on their GMATs and lots of these sorts of students have been rejected. IIMs take people based more on marks and therefore on average their students are probably better at quantitative analysis that the average ISB student. However about 20% of ISB is usually from IIT and about 50% of the batch have Engineering backgrounds so that half of the batch will be just as strong on quants.

I think what tips the scale for me anyway is that ISB has opportunities like exchange programmes with LBS and Kellogg, joint consulting programmes with Wharton. An increasing number of international students (I think there'll be between 5 and 10 for your batch). I also like the idea of being part of a new Indian institution with aspirations of being in the same league as a Harvard or Wharton. This will depend very much on how the founding batch, our batch and your batch represent ISB when we go out in the world. Seeing the college growing up day by day is very exciting.

Placements

There are about 25 students still waiting for an offer out of about 155 (168 students totally but quite a few had their own family businsses). I think ultimately all of them will get offers. There's still time till mid April. So they might bite their nails for a bit longer but I don't think there'll be a serious problem for any of them. People worry too much about jobs when they don't have them but I think they fail to keep things in perspective sometimes. All of them (and all of you) are among the brightest people in the world. They have a proven track record of achievement and if they don't get a job on the first day of the placement season it's not the end of the world. Most people get the best jobs at the end of the placement season. People at the beginning take the safe jobs HLL trainee postions for example. Then at the end you'll get random small companies you've never heard of looking for an MBA to head their new business development project and the people who have no offers and are biting their nails will suddenly get an amazing salary and exciting work. The most important thing is to stay optimistic because when you see everyone else getting a job your self confidence suffers and this translates into nervousness in interviews. If you just believe that you'll be ok - you'll get what want. I swear that optimism is the most important thing at an MBA.

The average Indian salary (excluding any foreign salaries that would skew the figure upwards) is around Rs 8 Lacs.

Most people between 0-3 years (excluding CA articleship) get salaries between Rs 6Lacs and Rs 7Lacs. You get a few that are slightly below (TCS for example may offer around Rs 5 Lacs to some people or even a little below for MT positions but people will take it because TCS often gives foreign postings and you can quickly earn dollar salaries) . On the other hand you get a few that are a lot more. One of my flatmates (24 yrs) got HSBC Investment Banking in London ($60k approx) and the girl who lives above me (Also around 23-24) got an offer of around $100,000 with a pharma company. The lowest offers would be for some MT positions of around Rs 4.5 Lacs, which are unlikely to be accepted but may be if the company offers growth opportunities, international prospects, etc.

People between 3-4.5 years get between Rs 7Lacs and Rs 10Lacs.
People between 5-6 years get between Rs 10 Lacs and Rs 13Lacs.
People with 6+ will get between Rs 10 Lacs and Rs 15+ Lacs. Really depends on the quality of your background

Please take these as rough guides. As you can imagine there will be people who fall out of these ranges by a Lac or two. I'm just trying to give you a feel. You're not a statistic. Ultimately what you will get will depend on your specifics.

I have opinions from around 49 people as to their salary increases post MBA here. 5 got less than they did before. 12 got less than a 30% increase. 9 got between a 30% and 50% increase. 14 got a 50% to 100% increse and 9 more than doubled their salary. Use these figures really carefully. Remember that if a person was only earning a Rs 3Lac salary before then doubling salary would mean earning a Rs 6Lac salary. A person earning Rs10Lac is unlikely to double his salary to Rs 20Lacs. Also like I said do not worry if you think you are going to take a pay cut in the immediate term. I think you'll find that over the next few years after your MBA your salary will rise much faster than it would have without the MBA as you prove yourself at work.

Placements are still underway but I think they will be fairly good overall when we finish.

The investment banking jobs is the one area that hasn't been great this year with just a handful of offers and that's why I'd like to just speak a little longer on this area. The main reason for this is that the entire industry has suffered from a downturn in the last couple of years particularly in investment banking. Now when an investment bank takes 5 people instead of the usual 15 people it doesn't see the point in going to a campus it hasn't visited before. That's why ISB hasn't been able to get that many great International investment banks here this year. However ISB does have contacts with banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros and they are most likely to come for your batch. It just takes one good year where they are recruiting for the relationships with ISB to build up and for them to become regulars. But having said that I think if a person is really interested in Investment banking then IIM-A is a safer bet this year I feel (I would like to point out that several companies who have not gone to IIMs have come to ISB as well - a good example is Novartis International which only recruits from 5 campuses in the world - Harvard, Wharton, etc). The other areas of banking have been fine with lots of people being taken into retail banking especially. Switching to finance is not impossible but was tough this year. There were a number of people who were able to make that switch without really aiming for it. There were also several others who really wanted to but couldn't. I think if you really want to and you read up throughout the year on the industry and are reasonably articulate in interviews then you have a decent chance.

A list of companies in alphabetical order who have come to campus this year so far includes: ABN AMRO, American Express, Anand Group, Asian Paints, Asian PPG, AstraZenaca International, Bahwan International, BCG, Bharti, Byrraju Foundation, Castrol, Citibank, Coke, Cognizant, Colgate, DRL, DSL Software, GE Capital, GE, Godrej, HCL, HDFC, Hero Honda, HLL, HSBC International, Hunt Partners, ICICI, ICICI Pru, iGate International, ING Investment, Infosys, Ispat International, ITC Infotech, ITC, Kotak, Lafarge, Mahindra Telecom, Mahindra Holidays, Marico, McKinsey, Microsoft, MPhasis, Nipuna, NIIT, Novartis International, Olam, Patni, Prudential ICICI Asset management, Ramco, Reliance Petroleum, Roulac, Satyam, Shaw Wallace, Smithkline Beecham, SRF Ltd Switz Inc, Symphony, TCS, TSMG, Tata teleservices, Techspan, vCustomer, Virtusa, Wipro technologies, Wipro Infotech, etc. This list is a few days old and since we are midway in our process will keep growing.

There are several companies that are scheduled to come but I couldn't be bothered to find out the entire schedule just now (sorry 2:53am-need sleep). In addition to the companies already scheduled the following companies are still being chased up to come to campus: BNP Paribas, Trinity, Dell, Swatch, Levi, Britannia, Accenture, Ford, Sapient, Aviva, UB, Volvo, Stern Stewart, Hutch, Adobe, Edelweiss Capital, Reliance Infocomm, Toyota, Oracle, Chubb, Avendus, CRISIL, IBM, Kanbay, AIG, Intel, ISEC, and several others. In addition to all these companies several people with greater than 4 years work experience are being helped to find specific jobs for them with specific companies through consultants. This is simply because it is harder to find roles that suit people with many years work experience and more tailored searches are required.

Hope this helps those of you still making up your minds one way or another. Once again I would like to add that you can get caught up in a whole bunch of worries about costs and loans and placements, etc. If you come here with the right attitude - to proactively develop yourself and retain your optimism throughout - you will not regret it. Leaving my job in London (despite having got a first round interview with McKinsey and final round with CSFB waiting) ISB was one of the best decisions I made. So in one word my advice would be - Come! :)"

some interesting discussions at the businessweek bschool forums about ISB.

http://forums.businessweek.com/bw-bschools/messages/?msg=44446.321 (you may have to register once)

Otherwise, its been an extremely busy 3 days... lots of homework, hardly any sleep, some work for the ISB LS, ELP marketing plan, thunderbird innovation challenge... I also looked at the smart manager case competition today... they have an interesting LBS case open for bschool students... Thinking about entering this one...

Nowadays there are so many bschools in India, one offshoot has been the number of bschool competitions... As of now, Dan who is coordinating ISB's participation in bschool events, if having a tough time ensuring that he tells us about all the events happening, deadlines and also keep track of who is participating and who is winning... at the same time, its an opportunity for many of us to participate in an interesting array of events...

I happened to notice the BPCL scholarships on the web... any school students or post grad students interested, visit, http://www.bharatpetroleum.com/scholarship/newuser.asp

Have been reading this book "the maverick" as part of the change management course... we are required to do a book review... the book should ideally be something that talks about change management at an organizational level... I suggest this book to anyone interested in open book management... author: ricardo semler...

thats it for today... running to another meeting... too many things to do and too many meetings to attend... this is beginning to resemble my workplace in my previous life!!!

Was watching Schumi at the US grand prix and suzuka today... Makes me wonder how this guy keeps his motivation going! Inspite of a record 6th title...

Today was the dean's forum and Dean Vijay Manajan was there in person, updating us about the changes in the board, additions, efforts being taken to boost international placements, the financial status, etc...

The ISB leadership summit is also in full flow... entries for variou events are trickling in... I am coordinating the technology paper presentation...

Today was also another busy day in terms of classes and CP... we discussed Jack Welch and GE... it was very good because we had amidst us, one person who had worked in GE... He explained to us how "workouts" happen, how GE goes about changing habits of employees, how it implements six sigma and the point of view of an employee about the boundary less organization... I had read "straight from the gut" but a first hand perspective from an ex-employee was truly worth the class...

Here is a 10 minute break I have awarded myself...

opening the windows after a long time,
to let some fresh air in
with the fragrance of the wet soil wafting in
the smell of greenery breaks the night's darkness
for a moment,
nature takes over from us mortals,
who have created a world inside this world,
a shell for ourselves to suffer in,
so when we break out we feel good

Got this forward today...

Wean Yourself
Little by Little, wean yourself
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood
Move to an infant drinking milk,
To a child on solid food,
To a searcher after wisdom,
To a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with the embryo.
You might say, “The outside world is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
And orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in the sunlight
The beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
In the dark with eyes closed.

Interesting read...

What companies want from MBAs

How does it feel at 3:30 in the morning, reading a case about the Pan European Fishing something? Weird! never thought I wud pay up 10 lakhs to read up on how they automated fishing auctions over the internet...

Frankly, its an interesting case being read by a tired moron... time to sleep...

Mgmt consulting and MBA

Someone in the businessweek bschool forums had asked why mgmt consultants prefer MBAs. What started off as a small reply went on and on and on... Thought at the end, it made interesting read... here it goes...

"Before I give you my take on the issue, I must say that a better answer would probably come from someone who works in the management consulting industry or at least is gunning for a career there. I have spoken to a few friends who work in the industry and this is my take on it.

While a GAP analysis is something that everyone must do for oneself, what I do know is that, in a management consulting role, one needs all round knowledge of how a company is run and how business works, everything from the basics of financial accounting and corporate finance to economics to organizational and behavioral dynamics of a company. If you are an accountant with a degree in economics, the way you will look at a problem will be different from an engineer with marketing experience. Education in a b-school shows you the various facets of running companies. It helps you take an all round view of the problem. If tomorrow, you visit a client as a management consultant, you are not going to tackle a problem that is as specific as what you get in IT consulting (I was one before I came to ISB). Many times, it will require some out of the box thinking just to know what the problem is. When the requirement of a management consulting job is said to be "problem solving or analytical skills", what is meant is, how are you able to take into account, everything from the financial status of the company, the organizational dynamics of the company, the employee sentiment, the cultural aspects of the country you are in, the marketing strategy that has been followed to date, the operational aspects, legal issues, the nature of the top management and their style of decision making and so on. Handling clients, solving problem agreed are too generic, something many of us IT consultants have done in the past, but the nature of problems you will face as a management consultant requires all round knowledge of ALL aspects of running business. You will find yourself under situations where, one day you work for a manufacturing firm having problems with productivity in their plants and another day, you will be in an insurance company helping them develop new products or target new market segments. Of course firms like McKinsey have internal knowledge bases that will help you but most of the time, you will be on your own, expected to represent your company is the most impeccable and impressive way possible, justifying your $400/hour billing.

Coming to where MBA has a part to play in all this, the very fact that many of us have had very specialized education like accounting, medicine, law, engineering and that background means that we look at problems in a very different way from each other. I have personally seen engineers smile at anything remotely quantitative and arts graduates revel in anything that is qualitative. We have been moulded to a large extent by the way we have been taught to look at issues.

Taking ISB as an example, you are put in a group with diverse students for 4 terms (6 months). For example, my group has an entrepreneur with a degree in hotel management, one from the merchant navy with interests in the stock markets, an industrial engineer with interests in finance, a young commerce graduate, an economics graduate running his family business and myself a computer science engineer. We have varied years of experience. We have very different backgrounds. Now, every time we have had a case discussion, (a case being a real life business problem), we have had amazingly different view points. We have fought pitched battles, at 1-2AM in the morning, disagreeing on every point possible. At the end of the day, every discussion has changed the way I look at problems.

The whole idea of diversity in b-schools is to break that pattern of problem solving that has been etched inside you by your education. No problem has a set piece solution. It is important, especially for a management consultant to look at every problem in its entirety before he attempts to draft a solution that will be unique and best. There has to be an engineer, an IT consultant, an accountant, a corporate finance expert, a marketing professional and a HR manager inside you. You will be expected to debate inside you the various aspects of every recommendation of yours.

As we at ISB have gone through these core terms, we have been exposed to one aspect after another, starting with marketing, then finance, then operations and then organizational and behavioral issues. As we have discussed case after case, we have seen the way we have looked at problems change. Now, if you give me a case, I will unconsciously look at every aspect of it before I recommend a solution.

A bschool is also a place for you to learn to work with diverse people. In a way, the smart ones learn handling people as well. If you thought you are good at handling people, probably you are, but I will still suggest trying your hand at a b-school with the diversity of students you will meet. Until now, like birds have flocked together for many who come in here. In a b-school, you learn to network, accept viewpoints, argue, negotiate and accept mistakes. It’s a humbling experience in a way. The network that you will create here will go a long way in helping you in your career. Not only that, the networking skills you will learn here will probably be most crucial as you move into a management consulting role. The courses you undergo and the textbook knowledge are no doubt important, but that’s only one aspect.

Management consulting firms prefer the top graduates from top business schools because, if you are among that crowd, not only have you mastered your courses at bschool, you have also managed to work your way with teams or different people, managed your clients at the internship (or ELP at ISB) and got the work you wanted, out of people you worked with. Not all students of a bschool manage that.

I do not know if there is any place else in the world that can give you a similar experience, but I am certain that a good MBA does shape a person's all round abilities. All the mgmt consulting firms seem to agree:)"

Back online

Probably the longest break I have taken... Its been the busiest of days at ISB over the past 2-3 days. The one day when I actually slept one two hours to complete all my readings turned out to be a disaster... wanting to wake up at 8:30, I slept until 8:50 for a 9 am class and was woken up by Rahul, a classmate... Just managed to brush, refresh and reach the class in time... The whole day was a daze though I loved the Change Management class as I was among the few who had managed to read up all the stuff... Did some good class participation (CP) and enjoyed the class too.... There were some interesting parallels from Anil, the ex army "Major Saab" of our batch... it was an interesting class... thursday evening was very relaxed but it wa amazing 'coz i couldnt sleep... Just that friday was off meant the mind relaxes so much, you dont feel sleepy! did my cover letter and resume for the M$ and CTS projects, mailed them and slept as i tried to watch "Road Trip"... pretty tiring and was in no mood to blog... woke up real late, around noon on friday! decided that i am going to chill the rest of the day... the whole week's stress of keeping up with readings for 5 courses had sapped the energy out of me!

Not that I have to punish myself like this... I can well take just 3-4 courses and stay chill... but I have taken 5 courses because, one, some interesting courses, and two, want to keep myself relatively free in term 7, the placements time... Friday evening went in volleyball under lights and the night in a party...

Today was another one of those lousy lazy days... the friday night party started at 11 in the night after a conference call with my ELP clients, nSpace in the US... the call went well with some new insights into the company and the research we are doing for them... the party was a bash... great music and dance to boot... the whole village was rocking... it went on till 5 in the morning and by the time i slept, the sun was up and winking! so today again had to be off beat... worke up around noon, and realized I have a case discussion today... Reebok's strategy in India... Marketing research case... and a meeting at 7:30 pm over dinner to discuss and do a write up... fortunately I had read the case 2 days back out of curiosity and also, have been following Nike and Reebok just like that for the past 2-3 years... so it was an interesting discussion when it happened today... just finished the discussion and allocated some parts of the write ups... Still have to review other pending assignments! Have to buck up now and start reading for monday and tuesday... busy week ahead...

Today was probably the one day when I have had the maximum to read up for classes the next day... Gosh, its 3:30 in the morning, I have already read 2 cases, one article and made one 1500 word case analysis. Now, I still have 2 cases and 3 articles to do!

Electives!

Yesterday and today were the first two days of electives. The first thing you notice about electives is the smaller class sizes. In the core courses, we were divided into 3 classes of 70 each. Now, profs offering electives have deliberately reduced their class sizes to 30-40 and that is pretty noticeable. One, I got a chance to speak a lot in class. The class seemed more focussed. There seemed to be richer discussion and everyone seems clued on. Dont know if I am mistakenly extrapolating what I have felt... The marketing services course is being offered by Nonny Singh and he has been keeping us very interested. The market research course, offered by Naresh Malhotra from Geogia Tech is the most popular course in terms of numbers, while operations strategy has also been commended (I did not choose this one). Marketing high tech products was interesting for a techie like me. So was Internet Business Models, by Krishnan Anand from Wharton. Now is the drop phase of the elective process. Meaning, we are all allowed to attend a lecture of a course before deciding if we want to attend it thru the term or drop it. Its been interesting to say the least... more as the days go by in this 6 week term...

IIMs vs ISB

If the heading made you sit up, I am not surprised. I was just going thru the forums at coolavenues.com and was amazed at the carnage. There seem to be a big crowd from other bschools who are extremely sensitive to ISB and its hype, to some extent justifiably so. Some amazing messages, mudslinging that does no good to anyone...

IIMs are the premier bschools in India. No doubt. ISB is not yet there. ISB aims not only to be there but to be among the best in the world. But it needs to tread that path for sometime to come before it can reach the target. There has to be a difference between a bschool that has an established reputation for decades and one that is just 3 years old. I simply dont see why people want to compare apples and oranges.

ISB has big plans. It has great backing from industry and academia. Spirited sincere students who want to make it big in life. All the essentials for a new school wanting to make it big in the world. But when you start a school saying that, "we aim to be the best in the world in a few years", you are indeed creating hype. That hype has been interpreted by many as readymade international placements, a great course that is going to beat the blues out of IIMs in the rankings and fantabulous salaries. Lets get practical. Building an institution takes time. Rome was not built in a day. But to make it big, we need to dream big first. Then back is up with inspiration, perspiration and sincere honest effort.

IIMs are the place to be if you will not be satisfied by anything but that high flying IB job in the US. Contrast that with the opportunity to build an institution. Example: This year, ISB will host the first ISB leadership summit. From the first step of conceptualization to drawing up budgets to roping in sponsors, media partners, travel partners to even co ordination to website creation to logistics management to convincing some of the best minds in the world to take time off their schedules to come to ISB during those 3 days, everything has been done just by the students. Mind you, even the idea came from one of us. No extra money was awarded for this effort. We had to manage by pooling available money for the different clubs. We had to bridge the deficit with sponsorships. We had to negotiate the rates for everything from advertising to publishing to every little detail. All this has been managed by numerous teams of student volunteers who have been working for the past 3 months, day and night. In fact, it is only now that we are in some shape and we have tonnes of work ahead. All this in the middle of arguably one of the toughest schedules in a bschool. Now, being a student of ISB, i know I do not stand the same probability of getting an international placement as say an IIM grad, but is that first placement everything. What matters to me more is the experience I have got by participating in this massive effort to create something big from scratch. And we did not have a legacy to learn from.

Going to a bschool is a personal decision. One has to weigh everything from costs to what is important for oneself before taking a decision. Clearing CAT or GMAT does not make anyone great. It is being able to keep ones cool when the situation demands, knowing what you want and the ability to work relentlessly towards that goal that differentiates. I care a damn if you are from ISB or IIMs or any bschool. If you are honest, hard working, sincere towards your goals and smart enough to recognize opportunity when it knocks, you will go places.

mumbai's first flash mob...

Im not from mumbai but have read a lot about flash mobs in the last few months... and its finally happened in india... mumbai... check it out... kewl....

http://in.rediff.com/netguide/2003/oct/05flash.htm
http://mumbaimobs.rediffblogs.com/
http://www.mumbaimobs.org/

for info abt flash mobs,
CheeseBikini.com
FlashMob.info
FlashMob.com

did u know? even baghdad has its flash mob site!
http://www.geocities.com/baghdadflashmob

...

After a couple of days when somehow, i wasnt able to get around to blogging, here i am back again... its been a tough term break... lots of non acad things to take care of... primarily elp... resume, schol applications, other project applications... and lots of personal work...

saw one of my all time fav movies last night... found the dvd of "my cousin vinny" in the lrc... was extremely relaxing... the day before that, saw my firs imax movie at the multiplex in hyd... impressive! bought a new set of creative speakers... the speakers that come along with the toshiba laptop are not worth mentioning... music and movies are much better now...

have been working on some questionaires for the elp and its been interesting... the idea of preparing one is to elicit the information you want without boring or distracting the respondent... and it was interesting indeed to prepare and review one... got some very good suggestions from people here... quite a learning experience... the market research course next term should help even more...

m$ and cts have approached ISB with projects... they want to do specific projects with students before the recruitment process... their way of gauging students... those who get to do the project get to work in the M$ and CTS offices for 10-15 hours a week!!! now, that even better than ELP... there may be many more such projects from companies that want to see the students before recruting... its very interesting for me... anyday better than biting your nails for a one hour interview... u might as well prove yourself... tomorrow is the last day for the citibank schol and i have been trying to cobble together an essay that they can find interesting... many others have been too...

all in all, its been a busy as well as relaxing term break... take it easy kinds...

current music: "Who the fuck is alice" :)

Dandiya Night...

Another relaxed day... term break is so much more peaceful... tonight was dandiya night in the atrium... Good fun... Nice music and some dancing fun... people dressed up in kurtas and ghagras etc etc... otherwise, pretty much a dull day... lots of sleep and some work on my resume... picked up "Frida" from the LRC... movie to end the day :)

term break!

Its term break... We had a take home exam for Gurcharan Das' course... but that was easy... my section celebrated the end of the four core terms with a trip to runway 9, probably hyd's only go karting course... the sections get broken up for the electives and so every section had its own party, the last days together... its been 4 terms of fun and CP (class participation) together... we have had fun, fights, and have put up with each other's opinions and learnt a tonne from each others opinions...
runway 9 was fun... go karting after a long time... they have a nice pub, pretty decent food and some shooting and archery if you are really interested... it was a nice evening... being a hours drive from the campus, we hired a bus and it was like back to those coellge day trips when you sing and dance and have fun in the bus... on the way back, there was a punchline dedicated to each member of the class... it was fun recounting some of the funniest things that had happened over the past 5 months...
yesterday atul, shilpi and another gang of 15 others went to the imax multiplex... we got tickets for the hindi movie "Zameen"... I was watching a hindi movie after some time and i did not regret it... this one was full of utter crap i thought... Portraying a hijack, the hijacker knows only one sentence and he keeps repeating "this is a hijack" to every one in the plane, even after killing a passenger... cudnt help laughing out loud... it was an out and out masala movie and i shud have left logic behind in the campus... anyways, going for a movie with a gang of friend made the day... to drown the movie and its funny punchlines, we went to Ten Downing Street (TDS)... almost everyone who was staying back in the campus seemed to be there... the whole place was flooded with ISBians and many songs were dedicated... very good music and nice spirit... it was fun... same faces in a totally different setting... I had been so lazy during the day that I had not had any food at all all day... so had to break at around 11 for some food... went to "Malgudi", which is just above TDS and reverted after a long time to my favourite south indian food... amazing food rounded the day off on a very good note...
back home and nobody was in any mood to sleep... it was just 1 am... so off we went to the rec center and the in house musicians, the guitarists and drummer of the batch, pumped out some very nice music... by the time I hit the bed it was 3... it was time for some sleep without setting the alarm... what a nice feeling that is!

exam time!

Management of Organizations and Strategic Analysis of Information Technology go on trial tomorrow... both closed book devils that have to be tackled first!

group formation dynamics draw to a close...

This is an interesting phase of life at bschool... spam mails floating around asking for groups... people cold calling asking to be part of groups... "have you found a group?"... "Mind joining me in forming a study group for this course?"... we have two exms only this time around... the other two were just assignments and take home... the existing study groups and sections will get automatically disbanded and new sections and groups will take over... those groups that have managed to work together very well, are probably sticking together as much as possible... those that did not manage to work out all that well are going thru the motions of getting their last assignments done before taking leave... when it comes to new groups, its your chance to get to know new faces and personalities... courses become more dispersed with some taking only 3 courses and some 5... all of a sudden, life has changed...

the citibank scholarships were announced today... 2 scholarships, $12500 each... the essays and resumes have to be done over the term break after the exams on monday... dont know if I will make it, given my lack of interest and background in finance... fingers crossed...

A new unexpected wave sweeps the community...

Today, the section lists for the 5th term courses were out... and that means two things... an emotional last day with our sections A, B and C... and new dynamics with the new section... and the dynamics include forming new groups... since now we all know each other very well, we have been left to form our own groups... and thats something lot of people werent ready for... except for some smart ones... there is some selection happening... all the ones who have given an impression that they are free riders (ppl who dont do their work in group work for whatever reasons) are being isolated... those who are known to be good in acads are in demand... as the groups are being formed, there is clear segmentation and self selection happening... in a way, i dont think its right... though free riders dont deserve any sympathy, it is important to have ppl who are not very good in acads but are hard working, sincere and bring in interesting thoughts... anyways, i did not take any efforts to form a group... i thought i can just let people approach me and i will have a group in place... and by the time it was 7 in the evening and no one approached me, i was beginning to feel weird... i was wondering if I was being isolated until the first mail came with an offer to be part of a group... i began to feel better and finally, it did work out and within an hour, i had all the study groups done for the different courses... hope this doesnt sound haughty but thats the laid back lazy bum that I am... it was an interesting exercise... new groups, new dynamics and new people to work with... its another means to get to know different people... lets see how it goes...

Response to a comment: Kanishka's blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/kanishka_sinha/
Just today I realised that i have tonnes of pending mail and comments here to respond to... planning to do so over the next week...

Picked this up from alum, kaniska's blog... a site which confirms (??) your gender based on your writing... interesting... i was gratified to know my blog writing is male-ish...
http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html

Presentation skills

The IT course in this term concludes today with another set of presentations... the last 3 sessions of the course have been allocated by Prof.Banker to presentations by students... We have been allowed to choose a topic that we believe will help IT add value to the business... Yesterday was the second such session... my presentation went thru ok... i wasnt really happy with myself... thought I did not manage to keep all in the audience interested enough... though many came up to me and said they liked it, and i still am discovering ways to keep everyone clued on when I am talking in a presentation...

my presentation skills have improved a lot after I have come here... in the first term leadership development course, there was some useful feedback... i had done many presentations in past life, even to clients abroad and have always felt comfortable... but i have learnt some new things I did not know about myself here... that has helped me improved further but i do have a long way to go before I can perfect this one...

In general, the presentations have been good... nobody has had stage problems, and have been fluent in talking... some used video clips, flash scoured off the web to enhance the presentations... the best aspect has been how alomost everyone managed to manage their time effectively... if ever some overshot time, it was not by much... i have been impressed...

isb has revamped its alum site... we all got a mail asking our profiles to be updated... the carrot has been job postings from alums... :) i liked the site though it has just opened and alums are yet to completely visit it... i am going to watch out to see how this develops...

In the middle of some extremely busy work, there was a mass dunking today... Dunking is throwing people into the pool... and every birthday baby is dunked in the pool at midnight... its a tradition among ISB students... Today, there was a major dunking when people went for their friends and before u could realise almost everyone who had come to just see the burthday babies get dunked was in the pool... mass dunkings have been more popular in our batch... many mobile phones and wallets have lost their color and life in the process... ;)

have a presentation in the IT class tomorrow and I am the only IT guy in my group... so it falls on my head... have to go...

A village party after long...

There are 2 student villages in ISB... SV2 and SV3... there are supposed to be 4 according to the original plan and sv1 and 4 will be coming up as ISB grows... as of now, SV3, my village, has the reputation of being the kewler of the two... parties, loud music are routine while the mood at SV2 seems sober all the time... (I only hope those guys arent reading this stuff;))

Last night we had a village party after a long long time... it had been in the waiting for a while... and all the pent up energy was let out as the music rocked the village and the booze flowed... The depression of the exams and the stress of the past few weeks had to be discarded some way... it was a real good party that went on and on until 4 in the morning... Rajat Seth, fellow student and our in house DJ, was at his best with a damn good cross selection of music... everything from english to hindi to regional... jazz tracks to hard rock to love songs... it was total fun... we even paused to celebrate a birthday when the clock struck midnight... it was fun and the best saturday night for a long time...

today, we have a informal "beer and chips" session with Gurcharan Das... The "beer and chips" sessions were started to get all of us to have a more relaxed and informal session with profs and visitors... The first one was with Ravi Bansal, discussing economics, India and China... Today, I assume its going to be everything from P&G to nishkama karma... its going to be interesting...

Yesterday was tough... and the stress got to me I guess...

and today was the investments part 1 exam... tough one... had everyone dazed... some really intuitive problems... this was not a well managed course I wud say... wasnt very happy with the first part being done over just 3 weeks followed by the exam... though the subject per se has been extremely interesting and intuitive, the fast pace did take its toll on many... given that we are suffering a 4 week term here, its been really tough on non-quant guys... its all going to change with a more evenly balanced term next year but that doesnt help me! anyway, this stuff will get applied again in the finance electives...

The elective registration started... tough go, choosing electives... some very interesting courses... its high time we decided the specialization as some basic courses are on offer...

the fee hike got announced officially today... the forex rate has not been kind on ISB and the 3 lakh rupee hike has been inflated to 30K$ by the strong rupee... I hope, just for the fee sake, that the rupee goes back to its 50 bucks a $ rate... ISB does need the money for its development but what worries me the most is that, given the high interest rates, the EMIs can go out of hand... let me see how this pans out...

Bad day... angry, disappointed and extremely frustrated... Guess if I blog now, I will end up with paragraphs of crap... As for a homepage, I have long stopped maintaining one... and havent even had the time to think abt it here... sorry guys... in a bad mood today... guess its just one of those low days...

Mathur, Microsoft and Me ;)

I like to look at myself as a linux evangelist, though I was at one point in time a full time advocate of M$ and Gates... so much so that I cleaned up all MCSD and MCSE during my college days... then I got employed and started working on Linux... and have been in love with it ever since... today, i love both these guys for different reasons, though linux takes the cake
in my mind...
The meeting with Sanjiv Mathur turned out to be very interesting until I almost turned it into a little disaster for myself... His talk about the change management project, Saratoga, that he carried out in India, as part of a global organizational change aimed at eliminating any signs of bureaucratic attitude that may have set in... was pretty interesting and more importantly candid... Sanjiv is a very candid person by nature... atleast that was the impression we all got... he admitted his failures and is proud of what he and M$ have achieved... His detailed description of how the company is being turned inside out just to ensure that customer focus is given primary importance was very enlightening... the stories of failures were especially very interesting... along with a candid description from Mathur the implementer himself... some gems were, "How a company with one successful product can lose focus of opportunity in selling other products... Even if there are opportunities in getting X $s from another product, it is always equated to a small % increase in market share or margin of the successful product"... "Employees feel secure and are receptive when you tell them what wont change, than what will change, when advocating change!"... "Implementing change in any country, will have to be a mix of standardized processes and appropriate amount of localization. What works for you in your country wont work for me, even if its Bill Gates who is advocating it!"... I could go on...

His candid and frank presentation with the correct dash of humor made him seem a soft person... one must remember that he is in his early 30s... He has 4 years in wipro, one year in oracle and then 7 years in M$... to become the india marketing head in such a short career is phenomenal growth... that too if you are just a BA History graduate... and one could see why... If I have to say just one sentence for it, I will repeat what Huggy said... "Someone who is as candid as this guy, will never deceive himself!"... So true!

Now, coming to the interesting part... after the presentation, I was among a group selected for dinner with him... and i was itching to ask him about the Indian government's policy about linux, how it has released linux in 5 local languages and the move by china, korea and japan to build their own OS using linux as a base... After a first few minutes of introduction and ice breaking, I jumped in...

Mathur is known for his sharp and dismissive view on Linux... A recent ET report in which he had spoken about linux is a case in point... the first link that a google search of his name brings up is line by line rebuttal of his statement in that report by a linux fan in IIT bombay... and that made it so much more spicy... and as expected, the moment I mentioned linux, I had all his attention... or so I felt... he was staring at me, as if boring thru me... I mentioned abt all the government moves and asked him his views... as expected, he simply lined up all his points against linux... like the absence of a single business promoter... lack of a clear agenda... lack of even a few profitable companies based on linux (except red hat)... now I could have argued against his points... but what would bother me, if i were in M$ shoes, is the move by governments and their IT policy... and I asked him exactly that... I dont know if I used the wrong words or the wrong tone but he seemed put off... he simply dismissed me saying, "What govt policy? there is no govt policy!"... I thought I had been a bit too aggresive and had rubbed him the wrong way... anyways, there were others who had so much to talk abt that I could wthdraw then and there... but when it come to policy, Mr Mathur, I am sorry, I dont agree with you... check this out...

Kerala: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/05/19/stories/2002051903550400.htm
Govt and open source: http://www.linuxforu.com/editorial/apr2003/MAIT.pdf
Asian policy: http://www.asiaosc.org/topic_9.html
Indian Policy: http://www.asiaosc.org/article_91.html

There need not be a written out policy, but then, there is indeed a clear move by even the MP govt to move to linux... As a M$ guy, I better be worried about the way govts are looking at linux...

anyways, it was indeed a evening to remember for me, Sanjiv and others in the dinner... at the end of the day, he seemed impressed, happy and that is very important for ISB, especially in these formative years...