Section Parties

As this is the last core term and every section is going to get dissolved after this term, sections are busy in partying, going for some outings etc. Our section had two outings till now in this term. We all went to "Lageraho Munnabhai" movie and recently went to another outing. Unfortunately I missed both of them due to some reasons. We also celebrated formals day (Everyone in the section came in formals with proper business suit and other required accessories) and traditional day (Guys in proper traditional attire, gals in sarees and Chudidhars) in this term.

Today we all celebrated Dandiya Raas playing Dandiya till 2 Am That was really fun. Almost everyone of us played Dandiya. I never played Dandiya till today. First time in my life I played Dandiya and I really enjoyed it.

Just 5 days left for our End term exams. This time all are faff subjects. Guess what! I am planning to take Fin major. Credit goes to Professor Ramana Sonti. He is our current prof who is teaching Investment Analysis in this term.

Like puzzles

Do you like puzzles? Here is an interesting link for you then.

One of my friend has forwarded this link.

http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html
I took 17 minutes to hack this. Got strucked for 4 minutes at stupid 'ojofuffo'. Ofcourse this puzzle is not really that tough. I am sure one can finish this in around 10 minutes. Will post all answers after a while. Till then enjoy this.

Term 4 (sep 4th-Oct 6th)

Our last core term (Term4) started yesterday. As usual we have four subjects in this term and the subjects are:-

1. Investment analysis (INVA)
2. Government, Society and Business (GSB)
3. Management of organizations (MGTO)
4. Strategic analysis of Information technology (SAIT)

Except Investment anaysis rest three are qualitative subjects. Learning wise we will learn a lot in a very much broader view in this term. Though not much work in an academic point of view, we need to work harder for other things like ELP (Experiential Learning Program), PAEV (Planning an Enterpreneurial Venture), LDP (Leadership development program), Problem solving skills workshop (conducted by Mckinsey) , finance workshops etc etc. Every minute is valuable. Also in the last week of this term, we may need to bid for fifth term subjects.

This term is squeezed into 5 weeks rather than regular 6 weeks term. Looks some companies may come in mid october for placements too. But no concrete data available about that. Resume workshops, General sessions by CEO's (which are biased as preplacement talks) are starting in a much faster pace. Hope I handle all these without any stress. Let the force be with me.

Back after a long break

After a long time here am back to blogging. We finished our term3 and currently enjoying the term3 break with some ELP (Experiential Learning program) project stuff. I still haven't decided whether to take major in finance or not. Few alumni said that in their batch most of the people dropped their idea of specializing in finance after doing investment analysis subject in term4. Looks that is pretty tough. Our term4 is going to start from coming monday. The other 3 subjects we are gonna have this term is kind of qualitative stuff. I decided to keep my total effort in Investment analysis. If I can understand the concepts well and if I can score better in Investment analysis then for sure I will take Finance as my major. Otherwise I will just give up and balance my portfolio with some Leadership and change management and Enterpreneurship subjects.

Today we had a project (ELP) kickoff meeting. When we are discussing about the scope of the project with the CEO, he mentioned a lot of terms which we learnt all these days in our MBA. I am sure this project will help us in applying our MBA learnings and it will also enhance our skill base. We prepared project plan and discussed few things like how to go about it and other related stuff. We are supposed to finish the project by December-23rd. Hope we do our best in the project.

By the way I forgot to mention. I got scholarship very recently. When I shared this news with my dad he was very happy and I could see his happiness in his eyes very clearly. It is a real great feeling to see your parents feel great about you. I can give up anything in my life to see my dad in such a way. I know how I am brought up. Never in my life I can forget my roots.

Tough Gets going

Just today we got our midterms over. After writing exams almost every 15 days, today I didn't even feel like I gave my mid term exams. May be as it is said "when the going gets tough, the tough gets going". We almost got habitutated to the pressures and these exams. In the core terms we will have only study group. With just one study group I have seen so many conflicts rising in the groups for whatsoever reason.

From 5th term we are gonna have electives. So we may have to form our own study group and the study group varies with each subject. And apart from that we will have another group for the ELP project. So per term we may have 5 study groups. I really can't think of that situation how we are gonna finish our assignments when there will be more than one assignment.

This week we have so many assignments and I have interview for ELP project too. One of my friend came from banglore for just 2 days. One friend is leaving hyderabad. One friend is going to US.Few mails to reply. Uff so many things to do. Can't even afford to go outside of the campus to meet my friends. Just 2 more weeks for this term to get over. My god! I really couldn't believe this. I am sure by the time I come out of this shock our term4 will get started.

Did this really need a click?

This looks really funny. No idea why this man want to take a photograph when their faces are hardly seen. Any Guesses?

Bidding

Today we finished indicative bidding for the electives. I am in a major dilemma in selecting the specializations. I have three choices in which I need to pick 2. I am thinking about IT,Finance and Entrepreneurship. Considering the fact that I have around 3 years of experience looks it would be better if I select IT as one of my major. IT and finance combination will be good. But am I planning to shift to finance???No clue, but just keeping the option open about that as of now. I guess I may land up taking IT and finance. We need to take 6 subjects in one concentration if we have to specialize in it. In IT I could get only 4 interesting subjects. Need to analyse more. Even after analysing if I dont get the other 2, I am not going to take 2 extra IT subjects just for the heck of specialization.

After having a glance at all the subjects, I am getting a feel that ISB MBA is sort of Quant oriented. Apart from the subjects I should start working on other things like industry analysis, collecting information about companies and things like that. I just prepared some rough plan about this. Let me see if I can stick to that plan. Most people don't plan to fail. They fail to plan. Atleast I overcomed the first step.

I couldn't change my sleep cycle though we have morning classes this term. Just got habituated sleeping around 4AM. It is bit easier for me to get up by 7:45 or 8 AM than hitting the sack before 4AM. Till now managed to attend all classes. Anyways just 12 more days I should follow this morning schedule.

Ok chalo guys. Buenos noches Y Buen fin de semana.

Quite confused

In the very first week itself am feeling that Term3 is very hectic. Except Enterpreneurship, other 3 subjects look similar to me. Somehow landing up in calculating present values and net present values. Totally lost in the other 3 subjects. I need to figure this out in this week itself to avoid later repercussions :-D. Before we come out of term2 trauma, so many assignments lined up in term3. Thats life at ISB.

Finally marketing results of term1 are out. I didn't score well in marketing, but thats okey. I am pretty sure that I am not taking marketing as my major. I really can't see myself doing some conjoint analysis down the lane in my career. yet to finalise about electives. I should catch hold of some alumns regarding this. Let me see.

PS:I lost my mobile two days back. That was my brother's gift. So sort of feeling senti about that. Anyways no point in thinking about that right now. I could retain my same old number. Thanks to Airtel. :-)

Term3

From tomorrow term3 is going to start. This time we have morning classes . I am habituated to sleep late and get up late from past 7 years. I used to bunk my breakfast just to sleep for some more time in my engineering days. Even my previous company timings were very odd (1 PM to 10 PM). I got used sleeping at 3 or 4 Am in the morning and getting up by 9 or 10 in the morning. I can't blame anyone for this. Its all my mind set. I just have to make my mind to think that I am a early riser. Let me see if I can succeed. But for sure I am gonna miss atleast 1 or 2 classes this term.

In this term we have
1. Enterpreneurship
2. Managerial Accounting and Decision making
3. Operations management and
4. Corporate finance.

I need to decide about my major(s) also. I am not very keen in taking IT&Tech as my major. Being a techie and taking IT major doesn't make any sense.But yet to decide. Thinking about finance and enterpreneurship as of now. Also this is the right time to start preparing resumes and analysing industries. Most of our alumns suggested to do this right from Day 1. Anyways its never too late:-). Okey more later. Adios:-D

Likhthe Jao...Likhthe jao

Today our competitive strategy paper was in this way. I didn’t like the way the paper was set for this exam. As part of the competitive strategy course we studied 10 cases (Cola wars, Nucor Steel, Intel, Jollibee foods, Eli Lilly, Cisco, Dell, Walmart stores, Mckinsey and Johnson & Johnson). It is an open book exam. Basically this exam tested our written skills rather than the strategy concepts I guess. At the same time this is the first open book exam which most of us (or rather everyone) used books extensively.

Instead the paper should have been something like a case followed by few questions about case like key takeaways from the case or something of that sort. Anyways I am just glad that paper got over.

Two more to go for this term2 to get over. ;-)

Economics

Economics is one subject which really fascinated me from term-1. Even the professors for Eco were damn good. Prof. Rakesh Vohra from Kellogg and Prof. Krishna Kumar from Duke are simply superb. They both have their own styles of teaching. As part of the course we have seen the commanding heights documentary. This is the best documentary I have ever seen.

Starting from Micro economics which took us from demand and supply relationship at firm level, industry level ended with Macro Economics which took us till speculative attacks in the economy. Previously I used to read some articles about economy. But apart from the article I read I couldn’t sense more than that like the theory behind that. Now these frameworks helped me a lot in understanding so many concepts. Global economics covered lot of topics like fiscal policy, monetary policy, foreign exchange, PPP, reserves, credibility regime, inflation , deflation, exchange fluctuations, budget deficits and surpluses, reasons for slow down in the economy, productivity shocks, currency appreciations, depreciations etc .

Here is an interesting video talk by prestowitz (president of economic strategy institute) about the impact of the return of India and china.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/358/

US may have to face some tough times if the growth in India and china continues in the same pace. According to few research papers US is heading towards bankruptcy. But Bush administration still says its budget deficit is just 2.3pc of GDP which is smaller than UK. And another threat to US is baby boomer generation is going to retire and the expenditure on health care goes up. They may have to balance the budget by increasing the taxes.

Here is another video (funny) which is done by columbia MBA students for their skit party. The person singing in the video is pretending to be Glenn Hubbard who was one of the leading candidates to be the Chair of the Federal Reserve, but the job was instead given to Ben Bernanke.

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/everybreath/

PS: Entire 6 hour documentary of commanding heights can be viewed in the below link.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/hi/story/index.html

QuickTime needs to be installed for this. All Episodes (full 6 hour video) is available online to be watched for free.

Its my turn to get tagged

I have been tagged by my friend Kishore . Now I need to finish these fill up the blanks and tag few people. Here I go:-

I am thinking who the hell has started this. I am thinking the upside of writing this is giving some time to introspect about self

I said Excellence is not a destination, it’s a journey

I want to gift a house to my parents and I want to see them well settled

I wish all my friends get settle in their lives.

I miss all my friends and my doggie.

I hear to my mind and heart

I wonder why some people make silly things into very big issues

I regret few things in life

I am a simple girl

I dance when I am alone and when i have absolutely nothing to do

I sing when am in a peak state of happiness (but make sure no one is around me :-D)

I cry when I feel low to just forget about things and to come to normal state. But I hardly cry. Even if I cry, I cry alone

I am not perfectionist.

I write anything that comes into my mind

I hate cheating someone or getting cheated by someone

I confuse always between left and right

I need a good job after my MBA at ISB

I should work hard to achieve my goals

I finish this post with this line.

I tag
rujuta
Vinay
Prathima
Nikhil
Chaitanya

MBA Jargons

I was just talking to one of my friends, who is working in Chicago. She was saying that she could see lot of change in my language in terms of using jargon. She says MBA is nothing but seeing the simple life in a complex view and making things unnecessarily complex. We had a healthy debate on this for almost 45 minutes. She might be true in saying that MBA’s use jargons a lot but yes, they don’t see simple things in a complex manner. In fact they make your life simple. I just said forget how people are seeing it. Ultimately we need the solution at the end of the day for any problem. Whatever may be the approach, at the end of the day we need an optimal solution. He/she who succeeds in this is the actual winner.

Few jargons:-

Incentive: - This is the most important thing for anyone for doing anything under the sky. Life just moves on with incentives. People may argue that there are many things in the world that just moves without incentive. But if you look at them carefully there will be some incentive. I know by now you might have started thinking about Non-profit organizations. They may not work for profit but yes, there is an incentive for them to work for fame or an incentive of self-satisfaction.

Trade-off:- Everyone might have done some trade-off before choosing anything. May be they might not have used the word trade-off but they might have did this in their day to day life. When we have two choices in our hand how do you think we choose one finally. We may do lot of trade-off between them, try to find out which gives us more incentive to go ahead, do some calculations if any, weigh the pros and cons of both and see the long run profitability and then we finally choose one.

Few more jargons like marginal, strategy, Core competencies, Competitive advantage, Optimize

The list goes on and on. I may come up with few more interesting jargons as I move further in my MBA.

Gone are the Days

Got up at 10:30 Am in the morning. Had a nice Aalu paratha. Then went to a movie. After that lunch in a restaurant with friends. Came back to home. Slept for another two hours. Then again went outside with friends. Had pani puri and chat. Still so much of time left in the day. Nothing much to work. Suddenly one of my friends called me up just to say “Good Morning Anu”. Got up from bed just to realize all that was a DREAM.

Sometimes Dreams will be good only if they remain as dreams. Do you guys think I can enjoy my life if that dream comes true? No way! I will just get bored with that life. May be for 2 days I may enjoy. But definitely not even if it is for one week.

I miss my childhood days. I miss my Engineering days. I miss those days I worked in my previous company. I am sure after one year I will say I miss those days at ISB.

Wondering what happened to me? Guess what!!!!! Today is my birthday. As per the tradition I got dunked last night. I really don't have any idea where I will be celebrating my next birthday. Yup ofcourse time will tell.

Those who wanted to apply to ISB can visit the below link to know more about the schedule and other details:
http://isb.edu/pgp/visit/admissions_important_schedule.asp

There was an interesting article ( "B-School: How different is ISB?" ) about ISB in Rediff. Check out the below link if u guys wanna read.
http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2006/jul/03isb.htm

Another article in rediff, which is an interview with the admission director of ISB:
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/jul/04inter.htm

PS: Today is my Mom’s birthday too

Editor's Round Table at ISB

The students of the Indian School of Business, are organising a Mega event - the “Editors’ Round Table” being held on Saturday, July 1, 2006 at the ISB. The event will be held from 2:15 pm to 4:45 pm at the Khemka Auditorium.

The topic of discussion for the Round Table is:

Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth?

We have invited interesting speakers for the Round Table and they are:
Alam Srinivas – Editor, Outlook Group
Kaveree Bamzai – Executive Editor, India Today
CRL Narasimhan - Associate Editor, The Hindu
Kumar Ketkar - Chief Editor, Indian Express Group
Niranjan Rajadhyaksha – Deputy Editor, Businessworld

In a world where professional preferences take precedence over political opinion, and political involvement is restricted to sporadic and half-hearted expressions of solidarity over individual issues - like the recent increase in reservation - the health of the Indian polity is seriously under threat. When political opinion can change the course of countries, it is disheartening to see the world's largest democracy lounge in political decadence; with the youth not doing much to change it. We hope to generate a healthy debate on this subject and sensitise the Indian youth to issues that have the power to influence our future. It will be a pleasure to have you participate in the interactive session during the Round Table.

If anyone interested in participating you can register at

www.isb.edu/RoundTable2006/register.html

Mumbai Dabbawalahs

Just two days back we had an interactive session with Mumbai Dabbawala association. They spoke about their clock-wise efficiency, low-cost operations. They are really experts at supply chain management. These people are really famous for their clockwise precision in supplying meals and were recently accorded a six sigma performance rating. They have only one error in 6 million deliveries.

What is that really so interesting about them?

Out of 5000 work-force very few understand English. They don't even understand the terms logistics, supply chain management etc. Delivering almost 2 lakh lunch boxes everyday using cycles and local trains and with perfect accuracy of time without using any technology is not the easy thing. Everyone is a share holder in the entire supply chain irrespective of the potential they have or the position they are in.

The few funny comments made by Raghunath Medge (Association President) and Gangaram Talekar in the presentation are

"We didn't even know the six sigma certification given to us. When we were told about it, we wondered what metal sigma was, gold or silver,"

"When we got a call from London that Prince Charles would like to meet us during his visit in Mumbai, we said he could meet us at Churchgate station at 11.10 am as we could not disrupt our regular operations,"

"I don't understand terms like logistics, supply chain or time accuracy...I just know my work is to deliver lunch boxes on time,"

The presentation was very humorous and inspiring. There is lot to learn from these guys. A long way to go. Hats off to Dabbawalahs for their dedicated work.

Here are the few newspaper clippings which covered about Mumbai Dabbawalah's presentation:

Now slowly these dabbawalah's are also becoming tech savvy. They recently launched an SMS service to expnd its customer base.

que pasa?

Buenos dias (Gud Morning) . Wondering what is this. Some of you might have figured out by now. Yes, I am learning the spanish language. Basically I love learning languages.(That doesn't mean that i know many languages). I know telugu, English, Bit of Hindi, Bit of tamil, Lil Bit of malayalam. In my previous company there are people from different regions like West bengal, orissa. From them I used to learn few words and reiterate those words. I used to have lot of fun talking to them with the very few words I know, in their respective languages. Of course I miss all that now. Anyways am learning spanish to compensate that. I guess I took a good decision to learn the spanish language. Many of my friends asked me where the hell I get time to learn languages. 4 hrs in the weekend is ofcourse a big chunk of time. But I felt, out of the hectic schedule and the trauma we face, this kind of course gives us some pleasure and fun. Trust me guys! Its really fun. But yes even this course has mid-term and end-term:-D

This term is quite hectic than term1. Markstrat is taking almost half of the term2's time. We are supposed to take 7 decisions for markstrat. Till now we finished only first decision. BTW our firm is performing pretty good in the markstrat world and we stand 3rd in the entire markstrat world of 90 firms (As of now). Hope we continue the same for the coming periods too.

Till term1 we used to have assignment deadlines by morning 8 or 8:45. So most of us used to finish the assignments by 2 or 3 in the morning and submit them at that odd hours. But yesterday we have got the DMOP assignment deadline at 12AM. I have seen many people catching their assignments and running at 11:59PM. LRC was totally crowded with the people waiting for their prints at the LRC printer. Check the snap of the log of the LRC printer. This is just the sample.
Loads of work to do. :-(
Adios. Hasta luego (Bye. See you later)

PS: Que pasa? means Wassup?
Markstrat decisions is nothing like fixing some key values to your product attributes, allocating some R&D Budget, allocating the sales force, distribution channels, targeting the proper segments, fixing the price, deciding on production of number of units for each brand etc etc.

Markstrat & Lemonade

Markstrat is the simulation of the real business phenomenon particularly the strategic marketing phenomenon. We were divided into groups and each group represents a firm. E ach firm faces a competitive environment in which four other firms operate similarly. We have to make strategic decisions like brand portfolio, product design, distribution, pricing, advertising, salesforce, Segmentation& positioning strategy, R&D etc under uncertainity. We were given certain budget and we have to allocate the budget intelligently or rather i should say strategically. In the process of this simulation, we have to make 7 decisions about our product characteristics, budget allocation etc stuff.

I am sure this will be pretty interesting as this is just the simulation of real market. Every group will be eager to see the firm's results at the end of the period (after every decision) and the profits/losses they make. But this is gonna take most of the term2's time.

I remember playing Lemonade game few months back which is also just a simulation of real market. But there are no competitors in that game. Its just a monopoly. My highest profit was some $143. If you guys wanna play that game follow the link:
http://schools.nycenet.edu/d75/his/shack/games/
lemonade/lemonade.html

You will have complete control of the inventory, supplies, pricing, quality etc. Based on the weather, price you charge and the quality of your product your product gets sold. Believe me this is really an interesting game. When i played the game for the first time I could just make some $35 I think. See whether there is a budding enterpreneur in you. Report back your profits if possible:-)

Term2

From tomorrow our term2 starts. Good thing about term2 is our classes will be in the afternoon. I am sure most of our section guys crib about this term's class timings as the classes immediately start after the lunch. May be with two cups of tea in the two breaks I can overcome sleep.

Four subjects in this term are:-

1. Competitive strategy (CSTR)
2. Marketing Decision making(MKDM)
3. Decision models and optimization (DMOP)
4.Global Economics.(GLEC)

I am sure I enjoy the subject Global Economics. From the size of the coursepack of competitive strategy, i can say that we are gonna learn many things about strategy, competitive advantage, strategic moves etc. We need to do 10 cases for this subject. One thing which really pricks me is all the 10 cases are american cases. They could have added few Indian cases in the study. Anyways no one is stopping me to read the extra case right! (But where the hell i get time to read. Newazzz for sure i will manage myself to read. Lemme see).

And in the Marketing decision making, I think the markstrat will be interesting. This will be as interesting as the marketing management of term1. And the last subject for the term- Decision models and optimization. Looks this is Quant oriented subject with some statistics involved. Till now i didn't even look at the index of this subject. Getting scared by seeing the size of the coursepack itself.

Just few hours back I came to the campus. Need to read one case and few pages from the course pack for CSTR. Feeling sleepy, but..... can't help. Will try to finish the case atleast for now.

End of the Beginning

Today is the last day for term1 and we have our term1 exams on coming monday and tuesday. Yes! 2 subjects per day. We learnt a lot in this short period. All the 4 subjects are helpful and we can use this knowledge in real time scenarios. I will try to give the gist of all the 4 subjects.

Marketing:- All we learnt in this subject is, how to market your product, which customers to target, what is the right time to launch your product, how you will be able to differentiate your product, At what price you should sell your product. what is the customer life time value, What is the economic value for your prodcut etc etc. In short marketing is all about serving the consumer needs in a mutual beneficial manner. We did 4 cases in marketing which covered all the main topics of marketing. Ofcourse still there is lot more to learn in marketing.

Small example which we noticed while we are doing our assignment in a group room. There were different markers in the room. On one marker it is written as "Please replace the cap after use". On other marker it is written something like "It can sustain for more than 24 hours without cap". This is nothing but product differentiation right :-)

Micro Economics:- This subject is very interesting. Ofcourse lot of calculus involved in the first half. The main topics we discussed here is Opportunity cost, Marginal costs, Consumer and producer surplus, Monopoly, Oligopoly, Game theory. Generally when we have two options, we choose the option which gives more profit. But while calculating the cost, we never consider the cost we are foregoing by not choosing the other option. That is nothing but opportunity cost.

For Eg: Cost of our education at ISB is 13+1.5+1+miscellaneous = 16 lakhs. What is the cost of not coming to ISB. Our usual salary. On average 5 lakhs(p.a). So the total cost of MBA at ISB is around 21 lakhs. My God!!!!

I cannot explain you all the concepts here. But believe me this subject is really interesting particularly the last concept Game theory.

Financial Accounting:- This subject covered all the basic concepts of accounting, like the 3 financila statements, depreciations, amortizations, depletions, Stocks, Inventory, Bonds,Leases etc stuff. I don't need to tell the importance of accounting in the real life. Without accounting its tough to survive.

Still am not confident in this subject. I guess i need to work hard in this.

Statistics:- Though this subject initially was very confusing (atleast to me) now am able to understand this subject well. It is all about sampling, regressions etc stuff. Statistics helps a lot when we need to estimate or predict, or how to pick up the samples, how to do regression analysis on the samples, how to analyse the results etc.

But don't you think we are bombarded with too much stuff. As I said before, if we are able to finish everything on time, including pre-reads, post reads etc then there is no need to worry at all. Or atleast if one can listen well and concentrate in the class lectures then its fine.

Apart from academics what all we learnt in this short duration:

1. Getting ready in 5-7 minutes. I mean to say getting up from bed at 8:35 and being there in the class by 8:45.
2. Finishing the work perfectly (bug free code i mean) in the11th hour.
3. Taking the photograph of the notes rather than writing it.
4. Giving good excuses if we fail in any work.
5. Sleeping in the class by keeping laptops open or by keeping cap (As Mr. G do in the class usually).
...
....
Lot more to write.

For now I will end it here, as i need to do lot in accounting.