The effectiveness of PPP model is a hot topic today beyond the traditional outsourcing space. HMRI is one of the greatest working examples of this. Here we have another successful PPP model where in the e-learning space ‘IT as an enabler’ brings state-of-art teaching methods to the students of Chattisgarh. Yes that’s right – you heard it right- CHATTISGARH.  

Under the project called “Gyan Vinimay”, virtual classrooms are setup and online lectures from IIT Kanpur are screened using video-conferencing facilities to the state engineering colleges. In the earlier part of this decade, there was acute shortage of faculty in these areas and the students had no access to high-quality education. This issue was thus addressed by the higher education department.  The program was piloted in Govt. Engineering College, Raipur and Institute of Technology, Bilaspur. They were connected using VSAT technology from Hughes in 2006-07. Later on, four more colleges were added and connected by a terrestrial VPN over Boardband (2MBPs) BSNL for uninterrupted connectivity.  

“The Private sector resources would carefully dovetailed with their commercial interests and those of the Government to provide Value Added Services” says the policy document from the Govt. of Chhattisgarh emphasizing the need of PPP in effectively implementing e-Governance solutions. The various players include initial infrastructure funding by the Higher Education Department, respective colleges pitching in for recurring costs like bandwidth charges and courseware and also funds raised in Jan Bhagidari Samitis. The Government plans to bring the 18000 colleges in e-classrooms via the “National mission on education through ICT” initiative.  

We have completed the first cycle admissions and the admitletters for the same have been sent out. My first impressions has been that theapplicant pool is getting better each year and this year has been no exception.Having personally interviewed a large number of candidates and also reviewedmost of the applications it may be appropriate to put down some of myobservations here.

 

Practically every applicant had put down some form ofsocial service activity in one of the essays. For a very large number theactivity started around June this year. Fact is if everyone is talking about itthen social service ceases to be a differentiator. It is very obvious that someapplicants have put social service down because  some application helpwebsites said we look at such activity favourably and improves the chances of ashort list. When I did probe some of the applicants during the interview itbecame obvious that they had nothing what so ever to do with social service –you can guess what happened to the applicant. We certainly do appreciate socialservice but let it be serious work in that area. There a lots of ways toproject your uniqueness and in my opinion the best thing to project youruniqueness is to talk about some thing you have done professionally. That issome thing that can be easily defended in an interview and results in a farbetter interview performance.

 

The other common feature this year has been the longterm goal of entrepreneurship. For a large number the long term was really longterm and one in fact said he would start some ting in 20 years time. Noproblems if that is indeed your goal but then you also need to have a goodshort and medium term goal.  While one does not expect candidates to havea detailed business plan in place the least one can expect is some ideas onwhat kind of enterprise it is going to be. A response like “ I don’t have anidea at the moment but hope to get one once I am in ISB” I don’t thing willwash.

 

The second deadline is round the corner (Dec 1^st2009) and we do hope to get the quality of applications we got in the firstcycle.

 

All the best!

All interviews for the shortlisted candidates for round one got over last week. The final evaluation and compilation of the scores is currently on. The result for round one will announced as scheduled on the 25th November 2009.

Meanwhile,the deadline for round two applications is round the corner – December 1^st2009. Don’t wait till the last moment to send them in.

All the best!

 The Senior Scholars Best Publications Committee of 2008 has selected Prof. Ravi Bapna’s paper ‘Consumer Surplus in Online Auctions’ as one of the five best Information Systems Papers published in 2008. The paper was published in Information Systems Research. CONGRATULATIONS!!!


ABSTRACT

Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable consumer surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of consumer surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure for private value auctions relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay, but is available to us from our experiment. For common value auctions, where bidders bid strategically to avoid winner’s curse, we develop an estimation procedure that infers the bidders’ signals from their bids, and subsequently infers the item’s common value and resulting surplus, from the signals. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4514 eBay auctions, indicates that the median surplus level per eBay auction is $3.61, which roughly translates to $1.5 billion in accrued consumer surplus for the year 2003 alone. On a percentage basis, consumers are capturing at least 18.3% of the total surplus generated in eBay auctions. We find that consumer surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.

To read the complete paper, http://www.isb.edu/SRITNE/Image/WP-07-2004.pdf 

  SRITNE is back with yet another interesting issue of quarterly newsletter. This time the newsletter is theme-based. When the team was brain-storming on which theme to carry, we came up with several ideas. Then we came across a 2009 Gartner paper which predicted that by 2010, 20 per cent of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via software as a service as a standard component of their business intelligence (BI) portfolio. We looked at the Indian scenario and realized the growing usage and demand for BI tools and applications. The companies are making strategies based on insights delivered from these tools.  Hence, we zeroed on the theme of BI usage in India. 

In the Industry Connect, you’ll find Mr. Arun O Gupta, Group Chief Technology Officer Shoppers Stop, talking about using the huge database in retail sector to avail competitive advantage. He recalls Shoppers Stop journey of using BI tools and how has been the ride so far. 

In Faculty Research, we are focusing on a case study developed by Prof. Ravi Bapna. The case talks about usage of data warehousing as a strategic tool at Bharati Airtel.  

The newsletter also covers the internationally renowned Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems. The conference was hosted by SRITNE, ISB. The conference carried the theme of ‘IT Services in a Global Environment’. The conference had 3 industry panels and various research papers with a wide range of topics.

 In the Student’s Corner, an Experiential Learning Programme (ELP) project is featured. The project targets to study the BI tools in retail sector – current usage and the need-gap analysis. 

Overall, we’ve tried to bring you an exciting newsletter. Do read it and let us know your feedback. The link to the newsletter is: http://www.isb.edu/sritne/File/SRITNEsQIII-Newsletter.pdf  

George Soros provides fantastic insight into global currencies, the renminbi peg, the great crisis, financial sector reform etc in these conversations with Chrystia Freeland, US managing editor of the Financial Times. You can find the lectures here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

We finished our Delhi leg of interviews day before yesterday. The applicants were truly diverse and competitive. It surely will be a herculean task for the Ad Com to pick the first among equals! The interview dates for other places are as follows:

• Candidates choosing Hyderabad as location: 19^th October onwards
• Candidates choosing Kolkata as location: 28^th and 29^th October
• International Candidates: 20^th October onwards.

As usual, when we finish our interviews, we eagerly look forward to popular blog sites where candidates post their experience for the ‘benefit’ of others. For us, it’s an amusing read to revisit it. But on a serious note, I think there is one important message which comes across - One cannot bluff his way through his application and subsequently through the interview.  Be genuine and honest in your application and in the interview.I will repeat what i said in my earlier blog - The interview format itself is designed in a manner to facilitate a discussion. The inputs for the interview are from the application itself.

And yes, the interview panel DOSEN”T have access to the candidates GMAT and Academic scores. They have access to the college/university from where you have graduated but not the scores.

 All the best and wish you all a Happy Diwali!

 We are now in the penultimate leg of going through the applications for short listing candidates from round 1. As posted yesterday, Interviews in Delhi are scheduled from 10^th October.   Candidates who have not opted for Delhi as an Interview location will get to know if they have been short listed from next week onwards. The announcements will be made in a phased manner.Watch this space for more details.  

The interviews for shortlisted candidates who applied in round 1 are round the corner. The Admission team has already sent out interview invitations to the shortlisted candidates from Delhi. Shortlisted candidates for the rest will be intimated shortly. This time apart from Delhi, Interviews are scheduled in Hyderabad and Kolkata. We kick off with the Delhi interviews which are scheduled from 10^thOctober to 14^th October 2009.

The interview panel will normally have 2-3 people representing Admissions, Alum and senior staff from the school. The interview would normally be of 20-30 minutes. Contrary to what others would make you believe, the ISB interview is not a stress interview. The interview format itself is designed in a manner to facilitate a discussion. The inputs for the interview are from the application itself. To ensure uniformity and remove any bias, the interview panel doesn’t have access to the candidate’s GMAT score.

So,all the best folks! 

The ISB is participating in the WMBA tour and if you are in any of the cities listed below between Sept 13 – 24 across US and Europe. We would be in the following cities - Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai, London, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington and Singapore.

Those of you who are currently in these place can meet the ISB Admission officer and interact first hand. To register for the same, please log onto - http://www.isb.edu/pgp/InternationalLocations.Shtml