Date : 04/06/2010
Venue :L-21, IIM-BangaloreEasily one of the best seminars we have had so far: judging by the number of queries and mixed emotions (the eternal conflict between social good and personal gain) on display during the seminar session with Mr.Murali, CEO of RuralShores (http://ruralshores.com/).
Ruralshores, a BPO outsourcing company, is unique for its value proposition of low cost outsourcing for its clients and employment opportunities to rural youth Founded by a group of passionate professionals and funded to a certain extent by HDFC Bank and Lokcapital LLC UK, Ruralshores now aspires to expand to 500 centres in 7 years.
A lot of thought has been put into undertaking a venture, which traditionally has been associated with English speaking skills. However, Ruralshores caters to the domestic market where knowledge of regional and national language would suffice to meet the demands of the transactional work from its clients. Post recruitment, the rural youth benefit from the extensive training that they receive from selected city/townships for about 6-8 weeks. The organization signs 2-3 year contracts with its clients Ruralshores provides the rural youth not only a living, but also a chance to acquire knowledge and experience which could pave the way for them to realize their aspirations. Ruralshores taps into experienced professionals and MBA grads by way of providing a chance to manage whole centres by themselves, which is in contrast to the normal experience of leading teams. Ruralshores infrastructure and security arrangements meet the standards required of such BPO centres, including the ISO 27001 Information security standards. While there are obvious challenges in retaining the local culture and scaling minimal resistance from the village leaders, Ruralshores has managed to tap into the goodwill of the local community to revolutionize the BPO industry. It comes at a right time, when there is an overwhelming perception of China stealing the BPO thunder from us.
Inspire of the eager hands going up seeking answers, the seminar committee had to intervene to provide a welcome break to our guests. But the queries continued outside the classroom over cups of steaming beverages and snacks, with few groups even identifying Ruralshores as the subject of their potential leadership term paper. It was good to be exposed to the world of social entrepreneurship in successive weeks as part of the seminar series and definitely would provide more impetus to our batch to explore the realm of social entrepreneurship: first as part of the electives and subsequently making a career out of it.
If one wants a taste of the efficiency of professionalism of Ruralshores, do drop an email to the customer contact email of iMINT reward program. (The email support services are provided by Ruralshores).
An article on "Ruralshores" : (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/world/asia/13india.html)
- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran
Thursday, June 10, 2010
RuralShores:The BPO New Wave - Seminar Series
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Leadership Club - First Cut !!
Venue : MDC/L-11, IIM-Bangalore
Under the stewardship of Prof.NM Agrawal, the first event of the "Leadership Club" began with 3 industry stalwarts spending some quality time with EPGP students and sharing their thoughts, over breakfast. The intent of this initiative is to connect with industry practitioners who have held numerous leadership positions and who could provide insights into what constitutes their thought process vis-a-vis running a business. Today's event focussed mainly around "Leadership Challenges of Managing Growth", especially in the Indian context. The entire EPGP junta made it on time, (in spite of an early start of 8AM on a Saturday) and initiated discussions with the guests in splinter groups and were keen to know their viewpoints on general business matters.
Mr. R. Vidyasagar (Senior Director Human Resources, EMC India COE) kicked off the formal proceedings by mentioning that he came from an organization in which he was Black"buried" all the time, which was otherwise more commonly referred to as "EMC". He noted that his organization faced three distinct challenges on the path to continuous growth: execution of plans and generating accountability; Taking "Make" or "Buy" decisions; and ensuring high performance from the workforce without causing burnout of any kind. He insisted on the value of providing a human touch even in adverse circumstances faced by an organization, such as when letting go people. While he all for promoting innovation, he remarked that "Applied" innovation is the need of the hour, since unrealistic innovations were a huge burden on any organization. He was of the opinion that employees in an organization could be saved from burnouts when they are allowed to choose their future path/role in an organization without involving their immediate supervisors. He closed his presentation by urging us to be "fair, but firm" in whatever leadership positions we hold in our professional careers.
Mr. Kamal Kumar (Managing Director at DASSAULT SYSTEMES-DELMIA – provider of digital manufacturing and simulation solutions and specializing in product lifecycle management) talked about his experiences in BARC, HCL, HP etc prior to joining Dassault. He talked about the challenges he faced in relatively small operations but that required highly skilled workforce. He extended an open invitation to our batch if we wanted a half day visit to their centre and showcased a short video on how 3D virtualization over the internet interface is used in their organization to expedite design and review steps in automobile manufacturing.
The final presentation came from Mr. Mali Mahalingam (EVP AND CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER, Symphony Services) who briefed us on Wadhwani Foundation, Symphony Services and their chairman Mr.Romesh Wadhwani. Symphony services, while still young in relative terms, has achieved spectacular growth in a very short span of time, thanks to their unique focus on Product Engineering Outsourcing" - what he referred to as the "Third Wave". Their strength also lay in having deep differentiating factors to complement their 7 different business models. The group believes in finding the right talent for the right job and places special emphasis on this aspect to sustain their impressive pace of growth.
The leadership series not only opens new avenues to interact with diverse industry leaders, but also enables us to co-relate our theoretical understanding of leadership with practical aspects as shared by our eminent guests.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
"Term-II Updates"
Stock check time – results for first term have already started pouring in. As expected, few happy and a little more disappointed souls in the class. The professionalism from the faculty in the providing the key, solutions, marks and feedback has been quite astonishing; something which I have not been exposed to before.
Second term commenced with a revised schedule that resulted in over exposure to Leadership/Macroeconomics/OB in the first 10 days, since the faculty had other engagements in the coming week. Prof N M Agrawal (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/85/n-m-agrawal), who heads the PGSEM course, wanted us to submit a 2000 word essay on our leadership experiences that was to be graded. Prof Vasanthi Srinivasan's (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/108/vasanthi-srinivasan ) first interaction with us was on the second day of EPGP course, and she picked up from where she left in talking about Organizational Behaviour which has been reworded as "Managing People and Performance in Organizations". Prof Shymal Roy (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/105/shyamal-roy ) has an easy and calm demeanour even when he utters absolute cracker-jacks with the straightest of faces, even as he expounds theories on Macroeconomics. The book he has authored is our recommended reading for Macro and is a compact power packed bundle of concepts on GDP, Aggregate Demand and the likes. Prof. B.Mahadevan (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/58/b-mahadevanc) , likewise has authored a book of his own and he took the extra pains of ensuring that the latest edition reached us on time. It is also interesting to note that he is a Sanskrit scholar and offers discourses on Bhagavad Gita tailored for modern management weekly once for the students. Prof.Jayanthi Iyer appeared to make our lives easier by categorically stating that last year batch students felt that cost accounting (CA) was one of the easiest courses to sail through. She has however added in a unique concept of preparing for the case handouts from two perspectives that would be evaluated – presentation and commenting/critiquing. No let-up in the intensity overall.
The branding committee initiated few rounds of discussions with the Chairperson, IIM-B website content supervisor to hash out the possible activities as part of the branding activity. International immersion destination now will happen in the land of Samsung/Hyundai/LG – South Korea. The details are being worked out, we have been told that we would be spending considerable time on industry visits in Seoul and Busan based on an itinerary drawn up by KAIST business school (http://www.business.kaist.ac.kr/index.asp?klang=ENG). The added attraction to this visit is an optional extended layover in Hongkong/Macau while returning; obviously at the expense of the students:-) The first draft of the committee formation processes and guidelines has been drawn up and the recommendations /suggestions from the class are being factored in.
Seminar committee went into an over-drive and arranged two seminars from diverse fields within the same week - Derick Jose (http://in.linkedin.com/in/derickjose) from Mindtree talked about significant engagements in the evolution of Mindtree; Siddhartha Chowdri (http://in.linkedin.com/in/hsiddhartha) from Accion spoke about Micro-finance and the current state of MFIs in Indian context. The seminar series itself commenced a few weeks back with a presentation by Krishnan Madhabushi (Subbu from "Second Degree" by Prashant John) from the entrepreneurial venture Kwench. (http://www.kwench.in/)
This term seems to be all about cases and extended typing hours on the laptop, going by the essays and term papers expected of us. So expect few keys on the laptop keyboards to be abused and if you find any alphabet omissions in the days to come, blame it on these assignments !!