Term VI - Paradigm Shift

The electives and placements posed a significant trade-off in Term-VI, and priorities shifted quite visibly towards the latter. The placement committee, the placement policy document, associated processes, career counselling sessions, email invitations, cold calls etc were the terms bandied about within the class. It helped that some of the professors offering electives were open to formulating the evaluation criteria based on the class’ opinion – and it so happened that few of our batchmates had only one end-term examination, while majority of the people had multiple project submissions. So that gave us some breathing space in terms of getting things going on the placement front.

Preparations are also on for the inaugural EPGP reunion in mid-December, which is primarily being driven by the IIM-B alumni association (IIMBAA). The alumni office also arranged for a photo session (which for once, didn’t require a pinstripe suiting up) for the annual yearbook that would feature all the graduates of 2011 from IIM-B.

The much awaited director’s merit list (top 5 students from the first three core terms) was also announced, which carries a scholarship amount of Rs.5 Lakhs. Kudos to the deserving winners, who showed tremendous focus and enterprise in coming up trumps. The class is counting on a few parties from these hotshots over the next couple of months.

The academics committee, in response to fervent calls to get more electives offered, went into an overdrive. Now, the number of electives on offer for Term-VII has been quite mind-boggling and one has to make a conscious choice of balancing the final project (Comprehensive project-CP), the placements, exams and project submissions. There is a heavy overdose of finance courses on offer in Term-VII, and this sure would send some shivers down the spine of “finaphobics”.

The placement brochure was finally out and is being sent out to various firms, over email and regular post. The early signs of placement have been very encouraging, thanks to the students as well as faculty pulling their weight in making a collective effort to improve upon last year’s placements. Meanwhile, the official word on last year’s placements are out and could be found at http://epgp.in/EPGP%202009-10%20Placements%20Snapshot.pdf

Term-V - The Beginning

With an option to choose between 4-6 electives (credit courses) from a list of 13 for Term-V, one was spoilt for choice to say the least. Students could also take up non-credit courses which will also require the mandatory attendance, exams, assignments etc and even grades; the difference being that the non-credit grades will appear in the final grade sheet but wont be factored for arriving at the CGPA. The non-credit option helps students to take as many electives as they want, given the constraint on maximum of 18 credit electives one can take.

Another notable feature is the option of auditing courses (except for visiting faculty in most cases) offered by various professors, who offer a course only when there are minimum of 10 takers. Unfortunately there were few courses where we couldnt muster the required number and hopefully these would be offered again in one of the remaining terms.

There was a mad-cap rush to identify our faculty guide for the Comprehensive Project (CP) and submit a signed project proposal to EPGP office before the fixed deadline. Inspite of a divided house, we saw the inception of "Preferred" group formation this term, given the fact that the entire 65 weren't going to take the same set of courses.

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

RuralShores:The BPO New Wave - Seminar Series

Date : 04/06/2010

Venue :L-21, IIM-Bangalore

Easily 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

Leadership Club - First Cut !!

Date : 05/06/2010

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.

- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran

"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 !!

- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran

EPGP Orientation 7th April - 9th April 2010

The 2nd batch of EPGP began with a 3 day orientation programme on 7th Apr – the day being a very light affair with registration, photo-op in suits, more introductions (with a success rate of remembering names at an abysmal low) and subscribing to the Airtel CUG plans. However, on 8th April as we strode into the Auditorium there was an air of expectation what with the dean for academic (Prof. Trilochan Sastry), IIMB-Director (Prof. Pankaj Chandra) and EPGP chairperson (Prof. Malay Bhattacharya) slated to address the gathering and extending the official welcome to us. Having worked for 8.5 years, it didn’t take long to rediscover the respect and anxiousness one would associate with any kind of closed classroom education (not to be confused with claustrophobia). Prof Malay was the first one to speak and he touched upon the history of the inception of this programme, the uniqueness and the considerable thought put into differentiating it from the rest of the one-year programmes. It came as a surprise to me that two professors went and observed the similar one year programmes offered by MIT, Kellogg, INSEAD, and another institute, to design EPGP structure. Prof. Shastry,based on his experience with the first batch, delved into things which needed improvement and also on the value of education per se. Finally Prof.Chandra invoked the need to align our goals and contribute to the development of India, and emphasized on the need to make the Seminar series a more successful one. During the Q&A session it emerged that the Seminar series definitely needed to be taken more seriously and the need to drawn speakers from non-management sector. It was gladdening to note that the faculty were overly impressed with the class participation from the first batch and highlighted the reasons for the same.

Prof Jose, the Chairperson for the Career Development Services, did some serious plain talking and got the audience participating actively with his occasional lighter comments. It emerged that the overall placement of the first batch was very good and exceeded his expectations, but it had its share of troughs and crests vis-a-vis the number of recruiters visiting the campus. He implored our batch to have realistic expectations and not to be swayed by the mood set by the media and hype existing in the society around the placements in IIMs. The biggest re-iteration came from him on the fact that IIM wasn’t a placement agency and it was up to the Student Place-com to drive the show, and his office would step in only on a need basis.

Post a crowded and quick, but grand, lunch we convened for the ICE BREAKING SESSION conducted by KWEC ( kwec.net - an agency specializing in behavioural sciences ) and anchored by its founder – Rahul Kapoor. Like any such training, the idea was to get the relatively over aged corporate denizens and army honchos to shed their inhibitions (within permissible limits), that would help expedite the mutual learning processes. To a large extent, the programmed seemed to have served its objective, going by the enthusiastic response right through leading up to the final two moments of quiet reflection on our parents. Rahul was all energy and it was quite amazing to notice that he lasted the course with the same vigour. As Rahul pointed out, there could be many takeaways from the entire exercise, however, he urged us to inculcate at least one to make the most of our time spent in the next one year. He signed off to take up the mike at Chinnaswamy stadium for RCB’s home game against DC. Komala, part of the CAO office, got a deserving applause from our batch and KWEC team for facilitating the entire event.

There was a “SAY CHEESE” moment with the official IIM-B photographer on the lawns of the institution, which I presume would be for next year’s brochure. That just about rounded up the second last day of the relaxed pre-cursor term before the real grind.

The final day of orientation had two sessions, the first one being on "Individual Learning Styles" by Prof.Vasanthi Srinivasan. The very first 1.5 hr classroom of the one year rigour didn’t seem to bring any of the usual phobia one would associate after a hiatus as long as 8.5 years from formal education. On the contrary, the participation from the whole of the class was very spontaneous and engaging, which I believe was due to the very engaging and humour-laden discourse from the faculty. Prof.Vasanthi expounded on the 4 types of learning styles, the associated learning patterns and what we should aim for over the next one year. The next session on "Political Entrepreneurship" by Prof.Rajeev Gowda started off on a humorous note when the Prof did a "Ungowning" himself : aka Jairam Ramesh. For the next 40 minutes or so the Prof walked us through his political aspirations which gained ground from his childhood days. Going by the session title, one would have expected the class to be about exploring Entrepreneurship in the political arena and the associated pros and cons. While that didn’t seem to be the case, at the end of around 40 minutes the Prof presented a slide seeking answers from his audience as to what he has been doing wrong which has resulted in him not getting a Lok Sabha ticket. The session wasn't didactic in nature and it seemed to be more of context setting for a problem and what could be the plausible solutions. While we wondered the relevance of this session, I personally liked the class and it seemed after all not that a big deal to sit in on a non-curricular session :-), but was equally cognizant of the fact that it wouldn't be the case with the academic courses. Later in the evening we had a welcome dinner arranged by IIM-B and were glad to spend time knowing each other, while also interacting with Komala and Prof.Sourav.

The real grind unwinds on Monday and we already have quizzes slated in 3 days time !!

P.S : Amidst all the information, inspiration and indulgence, text books too were distributed.