The Collaborative ISB Blog

2007-02-09T02:49:00.000+05:30

8 more days to go before the D-day.. companies are already scheduled with their slots, you know which companies you have applied to.. the only thing remains is the shortlist.. once thats out, you can at least gauge when you will be done with the biggest thing you pursued an MBA for.. at least I would know.. :)

The next post now will be with the details of all the interviews I did and the ones I was able to convert.. so bite your nails, like I am doing and be ready for a thumping victory post from me.. ;)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

87.5% MBA!!

2007-02-09T02:48:00.000+05:30

Back after a sabbatical!!... :) Yeah today I am 87.5% MBA.. just one more term to go and I can call myself an MBA from ISB.. WOW!!... :) But I think it would be even better if I have a tag of a good job along with it.. and how many more days to go for that? Just 8 more days.. can you beat that? 8 more days and we would see the academic center buzzing with students right from the wee hours.. that would be sight which was missing since the core terms.. the only difference this time would be that students would be dressed with "white color" attire.. :)

Next term, we expect it to be one of the most chilled out terms.. if the profs allow it to be like that... :) I have picked up courses like Retailing, Negotiation Analysis, Global Issues in IT Management and Strategies for Success in Web 2.0 ..sounds interesting.. lets hope they are.. Tried to pick courses which have the minimum amount of work through the term but found none.. :( :) :.. Anyways.. I am ready to take the last term head on, knowing thats its the last one!!.. :)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

7th term begins!!

2007-01-06T14:51:00.000+05:30

Our second last term begins on Monday and fortunately for all of us, almost all courses have been done away with the end term exams for this term. This would ensure that all of us will have at least a week then before taking on the placements head on.. I wonder how it would be then.. I mean the excitement in the air, mixed with sad and happy emotions.. dont know about others but I am definitely looking for those tense nail biting moments.. sitting outside the interview room waiting for your turn to get screwed.. :)

I hope all of us are placed well and at jobs that we wanted at the end of it.. 8th term would be so easier then.. almost every one around has made plans of just chilling out for that term.. I am so very looking forward to playing cricket every day in the front lawns of my student village... laze around in the shades of the founders lounge.. wow!!.. :) I hope we do get time to do all that after toiling so hard in the last few months.. :)

So yeah... we are reaching the end of one of the finest years of our lives.. and a great job would just add a bucket full of sugar on it!!

75% MBA

2007-01-06T14:50:00.000+05:30

Here I come again, with another post on me reaching one of the milestone of being a complete MBA!! Today I was done with my last exam, Evaluating Technology Investments. I dont know about investments in technology but it definitely reminded me of the investment I have done of coming to ISB, giving up one year of experience and the money that I could have earned.. not to forget the loan for paying the fees here.. :) And time has come for me to make sure all these investments bear fruit.. yeah placements.. this word has ruled my posts for some months now.. and now its just a month more when we would have almost a clear picture as to where we are headed..

When it started off 8 months back.. I was like... will this be the kinda life I will spend for the next few months.. will I survive? But then as its said "practice makes a man perfect".. in my case, if not perfect, it has definitely made me a "dont-bother never-mind I will reach where I want to" guy.. :) and guess what.. I am still one of those "75% MBA" guys.. ;)

Marching towards 2007!!

2006-12-28T02:33:00.000+05:30

Christmas eve celebrated... Annual Alumni meet, Solstice 2006 celebrated.. what remains? The new years eve.. but what will you find me doing? Studying for my 6th end term exams.. :) But no qualms.. why? Because I will mostly be on my way to make every new year to follow a memorable one with the kind of job I will probably get.. I mean I at least hope it to be that way.. :)

What do I see in retrospect? 6 terms at ISB.. added with 3 months at Infosys.. the ecstacy of at last making it to ISB after 3 years of following this institute.. the feeling I had when I finally got a mail which mentioned that I have been moved to the "admit" list from the "waitlist".. the response I got from so many of my friends whom I had pestered over these three years about me doing an MBA... the feeling on entering the campus of this grand institute.. the 6 terms of hard fought battle with assignments, projects, presentations, workshops, seminars, guest lectures, classes etc etc.. the new friends I made here and who will remain dear to me for years to follow..

What do I see in near future? One main final battle still remains.. the placements.. two more "xerox" terms remain.. though I feel it will be lighter than before.. then the grand day of graduation, will be ready to throw the hat in the air.. :).. then the first day at the new job.. the reputation of being an ISB grad.. all this awaits.. and how excited I am to take it on.. so here is a heart warming, bear hugging welcome to the year 2007!!... ROCK ON!!.. :)

Team ISB Cricket!!

2006-12-28T02:32:00.000+05:30

This is the email alias we have for the official ISB cricket team... and we played, most probably, our last match on 16th December against Virtusa. We won it, though I wont say comfortably.. after all we should at least behave the way our Indian cricket team does.. try and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.. but seems defeat defeated us after all and we managed to win.. :)

I used the word "most probably" because we could not make it to the next round and with placements coming up in the next month.. the students wont be able to participate in the tourneys for another 2 months.. come March, we would have just one more month at the ISB and no tourney gets over in just one month.. so theoritically, it was our last match as part of the ISB cricket team..

Added to other things that ISB offered, I really am thankful for they had this official cricket team.. I could not have imagined a year without playing cricket.. and ISB didnt let me down.. :) The moments on the ground.. playing under floodlights on a field that could not have been any greener.. it was an experience I was not expecting at all when I joined ISB.. the fun of still going for a match with your end term exams hanging over your head for the next day.. but then after the exams feeling that it was a good decision to go for the match as any amount of preparation for the exam would not have helped... All these things were some things I would have to take another life for experiencing.. as I dont think I am in the mood of doing another MBA in this life of mine.. :D

So ya.. I had to write a word for the contribution cricket has done to my life here at ISB.. HAIL CRICKET!!.. :)

PAEV comes to an interesting end!!

2006-12-12T14:08:00.000+05:30

If you have been a frequent reader of this blog, you would have observed that there was one post which talked about this elective course we had, PAEV (Planning an Entrepreneurial Venture). I had taken it up as I felt this would give me a holistic view of planning, launching and running a new business. While on the journey to finish this course, we experienced a lot of hurdles.. not the traditional ones that one would expect in launching a new business...these hurdles were of a different kind. These were the assignments, presentations, projects we had for the other courses we had taken. We had to literally pull time out of our schedules to prepare a good business plan. I had Sonali and Anshul, my ever dependable friends to give me company of this journey.

Finally last week we were done with the final submission of our business plan and heaved a sigh of relief. Not because we didnt like the course but because one load was off our shoulders.. :) But then came the testing times, we were fortunately or unfortunately shortlisted for the ISB B-Plan Competition, where in you are mechanically made to volunteer yourself as you had taken the course. With over 4 assignments to take care of over the weekend, we were a bit scared to devote the whole of Saturday into this. We made some stupid excuses to our dear Professor and he picked those up quite brilliantly, leaving us high and dry, and at the mercy of the judges for the semifinals on Saturday morning.

Then came the prime time with the "Escapades!" team (yeah that was our team and project name) standing in front of the judges giving a 10 minute presentation, only to find out that they could not finish their presentation within the stipulated time.. :) They didnt know whether to be happy or sad.. happy because this might have saved them half a day and sad because there was this opportunity to gain some satisfaction for the effort gone into it in past 3 months. The results for the finals were declared by Dr. Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of United States for Political Affairs. To our surprise and shock, our name was called out 4th from the 9 finalists.. the expression on our faces was worth watching with all of us standing with gaping mouths and clapping for ourselves.. :) The finals went well with us finishing the presentation in time but we didnt bag the final top 3 slots.. we werent sad.. it was a really rewarding experience for the effort which lasted over 3 terms. I would say the experience was really worth it.. and I am sure my colleagues would definitely agree to it!!.. :) A satisfying end to the course, I must say!!

Media Conclave just around the corner

2006-11-23T14:59:00.000+05:30

The most awaited event of the past few months is happening at last.. the Media Conclave.. the first time at ISB. Why was it most awaited for me? Because it was eating up a lot of time from our schedule and we wanted to get done with it soon so that we are relieved.. ;) Kidding.. it was and is fun to organize these events as you to get in touch the YOU-KNOW-WHOS of the industry and its further exciting when you do receive replies from them showing interest. This is what the ISB tag can do.. help you in having people lend their ears and eyes to hear and see about what you have for them... :)

Now why this mail about the Media Conclave? Do you think I would write a blog about something I am not involved with? .. :D I am also one of the organizers for this conclave and we have top shots arriving for this one. You can just visit http://isb.edu/mediaconclave and find out more about it. Once the conclave is over, you will find more about the happenings on the day of the event in the ISB home page in the news section.. :) Catch ya all soon.. :)

62.5% MBA

2006-11-23T13:35:00.000+05:30

I am done with my EGGJAMS!!! Done with it yesterday and ESPN had a perfect thing set up for me for the evening of the last day of my exams.. but guess what.. The Indian Cricket Team had other plans.. they managed to pull out an excellent defeat.. :) a disgusting one to be precise.. :) I think the ISB cricket team would have played better.. ;)

There are folks who have their exams going on till Friday but the question is "Am I bothered?".. I am not because I am done.. Next term starts on Monday.. and I have just two courses lined up as of now as I managed to get just 2 out of the 5 courses I bid for.. :) Will get more once the term starts, and now dont ask me why and how? The course selection and bidding for the elective terms is something you will understand more when you are at the warfront here to experience it. So me mentioning that I will be able to rope in two more courses once the term starts should be enough information to convince you that the system is good.. :)

So nows whats coming up? Chill out for today and tomorrow.. watch DHOOM 2... Man I want to watch this and Casino Royale as well.. lets see how it goes. Saturday is the day we play the third cricket match of another Corporate Cricket tourney, so YEEYYY it will be cricket again after two weeks.. :) Sunday evening, I am planning to again try and cheer up our forlorn India team against South Africa.. exciting weekend isnt it?.. :) I am excited, arent you?.. :P

Interviews kicking off

2006-11-18T04:15:00.000+05:30

The placements have started off with a good note.. much earlier than last year.. and the recruiters are impressed. The scene around is also looking good.. applicants are positive.. most of them have decided where to go and where they are headed to. The scene as I remember at the start of the year was completely different. So many confused faces.. questions like "Do I know where to go?" were quite prominent on everyones face. But now its settled in, sunk in that "this is it".. "this is where I need to go"..

Believe me, the stress of finding out that you are confused, is much more than any of the course that ISB can offer you. Moreover it gets worse when people around you fake that they are completely decided on their fate and they have it control.. and you are like.. "WHAT THE HECK? Am I the only one?".. only to find out later in the year that those same people are running haywire applying to all possible companies.. and you are the one choosing which company you want to go into.. :) So the gist.. if you are a prospective MBA candidate -

If you have decided where to go and are too sure about it, great!! Really great!! Hats off!!If you are confused (which was the state of most of us here), just make yourself believe something till the interview is over and then start off with your MBA. The initial few months that you spend at the school will make you find out what you are made for.. :) Overly planned people will be there around you, but this is no reason for you to be psyched about. Just chill and time will come when you will find out what to do..

Locking Supply to your Craving Mind

2006-11-02T22:39:00.000+05:30

This is the name of one of the courses I have taken.. :) To make it simple, its Logistics and Supply Chain Management.. :) no qualms about taking this course and no one to blame but yeah its one of the toughest courses I have learnt. When I say learnt, I am questioning myself here as I am still to figure out what it is.. ;) Its so heavy.. even after my friends and alums telling me that the course is heavy, I ended up taking the plunge.. Now that I have, I will have to make sure I make the most of it.

The reason for the naming the post the way I have is because the assignments for this course are time consuming that I have ended up staring at the ceiling while trying to catch a wink.. what do you expect me to do when I get in to bed at 6am in the morning and have to wake up at 7 for a class at 8.. :)

All said and done, the course is good, if at all I had more time to give to it.. :) Makes me look at any "operation" happening around and wonder if there is anything that can be done to improve it.. ;) Thats what ISB does to you... adds perspective.. :)

Posted By Mahesh Shenoy

That time of the year again..

2006-11-02T18:57:00.000+05:30

Its that time of the year again... when you keenly look into your inboxes to check if you have been shortlisted for the ISB interview. Now its been 3 years I have been a part the isb-pgp yahoo groups. First year as a rejected applicant, second year as a waitlisted applicant and now third year as a student.

I am aware of the exact emotions you feel during such a phase. Helpless.. you have submitted your application and just waiting with your fingers crossed for first of the special emailes to arrive in your inbox. The interview invite email.. every day, you end up checking your inbox at least 10 times to find out if its there, seeing some others get invites on the group, you end up calling your friend in the current batch who is busy with the tight schedule.. he suggests you to get in touch with the admissions department, you end up calling them just to find out that the interview invites for your city is yet to be sent. You are also told about the date they will start sending the invites for your city. Still this does not make you stop checking your inbox frequently..

The emotions on the yahoo groups reaches different levels. People receiving invites bombard rest of the applicants with the good news, some who didnt receive any mail after being from the same city feel that they have lost the battle... But friends its not the case.. who can tell you better than me who got in after trying a couple of years. It will definitely bore a fruit.. just be patient, work on your profile.. dont just sit for a year and apply again.. be positive and you will definitely make it. For those who have received invites, best of luck and be sure to crack the interview. Be prepared with your own application .. :) let the dice roll!!

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Hi "Placements"!!

2006-10-18T15:38:00.000+05:30

Mails have started flowing in.. about what? About the job offerings that will be coming to ISB later this year. Everyone around is excited, tensed, happy to see these mails. Its weird.. this is what was the reason almost everyone had come to ISB for.. so we should be prepared to take it head on.. right? But still I dont see myself falling in that category... why? Hmm.. thats because there is a lot depending on the result of this one thing.. :)

Interview preparation groups are pepped up.. professional clubs have geared themselves up in conducting interview preparation workshops and sessions.. it all feels so different suddenly.. the focus has started shifting from grades to jobs... quite naturally. We have already spent 6 months on campus.. 4 terms.. doesnt feel so.. another 3 terms and positively everyone will have at least one offer on hand... then one more term and we are done.. with everyone walking in directions they seem fit for their future... :)

The scene looks really positive for placements, not just because of the mails, but also because of the market condition.. jobs are there up for grabs... its just a matter of you proving yourself worthy of it. Best of luck to all.. and news will flow in as the proceedings go.. :)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

50% MBA

2006-10-18T15:36:00.000+05:30

Here comes the traditional post that appears on this blog after every term. Though its a bit late but yeah its the content that matters.. :)

Term 4, technically got over today with our last postponed exam in the morning. As far as the classes go, we could have safely assumed it to have been over by 6th Oct itself but because of an unfortunate or fortunate incident one of our term 4 end term exams trickled into term 5. All said and done, we can now call ourselves at par with those folks who have completed a year in other 2-year MBA BSchools... yes.. we are 50% MBAs.. :)

Term break started off a lot hectic than the actual term itself. Every soul on campus had stayed back for the first couple of days to innovate.. now you might ask what was that? Influenced by ISB last years success at the Innovation Challenge, we had over 30 teams participating from ISB itself this year. And everyone had the pressure of performing well this year as they expected to be at par with the last batch, if not better.. :)

Now after the term break is over, and this being the first of the elective terms, it was tension all around with some people able to get the courses they had bid for and some people still fighting for it.. :) Though eventually everyone has got what they wanted.

With now placements in the near future, it adds even more pressure to our schedules with the normal assignments and the works still being there to keep us busy. So lets see how easily I am able to keep you all updated on the happenings.. :)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - IT and ITES Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:47:00.000+05:30

IT/ITES, numbers are promising, rewards look even more attractive. With growth of more than 11%, the industry is expected to touch $60bn turnover by 2009. India itself has more than 65% of IT outsourcing and around 45% of ITES share of the world’s market, and the pie seems to only increasing.

The forum will analyze the sustainability of this growth from India’s perspective while analyzing:

India’s human resource advantage and challenges
Competitive position w.r.t. China, and other geographies
Strategy
Infrastructural, academic and political issues.

Another amazing point touched on human capital was the attrition in growing organizations. The irony of higher attrition when the company and its salary have grown was touched upon to understand why these very employees stay with the company when it is small and cannot give as many monetary and other benefits. There thus must be more than money that a company offers to its employees. This conference touches upon these and many other such issues.

1. Dr Ajay Kela [Symphony Services]

Dr Ajay spoke on balancing high rates of growth and at the same time maintain performance standards. He began with a history of the IT industry in India. The early 90s was marked by rapid growth in outsourcing of software operations of large multinationals followed by the BPO boom in the early 2000s and then to outsourcing of core revenue bearing software products and critical software processes. But there are challenges which Indian companies have to surmount in order to stay competitive in the coming few years. Dr Ajay, spoke of 3 ways to stay ahead:

a. The first was the issue of managing human capital. In a software company, employees are the greatest assets. An organization can succeed by being compassionate to employee needs and institute HR policies which harness the potential of every employee. The idea is to bet on people more than strategies. Ultimately an organization succeeds by having talented and content employees who are able to realize their potential.

b. The second key aspect is to invest in tools and technologies that help employees be more productive. Examples such as Video conference, working from home, the best software development tools were discussed.

c. The final challenge is to continue innovating in products and processes. It need not be radical, but could be incremental. However it is necessary to keep the flame of innovation burning in the company. Companies which succeed are the ones which differentiate in terms of innovation.

2. Ashish Gupta [Co-founder www.junglee.com]

Highlighting the VC investing patterns in the services industry Ashish started by stating the limited sources of funding available for ITES companies; with the F-network still meeting the maximum funding requirements of budding and existing entrepreneurs. Ashish spoke about developing a niche for yourself before one can attract investors. This is especially true for companies looking to enter the ITES sector as there are no tangible products to be marketed or presented that will speak for themselves. He emphasized two important points to enable you to stand apart from the crowd:

a. Domain expertise: You would have to prove your deep understanding of the product/service/market/scalability/client base etc. to ensure that you understand the risks and rewards associated with your plan.

b. Proven capabilities: A VC would typically look for proven track record of successful past client interactions, projects completed and milestones reached.

He also, emphasized that VCs like investing in Leaders, people who have vision and a passion to drive from the front. Though people skills are imperative, there is little scope for followers. Also, it is critical that the market space highlighted is interesting for investors with respect to growth, accessibility and overall potential.

3. Kedarnath U. [Polaris]

Kedarnath largely emphasized the importance of driving your process and innovations based on client needs. Using several examples from past acquisitions he has witnessed to His address revolved around:

a. Client driven innovations; do what client wants rather than what market drives

b. Importance of educating employees on the financial patterns of a company

c. Establishing credibility with the employees such that they see a career path within the organisation

IT Services companies need differentiation to succeed in today’s market. They need to be in constant touch with the customer to develop customer focus as their core strength, rather than technology focus. Employees also need to have a perspective of the customer’s business. Polaris focused on developing its core competency in finance domain, by providing its employees external training of the subject matter. Giving a different perspective to software development also helps Polaris in controlling its attrition rates. Polaris also believes in engaging its employees in CSR related work, which helps the employees in appreciating their responsibility towards the greater cause.

In today’s scenario, the customer is not looking for a great sales talk, it wants results. It is interested in building relationships/partnerships with its vendors, for which honesty and transparency is a must on the part of the services companies. They also need to focus towards future growth areas of Integration and Consulting services. Currently, nearly 88% of IT services work done in India is related to custom development and outsourced IT maintenance, but it will be the Integration and consulting services which will form the major chunk of the pie for next generation’s revenues (nearly 44%), clearly making it the center of focus for tomorrow.

4. Vipin [TCS]

Today’s IT companies need to match the speed of innovation, be it in the field of new technology, new services or new methodology. The companies need to under both the customer dynamics as well as the technology dynamics. Big companies like TCS, who are targeting to hit $10 bn in revenue in coming years have to not only keep pace with the technology frontier, they also need to develop back-up scenarios given the fast-changing nature of the market. They need to create multiple value chains in the company to ensure “Customer value creation” and to engage in regular “tune-up” of their strategy. Move from pure IT services to Consulting is one such move from companies like TCS and Infosys.

5. Feroze Mohammed [Sierra Atlantic]

S.A. is a company which has seen a growth from 15 people to 1200 people, which has been the industry leader several times, and has lost that coveted place several times. It has seen a complete cycle of Growth to Decline to Growth again. It has been a profitable player is many niche markets, which soon became commodity due to the competition. Here are a few thoughts which Feroze shared regarding his company:

a. Talent Management is key to any IT company’s success. The companies need to attract the right kind of talent, and it needs extensive market research on their part. Unlike many other countries, in India, the managers carry the responsibility of developing the available talent in the company. They need to recognize the “Stars” in the company and invest in them from a long-term perspective. It also needs to remove the “Bottom Slice” from its workforce to ensure the supply of the fresh blood in the company. In today’s scenario, Project performance and Billability are becoming key factors in determining an employee’s compensation. There is a higher emphasis to increase the variable component of the pay structure and link it to various measures of performance. Thus, it is imperative for the companies to ensure that their employees understand and appreciate the compensation package of the company (and more so of the competitor).

6. Raghuveer Mendu [Metamor Enterprise Solutions]

Mr. Mendu, like Ashish highlighted VC’s perspective. He stated that the investment or company dynamics largely depend on where the industry is on the growth curve. He thus called for a need for companies to customize their offerings, strategies, and client relationships depending on the state in which the industry is in to ensure success and expected responses from the market.

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Semiconductor Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:45:00.000+05:30

The theme of the Semiconductor track was about the opportunities and challenges in this industry, particularly from an Indian perspective. Surya Hotha from Broadcom, the track chair, started by talking about the TiE Hyderabad Semiconductor special interest group as a initiative to support budding entrepreneurs interested in pursuing this vertical. The question on everybody's mind was, "Is the opportunity we talk about, for real?" Does India have the potential, the talent pool, government support and the entire ecosystem to make this work?

The session started with a candid presentation from Bhavin Shah, an analyst from JP Morgan. He stated that the industry had evolved to a point where specialization was the means to success. While practically every south asian country has tried its hand at Semiconductors, only Taiwan and Korea have been able to create value. Korea focused on high volume memory chips and Taiwan has invested heavily in manufacturing, back end and foundry services. These being human capital-intensive operations, they have successfully used Employee stock grants to keep the labor force motivated. Another factor that contributed to their success is the return of US trained semiconductor experts to Taiwan in the 80s, which India is experiencing now. While he wasn’t convinced about the manufacturing boom, he did leave the audience on an optimistic note by pointing to opportunities in specialized services such as solar cell manufacturing and IC design. Aurangzeb Khan, the VP Market development from Cadence design systems, was the keynote speaker. His message was, 'Convergence drives integration'. In the competitive environment today, a silicon manufacturer has to be capable of providing a system solution inclusive of software, drivers and reference designs. The keynote was followed by a panel discussion. The panelists were Dr.Kumar Shiralagi (Intel Capital), Kishore Manghnani (Marvell), Stacy Fender (Xilinx), B.V.Naidu (STPI), Dasarath Gude (AMD), Venkat Vankayalapti (Cavera systems), Moderator: Surya Hotha (Broadcom). Following is a brief from this discussion:

Q. What are the opportunities and challenges for Indian Semiconductor industry?

Venkat: There are lots of opportunities for India in chip design and embedded design services, especially in the Communications, wireless, optical, applications.

Kishore: Do not restrict to India, look at it from a global perspective. VOIP services have grown tremendously in the last 2 years. The challenge is to figure out how these startups in India compete with others. Comparing to the Taiwan companies, they had no presence in the US, but their local market was strong.
On the other hand in Israel, most of the semiconductor firms have a huge presence in US. In the current industry trends it is essential to have presence both in India and the US.

Aurangzeb: An upcoming area is Lighting technologies, thought it might not be as glamorous. That is yet another area which has huge growth opportunities.
Naidu: India has done well in services. The growing Indian manufacturing industry, the local market and the design base that most MNCs have in India provides the semiconductor industry in India the triple advantage to succeed.

Q. Where do you see the funding coming from for these new startups in India? Naidu: To set up a semiconductor Design unit, it takes $20-25 million. The government provides aids in indirect forms such as exemption of corporate taxes. STPI has also taken up new programs such as the incubation program wherein the government invests up to 35% in building up of corporate infrastructure. Currently, Indian develop IP but don’t own it; we are encouraging Indian companies are also encouraged to file IP’s.

Q. What is the Xilinx Corporate VC fund about and how can it help entrepreneurs?

Stacy: We focus on areas where we can learn alongside the companies we support. We intend on funding ventures that are strategically aligned to our goals and that help propagate our ecosystem of programmable logic.

Q. On Building Industry and Academia relation.

Kumar: Intel plans to train a million teachers on IT by 2010. Centers of excellence have been set up at major institutes to improve the design curriculum and provide design tools.

Gude: Back in 1993, there was no VLSI talent in the country. I am proud to say that we established a college that focuses on design and produces the bst of the breed.
Stacy: Xilinx has started a internship program with IIT. They also offer VLSI and SMDP programs. In 32 different institutions.

Q. What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs

Kishore: The core team of any entrepreneurial firm is very essential. Apart from this, good source of capital and an established customer base is essential.
Gude: One doesn’t need to have large source of money. One can build small subsystems or sell an idea at first, then reinvest the revenues to build larger businesses.

Aurangzeb: Try and develop skill sets that set you apart from others.

Kumar: Intel capital looks for businesses that pose as a good financial return opportunity and as a strategic opportunity. A few companies that Intel capital has invested in are Tejas networks, Insilica and Vignyani. Intel has also focused on educational and rural PCs.

The session ended on a positive note where everyone agreed that there is an opportunity, be it design services, testing services, manufacturing, etc. Problems such as building a talent pool, an ecosystem and funding need to be addressed to ensure the success.

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Technology Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:44:00.000+05:30

The technology track began by around 3:30 PM on 21^st of September. The track chair Mr. Sudheer Koneru introduced the panel members to the audience and invited Mr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor at IIT-M, on stage to give the key note address. Mr. Jhunjhunwala enthralled the audience with the achievements of the TeNet team of IIT Madras in reaching out to the rural areas with latest technological innovations. His initiative has spawned more than 10 companies in the past with a focus on development of rural sector. The next talk was given by Mr. Pradeep Gupta from Dataquest on the innovations that can be achieved in the fast changing world. He also touched upon the important fact that R&D now is increasingly sourced from outside instead of inside, giving rise to the possibility of outsourcing of R&D in the future. Mr. Srini Koppalu gave a perspective of technological changes from the perspective of Microsoft.

The session was opened up for panel discussion and all the panelists were invited on stage. Panelists included Vani Kola, Mr Ajit Deora of LightSpeed (VC), Mr Srikant from Persistent among others.Participants flooded the panelists with questions. Mr. Kalyan Manyam and Mr. Sudheer Koneru moderated the discussions. Several questions on open source posing a threat to technology, taking new innovations to markets, venture capital funding, and innovations related to wireless technology were discussed during the panel discussion. Due to time constraints all questions could not be addressed.

Perseverence of an IIT professor who took leave for a year to study Marketing and other aspects of a business in order to be better able to handle questions asked by VCs like "How will you sell it?", "Whom will you sell it to?" stood out as an example for other budding entrepreneurs. The emerging idea revolved on the value that a VC brings to a business, and also on the question that every VC asks before committing to fund a venture - "Will this business become the market leader in the long run?".

The discussion was an enriching experience for all participants. Budding entrepreneurs were inspired by the opportunities that were discovered during the course of the session.

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Real Estate and Infrastructure Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:43:00.000+05:30

The RE and Infrastructure Track was held on September 21, 2006 from 3pm to 530pm.. The track comprised some prominent industry professionals and was introduced by A.J. Jaganathan, Director with Indu Projects. Jaganathan discussed that in most countries infrastructure precedes real estate development rather than following it. Since in India the opposite is happening, it poses challenges in terms of provision of organized and quality developments.

Speakers for the track:

· Manisha Grover, national Directo, Head Strategic Consulting & Research Jones Lang LaSalle India

· Prakash Gurbaxani, CEO TSI Ventures

· Ashish Chandak, Lead Specialist Business Development (Industrial and Commercial Infrastructure) IDFC

· Kiran Kumar Gandhi, Managing Director GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd – Keynote Speaker for the track

Panelists

· I. Shyam Prasad Reddy MD & CEO Indu Projects Limited

· AJ Jagnathan, Director Indu Projects Limited

· Ram Pujari, Director and Group CFO Indu Projects Limited

· Mr Hariharan, Ex-Chairman Andhra Pradesh Infrastructure Authority

The first speaker of the track was Manisha Grover. She provided an analysis of the Indian real estate scenario and the key drivers that are going to determine its long-term growth. She also provided a sectoral overview of the followed by investment trends. The presentation pointed out that there is currently a substantial mismatch between the micro level markets and availability of infrastructure. Manisha Grover pointed out that rental yields in major cities in India were showing downward trend, which was likely to continue with increased standardization of products and supply moving from tier 1 to other tier cities.

The other key trend of the real estate sector in India is transformation of development companies. There was “paradigm shift” with companies increasingly asserting a national presence as opposed to localized / regional influence. This was likely to further the standardization of products across different sectors.

Prakash Gurbaxani followed with his presentation. The presentation focused on the changing scenario of the real estate sector in India and the challenges and opportunity this provided. Some of the key challenges for the sector were identified as:

· Fragmented and largely unorganized industry

· No National Players yet

· Industry not known for focus on Quality and Customer Experience

· No organized investment structures (REITs etc.)

· Land laws archaic

With respect to the opportunities, Prakash Gurbaxani pointed to with a total market size of Rs 600 billion with an annual growth of 30%, all sectors were open to opportunities but the industry will need to fine tune both the financial and regulatory aspects of development. While the financial mechanisms were increasingly being put in place with new investment avenues such as REIT, REMF, and adoption of world-class processes; the regulatory processes such as archaic laws, high stamp duties, lack of defined exit routes, low supply of government land and restrictive FDI regulations still acted as an impediment for the industry.

Ashish Chandak provided a comprehensive overview of Indian infrastructure scenario. He corroborated A.J. Jaganathan’s comment about the need for infrastructure to precede real estate in India. However, he went on to add that “India had arrived” and had made quantum leaps with respect to its assessment of its infrastructure and recognizing the critical role infrastructure is likely to play in the overall development of the country.

Some of the key risks likely to hamper growth of the country were identified as:

· Oil prices

· Interest rates

· Infrastructure shortfall

· Fiscal slippages

· Reform slowdown

Ashish Chandak pointed out that infrastructure is the “backbone” of the country’s development and needs to be priority. He also mentioned that for this happen, financing of infrastructure needs to move from government centered projects to more public-private partnerships. While this had started to happen in some sectors, the need and pace of the financing activities and PPP model of development needs to keep pace with demand.

Mr Chandak discussed the progress made in each sector of infrastructure and pointed out the need for liberalizing the real estate sector as well as the need for stronger capital markets in order for the sector to really take off.

Mr Kiran Gandhi, the keynote speaker for the session, shared his experiences of Delhi and Hyderabad and some of the key challenges he has faced and the opportunities he saw in the near future.

Some of the key messages from his discussion include:

· Sustained investment in infrastructure and real estate can alone hold India’s GDP growth at 8%

· Indian infrastructure and realty sector today, is in the threshold of liberalization

o There is an immense opportunity for the professional talent, which is an outcome of increase in emergence of these projects. One of the key challenges going forward would be talent development and management

· Opportunities are immense, yet infrastructure & real-estate is an unexplored entrepreneurial domain

· New cities need to be developed around the major metropolises in order to sustain the high growth projections and the subsequent demand it is likely to pose

Kiran Gandhi spoke about how Hyderabad was on the forefront of the development process engulfing India and could provide the right benchmarks for the country.

After the keynote speaker, the panel convened to discuss the presentations from the speakers. Mr Hariharan, based on his experience as the Chairman of APIDA, spoke the need to garner political influence in order to move things forward. He also mentioned that any future model for development will need to be growth oriented and co-opt the public sector.

Mr Pujari, speaking from his experience as the ex-SBI officer with more than 24years of experience with international banking, risk management, and asset liability management provided a more financial point of view to the proceedings of the panel. He started the discussion by pointing out that risk should be viewed as a possibility / opportunity. However, he also discussed that asymmetry of information in this market was likely to cause imbalance in development and there was a critical need to build better databases for the industry, which will serve the industry going forward. Some of the key points of discussion were:

· Quality of information will be one of the biggest challenges facing the industry

· There was need to build talent in the sector and increase the human resource capabilities

· Regulatory risk posed one of the biggest risk in the development of the industry

· Financial risk comprised largely of poor availability adequate debt in the organized market for the sector

The panel concluded with answering audience questions. Mr. S.P. Reddy Indu Projects thanked the participants for sharing their insights with the track.

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Sports and Fitness Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:41:00.000+05:30

Growth of Sports in India was one of the main tracks covered during the three day Tie-ISB Connect meet. An eminent panel of guests addressed a number of delegates from various organizations as well as the ISB student body. Pullela Gopichand, the former All England Badminton Champion, delivered the key note address. He painted a bright picture for the future of sporting activity in the country and said that “Sports in India has come of age.” He emphasized a need for better infrastructural facilities so that our country can produce world class players. According to him, health and fitness are moving up the priority list of the population just the way infrastructure is becoming a focus area for the government. He said that this change is coming about because Indians have largely had a very sedentary lifestyle and health problems are pushing people to become physically active. Also, people are realizing that one can get involved in sports for excellence or for fun and recreation. Moreover, given the work pressures, sports can be used as a stress reliever.

Pullela was happy with the fact that more and more parents are willing to spend money to groom their children in various sporting activities. He strongly emphasized the need for a school with sporting excellence as well as academic excellence so that children would have an opportunity to experience the best of both worlds. This would give them the opportunity to identify their strengths and accordingly pursue careers.

After hearing the views of a sportsperson, it was time to listen to a business perspective from Anirban Das Blah, co-founder and Vice-President of Globosport. He manages leading Indian players in tennis, badminton, squash and cricket. He advocated three key strategies to achieve dominance in a given sport. The strategies being world class action closer home, emergence of an icon and media overdrive. He emphasized the need for a better understanding of sports management and various market opportunities. He said sports management in India currently means cricket management. There is a need for focusing on other sports and he suggested ways and means of doing the same. He said that sports should be build in a way that transcends the sports page of a newspaper and becomes a part of people’s lives just the way cricket has in our country.

He got strong support from Ashok Ahuja, Head of Department, Sports medicine at NIS. In fact, he took the discussion forward by identifying various business opportunities for the country in the field of sports. He highlighted the fact that most of the sports equipments in India are imported from various countries. Ashok strongly urged young entrepreneurs to take a leap forward and develop capabilities for equipment like Electrotherapy machines, microwave diathermy, motion analyzers, etc.

Dheeraj Koneru, MD of Latitudes Pro, brought a totally different perspective to the discussion by highlighting the key advancements and opportunities in fitness and healthcare. According to him, “high quality service” and “tangible results” were the secret behind competitive advantage in the business of health and fitness. He emphasized that weight loss is an emotional topic for most people and should be dealt with care and sensitivity. He also underlined that execution was more important than innovation in the field of fitness.

The last speaker for the day was Rajbir Rai, a student of law and an entrepreneur with the experience of running a shopping mall and restaurants in the US. He has also worked as an investor advisor to a mega-sports brand. He is currently helping set up India’s largest sport shoe manufacturing plant at Hyderabad. He was very optimistic about the opportunities in sports manufacturing industry in India.

The talk was followed by a Q & A session where Anil Singh, M.D. Pro cam International energized the crowd by his experiences and un-conventional ideas. The audience was delighted and the whole session was an insightful and a learning experience.

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Internet Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:40:00.000+05:30

Kris Seshadrinathan (Track Chair)

Ajit Balakrishnan (Rediff)

Sandeep Murthy (Sherpalo Ventures)

Hitesh Oberoi (naukari.com)

Raghav Kher (70mm.com)

Sameer Sood (Google)

Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri.com)

Sanjay Swamy (mChek )

Ganesh Rangaswamy (Greylock Partners)

Probir Roy (Paymate)

The track for internet and internet services comprised a panel of distinguished speakers and professionals. The moderator for the discussion was Mr. Krishnan Sheshadrinathan. The discussion was kick-started by a speech from Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan from Rediff.com. He provided the audience with valuable insights about the nuances of running a successful internet business, and the features essential for the same. The precision with which he pointed out the problems that most of the internet businesses run into, and the mistakes that they often do, was truly inspiring and motivating. With every passing moment, the audience’s appreciation of his work, knowledge and aura kept growing. He talked at length, about the choices that firms have to make to either be a service provider or be a media company in an internet business. He urged the budding entrepreneurs to focus on three aspects, essential to running a successful internet business, viz. focusing on the long tail, network effects and innovation.

Following him was another eminent speaker, Mr. Sandeep Murthy from Sherpalo Ventures of KPCB. He provided the audience, a perspective of a venture capitalist, looking to invest in interesting and promising internet business models. Keeping it plain, simple and short, Sandeep wooed away the audience by his compelling arguments and amazing clarity, on the issues related to funding businesses. He also spoke little about three of the most recent ventures that his firm had invested in, and went on to invite the panel for discussion.

As Mr Sheshadrinathan threw some interesting questions to the panel, the audience, mainly comprising of budding entrepreneurs, got multi dimensional perspectives of venture capitalists, whom they are here to woo anyways, and of some the people who had once been in their seats, looking for funding to kick start their ventures. While the panel also talked of emerging trends in the Indian market, a word of caution was thrown in by Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan, every now and then, warning the enthusiasts about the consequences of falling into the trap of copying the US or the Chinese business model.

Finally, the house was thrown open to questions from the audience, which most of them were eagerly waiting for. While many of the audience members had generic questions to the speakers, about the emerging trends in the industry and the ways to bootstrap their way out of the financial viscous loop, others had a completely different plan. Not willing to let go of the tremendous opportunity that Tie-ISB offers for these entrepreneurs, to convince the investors about the bright prospects of their business plan, many of the audience members asked specific questions, specifically to the VCs, if they would be willing to invest in their business model.

Finally, Mr. Sheshadrinathan, gave a note of thanks to the entire panel and traditional ISB memento to the speakers. The track was one of the most popular tracks of the Tie-ISB event, and the magnitude and the enthusiasm, of the audience and the panel, was a testimony to the fact that internet revolution is here to stay for long.

Prepared by :

Sukanya Ghosh

Vibhor Singhal

Yashovardhan Gupta

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Bio-Pharma and Life Sciences Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:39:00.000+05:30

ISB today hosted an extremely engaging and though-provoking discussion, moderated by Dr. Krishan Kalra and Dr. Srini Akkaraju, on the topic “Emerging Opportunities in Bio-Pharma and Life Sciences”. Many distinguished speakers presented their views on the future direction of the sector.

Dr. Kris Kalra, Founder and CTO, BioGenex, initiated the discussion by presenting his vision of how New Drug Discovery (NDD) can “change the world” through public-private partnerships. He envisioned government sponsored Centres of Excellence which will work towards convergence of Chem-bio-info-nano technologies and create a new paradigm in NDD. These steps could potentially reduce “bench-side to bed-side” time to 7 years and costs to $100 million.

Dr. Srini Akkaraju, Managing Director, Panorama Capital, gave a brief picture of the evolution of Indian Pharma from early opportunities in generics and contract manufacturing to future potential in new drug development. He mentioned that India holds the key to solving the global pharma crisis of R&D productivity and increased costs because next-generation business models are emerging here. His key message – “Retain higher value”.

Mr. Gene Williams, CEO, Cambridge HealthTech, gave further details of the problems ailing Big Pharma and suggested a few key areas where entrepreneurial opportunities abound for India. He also spoke at length about the emerging area of Translational Medicine as the key to reducing R&D costs and risks. He mentioned that outsourcing is not just about cutting costs but also about doing things better and doing them differently. This would help ensure that NDD fails less often and fails earlier in the process, so as to reduce risk.

Dr. Krishna Ella, Founder, Bharat Biotech, spoke eloquently about a perceived lack of risk-taking ability in India and called for innovation as the key to economic growth. He highlighted the need to develop skills as well as application to go with India’s enormous knowledge base.

Mr. Sushil Handa, Founder & CEO, Claris Lifesciences, shared his journey from an inflection point in his life to the creation of a Rs. 400 cr. multinational company. He started by emphasizing the fact that “empires are built by people who have nothing”, and stressed on the importance of the Indian entrepreneur should focus on no just the regulated markets but also the emerging as well as home markets.

The session was a glimpse into the entire ecosystem of Bio-Pharma, ranging from the entrepreneur to the venture capitalist and from the history to the future of the industry. The audience went back with a totally new perspective on the potential this emerging sector holds for the future.

Dr. (Maj.) Biju V. Mohandas

Dr. Rahul Khandelwal

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Retail Track Summary

2006-10-01T11:38:00.000+05:30

Participants

Jacob Kurian (ICG Fund)

Anirudh Dutta (Credit Lyonnes)

Sambasiva Rao ( Heritage Foods)

V P Harris (WITCO)

Subba Rao N (Actis Partners)

Ashutosh Garg (Guardian Life)

Raman Mangalorkar (AT Kearney)

The Retail track was one of the highlights of the Tie-ISB connect, and it garnered a packed house which only became bigger as the track progressed. One of the Unique features of the event was the diversity and distinctiveness of the panel. While, Mr. Jacob Kurian (ICG Fund) headed the track and brought the High Level venture capitalist ad investment perspective about Retail opportunities, Mr. Raman Mangalorkar (AT Kearney) gave a comprehensive overview of how the retail sector is expected to grow in the near future. The presence of some budding entrepreneurs like Mr. Ashutosh Garg (Guardian Life) and other eminent speakers brought in some distinctive and extremely relevant perspectives to the audience. The underline theme of the track was an insight into the Retail sector into India and the various opportunities and challenges it would bring in.

Mr, Jacob Kurian set the pace at the very onset by bringing in a beautiful analogy. In his words “Retail in the 2000’s is what Imformation technology is to 90’s” Mr. Raman Mangalorkar started by mentioning that the time is right for the students and entrepreneurs to enter into the retail sector as there are a lot of opportunities which are getting created in different stages of the value Chain, especially Infrastructure & supply chain.

Organized Retail is only 3% and is expected to grow by 30% in the next 3-5 years. The key factor that is propelling the growth is that India’s population with < 40 years is approximately 70% (<25 Years is approx 50%) and with the overall growth in economy the trend is towards increasing disposable income, which signals towards increasing demand for products and services. While Reliance has already announced an investment to the tune of Rs 25,000 crores and Pantaloon expanding its network at a rapid pace, other key Players like Bharti and many others are expected to jump in a big way in the next 2 -3 years.

While we would see lots of mergers / joint ventures getting formed as time progresses, debates are still on as to which formats would work better in the Indian context. As an estimated guess, Convenient and specialty stores are expected to do well, whereas the development stores may not work very well in the Indian context.

Whilst there are a lot of opportunities opening up, the challenge is to develop the physical and IT Infrastructure in a big and fast way. Retail has still not got a Industry recognition and with 97% of the retail currently unorganized, Players need to work out their cards strategically and work out a differentiated offer, which attracts consumers, to have a long term success.

In nutshell, it won’t be incorrect to say that Retail is the sector to be in the coming years and it is here that we can envision all the action in the near future.

Consulting in cross cultural environments by ATK

2006-09-29T09:46:00.000+05:30

A.T Kearney visited the ISB on 22nd September to share some perspectives about Consulting in cross cultural environments. The session was conducted by Raman Mangalokar (Principal), Supratim Banerjee (Manager, ISB Class of 2002) and Ankur Warikoo (Senior Business Analyst, ISB Class of 2006).

The team shared their experiences about consulting with various business over the course of their career and how working with culturally diverse teams added to their experience. Raman recalled and shared his experiences of working out of ATK’s Chicago office and the different experiences he had working with cross cultural teams.

The team also spoke about ATK, the kind of work done by the firm and how an ATK consultant is passionate about not just making recommendations for the problem they are trying to solve but also, to see through the implementation of the solution.

Supratim also shared his perspectives and spoke about his experience with ATK for last 4 years.

On 23rd Sept, Ankur conducted a resume analysis session for the benefit of the students interested in consulting and ran us through a case study of his own resume and how he worked on it to shape it up for applying to Consulting firms. Use of effective verbs, and efficient presentation tactics to bring out all the positive aspects of one’s profile was stressed upon.

Both the sessions were attended by a large number of students and the consulting club would like to thank the ATK team for visiting the campus and interacting with the students.

Venkat

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - Peter Mukherjea Speech Summary

2006-09-26T14:29:00.000+05:30

Peter Mukherjea, CEO, STAR group, was at ISB for the TiE – ISB Connect event to share his views on “Discovery of New Media Opportunities, blending technologies and leveraging India”.

He started off saying that “convergence” is the key to opportunities in the Media industry. Customers these days have all means available to them to check on the media of today. Be it mobiles or internet or television or radio or wired cars or wired planes, each customer has it at his disposal to make use of it. Thus, it is up to the every media company to find answer to the questions like “Who? What? When? How much?”. It is the answer to these questions which will help strategize moves to capture the market.

He claimed that the new media industry is moving towards a tipping point and we can safely assume to have hit it when even the lower class of the society will be having a means to watch TV shows on their mobiles. After all this said and done, it’s a fact that television still holds its current place with increased choice and complete control.

Mr. Mukherjea supported interactive marketing to be the jargon of the day with more and more people preferring to choose what they want rather than taking what is given to them. Interactive television includes shopping of related products (like DVDs) while you are watching a show and also gives you the power to control it in different ways.

He threw some light on the market size of the media industry and also showed some figures predicted for 2010. As per the analysis, the current media industry (including Television, Print, Internet and Others) has a market size of USD 1000 billion and its going to touch USD 1450 billion in 2010. In the segregation of the pie, Television will continue to have the same share but the Print media might loose some of its share to Internet.

Coming to the next point in the agenda of where India stands today in the Media industry, Mr Mukherjea educated the audience by telling that it has the third largest TV industry with 112 million viewer households after USA and China. He also pointed out one of the pain areas for broadcasters that they get just 14% of the revenue generated, which was because of under reporting on behalf of the Local Cable Operators.

He also shared some more facts on the advertising revenue of the Television Media industry. Total advertising expense in 2005 was USD 2.79 billion of which Television advertising expense contributed to about USD 1.15 billion. This revenue is growing steadily at the rate of 14% year on year. Having said this, India still lags behind its counterparts (other Asian countries like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand etc.) in this stream of revenue. He also pointed out the fact that the number of television channels are increasing at an alarming rate and we might end up having 1000 channels by 2010.

With all this about the television industry in India, our presence on the Internet has not been lagging far behind and has lot of potential which will become obvious in coming years.

Mr. Mukherjea also brought out other pain areas for the broadcasters as he cited examples of mandatory sharing of sports broadcasts along with content regulation and reduced advertising time being enforced on them. Also level playing field is not available, with regulation on different levels of investment allowed for FDIs in different sectors with in the Media industry.

As the TiE-ISB Connect was an event designed especially for bringing budding entrepreneurs and VCs together, Mr. Mukherjea did not leave out on telling the audience about the opportunities available in the Media Industry. Analog transmissions are giving way to Digital equipments with more investments coming in. Also there is a steady increase in the market for original specialized content creation for TV shows on niche fields like golf, gardening, weather etc. Apart from these, there is an emerging market for new media like mobile etc.

To conclude the plenary speech, Mr. Mukherjea let the audience know about the forthcoming targets for the STAR group as a part of their growth plans. STAR group, amongst other plans, would continue to concentrate on the Television media along with Broadband Wireless, Movies on a pay per view basis, DTH (Direct to Home), Network (distribution of new channels) and also tapping the regional channel market to provide a complete bouquet of services to its customers.

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

TiE-ISB Connect 2006 - New Media and Entertainment Track Summary

2006-09-26T14:23:00.000+05:30

Track Chair – Sadhna Seelam

Key Note Speaker – Prem Akkaraju (Sanctuary Artist Management)

Panellists – Rajesh Jog (Waygate Capital)

Rana Daggubati (Suresh Productions)

Alok Kejriwal (Contests2win.com)

Raj Atluri (DFJ)

Rahul Khanna (Clearstone)

Sekhar Kammula (Film Director)

Introduced as “The Classic blonde who dyes her hair black”, Ms. Sadhana Seelam, started the track with a short brief on an accomplished panel from the industry.

The talk actually centred along the line of new opportunities in media as an emerging industry, and also the technologies that would be replaced because of the evolution of the same. The point of debate therefore was would earlier modes of entertainment and media go extinct as a result of the evolution or would be sustain itself by complimenting the emerging trends.

There was one school of thought amongst the panellists which was a strong proponent of newer means of media like Internet, Mobile and Gaming. This was met with staunch views on the fact that there yet exists an elderly demographic that are still impacted by the traditional means of media like Television and Radio.

Prem Akkaraju, the key note speaker for the track, brought out the importance of evolving media tools like interactive marketing and music in a statistically rich presentation. He was ably supported by Alok Kejriwal, who attributed the success of his projects at Contests2win.com to interactive and consumer participative marketing.

One of the most candid speakers for the day was Mr. Sekhar Kammula, who stressed on the importance of relevant and consumer focused content in the media industry as opposed to the drive for monetary success. He highlighted the need to maintain the “Indianess” factor in the media and entertainment industry.

Rahul Khanna shed some light on the potential of the gaming industry and ably supported his stance with facts and figures.

Rajesh Jog brought a different perspective in a discussion which was interspersed with views conflicting with those held by others on the panel, conviction and a good sense of humor. He believes that the thought that the forms of new media displace the old is baseless and not true. Also while the concept of short content seems to be gaining importance, he feels that it is important for it to be revisited for relevance of content.

Raj Atluri reiterated the gaining importance of the media and entertainment industry from the perspective of a venture capitalist. He mentioned how despite being discounted as an area of investment, new media has now gone against the traditional views to actually sky rocket towards to an unexpected level. Justifying this statement was the fact that 15% of the investments across the world happen in the new media and entertainment industry.

We also had on the panel, Rana Dagubatti, who has seen his production house evolve from a traditional film content provider in to a enterprise also involved in the gaming and animation industry.

One topic of concurrence between all speakers for the day was the identification of a tipping point in any industry from an Indian context. Given the threshold at which the Indian media industry stands right now, this thought is best summarized by an excerpt from Prem Akkaraju’s the key note statement:

“There is no better time than NOW in India to capitalize and the future looks even better.”

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Types of Class Participation.

2006-09-20T15:39:00.000+05:30

Class Participation(CP) is a big deal in B-School. There are special points (which count for the final grade) usually alloted for "Relevant, direction changing" (insightful) CPs. Sometimes these points can account for about 40% of one's grade in a course! It is hillarious to see how different people understand those three words in giving their class participation. Every one of those CP filled classes is sheer unbridled fun. However, in some sections at ISB this has caused a lot of pain too because of too many "Arbit" CPs. Having said that, Section A has been good to its students in this issue. We have our share of fun during CPs but never to the point of paining everyone. The 4 terms with Section A so far have been awesome fun, and I do feel a little sad that our time together ends in another 15 days (at the end of the core courses).
Here are some types CP’s I’ve observed over the 4 terms we’ve studied together. I have thoroughly enjoyed every class involving CP much much more than those which have not had CP. And I have to say that this is ONLY because of the sheer variety! This post is not meant to pick on any individuals, and I can assure you that MULTIPLE people (including me in some cases) have indulged in each one of these types :-)! I just wanted to write this so that a couple of years down the line when we look back, we can have some good memories! Maybe we can initiate some section awards for the winners & runners-up in each category??

Global CP – The point made will fit in any class, any case-study, any discussion topic. Doesn’t matter when/where. eg. 1. The world is a very complicated place. eg. 2. Two plus two equals four!

Round-tripping/Circular CP – Keep going over the same point over and over again without knowing where to stop.

Politician’s CP – No matter what the question is, I will speak out what I want to say (even if it’s a directed question)

Scientific CP – Throw in jargon, confuse the heck out of everyone. eg. I applied Monte-Carlo simulation to come up with this answer!

“I support” CP – I don’t really have a point to make, but I definitely want the marks. So, I’ll ride on someone else’s tail coat!

“I don’t agree” CP – I don’t really know the case, but I sure as hell don’t like the person who gave the last CP. So I don’t agree!

Butt-in CP – I don’t care who has their hands up. I want to talk when I want to talk!

Just-woke-up CP – I dozed off, let my head drop and banged it against the table and woke myself up! Fish.. I hope no one noticed. Now, I need to make a CP point just to show that I"ve been awake. I put up my hands, get chosen to make my point, and make it. Uh-oh, they’ve already gone over this point ages ago!

Passionate CP – I get all emotional about the CP topic, and start fighting with other views/opinions. eg. When the economics professor talks about how certain segments of the mass love certain products (widgets in this case). Bang comes CP "But, love is not rational!!". The baffled professor gives up!

Multi-lingual CP – I will slip in a few words from other languages, just to confuse the non-Indian Prof.

Unrelated CP – This kind of CP is usually preceded by a disclaimer like “I don’t know if this is related, but what I want to say is ….”. OFCOURSE it’s not related. I know it as well as everyone else. But I need my airtime

Selfish CP – I will make all the points myself (even though only one point was required), ‘cause I don’t want anyone else to get anytime, or ‘cause I want to get max-airtime

Class-take-over CP – Ha! No one else in the class has been in this industry. I am the only one who knows about this topic.. Muwahahahaha, I shall do ALL the answering for the day!

Quota CP – I have decided to make 4 points today ‘cause according to my calculations, that’s the quota I have to satisfy to get a good score on my final grades. Once I give my share of CP for the day, I don’t really care what goes on in class beyond that, I shall go to sleep, or check my e-mail.

Factual CP – I know only the case and have read it for sure, I can’t be bothered about flexing my grey-cells to actually analyze it. So, I shall state the obvious mentioned in the case to obtain my points.

Basic-Instinct CP – I will use “Basically” once every 5 words of my CP

Insightful CP - The type that every one of the above CP is aspiring to be!

Posted by Manu

Myopic Views!

2006-09-20T15:21:00.000+05:30

I sat looking out of my window a couple of days back. I was fiddling around with my camera, and I was trying out different kind of foci on it. I shot a couple of pictures just sitting on my chair here. I uploaded the photos onto my computer today, and as I sit looking at them now, I'm startled by how these two pictures have sharp correlation with my observation on people here at ISB.

I attended an LDP (Leadership Development Program) session for Influencing Skills. At the end of every LDP session so far, I always feel frustrated with the attitude of my batch mates. They think that the entire exercise is a waste of time and that they don't gain anything from those sessions. My question to them.. if they already know everything, then how come they don't seem to be acing the sessions. For example, in the influencing skills, how come they weren't able to influence the other groups and come to a conclusion? How come then, they couldn't find a way out of the problem we were posed with? Their attitude is such that that even the Instructors are frustrated. The instructors don't know how to deal with the permanent "Oh, why are you making me sit here. I'd rather be elsewhere" look/attitude that most students exhibit during these sessions!

So many people come to ISB to learn the soft skills.. the leadership skills, the people handling skills, the presentation skills, the problem tackling skills that they lacked when they were in the industry. However, somewhere along the line in the last 6 months, they have lost track of their objective. Initially, I remember how people were cribbing about the course being too Quant oriented. These days, when we have courses like Management Behaviour of Organizations or Leadership Development Program, people call them "faff" courses which don't have any substance/learning content in them (just because there is no quant in it). Somehow, they forget the bigger picture (the one outside the window). They forget that these skills learnt in these so called "faff" courses will be the ones which will help them move higher. These are the skills that differentiate a Leader from a worker. There are so many "simple" things that I learnt even from this recent session on Influencing Skills as part of the LDP. Simple things like Spatial arrangements can make such a difference to influencing a group of people. Similarly, while a lot of people thought that the group discussion sessions of LDP were utter wastes, I found value in them. i learnt how important small stuff like your posture at the table can play in a discussion. I still remember how when some people leant forward when they were speaking, they automatically put the rest of the people in the group into a defensive mode. They were sub-consciously perceived to be "aggressive" and "pushy". The instructor also pointed out how you cut-off/don't listen to the two people by your side when you lean forward at the table. You automatically zone them out of your field of view! The two people on the side then feel ignored or are forced to respond aggressively to get back into the discussion again.
Such small stuff, I don't think anyone will point out to me in the real world. I'm indeed glad that we had instructors who pointed out such sub-conscious references. I know now that I"ll definitely watch the way I sit at a group discussion especially if I'm looking to convince someone else of some idea.
So, coming back to what I was saying.. there is INDEED a lot of value to all these sessions. If only people would develop some patience to be involved in these sessions and actually set aside their grades and assignments for the few hours we are involved in these exercises. It is the case of the two pictures above. When we focus on just what is in front of us, then all we'll see is the grill on the window. Then, there may not seem to be much in that direction. However, if we just took an instant to step back and look beyond the grill, we probably will notice the beautiful landscape lying yonder in the exact same direction. Yes, definitely, we need to be aware of the grill which lies between the landscape and us. But, let that not be the ONLY thing that we see!

P.S. Oh, BTW, the grill is still there in the second picture. The camera was focused beyond the grill.. that's all! If you look carefully, you should still be able to see the grill lines in the 2nd picture.

Posted by Manu

TiE - ISB Connect Starts Tomorrow!!

2006-09-20T02:32:00.000+05:30

This is one of the biggest events of the year at ISB. We have delegates from different industries and sharing their knowledge with us. Then we have panellists from these industries also speaking to us. The main highlight of the event would be the presentation of the business plans to the Venture Capitalists.

This serves as an ideal platform for entrepreneurs to pitch for their venture. It’s also possible that it gets funded.

All this happening, I just come to know what I had missed in my life till now. This is how the real world, the real market, the real business looks like. How in the world I would have possibly known as to these kinda things do happen? Its really mind boggling.

Really really looking forward to the event!!

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Where does the time fly?

2006-09-16T15:16:00.000+05:30

It felt at the start as if this term was the coolest of all the ones that have already gone by but now when I sit in my room in front of my laptop, I seem to have a 1000 items on my checklist. Its not just with me but with all of my batchmates.. no one is able to figure out where and how the time is lost? Knowledge is definitely gained in the time lost but still its somewhat confusing the way this is happening.. :)

This weekend we have at least 6-7 things to be done. Assignments, Speaker series, Events, Classes, Presentations.. etc.. a whole lot of it. All in all a jam packed weekend... also with mid terms coming up in another 7 days, its even more scary.

Also with the different sections enjoying the company of their section as a whole for the last time, its sad as well. Term 4 will mark the end of the core term and it will be the last few days our sections will be attending classes together. Its been so entertaining... the arbit class participations, the sleeping beauties, the cross talks, the late comings... all seem to flash back in my mind.. :)

Today we have planned the last section event of the core terms and we are going for a picnic. Everyone is thrilled about it are definitely looking forward to it. Also the fact that we would be half way through with the course after term 4 is giving everyone mixed feelings.. on the positive side, its the achievement of finishing an MBA (a rigorous one) and on the negative side, its the scare of the placements which would be approaching soon... will i get the job I dreamt of? Will I get a job after all? Will I Will I... so many questions.. :)

Lets wait and watch, what the future has in store.. you keep a watch here and you will know what the present is like.. ;)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Introduction to McKinsey and company

2006-09-13T13:16:00.000+05:30

McKinsey and Company visited ISB on 9 September 2006 to conduct an “Introduction to McKinsey” session with the student body. The session was conducted by:
Rajiv C Lochan – Associate Principal
Venkatesh Srinivasan – Engagement Manager
Rohit Kapoor – Junior Associate (ISB Class of 2006)
Gautam P Chhugani – Junior Associate (ISB Class of 2006)
Ruchi Bansal – Junior Associate (ISB Class of 2006) and
Chris Fernandes –Recruiting coordinator

The session began with a presentation giving the general background and information about the firm. This was followed by each of the speakers recounting their own experiences with the firm and the ups and downs in their careers. The student body appreciated the honesty and frankness of each speaker as they recounted their initial days in the firm.

Thereafter, the focus shifted to the recruitment process of the company. Venketesh invited questions from the students regarding the recruitment process and the same were addressed during for the remaining part of the event. The main focus of the remaining part of the session was on the short listing and interviewing process followed by McKinsey.

The speakers gave a detailed insight on the interview and evaluation process and elaborated on the parameters on which they judge the candidates. They emphasized on the fact that grades are important to the extent that they provide a quantifiable measure on the basis of which the candidates can be differentiated. However, it was also very clear from the discussion that grades were not the only consideration and other factors are equally important. These include – prior work experience, leadership skills and extra curricular activities. They also gave a brief overview of the rigorous resume short listing process where they spend almost 7 -8 minutes per resume and that every resume that is accepted needs the concurrence of at least two people.

After the resume short listing stage there are two rounds of interviews where they judge the following skills of the candidates:
· Quantative skills
· Problem solving
· Personality
· Ability to work in teams

The session was immensely useful as it gave a sense of what McKinsey is looking for in the applicants and provided an opportunity to students to reflect on their profiles and assess whether there is a “fit” between their profiles and the expectations of the firm and what needs to be done in order to bridge the gap.

Posted by Sunanda

Kun Chevrolet Cricket Tourney update

2006-09-13T00:43:00.000+05:30

ISB KNOCKS OUT AEGIS

ISB defeated Aegis in a day night encounter played on Sunday to finish second in its group at the end of the league stages of the KUN CHEVROLET CORPORATE CRICKET CUP 2006.

Aegis won the toss and put ISB in to bat. ISB had a poor start as RK was dismissed in the first over. There was a brief stand between Nishant Tiwari and Srikant before Srikant was dismissed for 16. By this time Nishant had gotten into rhythm. Naresh joined Nishant but was soon retired hurt after hurting his knee. Prateek joined Nishant in the middle but he too was dismissed soon. Then came the partnership that turned the match for ISB. Naresh came back, this time with a runner, and gave Nishant much needed support in the middle. Nishant blazed his way to 76 (4’s – 6, 6’s - 4) while Naresh at the other played a calm knock of 18 giving Nishant most of the strike. Some hefty blows at the end from Neeraj and Mahesh took ISB to 166/7 in 20 overs.

Aegis began their reply on a strong note putting on 47 for the first wicket before Kartik Agarwal struck for ISB. Soon RK joined the party picking up 2 quick wickets. It was anybody’s game as Aegis required 60 of the last 8 overs with 7 wickets in hand. But Kartik, RK and Venu bowled a tight line giving nothing away and picking up a few wickets in the bargain. Kartik’s spell was exceptional. Mahesh chipped in with a couple of wickets at the death and ISB were home by 8 runs. Rehan and Nishant did some good work on the field with a stumping and a catch respectively. Amrit top scored for Aegis with 56.

ISB finished the group stages with 3 victories and a defeat. Watch this space for updates on the Pre Quarter finals.

Team for the day: Nishant Tiwari, L Ramakrishna (C), N S Srikant, Naresh Mahadevan, Prateek Garg, Mahesh Shenoy, Neeraj Kumar, Venu Gorti, Kartik Agarwal, Rehan Habeeb(WK), Shankar Balakrishnan.

Scores in brief:

ISB – 166/7 (Nishant – 76, Naresh – 18, Srikant – 16, Raj Kumar – 3/30, Rakesh – 2/20, Rasheed – 2/36)

Aegis – 158/8 (Amrit – 56, RK – 3/29, Kartik – 2/19, Mahesh – 2/35, Venu – 1/23)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Term 4...

2006-09-08T23:23:00.000+05:30

With Term 4 at our doorstep after the term break, every one was pretty cool about studies. By now every one had got the hang of their life at ISB and knew how to tackle it with help of the "strategy" course already completed in Term 2.. ;)

Now with one week into the Term 4, it looks as if people are still in the term break mood. No assignment has been given to us till now for this term, which has never been the case for the previous 3 terms. Every one is enjoying this moment but I somehow have this feeling that its just the lull before the storm.. :( I also hope that I am wrong.. :)

To tell you all more about Term 4, we have 4 courses as usual and they go as follows:

1) Management of Organizations: A completely qualitative subject with official "paper plane flying" exercise happening in our 2nd class. We have never had any thing of that sort before and it was fun.. :) The name of the subject tells you what its all about.

2) Investment Analysis: Whatever was left over by Corporate Finance in Term 3 is going to scare us in Term 4.. :) It has started off pretty smoothly with the same concepts being revised again to create a base but have heard from sources that its uphill from here on. :(

3) Strategic Analysis of Information Technology: This subject deals with the much-accepted or rather assumed fact that implementing IT in every organization helps.. so we will find if this works for all or not.

4) Government, Society and Business: The name sounds pretty wierd ... right? How the hell this course would help us after an MBA? That was the exact question I had in mind but with a couple of lectures down my belt, I understand how the regulatory policies of countries and governments changes the rules of the game in a business. And its going to fine tune as the term proceeds. :)

Thats what we have for this term and lets see how and where it goes for when we can call ourselves 50% MBAs.. :)

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

ISB accounts for Deloitte H & S in the Kun Chevrolet Cup

2006-09-04T23:43:00.000+05:30

ISB Cricket team followed the basketball team had left off (they beat Microsoft a couple of days back) by bringing further laurels to ISB. They won their second match in a row in the KUN CHEVROLET CUP 2006.

In an early start Deloitte won the toss and elected to bat. The first few overs were quiet with not much action. In the 5^th over Abhijit drew first blood by having the Deloitte opener caught at point. Shankar then got into the action from the other end picking two quick wickets. Deloitte opener Manish batted well to score 36 before being dismissed by Shankar. After 10 overs Deloitte were 68/4 and looked set to score in excess of 140. That is when Neeraj Kumar came into the attack. He literally ran through the lower middle order of Deloitte picking up a wicket in each of his four overs to end up with 4/27 in a classic exhibition of leg spin bowling. He was unlucky not to get a fifth as the ball hit the stumps and bails did not fall off. The Deloitte innings folded up for 125 in the 19^th over.

ISB had a new opening pair in Nishant Tiwari and Prateek Garg. They started off at breakneck speed taking 22 off the first two overs and then there was a quiet over. If Deloitte thought that the initial burst was tough to handle and things would get easy they were wrong. What followed was impossible to handle. Both Prateek and Nishant tonked the bowling to all parts of the ground as ISB score moved from 50/0 in the 9^th over to 100/0 in the 13^th over. There was a competition between the two as to who would be the first to reach 50. Prateek won the battle there but was soon dismissed for 51(28 balls, 6’s -2, 4’s - 7). Nishant fell on just short being dismissed for 49(33 balls, 6’s - 1, 4’s - 9). There was a minor hiccup as 3 wickets fell in a hurry. But in the end ISB won comfortably reaching the target in the 15^th over with 5 wickets to spare.

The man of the match was shared by Prateek and Neeraj.

ISB next takes on The Hindu on Sunday.

Team for the day: Abhijit Roy(C), L Ramakrishna, Kartik Agarwal, Naresh Mahadevan, N S Srikant(wk), Prateek Garg, Nishant Tiwari, Prateep Dasgupta, Neeraj Kumar, Shankar Balakrishnan, Nitin Gupta, Venu Gorti, Nagaraju B.

Scores in brief:

Deloitte – 125/10 in 19 overs (Manish – 36, Sridhar -15, Neeraj – 4/27, Shankar – 2/11, Nitin Gupta – 2/18)

ISB – 126/5 in 14.2 overs (Prateek – 51, Nishant – 49, Nishit – 3/15)

Term 3 ENDS

2006-08-29T17:45:00.000+05:30

I thought life in Bombay was fast but now after 3 terms at ISB, there is no denying that time and life does not fly faster than this. It seems as if it was just a week back when I was still trying to fathom where I am and how I reached here.

The orientation week.. where we had the alums telling us all about it, their experience, the section wars and the batch strength. They had all events lined up for preparing us for the months ahead. Then came the terms, one by one and now after 3 terms, I think I have gained something.. not just in terms of knowledge but also in terms of life long friends.. a good network of people... Wait a bit.. what the heck? Am I behaving like my stint at ISB is over? Naa... not at all.. 5 more terms to go.. reality strikes and this time it struck a bit too soon.. :( :) :| ...

Tonight is going to party night... Tomorrow morning on a flight to Bombay... Tomorrow afternoon, I will meet my dearest bhanji after over 3 months.. Saturday morning, I would miss the cricket match that would be played by ISB in the corporate cup.... Sunday morning I would back, and ready to play for the next match of the same tourney that afternoon.. Sunday evening, will sulk thinking that term 4 is going to start... :)

Anyways.. thats how life is at ISB.. fun with spice.. ;) Catch ya all during the term break with the details of the same.. :) Adios Amigos..:)

Mahesh Shenoy

Session on Careers in Consulting conducted by The Boston Consulting Group

2006-08-23T19:12:00.000+05:30

Representatives from The Boston Consulting Group visited ISB on 17 August 2006 to conduct a session on “Careers in Consulting”. The main agenda of the session was to address the specific questions of students on careers in consulting and to dispel some of the common myths that enshroud the profession. The session was conducted by Arvind Subramaniam, Ravi Srivastava, Rohit Chhapolia, Vishal Sharma and Ramesh Jha.

1. The event started with the Arvind inviting specific questions and queries from the students. The key questions that were asked during the session were as follows:
2. What are the different types of Consulting?
3. How to make the most of the management programme at ISB from the perspective of making a career in Consulting?
4. What are the key characteristics that Consulting Firms look for in prospective candidate?
5. What does the life of a Consultant entail – Work Life balance?
6. What is the Career progression in a typical Consulting firm?
7. Myths about Consulting

The speakers started with clearly defining and differentiating between the different types of Consulting – Management, Functional and Operational. Further, they addressed the above mentioned questions by citing examples and instances from their own experiences and their career progression in the firm. They also gave an insight on the diversity of projects and engagements that they had handled and impressed on the fact that each engagement is unique to a large extent and entails its own set of challenges. The theme that emerged from the discussion was that Consulting is all about “Out of the Box” thinking and the tools and methodology used in one project cannot be blindly applied to all projects. They also gave an insight on the problems and challenges faced by them as consultants in their day to day work life and gave a perspective on how they went about overcoming these challenges. They elaborated on and dispelled some of the common myths that surround consulting and helped the students get a clear understanding of the profession as a whole.

Towards the end of the discussion, the speakers addressed specific questions regarding the recruitment process and how to prepare for the same. However, the specific details of the interview preparation process were not addressed and would be taken up in the interview specific sessions in the coming terms. It was a highly interactive session which ended with the speakers informally interacting with the students on a one on one basis. This exercise gave the students an opportunity to express their individual concerns and get answers to questions which were probably not answered during the session.

Posted by Sunanda

ISB starts Kun Chevrolet Corporate Cricket Cup with a win

2006-08-21T01:29:00.000+05:30

ISB starts Kun Chevrolet Corporate Cricket Cup with a win

ISB defeated Sloka by 4 wickets in their first match of this corporate tourney. The match was again played at Glendale which has now almost become a home ground to a whole lot of teams. Sloka won the toss and elected to bat.

Abhijit and Mahesh opened the bowling for ISB. Pratik joined the attack after 4 overs. If you wanted to watch a breath taking bowling spell, I should tell you that you missed this special one. Pratik was playing his last match (may be) for ISB and made it worth every moment for every member of the ISB cricket team. He pocketed 4 wickets. Kartik joined the magic, taking 3 wickets in 3 overs and Sloka ended up with 144 runs on the board. Not to forget the four catches pocketed by our wicketkeeper, Rehan.

Abhijit and Nishant opened the innings for ISB but we lost Nishant early; result of a supposedly bad decision. Naresh joined Abhijit in the center and they together flourished a partnership of 34 runs. Naresh got out to a shot trying to dominate the bowlers. Then came to the crease, a man who has got his name synonymous with the word “consistency”, Mr. N S Srikant. What followed was a treat to watch with Srikant holding his fort at one end and making sure the team wins. Partnerships formed and collapsed with a common name in all of them. He ended the match with a classic cover drive for a four, which also made him reach his first fifty as part of the ISB cricket team. A dramatic finish to the match.

Team ISB for the match – Naresh Mahadevan, Rehan Habeeb (WK), L Rama Krishna, Nagaraju B, N S Srikant, Abhijit Roy(C), Mahesh Shenoy, Pratik Patankar, Nishant Tiwari, Kartik Agarwal, Shankar Balakrishnan, Dhimant Parekh

Scores:

Sloka – 144/9 (Nirdosh – 32, Mohan – 36 no, Pratik – 4/30, Kartik – 3/8, Mahesh – 1/21)

ISB – 146/6 (Srikant – 53, Abhijit – 25, Naresh - 21)

Man of match: N S Srikant and Pratik Patankar

Posted by Mahesh Shenoy

Running for the baton

2006-08-19T01:52:00.000+05:30

I am almost there.. yes... one more week and one more term would be down!! 5 more pins to go and I would have a strike.. :) This term that would be my past pretty soon.. should be one of the most tiring terms I believe.. with assignments day in and day out.. with exams running at us at a speed that I didnt even realize when it hit me. But it was fun.. more details will come on it after the term has actually ended.

Also with respect to the content of this term, we had a whole lot of speaker series by all the clubs and it was good to watch these people who have touched the sky and know how it feels to do so. The hard way of course.. :)

We had Sameer Chandra (Chief of Staff for Sanjay Nayar) from Citigroup talking about "Career Options in Banking". Then we had Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri.com CEO) telling us about how he went about his entrepreneurial life. We also had one of the most influential person, Vikram Akula (CEO - SKS Microfinance) speaking on the topic "Microfinance and its effects on rural india". Shishir Priyadarshi came down to talk about the WTO and related topics. With his experience at working with the WTO in Geneva, he was able to give us a picture of some of the latest macro economies from present and latest past. We also had an interactive session with Ms Vani Kola who is considered the B2B queen. She found the companies, RightWorks and NthOrbit. The list goes on and on and on ... :) These were only a few of those amazing mind boggling speakers who had come down in this term..

I am sure there would be a lot more to look forward to as there is no dearth of greatness on this planet and its no harm in listening to people to find out on how to achieve that greatness. Who knows, one day I might be one of those giving guest lectures in BSchools... ;)

Mahesh Shenoy

Alum Interaction : Vijay Mulbagal

2006-08-13T20:15:00.000+05:30

Vijay Mulbagal from class of 2006 was at the ISB today. He spoke at length about the various aspects of consulting and about his short span so far in the consulting world working with Diamond. Here are some key takeaways from the session:

1) Not everyone is cut out for consulting. Management Consulting is a glamorous job but at the same time it’s tiring, tedious and involves a lot of travel.
2) Grades and only grades are not important to make it to consulting. Each one of us has some unique achievements and it depends on how we bring that out in our resume’.
3) Resume building exercise should start early (may be now). A good resume plays a vital role in helping a candidate make a shortlist. People should get their resumes critically evaluated by peers and others and try to achieve perfection. The cover letters should be personalized and well written as well.
4) Vijay suggested some books that would be good to read towards preparation for consulting careers. The McKinsey way, McKinsey mind, The Pyramid principle ( by Barbara Minto) and Say it with charts were some of the books he suggested.
5) It is very important that one understands the key qualities required for consulting jobs. Flexible(read long) hours, frequent travel and working with ambiguity are a part and parcel of consulting. Qualities like good interpersonal skills and ability to communicate effectively are extremely important.
6) You should not choose to get into consulting just because it is glamorous. You have to make sure that you are cut out for it ( i.e to say you will be happy doing it). If you lack the qualities and still feel passionate about consulting, you should work on developing them.
7) There is a huge world outside consulting. There are many people who have not gone into consulting and yet are very well placed ( i.e earning well and happy with their job content!). Finally its only the industry guys who make the headlines.
8) It is very important to understand individual firm culture. Every firm is unique and has it’s own strengths and limitations. An aspirant should choose his/her target firm after evaluating the best fit according to his/her preferences.
9) Vijay also spoke at length about his experience with Diamond so far, the kind of work Diamond is looking to doing in India and overall culture at Diamond.

The Consulting club would like to thank Vijay for taking time out and being with us.

Posted by Venkat

Basketball

2006-08-13T20:04:00.000+05:30

These days ISB is humming to the tunes of the Intersection rivalry in the game of Basketball. Its been a long time we had an inter-section tournament. Its much more fun when its a section thing. In games like badminton where you dont have a team playing together, it draws much lesser number of spectators but when it comes to a section tourney.. you find the whole section there to cheer the team.. and then there is a deluge the section slogans.. with everyone shouting their guts out to frustrate the opponent camp.. :)

Basket ball tourney started today and is going to go on for another 5 days. Its going to totally fun packed... and that too when there is added spice of submitting assignments each of those days.. its more exciting.. ;) Our section (B - Blazers) won their match against Section F pretty comfortably.. though both teams had possession of the ball for almost same amount of time, our forwards getting the basket most of the time.. and with the guards blocking the opponent forward's shots quite amazingly.. it was a complete team effort with our section winning by a margin of 22 points (40-18).

Our team for the match we played: Saurabh Kaura, Sameer Gujral (Captain), Ming Hsung Lee, Rehan Habeeb, Murali Reddy, Siddharth Lulla, Sreeja Iyer, Oshiya Ved, Mahesh Shenoy, Naresh M

Tomorrow we would be playing section C, who call themselves as "Pirates". Blazers are going to set the Pirates ship ablaze. Further updates on the tourney will be available at this very place pretty soon.. keep watching.. :)

Mahesh Shenoy

PAEV

2006-08-08T01:00:00.000+05:30

Some posts ago, I had promised that I would write about an interesting course. We here have a course by the name "Planning an Entrepreneurial Venture". It’s more of hands on than a classroom course. We have to form groups of 2-3, then bring up an idea and start working towards it. This would involve most of the course that we have been taught till now. We would have to do a market analysis for the segment we are targeting and then draw some figures from it to show the idea's viability. Sounds like fun.. :)

I have already formed a group of 3 and we have started the ideation process. The brainstorming sessions during this phase are interesting. Everyone trying to pool in and with the sort of support we have here at ISB, it makes you feel comfortable to venture out in to ideas which look weird otherwise.. :) Stalwarts being there to help and then with their guidance, we would end up with a business plan which would be presented to our peers and then evaluators. And if everyone finds it good enough and if we are really keen on making it our baby, we can hit the investors (VCs or Angels) as well. With all this happening, I am raring for the term break... Ah ah.. Its not because I would get a rest or something, but I would get time to work on this course without a class schedule to worry about or any assignments running down my spine.. :) Doing research and collating information should be a treat!!..

Bidding

2006-08-02T01:53:00.000+05:30

Sounds like I am running an auction firm here at ISB.. Isnt it?.. :) but I am not.. wish I could.. but this is how you get to select the courses you want. You bid for it and you get it if you have bid well enough and if there is enough seats to accommodate you in the class for the course. Though this sounds a bit weird but it’s a fair procedure.

Now with electives coming our way in another couple of months, this is the first time I have actually got down to look into the details of each course that ISB offers. You might start thinking how I went about doing a research on ISB when I planned to apply for it... Hmm.. figure it for yourself.. ;)

Coming to the elective courses... Its sad that I have just 16 credits, 4 terms and 8 more months.. with so many mind boggling courses to choose from. Moreover with a taste of the cream after 2 terms, its interesting to venture out into the extensions of the courses already experienced. This would not have been possible sitting at my home while deciding to do an MBA at ISB. If I start listing all the courses, the post will run into pages.. so its better I just stick to my emotions in this post.. ;) Just to give a feel, the courses I might end up choosing from (after a lot of thought) are:

Branding, International Finance, IT Strategy and Economics, Pricing, Sales management, Consumer Behaviour, Corporate Control M & A, Financial Statement Analysis, Investing in Private Equity, Marketing Research, Advertising, Corporate Risk Management, IT Services Project Management, Marketing Strategy and economic analysis, Global Issues in IT management, Indian Financial system, Managing Strategic Partnerships, New Product Development and Retail Marketing...

Wooohh.. that was some list.. Have to kick out a few more before I end up choosing what I can actually go for keeping in mind the credits I have to complete. Doesn’t that sound interesting?? It does to me, but the real picture will unfold when I actually start studying these courses and I have a feeling that I would want to get over with it as well.. :P.. just kidding.. I am all eager to take them on as early as possible.. Come on!! ..:)

Mahesh Shenoy

May I Swipe the Dropbox?

2006-08-01T11:28:00.000+05:30

One of the very few pains of being at ISB is the continuous, unhealthy and hostile barrage of assignment submissions we have to face every other day.

For those of you who are not well-acquainted with this intricate method of torture that is being imposed on us poor souls, let me shed some light on it.

The first four days of the week we have our classes and from Thursday evening to Saturday evening, it's party time. When I say party time - I mean that we have a party (loads of boozing and random dancing) during the weekend - not that we can chillax throughout the weekend.

So that we don't enjoy ourselves too much (dunno why it should be considered such a bad thing) our professors diligently ensure that we have enough work in the form of case analyses or a truckload of mathematical problems to solve throughout the week and especially in the weekends.

As the deadline for assignment submission approaches, the population density in the library and the atrium markedly increases - innocent guys facing testing times stoically.

Printers start getting busy and start failing due to overload. Frustrated groups of students hang around them checking their print jobs in the printer queue. IT Services guys start getting d-looks from us.

And then when finally the much awaited prints come out, it's a total mess figuring out who gave which print. Finally the right ones are assembled and we head towards the "blue dropbox" kept for submission of assignments. Sometimes they get jammed with an overload of assignments too.

For the last month - this naughty idea has been haunting me. Whenever I see those blue boxes (i.e. when I go to drop my assignment), there's this tremendous itch to take off with them. Or just hide it somewhere. To finish this instrument of torture for ever. I know it's wishful thinking ... they'll just get some more of them.

But even then it will be fun to see my friends searching for dropboxes in the middle of the night, calling up TAs from their sleep or whatever they might be up to, TAs searching for new dropboxes and all kinds of other fun happening while I giggle away to glory :)

Samik

Class of 2007

Take-aways from Entrepreneurship class:

2006-07-31T11:15:00.000+05:30

Entrepreneurship Class:

Though the course's main objective is not to make everyone an entrepreneur, it can provide sufficient tools and pointers to think about Entrepreneurship. It says "What to do and what not to do?" but doesn't say "What to do?” Also, we are very fortunate to have Prof. S Venkataraman, who is an entrepreneur by heart.

The Lesson that touched my heart is - the Ruth M Owades case (Very famous HBS Case). The case is about Ruth, who is a well qualified, top rank employee, who wants to pursue her entrepreneurial life. She will be left with three options front.

The class discussion is to evaluate the best among the three. Most of us looked conservative and concluded that 'she should wait for one more year and do some more analysis', which I strongly differed for the reasons - waiting for one year doesn't add much qualitative data. The more analysis we do, the more information we need, which makes it as 'Analysis Spiral' and the bottom line is "no decision will be made". Prof. gave some important insights, which I feel are the major take-aways from the case.

(1)There should be proper balance between 'Bias for Analysis’ & ‘Bias for action’ and thereby minimizes the tendency to consider ‘opportunity’ from an objective point of view. It also makes sense to spend your imagination before you spend your money.

(2) Spend your imagination before you spend your money. Keep the investment as minimum as possible - always there is an option to exit.

(3) Decisions are not number based all the times. Sometimes we need to go with faith.

Kishore, Class of 2007

What is Consulting?

2006-07-30T10:41:00.000+05:30

The consulting club conducted its first major event today. It was a panel discussion on a Consultant’s work profile and culture across different consulting firms. The discussion was moderated by our Deputy Dean Ajit Rangnekar.

Three Alums: Bejoy Suri from Accenture, Anshuman Biyani from BCG and Rohit Kapoor from McKinsey took part in the discussion.

Most of the discussion was centered around the kind of work consultants do in general with focus on strategy firms. What is consulting? What kind of work the consulting firms do? How is a typical day in a consultant’s life? How do you grow and learn in a consulting firm?—All these and many more such questions in the minds of many students looking at consulting careers post ISB were effectively answered.

The alums discussed in detail the kind of projects they have been doing since they joined their respective firms. The spoke at length about their experiences and touched upon the various assignments they have been involved in to give the students present a deep insight into the life of a consultant. Ajit provided us with his valuable comments and narrated his own experiences as a consultant to add to the discussion and drive home the issues being discussed.

A consultant’s typical day was also discussed and it was emphasized, that though consulting careers give you a great opportunity to constantly learn, innovate and challenge yourself, it’s a tough job at the end of the day and you need to be one up always to succeed. Further, it was clearly mentioned that consultants had to travel a lot and keep away from their base offices for long periods adding to the challenges of the job.

Later an interactive session with alums was conducted to build upon the discussions and answer certain unanswered questions in detail.

The consulting club would like to thank Bejoy, Anshuman and Rohit for taking time out to be with us. We also thank Ajit for agreeing to moderate the discussion and provide us valuable insights on consulting careers.

Venkat

FinalStrat (July 20th, 2006)

2006-07-29T19:57:00.000+05:30

And here's what finally happened. We ended up 2nd. Hoorah! We kicked some serious ass in the final round! Doubled our contribution!!

Manukaran Karunakaran

Class of 2007

BetterStrat! (July 4th, 2006)

2006-07-29T19:48:00.000+05:30

HA! Bumper returns this decision in Markstrat! 6 decisions down. 1 more to go. We have managed a good turn around from our initial horrible performance. We are now 3rd out of the 18 contendors. My group and I are damn kicked about it! The topspot is still way out ahead. Let's see. Markstrat has been the most interesting I've done so far at B-School. Here's a small indicator of our performance so far.. the stock index of our company O. Now gotta hang tight and make one more good decision!

The pink line is the performance of my company!

Manukaran Karunakaran

Class of 2007

BadStrat! (June 19th, 2006)

2006-07-29T19:30:00.000+05:30

After 12 hours of slogging it out and turning in decisions, we returned home to sleep. 2 days later (after one brilliant Arabic Theme party at SV3), I wake up to the results of the markets reacting to all our decisions.

End results : WE GOT SCREWED.

Something we did is made us lose market share. We dropped from the largest market share before our decision, to the lowest market share. Now, we have to do some damage control.

EDIT :Some pictures taken at 4.00a.m. after my group's decision was done and we went to bug Chetan's group.This was them making their decisions peacefully before we went there.

This was them, after we landed.

p.s. For some reason, I think the umbrellas reminded Sam of a beach, and hence the "Beach Boy" pose in the last picture!!

Manukaran Karunakaran

Class of 2007

Markstrat! (June 16th, 2006)

2006-07-29T19:28:00.000+05:30

In term 2, we use one of the most exciting learning tools ever made in the history of B-Schools. Markstrat!

Markstrat is a simulation environment in which many firms will compete to maximize their profits. We will be using this software as part of our advanced Marketing course. The entire batch has been split into groups of 4 or 5 and 18 "parallel" play industries have been created. 5 firms A, E, I, O and U compete in each of these parallel worlds. Each firm holds a different market position like in a real world. One will be a market leader, one will be a close second, one might be a player catering to a niche requirement, etc. We compete over a period of 8 years. At the beginning of each year we are expected to make a marketing decision and we will see the result of our decisions (w.r.t. those made by our opponents) at the end of the year. Various factors are in our control. We can invest in R&D, we decide how much to produce, we control inventory levels, we control the distribution channel, etc.

I love these sort of games where you get to lock horns with other humans. It is always a challenge and an extremely dynamic environment. It definitely beats playing against a computer. I have been looking forward to play this game for quite some time now. Supposed to be one of the most exciting (and also hectic) periods during the MBA program. In our case, we have the first decision for all the groups has already been made by the professor. We now take over and make the next 7 decisions. This "game" accounts for 40% of the grade, which makes it even more interesting. Our first Markstrat decision is due tomorrow morning. I think tonight will be a looong night, considering we are still learning about the industry we're competing in, our own strenghts and weaknesses and we still have to learn about our opponents.

Manukaran Karunakaran

Class of 2007

The GOAL

2006-07-26T22:39:00.000+05:30

Operations... hmm... what is it all about? Wondering why am I talking about operations when I am doing an MBA??.. :) No I am still sane enough... this is related to the operations of a manufacturing firm that was being discussed in the book GOAL by Goldratt.. A nice book. Written like any other fiction novel but has a lot in it we could learn. Let me transfer a bit of this knowledge to you all.. ;) It mainly talks about 3 things: Increasing throughput, decreasing inventory and decreasing operating expense. Let me relate all this to me doing an MBA at ISB..

Increasing throughput:

Hmmm.. whats the output of doing an MBA? I would say a fat pay packet with a satisfactory job.. ;) How am I supposed to increase throughput in those terms then? I will just try and apply to those jobs meeting the above criteria... that solves my problem...

Next is decreasing inventory:

Oh come on!! I already have quite less when it comes to inventory. My brain's shelf space is almost zero.. it might have been that way since quite some time as it doesnt have the capacity to imbibe anymore. :) Inventory is already reduced to the minimum possible.. :) This goes out of the window!!

Now comes decreasing operating expense:

All expense that was supposed to come by has already gone by.. already paid my tution fees.. :( the only expense I can decrease now is my diet expense... I hope I dont have to decrease that.. Come on.. i dont think I will able to achieve my GOAL, if I decrease that operating expense.. ;)

So all in all, looks like the learnings dont apply to me at this moment.. :) Jokes apart, the book was really interesting with all the mix needed to keep you engrossed till the last page. A good buy for me!!

Mahesh Shenoy

Term Break on Campus

2006-07-23T02:35:00.000+05:30

As I promised, I am back with the details of the term break where in I didn’t even touch the books.. :) It’s different when you wake up at the time you want and go laze in the dining hall doing a late breakfast, suddenly get up thinking you had some assignment to catch up on and then again realizing that this is a term break... :)

Movies Movies Movies... Watched GolMaal.. The security guy at the theatre suggested us this movie and I was looking around for him after I got out of the hall.. wanted to strangle him as he not only made us waste some precious money but also made us go through a torture for two and a half hours.. Looks like he pulled up a fast one on us, just like the characters in the movie.. Then came Superman Returns.. he did return but from where why how?.. no one knows.. neither do I... It was a tough ask to sit in an AC theatre for two and half hours at a stretch.. :) Now its going to be the desi superman's turn tonight.. yeah its KKrish.. :) lets see how this one goes.. :)

So this term break has been full of outings to the city.. have come to know more about Hyderabad roads.. :) Soon all this would come to an end with the term starting day after tomorrow.. most people would have even started doing pre reads for the first day of the term and here I am sitting and writing this blog.. time to catch up on some readings myself..:)

Mahesh Shenoy

The fun never ends..

2006-07-18T19:48:00.000+05:30

Today is the day we, ISBians of Co2007, would be called 25% MBAs. Yes we have achieved it... we have crossed hurdles involving the optimization of our lives, economies of our fellow men sitting across the ocean. Looks like I was the one who set up the operations for all the big firms all over the world and I was the one who strategized each and every move for them. Even the biggest of all researchers would not have chalked out successful plans for so many companies in one and half hours which I did sitting in the examination hall.. :) Last but not the least... customers are GOD... marketing is a religion.. but I dont know if I should be worshiping it.. :) Can someone please enlighten me??.. :)

All said and done... it was another wonderful episode (2nd out of 8) coming to an end... as the story unfolds, I am getting more curious as to whats more in store... Also this would be my first term break spent on campus.. It would be a completely different experience to stay on campus and you have the option of not studying anything... am raring to experience that feeling... must be awesome... :) Come back in another couple of days and you will definitely find another post with details on how I felt.. ;) Ciao!!.. :)

Mahesh Shenoy

Tennis at 2AM...

2006-07-14T19:37:00.000+05:30

... Come US Open, we have at least 2 ISB folks ready to take on the stalwarts.. :) Off late we realized that just studying all the time everyday and indulging in so-called intellectually stimulated discussions wears us out mentally. So there is Srikant and me, who have taken this initiative (for ourselves) of being physically fit, which will helps us not to go brain dead whilst we are at ISB.. :) Now now.. don’t start thinking that we have started this just because we are not going anywhere with our studies. ;) Just kidding...

I love playing tennis and that’s the reason for this post. Fortunately we have folks around who are equally interested, no matter what the situation is with respect to the term. Srikant is just one of those and we played tennis at an unearthly hour of 2am... and boy.. did we enjoy it?... yes we did... sweating out on a tennis court from 2 - 4am in the morning was one of the weirdest thing I thought I would do here at ISB.. :) Moreover I don’t think I would have done this if I was not at ISB. Also with just 3 days to go for the end term exams, it added to the thrill of the game... :)

Having said that I am able to venture out on more of such opportunities to make my life more entertaining here at ISB than it already is with all the exciting courses we have.. next post will have one of the most sought after course mentioned with some details on it.. :) The wait is worth it..

Mahesh Shenoy

Online Application Process started for 2007-08

2006-07-11T17:03:00.000+05:30

The online application for 2007-08 has gone live and is available at www.isb.edu/isbapp or can be visited through the link www.isb.edu/pgp - apply now.

A few improvements have been incorporated, but most of the earlier processes remain unchanged.

Application Fee: Application Fee is INR 2,000 or USD 50 and has to be remitted online using a VISA/MASTER Credit Card. The applicants also have an option of using the ICICI Net Banking option.

Application: All changes/editing have to be effected prior to final submission and once submitted, no changes are possible nor can they view the application. They can only save a copy of the print view on their system (currently in word format). Once the pdf format is developed, it could be saved in the system as a pdf doc. (we are still working in it). Once submitted, they will be able to see the status of the application from the same link.

Resume: Applicants need not fill in any resume template; the system will generate a resume on its own based on the details filled in by the applicant.

Recos/Evaluations: The format is same as last year. A Soft copy of the Evaluation Form is available as a part of the application. The applicant has to fill in his details and forward a soft copy/hard copy to the evaluator. The evaluator in turn has to fill it, sign and seal it in an envelope and forward it back to the applicant who should forward these forms without opening the seal along with his/her application. Effectively, it is the hard copy evaluation that we will be accepting. A Minimum of two and maximum of three forms are acceptable.

Transcripts/Mark sheets: Photocopies of mark sheets and certificates or transcripts from class X (not from class XII) are required as part of the application.

Diploma – As usual diplomas will not be considered as equivalent of a Bachelor’s Degree (we have stopped using the term “Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent” in the admissions criteria). - Eg., Hotel Management - DHMCT or Master’s Licence Certificate for Marine Engineers. However, we will consider CA, ICWA, CS, AMIE etc.,

Scholarship Form: Essay, Pay-slip/s, Tax returns have to accompany the Scholarship form in order to process the same.

Application material has to reach in one single packet to avoid any confusion and the entire material should reach the Admissions Office by the specified deadlines. Applications without required attachments will be considered invalid and will not be processed.

Online application Status: Status of the application will be online and available at the same link www.isb.edu/isbapp .

Application Help: In case of trouble with the application, please write to apphelp@isb.edu .

Please write to admissionsresponse@isb.edu , if you need any further details or clarifications.

Markstrat D-Day

2006-07-11T04:20:00.001+05:30

Today was the day when the historical results of the Markstrat game was declared to the public..:)

Ok.. just so that you don’t feel out of place, let me explain as to what this game entails. Markstrat is a marketing game where in you are put up against different firms in the same industry targeting the same set of customers. Just like in real life scenario, you would find all sorts of market forces acting on your firm. You have to take decisions such that you have a competitive advantage over others and earn maximum profit. You have funds at the start and you have to allocate it judiciously towards advertising, employment of sales force, R & D, launching a new product etc. Your funds for the second decision would depend on the profit you make after the first decision… You are able to monitor your own progress and also your competitors’ progress based on the market study you do. We had 7 decisions to cater to over this last 4 weeks and every bit of it was FUN!!!

It was a nice thought to have the whole batch sit in the auditorium and have a look at their own performance at the end of the game.. with some groups rejoicing when they have done well and some trying to avoid giving answers to their neighbours for obvious reasons.. ;)

After such an experience, I wish we have more games to play during this course.. rather than crack some theoretical fundaes for some fundamentals that I don’t know when I will use.. ;) just kidding..:) Come on .. get back to work! There’s loads to study with end terms starting next Monday.. Ciao…

Mahesh Shenoy

Co2007

Editors Round Table

2006-07-11T04:20:00.000+05:30

On July 1, 2006 ISB was host to four eminent personalities from the world of journalism for a round table discussion on “Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth?”

The panel also consisted of two speakers from the Class of 2007 – Disha Rustogi and Ali Potia. The discussion raised some thought provoking ideas and led to a series of very interesting debates on campus. The Media Club at ISB did a phenomenal job of executing the event! For more details, check out: http://www.isb.edu/campussbuzz1/RoundTable2006.html

Welcome back

2006-07-06T23:28:00.000+05:30

So folks, here we are .. the ISB cult back in action on the collaborative blog. Here you will find all the wonderful experiences of the ISB community. What does that exactly mean? It will be a bit of spice.. a bit of exam fever.. a bit of placement fever... and all the fun that comes along once you are a part of this BSchool!!

Watch out for this space which will cover a whole lot of action for the years to come.. when ISB climbs the rungs of leadership in this highly competitive world of IVY League BSchools!!

WMBA Tour

2005-09-06T00:57:00.000+05:30

ISB is participating in the World MBA tour in the US. The following are the details of the date / time / place / venue

11 September 1300-1700 Los Angeles Wilshire Grand

13 September 1800-2100 S Frisco Hyatt

15 September 1800-2100 Seattle Bell Harbor Intl Center

17 September 1400-1800 NY Hilton

25 September 1400-1800 Toronto Metro Toronto Convention Center

01 October 1300-1700 Houston Hilton

Mr Menon, the director of Admissions & Financial Aid, will be at these venues.

In case any prospective applicant is from these cities / the US , please use the opportunity to get clarifications from the man himself.

Magazine Cover

2005-08-21T20:54:00.000+05:30

If ISBlife were a magazine, this is what it would probably look like.

Checklist for MBA Prep

2005-08-18T23:35:00.000+05:30

1. Which type are you – want to do an MBA program “this” year or want to do an MBA program from a “particular” institute
2. Decide the above
3. Apply to your undergrad college for transcripts
4. Even if you haven’t decided, but decided that you want to do an MBA program, take GMAT
5. Unless you are too good in both math and verbal, give yourself three months. Be good to yourself.
6. Don’t think about a second attempt. If you goof up the exam, then please DO give a second attempt
7. MBA from a good b-school is expensive. Please include GMAT prep and miscellaneous costs in the total costs. It does not hurt. The idea of paying USD 250 or USD 500 (for retakes) to GMAC, that is.
8. Give yourself at least a month for each school. Essays can’t be written in a sitting. You need to revise them a dozen times.
9. Wherever possible, inform the boss of your plans. Request him to be your recommender.
10. Coach your recommenders. This is the weakest link and something beyond your control.
11. In case the recommender asks you to write the recommendation yourself, try and see if someone else can write the recommendation.
12. If you can’t find someone else, you don’t have an option but to write it yourself. Make sure you at least discuss with the recommenders what they want to write about you.
13. All the while, keep thinking about finance. Reduce expenses. Try to put some savings behind. Scan for potential personal guarantors.
14. Ensure GMAC has sent your GMAT score to your potential b-schools
15. Be meticulous. Don’t make last minute goof ups. If you are applying online, ensure you have not waited till the last hour to push the application. If you are sending a hard application, choose a good courier. Don’t expect the courier to be more efficient than its worst possible service.
16. Read newspaper. Watch news.
17. Having prepared essays, having thought about why MBA, you are fully prepared for the interview. Even then, think about all the possible questions. Prepare your answers. Rehearse.
18. Celebrate at each stage. Good GMAT needs one. An interview call needs one. An admit letter needs one.

PS: I may have missed some points. Please feel free to add.

Vijay Mulbagal

NPV of an investment in an MBA Program

2005-07-27T22:48:00.000+05:30

I have been saying this ad nauseam – the reasons to pursue an MBA program have to be ‘individual’. The reasons cannot be generic – what applies to somebody else need not apply to you. One of the many decisions to make before considering giving up a job to do an MBA program is financial. It would however be myopic and sometimes silly to take into account just financial aspect of the benefits of MBA. Life and Career are not straight lines and cannot be put to a linear regression to understand. The complexity of these requires that we understand and appreciate all the variables, if ever we can enumerate all of these variables. Once the variables have been broadly figured out, doing a cost-benefit analysis is pivotal. Many of the popular magazines and newspapers refer to the payback period as a measure to appreciate investment in an MBA program. But now that I have attended one class of Corporate Finance course, I can, with some confidence, say that payback period approach is flawed and does not capture the time value of money (thanks to my Prof. who used a similar example).

Calculating NPV of the investment is much better way of analyzing the decision. Of course, all math and analysis begin with assumptions. Here too we make some assumptions to be able to start.

I take an example of a person with following variables to explain how the NPV can be calculated

Age – 27
Present Salary – INR 500000
Age of retirement – 60 Years
Return on alternate investment opportunity, r – 10 %

First, let us calculate the Present Value of the income during the career time when MBA is not pursued. Let us call this PV (No MBA)

Assume, Expected growth rate of income without an MBA degree – 5%

C1= Current Salary; C1 (1+Gt) = salary during subsequent years; t = 1, 2….32; Gt=growth rate, which is 5 %

PV (No MBA) = C1+ C1 (1+G1) / (1+r) +…..C1 (1+G32) / (1+r)^32 = C(1+G) [ 1-(1+G)^32 / (1+r)^32] / [ r – G]

=> 500000 + 500000(1+0.05) / 1.1 +….+ 500000(1+0.05)/ (1.1)^32 = INR 9017000

Let us now calculate the Present Value of the income during the career when MBA is pursued. Let us call this PV (MBA)

Assume, Starting Salary after MBA, C2 – INR 800000; Expected growth rate of income, Gt – 7%; Retirement Age – 60 Years;

Cost of MBA at ISB = INR 1500000

PV (MBA) = -1500000 + C2 (1+G1) / (1+r)+…..+ C2(1+G31)/(1+r)^31 = -1500000 + 800000/(1.1) + 800000 (1+0.07) / (1.1)^2+………+ 800000 (1+ 0.07) / (1.1)^31 = INR 15380000

NPV of investment = PV (MBA) Less PV (No MBA) = INR 6368000

Given the assumptions, investment in ISB MBA program is an attractive proposition.
One may alter the assumptions (according to the respective circumstances and expectations) and calculate the NPV of the investment.

I close this with a caveat – the benefits of an MBA are far greater than financial and I think a simple NPV calculation cannot capture the essence of such benefits. But, an NPV calculation will let one put down what one’s expectations from MBA are. It is to be realized that from the financial angle MBA plans need to be treated as any other financial investment and need to be put to NPV test. We need to explain to our people – parents or spouse or anyone else – on why we think this investment is worth its money and time and why we think they should make some sacrifices today to see a better tomorrow. Through NPV calculation, convincing them becomes easier – provided the NPV turns out to be positive and reasonably attractive.

Post Scriptum:

-Seek pardon from readers with non-quant/fin background. But this is the only way to go about making a financial decision

- INR is Indian Rupees

Vijay K Mulbagal
Class of 2006, ISB
www.itheabsolute.blogspot.com

Books to read (Global Economics)

2005-07-20T21:26:00.000+05:30

In addition to the list of "suggested readings" posted by Sumit Dhar., I am posting a list of good readings for "Global Economics". Prof. Krishna Kumar was kind enough to share this list with us.

The suggested readings already posted were:

Entrepreneurship
Strategy
Managing Organizations

General reading for Global Economics:

* john maynard keynes: the general theory of
employment, interest, and money &
the economic consequences of the peace

(after all he was the founder of macroeconomics...)

* friedrich august von hayek: the road to serfdom

(the dangers of government intervention. maggie
thatcher's inspiration.)

* milton and rose friedman: free to choose

(more classical brainwashing, if you didn't
get enough from me)

* john kenneth galbraith: the affluent society &
a journey through economic time

(a sampling of the prolific writing of a high-
priest of keynesianism, and a former ambassador
to india, one written in 1958, and the other in 1994)

newer books...

* amartya sen: development as freedom

(the human side of development. leftists,
rejoice...)

* jagdish bhagwati: in defense of globalization

(rightists, rejoice...)

* martin wolf: why globalization works

(rightists, rejoice even more... wolf is one
of the better economic writers around.)

* richard layard: happiness -- lessons from a
new science

(wealth can't buy no satisfaction. integrates
economics, psychology, anthropology, etc. to
question if economic growth increases happiness.)

* thomas l. friedman: the world is flat &
the lexus and the olive tree

(written by bangalore's paramour. overwrought
metaphors, and gross generalizations, but
what the heck, he's on the right track)

* robert e. lucas, jr.: lectures on economic growth

(technical, but the non-technical introduction is
by itself a masterpiece, like everything else lucas
writes.)

* v. s. naipaul: a house for mr. biswas (a novel)

(lucas calls it the great novel of economic
development! read lucas' intro first.)

* angus maddison: the world economy -- a millenial
perspective

(the authoritative source of historical facts of
world development going back to 1 A.D. and
earlier.)

* jeffrey sachs: the end of poverty -- economic
possibilities for our time

(the heart is in the right place, but will it work?)

* william easterly: the elusive quest for growth

(sachs' bete noire. former world bank economist.
if you read the book you'll understand the
"former" bit...)

* jared diamond: guns, germs and steel &
collapse

(geography and economic development and
downfall)

* octavio paz: a tale of two gardens -- poems
from india

(nothing to do with economics, so what?)

DVD:

* thomas l. friedman reporting: the other side of
outsourcing (the discovery channel)

(the cultural side effects of outsourcing, reported
from where else, bangalore...)

End of Term 1

2005-06-08T13:16:00.000+05:30

The ISB life is normally compared to a roller-coaster ride. You have the ups, you have the downs and you have eight rounds. Scream as much as you can, rejoice, enjoy but more importantly stay awake and learn to learn. The one way ISB is different from a roller-coaster is there is no second chance (unless of course your spouse decides to pursue his or her MBA the next year and you live here through his or her experience. Believe me, that is not uncommon here, as far I know there have been at least 2 instances in the last 5 years!!!). But, more often you cannot go back to the counter and come with another ticket. So for us here the first round has ended and there are seven more to go. And what a round it was!!! We had a truly enjoyable first two weeks of orientation - Honeymoon - as one alumnus remarked. We shook hands with 348 others from our batch (well almost), there were repeated shakes as we failed to remember their faces, leave alone their names. We were no more ashamed of forgetting the name of a person whom we met only two hours ago, simply because the other person also forgot our names. To add to our limited retention capacity we had eight Gauravs, seven Rohits, five Amits, five Karthiks and so on to make more life difficult. Finally, our brain settled with a few folks that it could remember and we made few friends and lot of acquaintances. There were team building exercises about which we have spoken already. This was the initial part and can be compared to entering the amusement park complex that houses the roller-coaster and feeling good about the ambience.

Then the term started. No one can claim that they didn't know it was going to be this tedious. If they didn't hear about it during the application process when they came in touch with the then students in one online forum or the other, then they were warned (to put it bluntly) about it during the orientation by all and sundry. It was time to "fasten the seat belts" early, so that you stay with the ride or be uncomfortable throughout the ride holding on to it. Everyone knew the rules. All of us were prepared. But this was our first ride. And first round. You can never be 100% prepared for it. We learnt a lot on the way. We enjoyed our stay. We struggled through the marketing case studies and economics and accounting assignments. We held on. We also had our lighter moments. We partied; there were different tournaments - cricket, football, volley ball and basket ball. We had the elections to the Student Board’s President and the Vice Presidents. Then came the bumpiest and the last part of the ride - the term exams. For a majority of us, it was not a happy experience. But most of us took it in our stride. We knew we learnt a lot from it. And that is more important. There are five more days of rest before the next round begins (I cannot find any analogy for this break in the roller-coaster ride). Time for introspection, time for exchanging notes and time to enjoy staying back doing nothing for some and to catch up with their parents, spouses and kids for others. Some of the guys have been gracious enough to share their learning with the rest of the class.

Term 2, or shall I say round 2, begins on Monday. Time to go again through partly familiar and partly unfamiliar terrain. But whatever happens, don't forget to keep your eyes open. These are memories for life, things that you can cherish the moment you are reminded of them. Don’t miss them.

- Karthik Ramachandran.

Pressure on Resources...

2005-06-01T16:11:00.000+05:30

China driving up pressure on resources

China has emerged as a global force that is driving consumption and production of almost everything through the roof, according to the latest publication from the Worldwatch Institute.

It says growth in China last year helped boost incomes in many nations, but also drove up consumption of natural resources, increased the prices of raw materials, and pushed up pollution levels. According to Vital Signs 2005, surging economic growth in China pushed world steel production up by one third in the last five years, exceeding the billion-ton threshold for the first time in 2004.

Wrong priorities

“Trends illuminated in Vital Signs underscore the reality that current global funding priorities may be misdirected,” said Lisa Mastny, Vital Signs 2005 project director.

“If just a portion of the money spent on defence globally were spent on development, we’d likely see a starkly different picture.”

Although rapidly industrialising nations with growing populations will increasingly leave their mark, industrialised countries with relatively small populations but sky-high consumption patterns remain a major threat to the global environment.

Although the US population increases by only about three million a year and India’s by nearly 16 million, for example, the United States has a significantly larger “ecological footprint", with 15.7 million tons of US carbon outputs released into the atmosphere each year compared to India’s 4.9 million tons.

Student's view - by Karthik Ramachandran

2005-05-18T05:53:00.000+05:30

I'm amazed at how things can happen differently at ISB. Professionalism is the key-word here. Everything is so organized that it is so refreshing for anyone new here.

Take for example the team-building activity that we had during the second week. I was so happy with the whole event that I've been telling all and sundry about it. "Team-building" has been something that has been used so frequently now-a-days that I was little sceptical when this was in my schedule. But, boy wasn't it great. We were divided into groups of 9 and there were specific games that the team needed to play.Each of these games (or activities) needed exhaustive planning and team-work and flexibility to changes as we progressed. The games as such, I must say, weren't very different from what we'd seen before. But the way they were packaged were different. The whole event was outsourced to an external agency that had experience in conducting such events for corporates.

Each team was given details before a particular game and was provided with the time and material for preparing for the same. And, there were some catches in each event that not many teams identified initially. It was how real-life situations usually occur. You cannot plan for all eventualities initially. As you proceed, you face a lot of hurdles in between and you need to perform some course correction to ensure you don't hit against them. Also, every stage of a task is important.

I think the most important thing was all the events were recorded and replayed to us after all the events were completed. Though some felt that this was going beyond a point, I felt this was good learning. There were some real moments where the team members did not co-ordinate well or where one team member didn't trust the other one and so on that were captured and played back to us - not to embarass the cIncerned person, but for us to appreciate the importance of team-work.

Other than the one I've mentioned above, i have several instances where the authorities have been so responsive that I have a feeling they are over-doing it (Obviously, we always have complaints !!). A week or so ago when a handful of us decided that volleyball was going to be our evening activity, we discovered that the court was not in a very good shape and we needed to clean the court, mark the ends and so on. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the next day, the court was cleared, lines were drawn and there was care-taker waiting for us at the court to ensure that we were fine. My instant reaction was "Wow!! These guys are pampering us". I mean a year down the line we cannot go out and expect the same thing from anywhere else.

From then on we have been enjoying our volleyball sessions (almost 3/4 times a week). The first day we discovered that we didn't have the stamina to stand in the court for an hour (atleast I didn't). 4 years of work life had almost taken away everything from us!! But now, everything's sort of settled and many guys are getting into a good rythm and playing well. We plan to try our hands at the other games too. This is your last chance guys, do it before it's too late!!

- Karthik Ramachandran (ISB Class of 2006).

PS: He had his birthday recently and yet to be dunked in the ISB Pool :-)

2006 batch takes charge!

2005-05-10T00:52:00.000+05:30

The ISB torch has officially transferred hands from 2005 batch to 2006 batch of students. All the 347 students landed up in ISB between April 15th and April 23rd. The 15 days between April 15th and May 2nd helped us to settle in our rooms, to meet each other, to gather the knowledge from alumnus, to know all about ISB, academics, clubs, events, parties etc., Orientation programmes and Team-building activities were organized by ISB.

Quality, Diversity, Experience and Talent are in abudance among this year's students. Though we don't have mentionable number of foreign nationals, the diversity within the profiles is impressive. Number of women in ISB has increased this year, keeping up with the women's advancement trend that is happening in India. Average GMAT of this year's batch is close to 700 making it a intellectually superior batch.

The faculty this year has been carefully selected based on feedback from ISB Alums and on reputations. According to some Alums, this is the best line-up of Faculty that ISB has ever seen. We can't ask for more...

The infrastructure is amazing and has been mentioned zillion times in all blogs and websites. So, it doesn't need any further adjectives. To accommodate the 347 students, third student village has been constructed. ISB Library is one of the best libraries in Asia and houses unimaginable amount of books, journals, videos, research papers etc., The recreational facilities are excellent catering to many types of sports enthusiasts.

We are now 1 week in to the Term 1. The lectures and discussions with the faculties has been enlightening so far. We are being loaded with numerous assignments and readings. Sure it is a hard-work, but it's a happy work!

With a loads of expectations from ISB management, Alums and prospective students resting on our shoulders, the benchmark for year 2006 has risen considerably. We are all geared up to propel forward the ISB brand, to learn from the best faculty, to enrich our career and to contribute to the society in whatever way possible. Our journey has begun...

My name is Bharanidharan. I will be administrating the ISB Life for the upcoming one year. We have quite a few talented writers in our batch and they are eager to contribute to ISB Life. So, Expect many enriching posts soon...

John Kenneth Galbraith...

2005-03-29T11:16:00.000+05:30

A few observations by JK Galbraith.

On the floating currency:
The term [floating currency] is a fraud. Economists and Central Bankers invented the reference to floating currency when instability in the exchange rates become inevitable. With prices rising at different rates in different countries, there was no chance for stability in the rate at which different currencies were exchanged. That was inconvenient. But what was inevitable and inconvenient could be improved by giving it a better name. So instead of speaking of currency instability and unpredicitability or disorder or chaos, the term "floating currency" was invented. The public heard the monetary experts & authorities speaking with wonderful solemnity of "the float" & imagined that they had found something new. They hadn't. They were in a bad storm and called it atmospheric ventilation.

On Unemployment:
Unemployment is always less evident in an agricultural economy. People divide up what work there is, and work less hard. Disguised unemployment replaces the open statistical unemployment of the industrial economy and factory system.

On Price Controls:
When prices are generally fixed, inflation manifests itself not in higher prices, but in longer queues, longer lines waiting for scarce goods (remember the License Raj?)

And a few more....
Income & Inflation:
It has been been proposed that there be a specific differential between the lowest-paid worker & the highest paid executive. Sooner or later, there will probably be some such rule....Income causes inflation and therefore must be restrained.

On Monetary Policy:
Monetary policy is a natural & legitimate expression of conservatism. If you are not concerned about unemployment, if you don't like trade unions, and if you prefer large business over small business that depend on borrowed money, you should be in favour of monetary policy. Umm....

On Education:
All education increases mobility.

Btw, When do you guys finish? And how about posting placement stats here?

Thoreau

2005-03-06T13:18:00.000+05:30

Haven't posted here for a while. And since I have nothing much to say, I shall let Thoreau speak. Something that struck a chord, when I read it today.

"We read the English poets; we study botany and zoology and geology, lean and dry as they are; and it is rare that we get a new suggestion. It is ebb-tide with the scientific reports, Professor ______ in the chair. We would fain know something more about these animals and stones and trees around us. We are ready to skin the animals alive to come at them. Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race. How little I know of that arbor-vitae when I have learned only what science can tell me! It is but a word. It is not a tree of life. But there are twenty words for the tree and its different parts which the Indian gave, which are not in our botanies, which imply a more practical and vital science. He used it every day. He was well acquainted with its wood, and its bark, and its leaves. No science does more than arrange what knowledge we have of any class of objects. But, generally speaking, how much more conversant was the Indian with any wild animal or plant than we are, and in his language is implied all that intimacy, as much as ours is expressed in our language. How many words in his language about a moose, or birch bark, and the like!."

From Thoreau's Blog

Dr. Rangarajan at the ISB

2005-02-23T14:19:00.000+05:30

Dr. C. Rangarajan

One country. The financial crisis of the century. One man. So when Dr. C. Rangarajan(ex-Governor of the RBI, ex-Governor of Andhra Pradesh and Chairman of the Economic Advisory to the P.M) teaches a course on 'Macroeconomics and Policy Instruments', you do not miss the course.

The course covered the principles of Macroeconomics, monetary policy, financial stability, exchange rate management and globalisation. The most eagerly anticipated session was the one on exchange rate management, coming from the man who bailed India out of the 1992 foreign exhange reserve crisis, in his capacity as the Governor of the RBI. And when you hear statements like "We had to devalue the Rupee", you know it was the real thing!

The course ended with Dr. Rangarajan uttering the words: "I'm sure our paths will cross in the future", an insight into the inexorable march of a man, who at 72, is not yet content to hang up his boots and rest on past laurels. Yet another source of inspiration at the ISB.

Haiku Hacking

2005-02-05T00:10:00.000+05:30

Boredom's tentacles,
Spread cancerous on campus;
So I write haikus.

And thus are born some haikus about ISB and the campus. No prizes to be won for guessing what the haikus are about. For the un-initiated, a haiku contains 17 syllables, with 3 metrical units of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

1.

Winter walks away,

Another term ends too soon;

An endless cycle.

2.
Placement season ends,

Kids lose interest in class;

Another term awaits.

3.
Summer serves notice,

The calendar’s end is nigh;

Reality calls.

4.
Two slender wine goblets,

Tall they stand on horizon;

Three will be a crowd.

5.
The twin phalli rise,

Like Tolkein’s twin towers of yore;

A third one rises too.

ISBLife: The Way Forward

2005-01-30T13:32:00.000+05:30

When we started ISBLife, the idea was to create something that will be useful not only to past/current/future ISB students but also to MBA students from other institutes.

Given the time pressures here at ISB, I feel we did a decent job. We were chosen as the Blog of the Day by Blogstreet. We were occasionally referred to by Indian's largest MBA forum. We have had visitors from companies like Motorola, Sun, Microsoft, IBM and from places like US, Australia, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan etc.

I would like to do is thank the current ISB students/alums who took time out and contributed to this blog: Arun Anantharaman, Manu Dhir, Bharat Gulia (if only we could retrieve the blog he deleted...), Bala Prabhu, Daman Deep Singh Soni, Ranjit Babu, Joseph Francis, Rangarajan Govindan, Girish Nanappa, Ramki and Commander Manoj Ramaswamy. ISBlife would not have been possible without you all.

This blog must continue after we leave ISB. While we will all contribute even after we leave, we would like to include students from the next batch as contributors to this blog. We would like YOU to carry the mantle forward. By joining today, we will get a feel for your capabilities and know whom to give admin rights to by the time you join ISB.

We have already seen quite a few of you blog. If you are interested in contributing your articles here, please send us a mail at isblife at gmail.com. Do mention the URL of your current blog in the mail.

Books to Read (Managing Organizations)

2005-01-29T13:37:00.000+05:30

Here are some excellent books on Managing Organizations that were recommended by Prof. Paul Ingram. As always quite a few of them are good for laymen and no not require you to do an MBA to appreciate the concepts they talk about.

Warning: The last two, according to Prof. Ingram, are slightly dry academic tomes. Caveat Emptor!

Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them [Gary Belsky, Thomas Gilovich]
The Winner’s Curse [Richard Thaler]
Competing by Design [Nadler and Tushman]
The Visible Hand [Alfred Chandler]
Tree: A Life Story [David Suzuki]
No Gods No Masters [Daniel Guerin]
Filling the Glass : The Skeptic's Guide to Positive Thinking in Business [Barry Maher]
How we know what isn’t so [Tom Gilovich]
Organizations in Action [James Thompson]
Organization and Environment [Lawrence and Lorsch]

Books to Read (Entrepreneurship)

2005-01-28T22:41:00.000+05:30

As promised in the previous post, here are some good books on Entrepreneurship as recommended by Prof. Venkataraman. Once again, thanks to Thimmaiah Chendrimada for following up and patiently collating the list.

Prof. Venkataraman's List

Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan, 2000. The Entrepreneurial Mind-Set. Harvard University Press.
Clayton Christensen, 1997. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Harvard University Press.
Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor, 2003. The Innovator’s Solution. Harvard University Press.
Drucker, Peter. 1985. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Harper & Row: New York.
Duncan Watts, 2003. Six Degrees. Norton Press.
Ronald Burt, 1995. Structural Holes (Chapter 1 and 3). Harvard University Press.
Scott Shane, 2003. A General Theory of Entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar Press.
Saxenian, Anna Lee, 1994. Regional Advantage. Harvard University Press.
Bhide, Amar. 2000. The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses. Oxford University Press: New York.
Sahlman, William, Stevenson, Howard, Roberts, Michael and Bhide, Amar. 1999. The Entrepreneurial Venture, Second Edition. HBS Press: Boston.
What do venture capitalists do? HBS Case 9-288-015
Sahlman, Structure and Governance of V.C. Investment, in Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 27 (1990)

Books to Read (Strategy)

2005-01-27T13:40:00.000+05:30

Over the past year or so, Thimmaiah Chendrimada has been collecting a list of books that MBAs should read. Quite a few of them don't require an MBA to understand. Over the next week or so, we will be posting books that are eminiently readable.

Today, we will list books on Strategy. This list was compiled based on inputs provided by Prof. Aks Zaheer.

Strategy Essentials:

Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter
Competitive Advantage, Michael Porter
The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael Porter
Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad
Gaining & Sustaining Competitive Advantage, Jay Barney

Competitive Interaction and Game Theory:

Coopetition, Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff
Thinking Strategically, Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff

Global Strategy:

The Borderless World, Kenichi Ohmae
Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, Chris Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal

Strategy and the Internet:

Information Rules, Shapiro and Hal Varian
Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence, D. Yoffie

Strategy Implementation:

Corporate Culture & Leadership, Ed Schein

Knowledge Management:

The Knowledge Creating Company, I. Nonaka & H. Takeuchi

Strategic Planning:

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Henry Mintzberg

Strategic Alliances:

Alliance Advantage, Gary Hamel and Yves Doz

Mergers and Acquisitions:

Managing the Acquisition Process, Philippe Haspeslagh and David Jemison

Trust and Networks:

Structural Holes, Ronald Burt
Trust in Organizations, Roderick Kramer

Other Classics:

My Years with General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Strategy and Structure, Alfred D. Chandler

Recruiting season...

2005-01-12T13:48:00.000+05:30

I guess the recruiting season at business school must have started. Which means its the time when students have ...

1. started worrying about whether they've practiced enough in front of the mirror
2. timed their "tell me about yourself" part to make sure its less than three minutes
3. dry-cleaned their suits (which are resurrected only during interviews)
4. stocked enough sets of underwear and socks (especially their lucky underwear)
5. made plenty of copies of their resume and cover letters
6. made sure they don't submit the wrong cover letters to the right company (oh yes, that happens a lot!)
7. made sure that the interview schedules don't clash
8. done enough research on the companies they're interviewing with in order to ask intelligent questions (questions which, ironically, they'll never be bothered with again once they actually join the company)
9. stopped studying and go to class just for attendence and class participation and hope to scrape through in the exams
10. completely given up on their hopes of pulling up their GPA

Since every student would be overwhelmed with interview tips and advice on "what you should do right during interviews", there's a good chance that the "what you should not do" part hasn't been given the attention it deserves. So, as my contribution to this festive recruiting season, here's a list of...

...Ten Things You Probably Shouldn't Say To A Business School Recruiter:

10. "I'm here just for the practice. I'm actually hoping to join your competitor"
9. "Don't you ever trim your nose hair?"
8. "Why do I want to work with your company? Hmm... man, that's a tough one!"
7. "I'm on parole"
6. "All that lying about myself is making me nervous - can I go to the bathroom?"
5. "What kind of an interview question is that? Are you nuts?"
4. "Do you provide free lunch at work everyday?"
3. "I hope you're not from HR. Because I hate HR"
2. "Wow! You have so much confidence in me!"
1. "Can I get back to you on that question?"

Ten Things...

2005-01-11T13:02:00.000+05:30

Ten Things You'll Never Hear At Business School:

10. "I should have gone to the other lesser-ranked business school instead"
9. "Did you know? I was rejected by Harvard, Yale and Stanford"
8. "Exams? We have exams here?"
7. "I love studying! If only I could avoid eating, sleeping, peeing and instead study more..."
6. "Financial Accounting was so much fun that I wrote the exam twice!"
5. "I don't have time to party"
4. "Academics is so easy, even for someone as stupid as me"
3. "Grades? Our exams are being graded?"
2. "I'm on parole"
1. "Nope, I'm not interested in finding a job"

Gmail Invites

2005-01-03T09:03:00.000+05:30

Had put up some invites here yesterday, but they got used up. Hmm... people are still looking for Gmail invites. Great! Here are some more:

Invite 1
Invite 2
Invite 3
Invite 4

I have a few more lying around with me. So if you dont have a Gmail account yet, mail me at "sumit.dhar at gmail dot com". Ravi Handa too has a few, you can mail him at "ravihanda at gmail dot com"

ISB Admissions Interviews

2004-12-21T09:38:00.000+05:30

I was checking the blogs of a few prospective ISB students and found them all populated with posts about interview preparation and stuff. Well, here is a framework that will help the prospective students answer all work related questions in a very structured manner. The framework is called START.

Every work related question and quite a few behavioral questions can be answered using the START framework. What exactly is the START framework?

S: Situation
Start by giving some information about the situation you were facing. This could be background information that will help the AdCom understand your position better or information that is vital to understanding why you did something.

T: Tasks
Given the situation, what tasks needed to be done?

A: Actions
What actions did you take? Tasks is the universal set of things that needed to be done while Actions is the subset that you performed.

R: Results
Based on the actions you took, what happened? What were the improvements? Usually improvements are in terms of cost, efficiency, greater customer satisfaction etc.

T: Takeaways
What were your key takeaways from this experience?

Practice using the START framework. Your answers will be crisp, structured and to the point.

All the best to you guys!

PS: If you have any good ideas you want to share with others, do post as comments. Will include the good ones in the text of the post.

The Rope

2004-11-21T01:49:00.000+05:30

Sometime back, as a part of our Leadership Lessons through World Literature course, we had Captain Raghu Raman as a guest speaker. Captain Raghu has served the Indian Army for over 10 years during which he was a part of the elite Mechanized Forces. He is currently the Head of Practice at Mahindra Special Services Group.

While I could not attend his talk, I was moved by his narrative titled "The Rope". This is something that I want you all to read.

The Rope is available as a PDF here: http://tinyurl.com/4fqaf

His other presentation titled The Unorthodox Address is available here: http://tinyurl.com/4n3y7

Jargon buster

2004-11-08T21:45:00.000+05:30

So you're in the midst of an MBA program, or intend to get into one. Here's a short primer on the jargon oft encountered in the b-school business. Sprinkle a few phrases in your interview, and half the battle is won!

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)
you put all your money, 'x' on a horse on a sunny race day. Assuming the horse wins the derby and you don't pay tax, you take home an amount = 3x. Your ROCE = 300%.

Leverage
you put in you money = 'x' and borrow an amount '1.5x' from your friend. Now you put all this money into the bet described above. If you win, you get 7.5x. You pay back your friend 2x and keep 5.5x for yourself. Your ROCE = 550%.

Competitive Strategy
a.k.a gameplan. In cricket parlance, comp strat would be moving Harbhajan to umpire Bansal's end during the last test match against Australia so that the last man would be given out lbw.

Competitive Advantage
a.k.a sucker punch, if you have one. In cricket parlance, India's C.A would be the dusty pitch dished out in Bombay.
Usage: The dust bowl was India's comp. adv.

Value Chain
all the activities involved in producing a product or service. For eg., when you eat a heavy meal and experience a cathartic expurgation of you bowels the next morn, think of your body as a reverse value chain.
Usage: We must analyze the industry' s value chain to develop a differentiation strategy.

Value appropriation
your cut in the business. For eg., if you are a slave coder earning 4 lakhs p.a and your company bills you at $4ooo per month, then use as below.
Usage: My employer's been appropriating the value in this software value chain. (Notice that you're now getting good at this game, you just used two catch-phrases in one sentence.)

So go ahead, use these terms on your friends and surprise them. Better still, throw them at your boss and colleagues and watch yourself rise in their esteem.

Poseidon

2004-11-05T08:21:00.000+05:30

The ISB B-School event Poseidon is finally live.

Poseidon is the annual b-school festival at the ISB. Poseidon offers a common platform for students from the finest business schools all over the world to test their mettle in competitive events. The following events would take place:

· Twister – Online strategy game
· Tsunami – Biz Quiz
· Vortex – Fin Quiz
· Bounty – Fin Paper Presentation
· Blizzard – Mktg Quiz
· The Coke Wave – Mktg Case Competition
· Turbulence – Energy Case Competition
· Horizon – Emerging Markets Debate
· Typhoon – Entrepreneurship Case Competition
· Torrent – Tech Quiz
· Cyclone – Tech/SCM Paper Presentation
· Bermuda Triangle – Tech Case Competition

There will also be many informal events like Rock Show and Blind Date. Special note should be taken of Twister – the online strategy game. It’s the toughest strategy game to be played in cyberspace.

For details, please visit www.isb-poseidon.com .
Dates: November 27-28, 2004
Venue: ISB Campus, Hyderabad, India
Contact address: Email: poseidon@isb.edu www.isb-poseidon.com

Kasparov and Business Strategy

2004-10-02T18:14:00.000+05:30

According to Kasparov "What separates a winner from a loser at the grand-master level is the willingness to do the unthinkable. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough. Given the opportunity, I must have the guts to explode the game, to upend my opponent's thinking and, in so doing, unnerve him.

So it is in business: One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized. So, yes, a sort of courage is paramount. But that courage must be tempered by other less-glamorous qualities.

Read more on what Kasparov has to say on Business Strategy here.

Writing B-School Essays

2004-09-29T21:20:00.000+05:30

A reader of this blog, Sunil Iyengar, wrote to me asking me how one should go about writing essays for the ISB application. Instead of telling him what I think should be done, I mailed a couple of people in ISB asking them for some fundaes on what strategy they adopted while writing B-School essays. Here is what they had to say:

Tarandeep (Tarandeep_Ahuja at pgp2005.isb.edu):
Be yourself. Get the essay reviewed by some people who you know are good and will give you constructive feedback. Make sure it ties up with the rest of your application - The application is to be looked on as a whole - don’t look at essays separately. Essays are the opportunity for you to tell the person reading something about yourself, that isn’t captured in your resume. But most importantly - Be yourself.

Amandeep(amandeep_singh at pgp2005.isb.edu):
Admission essays are one of the most crucial aspects of the MBA application package. As a result, they should be informative, unique and also reflective of your personality, achievements and interests. I have just given the broad themes and how you should approach for writing essays on them.

Why MBA and Future Plans?
Arguably, this is one of the most important essays. Convey how your past experiences and your future plans motivate to get you an MBA. The essays should convey a strong sense of future. You should concretely identify the sort of position (preferably only one) you intend to pursue and should lay out the steps needed to get to that position. The whole essay should display a logical layout and should convey a strong sense of optimism and success.

Why this school?
In this essay articulate why this school suites you the most. Go through the website of the school thoroughly. Collect info from your friends or other contacts. Talk about the course curriculum and how it fits with your future goals. You can dwell on the school’s diversity, faculty or any other aspect you find fascinating (Could be friendly student body, research orientation etc).

Why You?
This essay is the perfect marketing board for you. To demonstrate that you are unique and also desirable candidate for the school, make this essay speak your personality out. Write in the style which comes naturally to you. Highlight your major achievements. Most of all support your assertions with examples.

Apart from that be concise and avoid verbosity. Be clear of common grammatical and structural issues of the essays. Finally a good beginning and a well thought out ending can make a lot of difference!

Kanan (kanan_nabar at pgp2005.isb.edu ):
I started well in advance - it takes at least 1 month (especially if you're working and doing apps after work hours or on weekends) and over 4-5 drafts.

Looked at the entire application as a package - it was after all my face to the admission's committee. Actually listed down my USPs & tried to bring that out through various examples. I always knew that with my non-engineering/non-CA background, 'diversity' was my ticket to a seat at any b-school - so played that up sufficiently and highlighted how my experiences could add value to a classroom.

Most importantly, tied everything in like an integrated campaign - even made my referees read my essays before drafting their recommendation letters so that they'd focus on similar attributes (as highlighted in my essays)

Girish (girish_nanappa at pgp2005.isb.edu):
This year's essay topics are very similar to last year's, with the notable exception of the case based essay. How did I approach writing for them? To tell the truth... pretty much whatever came to me at 9 am on the coffee-fuelled last day of the application deadline :) But then, you see, I had by then, spent an inordinate amount of time thinking over the essays and making notes for each of the topics so it all tumbled out quite easily.

So here is what really worked - spend some time looking at the topic you are most comfortable with. Every time you are in a meeting (What? You mean you don’t have meetings? You ARE working, aren't you?) and someone bores on with mindless statistics, its Time To Think About Your Essays. Make a list of things you have done until now - where you did your schooling, college - and what were the things you achieved there that would set you apart from other students. Like Dee (name changed to protect identity) could write of his amazing ability to locate a high quality, free-porn site from among the millions of very mediocre ones that lie scattered over the Net or Daman could talk about his preternatural ability to sniff out alcohol from a distance of over 300 yards. Or like the time your teacher made you stand in the sun when you would not rat on your thieving classmate, and the principal who publicly commended you for your integrity.

Or the time you overcame your extreme vertigo by signing up for flying lessons through your NCC squadron. Even the time that you got caught in flagrante delicto critically comparing physical differences with your teachers daughter, behind the shelves in the chemistry laboratory... er... maybe not. In any case, the stuff that you think is complementary to your 'One Page' resume. Using the resume as a template, put in some flesh and blood so that you come out looking like a whole person. When we look at your first essay - thats what we are looking to get a sense of. Remember you are trying to create a wholesome image of yourself that helps you stand out in the applicant pool. It really helps to talk to your peers or long time friends and get their view of what they see in you - they usually discern those qualities in you that you might discount heavily.

While 600 words might seem like a lot - try putting it all down and you will find that you are usually very short of space (like Dhar told me to keep this post to 200 words :) ). Do not feel constrained to fill in the application by hand - you can create the same template on MS-Word or StarOffice and get a neat print out of the essay topic and your response and attach it to the application.

The next two topics - the ethical dilemma and how you faced failure are important. It is very tempting and feels easy to manufacture a set of fictitious events and how you reacted in each case. But these are also very easily apparent to an objective reader, no matter how convinced you are about your powers of persuasion. Again, real life is stranger and far more interesting than fiction and these questions attempt to make you examine yourself. Each persons responses to this question will be unique and if you gave these about half an hour of thought each, it should be easy to come up with a good sequence of events from your life. Four hundred words can be enough space to explain why you felt compelled not to look at the guaranteed leaked question paper, or why you felt strongly enough not to fill in a weekly work report because you had done nothing the past week to justify billing the client.

Failure can be another mechanism by which you can put out what drives you and how you respond. It is also good preparation because failure happens here on campus even to the best of us - it is your ability to deal with it that will help you maintain your sanity and poise. So put it down as honestly as possible (for example being part of a company layoff, while painful, may not in itself be a failure, however the days afterward in which you confront dirty reality can certainly bring on the feelings of failure very strongly).

The last three topics are very straightforward. Most people have experience of working in teams, of watching good leaders within their own peergroups or organizations and should be able to relate easily and naturally to this set of topics. 200 words is a good sized paragraph, so dont sweat it, think about what you usually bring to a team meeting - you could be the one that breaks up the tension usually, or the one who usually does the groundwork or even the one who usually initiates meetings to get the team together - just put it down. The last one is a concise statement of where you would like to be with your ISB MBA - and it will be something that you will most probably be telling the recruiter when you interview for jobs at the end of the next year!

In all your essays please use good grammar. No matter how routine it may seem, bad grammar could just make the difference between you and a lesser applicant - or it could be really bad if in your Business Writing Class, yours is the essay that gets chosen for the "How Not to Write an Essay" example ;)

All the very best!

The Ketchup Conundrum

2004-09-28T14:22:00.000+05:30

Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?

- By Malcolm Gladwell

Many years ago, one mustard dominated the supermarket shelves: French's. It came in a plastic bottle. People used it on hot dogs and bologna. It was a yellow mustard, made from ground white mustard seed with turmeric and vinegar, which gave it a mild, slightly metallic taste. If you looked hard in the grocery store, you might find something in the specialty-foods section called Grey Poupon, which was Dijon mustard, made from the more pungent brown mustard seed. In the early seventies, Grey Poupon was no more than a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year business. Few people knew what it was or how it tasted, or had any particular desire for an alternative to French's or the runner-up, Gulden's. Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. In the food world that almost never happens; even among the most successful food brands, only about one in a hundred have that kind of conversion rate. Grey Poupon was magic.

So Heublein put Grey Poupon in a bigger glass jar, with an enamelled label and enough of a whiff of Frenchness to make it seem as if it were still being made in Europe (it was made in Hartford, Connecticut, from Canadian mustard seed and white wine). The company ran tasteful print ads in upscale food magazines. They put the mustard in little foil packets and distributed them with airplane meals--which was a brand-new idea at the time. Then they hired the Manhattan ad agency Lowe Marschalk to do something, on a modest budget, for television. The agency came back with an idea: A Rolls-Royce is driving down a country road. There's a man in the back seat in a suit with a plate of beef on a silver tray. He nods to the chauffeur, who opens the glove compartment. Then comes what is known in the business as the "reveal." The chauffeur hands back a jar of Grey Poupon. Another Rolls-Royce pulls up alongside. A man leans his head out the window. "Pardon me. Would you have any Grey Poupon?"

In the cities where the ads ran, sales of Grey Poupon leaped forty to fifty per cent, and whenever Heublein bought airtime in new cities sales jumped by forty to fifty per cent again. Grocery stores put Grey Poupon next to French's and Gulden's. By the end of the nineteen-eighties Grey Poupon was the most powerful brand in mustard. "The tagline in the commercial was that this was one of life's finer pleasures," Larry Elegant, who wrote the original Grey Poupon spot, says, "and that, along with the Rolls-Royce, seemed to impart to people's minds that this was something truly different and superior."

Read the full story here!

Strange Brew!

2004-09-26T08:53:00.000+05:30

Solids usually melt when they are heated, and liquids turn into gas, although exceptions do exist when heating leads to chemical changes that cannot be reversed, such as polymerisation. However, a reversible transition in which a liquid becomes a solid when heated has never been observed until now.

French scientists have discovered that a liquid solution containing α-cyclodextrine (αCD), water and 4-methylpyridine (4MP) solidifies on heating. When you heat it between 45 and 75C, it becomes solid. But as it is not a chemical reaction, the process is fully reversible. That is, when you decrease the temperature, this solid melts and turns again into a liquid.

Read the complete article here.

Social networking apps in the enterprise

2004-09-24T01:32:00.000+05:30

Social networking has become a popular seed for entrepreneurs to building ideas around nowadays. Beyond the fad of the already existing online dating applications, there are some interesting web sites like LinkedIn.com which are trying to build paid services around the concept of providing an opportunity to network with the kind of people you want. There many claims and counter claims about the effectiveness of these applications. Not withstanding the unproven nature of these plans, many others have gotten on to the bandwagon. Check ICQ universe on icq.com for example.

While many of these have tended to concentrate on the retail customer, the enterprise customer is already being targeted with a different kind of application of social networking concepts. Combining the math of graph theory with the basics of social communication theory, companies like spoke.com and visiblepath.com are offering some really interesting applications to enterprise customers. Applying the social networking concepts to sales forces and business networking within organizations and combining such ideas with CRM applications these companies results in interesting consequences for the enterprise. It provides a new way of helping its own employees track, follow and close new customer deals using the contacts of fellow employees. The attempt is also to reduce cases where the lack of a referral is a bottleneck while pursuing a new lead. Pretty neat.

Lets also look inward into the enterprise. If you get to dig deeper into the math of social networking, you will notice a striking similarity between what the math helps you find out and what we learnt in term 4 as organizational behavior. Here is a way through which the computer mediated communication mechanisms (in short e-mail etc.) can be used to build a map of the organization that can tell you who is the center of the influence network, where the structural holes are and so on... If an application can analyze that and present it to you, especially if you are managing teams across cities and geographies, wouldn't that be great? If you can easily find answers to questions like, "Is my marketing and sales team in the US talking enough to my R&D teams in India and Philippines", I think there will be many takers.

Saving Energy

2004-09-19T09:44:00.000+05:30

From Boing-Boing and Slashdot:

Saving Energy Without Derision is a new (and free) e-book by former Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff. This book is intended to be a real-world, no-nonsense, thoroughly documented collection of easy-to-implement recommendations to help the average thoughtful person to pick the "low-hanging fruit" of conservation and renewable energy.

The author is after the easy 75% of actions we can all take (but almost uniformly ignore) that most certainly make a difference in energy costs (after all that's what most people care about) and adjuring a bit of unnecessary adverse impact on the environment.

The author (who welcomes comments at zalan8587@qwest.net) intends to continuously update the book (consistent with readership interest) and address many new topics. For example, next on his list is an analysis of the economics and scientific basis of fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen.

To prevent Dr. Alan's site from getting Slashdotted further, we have set up a mirror for the PDF document. Get your copy of Saving Energy Without Derision.

ISB Trivia Contest

2004-09-18T19:21:00.000+05:30

This weekend, we had the "Who Knows What Trivia Quiz" here at ISB. Each section was paired up with a Prof. and a nice number of people had turned up to cheer their respective section teams. Daman, Midha, Kanan and Vishal; thanks for all the help with organizing the event.

Section A came back from behind to give Section C a run for their money. But finally the huge lead Section C had built up, proved to be unsurmoutable. Section C won the Quiz beating its closest competitor by 40 points.

For those of you who came in late, here are the questions. Feel free to answer them using the comments section. Answers will be uploaded in a couple of days.

PS: Quite a few people have asked me about the source of these questions. While there is no one single source, I use a variety of reference sites which are considered the definitive works on a topic. These sites are:

Mythology: Pantheon.org
Word Origins: Wordorigins.org
Cartoons: Toonopedia.com
Art: Artchive.com
Movies: IMDB.com, Filmsite.org
Good Trivia Quizzes: Kcircle.com
Encyclopedia: Wikipedia.org

Applying to the ISB - How we went about it

2004-09-16T05:33:00.000+05:30

Looking at the profiles of some of our regular contributors and some who aren’t, their rationale in deciding to do their MBA and why they chose ISB to do it in seemed like a good way to help prospective applicants in their decision making process.

Dhar suggested this and so I sent out the questionnaire and got responses from the following people:

Ranjit Babu (RB), Manoj Ramaswamy (MR), Sumit Dhar (SD), Kanan Nabar (KN), Mamta Goyal (MG), Rangararajan Govindan (RG), Damandeep Soni (DS), Manu Dhir (MD) and Girish Nanappa (GN).

1. Your age, years of experience, last job and educational background

RB: 25, 2.5 years, Market and Media research software, BE Electronics and Telecomm.

MR: 26, 4 years, Planning & Budgeting, Corporate Finance (Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd) Chartered Accountant

SD: 27, 4+ years, Information Security, BTech

MG: 31, 8 years+, Team Lead(software dev. in telecom), B.Tech. in Computer Engineering

KN: 25 years, 4 yrs 5 mths in Marketing communications. Last job was as an Account Manager in the Rural Mktg Division of Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai. B.Sc. (Hons.), M.A.

RG: 26, 5.5 years, Research Analyst with Deloitte Consulting, B.Com, CA

DS: 27, 4 years+, IT Consulting , BE Elec. Engineering

MD: 26, 3.5 yrs, Team Lead(software dev. in telecom), B.E (Information Science & Engg.)

GN: 32, 7 years+, ASIC design/verification, BE and MS in Elec. Engineering

2. When did you start thinking of doing an MBA?

RB: Working 1.5 years down the line, I realized I needed a career shift. I talked to a few friends and colleagues and an MBA at that juncture seemed 'wise'.

MR: About 2-3 years into my job when I started to get the feeling that MBAs may be preferred over non-MBAs as one goes up the corporate ladder.

SD: Around 2002. But finalized it only around Mar 2003.

MG: Immediately after completing engg. but seriously considered it around 2 years back.

KN: Started thinking about it in mid-2002 - was the best way to help me steer my career in mainstream marketing.

RG: Was clear about it from the time I qualified as a CA in May 2001. I planned to get three years of work-ex after CA on the CV and start the MBA in 2004 – which is what I did.

DS: I started thinking about an MBA right out of college. Waited for 3 -4 yrs to get decent work experience and apply to colleges.

MD: During the final year of my engineering course. Seriously considered it about a year back.

GN: My final decision was the result of discussing it casually with friends and acquaintances for about 2-3 years prior and then visiting other b-schools in 2003.

3. When did you take your GMAT? How long did you prepare for it? What was your primary preparation material?

Everyone responded that the resources they used were the Kaplan GMAT Book, Kaplan Test Prep software, the GMAT Official Guide, Princeton Review books and PowerPrep software from www.mba.com

RB: January 2004. I prepared for about two or three months- seriously began reading the Official Guide and worked on the Powerprep in the last month.

MR: January 2003. Prepared for abt 2 months @ ~2 hours per day. I didnt find Barron’s very useful.

SD: September 2003. Prepared seriously for 3 months. Around 10 hrs a week. Also used quite a few online sources, which while not directly related to GMAT helped me a lot nevertheless. One example is: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

MG: July 2003. Prepared seriously for two months prior to taking the exam.

KN: Took the GMAT in Oct 2002. Prepared for about a month while I was working - took a 10 day break prior to the test.

RG: Jan 2001 – At that time I had taken the CAT and felt it would be good to place the GMAT close to that date. In my opinion, the prep for CAT and GMAT overlap significantly.

DS: June 2000. Standard prep, nothing special

MD: Dec 2003. Prepared for 1 month.

GN: May 2003. Prepared quite seriously for a month prior to taking exam.

4. Schools considered/applied to other than ISB

RB: None! I was considering INSEAD when I received an offer letter from ISB.

MR: Nanyang Business School – Singapore, LBS.

SD: Wharton, Stanford, HBS, Kellogg and Tuck

MG: Kellogg, Columbia, MIT and Duke

KN: Considered National University of Singapore & Asian Institute of Mgmt, Manila - applied only to AIM.

RG: None

DS: Cornell, Duke, CMU, Indiana, Emory, Kenan Flagler

MD: None.

GN: INSEAD, Simon - University of Rochester, Yale - SOM, Nanyang Business School – Singapore

5. Sources of information about the ISB, prior to joining

RB: ISB website, Yahoo groups, BW Forums, ISB Blogs, emailing alums.

MR: Mani Iyer (Batch of 2002)

SD: Primarily Nikhil Gehrotra, founding batch, ISB Website, various online Forums. Obviously blogs like this were not in vogue that time. :)

MG: Friends, ISB website and ISB session at Bangalore

KN: Alumni (Class of 2003 & 04) - Had 2-3 good friends who studied here & had shared their experiences through out - 95% of my decision was based on their experiences during the course and after. Other sources were the ISB website (for faculty, details), brochure, media articles (largely around placements).

RG: Followed school right from inception. Have had a friend in every batch that has passed out so far, so information has been available all along.

DS: ISB website (for faculty details), Business India, ET articles ,friends from Infy

MD: Alumni, ISB website and ISB road show at Bangalore

GN: Arjun Chittoor – from the ISB batch of 2004, ISB website (for faculty details), Business India, ET articles.

6. What are your top two reasons to join ISB?

RB: Located in India. The Faculty.

MR: Importance given to workex, affiliations (Wharton, LBS, Kellogs).

MG: The faculty and the fee.

KN: The duration of the course and convenient funding options (9 yr loan)
RG: Wanted a quality one-year program. Wanted that to be in India if possible.

DS: The Faculty.

MD: Faculty, exposure and unique one-year program suited for working professionals.

GN: The Faculty. The location (close to Bangalore - hometown) and fee structure.

7. Round of application when applying to ISB – 1st round (Dec 2003), 2nd round (Feb 2004). Did you visit ISB prior to applying and was it helpful in making decision?

RB: Second round (Feb 2004). I couldn't visit ISB because I was based abroad.

MR: 1st round. Visited many times before applying since I was working at Hyderabad. A visit certainly impresses you.

SD: Second Round. Didn't visit prior to applying

MG: 2nd round in Feb 2004, didn't visit ISB prior to applying.

KN: Applied in the 1st round. Visited ISB in Oct. 2003 - meeting alumni & getting a feel of the environment on campus both helped consolidate my decision and motivated me during the application process.

RG: First round. I visited ISB about a year before I applied. I already had favourable inputs on the school, so the visit really just helped reinforce the positive image.

DS: Applied in the 1st round. I didn't visit ISB as I was abroad at the time of applying.

MD: 2nd round. No – did not visit.

GN: Applied in the 2nd round Visited ISB in Oct. 2003, very helpful in making my decision.

8. Who were your referees and why did you choose them?

RB: A senior manager in the firm I worked for and my undergrad professor. I was closely associated with the manager during my tenure; I chose to ask a professor for reference because it hadn't been too long since I graduated. I was sure that both of them would not hesitate to provide me with stellar recommendations :)

MR: First referee - CFO of the organization where I worked. Reasons- he had constantly encouraged me to take up further studies. And I hv worked under him for a few projects. Hence the right person to assess me on my core area of finance. Second referee- Sr VP- Marketing. Reasons – I felt it was important to highlight that I hv worked in cross functional teams and had a holistic perspective of an organization. Hence the choice of the marketing person to underline this.

SD: My referees were both people I had worked closely with over an year. I felt they had guided me quite a bit in my career as well as my MBA application process. One of them was an external consultant who had worked with us on various Information Security initiatives and the second was my immediate boss.

A small note: Someone I know had called me up earlier this week asking if the professors from college days were OK as referees. Ideally I would suggest that you get your recos from your workplace/professional lives. If there is some genuine reason why you cant do that, only then go for recos from college professors etc.

MG: People who I had worked with very closely - one of them was my manager in previous organization for almost 2.5 years and the other was my peer with almost the same experience as I had. They knew me well and were in a position to write a fair assessment.

KN: One of my referees was my immediate superior at O&M who had later moved for another assignment - a lot of my essays revolved around my experiences while working as part of his team. I was quite confident that he would present a balanced view about me. The other was from a Professor who was my guide in the Honours Programme at the undergraduate level. He brought a different perspective (from an academic p.o.v) added added to the to the other referral (that was purely professional).

RG: My immediate boss at Deloitte and the boss one level above that.
My immediate boss – because it’s almost mandatory! J Well, I had worked with this person for the last three years at two organizations – as colleague and as sub-ordinate. I knew he would give me strong, well-rounded reco. My boss’ boss – Expat (Irish) – felt it would add a nice “international” touch to the app! I worked with an offshore team based in Hyderabad for Deloitte Consulting US. All my work was with consultants from the US firm and I felt this reco would kind of help support that position. I had of course worked very closely with this person.

DS: My roomies and a close friend were my referees. One of them was in Stern and the other is extremely profound. Good help in finalizing my essays

MD: Previous bosses. I chose the bosses I was currently working with, because I was doing well at my organization and felt they were the best persons to write a recommendation.

GN: Both of my referees were people who I had worked with fairly extensively. One was from a client company and quite senior and the other was from my own company and a year my senior. I could trust them to provide an objective reference while being reasonably enthusiastic about me.

9. Had you decided on an area of interest prior to joining ISB? Which area?

RB: I worked on Technology for some time, and was in close contact with Market research systems at work. I came in looking for some extra gyaan on Technology and sound fundamentals in Marketing.

MR: I had not decided at that time. In the course of the first couple of terms, I hv firmed up on specializing in Finance.

SD: Vaguely yes. Knew it would probably be related to IT and Marketing.

MG: Yes - Entrepreneurship

KN: Yes. Marketing - that has largely been my area of work and interest. The objective of the MBA is to help me further my career in this field.

RG: Clear again from the start (2001) - Analytical Finance and LCM.

DS: I wanted to dabble with Product Management. Consulting as usual was a backup.

MD: Yes - Marketing.

GN: Based on my knowledge/work-ex outside of ISB, I had decided Technology and was also keen on International Business (not at ISB).

Life in a B-school (Part 1)

2004-09-13T01:33:00.000+05:30

The quality of life in a B-school provides a constant source of fodder to gossip mongers. Rumour mills thrive on outrageous stories of sleep-depriving work schedules, mind-numbing assignments, back-stabbing peers and blood-sucking professors.

Are memories of life at B-school days snapshots from hell or postcards from paradise? This article marks the first of a four part series on life in ISB (covering students, professors, academics and parties) and would aim to explode many of the myths that surround the B-school lifestyle.

The Party Scene

ISB is caught in the grips of a party frenzy at this moment. Term 4 has just started, the exams are a long way off and there is an unexpected respite from projects and submissions. With the weather gods being benevolent, it was partytime this weekend at the campus. In a short span of three days, I attended five parties, and others around me claim to have attended more! The parties in ISB are generally well attended and dignified affairs, keeping in line with the maturity levels of the individuals on campus. Obviously, they also provide the students with a much needed opportunity to let their hair down for some of the craziest and whackiest times on campus. Here is an inside glimpse into the kind of parties ISB has:

Birthday bashes:(Rating **) (The rating is based on how happening the parties are)

An e-mail to all students at precisely ten minutes to midnight, marks the beginning of a birthday bash. The mail draws students in all forms of night-wear to emerge from their retreats and head towards the birthday hosting flat. These parties are marked by cake cutting and smearing, followed by the smearing of anything edible on the face of the birthday boy / girl. Past parties are known to have had instances of smearing of pizza's, pastries, pasta's, maggi, egg, ketchup, namkeens, apple pie’s and even cheeku-shake!! The party then cleans up and proceeds to the swimming pool for a dunking session. The success of the dunking session is measured by the distance the guest of honour is thrown, the number of somersaults taken and also the number of people dunked.

Patrician socials: (Rating ****)

Strictly 'by-invitation-only' parties, these are known for their fine alcohol, a great deal of dancing or just good conversation. Open air barbeque's are the latest trend in these circles. An invitation to these parties is a measure of the social standing of an individual on campus. These parties are held by select groups of individuals on a regular basis, have a good mix of guys and girls and are some of the most happening parties on campus.

Plebian 'baithaks': (Rating ***)

Plebian baithaks are a free for all. Boisterous and disorderly, these parties are notorious for the exchange of the most scandalous gossip on campus, which is generally exaggerated in direct proportion to the drunkeness of the gossip monger. The activities at the other parties often form the basis of many discussions. The lingua franca is Hindi and the conversation is liberally sprinkled with the choiciest of hindi, punjabi, telugu, tamil, bengali and oriya expletives. These are strictly 'men-only'.

'Ghar ka swaad' parties: (Rating ***)

Usually held by the married people on the campus, when pestered by their friends beyond the resistance point. These parties are held in the studio apartments and are marked by the sweet aroma of home-cooked food, light music floating in the air and the sounds of pleasant but curtailed laughter. Entry to the 'Ghar ka Swaad' parties is very restricted and strictly by invitation only. These are by far the most difficult parties to get invited to and the most rewarding also.

School Bashes:(Rating *****)

The Big daddies of the party circuit, these are organised about twice a term for all the students. Held in the mirror pools, these are large affairs, with DJ's from the city, disco lights, fog machines and huge speakers. Attendance is very high and several rare and exotic species of students, sighted only in the habitats of the library are finally seen with liquor in their hands. The dance floor is the most happening place and despite the large size of the mirror pools, these get very crowded. These parties are known for some very interesting (read naughty) themes, which make them even more fun!

Casino reminiscence meets: (Rating ****)

Held by a very select and limited lot of students on campus, these parties usually go on till the early hours of the morning. Very discrete and understated, card meets are known for their ample liquor and heavy snacks. Although the parties start with small stakes, as the night gets along, the stakes get higher. The winners are often spotted treating one and all in the cafeteria on the next day. Blackjack, Baccarat and Poker are extremely popular amongst this very tightly knit set.

Group camaraderie dinners: (Rating **)

These are marked by small groups of individuals going across to Hyderabad to dine in the fine restaurants that the city has to offer. Very private, these dinners are known for the good food and even better conversation. Such dinners are preferred by groups to enhance their team spirit and bonding, which often hits rock bottom after some disastrous group assignments. A lot of students generally not seen in other parties are spotted at these dinners.

Boozard binges:(Rating ***)

Boozard's binges begin without warning, as and when the bacchus worshippers on campus realise that one amongst them is in possession of intoxicating substances, which are not in the nature of cough syrups. Male dominated parties, these go on till the liquor lasts. Generally open houses, there is no invitation extended for these parties. The people blessed with a good nose can smell these from a mile and they dominate these circuits.

Gourmet soirees: (Rating ***)

Held by the connoisseurs of good food, gourmet soirees are held at irregular intervals in certain select flats on campus. These parties are closed door affairs, and have a very favourable sex ratio (generally three gals to a guy). They are well known for ‘theme’ cooking and many an exceptional talents are uncovered during these parties. These parties provide an excellent opportunity for students to impress their loved ones.

Pub Visits: (Rating ****)

A mail to the students from the social events co-ordinator signals an ISB pub party. These are alternately hosted by the pubs of Hyderabad. Marked by Karaoke / special DJ's, these are widely attended by all students. Dancing and boozing are the main activities. Well known for their stress-busting powers, these provide an ideal party for the ISB’ians to paint the town red.

Other assorted parties: (Rating **)

The campus also play’s host to a number of assorted parties including ‘professor-sponsored’ parties, club parties, women's pyjama parties etc. Rare and far between, these parties are kept hush-hush. Entry is restricted and the author confesses that he possesses limited knowledge about these parties.

Singers Meets:(Rating *)

Organised at night in the common area, these go on till very late. Marked by a guitar player, surrounded by a perimeter of enthusiastic chorus singers, old hindi songs still rule the charts here. These are held on a fortnightly basis and are well attended by the singing brigade and members of the lonely hearts club. The lack of talent is often made up by the enthusiasm of the participants. These get-togethers though much appreciated by the music club members, are hated by all others whose sleep is disturbed due to the obvious lack of talent of certain members in the club.

This was a small glimpse of the parties held at ISB. Obviously, these are indicative enough of the extent and the number of parties held, catering to a wide cross-section of people and preferences. However, let this not deceive you into thinking that the b-school world is a world of parties galore. Watch out for the article on academics as part of this series to clear your misconceptions.

ISBulemia

2004-09-10T21:00:00.000+05:30

ISBulemia: A Primer
ISBulemia is a new generation lifestyle disorder afflicting well, mostly ISBians. Though the affliction sets in quite early during the student’s term at ISB, it surfaces only during term breaks when he/she interacts with the external civilisation. The ill-effects of the disorder includes worried family & relatives, confused friends and most importantly, a disturbed patient. The symptoms of the affliction are given below. All ISBians are advised to conduct a self check, the next time they go out of ISB for a term break.

1. On returning from an outing, you are upset when you find that your room is not tidy, bed is as rumpled as before, footwear all over the floor, books and magazines strewn all over. The fact that you had locked your house when you went out does not seem to make a difference.
2. You hit the refresh button to death while working on any computer, unable to get over the habit of reading 2 spam mails per minute.
3. You give detailed explanations and draw complex charts to answer questions to which other people give monosyllabic answers. Example- Q: Dinner? A: Well, It depends. If you consider the fact that…..
4. You raise your hand before speaking each time. This causes interruption in communication, especially when you are on the phone.
5. You start addressing everyone around you as ‘dude’.
6. While watching Olympics, you were surprised that swimming pools were used for swimming and not dunking.
7. You set up a complex bidding software on excel to determine who gets the window seat while on a family trip.
8. Your spending habits increase significantly, because you compare any prospective expense with your fees and conclude that it is too negligible to matter.

The above is not an exhaustive list and our infirmary is collecting information on further symptoms as they emerge. Historically, it has been observed that the patients go through a traumatic period of post-ISB rehabilitation into the external world. While the good news is that ISBulemia is not life-threatening, it does cause significant disturbance to the patient’s personal and social life. Since only a limited part of population is exposed to the disorder, probability of research funding for ISBulemia appears very low. Hence self-management seems to be the answer, atleast for now.

E.F. Schumacher on Buddhist Economics...

2004-09-10T14:24:00.000+05:30

Earlier today, I read that you are doing GSB this term. Thought that some of you might it find it worthwhile to ponder over E.F. Schumacher's thoughts on economics. Maybe, you could raise it with your prof, and post his thoughts on Schumacher's ideas. Anyways, here goes...

Let us take some fundamentals and see what they look like when viewed by a modern economist and a Buddhist Economist.

There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider "labour" or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation.

From the point of view of the workman, it is a "disutility"; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.

The consequences of these attitudes both in theory and in practice, are of course, far-reaching. If the ideal with regard to work is to get rid of it, every method that "reduces the workload" is a good thing. The most potent method, short of automation, is the so-called "division of labour" and the classical example is the pin factory eulogised in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Here it is not a matter of ordinary specialisation which mankind has practised from time immemorial, but of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that the final product can be produced with great speed without anyone having had to contribute more than a totally insignificant, and, in most cases, unskilled movement of his limbs.

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties, to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, stultifying, or nerve-racking for a worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

From the Buddhist's point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man's skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other?

To be continued...

Top Ten Comments directed at the Profs...

2004-09-10T10:54:00.000+05:30

1. Prof, could you please use the black marker
2. Could you please zoom the xls
3. Break (Fav reply to any question asked after an hour of class)
4. Cannot hear. Could you please use the mike
5. Can we have a sample question paper of the exam
6. The 'On behalf of the class I would like to ...' speech by the CR
7. Should assignments be done in the pre-determined study groups
8. Could you repeat what you just taught
9. Can you share the class slides on the website
10. Without holding up the class i would like to <ask you a question which in now way is related to the session>

Government, Society, and Business at the ISB.

2004-09-09T19:03:00.000+05:30

Well, that's one of the courses we are doing this term at the ISB - Government, Society, and Business. And its created a buzz on campus for a variety of reasons!!

The professor handling the course has an interesting background - well atleast interesting in the sense that he should be teaching in an area such as this. John R. Talbott used to work as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs. He now writes full time about economics and politics and also teaches at UCLA's Andersen School of Business. He is also the author of a bestseller: The Coming Crash in the Housing Market.

The first time the Class of 2005 heard him speak was at the Indo-China Conference. He had a strong contrarian view as compared to the other speakers on that day, presenting China as a threat to everything from world peace to global health standards.

The readings for this course have been heavy and abstract - extracts from John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Plato, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Amartya Sen, Karl Marx and many others. The purpose I understand is to generate discussion on understanding ourselves as individuals and the role we see ourselves playing with regard to society.

As expected, many people find the course of no tangible use. And the fact that 65% of the grade depends on class participation often encourages people to contribute some far from insightful comments in class. Which really does not add to the whole experience of this course!!

I personally am enjoying the course and its probably because of my own interest in philosophy. The readings present interesting perspectives and help challenge many beliefs that we take for granted with regard to life. I also believe that the professor intentionally takes contrarian and provocative stances on various topics. I think he does it with an intention to generate discussion and that these are not really his beliefs.

One highlight of the class is the two pieces of music that the prof insists on playing in each class - one at the start of the class, and one just after the break.

While we had western classical music in the first session, last class we heard the Black Eyed Peas' Where is the love. The Prof's comment on this number was: "Listen to the lyrics."

And the first person in the batch to figure out why he plays these pieces of music will win an autographed copy of the professor's forthcoming book!!

Guts, Glory, Passion: Cameron Clapp

2004-09-09T09:42:00.000+05:30

Guts, Glory and Passion: The picture says it all. The picture is of Cameron Clapp, a triple amputee and a winner of 4 Gold Medals at the Endeavor Games.

According to Cameron Clapp's website: "I am Cameron Clapp, a teenage triple amputee. On September 15, 2001, 4 days after the tragedy of 9/11, my 15 year old life changed forever as I experienced a tragedy of my own. I was hit by a train, resulting in the loss of three limbs—one arm and both legs above the knee. Remarkably, my head and body escaped the accident with hardly a scratch. For that I am very grateful."

Dedication, Passion, Courage, Determination; thy name is Cameron Clapp.

PS: Atreya (atreya_rayaprolu at pgp2005.isb.edu) points out another equally poignant and heart warming tale. Read the story of Stephani Victor, the winner of the national slalom skiing title here: easyreader.hermosawave.net

PPS: Srini (Srinivasan_Ramachandiran at pgp2005.isb.edu) points out to the fact that 6 times Tour-de-France winner Lance Armstrong, survived cancer and a curse to win it. Check out Armstrong's page here: lancearmstrong.com

The Flapper

2004-09-09T09:24:00.000+05:30

According to the Keith, "As far as I know, this is the only paper airplane that flaps its wings when it flies. No motor, no rubberbands. Just a piece of typing paper, a penny and an inch of tape."

Instructions: Click on image for detailed instructions

Lovely!! Perfect project for the weekend. Anyone from ISB care to join me in the attrium for a Flapper competition on Friday? :)

Tech Leaders at Crossroads

2004-09-09T09:08:00.000+05:30

Being good may not always be good enough--especially for companies in the fast-moving world of technology. The tech world is full of examples of companies which once were leaders in their segments but are not reduced to playing the second fiddle: Apple, Netscape, Word Perfect.

These companies had cool products and loyal customers who loved the product. But in the tech world, sometimes, it is not enough to stay ahead. Cnet looks at five innovative firms which have sexy products and loyal customers. The companies Cnet looks at are: TiVo, Vonage, Netflix, PalmSource and Research in Motion (RIM).

The article analyzes the business model of these firms, their chief obstacles and what they should do to adopt to the rapidly changing market.

PS: Here is an article about the possible tie-up between Netflix and TiVo.

Perpetual Motion Machines(?)

2004-09-07T08:33:00.000+05:30

According to the Economist, it employs millions of people around the world. Its products are responsible for almost half the world's oil consumption, and their manufacture uses up nearly half the world's annual output of rubber, 25% of its glass and 15% of its steel. This industry accounts for about 10% of GDP in rich countries.

'It' in the previous para is the Automobile Industry. But the automobile industry is now over 100 years old, and it is struggling. Average profit margins have declined from 20% or more in its youth in the 1920s to around 10% in the 1960s and less than 5% now, and some volume carmakers have actually been losing money.

This article does an excellent job of identifying the pains of this sector.

Its that time of the month...

2004-09-06T21:50:00.000+05:30

- When you are figuring out the full form of the new acronyms being used for the subjects in the term
- When the extended hangovers take time to wear off
- When you promise yourself to crack the term
- When you nullify all the promises you made last term (because you made new ones now)
- When the LRC (read library) is not all that full
- When the photocopiers can have their monthly maintenance check
- When people ask every other person "Kaise gayee chutti?"
- When the reply "Mast", comes back irrespective of what you did in the term break
- When you try to get your seat changed in the class because of the new seating arrangement
- When you are done with the monthly quota of movies and the pile of unread books in the room
- When bloggers find it easy to create lists