Student Profile 1 - "Bops/Bopi"

“Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and ability to satisfy them.”

I was with the Indian Navy for the last 21 years as a commissioned officer. The time I spent in the Navy was extremely fulfilling; having got an opportunity to work in many diverse kinds of roles. The Indian Navy is a true microcosm of India having people from all over the country and distinctions based on state, colour, creed , caste etc. never are significant.

The kind of roles that I played in the Navy ranged from training cadets to managing an unionized work force to designing warships. However the true essence of being in the Navy is to be at sea. The days spent at sea are what make the Naval experience so memorable. Sailing in the Malacca Straits (almost like an expressway in terms of traffic) , climbing up on the mast on a dark night to rectify a defect with the ship rolling and pitching, spending a day on US Naval tanker, trying to get the boat started and repeatedly failing are events which will always stay fresh in my mind.

However the most significant and life changing event in the Navy was meeting my would be wife in the salubrious climate of Lonavala. While I was posted there, Vijaya joined the unit (with a bit of an attitude) being from the first batch of women officers inducted into the Indian Armed Forces. But then a place like Lonavala does strange things to people, and today she is here with me as I embark on my second voyage.

Although the quality of life, the camaraderie, the security and the sense of belongingness were overpowering, I still decided to step out and try my hand at something different. I was partly pushed into this decision by my wife who having been in corporate world since the last four years thinks that one must experience both the worlds. Once the decision was taken, I thought it would be a good idea to get a better perspective of a business setup before making the shift. I believe a formal understanding of functions such as economics, finance etc will equip me to hit the ground running when I join an organization in the Civvy Street. What better way to do it than join a premier management institute like the Indian Institute of Management.

The five months so far in EPGP have been worth the time and the monetary investment. The two most amazing aspects of this phase have been the faculty and the diversity in the class. Such an enriching experience – one needs to experience it to believe it.

Regards,
NC Bopanna
Indian Navy ( Retd as Commander)
21 years work experience
BE (Electronics & Communication)
Presently at IIM B ( EPGP 2010 - 2011 )

Term III Updates

With just few more days to go for the end-term exams, we are busy winding up our term projects and doing the required paperwork for International Immersion (Term-IV). The two biggies for the III - term are Corporate Strategy (CS) and Strategic Marketing (SM) that required daily reading up of cases, associated reading material and the mandatory case presentations by select groups. "Cofin" (corporate finance - CF) laid the platform for us to dig our own graves in the way of the mid-term exam, wherein every wrong answer had a generous slashing of full one mark, unlike the usual norm of 1/4 or 1/2. The class did creditably, except for few of us who were truly dead and buried, thanks to the few deceptive MCQs.

The highlight of this term has been the numerous cases, most of them from the Harvard Case Repository, which brought forth hitherto unknown facts about firms such as Pepsi, Coke, Monster, Blockbuster, Aravind Eye Care, Honda, Microsoft et al. It gave us an insight into not just their marketing and business strategies, but also provided an overview of the industries they operated in, the competition that they had to ward off their origins etc. Corporate Governance and Ethics (CGE) featured some of the most interesting and original cases (written by Prof.Bala himself), a movie titled "Other People's Money", and couple of videos on ecological disasters. The discussions facilitated by the faculty post these presentations threw up ethical and corporate governance challenges and how the parties involved played their part....mostly in exacerbating the situation. Two of the contemporary (news airtime wise) corporate disasters - Satyam and Union Carbide – were widely discussed, along with a presentation on ethical dilemma faced by one of our classmates from Army who was a whistleblower on the corruption in Army's procurement practices. Now we don't take the board of governors for granted and are cognizant of few of the reasons for existence of laws such as the Companies Act.

Marketing and Strategy case presentations involved two groups presenting the same case, followed by a faculty driven discussion. It was quite interesting in situations where in the two groups contradicted each other on their final findings about the case. The Marketing term projects feature topics such as Yahoo's mobile apps, Kerala-God's own country, Brand repositioning of Maggi noodles, EPGP branding, Microfinance Industry etc. The class has been working on recommending strategies for firms spread across diverse industries and some of the firms we are working include Yahoo, Bharat Forge, Havells, and McMillan Publishing.

Over the last few weeks, the EPGP acads committee has been on an overdrive and has been meeting the various chairs and trying to get the best of the electives for our batch. Towards this end, professors offering electives have given 15-minute presentations about their course content, outline, pedagogy and evaluation mechanisms. Students have an option of sitting in on maximum of two sessions of any elective at the beginning of the term to decide to continue or to opt out.

On the extra-curricular front, none of our ambitious plans of contributing to the institute's fraternity has materialized in this term. However, few of our classmates have been very regular to the weekly, purely voluntary, and pure non-credit course of Prof.Mahadevan's take on "Bhagavad Gita" in a management context. One of our class mates, who has been a regular at these sessions, would be providing us his views on these sessions in the coming days.

The international immersion term in South Korea promises to be an exciting experience and the first official engagement towards the international immersion falls right in the middle of III term exams – the introductory session on "Industrial Context in South Korea" by Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan. The South Korea sojourn seems to be packed with a good amount of interaction with the Korean industry based on the itenary drawn up by our hosts – KAIST Business School.

The elections for various committees is around the corner and the nominations have been finalized for the same. The class representative would be lining up the nominees for online voting for various positions. Secondly, the Bangalore rains are adding to the charm of the verdant campus, and that should provide some succour to frayed nerves (on account of exam blues)

- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran

End of Term-II - Reflections

The detox process was activated just as we stepped out of the last of the exams for Term-II. The wellness committee, not the one to compromise on the well being of the tired souls, proposed a toast at Woodrose. Some of the junta couldn't hold their horses (notwithstanding the sore knuckles from writing for 6 hours), so one group headed to GP impromptu and a few of us begged the Extreme Sports Bar to extend their happy hour by just few minutes to accommodate the desperate lot. It was sheer coincidence that Brazil was slated to play Chile in the pre-quarters later in the night, but for now we settled for Orange (Dutch) magic against the Mohawk-Slovaks. Later in the unearthly hours, we witnessed the Samba (Brazil) magic casting a spell over the Chileans that was made all the more better by bread omelettes and chai at the all night canteen in the campus. The Dress Circle of IIM-B is screening the knockout matches and it was a master stroke to catch the game with the PGP junta, on the big screen right outside the mess.

II-term really whizzed by, with most of the time being spent preparing for the individual/group term papers, group presentations and individual submissions. The well spaced out (5 exams in 3 days) end-term exams provided just a bit of leeway, compared to what hit us last term. We were told that our perspectives of worldly considerations would also change quite significantly around 5^th term (for good reason), but going by the jargonization and conceptualization of discussions both inside and outside the classes, the change seems to be quite obvious already. There were lots of self-reflections on our part- some voluntary and few forced (were to be graded) on different subjects and life in general.

As of today, the hot plans being chalked out include regular gym workouts, EOD football endurance tests, cricket mind games on Saturday, Ping Pong battles to increase concentration powers, and Tennis for the uber cool ones. Just when the adrenaline was getting too much to handle, we got the due emails telling us to do what we "try" to do best – pre-read for III term courses beginning tomorrow (Strategic Marketing, Corp Finance, Corp Governance and Ethics, Corporate Strategy – Did I count right...those are just four courses and not five. Yupiee !!). But we have been forewarned that this term is going to be another sledgehammer.

- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran