I recently missed a speech by Mr. Nandan Nilekeni, Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)  at IIM-A campus. While I am sad about that, I got an idea that I should record the list of guest speakers who graced our class rooms so far and provided us gyan about the ground reality… Once I completed this post, I realized that this exercise has helped me re-iterate the concepts and ideas that I learned from these eminent business leaders. Please be warned that this has turned out to be a really long post…

Mr. Achal Raghvan, Ex-VP at Sundram Fasteners Limited and Ex-EVP Ingersoll-Rand gave us an overview of life as a General Manager and the issues and challenges we might face in each step. He effectively made us understand how concepts like Mission, Vision, Values, Strategy, Balanced Scorecard, Strategic Initiatives and Personal objectives come together to put strategy to work. Later in the context of another discussion, I came to know about how Mr. Raghavan innovated the use of BSC (Balanced Score Card) for strategic and tactical decision making exercises in the work place – it was an eye opener for me.

Mr. Anil Agarwal, Chairman of Vedanta Group gave us a very down to earth speech on how to start a business and ensure sustained focus on the goals and how to get around practical difficulties.

Mr. Anil Dua, Sr. Vice President, Hero Honda gave us an overview of how marketing strategies work at the ground level. I always used to wonder how Hero Honda is able to have multiple models in the same segment and they ensure that one model does not cannibalize the other. Mr. Dua gave a very convincing reason and explained the marketing strategies that they deploy to ensure success of all their models. This was one session which reiterated the theoretical concepts that we had acquired in the course and gave us first hand account of the right positioning of the product and ensuring value for all stakeholders.

Mr. Anil Mishra, CEO, National Multi Commodity Exchange, gave us an overview about the Commodity markets and the opportunities available for MBA graduates in the commodity exchanges.

Mr. Anil Velluri, Vice President & Managing Director, Sun Microsystems India gave us a very down to earth speech on leadership and how to manage during tough times. Listening to him made me realize that passion for the work and conviction about your actions will take you a long way… Although “I cannot die everyday” was a passing remark from him, it made a profound impact on me; made me realize that rather than worry and try to play hide and seek with an issue, it is better to face the issue head-on and resolve it. One more point that was effectively conveyed was that even the best designed strategy needs people to implement it and a successful manager needs a team that resonates with his/her thought process.

Mr. Chandran Sankaran founder and CEO of Zyme Solutions spoke to us about ways in which he has achieved ‘non-linear’ revenue growth in his S/W (BPO) company. He made me understand that BPO is not just about identifying an existing process at onsite and shifting it to offshore. It has to go beyond it and try and address the pains that the client is facing even if it involves setting up a new process at offshore. His business is an example wherein once the client realizes the value being generated due to the domain expertise possessed by the BPO, he/she might be willing to pay more than what is being spent in-house.

Mr. Gautam Doshi Group Managing Director at Reliance ADAG talked to us about managing a conglomerate, how an effective leader needs all-round capabilities in all areas and the global trends in Telecom in the context of M&A.

Mr. Hitesh Oberoi COO of Info Edge India Ltd (holding company of Naukri.com, Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com, Brijj.com, Shiksha.com etc.) talked to us about developing a web based business in India and the challenges that he and his company faced during the start-up and the recession period.  He gave us his perspective on what the Indian customer wants.

Mr. Kewal Handa Managing Director, Pfizer Limited gave us a speech on “Being a CEO” and how expanding one’s sphere of influence in the work place helps in moving up the organization. He also elaborated about the value and power of conviction and the need to transform continuously.

Mr. Mahesh Lal – former CMD HPCL – The one lesson that I learnt from Mr. Lal is the power of humility – how he displayed humility with all the workers when he joined the plant and how this relationship later helped him during a crisis. He also elaborated about a situation where his sub-ordinate was able to provide a better design (than him) for an enhancement project at plant. Actually the context did not require Mr. Lal to elaborate this story. This story reiterated my belief that a manager can be frank to this extent only when he/she is humble enough to learn from anyone and mre than that confident about his/her ability.

Mr. Mike Cockrell – Chief Merchandising Officer for Bharti-Walmart gave us an overview of Walmart’s global expansion plans and reasons to adopt varying strategy for each geography.

Mr. N.S. Rajan, Partner and Asia Pacific Head of Human Capital, Ernst & Young gave us an overview of life of a HR manager.

Mr. Neeraj Swaroop – Regional Chief Executive, India & South Asia Standard Chartered talked to us about the Challenges and Strategic Issues facing the Banking industry.

Mr. Nripendra Misra, IAS, Former Chairperson, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) – shared with us the lessons learned from Managing TRAI and how this learning can be transferred to other similar institutions in India. He talked to us about India’s future needs from the Telecom industry.

Mr. Parvaiz Dalal, Senior Vice President, GTS Asia – Royal bank of Scotland talked to us about every day challenges in the finance industry and the role playes by working capital in the organizations.

Mr. Peeyush Gupta, Chief of Marketing and Sales, Tata Steel elaborated about how Tata Steel was successfully able to wake up to competition after liberalization in the 90’s and create a brand image for Tata Steel with the end customers and how it was able to convince its dealers to move to the next level of marketing.

Smt. Reemaben Nanavathy, Chairperson, STFC (SEWA Trade Facilitation Center) attended the class when we were discussing a case on growth strategies for SEWA. Her inputs made us understand the most important issue with Boardroom (or classroom) strategies – that sometimes the market realities demand a different perspective altogether…

Mr. Robert F. Bruner, Dean, Darden B- School, Univeristy of Virginia gave us an overview on issues with M&A and talked about his book – “Deals from Hell: What we can learn from Mergers and Acquisitions that go wrong”

Mr. Shailesh Gandhi Information Commissioner from the Central Information Commission was a pioneer in highlighting the need for RTI and now working in the CIC to ensure that the RTI act gets implemented in its spirit and benefits the common man. According to me an effective usage of RTI in India will help in putting a brake on bribery and reduce those illegal practices that affect the common man.

Mr. Srivatsa Krishna, IAS talked about the rise of India as an emerging economic power in the context of major advances in thought leadership in infrastructure strategy and execution, and the unique risks that often visit such projects, especially risks pertaining to their financing, governance and execution.

Mr. Sunil Chainani, Director, Fabindia Overseas Pvt. Ltd elaborated how Fabindia is able to meet the twin objectives of growth and CSR – or rather growth with CSR.

Mr. Surya Sethi, IAS, Principal Adviser, Power & Energy gave us an Overview of India’s Energy Scenario and the Relevant Policy Implications.

Mr. Sethi visited us again in Oct (he had retired by then). In the past, in his role in Govt of India, he had a first-hand experience in Enron’s Dhabol Power Plant project and he used this context to help us understand the Pitfalls in International Business.

Mr. Umang Bedi, Managing Director & Mr. U.V.G Sekar, Head-Human Resources  – Intuit (Intuit owns several S/W products like Turbotax, Quickbooks etc.) talked to us about how innovation and understanding the stated and unstated needs of the customer has helped Intuit reap success in US and how they are currently engaged in translating this success in the Indian S/W market.

Apart from these, we also had the opportunity to watch recorded speeches of several eminent speakers. One that stands in my memory is a speech by Mr. Vijay Govindarajan on the need to think out of box and innovate for the future – innovation for 2025 should start right now…

If you are thinking that this was a huge list, then I do want to point out that all this happened between June and October 2009 and there might be a few whom I forgot to include (Thanks to my buddies Guru and Debottam for helping me remember these names…). Hoping for even more gyan accumulation in my last term.

- Ganesh Jayaraman

As the entire PGPX gears up for the upcoming alumni event from Jan 8th – 10th of next year, the Economic Times has printed an article about the get-together. Here is the pdf attachment of the same.

http://insideiimapgpx.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/et-news-item-pgpx-alumni-get-together1.jpg

Four students from PGPX (Manish Sharma, Manish Jobanputra, Dheeraj Chopra and Vishal Doshi) were covered by the economic times for their initiative to help SMEs go green. The complete article is here -

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/IIM-A-students-go-green-to-help-SMEs-save-energy/articleshow/5364791.cms

As I moved up the hierarchy, from an Operations Trainee to a General Manager, I recognized the need for an MBA. I was managing a group of 4 hotels in London where I was enjoying the challenge of taking all the decisions and facing the repercussions. However, I knew that I had to settle in India. Also, after 8 years of working in the hospitality industry I wanted to work in a more broad based industry.

I started my career in hotels in 2000 after passing out of Hotel School from IHM Delhi. The first few years of my career, I worked in Food and Beverages (restaurants) and was a part of opening teams for hotels like Grand Hyatt Delhi, Leela Bangalore, Hyatt Regency Mumbai and Radisson Noida. In between I worked in UAE for a year. In 2006, I was offered an opportunity to rebrand and launch a group of hotels in London. By 2008, I had worked in a leadership role for the past 6 years, been part of the opening team for 6 hotels and 7 restaurants and managed teams in UK, UAE and India. I had also started a coffee machine franchisee in UK and though it did not work out as well as I had planned, I gained tremendously from the experience.

However, I was restless and wanted more from my career. My biggest challenge was my education since Hotel Management was a 3 year Diploma. Luckily for me, in 2005, IGNOU offered an abridged graduation for desperate souls (IHM diploma holders) like me and I travelled thrice from London to Delhi to write my exams. Till now, no one in my family has spent so much in earning a graduate degree. To cut it short, I wrote my GMAT, applied to IIMA and was fortunate to be offered an admission.

One of the things I value the most from my 6 months in PGPX is the opportunity to learn from my batch mates, something which the management books call ‘benchmarking’. Small and simple things like their approach to a problem, presentation skills; the way they manage the pressure and yet come prepared for every class has been a very humbling experience for me. IIMA’s case based approach has helped us to understand frameworks and concepts as well as to learn about different companies and industries. PGPX is helping me to gain a broader perspective in business and helping me to understand Finance, Strategy and Marketing, the way it would not have been possible without taking a year off.

As part of my course, I have been working on research notes in the service sectors like ‘Cost Strategies of Mid-Priced/Economy Hotels’, ‘Restaurants: How Operations Management Can Reduce Costs and Improve Customer Experience’, ‘Strategic Initiatives by MNC Banks’. Hopefully by the end of the year I will be able to cover real estate, real estate and logistics.

I enjoy the problem solving side of business and hope to work in Management Consulting or Supply Chain Management after PGPX. The industries I am targeting are Retail, Real Estate, Banking and Hospitality. I feel my customer orientation, people management experience, understanding of services and the PGPX will prepare me for that role.

- Mohit Mathur

PGPX IV Batch has been covered in The Telegraph article “Target GMAT”. The full article is present here -

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090924/jsp/careergraph/story_11531780.jsp

It’s Term 3 here at IIMA. It’s barely 3 weeks since the term started and we are already writing final exams!! A schedule packed with core courses plus electives gets pretty rough with classes starting at 8.45 am and ending at 9pm followed by group meetings, assignments and other prep work through the wee hours of night. I realized that this course is also a test of pure physical stamina and mental concentration. Now that we are getting close to the International Immersion Program, placements, project work and so on, the focus is slightly shifting from just class preparations. So that’s where we are for now.

I hail from God’s own country. After finishing undergraduate studies in Architecture from Thiruvananthapuram, I joined the mass exodus to go to the land of opportunities. I took a Masters in Construction Management and Certificate in Business from Texas A & M University. Following graduation I worked for one of the leading private general contractors in the U.S. During my 5 years of work, I was posted on construction sites as a construction manager for the project management division on projects with budgets ranging from $30 million – $55 million. There, I managed subcontractor companies (regional and international), their resources, manpower, material, logistics and project schedule. I also handled contract negotiations, payment requisitions, cost engineering, preconstruction meetings, quality review and sequence of operations. During one of my posting as project scheduler, I managed the project schedule for a $35 million project, analyzed impact of design changes and contingencies on schedule. Even though majority of my experience is in the Mid-Atlantic region, I also travelled to other regional offices for bidding projects ranging from $10 million – $200 million. One of the bids I worked for was the Schaumberg Convention center, Chicago. Some of the projects I worked on are Children’s National Medical Center, Smithsonian Museum renovation and some condominium projects in Washington DC.

Although undergraduate days and graduate days in U.S. offered me plenty of opportunities to pursue extracurricular activities such as dance, theater, travel, various academic and non-academic clubs it is a bit difficult to continue the trend here at IIMA. Not due to lack of opportunities, but due to lack of time. The 1 year condensed program doesn’t offer you much choice to try all the things that you want to try without giving up some other things. However I did brush up my dance skills during the 3 nights of culturals we had here. Other than that, occasionally I try to catch up with some jogging to control stress and to get breath of fresh air.

Post PGPX, I would like to move into either auto or media industry in India primarily in the marketing function. May be it is far-fetched to change both industry and function, but at least I have identified that my passion lies there and so I can’t let it go without giving a try. March 2010 will provide the answer to that. Until then its reading, case preps, assignments, exams, class presentations, group work, project work, sleepless nights etc etc etc…….

- Seenu Kurien

This is the Part I of the five-part series on the budget 2009 evaluation. This part will focus on Basic sops and their term impacts. I have analyzed some of the provisions in the budget for Hi-Tech industry and possible effects based on my understanding of its working.

The finance minister has extended tax sops for IT exporters by one year under Sections 10A and 10B of the IT Act. This is a temporary measure at the best as it does not encourage new companies to set shop given the 1-yr time-frame only. This will only aid existing companies to weather the global downturn without having to worry about the tax overload on their margins. So this maneuver lacks a strategic vision.

By correcting an anomaly in Section 10AA that affected the tax benefits of companies in Special Economic Zones (SEZs), FM has enabled current companies to extract benefits of expanding operations. Most of the initial SEZs were setup with limited expansion capacities. With the growth in IT sector, companies were forced to grow outside the physical bounds of SEZ. Unfortunately, they were not able to take full benefit of expansion as their operations outside SEZ were taxable. Current measure can help them by making them more cost effective to gather more business and also expand further.

Currently, there are more than 6,000 software units under the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme. They account for about 85-90 per cent of India’s $47 Billion software exports, making them nearly $42 Billion in FY09. The current downturn has brought them down to about $37 Billion (estimated).

By removing multiple taxation on packaged software government is taking some steps towards checking piracy by bringing down the cost of s/w products. Indian IT companies need to move towards s/w product offerings from highly service oriented entities. More products for Indian businesses will improve the software consumption and open up avenues for innovation targeted towards benefiting the Indian consumers. This will enable Indian IT industry to move up the value chain and help preserve high-tech jobs within the country.

The measure to relieve employers from paying fringe benefit tax transfers this entire burden from the employer to the employees. So, for the government it earns them a few brownie points from the organizations while at the same time earning them higher returns. This is because employees will be taxed at a much higher rate than the corporate tax was being levied at. This measure, thus dampens the Income Tax benefits from removal of 10% surcharge on individual taxpayers. Is this government’s way of Corporate appeasement at the cost of individual employees?

-Anirudh

PGPX participants were featured in a panel based discussion on budget proposals and presented their views on the impacts of the proposals on the industries and Indian economy.

Here are the links of the feature

http://epaper.dnaindia.com/dnaahmedabad/epapermain.aspx?queryed=5&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=5&eddate=7%2f13%2f2009

http://www.dnaindia.com/academy/special_iim-a-students-evaluate-budget-2009_1273520

In case you havent noticed yet, my name is made of two surnames. Like I had a choice! The good thing about it is I can easily connect to anyone from Orissa, Maharashtra, UP or Karnataka; that is only till I open my mouth. Once they realize that I cannot communicate in any of the local languages: Oriya, Marathi, Hindustani or Kannada, the fraud is exposed! However, the blabbermouth that I am, I’ve so far been able to crack ‘em up with my Hindi/English. Funny, nobody has been able to guess that I might be from Gujarat. And even after I state so, I see their heads dancing in disapproval. ‘You don’t look like a typical Gujju’ (Although, nobody has been able to give me a rundown on how a ‘typical gujju’ is supposed to look like!). Maybe it’s the non-chubby face, unlike a typical Gujju bhai. Or the fact that I cannot stomach oily/spicy foods, a well accepted Gujju staple. Or that I have successfully completed 2 Marathons in Mumbai’s swindling humid heat, yet to meet a Gujju who has done so! Or maybe because vacationing twice every year isn’t my first hobby! But my one statement that brings expressions of credibility on their faces is “I went to America” (I am yet to figure out if this is something to be proud of or to be ashamed of for the Gujju community!).

So, yeah, just like the majority of engineers from my generation, I haven’t done anything “engineering” in my 7 years of work experience. MS (Industrial Engg) from Houston, US was easier than BE (Production Engg) from NIT Surat. Both, however, were equally hazy and boring. I am not complaining though because I am sure that played a vital role in my selection to PGPX program. I’ve worked as a Quality Engineer and later as Quality Manager for 3 different companies in the US for about 6 years. I used to play a lot of tennis and racquetball while in the US. In fact, I won the 2006 Texas State Open Tennis Tournament and was ranked #4 in Texas. But those were the good old days when I was young! Now, in India, it’s down to running Marathons. And here, at IIMA, I forget about my midlife crisis (at 30!) on the few days that I can manage to sneak out for a half-hour jog after defeating (ignoring!) the “pressure cooker approach”, “academic rigor”, “pencil pushing” and “number crunching” (phrases coined by the IIMA professors, not me!)

Needless to mention, my first hobby ‘reading’ (the real one, not the IIMA course material reading) has fallen out of favor with me. The last couple of books that I had read ‘The Blank Slate – The Modern Denial of Human Nature’ (1) and ‘Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (2) had spurred me on to read ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (3). Not sure when shall I be able to do that. Pray for me!

 (1) by Steven Pinker

(2) by Robert Pirsig

(3) by Immanuel Kant … (citations, the IIMA way!)

- Nigam Nayak

Initial growth phase
 
In the ’80s and early ’90s the Indian IT industry used to find it tough to compete with their western counterparts in bidding for projects. Though Indian companies possessed the process and technical knowledge to deliver quality services, the perception of “made in India” brand in western world was still low-quality. The Indian IT industry benefitted from the first wave of globalization necessitated in part by the Y2K crisis. For a while we rode the path laid by this anomaly, between the then existing 2-characters (YY) date fields in the systems vs. the desired 4-characters (YYYY). What it enabled for us was the rapid development of IT infrastructure and provide finances for rapidly training our man-power for IT services. Consider for a moment, the rapid infusion of many engineering talents from non-IT backgrounds of premier engineering institutes that have made it big in IT industry.
 
With the IT bubble bursting in 2001 came the next round of funding. The world suddenly looking to reduce its costs, found the newly developing mass of Indian IT infrastructure alluring enough to ‘out-source’ their work here. Thus, rose the Indian BPO industry which fueled the second wave of growth in Indian ITES sector.
 
From mid-90s, the Indian IT majors had built enough in-roads into US and EU markets to start moving up the value chain. They had now moved beyond the maintenance and migration projects of ’90s to undertake major turnkey development projects in 2000s. Several new services related to infrastructure development and maintenance, testing, ERP/CRM were also started and many Indian companies made their forays into product development.
 
In my next post, I’ll be commenting on some factors that have fuelled the growth of Indian IT industry.

Anirudh Gupta