IIMB Alumni Magzin Final - 16!05!2011

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SUMMER 2011
I I M B
Message from the Alumni Office
Rakesh Godhwani
Head, Alumni Association
Sankarshan Basu
Chairperson, Alumni Affairs
A lot has happened in the last 3 years - probably the best 3 years of my professional life. I take this opportunity to give you a crisp stateof-the-union report of the IIMB Alumni Association: From a startup, we are now a modest not-for-profit outfit with about INR 30 Lakh a year from events and initiatives collectively done across all chapters. We have potential to grow from here slow but steady. The IIMB Alumni Council, which has members from all chapters, meets quite often and works hard to take this association forward. The office is completely institutionalized at the IIMB campus - A block 1st floor, and is now giving its support, just like any other department of IIMB, to the Institute's vision of creating management excellence. We now involve alumni with various programs of the Institute which you would have seen like admission interviews, mentoring, guest talks etc. The Office now also has a regular beat - Biannual
Magazine - and we proudly present the 6th Edition here, a quarterly newsletter, periodically updated website, reunions, Anusmaran, updates from campus etc. By the way, we celebrated the 10th Anniversary of Anusmaran this year. We are bringing the Institute closer to you by live webcasts or events in your city - we did a 5 city tour on Innovation as a theme and will continue to do more in your cities. We are incorporating the feedback you all are giving to make our Association stronger e.g. the lifelong email id was a feedback from many of you that we launched early this year. We also launched a state of the art, cobranded platinum credit card with HDFC last month. This project is a very BIG DEAL for all of us. A portion of your spending is donated by HDFC bank to the Institute for student scholarships. I urge you to sign up for this card and contribute your bit.
Last not least, we are building excellent life-long relationships with you. I cherish my friendships with you all. There is not a single day when alumni don't visit my office and I thoroughly enjoy a hot cuppa with them in the serene woods of our Institute. And almost all our initiatives are done through alumni connections - some of them pro bono. And all of this would not have been possible without support from you and the Institute. I personally, get more than 100 emails a week. My office gets more than 300. And we try and respond to each of you. We are learning to do better and always keep our ears open to your suggestions, with the intent to incorporate them. So feel free to write to me more. I look forward to the next many many more years with all of you together. Let's engage, energize and enhance IIMB's leadership through a strong alumni association. Regards, Rakesh Godhwani
Shilpa Putturamu, Ranjini Sivaswamy, Sushma Ram, Rohini Ramegowda, Gayatri Nair
Contents
Editorial Committee:
Sankarshan Basu Chairperson, Alumni Affairs Rakesh Godhwani Head, Alumni Association Ranjini Sivaswamy Editor
The Alchemy of Wealth
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Editorial Team:
Rakesh Godhwani Ranjini Sivaswamy Gayatri Nair - Assistant Editor Unnati Narang - Freelance Writer Arnav Pandya PGP '01 - Editorial Support Sushma Ram Rohini Ramegowda Shilpa Putturamu
Back to B-School
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Guest Article
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Design & Production:

Cicada Media Bangalore
Salon
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Bannerghatta Road Bangalore 560 076, India Tel: +91-80-2699 3336 Fax: +91-80-2658 4050 Email: alumni@iimb.ernet.in Website: www.iimbaa.org
What's up @IIMB
The Travellers
Copyright, 2011. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine can be reproduced either in part or full without IIMB's prior written permission. For private circulation only
Class Notes
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Alumna Writes
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Anusmaran 2011
THE ALchemists of iimb
The Alchemy of Wealth
Take a second to imagine flashing dollar signs, green indicators against your stock investments and escalating figures in your bank account. Do you feel a compulsive need to make money? Not for what it can buy, but for what it is. Now try to imagine it all again - with a few changes this time. No dollar signs, enormous losses and an unavoidable debt trap. How much time did it take you to reverse your imagination? That's precisely how soon money can walk in or out of your life. There are some who've lasted it, but many more who've lost it. What does it take to make money work for you? Here is your chance to find out the secrets of the rich from top-notch IIMB alumni who have made it big.
n October 28, 1929, people left for work in the morning just how they would on any other Monday. Not knowing that it could be their last days at work. That Monday, in a single day, markets in the US lost $14 billion. Wealth four times the government's budget disappeared into thin air. What followed was utter panic amongst investors, huge job losses and a series of suicides. Money makers who had been riding on the high tide had hit rock bottom. In September 2008, the markets crashed again and history repeated itself. In what was seen as the biggest recession since the Great Depression of the 1920s, the stock market index eroded by more than fifty percent in less than two years. People were laid off in huge numbers every day. Those living off their dividend earnings faced a severe blow. Faith in pension scheme, like all good things, was shaken. Market players woke up every morning to check which bank had shut shop next. No low seemed low enough. The common man too, had become victim of a complicated terminology he didn't understand and of a quandary he didn't quite know how he had landed up in.
How did the rules of money making get reshaped during the tough times? Jobs were clearly eliminated as a safe bet for making money. With companies resorting to extreme cost cutting by laying-off their people, nobody was sure how long they would last in their jobs. The good old secure job was no more an option. The second thing the recession proved was that losing money was as easy as, or perhaps easier than making it. Even legendary investor Warren Buffet's firm Berkshire Hathaway reported that 2008 was his worst year ever. However, it was only the second year in more than 40 years that Berkshire posted negative results. This also shows that there is some skill involved in money making. Yet, skill is not all it takes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb asks the right question in his book 'Fooled by Randomness' - if you are so rich, why aren't you so smart? Taleb writes, "Can we judge the success of people by their raw performance and their personal wealth? Sometimes - but not always. A large section of businessmen with outstanding track records will be no better than randomly thrown darts."
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No wonder luck or timing, as one may like to call it, is important. And many big shots do attribute their success to luck. Oil tycoon George Kaiser, one of America's richest selfmade billionaire, was quoted as saying, "I recognized early on, that my good fortune was not due to superior personal character or initiative so much as it was due to dumb luck." Finally, the tough times led one to conclude that money can't be a measure of success. It is like a bottomless pit and the seamless sky,
extending from infinity to infinity. Something that is so broad in range can hardly give definitions to a person's achievements, or to what his life may mean. That said, this article is not all about money. But it will still tell you how to get rich. It is about ideas - ideas one may have about money, ideas that take people a long way on the road to wealth and mistakes that can shatter wealth amassed over years. What it also has is the potential to give you an idea to start now. It doesn't matter if you are forty or fourteen. You can make a start from wherever you are. The first
question is whether your purpose is right. Is it confined to the numbers or does it transcend those hefty figures? Over the years, many of our alumni have received recognition for their successful contribution to the financial services sector. In this series of interviews with bankers, private equity investors and fund managers, we will walk you down their extremely challenging career paths. Find out what they learnt and continue to learn about the lure of the lucre, and about going beyond it.
What have we learnt about money?

Rajiv Maliwal PGP '85
ne of the things that we learn from the successful is to keep climbing even if you slip, in pursuit of excellence. For Rajiv Maliwal, the story has been this and more. Above everything else, his career has been ruled by bouncing back higher after each hard fall. And he knows that you can only bounce back if you are made of the right material and have the perseverance. Since the time Rajiv passed out of IIMB, he says, his career has been a series of lows. Coming from someone of his stature and professional achievement, such a statement is quite surprising. As layers begin to unfold and he narrates his extraordinary experiences, it is not hard to see the highs following all those lows. He started off with an internship at Citibank in 1985. "In those days Citibank only hired about five or six people all over India from all the IIMs. When I got selected as an intern, the expectation was very high. But I didn't get a final offer from Citibank. I started my career with a low and had to join a fairly small company. I persevered and it paid off. Within six months, Citibank made me an offer." The Citibank job was a notable achievement in many ways. And while Rajiv went on to run big business for them, developments in the Indian economy in the early 1990s threw open even bigger opportunities for him. Multinational investment banks were coming into India. Surprisingly, it was then that Rajiv says, he met with another low. "Like all aspiring young guns, I wanted to join Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. But the closest I got to, was a job with GE Capital." However, this time too, within three months of joining GE, Rajiv was called for an interview by Goldman Sachs, Hong Kong and he got through.
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Rajiv Maliwal PGP '85, is the Founder and Managing Partner of Sabre Partners India. He led the creation of the biggest banking role up that came to be known as Centurion Bank of Punjab and its subsequent sale to HDFC Bank, which is now considered one of Asia's best private equity deals. Prior to 2002, he was the Global Head of Private Equity at Standard Chartered PLC. He has also worked with JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citibank. Rajiv is married to Srividya, PGP '86, a successful professional herself, and has two children.
"I was responsible for setting up and growing the investment banking and securities businesses for them in India. I quit Goldman after several years to join JP Morgan, Singapore. In 1997-98 the banks in Asia were undergoing a lot of stress due to the Asian crisis. I had a choice to either manage JP Morgan's joint venture with ICICI in India, or to move into a smaller organisation in a far bigger and material role. I chose the latter and came back to India to head ANZ Grindlay's Bank. This experience was the turning point in my career as I got valuable experience of managing an organisation, with over 2000 people, as its CEO." Then Grindlays got acquired by Standard Chartered Bank, and the aspirations to build India's biggest foreign bank took a back seat. After more than a decade in investment banking, Rajiv decided to move from the sell side to the buy side. "I had always wanted to start a private equity fund. We started work on our own independent private equity firm called Sabre Capital. Conceptualising and starting was easy but raising money was quite a challenge. 2002 was the first year anniversary of 9/11. Potential investors were wary of start-up managers in emerging markets, like us. We decided to change our approach, that is, to identify an opportunity first, and approach the investors with a definitive proposal. Things really started moving, when we identified Centurion Bank in India. We
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subsequently, bought Lord Krishna Bank, Bank of Punjab and Bank of Muscat. We called the cluster CBoP Centurion Bank of Punjab. In 2008 it was taken over by HDFC Bank." Sabre Capital successfully used Centurion Bank as a platform for India's most valuable banking roll-up. The HDFC-CBoP merger multiplied the investors' money by eight times in less than four years. With such phenomenal returns, was this deal then, the high point of Rajiv's career? "Definitely. I was very sure about CBoP. But what is even more satisfying is the kind of professional recognition Sabre Capital and the team has received from the industry. This then led to our joint venture (JV) with Temasek Holdings, Singapore for a mutual fund in India called Lotus Asset Management which became India's fastest growing asset management company. We then raised an Infrastructure Fund and a Healthcare Fund from leading US, Middle Eastern, Asian and Indian institutional investors."
Behind all the big deals and investments is a Rajiv who doesn't shy away from talking about the bold steps he took to make Sabre happen. "I had to sell off my small flat in Kandivali - the only one I had - just to meet our operating expenses. Today, when I invest in companies, I need to be convinced that the managers have skin in the game. If the business is going down, will they stand to lose personally? Even when we hire people, we ask whether if the investment goes down, will they personally suffer or will it be just be a job. One of the criteria when we invest in company is that three to five percent of the corpus should be our own money." So what has been Rajiv's best investment so far? "Prior to forming Sabre, I had invested in over a dozen companies, but I think the creation of Sabre Partners India has to be the most satisfying investment. This then led to creation of several successful platforms like Centurion Bank for financial services, Lotus Mutual Fund, Sabre Infrastructure Fund, Sabre Healthcare Fund and Sabre Venture Capital Fund (the most recent initiative)." What about his personal investment? "One of my earlier investments in a French/Asian company called Welcome Real-Time tops that list!"
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I had to sell off my small flat in Kandivali, the only one I had, just to meet our operating expenses Rajiv Maliwal
GET RICH OR DIE TRYING OR.... READ ON

Being in the thick and thin of it, there are many lessons Rajiv Maliwal has learnt about money. Here is an overview of some of them.
Don't chase it
What does it take to make money in the first place? Ironically, Rajiv says not chasing money. "Money cannot be your target. No amount of money is enough for anyone. You will make a little, and then you'd want more. You'd see someone with more money, and then you'd want more again. Yes, you can't divorce the desire to make money, but you can 'not chase' it. You have to chase excellence"
responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. But it is only when you speak with someone like Rajiv Maliwal that these ideas start to make practical sense. Even today, he doesn't draw a salary from Sabre and makes money only from capital gains. "Money is a hygiene factor. It should just allow you to look after your health, house and your children's education. Beyond that, money is actually counterproductive; it spoils lifestyles, family, etc. The only use of money is to deploy it back in business and society," says Rajiv.
backing entrepreneurs and helping influence their companies? I have done bigger deals in JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs but just getting the RBI approval to buy Centurion bank gave me enormous satisfaction. It makes you a part of a journey. But you can't do it if you are not willing to take risks. Also, you can't do it if you don't have the experience to create your own company. We started off with disappointments with Sabre but it did culminate into a professional standing and financially superior returns because of perseverance." Is it all about perseverance then? "No, there is the luck factor too. Then again, as a golfer once said, the more you practice the luckier you get. To be lucky, you have to be focused, persevere and look at a longer-term horizon. Those who succeed in the long run have been people who have spent a significant time doing what they are doing."
Money does not motivate

Management thinker Frederick Herzberg asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn't money; it's the opportunity to learn, grow in
Perseverance brings luck

Rajiv moved from a high paying investment banking career to private equity after many highs and lows, because he found it so enjoyable. "What can be better than
What money can buy

Greed is not good:
There are many who acquire too much money, too quickly and using questionable means. What about the Madoffs and the Milkens of the financial world? "That's plain greed. And greed is always detrimental. The moment greed takes over, you take short term decisions - you don't build a franchise, you don't get quality people and you may not necessarily enjoy what you create. Even when you are greedy, there will be five other people greedier than you, who will look to gobble you," says Rajiv Shukla. Rahul Shukla PGP '91 hails from a small town near Jamshedpur in Jharkhand. As a young boy, Rahul
Rahul Shukla PGP '91

According to him, family plays an important role and spending time with them, especially on holidays, which he takes as regularly as possible is a great way to manage stress and deliver at work. "Travelling with family has always been an exciting and a rewarding experience - Tibet was fantastic. I went to the Mount Everest base camp with my wife and three year old son. Other favourites include holidays in IndoChina or the forty-eight hour train journey from Beijing to Tibet through regions of permafrost and at altitudes at times above 5,000 metres above sea level. We were one of the first passengers to travel by that train.
remembers looking at aeroplanes in the sky and wanting to fly to faraway places. Today, as a successful banker who has travelled to more than fortyfive countries, professional success and the consequent social affluence is more than evident in his life. "It has been a tremendous journey. And it has been possible in the same job of over 20 years. Citibank gave me the platform to build a meaningful career in financial services, grow professionally and see the world at the same time," says Shukla. He feels the intense travelling that came with the job, taught him a lot, "My journeys including some enriching family holidays have all helped me broaden my horizon and realise my dream."
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Last June, I travelled in Japan for an entire week with my son before coming back to India and it will always remain etched as a very special holiday." Is there, then, any place that this globetrotter has not yet set foot on? What is his next destination? "It has to be Latin America and Africa." Rahul admits that financial stability is what allowed him to have these unique travel experience that he could have only wished for as a child. Being financially secure allowed him to not just travel, but also to spend when travelling. "You don't really always have to plan on a shoe-string budget, and therefore the liberty to propose and arrange an exquisite family destination does give you another degree of freedom," says Rahul. "Above all, being financially sound gives you a certain amount of security and also allows one to give back to society what one has received." But was money Rahul's prime motivation to get into finance? "No it never was. I wanted to do high finance, that is, large and complex financial transactions. Investment banking requires you to work seven days a week. I would travel for work at least four-six days a week from Hong Kong. You cannot do such a job just for the money; you have to intrinsically like it. And if you don't have the aptitude for it, you will not last in it for long. Money is ancillary," he says.
If it's really not about the money and the monetary reward is just a byproduct of professional success, then what is it that motivates the banker to be in the business of creating and managing wealth? "It is the ability to stand in front of companies when you are relatively young and to know that they are depending on your advice. That's the real high you get." In spite of all the good things that come with being financially well-off, like everything else professional success comes at a cost. This cost is the personal sacrifice in terms of time spent away from family. "When I was growing up, my father would be home by 5 o'clock. Now, it is tough to catch a leisurely evening with your wife. The travel component has increased significantly in today's careers. As a result, fathers are not always there when their kids are born or are growing up," says Rahul. At any point of time, did he feel like giving up his successful career and go back to being a small town guy with plenty of time for the family? "At times, it is difficult to imagine turning back. When you are in an amazing job that fits with you professionally and meets your personal interest, you don't want to let it go." As someone who has done well in terms of both value and wealth creation, Rahul ponders on why India as a country is not becoming wealthier. When
thinking on these lines, he sees the role of education as a critical bridge for narrowing the widespread income disparities. "Seats in higher education institutes are very limited in India. If you go one level below the IIMs, the quality of jobs offered is quite different. Right to better education should be the focus of the government." Is there then a direct relationship between a person's level of education and the amount of money he makes? In his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki criticises the education system for not teaching financial intelligence. His rule is simple: When income from your assets exceeds your expenses, you are headed the right way. Plus, if formal education could make someone rich, how do you explain the success of college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg? "In the Indian context, the education system largely has not led to the growth of entrepreneurs. The fact that you go through the education system and not drop out of school to experiment is well-grounded in our society." Whether one's road to riches is through professional qualification, investment strategies or entrepreneurial stints, at the core of it must lie a desire to excel, or what Rahul calls ambition.
Rahul Shukla PGP '91, Head of Corporate Banking, India Citibank joined the company right after his PGP. He started with the transaction services group and then moved into corporate finance. In the last two decades, he has worked in various divisions of Citibank, and across countries. He made his foray into investment banking when he moved overseas. He was in Singapore for three years and Hong Kong for a decade; he came back in mid 2010 when he was named Citibank's Head of Corporate Banking in India.
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Wealth-wise
Shrenik M Khasgiwala PGP '98 Shrenik M Khasgiwala PGP '98, is the Executive Director - Investment Banking at Enam Securities. He is a Chartered Accountant. Prior to Enam, Shrenik has had extensive experience in management consulting with AT Kearney Securities Europe Ltd for over 7 years.
Most of us use the terms money and wealth interchangeably. What has language got to do with how much money you have, anyway? Apparently a lot. Robert Kiyosaki writes, "The primary cause of financial struggle is not knowing the difference between an asset and a liability. The rich buy assets. The poor only have expenses. The middle class buy liabilities they think are assets." He defines wealth as how many days forward you can survive, if you stopped working today. Shrenik M Khasgiwala simplifies notions of wealth creation for the common man. When asked whether it is synonymous with making money, he says, "It is almost impossible for me to narrate my learnings on this without a feeling of humility - in that I have still to learn a substantial lot about wealth creation and a long path to tread myself in creating wealth. Having said that, my role as a chartered accountant, as a management consultant and then as investment banker over the last 15
years has brought me some very interesting insights which I would love to share with younger members of the alumni." Shrenik lists out three fundamental differences in the way he has come to understand these terms: Wealth creation is non-zero sum it is not associated with earning at someone else's cost. It involves real creation of value for various stakeholders in a win-win way. Wealth creation is more long-term and sustainable. As the Chinese proverb goes, "Things that grow fast like weeds in a swamp will go away as fast. It's the diamonds which are made withstanding years of pressure that last forever." Wealth creation is a result of, what I call, 'balance sheet thinking' as against 'P&L thinking'. P&L thinking is about the recurring effort, for example, starting from zero every year like the P&L, whereas balance sheet thinking is about cumulative effort or
stacking up each year like the reserves or assets on a balance sheet. What do these differences mean for the common man? How can an average person become financially intelligent? "There are several rules of financial intelligence. And these are very simple too. Create capital from savings and put it to intelligent productive use. Do not take unforeseen risks, including by way of leverage or governance issues. The common analogy that I find useful to think about is that is the 'snowball effect' - the rolling of a small ball of snow down a snow-covered hill. As it rolls, the ball will pick up more snow, gaining more mass and surface area, and picking up even more snow and momentum as it rolls along. A friend's father once said - remember this simple math - if you were to save Rs 1 lakh every month over a 35 year career and invest it in a 15% per annum saving instrument, you will end up with about Rs 150 crores at the end of your career!
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All you need to do is make sure the chain of compounding does not get broken," says Shrenik. With such simple rules, why don't we see more and more people getting richer? Is there an inherent attitude one needs for wealth creation? In Shrenik's view, there are many characteristics that qualify as the 'right' mindset to create wealth. And he finds these well documented in a lot of success studies. But if he were to pick one such attribute, what would it be? "The one attribute that I have seen at the core of serious wealth creation is that of enterprise, that is, careful risk-taking."
In India, the subject of the rich getting richer keeps coming back into public debate every now and then. And we seem to have come to terms with it. If wealth creation is not a zero-sum game, is it because of individual attitudes that not all are able to find place or is it the system that's gone wrong? "If I were to simplify it , there are three things we must do as a system to enable individuals - education for all, risk mitigation products such as insurance and social-security for all and a transparent governance system. But the onus will always be on the individuals to improve their own circumstance in life. I once read a quote which said 'Men who want to
improve their circumstance, must first want to improve themselves and this cannot be truer than in these times for modern India - India is today the fabled land of enterprise where there's opportunity for everyone who's ready for it!"
The onus will always be on the individuals to improve their own circumstances in life - Shrenik Khasgiwala
B-School, Finance and Mega deals - Is there more to it?

Sports, acting and investment banking are infamous for being the only three ways of making money. Small-towners have made their mark in all three. If Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni and Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut weren't enough to prove it, take the case of Ashudeep Garg. Hailing from Chandigarh, this young engineer went on to build a remarkable career in investment banking post his PGP from IIMB. Ashudeep discusses what motivated him and why he switched from engineering to banking. He talks about it in an absolute matter-of-fact way. "Post my engineering, I worked with Reliance Petroleum for two years. When you start working, you suddenly realise you are much lesser than you thought. Why did I opt for an MBA? One of the primary
Ashudeep Garg PGP '99, Senior Director, M&A/Equity Advisory at Rabobank, started his career as an Engineer at Reliance Petroleum Limited. Post IIMB, he was managing Structured Finance at SBI Capital Markets. He was also the Associate Vice President at KPMG Corporate Finance.
motivations was that I wanted to make more money, but more importantly, to have a better life and settle in metropolis."
Business education matters

Having been there and done that, Ashudeep discusses the various myths associated with money. A popular idea about making money is that it is necessary to attend BSchools in order to get rich. Is management education always worth the time and cost involved? "It is definitely worth it, especially in the finance industry. When I travel with global officers for work and we sit across the table, a question that always pops up is where you graduated from. Having been to an IIM makes a huge difference - more
Ashudeep Garg PGP '99
doors open up, people look at you with more respect and you end up doing more business and in turn, making more money," says Ashudeep. Before his PGP, finance had been just a hobby for him; but after IIMB he was all set to make it his career.
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Mergers and acquisitions are often looked at as one of the best ways to make large sums of money and create win-wins. Ashudeep breaks this myth.
But did he shift in such a way that his engineering education didn't matter anymore? "No, it became my anchor. I spent time studying petroleum and analysing oil companies. When I joined the finance team at SBI Capital Markets, my key role was to help petroleum companies raise funds."
Finance jobs pay well but so does entrepreneurship

In most business schools, finance jobs are the hot favourites for day zero of placements. Is it because finance jobs, as per popular belief, are the highest paying ones? Did Ashudeep's job with SBI Capital Markets show him the big money? "In 1999, I started my first finance job with an in-hand amount of Rs. 13000 a month. It was not a high paying situation even then. But ten years down the line, even though I started finance with smaller salaries, now I am probably in the top quartile of my batch in terms of earnings. And it's not because I had anything extraordinary. It's more because the industry is cyclical in nature. To make money, you must be in the right place at the right time." Does it mean anybody in any industry
can make that much money? "I know the head of strategy of a company and he makes a lot of money. Many entrepreneurs make the kind of money that can easily afford them semi-retirement. These are not finance guys but they earn well." Is it then, the luck factor? "Not really luck. You must have the capability to be at the right place and the right time. Pure luck might work only for a few people." One of the other common myths about money is that to make money, you must join a corporate. But Ashudeep feels differently. "Today, entrepreneurs make more money than a person in a job. And I don't think it is because of education; it's because an entrepreneur's level of frustration or motivation is much more." So after two and a half years with SBI, Ashudeep applied for a position with KPMG. "Again, there was not much change in the salary I was getting but I was able save well for myself and decided to get married," he says. While at KPMG, he started off on the advisory side, he later moved to M&A valuations and private equity in sectors like oil and gas, financial services, etc. Frontline investment banking appealed to him more, and
that was his major drive to move to Rabobank. "I joined a team which essentially focused on private equity and structured finance. It was a good blend of what I had learnt; it was a lot similar to what I used to do for SBI, and PE was new in the industry. I was quite oriented towards Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)."
M&A is not always the answer

M&A are often looked at as one of the best ways to make large sums of money and create win-wins. Ashudeep breaks this myth. "M&As can often be driven by the management's personal goals and not just the company's growth. Managers might want to show in their profile that they grew the company from say US $4 billion to $8 billion in a matter of 2 years. Someone who has such an ambition will do it. But it doesn't mean that you can't grow big without M&A. Many companies have scaled new heights by sticking to organic growth." While growing companies look to M&A to fill their coffers, the common man finds respite often in the stock markets.People also tend to assume
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that it is the markets that make the finance guys filthy rich. "Most people in finance are just doing their jobs. They don't make a lot of money in just stocks. If as a finance person I know a hundred companies that are worth investing in, it doesn't mean I will invest in them. It doesn't work that way." One would expect someone sitting in a high rise bank building in Mumbai to have the best stocks at the tip of their fingers. Or is it impossible for even someone central to the finance sector to pick
stocks effectively? "The question to ask is when you should invest in a particular stock and how much returns it will yield in a given span of time. A stock may be very strong but if you don't invest in it at the right time and in optimal quantity, the opportunity is lost," he says. For Ashudeep, even when it comes to making money in the markets, his views on basic business education remain the same. "If you are qualified and have the right credentials, it will
give you a longer window to manage risk than somebody else who doesn't have an education or the right experience." Ashudeep's business education has clearly stood him in good stead. So while many entrepreneurs across the globe became rich after dropping out of BSchools, that road was certainly not for Ashudeep. He started small but he started strong. Today, every step of his journey has paid off, like it did for many in sports and on the silver screen.
Are you an entrepreneur too?

Thyagesh Baba PGP '95
Thyagesh Baba PGP '95, part of the founding team at Spark Capital, heads the Institutional Equities division since March 2009. He, among all others at Spark, has the most widespread functional experience in financial services. For nearly 10 years at Spark, Thyagesh took on both deal-sourcing and execution roles in investment banking, working on transactions in the Infrastructure, Financial Services and IT sectors. Thyagesh sees himself as a 'total footballer' in the Spark team.
Entrepreneurs often turn to banks for their investment needs. But how often does an entrepreneur build an investment bank? Thyagesh Baba made this rare choice barely four years after working in the financial sector. Post his PGP, a young Baba set out to join Peregrine Capital as a research analyst, and later also worked as a sales trader on their India desk. The company, born hardly a decade before that, could not withstand the Asian crisis of 1997 and had to shut shop in 1998. Baba learnt his first lessons about money making - cash flow is everything and aggression for growth had to be measured.
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While he went on to work with Citibank for a year and a half, the time he had spent at Peregrine paid off in more than one way. Y Rama Rao, his senior at Peregrine, was starting Spark as a boutique advisory setup. Baba, who was just getting married, decided to join Rao in spite of his pressing needs for security at that stage. A second lesson - it is important to take risks, but with partners who you share your philosophy with.
Sealing the deal

Today, as Thyagesh Baba sits in his office on Santhome high road in Chennai, he can recollect every brick that went into the making of Spark.
He remembers all those path breaking deals, the hours of toil and the several challenges that a small bank had to face. And he can talk about each of them with a surprising ease. His latest deal, for instance, was a $100 million investment by Warburg Pincus in the NDR Group. "We were representing Warburg, a blue-chip global private equity fund. There were several challenges, as we had four counter-parties to convince, on valuations, structures and rationale. Deal size, nature of transaction and quality of parties involved were primary drivers that kept us going. More importantly, we believed in the space and the promoter group's vision for growth."
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One would imagine that such deals are being made from a typical investment bank building based in the financial capital, Mumbai. But Spark and Baba always chose to walk a not-so-common path. Why did they establish base in Chennai? "In those days, Chennai was an under advised market. It offered unique opportunities to set up an advisory firm, by way of cost structures and the integrity of the promoters you ended up advising." Without complete faith that the other partners or promoters will be honest and open, one cannot create wealth sustainably. "Confidence in the promoters is a must for any good deal. Thirst for wealth-creation against the option of 'skimming of cash' needs to be recognized by the team. Inclination to be rational with valuation expectations and an openness to share wealth (with employees and other investors) is an indication of how ethical the promoters are," says Baba.
make money. You must stick to simple rules. Analyse businesses on three or four metrics that you can easily track and understand. Above all, invest in the right people. Back the right management. Ask yourself how this team will respond to change when the times demand the same." If the rules of the game are so simple, where are people going wrong? "A major chunk of our problems arise from the practice of sweeping long term problems under the carpet and relying on short term fixes. Any approach that is not based on cash flows, or is based on regulatory arbitrage, or on establishing monopoly by lobbying, will go wrong in the long run. Because these are all systemic positives and are temporary. To make money, evaluate the inherent wealth of a business or build businesses that represent wealth creation." Is the Warren Buffet approach of finding the inherent value of stocks, then, the final word on investor success? "The approach is right. Practice it bottoms-up, by focusing more on individual businesses and not just the macros of an economy or industry," says Baba. People often spend all their lives acquiring the right 'skill set' for
making money, whether as an entrepreneur or otherwise. Yet, it is not always the 'vision' of an entrepreneur or the 'skill' of a trader that makes him money. It could be sheer luck, or it could be acting on pure instinct. How much role does Baba attribute to instinct? "I would like to believe it is more than 70%, but it is like trying to quantify the unquantifiable." While numbers are important, Baba advises entrepreneurs to do what they strongly believe in and not be overpowered by numbers or apparent competitive deterrents. The same goes for investors. "Do not be overawed by what's happening around you. Distribute bets across a limited bunch of investments that you understand. Be open to reinvesting a good chunk of returns made and not take cash out. There will also be rough patches. Face them with a sense of calm." An entrepreneurial journey always has its highs and lows. But if you believe in what you are doing, there will always be rewards at the end of the road. Also the rewards will be far greater than those from simply amassing wealth.
Keeping it simple
It is easy to imagine investing in the right stock at the right time, to buy low and sell high, in order to get rich. But is that all you need in the real world? "These are simple rules to
It is easy to imagine investing in the right stock at the right time, to buy low and sell high, in order to get rich. But is that all you need in the real world?
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For the love of creation

Balu Nayar PGP '89 brings over 20 years of experience spanning media, marketing and business development. He is the co-founder of the Morpheus Media Fund. He played a key role in the conceptualization, business modeling and monetization of the IPL as Managing Director of IMG. A graduate of the IIT Kharagpur and IIM Bangalore, Balu is also involved in mentoring start-ups, especially in media and technology.
They say every child is an artist; the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. A true artist uses his colours as a tool and the canvas as a medium to put down the picture in his mind. Every person has the choice to either be like the artist who paints his imagination, or to be someone who paints what the world likes or what sells. It is this choice that determines what kind of projects you choose to work on and which goals you pursue. For Balu Nayar, his career has been all about doing what appeals to him, and not about which course of decision will pay more. Not surprisingly, he issues a subtle disclaimer before he starts discussing various nuances of money. "I am not the typical fund manager," he says. That doesn't deter one from wanting to know more about him as he is someone with a phenomenal amount of experience across industries. From sports to internet, to telecom and broadcast media, he has done it all. Balu played a key role in conceptualizing IPL; he headed Yahoo's Connected Life businesses across India, South-East Asia & Australia; he was instrumental in building Telecom's value-added services in India in his role at Hutchison Telecom and set up the marketing division at Star TV. For the past three years, Balu has been in the private equity and venture capital
space as the Managing Director, Morpheus Fund. In his long and rewarding career, where does money fit in? "The objective should be to create something that will make an impact and result in wealth creation. Wealth should be the bigger goal. Money is what you have at your disposal but wealth is what you possess in terms of intangible assets, resources and goodwill." Balu feels that money is only one component of wealth, which broadly includes other parameters such as social contribution of your work, the learning curve you experience, etc. How can one bridge the gap between money and wealth? Entrepreneurship is one of the ways to bridge this gap and create sustainable, long term benefits. A lot of people perceive entrepreneurship as just about making money. Balu shatters this myth, "A business model which has money making as its objective will not work. The entity has to contribute and deliver value to get customers. While the business idea is important, it is equally necessary to look at its execution. Entrepreneurs should not start-up for the glamour or money aspect." Balu mentors start-ups in the field of technology and media - two sectors which have been at the core of his career. In his experience as a
mentor, what are some of the mistakes he has seen entrepreneurs make, when it comes to the money aspect? "Typical mistakes entrepreneurs make are incorrect assumptions on the time taken for the business to generate revenues or profitability, and the related issue of the extent of funds required before the business can sustain itself, as well as the incidence of cash-flow issues. In some cases, the availability of excess funds can lead an entrepreneur to get carried away and take incorrect decisions to the detriment of the business." Even though not an entrepreneur in the strict sense of 'starting your own business', Balu has incubated startups and set up the Morpheus media fund in addition to many other entrepreneurial stints. Now when he looks back, is there anything he'd like to change or any word of caution for new-age entrepreneurs? "For any new-age entrepreneur, I'd say that while the business concept is important, the execution is far more important. Secondly, be prepared for a major change in the business model or direction of the venture pretty early in the life-cycle. Thirdly, be prepared for all your plans to take longer than your most pessimistic forecasts to actually fructify." While execution is a step-wise process, what is it that helps one find opportunity and ideas in this
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first place? How does Balu do it? "One needs to travel, both mentally as well as physically. If you sit back in your office, you won't find the opportunity. It is important to 'think' market; the answer lies in the network of people you meet and places you visit." Is that how the idea of a media fund at Morpheus occurred to him? What is it all about? "The Morpheus Media Fund is a private equity fund that invests growth capital in companies
where effective marketing is the key driver to growth. It targets consumer-oriented businesses, and the core objective is to help build powerful Indian brands." One can't help but ask how big this fund is, given India's consumption driven economy. "The fund has a target size of Rs. 900 crores," says Balu. With this corpus and Balu's ideas of wealth creation, one can be confidence that this fund will add value by several multiples.
Balu Nayar PGP '89
Money, money everywhere but not a coin to flip

This year, Forbes magazine has featured 7 Indians in the top 100 ranking of the world's billionaires. The average net worth of the Indian tycoons is $4.5 billion. At the same time, poverty remains a major challenge for India. According to a World Bank report for 2010, 37.2% of the population (about 410 million people) remains poor, making India home to one third of the world's poor people. If there is so much wealth at the top, why has it not trickled down? Where are we, as a nation, going wrong? In his book India Unbound, acclaimed writer Gurcharan Das shows how India's policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when economic reforms paved the way for a 'shining' India. He raises a pertinent question, "If we were once rich, why are we now poor?" For a long time, Indians blamed the British for a drain of wealth, not realizing that the policies adopted by India's political leaders post independence were flawed too. We blamed foreign trade for our poverty and strived for selfsufficiency through a closed economy model. We learnt the wrong lessons from history. But it is not impossible to make a poor nation prosperous. Many Asian economies have grown from rags to riches much faster than the West. Technology has been at the forefront of such change. India, too, is now on a similar path. Sumit Chandwani PGP '91 is President at ICICI Venture and Bhargav Dasgupta PGP '92, Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Lombard are highly positive that the trickle down will happen in India. They are firm believers of the free market. And even though market competition rewards meritocracy, they believe that only when the pie gets bigger, will everyone get a share. What is the way forward for India to grow more equitably? These two corporate leaders put forward new ideas.
Sumit Chandwani PGP '91 is Executive Director at ICICI Ventures. He has 20 years of experience in private equity, project and structured finance. He was awarded the Entrepreneur of the year award in 2010. He has been involved in all aspects of the investment process and has led transactions in VA Tech Wabag, Ace Refractories, PVR Ltd.,etc. In his last stint at GE Capital, he was the Country Head for GE's Vendor Financing business in India.
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Sumit Chandwani does not get excited by investment banking. Instead of playing the role of an agent or broker, he always wanted to be the principal - a lender or project financier. "I was always excited about evaluating different industries. I enjoy looking at business by close quarters, to see how they are run and managed," says Sumit. Having been in project finance and private equity for almost two decades, Sumit naturally sees businesses through the looking glass. What kind of ventures does he find maximum potential in? "Any investment decision depends on three things - industry characteristics, entrepreneurial team and the return on capital. The industry must offer good growth prospects and the possibility of creating shareholders' value. The model should be scalable." In his career, Sumit has made some remarkable deals. One of his favourite investments was in VA Tech India Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of VA Tech WABAG GmbH, Austria. The Rs 100 crore water technology company is now worth Rs 1500 crores in revenue. In terms of investor value, it has grown 25 times since the deal was signed in 2005. As someone facilitating growth of enterprises, has Sumit ever wanted to start-up on his own? "Not in the classic way of becoming an entrepreneur. But I might do something in the Private Equity/Venture Capital space because I enjoy working with a variety of industries, with very smart entrepreneurs and assisting them in strategy formulation," he says. So long as Sumit is able to add value to the enterprises he is enabling, he is more than happy doing what he does. Where does money fit into this equation? "I hold the view that the profit motive is very important. It makes people responsible,
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improves productivity and decision making. But money making is not just about money. It's about doing things better." Like most successful people, he adds a word of caution and says that money cannot be your main motivation. If it were, then value systems, corporate governance norms, etc would all crumble. Pursuing your passion should be the driving force in what you do, he adds.
more and more aware of the need to send their children to school. My driver wanted to send his kids to an English medium school and I said I'll fund their education. Once awareness is created, means are easy to come by." In the coming decades, if wealth were to get distributed more equitably, what will be the catalyst of this change? Technology, says Sumit, will be the biggest leveller. "Whether it is the Unique Identification Number (UID), the financial inclusion measures or news on your cell phone, technology will make the change possible. The future will belong to entrepreneurs who will create solutions." Since 1991, India has made conscious efforts towards including more people in its growth story. But the government's motto of inclusive growth ironically becomes possible when the government steps back and lets the private players operate. "The government should essentially be a regulator. Starting with telecom in mid 1990s, then power, insurance and healthcare, the government has slowly reduced its role as a doer to that of a regulator. Now, this is happening in the education sector.
Technology will be the biggest leveller, says Sumit Chandwani
Unfortunately, in India, only a small chunk of the population has the means to pursue their dreams. What about those who don't have the privilege? "The trend is gradually changing. We are creating a new set of wealthy people. Earlier, wealth was only confined to the business families and politicians. Now we are creating a new breed of wealthy individuals who are either first generation entrepreneurs or have excelled in their professions. The movement of people contributing towards society will gain momentum and as wealth gets distributed, more and more people will become more responsible." So far, the trickle down in India has not been visible. With malls and high rise offices sprouting in every city, the roadside vendors and rickshaw pullers have not found much respite from poverty woes. Sumit looks at it differently. "Every pan walla, every rickshaw puller is an entrepreneur. He is self-employed and has to earn his living every day. We are becoming a country of entrepreneurs. Maybe the access to education has not improved drastically, but people are becoming
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The government is not geared to do a good job of these activities in a country like India. As the realisation sinks in, new avenues will be created for entrepreneurs. This will redistribute wealth." When Sumit joined ICICI, he says, it was not the best paying job. But the chance to work in project finance made up for it. Ultimately money only improves your lifestyle and standard of living but it is not reason enough to spend your
life doing something. What has it meant to Sumit? "Well, if I want I can take a sabbatical and go travel for a year. I can do that now. I can also give back to the society. In a few years, I will definitely get involved in a social initiative. Ironically, money is what has made it possible." Back in his college days at IIT Roorkee, if one wanted to find Sumit, the best place to look would be the campus grounds, where he would sit and stare at the night sky. Not many know that this finance hotshot is also
a star gazer and is fascinated by astrophysics. The Universe seems to be his source of strength. It puts things in perspective for him. "The Universe is a constant reminder of how small and insignificant we are in the overall context of existence. Once you understand this, you don't take yourself too seriously. That's important in life." Probably, when he has the time, Sumit will also go and pursue his love for the stars and study the Universe. For Sumit, money will only be a facilitator of what he enjoys and never an end in itself.
Bhargav Dasgupta, PGP '92, is the Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Corporation Limited. He began his career with the erstwhile ICICI Limited in 1992 in the Projects and Corporate Finance Division. Since then he has held key leadership positions in diverse business areas of the Group. He set up ICICI Bank's International Banking Group. In his leadership this group built an international presence in 14 countries and contributed almost 20% of the business of the bank in just four years prior to 2006.
Ever since Bhargav Dasgupta graduated from IIMB, he has been working with the ICICI group. There are two reasons why people stay with the same company throughout their career - either they become too settled in their jobs and get used to the security, or they keep themselves involved in challenging assignments and move out of their comfort zones. The latter applies to Bhargav. He has been constantly innovating and adding value to the Group's business in various capacities. He played a key role in building ICICI bank's international business between 2002 and 2006, and as a result, its $12 billion strong balance sheet then. Yet, the subject of money does not please
him much. He'd rather talk about value creation than money making. "It is wrong to chase money as an end in itself. I stayed back in ICICI not because of the money, but because of the exposure and the job content. People kept leaving every three to four years. Many left for better pay elsewhere. But because I was adding significant value and handling large roles, I was happy with my job. I might not have been half as satisfied with what I am today otherwise," he says with conviction. What was it about his work that really kept him going? "It was the joy of building an organisation. ICICI allowed me to do entrepreneurial stints every now and again. When I was just four years into ICICI Ltd, Mr Kamath became the CEO. He created a culture wherein if he saw someone grabbing the opportunity, he would give them more opportunity." So while Bhargav started in project finance, he went on to do oil and gas financing, e-commerce, technology management, corporate strategy and treasury. In 1999, when ICICI Ltd became ICICI Bank, he played a key role in implementing best
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practices and taking ecommerce beyond the core business activities. "I was the COO of ICICI Econet for about one and a half years; we set up new businesses for the bank in ecommerce. One of the most successful was a company we incubated called Techprocess, a payment gateway for electronic bill payments." ICICI Ventures and Econet were merged in 2001 and that is when Bhargav was called back to ICICI Ltd in Strategy and New Initiatives Group. He was now directly reporting to Mr Kamath. It was in this role that he prepared the international strategy for the bank and was asked to head it. "The most exciting part of my career was building the bank's international business. Our strategy was to follow our customers, while leveraging our technology platform and capabilities in India to have a low-cost backend. It was a great time to build the international business because the Indian economy had opened up and many Indian corporations were going abroad. There was huge demand for cross-border transactions." In October 2006, Bhargav was elevated to the board of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company
as Executive Director responsible for sales, distribution, product and marketing for both retail and group business of the company. He took over his current role in May 2009. In Bhargav's words, he has been driving a change agenda. How has this shift from banking to the insurance business changed his perception of money, or value as he likes to call it? From a business where number of bank branches, customer accounts opened or transaction volume would define results to a highly competitive business of insurance where market share makes all the difference, has the definition of value changed? "Definitely. During our international expansion, it was all about how much we can enhance value by building our international presence and profits. We were concerned with the low hanging fruits. In the business of life insurance, it was all about growth, the distribution rollout, number of agents, etc. What I am doing today is fairly balanced. Value lies in not just growth, but balanced growth. You have to be careful about what you are underwriting otherwise the bottom-line will suffer." Bhargav's path to where he now stands has not been an easy one. It came with a lot of personal sacrifices. When he was setting up ICICI's international business, he would be travelling for 15 days every month. He still remembers one incident when he was in India for three weeks at a stretch and his five year old daughter asked his wife why he was at home. Today, he can look back and laugh about it. A lot of people slog in jobs all day, for decades. And at the end of the road, some make it to the top, but many don't. What is it that makes one person different from the other? "In a high performance organisation, a professional moves up based on meritocracy. There are certain general skills you need. It's about overall competence and having the right attitude."
Even if one assumes a hypothetical society with equal competence levels, similar to John Rawls' veil of ignorance where he assumes that "no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like", would it lead to some level of equality in the society? Can we ever do away with disparities of income and wealth, to create a rich nation for its entire people? "I am a strong believer in market driven competition, rather than the socialistic view. I remember as a boy in the 70s, how difficult it would be to just buy bread; it was a controlled product. The scarcity in the economy was much more disturbing than the inequalities seen today. We had a much larger number of poor and fewer rich. Trickle down was probably not even possible because there was no pie to share. You cannot distribute poverty," says Bhargav. Though Bhargav supports capitalism and believes that trickle down will now take place, he is completely against notions of greed. Today, with the richest Americans signing 'The Giving Pledge' to make a commitment to give most of their money to philanthropic causes, the day is not far when Indians will also join the bandwagon. Many are already doing their bit in different ways. Bhargav, for instance, supports the cause of children's education. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with making money; it can be both an enabler and facilitator. The skill lies in how one puts it to use. And just like it did for these business leaders, your attitude towards wealth creation will make all the difference.
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Life in the World of Finance A bystander's ramble

Article by Prof. G. Sabarinathan PGP '82
hen I was approached by the editorial staff at this publication to write this piece I first felt like the celeb who has just been informed that he has been selected for a lifetime achievement award. A signal that one is well over the hill. Then I realized that with a tad less than thirty years of work experience if nothing else, I had earned the right to spin a story. In allowing me a blank canvas to paint on, these guys had signed up for that story, no matter however boring it was going to be. months. I chose the job offer from ICICI, motivated by a desire to contribute to the development of the country in some way. Before long I realised I was not sure of my contribution to the cause. Instead, in working for a development bank all that I could say for myself was that I was not part of a purely profit motivated enterprise. And here was the irony: Thanks to the large influence of multilateral institutions Indian development banks at that time believed that it was private enterprise that would be the engine of economic growth. That said, working at ICICI was a heady experience. ICICI empowered its young officers to assume responsibilities that would require several years of work elsewhere. As an officer in a bank that was one of the few sources of long term funds and that was regarded as more professional and less corruptible than many other state owned institutions, corporate executives and promoters were keen to have you among their business network. I have to recount this unforgettable incident of those days which is valuable for the way it epitomizes the world view that prevailed within ICICI, and probably other development banks too, at that time. In a rare meeting with the Chairman and Managing Director, one of my colleagues asked if we could all have visiting cards. That was the term for what is now more fashionably known as a business card. The boss, known for his nononsense approach, asked the officer sternly if he knew when he might ever use a visiting card.
1982: In the name of king and country

There is this old line which says that if at twenty you are not a Communist you don't have a heart. When I completed my PGP at IIMB in 1982 I was all of 22 years and some
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When the officer responded, defensively by then, that he would use it when he visited clients, he was reminded that ICICI's clients always visited the officers and not the other way round. The other striking recollection is the looming presence of Bharat Sarkaar in everything that we did. Every senior officer who had led the true life of an ICICI officer would have something or the other to contribute to the collective organizational wisdom of something significant that some bureaucrat may have pronounced in the context of some business decision in the past. Imagine an officer of a commercial bank today citing the view of a babu in Delhi, however senior s/he might be, while proposing a routine commercial decision. It is another matter altogether that aspiring corporate executives might benefit professionally even today from their understanding of the pet weaknesses of men and women in power in government.
These changes were not without their flip side though. The churn on the human resources side was particularly noteworthy. It was not just because of the enormous deficit of appropriate talent and trained manpower in India at that time, but also because of what it meant at the human level to those who suddenly discovered that they did not fit into the emerging new world. Many of those who found themselves struggling for a sense of relevance in that evolving marketplace must have felt like the famous playback singer of yesteryears, P B Srinivas, who once told me as to why he no longer sang for movies: All the three Ts of music have changed, Sir. The times have changed, the tunes have changed, tastes have changed. As western trained Indians and executives of western ethnicity landed in India to manage the Indian arm of various multinationals they
brought in new norms and mores at the workplace that were more similar to the western working atmosphere. There were subtle changes that many outsiders would not notice but their impact was on the psyche of the Indian corporate executive was not all that subtle. While these might appear to be sweepingly impressionistic observations many who are familiar with these transformations at the workplace would agree that the office of today is characterized by a far more transactional feel to relationships, a much more clinically detached attitude towards colleagues and an overbearing sense that this rough and tumble world is a lonely place where at the end of the day one's well being is entirely in one's own hands and that the key to success is to "leverage" official relationships to further one's own success.
Fast forward 1991-1992

So when the world suddenly changed one fine morning with the announcement of the economic reforms, it was a strange experience for many of us. On the positive side every day saw some new announcement that allowed even more freedom and ever more opportunities for entrepreneurs and businessmen to set up new ventures. For providers of capital like us who had started the venture capital industry in India it meant structuring innovative financing deals. The financial landscape changed dramatically as many new global players entered the market, pushing at the boundaries of regulation and seeking to offer products and services that were made of the stuff that one had only read of in text books.
Prof. G. Sabarinathan PhD PGP '82 is Associate Professor in the Finance and Control Area at IIMB. He is an alumnus of who came back to the Institute for the love of teaching. More recently he elected to become a self-styled gadfly.
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When the world suddenly changed one fine morning with the announcement of the economic reforms in 1992, it was a strange experience for many of us.
If there is some symbiosis along the way, one may not mind it, at best. It is not as if these predilections are purely the by-product of the new corporate setting, post reforms, and as if they did not exist in Corporate India previously. They quite possibly did but it was perhaps not recognized as a mainstream worldview that is characterized by the belief Gordon Gekko evangelises in the movie Wall Street: Greed is good.
These observations are relevant here because in the rest of this article I am going to talk about the prospects that the world of finance holds for a business professional.
acquired any ability to call the future. Some broad signposts should however be unmistakably visible to even an untrained observer. Take for example the various sectors of finance. In the decade ahead, there is hardly any sector that is not going to explode in terms of business growth, job opportunities and, not in the least, the moolah for the successful. That includes businesses we all recognize such as retail financial services, corporate
Darkly, through the looking glass

Despite the number of years that I have now spent trying to understand the intimidating predictive theories of financial economics I doubt if I have
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Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line
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banking, insurance, broking and some of the neophytes such as venture capital and mutual fund management. And many businesses that we might just begin to see evolve such as risk management, institutional asset management, asset reconstruction, collective investment vehicles for real estate and the commodities businesses, innovative forms of asset and project financing and acquisition financing. All of that will be powered by capital flows of a magnitude that will make the large inflows of the past decade look like a trickle. Don't forget that the securities market of the fourth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity which is also among the top five in terms of GDP growth rate and the second most populous country accounts for just 2.50% of the combined value of some US $ 57 trillion of all the equity markets across the world. With the locus of economic activity steadily shifting towards the BRIC economies, notwithstanding President Obama's feeble attempt to cheerlead American protectionism, there is one thing that can be taken for granted- growth of the Indian finance sector. IIMB's alumni have been planting flags of achievement in many of these industries already. When I think back about the numerous bright minds that I have been fortunate to have in my class, it is not difficult to imagine that many more leaders that will emerge from IIMB's alumni in the current decade and thereon. Successive batches of IIMB'a alumni have helped steadily build its respectability as an institution, from the position of obscurity and sometimes even unkind ridicule that alumni of the earlier years faced in
spite of their talent and performance. So it is with a sense of both satisfaction and gratitude that I look upon the achievements of the alumni of the later years.
Life as an academic.OMRG!
OMRG is SMS-lingo for Oh My Rocking God. That is my first reaction when people ask me about life as an academic, having switched to this life, much to the consternation of friends and family. Here are a few preliminary observations about this new incarnation that I feel persuaded to share. First, of the various disciplines in management, finance has perhaps been among the most amenable to the intellectual excursions of many a renegade mathematician in search of a profitable calling. These finance academics are even given exotic epithets such as rocket scientists, although that did not seem to impress the Canadian singer Shania Twain who sang, "Okay, so you are a rocket scientist, That don't impress me much". Second, in these past ten years, like a born again, I have been more faithful to the scriptures of financial theory than perhaps many fellow academics who are not cast in my unfortunate position of having to prove that they have shed their practitioner's baggage. And therein lies lesson# 1: Swear by the Book even if it appears so disconnected from reality at first - at least until you get a permanent faculty position. Like in any organized religion, once ordained into priesthood, a little blasphemy might be tolerated. Lesson # 2: Academics is not necessarily about answering
questions from the real world. If at all it does answer, do not expect that you will always understand the answers. And that is so only because you are unable to comprehend those answers, not so much because the answers themselves are arcane. In a related admission I have to concede that once in a while I am reminded of this remark attributed to Warren Buffet, "It isn't necessarily because such studies have any utility; it is simply that the data are there and academicians have worked hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired it seems sinful not to use them." And finally, to those who are looking to an academic job as a safe harbour from the shark infested oceans of business I have a simple update by way of lesson # 3: They just locked the easy access to that safe harbor and threw away the key. And sorry, I was the last one to just edge myself in. From now on, if you want to become an academic it is the hard way up - a proper PhD, serious research and publication and decent performance as a teacher. And oh, by the way, teaching is not quite what it used to be before the days of the mobile phone and the internet. In the classroom of today the exhortation from Pink Floyd's famous song is routinely played back to you, Teachers, leave them kids alone. All of that and more about life as an academic in a book that I dream of writing some day, no matter whether I find a publisher or not!.
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G U E S T A RT IC L E
True Wealth Creators:

Glimpses from the Past
Article by Shankar Jaganathan
Shankar Jaganathan is a proponent of a fair and just society. He is passionate about economic history, sustainable development and corporate governance. He believes a combination of education and technology can help us realize the ideal society. Shankar has over two decades of varied experience in the corporate, academics and the social sector. He is the author of the book Corporate Disclosures: 1553-2007, The Origin of Financial and Business Reports, published by Routledge in 2008. His second book, The Wisdom of Ants: A Short History of Economics, is scheduled for publication in September 2011.
Valuing Wealth
he publicity blitz that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett attracted when they jointly visited India is not surprising, for the rich and the wealthy have attracted the limelight since times immemorial. But curiously, the attention the rich get is not directly proportionate to their quantum of wealth. Even among the rich there is a pecking order; some sources of wealth are valued more than others, some uses of wealth are commended while others are frowned upon and what they do is constantly scrutinized. The value system prevailing in a society reflects the relative rank accorded. Looking back over the ages, has the value system changed? If it has, then what has changed and why? If not, is there any element that has survived the ravages of times? Colour coded into white, grey and black, Naradasutra in Ancient India classified wealth into three categories. The classification reflected the then prevailing value system. The pinnacle position was reserved for the creators of Sukla or the white wealth acquired through knowledge, valour, practice of austerity, teaching, sacrifice and inheritance. On reflection, we can conclude that this wealth was a byproduct of some other primary motive not directly related to wealth acquisition. The next rung was reserved for the Sabala or the grey tinge where wealth is directly targeted through money lending, tillage, commerce, gift received for artistic performance and personal services rendered. Krsna or the wealth of dark hues occupied the base position as it was a result of wealth acquired by ethically questionable means, namely bribes, gambling, forgery, robbery or frauds. Had Gates and Buffett visited Ancient India, would they both have been equally honoured? Or would
Gates the entrepreneur with his knowledge based wealth be placed on a pedestal, while Buffett the investor, be accorded a lower status due to his 'money lending' lineage. Although this could be a matter of debate, there is no denying the fact that both in the Ancient India and today in 'Anna's' corrupt-conscious India, the owners of Krsna wealth would be looked down upon and treated with contempt. Was Ancient India unique, or would Buffett have received a different reception elsewhere in the world?
approved of trade only to meet the needs of a family, provide relief to the distressed or supply necessities for their countrymen. Added to this, in the Christian and Islamic world, money lending was considered a sin as it exploited the misery of their brethren. Given this strong value bias, what changed the social attitude towards conscious wealth accumulation?
Profits Sanctioned
Over time as trade expanded from consumables like food within a local community to intermediate goods like wool among the merchants located in more distant markets, the concept of just price too evolved. Johannes Nider a 15th century Dominican friar summed up this change when he noted, 'A thing is worth as much as it can be sold for, that is, according to how purchasers can be got to buy when at liberty and by free choice, and assuming that the purchasers are not fools, pinched or deceived.' He justified the idea that value lies in the eyes of the beholder, by using the ethical plank of objectivity. While a seller could be suspect in deciding a just price as he is an interested party, he could not go wrong in trusting the buyer's decision; especially when this view was endorsed by the community. Gradually, as the revised concept of just prices gained acceptance, profit transformed from being a dirty word reeking of exploitation to a service fee paid to the providers of socially demanded products and services. While Johannes Nider explained the idea of just price, Adam Smith - the father of economics - subsequently outlined the process by which profit is bleached off its taints of exploitation. Smith saw free-markets as a non-violent and voluntary exchange mechanism of goods and services. Given this, each participant in the market must adopt the value system of his counterparty.
Around the World

In the land of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, there is a slim chance that Gates and Buffett would have received a red carpet welcome. To the ancient Greeks, wealth was a means to an end and as Aristotle remarked, pursuit of unlimited wealth led to 'living only, and not upon living well.' In the ancient Greek society, only slaves and foreigners toiled for wealth. For the free citizens, first action on attaining economic independence was to invest their wealth in land and be insulated from dirtying their hands in any further economic activity. On gaining economic independence, the free Greek citizen devoted his life to politics. In India and in other parts of the world too, any conscious attempt to pursue wealth was socially frowned and religiously censured. Life on this earth was seen as an entrance test to paradise. It was a divine mandate to be born poor. The inheriting rich were advised to live a pious, frugal life and to help the poor. Trade and commerce during this era was recommended based on the concept of just price and fair wages. As Thomas Aquinas the 13th century theological scholar commended, if a seller unknowingly sold 'gold as brass' the buyer was bound to compensate the seller. Further he
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Though driven by self-interest, a successful businessman must have sympathy. A successful seller must appreciate the needs and the value system of his buyers, and vice-versa. If the seller initially quotes a price and does not get willing buyers, he must then step into the shoes of the buyer to realize their hurdle. On viewing the transaction from the angle of buyers, the seller would then revise the prices lower till he gets willing buyers. As the buyer is not compelled to buy and retains the freedom to walk away from the deal, Smith showed that there was no exploitation involved in trade transactions. This new insight of 'exploitation free' transactions in the free markets may have been the catalyst for wealth to be moved from a three-tier to a twotier classification. With this change, there remained the Sukla wealth or what is valued and the Krsna wealth or what is despised. Sabala wealth of the grey tinge, a result of wealth directly targeted by money lending, tillage, commerce, artistic performance and personal services merged with the Sukla wealth. Did this merger authorize unrestrained wealth accumulation, or were restraints put in place?
prayers. More profit and more wealth showed that the individual was more worthy in the eyes of the God. With this new rationale, pursuit of wealth was socially approved, but with one caveat. Wealth could be accumulated and used productively. But wealth should not be used for personal indulgences and luxurious life style. John Wesley, the Methodist pastor in his sermon delivered in 1760 on The Use of Money articulated crisply the thought behind wealth accumulation and its justified uses. Earn all you can, save all you can and give all you can was John Wesley's clarion call. He qualified his three part advice with clear limits. Without hurting yourself and your neighbour, in both body and soul was wealth to be gained by diligent application. Likewise, he advised eliminating expenses that indulged in gratifying desires of flesh and eyes or feeding the ego to save all you can. Expense on exotic food, expensive apparels, ornamental and expensive furniture was frowned upon. He visualized wealth as a gift from God, to be held in trust as a steward, and not consumed as an owner. After providing for self and their household needs moderately, his final recommendation was to give all you can. Giving not just what you can, he emphasized 'nay, in a sound sense, all you have'. This principle of altruistic wealth accumulation and liberal philanthropy found acceptance in a society that had for long looked down upon self-centered living. John Wesley's thoughts found an echo in each subsequent century. In the 19th century, John Ruskin the English philosopher and Andrew Carnegie the steel magnate amplified his idea of trusteeship. Carnegie not only preached his crisply articulated Gospel of Wealth but also practiced it. His logic for giving away wealth was based on its efficient use. He listed three options for surplus wealth
accumulated -bequeath it to the family, leave it for charity after death or give it away during the lifetime. The first option he noted resulted in inefficient use as he saw the inheriting European aristocracy not live either a frugal life or provided an example of liberal giving. The second option was not really an option as the wealth holder had no choice in timing his death. This left Carnegie with the third option as the only real one to pursue. He recommended using the surplus wealth to set up 'ladders' for the needy who wanted to climb out of their life of poverty. In the first half of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi preached trusteeship to the wealthy. In the second half, on the other side of the globe, Warren Buffett provided a perfect example of this idea. He epitomized simple living and high thinking. His choice of residence and mode of transport reflected his need. In an ego-free decision, Buffett donated his billions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No wonder he is recognized as the Sage of Omaha. Looking into the 21st century, this concept seems to be gaining ground as we look at the large number of foundations and charities being set up by the rich. As we scan ahead, does the responsibility of wealthy end with gain all you can, save all you can and give all you have, or is there anything else for them to do?
Work is Worship
Once the moral hurdle in pursuit of wealth was removed, it did not take long for people to realize that wealth is rewarded only to those who are solely devoted in its pursuit. John Calvin the French social reformer advanced a new logic that placed work on par with worship. Profession is also a part of the divine plan he noted, and diligent engagement in a profession was equivalent to dedication in religious life. He went on to elaborate that hard work engaged the individual's mind. Time spent away from work was time spent not glorifying God. By this logic if work was worship, he concluded profit and wealth were visible answers to our
Voice for the Voiceless

Beginning in the 20th century, the influence of the rich has gradually but surely expanded from the economic domain and crept into the political, social and the artistic spheres as well. Wealth has emerged as the new universal symbol of success; success that embodies dedication, insight and wisdom. The earlier sources of influence emerging from valor and intellect are now submerged and seen in wealth.
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Not only is wealth as a symbol visible, but it can also be quantified and objectively ranked, which is not the case with respect to valour or intellect. The publicity surrounding wealth rankings and its popular appeal has made the wealthy influential. In democracies where public policies are shaped by popular opinion, the influence that the wealth wields is significant and material. The question is how this influence is used.
Wealth has widely varying effects on its owners. For many, wealth is liberating and gives them wings to soar higher. But to some others, the influence of wealth is limiting. Their dominant motive to protect wealth hinders their ability to speak out against the powerful and influence public action into its right course. When properly used, this ability to influence public debates and public policy decisions is substantial in all democracies. Increasingly the more
'responsible' among the rich are evangelizing their core beliefs. Buffett calls for fair taxes, Soros calls for open societies, Premji calls for universal elementary education and Gates calls for basic healthcare. A common thread that runs across all these themes is to strengthen democracy, the system at core that enabled all these individuals to earn their wealth.
Lessons from the Past

From this short study, we can take away four critical points in identifying 'true' wealth creators: Wealth cannot be ranked based only on quantity. Some sources of wealth are valued more than others. In the present world, self-created wealth is valued higher than inherited wealth. Even among the self-created category, wealth that is a byproduct of meeting social needs like employment, serving the requirements of the needy and safeguarding environment is at a premium. In the world today, a single bottom-line is no longer adequate. The enlightened world has moved to the Triple-Bottom-Line concept, where profits are measured along with its impact on the planet and people. The second dimension of wealth is in its personal use. In a world of billion dollar residences, million dollar luxury vehicles, ostentatious attire, jewellery and exotic food, austerity is prized. Simple lifestyle is a value very tough to define, for what is a luxury to one could be the basic need of another. Given this vide range in value system Andrew Carnegie prescribed a practical test. He remarked, 'So in the case of wealth, the rule in regard to good taste in dress of men or women applies here. Whatever makes one conspicuous offends the canon. The verdict rests with the best and most enlightened public sentiment. The community will surely judge, and its judgment will not often be wrong.' In short, a lifestyle that blends with the rest was the best. The third dimension of wealth is in its public use. It comes from the realization that the opportunity to accumulate wealth is directly related to the opportunities available. Warren Buffett making the pledge to give away 99% of his wealth during his lifetime or on his death, identified these opportunities by noting, 'My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispriced securities with sums reaching into billions.' He not only chose to correct this obviously misallocating reward system, but also combined with Bill Gates to evangelize among the rich around the world, the practice of giving away a majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Providing a voice to the voiceless is the fourth and the final dimension of true wealth creators. Wealth comes with responsibility and in a democracy, the first responsibility of its well wishers and beneficiaries is to preserve and promote democracy. Given this, the final test every wealth creator has to measure upto is their contribution to strengthening democracy. Looking around the world today, Warren Buffett is the wealthiest measured not just on any one but on all the four dimensions. With or without further refinements if we accept this concept of true wealth creators, will we see the day soon when management institutes start self-assessing their performance on their 'Buffett' ranking score-A measure of the contribution their alumni make to themselves and their society? That would be the day when management institutes truly come of age. That would also be the day when the potential of management 'science' is more fully realized as we know it today.
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I touched death and came back

Chandrika Samarth PGP '95 Article by Ranjini Sivaswamy
ow much courage does it take to pick up life back from being dragged under a car? There was a lot that was lost, but Chandrika Samarth PGP '95 knew there is a bigger world to be won now. And he's won it in such a style that he's nothing less than a hero - a hero who touched death and came back. Samarth, a very handsome man indeed, is a champion bicycle racer. He has made the town of Boston his home and he loves it even more for its enchanting road bicycle trails. For the love of the sweet outdoors he treated himself to a Trek Madone 5.2 (Lance Armstrong rides a Madone too!); his heartthrob, only next to Ruchira, his charming wife. The bike took him racing across Boston, across contests - but only for a year until Samarth met with this near fatal accident. His survival was a miracle of miracles. He had taken to the roads on a casual ride at around seven on this November evening in 2009. Was it the darkness, was it loss of control or was it anything else, we do not know - but let's blame it on the November evenings that get dark pretty early, so much so that the lady driver of a speeding Volvo car missed noticing a biker on the road. Things went rather bizarre in just a few seconds. Her car came head on and since she did not see Samarth's bike, there was absolutely nothing that Samarth could do while her car plowed straight into the bike. That was not it; the car did not stop for another 300 meters and this was with Samarth caught beneath the car. He was getting dragged with his back getting scraped mercilessly by the road and also with his chest getting burnt by the exhaust, while he held on to the bottom of the car. The accident scene looked nothing but horrific and it was nothing short of a miracle to find Samarth alive under the car. People living nearby heard the din and ran out from their homes while the 911 emergency call service responded within 3 minutes. Thanks to this fast response a helicopter flew in right away and Samarth was air lifted to a Level 1 Trauma Care center. Within 45 minutes of the accident, he was already receiving medical attention. Thank heavens, Samarth did not suffer from a head or a spine injury. But one third of his left foot had been scraped off on the road and he had had his ankle dislocated along with the fracturing of all of the bones of his foot. The scenario had doctors more in favor of foot amputation. The exhaust system had given him severe fourth degree burns to his chest and right leg. Until now he has had five reconstruction surgeries to his foot and three surgeries to graft the burnt skin on his chest and legs. He was under two months of intensive care at the
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Samarth with the Manager of the bike shop
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hospital, three months of home care, physical therapy and more than a year of psychiatric counselling for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Through most of it the trauma of the accident lingered on. Samarth and his family have truly seen the worst of times. Ruchira was thrown right into the middle of this entire maelstrom handling her own trauma while fighting it out with doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies. She had the onerous task of breaking the news to Samarth's parents and providing them strength to bear. Samarth's brother flew down immediately from Saudi Arabia and provided much needed support to Ruchira during those initial few days. They both heavily engaged with the doctors against amputating Samarth's leg and thanks to their courage and optimism he was given reconstructive surgery instead. Brenda Euland writes that there is always a flame of spirit in courage and in a vision of some necessity higher than oneself. That's exactly what Samarth found. Though suffering from long term post traumatic stress, he is not the kind to be bogged down forever by this tragedy. Samarth surprised doctors with the speed of his recovery by diligently following their advice and working little by little to overcome the dependencies that limited him. He decided to resume work part time after eight months of the accident and not just that, he also decided to drive all by himself even at a stage when he was still nervous in public Chandrika Samarth PGP '95 is an entrepreneur and a crazy tech geek. He has put in his business sense and the , experience of working in the IT and Healthcare industries to start Environment & Health Group. This is a US Government grant funded startup affiliated with Harvard University. Samarth is a Sloan Fellow from the MIT Sloan School and a Teaching Fellow at the Harvard Medical School in Healthcare and IT.
places. The left foot that was crushed in the accident, however, has a permanent limp and prosthetics will have to be worn permanently thereby reducing the choices of sports that can be resumed. But guess what Samarth's next step was - after those eight months he got himself another bike! His spirit for life and his drive to surpass this consuming tragedy are simply awesome. We bow down to you Samarth! "Once you show your own courage, people go out of their way to help you", that's what Samarth said while approaching the bike dealer from whom he got his first bike. Yes! He went back to the same dealer again
and much to their surprise and elation put forth a vision to teaching kids about safer biking. The Trek Bicycle Corporation chipped in and so did several biking gear manufacturing firms towards this vision and now Samarth is once again the proud owner of a brand new Trek Madone 6.9 that has been specially customized for him to race the trails again. And more importantly, he is today a member of a local community organization that promotes safer biking. As he still deals with the accident and battles his injuries, let's all tell him that we are there with him as good old friends and want to see him recover even faster.
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Samarth with his wife Ruchira after the Pooja of his new bike
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An Officer and a Gentleman

Sanjeeb Kumar Patjoshi PGPPM '07 Article by Gayatri Nair
submission of assignments and also for methodical evaluation of our learning in various examinations without showing any concessions and ignoring our status of being senior government officers. I also admire them for making us study and learn like other regular nonsponsored students. Exposure to excellent academic system at Syracuse University USA was the icing on the cake," he said.
Preach and Practice

While being a student in IIMB, Sanjeeb categorically proved that he believes strongly in the adage, "Practice what you preach". In the beginning of the course each participant was asked to make a presentation about the best work done in their field postings. "My presentation was about developing gardens in each office compound in Palghat District Police and how this step improved psychology, mindset and behaviour of all staff working in various police stations. I also commented about the then very bad foul smell emanating from uncovered sewage drain and the shabby look of front of IIMB main gate. This was taken seriously by attending faculties and was then relayed to IIMB administration. Now it has been done up nicely," he said.
ealously pursuing academics and then implementing the same to infuse life in loss making organizations and making government agencies more transparent is what maketh a civil servant. Sanjeeb Kumar Patjoshi PGPPM '07 clearly fits the bill. His insatiable thirst for knowledge propelled his journey from being a HCL Customer Engineer for a year after B Tech to being Managing Director and Chief Executive in not one but three sectors in Kerala. Sanjeeb, the MD of Kerala State Films Development Corporation (KSFDC) is a native of Orissa who can speak fluent Malayalam and believes in making the terribly opaque government agencies as transparent and people-friendly as possible.
Sanjeeb didn't think twice before quitting it all to learn a thing or two about management theories. "It was more motivating and exciting for me to focus on studies and learning theories and applications of management," he narrated. This phase of being a student of PGPPM at IIMB was different from his life as a B Tech and M Tech student where "I had some mental pressure of securing good job in campus selection or through competitive examinations of UPSC. With IIMB's learned faculties to teach with their vast academic experience and with my field experience, it was easy to correlate class room teaching to field applications in administration and management," he added. Impeccable teaching at IIMB was one of the many other aspects that he fondly remembers. "I admire all Professors, they would strictly conform to various deadlines for
In Pursuit of Academics
For Sanjeeb, the pursuit of knowledge did not end with his course in IIMB. Immediately after leaving IIMB he joined PhD program in Entrepreneurship Development in Sambalpur University of Orissa. "On return to my cadre state, I was posted as Managing Director of Kerala Milk Federation for more than three years during which the organisation raked in substantial profit, a shift from its existing phase of loses. I owe this success to IIMB.
Coming to IIMB
In spite of drawing a good salary thanks to his All India Service job,
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I am also teaching in various academic institutions on honorary basis. IIMB teachings ingrained in me that any administrative and management decision need to be based on research and data, but not on any opinion or any previous experience," he pointed out This alumnus proved his mettle as an administrator, by hitting a hatrick of sorts. He was posted as Managing Director and Chief Executive in three State Government public undertakings in three different sectors of Dairying, Road Transport and Cinema Development. He has also been conferred with a number of awards for his academic pursuits. "At National Dairy Conference, Goa in 2009, I presented a paper "Solving Naxalism through Dairying in India" which was liked very much by delegates of West Bengal and other naxal affected states. I got "Pride of India" award in 2009 at Bangalore for my contribution to the dairy sector. On March 12, this year I was awarded by IIT Kanpur with Satyendra Dubey Memorial award for upholding human values and public service. I got "Leadership" award from IIM Kozhikode in year 2009. I am also recipient of United Nations Medal in year 2001 at Kosovo, Europe. I have published four papers on Dairying in various journals. I have got two Good Service Entries, 25 Commendation / Appreciation letters in my IPS career."
India by indulging in it, by not preventing it and by supporting unscrupulous political executives. If one remains honest for self, then down below in hierarchy, there will be reduction in corruption as per management concept of "Signalling". He further added, "Few examples of my deeds to overcome red tapism 1. Removing display board at door of my office chamber mentioning visitors' meeting time with the officer. How can a visitor from a distance know this timing for meeting any officer? Why should any visitor wait for long if he does not come to meet the officer within specified time? With Principal- Agent concept of management, officer is agent and visitor is principal. 2. Maintaining a file of meetings so that others understand clearly and fully. 3. First hand information from bottom of pyramid which prevents undesirable interpolations, falsehood, twisting of facts etc."
quick passing of Malayalam examinations, conducted by Kerala Public Service Commission. Hence there is no Malayalam language difficulty with me at all," he said.
Chilling Out
When he is not busy ensuring the smooth running of Malayalam film industry or sorting out strategies to alleviate losses of the Milk Federation, Sanjeeb indulges in a good game of lawn tennis, table tennis, swimming in pool. "Of late, due to my present job as the MD for KSFDC, I am getting to watch many films and it has helped me develop my capabilities as a film critic, may be for my future additional career," he added. Sanjeeb presently resides in Kerala with his family that comprises his parents, wife, son, daughter. "My father Sri Sebaranjan Patjoshi is retired Superintending Electrical Engineer from Orissa State Electricity Board. My mother Srimati Annapurna Patjoshi is housewife. Wife Kabita Patjoshi is alumnus of famous Sailabala College, Cuttack. Son Amit is now in 11th class in FIITJEE Integrated School, Bangalore. Daughter Aditri is 4 years old whose birth in year 2007 became another gift for us along with IIMB's PGPPM."
From Orissa to Kerala

Interestingly this Orissa bred civil servant is as at home in Kerala as he is in his home town. "I am fully conversant in Malayalam language. In fact I got Kerala Government trophy for topping Malayalam examination at training academy; I got advance increments in salary for
Malice called Corruption

A civil servant clears many a hurdle before finally gracing top posts, but his battle does not end there. On the field there are some enemies that needs curbing, namely corruption, red tapism and the like. Sanjeeb is only too aware of these problems. "Corruption is an endemic and chronic disease among some people. It is my opinion that bureaucracy, in both public and private sectors, is mainly responsible for this widespread corruption in
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What's up @ IIMB
IIMB gets new Dean Administration

Prof. Raghunath S has taken charge as the new Dean in charge of Administration of IIMB. Prof. Raghunath is a Post Doctoral Fellow from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is also Doctor of Philosophy from Gujarat University. Prof. Raghunath is faculty at IIMB in Corporate Strategy and Policy. He takes over charge as the Dean from Prof. B Mahadevan who has achieved some wonderful developments at the Institute during his three year tenure at the Institute. We thank Prof. Mahadevan for his much valued service and wish Prof. Raghunath a spectacular regime at the Institute in the years to come.
Convocation
At the 36th Annual Convocation, 578 students graduated from the Institute in the presence of IIMB Chairman, Mr Mukesh D Ambani and Mr Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of Human Resource Development and Communications & Information Technology, who was the Chief Guest at the event. The event was watched live over the web by over 1000 people - alumni, family members of students and friends all over the world.
South Asian Youth Conference

IIMB hosted the first South Asian Youth Conference at the campus from May 23-28, 2011. This conference brought together 120 youth leaders from the 8 South Asian countries for a 6 day action-oriented program. The theme of the conference is Peace - expressed as Peace Within, With others and With the Environment. Delegates who came from the SAARC countries attended the Conference which draws its objectives from the broader vision of SAARC and the UN towards a global partnership for development. The conference was organized by the Blue Ribbon Movement, an organization founded by an alumnus, Abhishek Thakore PGP '05. It is a matter of great pride for us to see his organization do such remarkable work.
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AshutoshSawant
Gandharv, Abhinav and Nitin
12 Students Choose Entrepreneurship Over Placements

Here's a trend that has been picking up pretty interestingly over the past few years - students Shubha opting out of placements to start jeet Ma zumdar something on their own. This year, a record 12 students, as against two last year, deferred their placement to follow their hearts into entrepreneurship. So, what changed this year? Gandharv Bakshi PGP '11, one of the bravehearts, says that they feel a lot confident about their entrepreneurial pursuits and with the support from the Institute they needn't look for more encouragement. These young entrepreneurs are allowed to stay at the Institute hostel for an extended 6 months and the incubation centre at the NSRCEL also marked out a separate office-space that was freely available for student-run ventures. Would the number of entrepreneurs emerging out of IIMB be higher in the future batches? From current indications, the answer is an overwhelming yes, says Gandharv.
hu Amarendra Sa
Suhas Shetiya
Akhil Gupta
Nithin Chandra
Soga Vamsi Krishna
Abhishek Humbad
Harvard to publish IIMB cases

The Institute has entered a significant engagement with Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) - Harvard will distribute a collection of teaching cases developed by the faculty of IIM Bangalore, for an initial period of three years. This is a major step that takes the global vision of IIMB to the next level. IIMB proudly joins a select group of business schools such as the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and the Darden School of Business that also distribute their cases through HBP. On the occasion of the signing of the distribution agreement, Professor Pankaj Chandra, Director, IIMB said, "The partnership with Harvard Business Publishing is a significant milestone in the Institute's journey to achieve its long-term vision of establishing itself as a global centre of management research and education. The occasion marks the recognition of the relevant and in-depth research being carried out by faculty at IIMB. We have consciously invested in research-based publications, and this agreement will add impetus to our efforts in this area." Vinay Hebbar, Managing Director of Harvard Business Publishing in India said, "We are pleased to offer cases from a leading Indian B-School, like IIMB, to our community of educators globally. This is consistent with Harvard Business Publishing's endeavour to source quality content, ideas, and research from India and bring it to our audiences in India and worldwide."
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New Faculty @ IIMB
Prof. Patrali Chakrabarty Assistant Professor, Marketing Prof. Ritu Tripathi Assistant Professor, Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Management Prof. Ramadhar Singh Distinguished Professor, Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Management
Prof. Kanchan Mukherjee Associate Prof. Organisational Behaviour & HR Management Prof. Sreelata Jonnalagedda Assistant Professor, Marketing Prof. Ramya Ranganathan Assistant Professor, Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Management
Prof. J Ramachandran honoured as first Bain Fellow in India

Professor J Ramachandran has been invited to be the first Bain Fellow in India. This honour will provide him with access to the Bain Global network and support for his research. Prof. Ramachandran has also been invited to be a member of the Bain India Advisory Board. He is Professor of Business Policy at the IIMB. His research focuses on strategic and organizational challenges of emerging economy multinationals, family business groups and firms in cultural & creative Industries.
Prof. Pulak Ghosh receives Young Scientist Award

Prof. Pulak Ghosh has received the Young Scientist award in the Statistical Applications category for Year 2011 from the International Indian Statistical Association. The award recognized his outstanding contribution and innovative work on applied statistics. The award ceremony was held on April 24, 2011 at Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. This is a significant recognition and highly prestigious honour given to a researcher 45 years old or younger. It is keenly contested and nominations are screened on the basis of published work, its impact on the practical field, and contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of statistics.
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Obituary
Prof. A Sundar Professor A Sundar passed away in his sleep in the early morning hours of Monday, March 14, 2011 at his house in his native village of Nemmara in Palakkad district of Kerala. Professor Sundar was a faculty member in the then Agriculture department of IIMB in the late 1980s. Prof. Thirunarayana IMB deeply regrets the demise of Professor P N Thirunarayana, Visiting Faculty in the Marketing area at IIMB, who passed away on March 22, 2011 at his residence in Bangalore. He was recognized as one of the most outstanding faculty members of IIMB. Professor P N Thirunarayana was a wellknown academician and was associated with IIMB for 33 years.
Innovation and Leadership Beyond Borders

If you are a business owner, or a leader in an MNC, or a budding entrepreneur who is considering a new venture or building their global experience base and mindset - you would want to check out this opportunity a little seriously. IIMB along with Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland (Smith) and the School of Management, Zhejiang University (Zhejiang, China), has launched a Global Senior Management programme that will have business leaders traveling to the home countries of the Universities to learn the keys to successful innovation in each market. The programme, designed as three one-week segments, is titled Innovation and Leadership Beyond Borders. Maryland will host the kick off in June 2011, with a week long programme focusing on managerial and creative innovation. The second phase - manufacturing innovation - will take place in Zhejiang, China in September 2011. The programme will culminate with a service innovation module in Bangalore, India in January 2012.
Prof. Arnab ties the knot

Professor Arnab Mukherji entered holy matrimony with Priyadarshini Nair on the 29th of January. Prof. Arnab is a faculty in Public Policy and his wife works with Thompson Reuters.
Prof. Shainesh G FPM '96 gets Best Prof. in Marketing Award
100 years of IBM

The Centre for Corporate Governance and Citizenship (CCGC) at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) hosted the IBM Centennial Lecture on March 3, 2011 at the IIMB campus. IBM is marking the 100-year anniversary of its founding on June 16, 1911, with a year-long global initiative.
Achievements galore for Prof. Sankarshan

Professor Sankarshan Basu, Professor of Finance & Control and Chairperson of Alumni Affairs at IIMB, has been elected to the elite community of Princeton Registry. This is in recognition for having demonstrated great commitment to excellence in career and display of exemplary leadership. Princeton Global Network is one of the most comprehensive publisher of executive biographies in the world with its registry comprising of top tier professionals representing every industry. Prof. Sankarshan has also been elected as Secretary of the Asia Pacific Risk and Insurance Association for the year 2011 2012. He also co-authored a book titled Options, Futures and other Derivatives along with John C. Hull. Many congratulations!
CMO Asia has announced Asia's Best B School Awards and we are proud to have Prof. Shainesh being pronounced as the Best Professor in Marketing. The Awards is presented to individuals and institutions that have surpassed several levels of excellence and set an example of being a role model. We congratulate Prof. Shainesh on this milestone achievement.
SUMMER 2011
35
T H E t r av e l l e r s
Indian Fox Family - Rann of Kutch, Gujarat
Black buck and the Anthill, Rollapadu, Andhra Pradesh Shreeram clicked this stunning picture of the exotic black buck in the grasslands of Rollapadu, Andhra Pradesh. "Grasslands are a fascinating, yet shrinking eco-system. Shrinking grassland habitats has endangered the Blackbuck. This beautiful animal is now forced to graze in the agricultural fields that were once part of its territory in many places. It was early morning on a very hot summer day at Rollapadu. I'd just reached the place when I saw this beautiful animal sprinting. The anthill was slightly off its running trajectory, but it creates a beautiful image of a fragile ecosystem", says Shreeram, an ace wildlife photographer.
M V Shreeram PGP '04
Around sunset, the family of foxes came out of their den and the kids started playing. M V Shreeram captured this moment where the tenderness of the mother and the mischief of the kids comes out so beautifully. In Shreeram's words - "The vast grasslands of Kutch hold a very delicate eco-system, with huge numbers of migrating birds making it their home in winter. Mammals, like these Indian Foxes, face a constant fight for survival with limited sources of food and water. Indian Foxes make a den on flat ground. Normally, one parent stays in the den while the other goes out looking for food. The kids are very playful - the play is like a rehearsal for their adult lives as they enact hunting, attack and defense techniques. This was undoubtedly one of my best wildlife moments. Watching the kids jump around, cuddle up to their mother and have blissful fun, totally unaware of the world around them, truly brought joy to my heart."
Jhelum travelled to the town of Siem Reap in Cambodia, close to the Thai border. He describes his experience - "I crossed over to Cambodia by road from Thailand. There is a highway from Bangkok running to Aranyapet on Jhelum Chowdhury the Thai side of the border PGP '97 from where one crosses into Poiphet on the Cambodian side. From there to Siem Reap, a French style town, is a couple of hours by road. Interesting, the current ThaiCambodian border war over the disputed Preah Vihar temple started two days after I crossed over. By then I was safely in Phnom Penh." Ta Keo or Temple Mount, Cambodia
SUMMER 2011
The Maasai Men, Masai Mara, Kenya
Abhilasha was on a trip of her life time when she went on a safari trip to Kenya last December. Abhilasha describes - "The Maasai people of East Africa live in southern Kenya. We visited a Maasai Village during our trip to Kenya to learn more about Maasai culture, traditions and lifestyle. Traditional Maasai lifestyle revolves around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and more the children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor. Maasai society is strongly patriarchal in nature, with elder men, sometimes joined by retired elders, deciding most major matters for each Maasai group. The people are traditionally polygamous; this is thought to be a long standing and practical adaptation to high infant and warrior mortality rates."
Road sign, Masai Mara, Kenya
Abhilasha Jain MPWE '10
LOLZZZ!!! "While on the safari in Masai mara one day looking for elephants we came across this sign which had us laughing out loud. The picture I think is self explanatory", chuckles Abhilasha.
Ruins of Ephesus, Turkey Abhishek Thakore PGP '05
Abhishek was on a trip to Turkey as a part of the World Youth Congress and he went on to explore this land of rich history. Abhishek explains, "Ephesus is a 2000 year old city that had a population of 250,000 in its time. What makes it special is the sheer amazement you feel at how a civilization could have existed with sophistication to provide travel and sanitation for such a huge population.The amusing part was the public toilets they had - western style and lined up like chairs! The library was huge - perhaps explaining the knowledge that built the city. It reminded me of the IIMB library in some ways!"
SUMMER 2011
37
Paro Taktsang Monastery (Tiger Nest Monastery) Bhutan Karthik was spell bound at the beauty of this monastery precariously perched on the cliffside of Paro valley in Bhutan. He says, "what makes this place unique is its pristine beauty and proximity to the border. The Indian Army has a herculean task of negotiating the tough terrains around this place to protect the border. Bhutan is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The tiger nest monastery sitting on top of a cliff is a beautiful creation of mankind and hats off to those who dedicate their livesto the religious pursuits in such difficult living conditions".
Panga Teng Tso Lake, Indo-China Border, Arunachal Pradesh This lake, a territory of dispute between India and China, is a scenic marvel that is tucked in the grandeur Himalayas. The lake is geologically an endorheic basin - a lake that is like a closed drainage basin and unlike other lakes does not allow water to flow out of it to reach other streams, lakes or the sea. Karthik says, "I think Arunachal Pradesh is one of the most beautiful places in Karthik Prabhakar India. Accessibility is a major concern which has PGP '11 kept tourists away from this place which may be a reason for its untouched beauty. However, it is a pity that we as Indians need special permission to enter this state and I wonder if the days of collecting a Visa for Arunachal are not far away. I hope this beautiful place is provided with more support and development."
Golden jelly fish, Andaman Seas This golden jelly fish, typically found in the Andaman sea, is a beauty, but yeah, only from a distance. It stings pretty fiercely, although not fatal, and can shock a swimmer. Bipin took this photograph from a boat on a remote bay in Southern Andaman. The place is rich with corals, colourful fish, turtles and of course, jelly fish.
Bipin toured the Andamans with his wife and found these haunting remains of the deadly Tsunami of 2004. Bipin says, "This is a palm grove that was completely destroyed by the Tsunami. The Ghostly remains of Tsunami, Adaman & Nicobar photograph is a Islands grim picture of what remains of a once beautiful green landscape. I shot this photograph near the land of Jarwa tribes in Andaman islands. The place Bipin Kulkarni is known for its remoteness and PGP '09 unadulterated beauty of nature."
SUMMER 2011
Lavanya, who lives in Chicago, recounts her experience when the city got a record snowfall of 21 inches overnight with winds in the range of 40-50 mph on the Feb 1, 2011. She says. "It was a life-coming-to-a-standstill, Lavanya Krishna grinding blizzard. Having PGP '99 grown up in India in Bangalore mostly Ive slowly gotten used to the idea of shoveling 2-3 inches but boy 21 inches! My husband and I were quite unprepared as we had just moved into a new house and barely had a shovel, no snow blower. Our drive way is about 40 ft X 15 ft and with the snow drifting we had about 1700 cu. ft of snow to shovel. However both of us being MBAs and being Consultants used to attacking difficult problems we managed to shovel it all in a methodical way having fun and bonding!"
Anuradha Chatterjee EEP '09
Anuradha went backpacking to explore the mystical temples of Abu Simbel in Egypt, a set of two temples near the border of Egypt with Sudan. She describes, "The temples were constructed for the pharaoh Rameses II who reigned for 67 years during the 13th century BC (19th Dynasty). The temples were cut from the rock and shifted to higher ground in the 1960s as the waters of Lake Nasser began to rise following completion of the Abu Simbel temples, Egypt Aswan High Dam.
SUMMER 2011
Anuradha, a solo woman backpacker, travelled to this interesting place called Ayutthaya city, located at the confluence of the Chao Phraya, Lopburi and Pa Sak rivers. Anuradha says, "This picturesque Ayutthaya, Thailand city of Ayutthaya was the Thai capital between 1350 and 1767. In 1767 the city was destroyed and plundered by the Burmese army, resulting in the collapse of the kingdom. In this ruin of wounded Buddhas, one Buddha head miraculously survived. The sandstone body was crushed but for some reason the head remained and the tree grew around it and is literally a living part of the tree."
39
Class notes
Shoot as you Learn
Making passion socially relevant is not the usual wont. But then our alumnus, Anil Kumar, PGP 2000 is a cut above the rest. Kumar stumbled into the world of photography when he treated himself to a DSLR. "Then I tried reading the manual, stuff on the internet and even joined a short term course. However, most of these weren't beginner/amateur friendly options," he pointed. So he did the next best thing: he started Delhi Photography Club (DPC). The uniqueness of DPC lies in the fact that it promotes photography without an overdose of technology. "You don't have to necessarily have a DSLR with bulky lens to join our workshop. These are simple and effective workshops that allow and encourage you to enjoy clicking great pictures with your simple digital cameras," he said. Of course, if you have a DSLR, it's great. Interestingly, they also conduct workshops for underprivileged children allowing them to express themselves creatively. DPC also has take free initiatives to promote photography. These are - Heritage Photowalks, Photocapture Trips and Teatalks in various parts of the
city, where any enthusiast can join and learn photography from peers. For more information, log onto www.delhiphotographyclub.com.
Anil Kumar PGP 2000
SUMMER 2011
Class notes
Towards a Healthier World

Congratulations to Dr Prateek Rathi, PGPPM, '11 who has been invited to the Global Health Council Conference 2011 to present his extensive work on making health care accessible to the poor. During the PGPPM program, Dr Rathi who has been involved for more than 20 years in the areas of Healthcare Delivery and Administration in the Public Sector undertook the Research Project titled, "Evaluation of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, a Health Insurance Scheme for below poverty line people". The same will be presented during the conference. The conference, the world's largest global health conference that is not focused on a single disease or health area, will be held June 13-17 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. Healthcare leaders across the globe will come on a platform to share and exchange ideas so that better healthcare is delivered to all. The Global Health Council's 2011 Annual International Conference on Global Health, "Securing a Healthier Future in a Changing World," will focus on the challenges of and innovative solutions to address the demographic changes that have shifted the global burden of disease.
Duke and Duchess of Sustainability

The desire to spend more time together prompted a couple to take a whole new avatar: creators of a brand that asks carbon footprints and animal testing to take a walk. Krya, India's first sustainable consumer products company is the result of the creativity of Srinivas Krishnaswamy, PGP '01 and his wife, alumnus of IIM C, Preethi Sukumaran. The inspiration to strike out on their own came from the desire to as the couple puts it, "to create a business congruent with our principles." "Krya was a natural extension of our beliefs on sustainable urban living. For example, we still do not own a car, 10 years into our working lives. Further, Krya is a vegan company, as are we, and all our products are plant based and free from animal testing," said Srinivas, who had eight years of sales and marketing affairs with J & J. Preethi spent a brief period in J&J after which she had six years in brand management at Henkel & Marico. Kyra's products, which the couple calls sustainable goodies, follow the sustainability principle of cradle-tocradle. This means that at every point in the value chain, from sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, transport, consumer use & disposal, carbon footprint has been minimized and sustainability ensured. Connect with Srinivas and Preethi at http://facebook.com/kryagoodies.
Serene Choice
A good course is all it takes for aspiring entrepreneurs to realise that taking risks is not such a bad thing. Bhaskar Baada GMITE '08 says it was the Management Education at IIMB that gave him a good perspective of business. This in turn helped him realise his dream of starting a consulting firm, Serene Consulting. The company was registered in August 2010. The firm is involved in providing objective advice, expertise and specialist skills with the aim of creating value, maximizing growth or improving the business performance of clients. "We primarily consult in Mechanical Engineering, Human Resource management, Learning & Development," said Bhaskar who was earlier with Kinetic, Pune in 1994 and later moved on higher roles to other companies like; Perfect Molds, Pune; GE Power Controls, Bangalore; Lear Corporation, Mumbai;, Excellent Tooling Solutions, Bangalore. His Last job was in Engineering Services group in Geometric Ltd, Bangalore (May 2007 to April 09) as Project Manager. For more information log onto www.sereneconsulting.in
SUMMER 2011
41
Class notes
Kashmir Comes Calling

Close Call in Kashmir, novel by Bharat Wakhlu, PGP '85 is a thriller that derives inspiration from rampant militancy of 1990s Kashmir. Bharat, the Resident Director of the Tata Group in New Delhi, has been writing since the early nineties (his first book on Total Quality was released in 1994, while a book on Values and Ethics which he co-edited with E. Sreedharan of Delhi Metro was also released recently). But with Close Call in Kashmir, Bharat has taken on a new path: fiction. The plot in Close Call in Kashmir unfurls in various locations, with militant ridden Kashmir being the prime location. Militancy, ancient secrets, complex family relations, the books offers all that and much more. The beauty and spirit of the troubles paradise has been beautifully captured by Bharat who grew up in Kashmir.
Shoot at sight
Doing a job for a living and living to do a job are two totally different things. M V Shreeram PGP '04, rest assured falls bang into the second category. A hardcore travel enthusiast, had enough with the oft repeated mundane run of the mill tourist spots and instead decided to explore places oblivious to the tourist eye. "I've been traveling across the country photographing wildlife over the past 3 years. Over the course of my travels, I realized that there are so many unexplored places within the country; totally off the tourist map, yet as beautiful as anywhere in the world," he points out. Realizing that there may be many like him out there he decided to become a guarding light for those ready to explore and thus started Darter Photography Tours in January 2011. "Darter aims to bring these experiences to everyone interested in photographing the great outdoors," he added. So what do they do? "We conduct photography tours to different parts of India and beyond, to help photographers explore different genres of outdoor photography - wildlife, landscapes, travel, heritage and architecture," he says. Darter's tours cover a wide range of destinations - from the high-altitude deserts of Ladakh to the rainforests of the Western Ghats. Incidentally Darter is named after a bird that we find in lakes and rivers in India; the name also puns on "darting" from place to place. Find more about them at www.darter.in.
Stork comes visiting
Sharad Seth PGP '06 and his wife were blessed with a baby recently
Ravi Badhan PGP '04 and his wife Aakanksha were blessed with baby boy, Lakshya, on April 6, 2011.
SUMMER 2011
Class notes
The Grandmother Stylist

A 56-year-old grandmother, after years of handling family commitments finally takes the plunge into the challenging world of entrepreneurship, with help of her twin sons. Sounds different? Well, that is Girija Ramachandra MPWE '10 for you. An arts Graduate form Venkateshwara University, Andhra Pradesh, Girija was always interested to take up a job but couldn't because of her family commitments. Then one fine day, she introduced a brand new concept of clothing, "Made for ME" for men through Peprismine.com. So all the men out there who are frustrated with the lack of that perfect pantaloons or shirt, it is Girija to your rescue! "Our venture started off with a problem that one of my sons faced - he was not getting the design, styles and size that he wanted. With our research, we understood that it was not just his problem but a problem for most men. The key findings were men are becoming more fashion conscious. They are interested to look their best and have preferences in terms of design, style factor, at all times. As an Entrepreneur, I strongly believe that opportunities exist everywhere - take a deeper look at those opportunities and use it in the best possible ways," she said. The team at Peprismine consists of 3 members - D. Girija and her two sons Anup and Anuj. Connect with them at www.facebook.com/peprismin.
Obituary
Thamarai Selvi PGP '08 Thamarai Selvi, who was a Business Development professional and a technical consultant, passed away. She was working in Hyderabad. We extend our condolences to the family and friends of Selvi who have lost her at such a young age. May her soul rest in peace. Sanjay Vir Singh PGPPM '06 IPS Sanjay Vir Singh, who was the IG, Internal Security, Karnataka Government passed away following a cardiac arrest on January 15, 2011 in Hyderabad. The 47-year-old was an IPS official, 1989-cadre, and also an alumnus from IIT Delhi. He is survived by his wife and two children in Bangalore. On behalf of entire IIMB community we convey our sincere condolences to his family and friends. May his soul rest in peace.
Patented Study
Yet another alumnus has joined the ever growing list of IIMB alumni writers cape. Arun K Narasani PGSEM '06 and the Co-founder/CEO of Brain League IP Services, which was incubated out of IIMB's NSRCEL during 2004-2005 has co-authored a book, Indian Patent Law and Practice. The other authors include K. C. Kankanala a visiting faculty at National Law School of India University and NALSAR University of Law and V. Radhakrishnan who is a visiting faculty at NALSAR University of Law. The book that was published late last year by Oxford University Press is a reference work on Indian patent laws. It is a commentary on patent law and examines statutes, rules, as well as case law.
SUMMER 2011
Reunion Bonanza
For the first time ever, the alumni office conducted reunions for four batches simultaneously, PGP 80, PGP 95, PGP 2000 and PGP 85. And they were a riot of fun. From December 24 to December 28, as the citys temperature plummeted, the campus remained warm, with love, laughter, nostalgia and giggles flowing in huge quantities. More than 200 alumni with families came from across the globe including Singapore, Dubai, United States, just to reconnect with their batch mates who gave them indelible memories. Here's thanking all the alumni for making it an affair to remember!
43
Class notes
The Musketeers
Right at the top
Anup Bagchi PGP '92 becomes MD & CEO of ICICI Securities
Three FPM alumni, Kanti Kumar Gali FPM '95, Srinivasa Rao Chalasani FPM '02 and Samir K Kagalkar FPM '11 along with Madhavi, an alumnus of XLRI have come together to start a B school in Bangalore. This School, named Accend School of Management & Entrepreneurship (www.asome.in), has a special focus on entrepreneurship. This is a small step towards offering quality management education to aspiring future managers, with the help of the grooming that the founders have received in IIMB & XLRI.
Swinging it in Style
PGA tours make way for the latest golf sensation, the IIM Masters! In an exciting golf tournament that took place in ITC Classic in Gurgaon, IIMB lifted the IIM Masters trophy defeating the likes of IIMA and IIMC. The collective effort from IIMB helped them swing it right. Congratulations IIMB! Next year the IIM Masters will be back again in Gurgaon on February 25, 2010.
Himanshu Chakrawarti takes charge as CEO of The MobileStore
Showers of Blessing
Ramesh Srinivasan PGP '84 becomes President and CEO of Bally Technologies
Mallikarjunadas CR named CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group India
Most of you who have been in touch with the Alumni Office would know Rohini Ramegowda our Event Manager, the spearhead of our Reunions and other major events. Rohini, darling of our office, entered holy matrimony with Shekar this May. We wish her and Shekar a lifetime of love and togetherness.
SUMMER 2011
Alumna Writes
Checklist to Princeton
Symmetrical, tidy and above all achievable - that's what my checklist looks like. If management speaks in tongues, I know them all. Excellence lies in closing the gap between making a plan and getting it done, or in other words, thought and action. The thought phase is behind me. Hello action, here I come! Checklists, of course, are the magic mantra that separates the doers from the can't doers, or thinkers, as they are called. My checklist is wholly achievable. Theoretically. Theoretically it is wholly achievable. 5 .30 am Walk to the gym. There is a spring in my step, the birds are stirring, the leaves fluttering in the mild breeze, the moon does not look too happy to retire for another day, and the reassuring ring of the chaiwala under the tree on the street corner tells me that all is well, more than well. It's happy. It's a happy day. We are finally finishing the final essay, the one that guarantees admission to America. I'm automatically alliterating in preparation. I rub my hands in anticipation. We are committed to completing the composition today, starting at eight. Eight hours beginning eight and the essay should be done. I am glad to be off from work. What could be more important than helping my daughter gain admission to a good university? Neha has already confirmed she will be showing me her earlier attempt at the Big E for the Ivy League. Which shall it be - Princeton or Yale? Oh, it's going to be a good day, a great day, a gorgeous humdinger of a day. There is no harm in practising adjectives and Americanisms along with alliteration. 7.30 am Back from an endorphins releasing workout. Not for nothing do I wear my 'Supermom' apron. I've showered, done a quick 'Hey you' to the gods, put on a 'good luck' sandalwood dot on my forehead, all
Alumna Writes
Sangeeta Mall PGP '86 this while the idlis, my daughter's favourite breakfast, are steaming, and am now marching to Neha's room to wake up my little princess. The fairytale ends abruptly when I see the discarded DVD player, the headphones barely detached from my daughter's ears and telltale DVD cover of Dabangg lying on the floor. Late night movie watching does not match with waking up in the morning. Uncheck 'Wake up Neha at 7.30 am'. 8.30 am Three snores in 10 seconds. That's the current rate emerging from Neha's nose, down from four 10 minutes ago. The snores are deadened, but only slightly, by the pillow that Neha has pulled over her head to deaden out my nagging. Uncheck 'Serve fresh breakfast'. 9.00 am The snoring rate holds steady. My 8 hour target is faltering but panic hasn't set in, not yet. The 11th hour is actually only the 9th hour. An 8 hour day with an hour's lunch break ends at 5. All's well. We have only extended the day to 6pm. No panic, absolutely, NO PANIC. Uncheck 'Fifteen minute coffee break'. 10.00 am First things first. Scrape the idlis into the dustbin before the dog sneaks away from the smell. Next, stuff a gag in the mouth to prevent a scream from bringing down the roof. Third, stuff gag in Neha's mouth to stop the snores. And if she chokes to death, well, one has to be stoic.
SUMMER 2011
45
Alumna Writes
Dead or asleep, what does it matter? The end result is going to be the same, disaster and disarray. The distant murmurs I heard when I woke up this morning were, I now realize, Neha having a last minute chat with another vampire bat before going to bed. Our timings are perfectly synchronized. She sleeps when I awaken. Her sleep cycle is already American. I make a final bid to breach the sound barrier of her snores. A jug of refrigerated water aimed at the medulla oblongata succeeds where all else failed. The Yale aspirant rises up ninety degrees, gasping and gulping, resembling nothing as much as a confused newt. I smile. The sun is final shining. 'Essay,' I chirrup. 'Wha wha.. wha' Today is your essay writing day,' announces the tiger mom. 'Wha wha whump.' Neha collapses back on the bed, rising up again in horror as she sees me taking aim with the jug again. It's wonderful how quickly we come to an agreement on the way forward. Uncheck 'Spell check rough draft'. 'In my day,' I yell, 'we did our own work! My mother never helped me to get admission to IIM!' Uncheck 'Do not yell or bring up your golden past'. 'I know all the other kids are done with their essays!' I lie, throwing a pillow at Neha's head. Uncheck 'Do not compare your child with other children. Each one is different'. 'I wish we had finished this business last month instead of waiting for the last moment!' I wail. Uncheck 'Never talk of what could have been'. 'I told you to write on your biggest childhood fear!' I grind my teeth. Uncheck 'Never choose for your daughter.' 'Get up! I want that essay done in the next half an hour!' Uncheck 'Never set an unreachable goal'.
Neha looks grumpy and morose at my scolding. Uncheck 'Start day with a joke to bring a smile on her face'. 11.00 am 'No wait, wait! You don't understand! Excuse me?... No, no, I wasn't yes I fully understand. No, it won't happen again. What, today? But No I'm not escaping anything. It's just that well, I'm on leave today. No, of course my domestic life isn't hampering my work. Yes sir!' Uncheck 'No cigarettes today'. I've already smoked three in my bathroom. Tiger mom is now a grovelling puppy. Animal analogies aside, the elusive essay is still an illusion. The practice essay on 'Can the poor be happy' was only a mirage. Neha never bothered to transfer her thoughts onto paper. Submission deadline is 2 weeks away. This is supposed to be polishing time, not writing time. Thoughts of Princeton and Yale fade into the far distance and the receding tide of admission ambition of an aspirational adolescent gives way to a flood of official oppression. I think the essay has got under my skin. Uncheck 'Crosscheck poverty data'. 11.30 am 'Emergency in office,' I call to my daughter. 'I'll come back early. Please finish the essay before I return. Papa is extending his trip by a day. So he'll return tomorrow. Get something to eat.' Uncheck 'Stay by her side all day without crowding her'. 11.55 pm Have just crawled home on all fours after averting a Richter 8.7 crisis at work. Uncheck 'Essay is top priority'. I light up my last cigarette for the day and gobble up the cholesterol bomb named McDonald's chicken burger with medium fries and large Coke, all equally cold. Uncheck 'Start on calorie-minder chart'. I chase dinner with another cigarette, positively my last. The house is quiet, if one calls sounds of metal rock from Neha's bedroom as quiet. On the dining table there is an exercise book opened on the same page as this morning. The sentence on top reads "Happiness is getting what you want at
just the right moment". Nothing further on the page. Neha is a girl of few words. How do I explain that to the Princeton and Yale gods? Uncheck 'Tally final draft with first draft'. 12.30 pm 'Hey mom,' calls Neha, walking into my room and giving me a cursory hug. 'Guess what I saw today!' Rhetorical questions don't have answers. I don't guess. This time, I'm grumpy and morose. The nicotine overdose isn't helping. 'A shooting star! Imagine! I was sitting by my window, ummthinking about my essay, actually,' she adds hurriedly when she sees my expression, 'and this real beauty streaked across the sky. Oh man! I wish you'd been here! We could have seen it together. A real shooting star.' It isn't the chicken burger that's clogging my throat. Or the cigarette smoke. I hug the hug to myself. The shooting star returns my reality to me. "Happiness is getting what you want at just the right moment". Truer words were never written. Ask me. I'm happy now, happier than I've been at any point during the day. That hug came at just the right moment. 'Did you make a wish?' I ask. My princess grins. 'Admission to Princeton, of course!' We both laugh. It might or might not happen. That doesn't take away from my happiness. Uncheck 'Return to normal after completing essay'. Nothing is normal. Neha ensures that.
Sangeeta Mall PGP '86 is an alumna who has taken the plunge into creative writing. She authored her first book 'Cloud Nine Minus One' last year. She's an ardent humanist and and edits the International Humanist News.
SUMMER 2011
What a journey it has been - starting small, learning and growing. It's your support that inspires us to get better each time. Be with us and help us soar high! Write for us Keep us posted Spread the reach of the Magazine Advertise with us Tell us how you'd want to be a part of the journey of our Magazine. Write to alumni@iimb.ernet.in

IIMB Alumni Magzin Final - 16!05!2011

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