News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

ISB Healthcare and Pharma Conclave 2008 - Focus on Emerging Markets- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:12:33 GMT

The Healthcare Club, at the ISB, hosted its flagship event ‘Healthcare and Pharma Conclave 2008,’ placing a special lens on emerging market issues in the healthcare sector. This year’s Healthcare Conclave spanned for two days and comprised special addresses by doyens in the healthcare arena, and panel discussions by industry experts. The Conclave managed to capture the essence of the opportunities and the scale of challenges that the developing markets, particularly India, are set to face in their quest for global stewardship.

At the start of the event, President of the Healthcare Club, Ritu Garg, gave an overview of the Healthcare Club activities and added, “This two day global event will probe into the changing dynamics of this sector, and track the road ahead." Savita Mahajan, Associate Dean, Strategic Initiatives, Admissions, Career Services, and Alumni Relations, in her welcome note, mentioned that at ISB’s interest in the Healthcare sector is increasing at a phenomenal pace. “ From a mere interest, to forming a Student club, to hosting global conferences, and now we are thinking of initiating healthcare management in our one year PGP programme at Mohali,” she summed up the School’s impetus in integrating the healthcare sector in its growth journey.

In his keynote address Prathap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals, mentioned, “The ISB is an institution that has first brought about a confidence in people that ‘ we can do it’, and then has shown the way how to achieve it.” Putting forward a question -“Who should plan the health of our country? - he himself answered, “Professionals who can analyse how to deliver excellence in healthcare and make it sustainable.”

Summing up the various challenges in the healthcare sector as - inadequate hospital beds (there is 1 bed for 1250 people in India today, and there is a need for 100,000 beds every year for the next 10 years in order to make up the deficit), the second challenge is that of access (the need for health insurance and health plan), and third is an acute shortage of heath-human resources. “There is a need to change health education and then ramp up the number of doctors and specialists. There is also a need to bring in competitive lines, and most important there is a need for research and innovation, " Reddy said. He also mentioned that it’s also time to rediscover what is already available in our ancient systems, the alternate medicines, and take them ahead. To the students at the ISB, Reddy said, “Young entrepreneurs like you, you have the energy, and healthcare needs you.”

A special address was delivered by Mohan Chellappa, President, Global Ventures, Johns Hopkins Medical International, on ‘Learning from the west, or is it the other way?’. Chellappa pointed out that in the developing world there is a shift in disease mix - moving from infectious to degenerative, and that ‘western diseases’ will now increasingly be known as ‘eastern diseases’. Explaining some of the key drivers in the healthcare markets of developed markets as “ demand, affordability, consumer expectation, Chellappa said that the while the developed markets have financial transparency, labour productivity, quality programmes, group practices ( branding, equity models etc) etc, these markets however tend to be beauracratic and are ailed with problems like declining revenue growth, reimbursement issues etc.

Emerging markets, Chellappa further explained, are more focussed on patients, have a financial accountability, is witnessing a reverse brain drain, and the challenges of these markets he said were, “limited availability of medical professionals, regulations that are not well defined, a non-homogeneous market, and low asset turn over ratio fragmented private sector.” What we need to learn from developed markets, he noted, were a symbiosis between research and practice, use of technology and finally medical value services. He also said that the need was for “operations innovation centres” and that an institute like the ISB can take that up.

Following this, Jasmin Patel, MD, Fidelity Fund Management presented his views on new investment opportunities in healthcare. He said, “If we look at the extent to which diseases in India is a fraction of diseases around the world, we find that we do not have commensurate level of infrastructure, and that is where opportunity might lie.”

Patel added, “A lot has to be done for the rural common man, just to get him to the healthcare provider, let alone provide quality healthcare.” He also noted that as a government and as a nation we spend a very small portion of our GDP on healthcare, and presuming that most of the funds will not come from the government, we anticipate that further investments are likely to come more from the private players. He also pointed out that though the cost of drugs was low in India the cost for devices was very high, and that there were opportunities for low cost device business. The high growth areas according to him were providing healthcare outside the metros, newer models of healthcare delivery like telemedicine, medical and para-medical education, medical devices, health insurance and medical information. Other opportunities he outlined were regarding contract research, development and manufacturing, biogenerics, chemist chains and central diagnostic labs.

The second session for the day began with the address by Daljit Singh, President Strategy and Organisational Development, Fortis Healthcare Limited, who spoke on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) in healthcare. He began with an explanation of various growth strategies in healthcare business, followed by particular issues in M&A. Singh outlined the key trends in M&A in Indian healthcare industry. He said that M&A in healthcare were likely to increase due to speed and convenience and that this activity will be spurred by availability of private hospitals and of funding by private equity investors. According to him the “hot market” was driving high valuations in the industry. Contrary to popular belief, he said, “sellers have a long term perspective” and “are not desperate to sell” unless they see a “long term value addition.”

Followed a panel discussion on ‘Asia as a leading global player in healthcare industry by 2020: Optimism or reality?’ The first panellist to present his views was Kushagra Katariya, CEO, Artemis Hospitals. Katariya spoke on medical tourism and in particular Asia as a destination. He talked about the advantages of treatment in Asian countries due to lower cost, availability of some of world’s best physicians, excellent systems and processes verified by accreditation and superior support staff and infrastructure. He then discussed the various challenges that could hamper Asia’s claim as a preferred destination - like lack of transparency, of accountability, of data and research driven medicine, and of providing care for the local population at par with international patients.

Panellist B S Ajai Kumar, Chairman, HCG Hospitals, brought the focus of the discussion to the abysmal state of healthcare in India due to poor public spending, lack of insurance penetration, corruption in healthcare and lack of incentives. He recommended creation of a healthcare fund on the lines of the American Medicare system, funded primarily through a new healthcare tax.

The next panellist to present his views was S Balaji, Managing Director, Fortunis Ventures, Indu Group. Balaji spoke about the integrated health communities that Indu group was investing in. He illustrated the facilities that were coming up in the Nagpur Health City and how such a community of medical, educational, research and residential facilities would generate value from proximity and shared resources.

Loraine Kalra, Director, Medical Services, Columbia Asia Hospital was the fourth panellist on the dais. Kalra put forth the thought that what India really needs is primary healthcare and secondary healthcare but what it actually has is a lot of tertiary healthcare which is mainly distributed in urban areas. She further said that the real solution lays in public private partnerships (PPP) and that “we should study how we can create models which will not only be competitive but also financially viable.”

Kali Prasad, Senior Partner, Ernst and Young, was the last panellist to present his thoughts on the topic. He appreciated that the ISB had the only programme in the country with such a large number of medical doctors pursuing the PGP Programme. He encouraged the students to “come up with models of healthcare” which can serve the people at an affordable cost.

Arati Verma, Chief, Medical Excellence Programs, Max Healthcare delivered the plenary session. In her presentation she conveyed how the practice of medicine has grown more complex with time, and hence unsafe due to greater propensity of errors. She gave an example of how incorrect dosage can lead to hospital acquired kidney failure, and that small mistakes lead to significant cost and consequences for the patient and the hospital. She stressed on excellence based practice of medicine and on regular measurement and communication of performance on the criteria of excellence.

Day two of the Conclave was focused on Pharmaceutical industry. A welcome address was delivered by N Vishwanadham, Executive Director, Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the ISB.

The first speaker for the day was Robert Go, Global Managing Director, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Deloitte Consulting. According to Go “the emerging markets have potential opportunities across the pharmaceutical value chain.” Regarding advantages he stated that India offers up to 60 percent lower costs of developing an FDA plant when compared to the US, while it offers close to 27 percent cheaper running costs compared to European companies. According to Go, the drive towards globalisation will benefit players that are competitive on multiple fronts. Local companies making profits today will become large enough to acquire players abroad and become global using these advantages. There are nevertheless pitfalls to be careful of. He also noted that a significant proportion of investors are careful of legal and regulatory issues in outsourcing, among other factors. He commented that having a “capable local partner will be critical to success of firms that outsource work to emerging markets.” Their ultimate success will depend on interplay of several key economic, political and market factors.

The presentation was followed by a speech from Subhanu Saxena, CEO, Novartis, UK. Saxena commented on inherent strengths of emerging economies particularly in the areas of knowledge based industries and stated that “India will be intellectual capital of the world due to the inherent innovative capabilities of Indians,” he said. Emphasising on the importance of effort in education he ended his speech with a Sanskrit couplet on treating “knowledge as the greatest wealth.”

The topic for panel discussion on the second day was ‘Pharmaceutical R&D: Is the pipeline running dry? Exploring the alternatives.’ Panellist Tapan Ray, Director General, OPPI, spoke about the increasing cost of Research and Development and about the tightening regulations leading to the drought of drugs Vijay Chandru, CEO, Strand Life Sciences discussed the means for fixing the shrinking R&D pipeline via either “making failure affordable” or via the use of “predictive science” and conducting tests via computer modelling and simulation. Thereafter, K Shivkumar, Director (Pharma), Merck presented the case for opportunity in Contract Research and Manufacturing (CRAM) in India. He also detailed major challenges in its implementation including access to raw materials and regulatory issues in “conducting research across political boundaries.” The last panellist, A K Parameswaran, Head, Lifesciences Practice, Cognizant, talked about the use of IT as an Information Engine, Automation Engine, Mining Engine and as Knowledge Engine across the pharmaceutical value chain. According to him “IT plays an integral role in every business process within the Pharma industry.”

The Conclave also saw the final round of Healthcare and Pharma business plan competition . Judges Jasmin Patel and Loraine Kalra adjudged the team ‘Innolife’ from IIFT Delhi, comprising Ankur Mittal and Amit Sharma, as winners. Home team ‘Hydroclave’, comprising Vikram Popli, Garima Ganeriwala, Rajan Handa, and Rahul Rathi won the second prize.

President of Boeing-India visits ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:45:21 GMT

Full Text of Address

Dr Ian Thomas, Vice President, Boeing International and President, Boeing-India interacted with the Indian School of Business (ISB) community recently at a talk hosted by the General Management Club. Dr Thomas talked about the aerospace industry and Boeing’s operations in India.

Dr Thomas, who has a Master’s degree in international relations and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge, started off the talk with insights into his transition from academia to government and then to the private sector, when he started working with Boeing.

He then went on to talk about Boeing’s relationship with India. “We like to say that India joined the jet age on Boeing wings because Air India was the first all jet carrier in the world and that has been a very proud partnership,” he said. He added that Boeing was moving on from the previous model of being an offshore company that was focussed on resource exchange.

As Boeing transitions towards an onshore model, he said they were committed to building a $100 million facility in Nagpur in partnership with the TATA group and an $80 million pilot training facility in Mumbai.

He said that as India assumes a major political and economic role in the world, its legitimate needs for defense are going to increase, which bodes well for companies like Boeing.

He added that Boeing sees India as the potential aerospace giant of the 21st century, with buying power being a key factor. “I think that some of the figures that I have seen are that less than 1% of the population is flying every year. So the opportunity to grow passenger figures is very compelling,” he said.

Dr Thomas added that the biggest challenges that the aerospace industry faced in India were infrastructure, tax regime, policies and regulations, and manufacturing consolidation. He added that the proliferation of world class airports, easy access to support activities and immense potential buying power would support the growth of the sector in India.

He ended the speech by saying that they were focussed on the next quarter century. “What we are laying down here in India, I think is going to position us for the next quarter century,” he said.

ISB Green Drive Grows Greener- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:15:35 GMT

The Net Impact Club from the Class of 2009 at the Indian School of Business (ISB), started the year with a number of ‘green campus initiatives’, and it continues to find innovative ideas and engagements to address campus sustainability.

The year started with inviting environmentalist and biker Shrenik Rao to interact with the students, initiating community tree plantations, organising a movement to make the campus plastic free, a newspaper recycling drive etc. What is remarkable is that the entire student community has participated in this responsibility, and the green movement here is not a mere whitewash, but a sustained effort by every member.

So we had club volunteers, working in tandem with various work units at the ISB, who identified and streamlined processes which were using too many resources like paper, energy etc. Also subtle improvements like defaulting of Duplex printing for printers, efficient typography have been initiated by the students. Around the campus, and specifically in the student villages, modes of energy conservation are being identified.

The ‘Green Team’ is working on effective disposal methods of bio-degradable wastes from the canteen and student villages, and the possibility of starting in-house composting of bio-degradable wastes is next on the club’s agenda.

Recently an awareness campaign called Batti Bandh (lights off) was organised by the student body. Most lights in the campus were switched off for an hour, and students and spouses organised a host of fun activities to commemorate this initiative. The Music Club rendered a recital, followed by a performance by little children, giving out a simple message to humanity to save the environment. At 8:00 pm, lights in the School atrium went off, and the air was filled with notes of the popular song “Heal the World”. It was a special moment of solidarity which will stay for long in every body’s heart. “ The moment signified a promise made by each of us to act as responsible member of the world family, and not waste the precious dwindling resources lent to us”, said organiser Abhishek Mitra. An ‘Oath Tree’ was placed in the Atrium, on the leaves of which everyone present wrote oaths about saving energy, water, paper, etc. The Green Team was also quick enough to hand out mementos to help them remember their oaths. A candle light dinner organised at the School Dinning, was a befitting end to the theme.

Approximately 103 units were saved during this event. “A friend and I sat down to calculate how much difference it makes if we decide to switch off the light of our quads by even one hour, and we felt for the first time that we can make a difference somewhere,” noted student Rishi Raj Singh. Spouse and volunteer Shreeja Kanoria added, “The next day I saw people carry their own bags to avoid taking a plastic one. They remembered their oaths. We were earlier just a Green Team, and now we are a Green Community.”

Small attempts add up make monumental difference. The ISB Green Team plans to stop procurement of 5000 plastic bags into the campus every month, has already collected 1 ton of newspaper in the first month itself (the proceeds being donated to an voluntary organisation working in the area of education of children and empowerment of women). 400,000 sheets of paper will be saved during the remaining part of the academic year at various offices at the ISB. Meanwhile, the Oath Tree stands testimonial to the spirit and endeavours of the Class of 2009.

GLAMS Hosts Roundtable on India Logistics- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:47:06 GMT

The Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted the ‘India Logistics Executive Roundtable’, with a special focus on the warehousing and distribution logistics in India. The conclave generated ideas about coordinated growth strategies in supply chain and logistics. Participants included CEOs and higher level managers from sectors like manufacturing, retail, logistics providers and 3PLs, investment banking, software and technology providers, infrastructure and real estate developers etc.

The Roundtable started with a welcome address by Dean, M Rammohan Rao and a presentation by Professor N Viswanadham, Executive Director, GLAMS, who gave an overview of the day’s agenda. Professor Viswanadham discussed briefly about the significance of ‘value chain’ in warehousing, stressing on the importance of ‘location’ in the chain. “Current attempts are to build hard infrastructure, and no attention is paid to soft infrastructure such as trade facilitation etc,” he said.

Following his presentation were a series of discussions about the present scenario of the Indian logistics arena by sector players like K Raheja, Real Term, Godrej, Future Logistics, ESSAR, and Orkash. Vishwas Dhumal, CEO, K Raheja, stressed on the importance of “uniform policies” to help the sector, and noted that the problem lies in the fact that in India logistics and warehousing is still treated as part of real estate. Brian Oravec, CEO, Real Term FCH Logistics Advisors, said there was a need to “reduce inventory, improve asset utilisation and increase customer service level.” Anshuman Singh, CEO, Future Logistics noted, “The logistics sector in India rides on the back of organised retail sector.” He added that the changing retail landscape in India is changing the logistics scenario too. Ashish Sonal, CEO, Orkash Services Private Limited, said that the logistics sector in India is projected to touch $125 billion by the year 2010, but is ailed by four key deficiencies – “fragmented and unorganised, low visibility, inefficiencies , and last no surplus for reinvestment and growth.”

This was followed by an panel discussion, ‘The Ground Reality’, where panellists brought to the foreground issues about the present state of warehousing, about projected demand, and about warehouse operations and pricing.

The second session was followed by another panel discussion on ‘Free Trade Warehousing Zones, CWC, DFC, and Marshalling Yards’. Issues like whether there is actually a shortage of warehousing, and about the underutilisation of marshalling yards of the Indian Railways , were discussed among other subject matters.

The concluding session of the day was a projection into the future of Indian Logistics. The panellists tackled the question of ‘ Where from here?’ Some futuristic themes dealt with were RFID, infrastructure headways made at Andhra Pradesh, and about transport management systems. The panellists were from APIIC, Aankhen, Smooth, and Oracle, SAP, TCI. A panel discussion on’ Warehouse Management Systems and Logistics Planning brought on the table what are the readily available automation and software tools that can be used in India, and why we do not use auctions and bidding.The day ended with a closing session on ‘ Green Lean and Integrated DCs – How to make Logistics Infrastructure work.’

The Roundtable was concerted effort to bring together various players in the logistics ecosystem. It successfully initiated a symbiotic environment, where participants built mutually benefiting networks, and took back strategic investment and operation plans.for the road ahead in logistics.

The Sponsor for the event was Aankhen, and the Media partners were 9.9 Media.

ISB signs MOU with APIIC- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:23:46 GMT

As part of its ambitious growth plans for developing business related multidisciplinary programmes in forthcoming years, the Indian School of Business (ISB) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) for the establishment of a business/knowledge park on campus.

The business park will also help in increasing industry-student interaction by giving students access to industry experts, projects and internships. At the same time, it will let companies take advantage of the ISB’s expertise in management research and executive education.

M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB and BP Acharya, Chairman and Managing Director, APIIC signed the agreement at the ISB recently. As per the agreement, which is based on the ‘build-operate-transfer model’, the ISB will lease 30 acres to APIIC for the proposed project for a period of 25 years.

“This is a very innovative project in the sense that an educational institution like the ISB and an infrastructure building organisation like the APIIC are entering into a partnership,” Acharya said, adding that such partnerships were prevalent in Singapore and the United States.

Deputy Dean Ajit Rangnekar said, “From the ISB’s side, the important thing is we want to aggressively expand our offering of business and business related programs and this will help us do that”. He added that the AP government had been a big supporter of the ISB and they would like to help bring industries to the state.

ISB Student Club contributes to Bihar Flood Relief- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:30:05 GMT

An ISB student club helped raise more than Rs 10, 00,000 so far, in an ongoing effort to aid victims of the devastating flood in Bihar last month.

The ISB chapter of Net Impact, an international network of MBAs, graduate students, and professionals who are committed to using business for a positive social, environmental, and economic impact, worked to provide money and essential supplies to relief efforts.

“The level of damage that such a calamity caused was unprecedented,” said Rajarshi Ray, President, Net Impact Club. He added that more than 2000 people were reported dead, 250,000 acres of farmland was destroyed and 300,000 homes were destroyed in the flood.

Not limiting themselves to contributing money, club members first identified an NGO, Mandan Bharti Jagriti Samaj that had already tied up with CARE and UNICEF for supplies and was well respected.

Three flood relief camps, Middle School Daparkha, Tribeniganj, Supaul, Rajapur Canal, Basantpur, Supaul and Urdu Middle School, Naulakha, Saharsa, which together housed around 10,000 people, were adopted to focus the relief efforts.

Fund raising drives were coordinated with other companies, including Google, Franklin Templeton, The Parthenon Group and Computer Associates. In addition to the money, 100 Boxes of IV fluids, 13 Boxes of ORS, Diarrhoea, and Fever medicine, about 2000 kg of clothes, over 2500 packets of biscuits and two cartons of utensils were sent to the affected area. The group also coordinated with Wockhardt Hospital in Patna to provide supplies to NGOs.

Besides corporate houses, other contributors to the fund raising drive were the ISB students, alumni, staff and faculty. “Given a calamity of such proportions, it required us to do something very quickly,” said Ray. “Considering that we are one of the top business schools with the best students, we had to utilise the network and resources we had.”

'Get the Story Right' - Resume Writing Workshops by Alumni- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:46:34 GMT

Recently the Consulting Club from the Class of 2009, at the ISB, organised two resume preparation workshops, conducted by alumni from McKinsey & Co and BCG.

These informal sessions included important pointers, and clarified finer details about resume writing and case interviews, thus supplementing the placement preparation process which is underway at the ISB.

A group of around six alumni from McKinsey & Co conducted the event by first listing down specific queries that students had with respect to preparation of resumes. They then proceeded to answer the questions by focussing on three key components of a resume – structuring, content and formatting.
Under each component they gave specific pointers to the students, by drawing on their own experiences as well as illustrating sample resumes. They emphasised the importance of peer reviews and of multiple iterations of a resume. Since this was a general session, the pointers given were applicable for any resume and not just a resume for a consulting firm in particular. The session concluded with a Q&A session that extended late into the night. The alums tirelessly addressed all the queries of the students, one on one. They also took questions on electives and the elective bidding process.

After a few days, a group of alumni from BCG came down to the ISB to share some gyan on resume writing and how to approach case interviews. The workshop started with some fundamentals about resume writing. The gist of the workshop was “Get the story right.” The CV should bring out a story about the candidate, they shared.

Some fundamentals shared were – “The recruiter wants to understand the personality so the CV should highlight the special attributes of the candidate. Therefore if the strengths are some specific expertise then a function or skill based resume is suitable. If the aspirant has undergone rapid growth in his career then a chronological resume makes more sense.”

The group explained that a CV should highlight the following themes – Analytical, Communication, Leadership, Client management, Business/commercial Knowledge, People Skills and Creativity.
Addressing the theme of case interviews, the alumni explained that there are two main types of case interviews - Brain Teasers and Business Problems.

Brain Teasers comprise of questions like “how many pencils are sold annually in India?”
Business Problem Case usually includes snippets from a case done by BCG earlier, for example - “A pharma company has a product which is superior to its competitors. Its sales are declining, what can you do?”

The seniors cued in that firms generally do not expect an extensive business background and that candidates are not expected to know about all the jargons pertaining to an industry. They also advised the present Class that applicants should think very hard about the company, job profile and role before applying to any company, and that during a case interview candidates should not adopt a mechanical process. “The interviewer is looking for creative approach,” one of them said.

A Timely Discussion on Financial Crisis- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:00:13 GMT

Choppy stock markets, liquidity crisis, credit squeeze, escalating interest rates, inflation hovering at a 12 percent, the global downturn has indeed left all of us asking for answers and assurances. In such a backdrop, the ISB community recently organised a forum to analyse the genesis of the global financial crisis, to derive lessons that can help avoid or at least reduce the possibility of such circumstances in the future, and also to discuss its implications for India, and finally take lessons for the way forward.

A student-driven initiative organised by the Finance Club from the Class of 2009, the discussion had on its panel Visiting Associate Professor Sumit Agarwal from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Rajesh Chakrabarti, Assistant Professor of Finance, ISB, who researches the Indian financial sector, and Ramabhadran Thirumalai, Assistant Professor of Finance, who is also the resident expert on derivative instruments.

Professor Agarwal began the session by explaining the benefits of securitisation, and how it went from good to bad to ugly. “The number and share of sub prime mortgages increased rapidly over the last few years. Whether factors like rising house prices, excess liquidity, increased securitisation and lax underwriting standards led to increase in sub prime mortgages, or the increase in sub prime mortgages led to these factors occurring, is a chicken and egg kind of situation, and open to debate,” he said.

He went on to explain how ‘Mortgage Backed Securities’ are structured by slicing and dicing mortgages, and how they are packaged and resold to institutions across the financial system. Professor Agarwal pointed out that because of the complex structures of these instruments, the instrument holder had no clue about what underlying asset the instrument represented. “As long as the housing prices remained high, there were no problems. But when the house prices in the US fell and the sub prime borrowers were unable to repay the mortgages, it led to a cascading of delinquencies in the system,” he explained.

According to Professor Agarwal, it is difficult to pin down any single agency as responsible for the crisis. “Securitisation agencies, credit rating agencies, mortgage brokers and investment banks all share the blame,” he noted.

As far as the effects of the crisis are concerned, Professor Agarwal believes that it will have a direct effect on the residential housing market, a semi-direct effect on the consumer market, and indirectly will lead to a tighter credit market. He said that consumers in the US are in for hard times, and this is reflected in the figures of home owner vacancy rates, home sales, debt as a share of financial assets and delinquency rates on automobiles, among others.

Professor Rajesh Chakrabarti started by discussing what does the financial crisis entails for India.
“The news is not that bad for India. Being conservative over the years has helped Indian banks to be in better shape than its foreign counterparts,” he noted. Professor Chakrabarti further explained that even 10 years ago, when the Asian financial crisis hit the economy, India was spared from the worst effects as it had limited exposure to the global economy. Indian regulations have resulted in a somewhat insulated Indian economy. However, he noted, that it doesn’t mean that India will not be affected by the current economic downturn. It is in someway connected to the global economy.

Professor Chakrabarti then went on to discuss the Indian banking system. He informed that in India there is very limited exposure to sub-prime. Few banks have some exposure to CDOs though their international units. Many Indian banks held securities linked to Lehman. Amongst Indian banks, 14 banks had exposure to Lehman or its subsidiaries. Further, Indian banks have a capital adequacy ratio of 13% as against the norm of 8-9% in global banks, and thus Indian banks are stable and strong.

“The current global crisis will hit the financial service sectors the most since it is more connected to the world’s sentiments. Firms that deal in brokerage or trading are the ones likely to be hit the most,” Professor Chakrabarti said. He added that although the falling oil prices are a respite, the rupee depreciation is making the scenario worse. “At the same time, there has been no major macro effect that suggests that Indian economy is doing badly. India has a strong domestic market and is not as market driven as other economies in Asia,” he added. Professor Chakrabarti suggested that inflation is expected to come down with falling oil prices. Although falling rupee is a concern. “All this suggests that we are not completely insulated and there is a degree of vulnerability,” he concluded.

Professor Thirumalai briefly elaborated on the complex derivatives structures that were involved, which ended up compounding the crisis. Another important aspect was the fact that these derivative exposures were so complex that most institutions did not even realise the true extent of their exposures and this was the reason why remedial action was difficult to implement. Also, the extreme complexity left institutions at a loss on how to fair value these exposures, especially in volatile markets. “At best, the pricing was done on the basis of some remote possibilities of severe defaults, and this was considered remote and hence valuations did not reflect realities, to say the least,” he said.

The session concluded with an informative round of Q&A, which largely focussed on the bailout package. The opinion of the panel was that the bailout package was necessary and in its expanded form is more relevant – it is better for the US government to actually acquire stakes in these institutions rather than just buy bad or toxic loans.

As a last note the panel agreed that India is well positioned to weather the global storm because first institutions are now more risk aware and risk focussed, second regulators and governments fully realise the extent of the problem and are working towards tackling it, and finally vested interests will ensure global stability and security to prevent extremist elements from taking advantage of turmoil

ISB hosts Sierra Atlantic Board of Directors- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:14:34 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB) played host to the Board of Directors, Sierra Atlantic, recently. Raju Reddy, Chairman and CEO, Sierra Atlantic, was accompanied by other members of his Board including Hatim Tyabji, Executive Chairman, Bytemobile, Inc., Kanwal Rekhi, Founder, The Indus Entrepreneurs, Max Hopper, President, Max D Hopper Associates, Ronald H Kase, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates, and Rajesh Subramaniam, Managing Director, Walden International.

The board was given a tour of the campus and then attended a presentation on the ISB. A meeting with M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB, and other members of the ISB leadership team followed the presentation. The board members then engaged in a free wheeling discussion with students from the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) club.

Rekhi, who has been associated with the ISB for a long time, remarked that he saw a lot of growth in the school since its inception. Talking about the downturn of the US economy, he said that the economy is eventually governed by life. “The US economy is generally pretty resilient,” he added.

Falling in Step with Tradition- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:44:30 GMT

October is a very special month at the Indian School of Business (ISB). There is a visible festive air on campus, and the ISB community comes together to celebrate the festivals like Navraatri, Dusshera, Diwali , etc.

Never letting go of a chance to celebrate the essence of tradition, the Student Life Council (SLC) and the Spouse and Family Association (SFA) at the ISB, recently organised a colourful Dandiya Nite. More than 200 students, family members and faculty joined the celebrations at the School Atrium. “The Dandiya night was fun. It was great to see everybody in their best traditional dresses and dancing the Dandiya in a large group at the centre of the Atrium. It is an evening I look forward to every year at ISB,” says Professor Rambhadran Thirumalai.

It was an evening when everyone wanted to dance. Two concentric circles of eager dancers, all geared in colourful traditional attires, equipped with the Dandiya sticks, followed the rhythms of the playing band, and the Atrium sprang into life. As the band played popular numbers, the crowd got fully involved and swayed to the rhythm of Dandiya music, hitting sticks of his or her respective partner on the beats, in a synchronised manner.

The costumes worn had its own significance. Everyone present took the effort to wear traditional costumes, some of them dressed in the quintessential multicoloured ghagra- cholis, complete with all the accessories. Spouse Darshita Shamo was adjudged the best dressed lady of the evening and Kanu Julka, the best dressed male.

Numerous stalls were set up to highlight the festive mood of the evening. Jewellery, clothes, potpourri, and of course appetising and mouth-watering Gujarati dishes like Dhokla and Khandvi enticed every palate and every heart.

One could not miss the exchange programme students who were engrossed in learning how to get the dance steps right. They had come dressed in traditional clothes, and were seen enjoying every minute. "Dandiya night was an absolutely stunning event - with all those colours, the vibrant music and people dancing in large groups, one couldn't help but feel part of the very lively ISB community," remembers Katja Linnemann from the China Europe International Business School, China, who is presently at the ISB.

It was truly a multi cultural experience, and beyond the colours and rhythms of that evening, it gave the ISB community a great opportunity to come together and create some memorable moments. Sneha Beriwal, Director, Student Life Council and active organiser of the event sums it up as, “hypnotising colours, entrancing music, mouth watering cuisines and timeless culture marked the evening. Everyone was bitten by the Dandiya bug, and took away memories for a lifetime.”

Building a Community to Ignite the Genius Within- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:43:31 GMT

Professor Prasad Kaipa, Executive Director , Centre for Leadership, Innovation , and Change (CLIC) envisions the Centre to be a premier destination for knowledge creation and dissemination in the areas of leadership, innovation, and change management for India, the emerging economies, and the world. In an interaction, just a day before the CLIC Conference ‘Igniting the Genius Within’ began, Professor Kaipa explained about what is unique about this Conclave, and what CLIC proposes to take away from the sediments of the three day long interactions.

Tell us something about the unique format of this Conference. The concept of World Café, that you have integrated, generates cross pollination of ideas and creates a sort of global community. Was that your purpose?

The format of the conference is designed to build a community. There is a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. I would like to say that it takes a community to ignite the genius within participants of that community. When the structure, process, engagement, inspiration are designed around bringing the best out of people in that community, then igniting the genius does not become accidental, it becomes intentional and allows for genius to self-ignite.

There are several elements that we are paying special attention to. First the structure - the Conference is organised in School Atrium instead of a traditional auditorium. One reason for this is that when people sit around tables and have access to microphone, and not everybody is facing the speaker, it empowers people in a silent and clear fashion. It is not just about what happens on the stage, but also what happens around you. So the focus shifts from ‘giving Gyan’ to provoking, inquiring and engaging people to look within, explore deeply and see what are the real or perceived limitations that are blocking the way of their individual genius.

The Second element is the process – By giving about half the time for speakers and other half for participants to discuss with their table mates, we are honouring and respecting that each member has something to contribute.

Third, the Conference uses three lenses namely wisdom perspectives, scientific principles and management best practices, to look at each theme. In fact, they represent three primary colours and the integral lens called life contains all of them. At the end of each day, we have the World Café which is like a coffee shop where people choose to engage in what they got, where they are, etc. We allow people to mingle to share and explore their lessons, practices, principles and perspectives from the day. Many times people get surprised at what others are taking away from the same talk, and that opens people’s minds and hearts and gets them thinking, changing and re-learning.

The Conference examines three areas – Leadership, Innovation and Change – Do you think that the three themes will melt into one another during the course of the Conference? What do you aspire to achieve at the end of the three days?

The three themes are like body, mind and heart of a living person. They are separate parts and together make up a whole. Leadership is about action, and practicing what one preaches. Innovation is about bringing human creativity (mind) to focus on a problem or a possibility to come up with an innovative solution, business model, discovery, product or process. Change of hearts is the only way to guarantee sustainable change in people. In that respect, leadership focus without paying attention to innovation and change leads to blind loyalty to tradition or belief. Innovation focus without paying attention to leadership and change issues allows people to come up with products and processes that die without executive or leadership support and nobody commits to making them a success. In other words, innovation is like a beautiful orphan with an uncertain future. Also, change management focus without leadership and innovation to support it is unsustainable.

Successful leaders in the 21st century recognise that one has to learn to manage change effectively. Take the example of Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways during the recent flip flop around employee layoffs. When he did not manage change properly, his leadership credentials were questioned. Similarly, without innovation, the top-line growth is at risk.

To summarise, I look at the three themes as interdependent and integral to the success and transformation of individuals and organisations.

A Conference like this is not just an isolated event and will generate more expectations. Can you tell us something about the road ahead? How will CLIC use the Conference to further its vision?

You are right. The conference is just an appetiser. We have in the pipeline thought leader forums in the areas of wisdom perspectives, on each of the three themes -Leadership, Innovation and Change. This means inviting academicians, practitioners and consultants to come together and explore how we can bring different perspectives based on Indian wisdom. It is not just about religious rituals or tenets. It is not even about adapting spiritual principles as they are, but on focussing what wisdom perspective means. How would a 21st century CEO act if he/she was to be Arjuna and Krishna was to speak? In fact, what form or role would Sri Krishna take if he were to incarnate in 21st Century? Similarly, if Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohammad were to be alive now, what would their message be to the business leaders and money lenders of today? Based on our conversations during the Conference, we plan to release a ‘Wisdom Series’ of books and articles to help global leaders.

Similarly, we are planning a series of articles and cases on various innovative developments that are taking place in India. We are also documenting some key change and transformation stories of large organisations, and how they lead and innovate differently from organisations in developed countries. In fact, in partnership with Young Global Leaders (WEF), we are studying leadership styles of Indians and other leaders from Asia and emerging economies and comparing it with styles of western leaders.
We are also having executive education programmes during the first week of December. I am doing a four day transformational leadership course for the fifth year in a row. This is for CEOs, entrepreneurs and other senior leaders to clarify their own paths and develop a different kind of leadership. Professor S Ramnarayan, Clinical Professor of Business at the ISB, and Management Committee Member of CLIC, is co-authoring a book on transformation of Indian Railways.

Tell us something about the profile-mix of the participants?

We have about 150 participants and 30 faculty members coming in from various locations and countries. We have about 20 plus people coming in from outside the country. Among the participants, over 65% are senior managers (General Manager and above). 25% of them are middle managers. In terms of sectors, about 25% of them are from consulting sector, 15% from Agro business, 13% from IT industry, 9% are from Infrastructure and construction business, 8% are from education sector, 7 % from Electronics and telecom. Finally, we are dominated by men as only 6% of the participants are women.

ISB Energy Conclave Addresses Needs of Tomorrow- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:22:26 GMT

The Energy, Manufacturing and Operations (EMO) Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently hosted the Energy Conclave, the first ever of its kind in an Indian B-school.

Addressing the theme ‘Gearing up for the energy challenge: Energy strategy, Challenges and Opportunities’, was an impressive panel comprising Narindra Bachlus, CEO, Exxon Mobil India; S Padmanabhan, Executive Director (Operations) Tata Power; Ajay Gupta, Head (Commercial and New Business) Cairn Energy; Rana Kar, GM (Business Development) British Gas, and Ravi Khanna, CEO, Moser Baer Photo Voltaic.¬

The Conclave was inaugurated by Professor M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB, who commended the student led EMO club for the initiative. Dean Rao spoke about the ISB’s role in promoting various initiatives through its centres of excellence, and how an interaction of this sort between industry and students, gives the ISB an edge over other B-schools in India.

The day’s discussion focussed on the current energy scenario, and the issues it brought about in sustainable energy. Clearly, India had its own challenges and opportunities in the sector, and a growing economy needed to address each of these challenges. The alternatives presented were, among others, hydrocarbons, nuclear energy and various modes of alternative energies.

One of the panellists said, “Ninety-nine percent of India’s future energy needs will be met by hydrocarbons and thermal energy.” Concern amongst the students on how sustainable the current scenario would be was allayed by the panellists. They pointed to the fact that India had the 3rd largest coal reserves in the world but isn’t extracting enough of coal to feed Indian industry and that the Indian government is considering privatisation as a solution to use its fossil reserves more efficiently. Nuclear energy clearly was something that cropped up repeatedly for discussion between the panel and the students, given India’s capability of generating nuclear power and the recent agreement. One of the panellists pointed out to the abundance of Thorium in India, and Norway’s attempts to generate electricity from Thorium, a clear opportunity for collaboration.

The discussion also focussed on the emerging business models and rural energy problems. In the interactions following the panel discussion, the new technology of solar panels was discussed as a potential solution towards solving humungous space demands of solar panels. The panel agreed that meeting electricity demands of rural India was the next big challenge for the power sector. Some immediate issues to be addressed by the Energy sector were summed up as - reducing transmission and distribution losses, distributed power generation, demand side energy efficiency and feasibility of financing large power projects all of which must act in unison to meet the future demands of Energy in India.

“There is a lot of research going worldwide in this sector, and the ISB being a research driven institute, decided to tap this sector and it really helped us understand the dynamics of the same,” recalls student Souvik Ghosh, Class of 2009, who participated in the Conclave. “It was one of the most interactive and meaningful sessions we ever had at the ISB,” confirms his colleague Ankur Mitra.

The focus of the EMO club at the ISB this year has been to discover new grounds and have discussions on issues which have been primarily a feature of various conferences at the world level. Club President Ritesh Dogra said, “The Energy conclave was the first flagship event of the club- a legacy that we leave for all future batches. We have an extremely focussed and dedicated team and hence in future all of us plan to increase industry interactions of the same type.”

Belgian King visits ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:40:43 GMT

His Majesty King Albert II, the King of the Belgians, recently visited the Indian School of Business (ISB), during a state visit to India. His Majesty was accompanied by H E Karel De Gucht, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a delegation of economic and academic executives.

His Majesty planted a sapling at the ISB and was given a tour of the campus by M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB and Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB. He then attended a panel discussion on “Making Indian-Belgian Acquisitions work: Opportunities and Challenges”, moderated by Philippe Haspeslagh, Dean, Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School.

The other panellists in the discussion included Sashi Kiran Shetty, Chairman & Managing Director, All Cargo Global Logistics Ltd, Eric Van Zeele, Former CEO, Pauwels group, Vineet Chabra, Managing Director, Global Green and Ajit Shetty, Chairman and Managing Director, Janssen Pharmaceutica.

The panellists shared their experiences on working with Indian companies that acquired Belgian enterprises. Noting that two of the presentations involved smaller Indian companies taking over larger Belgian companies, Dean Haspeslagh said, “The presentations show the entrepreneurship drive of the Indians”.

Sashi Kiran Shetty gave an overview of All Cargo and its strategy, ‘leap, consolidate and leap further’. He said that the reasons for India and Belgium working well together were; no language barrier, fewer cultural differences compared to the rest of Europe, welcoming regulatory climate in Belgium and the ease of settling Indian expatriates in Belgium.

Van Zeele talked about the acquisition of the Pauwels group by Crompton Greaves (CG) and its impact on back office functions. He said CG achieved the integration by a ‘Best of both & transformation’ process, which aimed to leave Pauwels as Pauwels and CG as an Indian company.

Chabra gave a presentation on “Acquisition of Intergarden NV”. He said that the selection of the right lawyer was critical for a smooth integration of companies. He also stressed on the importance of knowledge, experience and self-awareness. “The most effective communication is action”, he said. Ajit Shetty ended the panel discussion with a short talk on the acquisition of Janssen Pharmaceutica by Johnson & Johnson.

His Majesty and the rest of the delegation then headed to the Atrium, where they were formally welcomed by Dean Rao, who also presented a small token of appreciation to the King. An interaction with local business people, faculty, administrators and students concluded His Majesty’s visit to the ISB.

Diverse sectors discussed at Tie-ISB Connect 2008- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:33:17 GMT

Panel discussions on diverse sectors like Agriculture and Agri-processing, Manufacturing, Energy, Retail, Real estate, Infrastructure & Urbanisation, Healthcare and Education & Training were all a part of ‘The Indus Entrepreneurs-Indian School of Business (TiE-ISB) Connect 2008’.

The panel discussion for the Agriculture and Agri-processing track was chaired by J A Chowdhary, President, TiE Hyderabad, and the discussion was moderated by Mahesh Kanumuri, Managing Director, Arivali Partners. The panel focussed on identifying the challenges and opportunities in the sector. The major challenges, as recognised by the panel, were lack of investment, technology deficit, infrastructure deficit and lack of trust among the farmers.

The main opportunities in the space included public private partnerships in irrigation facilities, knowledge decimation through use of ICTs, value added product development and health related products. The panellists also identified key requirements from entrepreneurs in this sector – the need to incorporate innovation and efficiency, and understanding of the price variability of agricultural products due to natural factors.

The track on Manufacturing focussed on how to best target the next 800 million. In his keynote address, Professor N Viswanadham, Executive Director, Centre for Global Logistics and Manufactured Strategies (GLAMS), outlined some challenges of the sector - lack of an efficient hub and spoke network, lack of warehousing facilities and connectivity solutions. He also offered some solutions, “take advantage of the available infrastructure, like networks and logistical capabilities of the post office to bring a host of services,” he said.

Panellist Vineet Agarwal, Executive Director, TCI predicted some future trends in the supply chain arena as - manufacturing and logistics (including transportation, inventory & pilferage) will be fully integrated, presence of bigger and fewer warehouses, hub and spoke system to grow and convergence of a global manufacturing network.

Nrupender Rao, Chairman, Pennar Group shared that the need of the hour is innovation on a small level –“sell small, sell cheap.” Other panellists comprised Kunwer Sachdev, CEO, Su- Kam Power Systems and Ramesh Dalta, Elico.

The panel discussion for the Energy track was chaired by Atanu Dey, Chief Economist, Netcore Solutions. The panel discussed the various types of alternate energy solutions available in the country. Dey started the proceedings by elucidating the history and importance of energy. He said that oil was not used 200 years back, and that it would be history 50 years from now, something that should propel us to look for other alternative means of energy. He also said that energy is the constraint for most other types of resources such as water and food.
The panellists agreed unanimously on the huge growth potential in the sector due to its current state. The solutions discussed included motor energy efficiency improvement, waste management, Photo-Voltaic (PV) cells and nuclear energy.

The last panel discussion of this year’s TiE-ISB Connect was on Education & Training, chaired by Dr V Chandrashekar, Clinical Professor of Business, ISB. The panel discussed the opportunity and constraints facing the sector in India. It also touched upon few successful initiatives being taken in this field, such as the training of weavers for the apparel industry undertaken by IL&FS Cluster Development Initiative Limited and entrepreneur training and mentorship offered by Mentor Square.

The panellists agreed that there is a huge opportunity in the space of education and training as India currently faces a huge deficit of employable manpower. The biggest constraint for the growth of the business of education in India is regulation. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs have a great opportunity for themselves in the education sector. For sustainable growth and scalability, they will have to put in efforts not only to do well in their ventures but also push policy makers to let them grow.

TiE-ISB Connect 2008 Inaugurated- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:33:40 GMT

The fourth edition of the ‘The Indus Entrepreneurs-Indian School of Business (TiE-ISB) Connect’ was inaugurated with the lighting of the lamp by M Veerappa Moily, Chairman, Administrative Reforms Commission, Dr Geetha Reddy, Honourable Minister for Industries, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Dr M Rammohan Rao, Dean, Indian School of Business(ISB), Srini Raju, Peepul Advisors, JA Chowdary, President, TiE Hyderabad and Dr Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director, Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED), ISB & Co-Convener, TiE ISB Connect.

In his welcome address, Chowdary said that until four years back in Hyderabad, there were no venture capitalists or incubation facilities to provide support for entrepreneurs. “TiE and ISB have collaborated over the last four years, to provide this incubation,” he said.

Tanuku then gave a presentation on the ISB and the different aspects of the three-day event and said that the hope was, “it will lead to helping India move forward”. Talking about the theme of this year’s Connect, ‘The Next 800 Million: Opportunities and Challenges’, he added that he hoped it would be the theme for not just this event but for several other events.

Thereafter the Dean welcomed the participants and gave a brief overview of the ISB, which was followed by Reddy giving the inaugural address. “I am impressed with the theme of the TiE-ISB Connect as it is the need of the hour to create and enable an environment for rapid and sustainable growth of entrepreneurship”, she said.

In his keynote address, Moily talked about ‘Wealth Creation & Inclusive Growth’ and the characteristics of a leader. “Decisiveness is the fundamental characteristic of a leader, the courage to take tough decisions, test new ideas and best practices”, he said.

The first day of TiE-ISB Connect 2008 once again provided a platform to aspiring entrepreneurs, in taking their first steps on their entrepreneurial journey. Entrant teams from around the country presented their business plans, while gaining valuable professional feedback on their ventures in the ‘Jumpstart your Enterprise’ workshop, which is a day long learning event comprising several workshop sessions, each topic focussing on a specific area of entrepreneurial learning. Mentors included the ISB faculty, top Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors.

Sateesh Andra, Venture Partner, DFJ India, then held a panel discussion on “Spirit of Entrepreneurship – My Journey”, followed by a panel discussion on “Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Organisation Building – A Road Map”, held by K Ramachandran, Professor, ISB. There were also sessions on fundraising, negotiating with VC, social venture funding, marketing strategies, building social enterprises and execution.

The second day comprised a panel discussion on ‘Next 800 millions - Challenges and Opportunities’. On the panel, among others, were Reuben Abraham, Clinical Assistant Professor of Business, ISB, and Director of BoP Learning Lab India, Mudit Kapoor, Assistant Professor, Economics and Public Policy, ISB, and Atanu Dey, renowned economist.

Professor Abraham initiated the panel by outlining the success and growth story of India during the past 8-10 years, but asked, “Is this the whole truth?” He perceived a grave distortion of truth and sought answers from the panel members. Professor Kapoor mentioned that the 800 million that were being discussed were still “poor and vulnerable” and the alarming statistics of illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of immunisation etc, during the last 8-10 years in India, gave rise to an alternate picture. “This side of India is not given the right to participate in the growth story,” he noted.

Dey added that though we keep talking about economic reforms, there has been no significant governance reform and thus most reforms are not directed towards the lower socio-economic segments of the Indian population. “Reforms, and not just growth, needs to be inclusive, and finally there has to be some leadership to bring in those reforms,” he said.

The other panels on the second day discussed Agriculture & Agri-Processing, Manufacturing, Retail, VC Connect and Taking India Forward.

Diverse sectors discussed at Tie-ISB Connect 2008

Panel Discussion on 'Making Hyderabad a Global City'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:53:11 GMT

The Indu Centre for Infrastructure and Real Estate at the ISB recently organised a panel discussion themed, ‘Making Hyderabad a Global City’. Present on the occasion were K R Suresh Reddy, Honourable Speaker, AP Legislative, Dean M Rammohan Rao, Deputy Dean Ajit Rangnekar, and a host of members from the realty community.

The panel comprised Cornelis M Keur, US Consul General to Hyderabad, B P Acharya, Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC), K S Jawahar Reddy, Metropolitan Commissioner, Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA), Syam Prasad Reddy, Founder, Indu Projects Limited, and Professor V Chandrasekar, ISB. The evening’s proceedings were moderated by Utkarsh Palnitkar, Partner & Head- Infrastructure, Real Estate & Government Advisory, Ernst & Young.

The Honourable Speaker, in his address, mentioned that there was need for a ‘connect’ between various research Chairs and Centres of Real Estate, which function concurrently but never together. The Centre at the ISB, he hoped, will facilitate the interlink between the executive and the legislative in sharing research findings and best practices in the sphere of real estate.

Palnitkar opened the debate by asking the panellists what the parameters of a global city really were, why Hyderabad does not list in the count-down of top 100 cities of the world, and finally do we really want to change the character of the city at the cost of being termed as ‘global’?

Consul General Keur explained that Hyderabad did not feature in the aforementioned list simply by the virtue of its size, and because it was a relatively small community. “It is a very warm and welcoming population and accepts people easily,” he said of the Hyderabadi community. He also mentioned that Hyderabad ranks high on the parameters of transparency, a rapidly developing social capital, the ability to speak in English – all which go on to prove its ‘globalness’.

Jawahar Reddy mentioned that infrastructure is a vital component for any city to grow, and that several measures like the Outer Ring Road, the Hyderabad Growth Corridor etc, are initiated in Hyderabad in order to take away the infrastructure pressures of the core city. He also added that Hyderabad is working to better its public transport system.

Acharya made a presentation on how the “sleepy city of Hyderabad metamorphosed into a cyber capital.” He shared some milestones in Hyderabad’s journey, from boulders to cyber towers, convention centres and golf courses. He however mentioned that the core mindsets of the people are still unchanged.

Professor Chandrasekar noted that what makes a perfect city is its ‘soft issues.’ “Mutual interaction, free flowing communication are important aspects to be considered while laying the infrastructure of a city”, he said.

Syam Prasad Reddy said that the quality of infrastructure and that life in Hyderabad is definitely on the rise, but that we also need to work towards branding the city just in the way that Singapore of Hong Kong has. “We have a cultural heritage like the Charminar, and we have modern elements like the Cyber City. We need to draw global attention,” he said. He also added that Hyderabad is ailed by the lack of discipline and that it needs more awareness programmes.

A Q& A session followed where the panellists answered queries, specific to the city of Hyderabad, about lack of public transport, roads eating into pavements, water logging etc.

The evening ended with dinner and networking .

ISB Hosts Asia-Pacific Business School Librarians Group Meet- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:49:38 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB) recently hosted the 7th Meet of the Asia Pacific Business School Librarians' Group (APBSLG) .

The ABSLG is a forum for directors of business school libraries in the Asia Pacific Region, to support the professional development and standing of the member libraries through mutual exchange of ideas, data and collaborate activities. The members of APBSLG meet every year to discuss issues of mutual interest, share information and participate actively in working groups.

During the three day meet at the ISB, the group deliberated on managerial and administrative issues and trends, shared knowledge about co-operative initiatives to aid the provision of information in business schools, and also discussed on opportunities for international collaboration and networking.

Dr K Mohan, Senior Director IT and LRC at the ISB outlined the purpose for the meet as “a platform for sharing information and collaborate and benchmark ourselves against the best in the world.”

An inspiring address by Dean M Rammohan Rao, academic talks talk by Dr ARD Prasad, Dr Devika P Madalli, DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, and subsequent presentations by other members of the group - Celia Chug, Research Librarian, Finance & Accounting, Li Ka Shing Library, SMU, H Anil Kumar, Librarian and Head NICMAN, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, a presentation on Scholarly Communication survey by René Steffensen and Leif Hansen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, were a few highlights of the event.

Participant Gina De Alwis from SIM said that the learnings from this meet was invaluable and that they were all taking it back home for application. She also added, “The ISB has been a fantastic host. Not only did it take care of the intellectual aspect but made sure that we got our taste of the Indian culture.” Anil Kumar from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad added, “To ISB goes the credit of bringing the APBSLG meet to India for the first time. Other than sharing of ideas, the meet was a great occasion to network and discuss common issues” He also shared some of the themes delved into during the meet – the current financial crisis and how it going to effect budgeting, the challenges on the road etc. Pascale Pajona from INSEAD added that the insights about the uses of Information Technology, that various participants shared, were very handy.

It was an occasion of coming together of a fraternity to share experiences and add to the knowledge repository. And the ISB provided an excellent environment for the same.

Participant John Foley, Melbourne Business School, summed it up as, “The ISB is a monastery of sort, something spiritual here, and the LRC specifically, in its layout, personifies access and openness.”

Director General of US Commercial Service at ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:17:40 GMT

The Director General of US Commercial Service and the Assistant Secretary of US Department of Commerce, Israel Hernandez, along with Cornelis M Keur, Consul General of US in Hyderabad, recently paid a visit to the Indian School of Business (ISB).

Accompanying them was a Fedex Trade Mission, comprising 30 odd business leaders from the Small and Medium Enterprises in the US. They were here on a Trade Mission, co-sponsored by US Dept of Commerce and Fedex.

For the group, the visit was an opportunity to experience India, to explore new opportunities, and to strengthen trade ties. They visited the ISB to learn about the vision and functioning of a premier business school in this part of the world.

Present on the occasion were Deputy Dean of ISB, Ajit Rangnekar, ISB faculty members, and representatives from the senior ISB management.

Rangnekar recalled that the ISB is indeed a product of Indo-US collaboration, as two of its partner schools are from the US, namely The Wharton School and Kellogg School of Management, and several area leaders and visiting faculty, who frequently visit the ISB, are also from the US.

Enumerating what sets the ISB apart from other B Schools in India, Rangnekar said that it was because of ISB’s focus on “emerging economies, on small and medium enterprises, and finally on entrepreneurship”. “That is our space, and we dream to be on the global map through our outstanding student and our relevant research.” Research at ISB, he clarified, focuses on both “global cutting edge research and also on issues pertaining to developing world.” “In this journey we look forward to more partners, and will be delighted to work with you,” he said to the group of visitors. The visitors then toured the ISB facilities and also interacted with the students.

On this occasion, Consul General Cornelis M Keur presented the US Commerce Department’s Certificate of Appreciation to the ISB, in recognition of the school’s contribution for creating international trade opportunities between the US and India.
Deputy Dean Rangnekar accepted the award on behalf of the School.

Giving away the award, Consul General Keur said, “I am delighted that the ISB is being recognised for its commitment to enhancing US –India commercial ties that support economic growth and jobs in both our countries.”

Ikshaa 2008 - Business at Youth Avenue- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:56:46 GMT

Ikshaa08: Business at Youth Avenue, the flagship event of the Marketing Club, Class of 2009, was recently hosted at the Indian School of Business (ISB).

Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB, in his introductory remarks said that the student-led event was reflective of the school’s vision. “A tradition at the ISB where youth always take the lead”, he said. “Having been around the world, youth in India is by far the brightest”, he added.

Saurabh Kanwar, Head of Content and Communication, Channel V, started off the summit with his presentation, ‘Teri Maa ki Youth – Some motherhoods about youth marketing’. The first motherhood, according to Kanwar, was the inherent dichotomy in youth. He said Indian youth love to experiment and experience, but only in anonymity. “They love logos and brands but fakes will do just great, they go to the temple but to pray for money and success,” he noted.

Another interesting theory he proposed was ‘Plus Ka change’, which translates to the more things change, the more they remain the same. As examples of this, Kanwar mentioned fragmentation and growth of choice, and the simultaneous need for aggregation. “Hindi is not uncool, but English is still cool; growing globalisation and hyper charged localisation; independent music rocks, but Bollywood rocks on,” were some other observations he made. To the budding marketers at the ISB he said that to have a heroic brand, one has to build an icon which is not one-dimensional.

A talk by Joy Bhattacharya, CEO, IPL Kolkata Knight Riders, followed. Bhattacharya said that it was imperative for us to understand that things have changed. “We are a much more equal society”, he said. He also said that the big thing about marketing 'to youth was catching them at the right age and getting them to like your product.’

During the day’s proceeding, Deepika Warrier, Director, Marketing, Snacks Division, Pepsico India Holdings made a presentation on “Food for Thought: Marketing food brands for youth”. One of the insights she shared was that “Indians love to snack”, adding that in the Chinese culture, only women snacked, with the men choosing to smoke rather than snack. Talking about building the ‘Lays’ & ‘Kurkure’ brands, she said that the most innovative thing that Lays did was to make snacking “sexy”. She mentioned that the stages in building the Lays brand were - targeting youth, including flavours of the world, and cashing on India’s victory abroad and the concept of Chaat Street.

Rajaram Narayanan, Vice President, Lakme and Hair Care, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, then addressed why youth was important to Unilever and shared some insights on marketing products to the young population. He said that some of the obvious reasons why youth were important to Unilever were that more than half the country was young, that incomes were higher with the prevalence of call centres & BPOs, and finally it is a media-soaked and connected generation.

“Looking good is an obsession with the youth”, Narayanan observed, adding, “And youth talk a lot”. He added that young India is optimistic, negotiates, loves jokes and loves to be entertained. He elucidated on these points with case studies of Sunsilk and Axe.

Loveleen Raina, VP, Account Management, Ogilvy & Mather gave the concluding presentation on marketing Motorola cell phones. She said that they ran to youth when there was nowhere else to run. She said that Motorola decided to market to the youth after they realised that there are two kinds of poor in the country – the economically deprived and the youth. Some of the other insights she offered were that youth in India prefer negotiation over confrontation, and that one of the biggest drivers for the youth is personal expression. “The young constantly want to vent out without thinking about consequences,” Raina said.

The day ended with a relevant Q & A session and a networking opportunity with industry leaders.

Vice President of Walt Disney India visits ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:52:07 GMT

Mahesh Samat, Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Walt Disney India and K Seshasayee, Director, Corporate Communications, Walt Disney India visited the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently. Samat addressed the ISB community on “A family audience – Myth and opportunity for entertainment brands”, at a talk hosted by the Marketing Club.

Samat is responsible for driving the Walt Disney Company’s strategy, coordinating all business efforts in India, including overseeing Disney global franchises in the market, expanding existing businesses and creating new business opportunities. He manages all Disney businesses in India, except the ESPN/Star Sports joint venture, with all local business segments reporting into him.

Samat talked about what Disney does in India and also their operations globally. “The best thing about Disney is that even when you are marketing it, it sounds fun”, he said. He started off his talk with a video and then gave some background on Disney. He mentioned that Disney has over 3000 characters and properties.

Further into the talk, Samat put light on the fact that Disney was not really a media and entertainment company. It was a company of creative properties and franchises which were then leveraged across different lines and businesses. This is what constituted the ‘Disney Difference’. As an example of this, he mentioned the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, which was a theme park ride that was turned into a movie and then spawned off a huge merchandising market.

He also said that Disney was about 3 years old in India and mentioned the large movie market in India, owing to a strong movie culture and a large number of kids. “From a family entertainment standpoint, it’s a perfect country to be in”, he said.

Samat focussed on the stand that they did not want to build a Walt Disney India ltd but an Indian Walt Disney and would focus on three big areas – kids retail, TV and films. “We want to build a brand that touches Indian families everyday”, he said. According to him, the biggest challenge was emerging markets. “In markets like India, each business is too small on its own. When you put them together, there is a lot more you can do like pulling all their resources”, he said.

Talking about retail, he stated that it was too early for them to define their exact strategy since they are still in the learning stage. He said Disney was probably one of the most socially aware companies in the world. For instance, globally they have a policy to promote better eating. “And one of the things that we are working on promoting in India is this concept called volunteering”, he said.

He concluded by saying that they are very socially aware of content. “If anything is branded Disney, a kid should be able to watch it alone”, he said.

Second Campus at Mohali Announced- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:34:26 GMT

Press Release

The Indian School of Business (ISB), today signed a tripartite agreement with the Government of Punjab, and four leading business leaders, to set up a second campus at Knowledge City, Mohali, Punjab. The formal agreement was signed in the presence of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the Dean of ISB, M Rammohan Rao. The signatories were Anjali Bhawra, Secretary, Higher Education, Government of Punjab, Rajat Gupta, Chairman, ISB, and four Founder-Supporters of the ISB campus at Mohali namely, Analjit Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, Max India Limited, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises Limited, Sunil Kant Munjal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Hero Corporate Service Limited, and Atul Punj, Chairman, Punj Lloyd Group.

70 acres of land has been allotted to the ISB, by the Government of Punjab, on a 99 years lease. The Founder-Supporters of the ISB campus at Mohali, have come forward with a contribution of Rs. 50 crores each. The Founder-Supporters will extend their existing support in the areas of Placements, Internships, Programmes on Campus and Visiting Faculty to the ISB campus at Mohali.

ISB Mohali envisions to be another world class, premier, academic institution providing a Post Graduate Programme in Management and short duration Executive Education Programmes. Proposed are four Centres of Excellence in Healthcare Management, Public Policy, Manufacturing Sciences, and Physical Infrastructure Management, for promoting research and providing additional specialisations in the post graduate programmes in these areas. The first academic session at the ISB campus in Mohali is expected to commence in 2012. The Mohali campus proposes to have 280 seats in its Post Graduate Programme, and plans a participation of 750 professionals in its Executive Education Programmes.

A Deputy Dean, will be appointed to run the Mohali campus, including the four Centres of Excellence. It will additionally have the benefit of a Campus Advisory Board. The ISB faculty will be available for teaching on both campuses and all standards and processes will be common across both campuses.

Post the signing of the agreement, Bikram Singh Majithia, Information & Public Relations, Water Supply & Sanitation, Science & Technology and Environment Minister, Government of Punjab said, "The setting up of the ISB will help facilitate the emergence of Mohali on the national map as an important centre of higher learning.” He also thanked the Founder-Supporters for reiterating their support and their commitment to Punjab, in helping to set up a world class institution at Mohali.

According to Chairman Rajat Gupta the Mohali campus was another significant milestone in the ISB journey. “I am grateful to the vision of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and our Founder Supporters for making it possible for us to bring high quality education within the reach of more and more Indians,” he said Dean Rao added, “We have endeavoured to always groom high quality talent for the country, and I am delighted that we now have the opportunity to groom talent for new growth sectors especially healthcare, manufacturing, infrastructure and public policy.”

“I feel that being a part of the creation of the ISB Mohali is a privilege. Such a partnership is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” expressed Singh. The proposed Centre for Healthcare Management, he informed, will impart Industry relevant skill sets to students in this Programme to meet India’s growing need for quality healthcare professionals.

Mittal noted, “We are delighted that our support to the ISB for its second campus in Mohali will benefit the Indian youth, including those in the region, with quality education in management". The Centre for Public Policy, he said, will be a first of its kind, world-class institution that will create a talent pool and provide meaningful insights, facilitating the policy making process in various strategic areas. Munjal said “We’ve been looking to promote a centre for manufacturing and operational excellence that would firstly help us replenish our talent pipeline, and secondly, make India’s manufacturing sector globally competitive. In ISB, we have found the right partner to fulfil these objectives.”

Punj mentioned that the agreement was a landmark public-private partnership which will play a critical role in generating a huge pool of skilled managers to meet not just India's but also the global skills shortage in the construction industry. “The Centre for Physical Infrastructure Management, proposed at the Mohali campus will be a unique institute offering managerial skills in the infrastructure segment," he said.

Sky is the Limit- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:39:58 GMT

Gourav Ray from the Class of 2009 at the Indian School of Business (ISB), has for some time been flying in the air along with some of his colleagues here. And it is not even close to Placements time.

He is just spearheading a heady student’s initiative called ‘Hifliers’, which is a crash course in flying. Lieutenant Colonel Gourav Ray was a Senior Aviation Instructor from the Army. For the past four months, amidst a neck-breaking academic schedule, he has been teaching his batch-mates the basics of flying.

Ray is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy and Indian Military Academy and has served in the elite Army Aviation Corps for 13 years spanning one war, one major operation and two insurgencies. He is a veteran of the Kargil war where he flew during Operation Vijay in the Kargil, Dras, Mushkoh and Batalik sectors. As a helicopter pilot, he has operated in some of the highest helipads in the world including the Siachen Glacier. He is also an experienced Flying Instructor with over 2000 hours of flying and instructional experience. Currently, he is “reinventing” himself by pursuing an MBA from ISB.

“Flying is what I do best and I wanted to share the feeling of being on top of the world with my friends here,” says Ray.
Adventure ‘Hi-Fliers’ began in the campus with a small presentation on the idea where Ray discussed the basics of flying to a group of around 60 students. This was followed by a class on flight instruments, procedures, air regulations and the basics of the Cessna aircraft. Braving a gruelling term and mammoth assignments, several students took out time to take notes during the on-ground capsule session.

Ray explains that the initial sessions focus on giving a pilot’s perspective to the students, and helps them identify the risks and hazards involved in flying. Ray takes two to three students per week for the training.. “I did not want to limit the experience to a joy ride and so helped them get a feel of controlling the 120 bhp Cessna from the pilot’s seat,” Ray says.

Theory done, finally, this November it was time to strap up. As the propeller cranked and roared to a start, the ISBians were ready to soar. It was their first ever air experience in a Cessna, but the cockpit was full of confident smiles, nothing else. The Hifliers took to the skies confidently. Apart from carrying out circuits and landings, they took time out to fly over ISB as well. Ramani, who recently had his first sortie flying over the magnificent campus said “Flying over ISB was a spellbinding experience.” Kedar Sule, a Microsoft Flight Simulator enthusiast said “Thanks to Hi-fliers, my dream of flying the real thing came true.” For Amrita Banerjee, the first lady student to get airborne, the experience was “once in a lifetime”. “The sessions were a great stress reliever” said architect Dushyant Ahuja, contrary to popular belief that flying is tough stuff.

Ray is supported in his adventure by the Rajiv Gandhi Aviation Academy, Hyderabad, which is providing the infrastructure support

ISB personifies high achievers, for whom the sky is the limit, and this student initiative just proved once again that learning in this place is not bound by the classroom walls. It sometimes takes you up in the sky.

Renowned economist gives talk at ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:24:19 GMT

In an informal and interactive talk at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Dr.Ajit Ranade, Group Chief Economist, Aditya Birla Group spoke about the global financial meltdown and how it has impacted us.

To provide a background for the discussion, Ranade talked about what led to the financial meltdown but added, “Its not important where we come from, its important where we are going”.

He said the financial sector’s fundamental role was to connect the savers to the investors. “The dog is supposed to be the real sector and the financial sector is supposed to be the tail”, he said, giving the example of India, where of the total GDP, 7 percent is the financial sector. “But unfortunately in recent years it has become the tail that wags the dog,” he continued, adding that over the last 30 years, in the US, almost half of the profits came from the financial sector. He said the meltdown started with sub-prime loans because of banks giving loans to everyone and anyone and soon impacted the entire sector. Mentioning the savings crisis in the 1980s that was largely confined to Texas and Florida and the Asian Banking Crisis of 1997, he said this is the mother of all crises in terms of magnitude. He added that this was the first crisis that was made and manufactured in a developed country.

He started off an animated discussion with a question as to why the dollar was strengthening, despite the economic slowdown. “It is because whatever you think of the US, it is the best country which can come of this crisis – they have the best resolution system, legal system, democratic system”, he said. “There is no other country like it”.

“In India, you can get a good haircut in Rs 40 but I bet that you can’t get a good haircut for a $1 in the US”, he concluded, adding that “Companies make profits even offering products and services at these cheap rates”. He added that when a country like the US grows at zero percent, it is said to be in recession. But even at that stagnant rate, they produce 15 million new cars. When India produces barely 2 million new cars, there is said to be a 2 percent GDP growth. “So we should keep the perspective”, Ranade said.

Panel Tackles Trends in Realty Financing- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:58:29 GMT

The global liquidity crunch is hurting Real Estate businesses in India. It is a grim situation, and it is becoming extremely difficult for both small and large realty companies to organise financing in recent times. Bankers have become more cautious in lending to the Real Estate sector as a result of decline in sales and high property prices. The Government had also expressed concerns on the rising property prices across the country. What is impact of the slowdown of such an important sector on the Indian Economy? What steps can be taken to mitigate these consequences?

To understand these uncertainties and to enrich student’s perspective on the current crisis facing the Real Estate Sector and its subsequent impact on the Indian economy, the Real Estate and Infrastructure Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently organised a panel discussion on ‘Financing Real Estate and Trends and Opportunities’.

The panel comprised of various experts from the Real Estate sector. The panellists were Hari Challa, Managing Director, Aliens Group, George Johnson, Senior Director, Profit Head, Hyderabad, JLL, Jita Mitra, General Manager, Finance and Accounts, Maytas Properties Pvt Ltd and Dr Piyush Tiwari, Senior Lecturer, Aberdeen Business School, Scotland.

The discussion started with Dr Tiwari’s presentation on the global Real Estate market and the subsequent impact of the credit crisis on the Real Estate market in India. He urged the panellists to present their respective insights on the impact of the crisis on the Indian Real Estate market. Johnson then presented an ‘investors’ perspective of the market. He specifically highlighted the liquidity crisis in the industry, and how market sentiments were negating the positive measures taken by the government. He also talked about the increased property vacancy ratios and a huge mismatch between demand and supply of residential and commercial properties. However he was convinced of the strong fundamentals of the Indian market, and was sure that the market will bounce back in some time.

Challa brought forth the ‘builders’ perspective on the market scenario and mentioned how the current slowdown was a blessing in disguise for developers and builders as it led to low competition and cost reductions. He emphasised on the fact that the current market scenario offered an opportunity to developers to emphasise on quality and performance and also allowed them to realign their portfolio with the traditional market segment of middle-class buyers.

Mitra lent both a ‘Bankers and Developers’ perspective to the discussion. He emphasised that strategic strength of the builder was more important than the construction strength. A sound developer strategy would allow him to sail in this rough market. He highlighted the importance of “monitoring mechanism” and the need for a “regulatory authority” for the Real Estate sector on the lines of SEBI and RBI.

The panellists then engaged in an interactive discussion on various questions such as – the future of SEZ’s in India, risk pricing by bankers, softening of the rental market and the importance of the system driven approach in the market. Everyone agreed that the market required 3C’s to succeed – “somebody’s cash, somebody’s clients and everybody’s confidence”.

The panellists were also of the opinion that diversified companies would increase market value in this sector. They agreed that the market is still optimistic about the industry and that the same factors would become the catalyst for this sector’s development. There was an unanimous agreement on the fact that there is enormous potential in the industry and that the Real Estate market will grow several times in the coming decade.

The panel discussion offered an opportunity for the ISB students to interact with the panellists and further refine their thoughts on interested areas in the Real Estate market.

The Real Estate & Infrastructure Club President, Rajeev Ramprakash, summed up the entire Panel meet as, “This was an opportunity to hear first hand from practitioners about the issues facing the sector today, and also hear them reflect on lessons learned from the intense growth phase we are emerging from. The presence of a developer, a financier, a consultant and an academician made the discussion very relevant and lively. ”

ISB Runs for Hyderabad- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:52:24 GMT

It was another never ending night of giving finishing touches to mammoth assignments. Next morning, 4.45 am, students at the Indian School of Business (ISB) effortlessly assembled at the School’s Godrej Porch. With them were present faculty members, staff, alumni, spouses and even children. Their destination was Necklace Road at Hyderabad where the fourth edition of the Hyderabad 10k Run was to commence. ISBians, for the third year now, took part in this event. On that pleasant November morning 250 odd ISBians ran along with other students, youth, sportspersons, corporates and even senior citizens, and displayed the camaraderie and solidarity much needed in today’s times.

The Hyderabad 10 K run is organised by the Hyderabad 10K Foundation, which is a not-for- profit organisation established with an objective of promoting Health, Fitness and Sports.

After a brief warm up session, the 10 K Run was officially inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Honourable Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. The entire mob of participants started filing out of the grounds and joining the run. The air was filled with varying moods and speeds. Some walked easily with friends, some ran out of breath, and some jogged with energy abound, but everyone was determined to finish the run one way or the other. The youngest member of the contingent was a two years old, and he did the run partly walking and partly in a stroller! Ten members of the ISB team finished the run in less than 1 hour 15 minutes, which was extremely close to the prize winners’ timings. Student Bharat Birla from the ISB was the first to reach the finish line. On return they were greeted by none other than Dean M Rammohan Rao. The day ended with the crowd exhausted yet spirited, and the cheers of “ISB Rocks” filled the air.

Student Viren Wilfred Rasquinha, ex Hockey Captain of India, was one among the many motivating organisers during the event. “It was amazing to see and feel the camaraderie amongst the students, staff and non teaching staff of the ISB. The turn out was impressive,” he said.

Alum Nidhi Reddy, Class of 2008, added “As an alum, as a staff member, I am extremely proud to be part of this close knit ISB family – whatever the occasion, we aim high and give it our best shot. We strive for excellence in everything we do, and that’s what sets ISBians apart.”

Student Anurag Krishna recalls “the great fun and the amazing experience” he had. Ruchi Sihare shares, “I just didn’t want the event to get over, our spirits were never-ending, and it was a day again where we came close to the true ISB spirit.

Dushyant Ahuja adds, “I had always been of the opinion that finishing a marathon was just a matter of will-power, and didn’t require anything else at all. To my surprise, while running I realised another important ingredient - teamwork. I’m sure I couldn’t have finished the marathon without constant support and encouragement from the other members of the ISB family.” This year the run was dedicated to the cause of Kidney Cancer awareness in memory of Student Nilesh Pandit, Class of 2006, who succumbed to it after a tough fight. The entire contingent also decided to make the event a ‘Solidarity Run’ for Mumbai, post the terror attacks. The ISBians had special T-shirts made for this occasion designed by Elizabeth Thomas, a student spouse, which highlighted the feelings of solidarity. The event was indeed a small step in togetherness towards a great cause.

Music for Peace at ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:44:06 GMT

It is said that ragas have magical powers. The ISB community experienced the power of Raga Bageshri to evoke peace and harmony, as music rained all over the School’s Khemka Auditorium. When Grammy Award Winner Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt played the strings of Mohan Veena, humbly dedicating the music to all those souls departed during the recent terrorist attack, the audience could not resist tears.

Panditji, as he is respectfully called, was recently at the ISB for ‘an evening of Ragas’, jointly hosted by ISB Music Club, ISB Faculty and SPICMACAY, Hyderabad Chapter. He was accompanied by his son, Salil V Bhatt on Mohan Veena and Pandit Ramkumar Mishra on Tabla.

Creator of the Mohan Veena, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt has always mesmerised the audience with his pristine pure, delicate yet fiery music. Being the foremost disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, he belongs to that elite body of musicians which traces its origin to Tansen, the court musician of Mughal Emperor Akbar. Panditji has attracted international attention by his successful ‘Indianisation’ of the western Hawaiian guitar with perfect assimilation of the Sitar, Sarod and Veena techniques, and by adding 14 more strings. He won the Grammy Award, the highest music award in the world, in 1994 along with Ry Cooder for their world music album, 'A meeting by the river'. The Government of India honoured him with the Padmashree in the year 2002.

Panditji began his performance at ISB with an elaborate ‘Aalap’ of Raga Bageshri. Touching the three octaves, he brought out all the subtle nuances of the raga. Sri Salil, the first Indian musician to perform in the German parliament, gave excellent support to his illustrious father. At the end of the Aalap, Pandit Ramkumar Mishra joined the music with his Tabla, and the composition started at a slow rhythm. Steadily and progressively, Panditji increased the pace of the music, and the tempo began to build up. At each stage of rhythm, he sustained the music to detail the Raga. And at the peak of the pace, when the rhythm was the fastest, the audience was astounded by the vibrancy and dynamism of the music coming out from the delicate and soft-spoken Panditji.

“When the heart is full, words fail to come out. And even if they succeed to come out, sometimes we feel that the rich English language is insufficient for the right word”, said Prashanth Hariharan, member of core-team of ISB Music club, thanking the artists for the experience. For the ISB community, the programme evoked nostalgic memories of the inaugural day of the Khemkha Auditorium at the ISB, when Panditji had rendered the first ever concert on the same stage at Khemka.

ISB Day - Celebrating the Power of Seven- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:05:02 GMT

‘Seven – the Colours of the Rainbow’ was the theme of the Seventh Year Celebration of the Indian School of Business (ISB). On December 7, the entire ISB community came together for a memorable evening, to commemorate the seventh year of an institution called the ISB.

The School Atrium was abuzz with voices, laughter, music, and the air rang with jubilation and the coming together of friends and colleagues. Students, spouses, little children, faculty members, and staff took part in a well organised and innovative cultural evening.

To lend the day its due importance, Dean M Rammohan Rao and Uma Rao were seen actively participating and enjoying the efforts put up by the organisers. The event line-up ranged from little children crooning rhymes, to classical dances and fashion shows. Also presented were some really innovative items like; the ‘Mime Show’, which was an ideal combination of humour with a social message; the shadow dance; an international fashion show that recreated the magic of the European Classical era; a fusion dance; an impeccable Indian classical performance etc. The electrifying performance by the Music Club had the entire crowd up on their feet and singing along.

It was one of those days when everyone at the ISB, left aside the daily humdrum of life, and wanted to be part of this special day. Sneha Beriwal, Director, Student Life Council, was an active organiser of the event. “Being a part of the organising team, I have truly seen the spirit of the ISB both on the stage and behind stage. As always, it was great seeing the hidden talents unfold towards a common cause,” she recalls.

Student Anu Gupta says, “ISB Day celebrations reflected a highly spirited, creative, immensely talented and socially responsible bunch of ISBians, both on and off stage. The event showcased a glimpse of what ISB stands for- a truly global school where mind opens up and soul follows the heart.” Spouse Kanika Julka adds, “Simply, my mind asks for more. Life at ISB is fun, and this celebration, as always, was a job well done. The little ones made a huge effort to bring smiles on every face. Bravo ISB kids!”

Student RajeshKumar Krishnakutty notes, “Through all the work load, distractions and pains, we managed only two to three days to practice for this event. And we have no professionals among us either. And yet, at the end the whole thing was executed flawlessly.” Student Bhavesh Rajendra Singhi feels that celebrations like ISB Day take diversity at ISB to new highs. Diversity that is not only between individuals but also within an individual.

Keshav Kanoria agrees, “It’s a time when all the constituents- students, spouses, faculty, staff, and kids -come together to celebrate this great institution called the ISB.”

Suresh Dasari puts in “It was awesome. I felt young and enjoyed liked a school boy.” While Viraj Anand Datar sums it up as, “In a nutshell, this event showed how business graduates can put up an outstanding display of arts with their latent talent.”

Seven years, and growing stronger!

Solstice 2008 - Homecoming of Heroes- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:37:22 GMT

The theme of this year’s Solstice, the Alumni Reunion of the Indian School of Business (ISB), was ‘Heroes – The Homecoming’. The much awaited annual event was held between December 19 to 21, 2008.

The School Atrium wore the look of a kid’s birthday party with balloons and cut-outs of super heroes. Around 350 Alumni came together to re-bond with their alma-mater, while volunteers from the current Class of 2009 were acting like perfect hosts, taking care of every detail of an extremely well planned programme.

The weekend began with student interactions and mock interviews held by alums, followed by a Welcome Back party at night. The other highlights were the ‘Bind Unwind’ sessions, the Alum-Entrepreneur Showcase, lots of fun activities, Hyderabadi food festival, and a Rock Show to top the momentum of the event. The inauguration of the ISB Alum Entrepreneur’s Board, by Dean M Rammohan Rao set in the right mood, when every ISBian felt proud to be part of the School which has an galaxy of illustrious alumni all around the world.

Keeping up with the tradition of dedicating every Solstice to the batch that completes five years, this year’s Solstice was dedicated to the Class of 2004. Around 60 alumni from this batch turned up to celebrate the occasion. They also met with the management group during an informal session. A tree planting the tree plantation ceremony in memory of late Nilesh Pandit, Class of 2006 was a thoughtful event put together by the organisers. At another small get-together Dean M Rammohan Rao addressed the alumni present. “I am glad to see all of you. This is your School, and I hope you continue to associate and contribute to the School’s growth,” said Dean Rao.

Deputy Dean Ajit Rangnekar, in a presentation to the Alumni, imparted a sense of what the School has achieved in the recent years – from the scaling of faculty to the number of exchange programmes, from 4 faculty members to 30 plus, 33-35 exchange programmes – to important initiatives at the ISB like the EMSI, the Behavioural Lab etc. “All are indications that we have arrived,” he said. He also pointed out areas of collaborations with the alumni, and urged the alums to take part in the research agenda of the School, collaborate in creating new case studies, start functional clubs at ISB etc.

Following the Deans, Dr Shubhashis Gangopadhya, former Adviser to the Finance Minister, addressed the alums and the current batch on a very relevant theme – ‘Leading in Tough Times.’ He mentioned that tough times in a country like India are obvious, and that whatever India has achieved in the past few years, is not because of one leader, but the resourcefulness of a number of individuals. “Don’t expect leaders if you want to do something different. If you want to change things do it yourself, it is easier,” he added. “Take over the leadership of your own life”, he advised an engrossed audience.

Solstice 2008 was also full of fun activities. One could see alums team up to play Paintball. Vamsi G M, Class of 2007, while waiting for his turn to play paintball said, “It feels nostalgic to be back on the campus with friends.” Kanika Atri, Class of 2007 added “I am living with a current student and I can see them going through the rigorous schedules as we did last year. I am also glad to meet my old friends, and am taking out time to go to all our old hangouts.” Rohit Mathur, Class of 2007, an investment banker working with Ernst & Young seemed to enjoy the game too. “It is a great feeling to be back on campus. I am enjoying myself thoroughly. Paintball is a fabulous event,” he said. Kavita Yadav, Class of 2007, currently with Ernst & Young, Hyderabad takes out time to visit the Campus once a month. She said “Solstice is a welcome event. We get to meet all our friends again. Paintball is a good way to get informal with my batch mates rather than just partying.” Also present there was Rahul Khandelwal, Class of 2007, currently with Apollo hospitals, and his batch mate Utkarsh Joshi. They echo the same sentiment- “Solstice helps us rewind and re-bind.”

We caught up with more alumni . Says Alumni Greishma Singh, “To be honest, it felt like I had never left! The familiar faces, the gorgeous buildings and of course the frantic pace that only ISB has to offer. The only difference is that after having been away from it for a while, I had a new appreciation for all that was around me. Somehow, one stops noticing just how beautiful the campus is when one is living there 24/7.”

Karthik Polsani, Alumni from Class of 2008 remembers, "I cherish the wonderful moments we had as a study group. Our group had quite diverse profiles and I really had a great time working with my group.. Also right in between placement, I was able to convince myself that entrepreneurship is the best job out of campus and decided to sit-out of placement.”

Also seen around were little ISB kids who were having their own share of fun and glory. While the ISB kids made paper masks and played ‘father in the den’ with their old friends, the young mothers watched. Spouse Preeti Gore (wife of Ratnakar Gore, Class of 2008) says, “We are reliving the last one year and this feels great. The children are really enjoying themselves.” Spouse Vasukhi Chilukoori (wife of Srinivas, Class of 2008) adds, “The event is very well organised.” Yamini Bhansali (wife of Sushant Bhansali, Class of 2008) puts in, “Being back on Campus and meeting old friends brings in a beautiful feeling.”

On the second day of the homecoming, hundreds of students and alums gathered at the Recreation Centre Lawns swinging to the tunes of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Nila kyun hai aasman’ played by members of the ISB Music Club. This was followed by an indo- western choreography presented by the ISB Dance Club. Post midnight, the Indian fusion band, Swarathma, played an eclectic mix of music. In the echoes of “once more”, Swarathma signed off to give way to DJ Anant who rocked the crowd till the wee hours of morning.

Mita Bedi, Director Alumni Affairs from the Class of 2009 summed up. “It was very exciting to see the good cheer and festive feeling at the ISB Campus during the Solstice weekend. Everyone had a blast and that made it all worth while for the organisers and volunteers from the class of ‘09 who spent many late nights making it happen. For me personally it is an experience that I will cherish forever, I have made many new friends and learnt a great deal.”

Social Responsibility Conclave hosted by the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:36:33 GMT

A conclave on social responsibility was hosted at the Indian School of Business (ISB) on October 18, 2008. The conclave, with this year’s theme, ‘Business: A Power for Good’ generated insights, ideas and guidelines relevant to the industry in general and especially students from business schools.

M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB, started the event with a welcome address. He stressed that even educational institutions and not just corporations have a social responsibility. The dean commended the ISB students for taking time for social responsibility initiatives, keeping their busy schedules in mind.

This was followed by a panel discussion on “The connection between Corporate Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility and why doing 'good' is good for business.” Viraf Mehta, Chief Executive, Partners in Change, Vinay Somani, Founder and Chief of Karmayog and SV Nathan, Regional Director of Talent, Deloitte US in India were the panellists.

The second panel discussion focussed on “Inclusive Growth and the Changing Face of the Development Sector,” with Jereninio (Jerry) Almeida, Founder of iCONGO, David Kyle, Chief, Indian School Finance Company, Hari Menon, Program Manager, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, India, Barun Mohanty, Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation India, Ujawal Thakar, CEO, GiveIndia and Dave Wallack, Senior VP, People for IFMR Trust. Harish Bijoor, Brand Expert & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc moderated the panel.

A keynote address on “Our Individual Responsibility” by Dr Jayaprakash Narayana, Loksatta Organisation followed the panel discussion. Paper presentations on “The role of business education in 'good' corporate management”, by the finalists in an inter B-School Paper Writing Competition concluded the conclave.

Chairman Rajat Gupta's Message- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:42:28 GMT

Dear ISB Community

The ISB Executive Board has reluctantly accepted Professor MR Rao’s resignation as Dean of ISB with immediate effect. The events of the past few weeks have been very distressing to all of us, and MR in particular. We respect him for taking this difficult decision in the best interest of ISB.

Dean Rao has made enormous contributions to ISB over the years and we will always be proud of achieving the Financial Times Top 20 ranking under his leadership. He has led ISB through a critical period in its history growing our faculty pool and our research base significantly. However, given his personal proximity to the unfortunate controversy at Satyam, he has taken the decision to step down as Dean to protect the reputation of ISB in yet another example of his selfless commitment to building some of India’s leading management institutions like IIM Bangalore and ISB. The Board appreciates this gesture and will always value his contributions to ISB.

As you are all aware, we are in the middle of a Dean Search that will now be accelerated and, in the interim, Deputy Dean Ajit Rangnekar will hold charge as Dean of ISB. We believe the ISB leadership is well-positioned to take us forward during this period of transition. My fellow Board members and I are fully committed to supporting Ajit and the ISB team in tackling any challenges that you may face. While we recognise this has been a distracting few weeks, I hope to receive your full support in moving ahead to achieve greater heights for ISB. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us directly if you have any questions or concerns.

With warm regards,

Rajat Gupta
Chairman
ISB Executive Board

Dishing out a Healthy Enterprise- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:59:30 GMT

It was while at the Silicon Valley, USA, during the years 2005-08, that Chandrani Chakrabarti and Abhishek Mitra, from the present Class of 2009 at the ISB, were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, “It was all around us. There were stories of success and failures, but no one seemed to get over it ever. And that struck a chord in both of us,” says Abhishek.

Wife Chandrani saw a good business opportunity in exporting high quality jewellery components to the US markets, where there seemed a demand for such goods. “But for that we needed some proper business knowledge, some vocation, as we come from totally technical backgrounds and non- business families,” says Chandrani, an electrical engineer herself.

The next logical step was the ISB. At the ISB, it was while talking to the alumni, that the couple caught on to a clinching statement made by one of them - “look for an idea around you and make it work.” That is when the idea of setting up a health food and beverage counter at the ISB came about to the young couple. “We could sense a palpable need for health food and more variety of fruit juices, here on the campus. Lot of students here come from abroad and are used to things like whole wheat sandwiches and fruit salads,” says Abhishek. Delivering a value added services like a fruit salad packed in a plastic cup or glass, which the student could grab and go to class, seemed attractive enough.

The next step was implementation. Here, both recounted the phenomenal support they received from the PGP mentors, the Operations team at the ISB, and their colleagues. Everyone pitched in to help the couple in their venture – from assistance in planning out the business, to acquiring contacts, resources, getting a space to operate, easy network with the food industry and suppliers – they had it all. It was a minimum investment and maximum support model. After brainstorming for months, designing the b-plan, and bouncing it with mentors and colleagues, finally the counter was inaugurated at the School cafeteria selling delicious smoothies, milkshakes and other fruit based beverages.

The beverages are made with a combination of juice, fresh fruits and supplements like wheatgrass and oats keeping the inherent nutrients present in each ingredient in mind. No extra sugar is added to any of the beverages. Students at the ISB can now choose from a Detox Smoothie, a Chiku Apple Milkshake, a thirst quencher like Spicy Watermelon or a Soup of the Day.

The response on campus has been encouraging. Students flock to the counter during class breaks and day ends. Batch mate Sureet Hazra says, “It is a great initiative. To balance a hectic academic curriculum and implement an enterprise such as this, which is already running like a well-oiled beverage outlet, is a remarkable achievement. The menu is orchard fresh which is a delightful relief during these carb-conscious days.” Student Ujval Nanavati adds, “It is nice to have a healthy alternative to carbonated and caffeinated beverages on campus. The offerings are at once filling, satisfying, light on the wallet as well as healthy”

“We had the advantage of setting up a venture amongst budding business managers and world class business school professors. So their suggestions, criticisms, feedback was invaluable as everyone was viewing our efforts with a business eye, and that helped,” says Chandrani.

Right now the duo has one employee working for them - the guy who makes the smoothies and fruit drinks. The recipes are all Chandrani’s and she has tested them endlessly on her friends and colleagues on campus, and finally zeroed in those which were a hit. No added sugar, no preservatives, with the pulp of the fruit included in the drink for maximum health benefits are some advantage points that attract all the health conscious people at the ISB.

Abhishek mentions that they also have health snack line products in the pipeline, recipes are ready, but the time schedule at ISB leaves them with no time to operationalise it right now. “We thought of snacks like fruit chaats , which are oil free, yet tasty, and snacks that will retain their Indianness – that is our USP,” says Chandrani.

Squeezing time for an enterprise like this in between a hectic academic schedule at the ISB sounds impossible? The couple share that it was just that they learned how to prioritise, and when you do something you really want to, you just find the time. “We found ourselves discussing pros and cons over breakfast. It helped that we are married and can spare that much time with each other here on campus,” admits Abhishek.

Future plans post ISB are kind of brewing on the table. The couple want to set up similar health food and beverage counters at Hyderabad. “We want to focus on people who want to eat healthy food and those who follow diet plans. We want to provide the whole solution for healthy eating to our clients. Of course we will involve the expertise of a nutritionist in this whole enterprise,” notes Chandrani.

They both agree that the present turbulent times are actually ideal to start one's own venture. “It is a time for entrepreneurs, and it is not very difficult to get into business as cost of entrepreneurship has gone down in the present times,” says Abhishek. Chandrani sums it up for us, “The important thing is to start with a simple idea, and find it somewhere around you.”

"Teaching is Leadership" - Shaheen Mistry at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:39:33 GMT

“Do you have what it takes to lead a movement to eliminate inequity in education?” That was a question raised by Shaheen Mistry, CEO, Teach for India and Founder of Akanksha Foundation, when she recently addressed a crowd of young leaders at the Indian School of Business (ISB).

‘Teach for India’, established in 2007, is a movement by a group of leaders working to reform education in India, and seek innovative solutions to end educational inequity in the country. To sustain the momentum of this movement, Teach For India now aims to recruit India’s most outstanding recent graduates and young professionals to serve as teachers in low income urban and rural schools for two years.

Mistry, in her address, inspired the audience of students at the ISB, to contribute to the process of redefining inclusive education, and simultaneously become socially responsible leaders of tomorrow.

Defining ‘Leadership’, she cited Mahatma Gandhi as a case in point. “He had set a vision for free India, he included every India in that mission, chalked out a plan, executed it, constantly improved on it. Any leader goes through the same steps. We need to replace this idea with Teach for India,” she said.

The need of the hour was, according to her, a big vision, need to invest in learning tools, need to make each student want to learn, provide incentives for them to come to school, make the family realise the importance of education etc. “We need individualised plan for each child, each of who has a different level of learning,” she pointed out. “Teaching is about leadership, teaching is about you learning more,” she added. She also said that the prospect of spending two years in a high poverty classroom, with such a mandate, was an incredible responsibility, a real exercise in leadership, and there in lied the challenge.

She explained the teaching process at Teach for India included a four- week residential training, where basic tools of teaching are imparted, and this is followed by on going support and constant help from a mentor-teacher. Such an experience, she shared, makes one question, where we are in life and what we want to do. “Some of you may come back as entrepreneurs to work in the field of education,” said Mistry. She was quick to add that there are a lot of social and cultural pressures when a B School graduate announces that he/she would teach in a primary government school for the next two years. “We need to charge young people to do this,” she said, adding that corporate partnerships and institutional can help in this direction.

What such a job has to offer is a modest stipend, being located in Mumbai and Pune for the time, working in a municipal or low income private schools, having to teach all subjects, Mistry clarified. Yet, the larger leadership project involved could be something like – ‘Leave the school as a better place when you leave’. That was enough inspiration.

ISB Leadership Summit 2008- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:19:44 GMT

First International Conference on Igniting the Genius Within- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:23:59 GMT

ISB Hosts Special SMS Conference- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:25:39 GMT

'Be a Part of Intelligentsia'- A Talk on Countering Terror- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:55:18 GMT

Recently students at the Indian School of Business (ISB) were engrossed during a very timely and socially relevant talk delivered to them by Lieutenant General Arjun Ray, a veteran in Counter Terrorist Operations. It was a practitioner’s perspective into ‘The Mind of the Terrorist, and War against Terror’.

Lt. General Ray is a man with an experience of a lifetime, in war, in conflict, and in peace. Having served in the army for over 38 years, he possesses a practical and theoretical insight into combating conflict situations, insurgency, and post-conflict reconstruction. He has interacted with nearly 400 hardcore terrorists during his career, and thus his unique perspectives on how to combat the biggest evil of our times, terror, left the audience at the ISB in a reflective mood.

Right at the start of the address, Lt General Ray clarified that the topic was an “emotive subject”, and hence had different perspectives, and that his talk was solely his responses to terrorism in India – “a critical analysis of the challenges”.

“We need to be candid in our thought process to address this problem. We need to turn the light inwards,” he started the discussion with these words. Lt General Ray then went on to differentiate between the Indian ‘intellectual’ and the ‘intelligentsia’. The intellectual criticises and cribs about the systems around, while the intelligentsia doesn’t take sides and rather brings sides together, he explained.

“26/11 has provoked anger at the helplessness of the Indian state, but that’s nothing new, we always knew about the complacency of our democracy, the criminal records of our politicians, the fact that our intelligence agencies work in silos, etc. The problem with us Indians is that, we don’t have a sense of history. We don’t learn from history, and so Kargil and Kandahar and 26 /11 will be repeated,” he noted. He brought to the table alarming facts like - 40,000 people died in proxy wars in Kashmir since 1981, after Iraq the largest number of terrorist deaths is in India. “Where is the middle-class conscience? What has the Indian conscience been doing for the last 61 years?” he asked. He added that as the 26 /11 terror attack had “brutally and frontally” attacked the psyche of the Indian middle and upper middle class, we have got up and taken notice at last.

The next half of his presentation dealt with certain ground rules and realities to understand terrorism and political violence. “First is for political leaders, military experts, diplomats, and shakers and movers of opinions to understand that war is not a solution, it is not even an option. In the present times of downturn war will be an economic damnation,” he said, stressing again that war is no solution to counter insurgency. Second, he believed that terrorists are not fanatics or sociopaths. “Within all of us is a thin vulnerable line between evil and good, and each of us is capable of unspeakable crime in a given context,” he said. Thus, identifying a terrorist is difficult. The third reality, according to General Ray, is that social experiments and scientific research have shown that good people can become evil and vice versa. Thus anyone can become a terrorist as much as a terrorist is an average, normal person.

He went on to discuss that 700 years of foreign rule in India has affected the psyche of the Indians. The middle-class is thus “politically apathetic, lacks social sensitivity, has no social commitment, is always blaming someone else, has a confused identity, suffers from loss of confidence, and finally has no voice.”

“We need to sit up now and take notice. And I have certain expectations from all of you in the audience,” he said. He urged everyone present to first understand their own religion in letter and spirit, because the “central doctrine of all religion is rightful thinking and respect for life in every form”. “I expect you to promote communal harmony and capture the middle ground by chanellising anger to action,” he continued. “Be a part of intelligentsia and be a part in bringing about change. Your education is incomplete if you don’t be part of the intelligentsia. Take the citizen’s pledge to become a stakeholder of the society in dealing with this problem. Exercise your franchise if you want better governance. Be pro- underprivileged, be a committed proactive citizen,” he summed up the evening’s session with these words.

A Talk on Managing Future in Turbulent Times- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:56:37 GMT

‘Managing the Future in Turbulent Times’ - that was the theme of the talk delivered by Professor Prasad Kaipa during a session with the students at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Kaipa is the Executive Director of the Centre for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC) at the ISB.

Based on the challenges associated in the current chaotic times, he held this relevant session on how to manage one’s future during the present turbulent times. The talk dealt with themes like managing stress, handling expectations, facing unexpected situations, etc.

“Stress is your mind and body’s response or reaction to a real or imagined threat, event, or change,” said Professor Kaipa. He explained further that stress can be good or bad for us depending on how we react. We either act as victims to the threat and indulge in self pity or respond positively and act with more clarity of thought.

“It all depends on us. We can choose to be the victims or choose to climb another mountain which could not have been attempted without the stress trigger,” he said, adding that unfortunately most of the time, we choose to be victims. “The irony is that, majority of the time, the stress is due to an imagined threat that we ourselves have created in our minds. The mind does not recognise the difference between a real and an imagined threat. It only recognises that there is a threat,” he noted.

What happens when we are stressed? According to Professor Kaipa the body’s function is to give a fight or flight response when it gets a signal that there is a threat. The body immediately prepares to protect itself by alerting the entire system. Depending on the level of stress, the body reacts differently.

Professor Kaipa further explained three different stages of stress. The stress level is directly related to how each person is affected by his own external/ internal Guilt, Pride and Shame (GPS) pressures, he pointed out. Therefore, the body reacts differently depending on the stress level created by its own GPS. The stages, according to Professor Kaipa, are -

Alarm Stage – This is the stress trigger stage. An analogy can be brought in here. When a person is talking on the phone while driving and the conversation heats up, the driving too becomes rash. This is the trigger. We can recognise our own triggers.
Resistance Stage – This is when we resist change/ threat. Some of the behavioural indications of this stage are insomnia, fatigue, and change in eating habits. Emotional indicators are fear, anxiety, and depression. Cognitive indicators are confusion, nightmares, and poor problem solving.
Exhaustion stage – This is the stage when the stress affects your body deeply by leaving long term scars such as digestive disorders, headaches, and other such health problems.

So how do we cope with stress? Professor Kaipa recommended different strategies to cope with stress. Some of them were to increase awareness, observe the small things in daily life that triggers anger, anxiety, to deal with your conflict with yourself at peace, etc. He also suggested various awareness exercises such as journal writing, art therapy, and observing mental models.

“If you observe carefully, you will find that most of the time, you lose your temper because you are angry with yourself,” he said. He suggested one of the most effective coping strategies is to ‘maintain a positive self image’. “Give yourself a pat on your back when you have taken a small step towards your goal. Do not criticise yourself if you have not performed up to the expectation set by you or get bogged down if you feel that you are not living up to others’ expectations,” were some guidelines provided. Professor Kaipa explained this further by giving an example of a child learning to walk. “If you criticise a child every time he falls when he is trying to walk, how would he feel? Encourage yourself and be your own critique but do not look down at every step missed. Create a vision and keep your eye on the vision as you move towards it,” he said.

The inspiring talk concluded with an insight by Professor Kaipa - “Do not be the ocean near the shore that gets affected by every wave; be the ocean that has the depth in the centre – calm and serene. Nurture yourself, heal yourself.”

ISIS 2008 Brings Together the Global IT Community- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:12:00 GMT

List of papers

The Centre for Information Technology and the Networked Economy (CITNE) at the ISB hosted the third International Symposium of Information Systems (ISIS 2008). The Symposium brought together leading academic researchers and industry thought leaders to confer and debate on research topics, which are relevant and rigorous, in the IT domain.

The Co-Chairs of the event were Professor Rajiv Banker, Temple, University, Professor Ravi Bapna, University of Minnesota, and CITNE, ISB, and Professor V Sambamurthy, Michigan State. In his welcome address, Professor Bapna mentioned that this international symposium aimed to bring the global IT community together, and focus on the role of IT in enhancing global competitiveness and economic development. Professor Banker mentioned that the ISB’s objective has, like the top global B Schools, always been focussed on research, and that we are lucky to have such a rich field of study around us. Present on the occasion was Dean M Rammohan Rao who emphasised on the importance of “faculty-led research and practice-oriented research” at the Centres of Excellence, at the ISB.

Keynote speaker of the event was Kris Gopalkrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys. In a presentation ‘ IT Services- The Indian Story, Gopalkrishnan stated that there was a need to first re-look at the “ideas where the world is going and the challenges it is met with”. During the last 60 years, we are living through a period in history of world where technology and business is radically changing,” he said. He explained the journey through the last 60 years when the industry metamorphosed from ‘mainframe to mini computers to PC to mobile to pervasive.’ For the last 30 years, he noted , the IT industry had been a global business right from the start, has had online services, has always been globally competitive , has introduced global delivery model etc. Here Gopalkrishnan mentioned that the industry never compromised on quality. He compared the Indian IT services industry to the Japanese car manufacturers where the focus was and continues to be on ‘Quality’.

The rate of growth of this industry, he said, was faster than services industry. Along the way it has created 2 million trained manpower (4 percent of Infosys revenues are spent on training) in this “extremely young industry”. In the current scene, according to Gopalkrishnan, the industry has grown from providing technical solutions to business solutions. It has ventured into fields like consultancy, system integration, infrastructure management, and has emerged as a cross-multiple and cross-geographical industry. “The IT industry has gone through significant changes, but has survived and done well for itself,” he concluded.

The first panel discussion was themed ‘Captive v III Parties: Defining the Value-Efficiency Frontier. Panel members comprised Pari Natranjan, Zinnov, Amresh Ramaswamy, Microsoft, India (R&D) and Kashyap Kompella, TPI India. The panel moderator was Professor Rajiv Banker. Ramaswamy spoke mainly on what Microsoft does in India, especially in R & D, and why they are in India. “As far as Microsoft R&D is concerned it goes wherever there is talent,” he said. The evolution of R&D at Microsoft has gone through phases, he mentioned, and the aim has been too attract best talent and retain them. The R&D Team at Microsoft, he noted, were mostly of Indians who have moved back from US, and thus they add lot more value to the company. Ramaswamy however said that the Indian ecosystem is still weak and the emphasis is still on programme management skills rather than research. “At Microsoft we value individual contributors rather than people’s manager,” he said.

Kompella traced out some changes in this arena. Some interesting points he raised where about how the ‘Bangalore preference’ has gone down, that the number of manufacturing companies operating now in India have increased, how there is a lot of emphasis on competency creation in specific area, increased importance of organisational alignment between leadership teams in US in India, and the increased role of Indian leadership in global responsibilities. Natrajan maintained that his company’s success was all about customer access, and about execution. “It is about co-creating with your customers and execution of your strategies that is extremely important,” he said.

The second panel was on ‘Transformational IT Management: New Trends in IT Consumption for Business Value’. The panellists were Bipin Paracha, Wipro, Prashun Datta, Reliance Energy, Manik Gupta, Google, and Narasimham V Peri, IBM. The moderator was Professor V Sambamurthy According to Pasricha, more than 70 percent of top IT corporates are spending a lot on Business Intelligence. “The new trends talk about data mining, where 40 – 50 percent cost is in IT Infrastructure, which leads to a shift from the technology to information,” he said. According to him, upcoming trends show that the younger generations are using less of email and more of ‘non-enterprise infrastructure’, giving rise to management challenges of handling huge data and its security.

Dutta explained how we can add value to the business and sustain it by-understanding the basic business nature and aligning IT with it accordingly. “To add values integrate operation technology with IT, come up with ideas which make it sustainable and involve the end users in adding value, and finally look for its usability,” he said.

Gupta, who is also an ISB Alum, Class of 2008, described the new trends in IT from an innovation perspective, where everything is provided by the customers and consumers. “The customer organises the world’s information and makes it accessible to the users. They organise trends in a way wanted by the consumers having there involvement in adding value to the product,” he said. He gave the example of the Google Map Maker, where the entire value was added by the consumers themselves.

Peri mentioned that IT industry is revolving around Business Intelligence and Transformational Analytics, where the transformational value is a reality. “A value driven company is a reality and need to sustain its value on a gradual basis. There is a need to clearly define a value metrics and empower the consumers asking what they want,” he said. He added that for a business, “incremental value” is a must.

The third panel of the symposium was on ‘Human Capital Development in the IT/ITes Sector.’
Speaker Prithvi Sher Gill, Accenture, said that the human capital has grown “purely organically”. According to him, in India, there is the widest portfolio of skills and the future has more but not without challenges all around it. “There is a pool of talent still unexplored and to recreate the pools of talent for everybody, we need to explore it, invest in it and make it accessible for everybody,” he noted. Panellist Ashok Reddy, Teamlease, observed that there is a huge upside of the democratic graph and GDP but still under-employment and unemployment is a big challenge.

According to him, there should be movements form the rural to urban, farm to unfarm, school to work, to tackle these challenges. “There exists a huge fight between the skills and the bookish knowledge. There is connection between the demand and the supply but when there is a mismatch, the element of repair comes, which in itself is challenge,” he said. The elements, Reddy mentioned, were like money, private/public partnerships, skills and interventions are required to deal with the challenges and the preparation required should be long term in nature.

Tan Moorthy, Infosys, recounted that there are around 400,000 engineers graduating every year and they need the three 'I’s: Infrastructure, Intellectual capital and Industry. “For the human capital to enroll into the industry we need to get programmes from across collaborations and take it to the decision makers to look how they can be incorporated, “ he said. He further added about how we can change the curriculum in the industry by raising the capabilities of the faculty/teachers in schools, giving exposures of what engineering school is all about, encouraging team work, developing communication skills, and providing education for a survival perspective.

Final panellist, Professor Ritu Agarwal , University of Maryland, mentioned that one of the challenges in today’s world is how to train and develop the Human Capital Development (HCM). “HCM is required, but as individuals rather than systems, to have a positive effect on the turnover. HCM is team work, motivation, ideas and openness to new ideas,” she said. Human Resource (HR) practices involve: recruitment and selection, appraisals, rewards, and development. It also involves a key set of tradeoffs: managing mindsets, benchmark the profile, and leverage long term employment.

NYU Stern Students gain new business perspective at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:30:53 GMT

A group of 26 MBA students from the New York University Stern Business School are here at the Indian School of Business (ISB) to attend the ‘Doing Business in India’ programme. Described as an intensive course aimed to foster a deep understanding about key strategic and managerial challenges of doing business in India, this two week programme was hosted by the department of Co-curricular Activities at the ISB.

The programme is a combination of lectures, case studies, class discussions, company visits, and field trips, all geared to expose students to strategic and operating issues, and get them familiar with the challenges and opportunities facing the Indian markets.

The schedule comprised sessions on Indian economy and financial systems, rural marketing, IT and outsourcing and an interesting session on Indian art history. In addition, there were a number of networking forums with ISB faculty, alumni, entrepreneurs, and students. A panel discussion on ‘Opportunities in Emerging Markets- Special Focus on India,’ brought to the table a lot of knowledge sharing. Then there were various company and NGO visits to supplement classroom lectures. The students visited organisations like Infosys, Naandi Foundation, Dr Reddys Lab, etc.

During an interaction with the group visiting student Maureen T Mullen shared that the programme helped her understand the opportunities in the real market, and how economic development has empowered the people in India. “It was while interacting with professors here at the ISB that we learnt how India is looking to do business in every aspect,” she said. Her colleague Vera E Veldkamp added, “We tend to view India as one market, and the sessions with the marketing professor proved very useful as he broke down facts about how the urban population is not the same as the rural, and about the need to treat them as two different markets. This helps us to view how India will go forward in the future,” she said.

About their stay at the ISB, the group shared that the most attractive aspect of the Indian culture, as personified at the ISB, was the hospitality, and that everyone is open to converse on topics as diverse as economics, politics, to family life. Student Vinay M. Patel commented that the School’s common cafeteria was a great place to unwind and connect. “We got to interact with local students and faculty doing research, and it's a way to learn faster about culture and such things,” he said.

Edward Clow found one aspect about the ISB students particularly interesting. “Students who have spent a number of years in the US have come back using the ISB as their launching pad to further their working lives. Some have come back because of family reasons, some simply because of loyalty to their country. This indicates that expectations are now more from India, and that there are more opportunities here, perhaps even a better quality of life,” he noted. “Here we saw ‘culture in action’. It explained how doing business in India works. Culturally there are many differences and it changes every approach you will make in this market. You may not get to read about them in a book ever,” said Jennifer K Benedict.

Michael A. Glickstein concluded the interaction, “Back in the US one reads about how educated the work force here is, and how hardworking they are, doing six days a week. After our visit to companies here, everything was put in perspective.”

British Airways CEO at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:12:17 GMT

“Managing a business is more challenging than flying an airplane,” said Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways, in his address to the community at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Walsh was on a visit to the School and spoke to the students on ‘Bold Moves in Tough Times’.

Walsh joined British Airways as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) designate in the year 2005. Under his leadership, British Airways delivered record profits and an operating margin of 10 percent. He has been in the airline industry since the late 70's, and thus his insights into the complexity of the industry proved very helpful to the students here at the ISB.

Walsh recounted his challenges as a CEO at Aer Lingus, prior to British Airways. The time was an aftermath of 9/11 and the company was faced with bankruptcy and heavy losses. Walsh shared how he “radically restructured”’ the airline and transformed it into one of the most profitable state-owned airlines in the western world. “A valuable lesson I learnt from this was to address the challenge as soon as you identify it rather than waiting for the crisis to culminate,” he said. Here he also noted that any crisis significantly limits the options available, and so one may be forced to take radical options.

Next he plainly put across to the audience that the airline industry is facing a great challenge, and that the external environment is tougher than it was post 9/11. He predicted that in the coming year passenger traffic will fall by 3 percent and cargo traffic will decline by 5 percent. The globally gloomy environment, he shared, was due to “declining economic growth in key markets and because consumer confidence is at an all time low.”

Walsh also shared some tangible actions taken by British Airways to counter the present scenario. Some of them were - look at areas of inefficiency and eliminate them, make cuts on capacity, for example reduce flights by 3 percent during winters, and most important have a radical restructuring of the management. “The British Airways was always overtly bureaucratic, and so we attempted to improve efficiency and reduce bureaucracy, to change the culture within business," he said.

In his conclusion Walsh added, “I passionately believe in deregulation and liberalisation of the airlines industry. It is ironic that this industry that has actually accelerated globalisation, cannot fully participate in it,” he said, mentioning that all restrictions on airlines by virtue of their nationality should be removed.

Later the floor was open to Q & A from the audience.

ISB Moves up in Global MBA Rankings - Stands at 15- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:17:56 GMT

FT Global MBA Rankings 2009

Press Release

The Indian School of Business (ISB) is placed 15th in the 2009 global MBA rankings released by the Financial Times, London. Last year the School was ranked 20th by the same source, and with a significant surge of five ranks, the ISB has once again proven to be a world acclaimed centre for management education. This year the FT rankings place the ISB as second among Asian business schools, closely following CEIBS China.

The Financial Times rankings was developed on criteria like distinguished faculty, pioneering research, alumni career progression, diversity, innovative curriculum, excellence in entrepreneurship, etc. On each front ISB has once again confirmed betterment and excellence.

“ISB’s vision is to make high quality education accessible to a large number of aspirants and I am delighted that the School is growing steadily to fulfil that vision,” said Rajat Gupta, Chairman, ISB, on hearing about the news. “The rankings are a confirmation that we in India can do it big if we really want to,” said Dean Ajit Rangnekar. He noted that such rankings are becoming ‘global’ in nature. “Even 5 -10 years ago the ranking table was dominated by American business schools and today Asian and European schools find important places,” he said. The ISB and CEIBS, Dean Rangnekar pointed out, were both products of collaboration. “This is a clear message to the government that partnering and collaboration is the way ahead to replicate success fast and quick,” he said.

Associate Dean Savita Mahajan outlined an interesting point that goes into the ranking decision. “How our graduates are performing in their jobs, over a period of three years, their career progression, is an important diktat of these rankings. And this is information that the FT gets directly from the alumni,” she mentioned.

It was once again a time and reason for the ISB community to celebrate. The School Atrium was flocked by students, faculty, families, and staff. Loud cheers of “ISB Rocks” filled the air. Emotions of all sorts were in sight as every ISBian partook in the proud moment.

Present President of the Graduate Student Board at the ISB, Rohit Kapoor, summed up the reaction of the student body, “As students we are all stakeholders of this institution, and to be a part of this historic moment feels euphoric,” he said. Ujval Nanavati, Class of 2009 said, “Last year’s debut in the Top-20 was a fantastic achievement and provided the required impetus to the ISB community. And well, we have done five better this time.”

Batchmate Debottam Datta echoed a similar mood. “The FT 15 ranking for a school as young as ISB is phenomenal. It is an indication of how the outside world views us and it makes us proud. I look forward to the cake cutting and the celebration party tonight,” he said. Student Rajarshi Ray added, “FT 20 in 2008. FT 15 in 2009. What next? At the ISB nothing’s impossible. Being in the FT top 20 for 2 consecutive years goes on to show that the ranking wasn’t a mistake. It’s a proud moment not just for us, but for India as well. ISB truly rocks.”

Kavitha Gorapalli from the present batch put in, “Rising up five places in a ranking in within a year is no easy feat. It speaks volumes about our management, faculty, student body, and alumni. I feel so proud to be a student of the ISB. I was in New York when the School was ranked at 20 last year. I remember patting myself on the back for choosing the ISB. This year, I’m thrilled to be part of the live celebrations with the rest of the ISB family. I’m looking forward to seeing the ISB spirit in full display – a sea of ISB t-shirts, loud cheering, and big pieces of cake!”

“It makes me proud to be part of an institution that is ranked among the top 15 in the world, but I am not surprised. Given the dedication of the faculty and staff, I think this is one of many things to come. As students, we need to be conscious of our ranking and exemplify the leadership that the ranking has granted,” expressed student Rajeev Ramprakash. Gautam Chopra from the present class added, “It is heartening to see the sea change in the mood of the entire School. This moment just consolidates the belief that we are like diamonds – the more pressure we are under, the tougher we become and more sparkle we yield.”

And the cheers and celebrations continue for some time now.

ISB Hosts Asia-Pacific Conference on Consumer Research- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:01:04 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB) recently hosted the 2009 Asia-Pacific Conference of the Association for Consumer Research (ACR). The ACR is a forum that works towards advancing consumer research, and facilitate the exchange of scholarly information among members of academia, industry, and government worldwide. To this end, ACR hosts and supports a number of conferences, which bring together researchers, public policy makers and practicing marketers interested in the study of consumer behaviour. It also reviews and publishes scholarly research publications.

The ACR Conference at the ISB consisted of plenary sessions, round table sessions, working paper track chairs and film festival tracks. The Conference co-chairs comprised Professor Dipankar Chakravarti, University of Colorado, Professor Rajiv Vaidyanathan, University of Minnesota Duluth, and Professor Sridhar Samu, ISB. The round table sessions were chaired by Humaira Mahi, San Francisco State University, the film festival was co-chaired by Marylouise Caldwell, University of Sydney and Giana Eckhardt, Suffolk University, while the working paper track was chaired by Professor Partha Krishnamurthy, University of Houston. The Conference also saw Professor Jagmohan Raju, The Wharton School, who is also the Area Leader of Marketing at the ISB, among other distinguished scholars from across the globe.

“The role of this Conference is to bring together esteemed academicians who discuss their research, and hosting it at the ISB certainly puts the School on the map. It helps us attract these people to the ISB. Also, the insights from this Conference will hep us understand better the Indian consumers, with respect to other markets,” said Professor Raju while attending a plenary session. Professor Chakravarti added, “The Conference led to interactions on consumer research issues in the Indian context, and the opportunity for us scholars to understand these issues was enormous. I am very hopeful, that as we grapple with these issues, more and more research will emerge, and help us develop new frameworks and new concepts which will enrich the field of study. Towards this end, the Conference was a huge success,”.

The first plenary session was themed, ‘Consumer Behaviour at the Bottom of the Pyramid’. The session was chaired by Professor Chakravarti, and the guest speaker was Verghese Jacob, Byrraju Foundation, Hyderabad. The session underscored the challenges that BOP markets pose for consumer researchers, whether academics or practitioners. Jacob outlined the services of the Foundation, and more importantly the context of these services, which he felt could lead to opportunities for research. He mentioned about the “great paradoxes in this great country”, where there is, on one hand, a lot of progress at the higher end of technology , management and Indian corporates, and on the other a great concern about those who live in 600,000 villages of India. “Most of them are under-employed, unemployed, have no security net, and in terms of human development, rural India is at the bottom,” he shared. Jacob added that it was not about bridging ‘rural-urban divides’, but more about bridging social, economic, digital divides. The need he felt was for a world class platform to create a holistic, sustainable and empowering model of rural transformation.

Jacob disagreed with the popular phrase ‘Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’. “The fortune doesn’t lie in economic resources but in their innovations and optimisation of their resources, in their positive attitude”, he said. He also brought to the table the fallacy in the assumption by urban marketers, that people at the BoP need these products. For example shampoo - is it their primary need, where they don’t have a meal to eat? Should we divert their incomes toward an aspirational need? – that was the question he put to the audience. Jacob suggested inverting the pyramid - not from city to villages, but to have products and services from the village, for the village, and use resources and talents present at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

The second plenary was titled ‘Consumer India: An Emerging Profile’. The speaker was Rama Bijapurkar, one of India’s most respected thought leaders on market strategy and consumer behaviour. This session provided participants with an innovative framework for examining the complex plurality of Consumer India in an effort to identify new research possibilities. Bijapurkar shared her unique perspectives of ‘Consumer India’. She mentioned that obviously the largest chunk of the ‘emerging new world’ was India and China, but that the key question is ‘will consumers from this world evolve and become like those in the developed world as we know it’? According to her they never will. “We are large economies of poor people like never before, a lot of people consuming a little bit each that adds up to a lot" she observed.

She pointed out factors like state level differences, many shades of rich, middle-class and poor, rural and urban India at different stages of evolution etc. She also pointed out that by 2020 the consumer needs and expectations and value process algorithm will be different and that the new world will get poorer. “The monster consumer is here,” she said. They are the one who are “spoilt by high tech and high touch services and they leapfrog in adoption”.

Rural India, according to her, is growing, leap-frogging but is scattered and has a poor ecosystem. “Poor India is not backward, they are collectively rich,” she observed. They embrace technology, information exploded here, and they are innovative too, Bijapurkar mentioned.

Apart from a host of competitive papers presented at the Conference, some interesting special sessions dealt with themes like ‘Negotiating Individuated Identity in the Face of Dominant Ideological Representations: The Role of Advertising and Technology Consumption’, ‘Socio-Culturally Embedded Literacies in an Emerging Economy’, ‘Finding Your Way Out of Sticky Situations: The Role of Self-Regulation’, etc.

The Roundtable Sessions on ‘Conducting Consumer Research in India: Challenges, Issues and New Directions’, ‘Re-appropriation in the Global Consumptionscape’, ‘Hyperwesternisation and Asian Consumer Culture’, provided valuable perspectives on consumer behaviour.

The film tracks provided moving insights into many relevant socio-economic themes. One track was on the changing role of home design in the wealthy state of Qatar and how it relates to gender identity and other issues. Another track, ‘A Right to Life’ highlighted the complexities of empowering the citizen-consumer by implementing reform in the
public obstetric/gynecological healthcare sector of Pakistan. An interesting track depicted a study on adult celebrity worship within a fan club. Another movie documented how audio and visual cues are purposefully exaggerated in Indian culture as a means of separating the sacred from the profane.

Bocconi Undergraduates at the ISB - Fifth Time Over- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:56:56 GMT

Twenty five undergraduates from Bocconi University, Italy, are here at the Indian School of Business (ISB) as part of the three weeks ‘Bocconi Campus Abroad Programme’. This is the fifth consecutive year that the ISB has been chosen as the destination for this particular programme. The ISB has also been rated by Bocconi, as the best among their other ‘Campus Abroad Programmes’.

Organised by the office of Co-curricular Activities at the ISB, the programme comprises Bocconi elective courses taught by Bocconi professors, lecture seminars held by the ISB faculty, company visits, and finally a taste of the Indian culture and environment. The Programme is intended for students who want to enrich their academic curriculum with a deeper insight into international issues of a particular geographic area.

“The elective is specifically on India. So students learn in the classrooms and then walk out of the door to see in action what they have learnt,” explains accompanying Professor Fabrizio Perretti.

The students have already attended lectures on microfinance and doing business in India delivered by the ISB faculty. Student Filippo Passadore mentions that he found the lecture on microfinance particularly interesting. “Usually we tend to associate microcredit to India and Bangladesh. But the professor told us about microcredit developing in places like the US. We tend to talk more about the social aspects of microcredit, but here we were given a critical perspective about the issue, and emphasis was laid on the political aspects of microcredit as well,” he notes.

Mattia Luigi helps sum up why Bocconi zeroes in on the ISB for this programme in particular. “Its excellence, as proven by the FT 15 achievement last week, also because the ISB is one of the most prominent institutions in India. India provides an extremely interesting environment, as personified here at the ISB – it is both informal and international at the same time. So, it gives us an opportunity to get a taste of Indian culture right here at the ISB," says Luigi.

Cecilia Caio found the students at the ISB “extremely prepared academic wise” and the combination of a work experience, she said, was rare. “From day one they were friendly, welcoming and shared experiences with us, which we found very useful,” she says. The rest of the group are meanwhile enjoying the “spicy pasta, curry at breakfast, people who are warm and shy at the same time, and an order among the chaos on the Hyderabad roads.”

Professor Perretti adds at the end of the interaction that as India is playing a strategic role in developing the world markets, so students must come here to get a grasp of what is happening on ground here, and to get the instruments and tools needed. “The ISB is the best location to see the India of the future,” he says.

Addressing 'Talent Challenge'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:10:14 GMT

Nick Van Dam, Global Director for Learning, Talent Development Officer, Deloitte, was recently at the Indian School of Business (ISB) to give a talk on the global talent challenge, and how to use technology and create just-in-time and high-impact learning environment. The session was organised by the Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (CITNE) at the ISB and the Consulting Club.

An internationally recognised consultant and thought leader in learning and human resources development, Van Dam also holds several advisory board positions, including, among others, The International Consortium for Executive Development and Research (ICEDR), and MA, a global learning alliance of the world’s leading companies and premier business schools. He has also authored the book '25 Best Practices in Learning & Talent Development'.

Van Dam began the address by highlighting about the global talent challenge. According to him, 75 million positions will soon be vacant across US and Europe and 40 percent of people in senior management roles will retire. He talked about the demographics of countries like Italy, France, UK, and the new entrant China, which are dealing with challenges of supporting an aging population and ensuring that national income continues to grow.

He said, “Everyday, there are new jobs, new roles which make the existing skill sets obsolete. This phenomenon will continue in the future too, leading to skill gaps amongst the most significant workplace challenges.” He also touched upon how though at present 53 percent of European graduates are women, the same does not reflect of women in senior management roles and women initiatives at Deloitte.

Van Dam maintained that ‘Talent Challenge’ is here to stay. “ The biggest source of competitive differentiator for any organisation is its people. It’s about people who are figuring out the next generation of products. If an organisation like Apple won’t have people, it will die,” he said.

Thus, the need was, he stressed, to put in place a very robust learning and development programme which would help people to take their skill set to a next level and help organisations retain talent. “It is important to create a culture that is driven by learning, developing, coaching and mentoring,” he said. The fact that 98 percent of learning takes place on job, makes learning and development a critical part of an organisation in order to source and retain talent. “It’s all about experience. It helps to retain people, as people before joining, look for opportunities provided by an organisation to take their existing skills sets to the next level,” he said.

Van Dam talked about globalisation and the need for a global culture. “In order to become more global, we need to have a global culture in place,” he said. He mentioned that from competency perspective, today organisations require people from across all countries to have the same skill sets, to be connected and bring in best practices globally, and to form one virtual global team. He added, “The best place that you learn from is a place with high growth and high change. The Indian economy has been growing and will continue to do so, as a result there always will be opportunities here.”

He also explained about the different e-learning applications which help people to get access to knowledge, develop skills, connect with other people and learn from each other. He said, “Web based training programs supports the whole globalisation concept.” To explain this further he cited the example of ‘Certified to Serve Johnson & Johnson Programme’ by Deloitte which helps people to get ready, to know the organisation better, its values, culture, etc. This enables a person to be successful and serve the organisation better.

He talked about the ‘Deloitte Learning Platform’ and the e-learning foundation that he started four years ago. He shared with the audience the work done by the foundation and its ongoing work of developing content for children between the age of five and eleven, and making it available on internet and CD ROMs, free of cost.

The talk was followed by questions from the audience ranging from how to plan and execute training programmes, to the effects of globalisation on employment opportunities in India.

Visit by UK High Commissioner to India- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:31:00 GMT

“A wonderful two hours”, that was the comment left in the visitor’s book by Sir Richard Stagg, KCGM, CMG UK’s High Commissioner to India, during his recent visit to the Indian School of Business (ISB).

During his visit to the School, Sir Richard spent time with Dean Ajit Rangnekar, discussing various issues of mutual interest. He was highly appreciative of the School’s growth graph and vision. The talks revolved around collaboration and cooperation, and how educational institutions can help strengthen relations between the two countries.

During his interaction with students at the ISB, Sir Richard had a lot of queries about how the present batch is coping up with the current global financial crisis, their views on the opening up of the educational sector in India, and the various career prospects that the students are looking at.

Noting that the ISB was a “highly impressive institution”, the High Commissioner promised that his next visit to the ISB would definitely be a longer stay.

First Graduation Ceremony of ISB-Goldman Sachs '10,000 Women' Initiative- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:41:04 GMT

The first graduation ceremony of the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) ‘10,000 Women’ initiative in India, was held at the Indian School of Business (ISB). There were 29 women entrepreneurs present at the ISB to receive their certificates, and it was a proud moment for each of them and their families who had come to cheer.

‘10,000 Women’ is a global initiative by Goldman Sachs, which aims to provide 10,000 underserved women, predominantly in developing and emerging markets, with a business and management education. The ISB is the academic partner associate to implement this global initiative in India.

The first batch of graduates of this 150 hour certificate programme in entrepreneurship went through rigorous classroom instructions at the ISB, followed by mentoring and on-the job support. Graduating students met with leaders from Goldman Sachs and the ISB, and presented business plans developed through their coursework.

“These graduates are a shining example of the limitless potential of the Indian economy,” said Brooks Entwistle, Managing Director and CEO of Goldman Sachs India, who was present during the ceremony. Entwistle mentioned that the partnership with ISB in the 10,000 women initiative is actually part of an ongoing relationship that Goldman Sachs has with the ISB since the inception of the School. Goldman Sachs has been actively collaborating with the School on areas of research, curriculum and career development of students. He also mentioned about the necessity of being involved with the community while doing business, and that the 10,000 women initiative was really an attempt to “put people in touch with people”.

The Graduation Day programme comprised award ceremonies, an inspirational recount of experiences shared by a mentor and a mentee during the development of a B Plan, handing out of certificates etc.

Over the five year programme the ISB will train 300 women in select cities throughout India. The ISB programme will provide classroom instruction, mentoring, networking, case study discussions etc.

Exchange Students Play 'Fair' at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:13:41 GMT

The India versus Overseas Football Match rolled out at the Recreation Centre lawns of the Indian School of Business (ISB), last Sunday. Weeks of practice and loads of goodwill showed up on that mild afternoon, as students from the Class of 2009 at the ISB played a friendly football match with the exchange students at the School. Team India had 15 players and was challenged by 14 top notch payers from the Overseas team. The visitor team comprised students from Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and US. Beyond the boundaries of the play-field were scores of cheer leaders from both sides, who surely made their presence felt as they cheered for their team. The rules of the game were simple and clear – ‘have fun and play fair.’

Cesar Vidal from the Class of 2009 recalls, “We even designed T-shirts for this occasion - India was wearing dark blue and Overseas was in beige. And then we had also arranged for music, micro, snacks and refreshments. So the match stretched into an evening of interactions and fun.”

As the game proceeded both the teams played hard to score goals against each other and finally Team India made some bold moves and proved to be winners of the day. The final score was - India-6, Overseas-4.

Participants from Team Overseas hoped that the event would leave behind a legacy of sorts, and that the coming batches of the exchange students made sure to beat Team India next season!

ISB Student's Essay on Sanitation wins Prize at Global Forum- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:47:44 GMT

The Centre for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management hosted a Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Narrative Competition. This short-essay competition aimed to highlight the challenges of implementing business in emerging markets and identify innovative business initiatives or solutions to those challenges.

Amit Gupta from the Class of 2009, at the Indian School of Business (ISB), was recently adjudged third at this prestigious competition. This year the event attracted more than 100 submissions from 18 countries, illustrating a diverse array of businesses in 37 different countries.

Gupta’s submission titled ‘Sanitation in Indian Slums: A Struggle for Dignity’, which he co-authored with Kumar Vijay Mishra, Colorado State University, begins with a startling reality - “Bewildering but truth it is, that a sizable chunk of India, mostly poor and rural, has no access to hygienic sanitation facilities”.

“600 million people in India are still open defecators. It is important for us as future leaders of this nation to create awareness and solutions to such problems. It was an opportunity to apply my learnings at the ISB to a unique community-led, profitable venture which was (unlike other social initiatives) powered by Venture Capital financing from CLIFF,” mentions Gupta about his choice of theme.

In his essay Gupta maintains that though several governmental and non-governmental organisations have initiated public sanitation programmes in India, not many of them exclusively cater for building slum toilets. And those who do, design sanitation schemes to meet their own needs and donor constituencies. “Often, the urban planners themselves haven’t seen any feasible slum sanitation solution. Then, almost always, grim prospects of lower financial return from the slum communities drive big market players away even though the customer-base is huge”, he writes.

The later half of the essay talks about the Indian Alliance Initiative, which successfully is turning Slum Sanitation into Business. “The Indian Alliance model involves the community members, usually women, at every stage of the project such that the communities begin recognising these toilets as a community asset and ensure subsequent maintenance. While the Alliance continues to negotiate for land and resources, it still insists on thorough community involvement for construction and maintenance,” Gupta notes in his prize winning piece. The essay concludes with how the Indian Alliance initiative is also “a powerful demonstration of socio-gender convergence apart from community-led enterprise and sustainable development. Today, this simple but unique paradigm is a role-model for several poor communities to contribute in meeting India’s zero-open-defecation goal.”

Gupta will now receive a cash prize sponsored by USAID, his submission will be published on the BoP Learning Lab website, and he also will get an opportunity to engage with IFC BoP practioners.

UCLA Dean at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:21:10 GMT

Judy Olian, Dean, Anderson School, UCLA, recently visited the Indian School of Business (ISB). She was at the School to meet and interact with the faculty and senior management here.

She commented about the ISB by saying, “A School that has risen so fast and so high, an intellectually focussed school with a unique mission that reflects in its focus on emerging market and economies.”

Dean Olian is the eighth Dean of UCLA, and under her leadership, UCLA Anderson is keen on developing a global presence, with a series of targeted global partnerships, especially in China, India and Mexico.

While at the ISB, Dean Olian mentioned, “I was inspired to see here that someone working in the field of social entrepreneurship, is affiliated to this School, and is supported by the faculty and the students - this I think gives the ISB its unique flavour.”

According to her the ISB has differentiated itself with the unique opportunities of this region, and has done this “quickly and with great quality”.

'Sahayak Divas' - A Thank You Note from the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:27:57 GMT

Every year during the month of February/March, the community at the Indian School of Business (ISB) comes together to felicitate, applaud and appreciate all the service providers at the ISB. It is a day to recognise and motivate the ‘Sahayaks’ at the ISB, who throughout the year, work towards providing every kind of back-end support to the School’s day to day functioning.

This year “Sahayak Divas” was once again organised by the Operation Team at the ISB. The family members of the ISB gathered at the School Recreation grounds for an evening of togetherness. Present on the occasion were, Dean Ajit Rangnekar, Professor M Rammohan Rao, Associate Deans Sanjay Kallapur and Deepak Chandra, Uma Rao, Alka Rangnekar, faculty members, staff, students and spouses.

All the service providers associated with the ISB, namely Sarovar, Sairam Nursery, Walsons, International Travel House, Avon Solutions, More, Café Coffee Day, Sunshine, Apollo Hospitals, IT support vendors, Dalven printers, ISB book store vendor, were invited for the event.

“Many dignitaries of national and international repute visit the ISB every year. They include people like King of Belgium, Governor General of New Zealand, Infosys Chairman, and SBI Chairman and so on. You are the first to serve them and you play a key role in helping them form an impression about the ISB – the buildings, the greenery around, their accommodation, the dining hall. You serve us year long, and today is the day for us to say a big thank you to you,” said Dean Rangnekar addressing the crowd of cheering Sahayaks.

Professor Kallapur added, “Every morning we feel happy to see the impeccable surroundings of our campus. It is all your effort and service and I extend my sincere thanks to you for that.”

The motivating address by the Dean and by the members of the senior management at the ISB was followed by an achievement awards distribution ceremony, and finally an interesting cultural programme. The songs and dances by the house-keeping staff, Sarovar and Dalven attracted lot of appreciation and applause from the audience.

Indian Railways Acquire Strategy Insights at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:54:03 GMT

The Centre for Executive Education (CEE) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently conducted a Strategic Management Workshop for senior administrative officers in the Indian Railways.

The aim of the six day workshop was to get the top brass of the Indian Railways to develop competencies and skills that focus on three objectives – developing strategic thinking, developing cross-functional perspective, and managing complexity and uncertainty in their current roles. The course structure was geared to develop a general manager’s perspective - decision making; develop understanding of own department’s role within Indian Railways’ overall goals; long-term thinking and planning; how to lead change, moving from ideas to implementation, financial evaluation of projects; how to evaluate PPP projects etc.

Participant Sanjay Gehlot, Chief Commercial Manager, Passenger Services, Eastern Railways said, “This programme gave us a good idea of where we stand and where we are heading for. We acquired a theoretical framework as to what we should be aspiring for.” He also pointed out a session that he found particularly interesting. “It was about how in order to have happy customers you must first have happy employees, and that employee orientation is equally important as customer orientation,” he said.

The workshop comprised sessions like one on Operations and Supply Chain/IT Strategies mentored by Professor Medini Singh, Customer Focussed Marketing Strategy by Professor Nirmal Gupta, Leadership and Change Management by Professor S Ramnarayan, Financial Value Creation by Professor Suren Mansinghka and finally a session on Strategic Thinking and Implementation by Professor Atul Nerkar.

PP Sharma, Joint Secretary who had earlier attended a similar programme at INSEAD said that the programme at the ISB was “compact, closer to reality, consisted of relevant case studies which are close to my work place and so translatable.” He also mentioned that the Indian Railways had recently witnessed a management of change, and the 3P model that he learnt during the course helped him comprehend this change. “If we are educated and activated, this message can percolate to our other colleagues,” he concluded.

In addition to class-room based inputs, there were a few Guest Speaker sessions during the evenings on key topics like importance to the target audience from a practitioner’s perspective. During the course of the programme, participants were also divided into groups, and these groups made presentations on the last day of the programme, and received invaluable feedback from the top leadership team of Indian Railways and the ISB Faculty.

Sanjeev Mathur, Chief Materials Manager recounted that his one takeaway from this programme was “strategy from the eyesight of the passenger, the consumer, the freight carrier etc.” He said that the relevance of the course made it easy for him to translate most of it into the daily working environment.

Jaya Singh Chauhan, Chief Security Commissioner, North Eastern Railways summed up, “My coming to ISB has been very rewarding. As a top manager of the Indian Railways, I go back with the vision, the strategy, the motivation, and with a better understanding of myself, as a manager and my men.”

FHDW MBA Students on an 'India Excursion' at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:56:39 GMT

A group of MBA students from the Paderborn School of Business, FHDW Germany, visited the Indian School of Business (ISB) as part of a study tour titled ‘India Excursion’. They were accompanied by Professor Udo Dierk, Head of the International Centre for Management Learning, Paderborn School of Business.

The group was a combination of students with work experience in varied sectors - Sales Managers, IT Managers, Project Leaders, Quality Improvers, Human Resource Managers, Controllers, etc., were all a part of this group. While at the ISB they visited different software firms and rural markets to get a first hand knowledge about the Indian business environment. This was supplemented with lecture sessions by the ISB faculty on topics like, trends in the Indian manufacturing industry, doing business in India, and the impact of global financial meltdown on India. A panel discussion and presentations by students were some other features of this study tour.

Participant Kira Berges shared that she used the opportunity to, “See for myself how fast these economies have grown in the last few years.” Ulf Morfeld noted something particular, about the session on Indian manufacturing, “According to most of us, manufacturing is producing goods etc. Here we got to know India, as the service provider for the world, and the fact that most high-skilled and educated people come from within India itself. This was interesting,” he said.

Carsten Borchert gave an idea of his ‘India experience’. “In Germany everything seems to have a sense of order , and here everything is a big chaos. But what caught my attention was the presence of an inbuilt order amidst this chaos,” he said. His colleague Heike Benik added, “The ISB gave us a complete and balanced picture of the country. The students here are very balanced and open minded, and it is the same for India.”

Professor Udo Dierk, for whom this is the second time at the ISB, remarked that this time around he experienced the striking contrast between the corporate world and the world we see on the streets. “People are proud to work for their companies. They want to take their companies forward, and also their country. And all this is without any political impact. India does not want to become the number one as a state or dominate the world, as is evident in a country like China,” he said.

The tour was facilitated by the Co-Curricular Activities (CCA) at the ISB, and is the eighth successful study tour organised by CCA for this academic year.

BRIC Schools Design Programme on Fast Growing Markets- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:30:20 GMT

Business Schools from BRIC recently came together at the Indian School of Business (ISB), to design an Executive Education programme on fast growing market opportunities. Present at the ISB were Wilfried VanHonacker, Dean of Skolkovo School of Management, Moscow, Sam Park, Researcher on China from Skolkovo and Aldemir Drumond from FDC Brazil, who is also the in charge of the BRIC programme. They were joined by Deepak Chandra, Associate Dean from the ISB in creating this programme.

The programme, titled as ‘Harnessing Growth in Fast Growing Markets,’ plans to focus on organisational planning to tap into fast growing markets, the target audience being the organisations which are aiming at value creation through these fast growing markets. The programme, which is all set to be launched in November 2009, is designed as a three- module structure. The first module will be conducted in the US, where the participants will get a macro view of the new realities in these fast growing markets. This module will provide the necessary framework to work towards the new management principles relevant to these markets.

The second module will be hosted in individual BRIC countries, and will explore operational excellence issues in terms of market and value chain optimisation opportunities. Finally, the third module will be conducted in Europe and will provide an insight into organisational alignment to reap the benefits from the opportunities of these fast growing markets. It plans to help assimilate the first two modules and look at it as value creation across BRICs and across value chains. It will also explore organisational alignment to create an appropriating value.

While at the ISB, the BRIC representatives also met with Dean Ajit Rangnekar and members of the senior management.

ISB Faculty is WEF Young Global Leader 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:09:29 GMT

Professor Reuben Abraham, Clinical Assistant Professor of Business at the Indian School of Business (ISB), has been recognised as a Young Global Leader (YGL) for 2009 by the World Economic Forum. The Forum acknowledged 200 outstanding young leaders from around the world this year, drawn from business, government, sports, academia, media, non-profit organisations and the arts, for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to shape the future of the world. Professor Abraham is among 24 leaders chosen from South Asia for this prestigious award. He joins other Indian YGL 2009 nominees like Sachin Tendulkar, Mahesh Bhupati and Kanimozhi Karunanidhi. The global winners list this year includes distinguished names like Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher, Chad Hurley etc.

“The entire ISB Community congratulates Professor Abraham on opening a new dimension for the School,” conveyed Dean Ajit Rangnekar on hearing about the news. "Obviously it’s a great honour to be recognised in this fashion and even more so, when you realise who your peer group is. I hope to leverage this award and the network it provides to advance the debate around the work we do at my centre on creating market-based solutions to address socio-economic development issues in emerging markets," said Professor Abraham about the recognition.

Professor Abraham is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at the ISB. CEMS carries the explicit mandate to investigate issues pertaining to emerging markets. At its core, CEMS has been set up with a belief that market-based solutions exist for a majority of the developing world's problems, as long as we develop new products and services, demonstrate proof-of-concept, and attract investment capital from a variety of investors from the global capital markets. Currently CEMS focuses on four areas which it considers crucial for inclusive economic growth – Urbanisation, Energy, Healthcare, Small Business and Finance.

Professor Abraham serves on the board of George Soros’ Economic Development Fund (SEDF). Under the aegis of SEDF, he has helped set up a unique India-focused SME early stage fund with Google and Omidyar Network as co-investors, which he is a senior adviser to. He serves as an adviser to several companies, including a financial services company; a large real estate company; and three start-up companies. A TED Global Fellow in 2007, he now serves on the TED Fellows selection committee, and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Before ISB, Professor Abraham completed his M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York. During his time at Columbia, he was an Associate Fellow in Global Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow at the Public Policy Consortium and a Sloan Foundation/CITI Telecommunications Fellow. He also conducted research at three Columbia University research centers. In addition, he also was a consultant at the World Bank. Before Columbia, Professor Abraham was involved in two start-ups in India, in the media/telecom space.

Lessons in Spray Cans and Pop Art- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:32:52 GMT

It was a regular day at the Indian School of Business (ISB), with a perceptible calmness which came along with the end of the term assignments and the placements taking priority over everything else. And then suddenly one was greeted with a splash of fluorescent colours and hip-hop art.

At work with spray cans, oil colours and pop art images were artists-in- residence Amarnath Sharma and Aviral Saxena. They were at the ISB for five days as part of the Business and Arts Programme. This annual programme aims to expose students to the nuances of creativity, and provide them with a holistic learning experience. As a part of this programme, reputed artists are invited to live on campus for a week, where they interact with the ISB community, while pursuing their creative activities. The work of art, be it a painting or any performing art, is then presented to the community at a formal gathering. Celebrated painters like Laxma Goud, Paresh Maity, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Laila Khan Rajpal and well-known sculptor Karl Antao have visited the ISB earlier as part of this initiative.

Painter Amarnath Sharma, uses the medium oil on canvas and his style as he puts it, is “figurative.” Having finished a portrait of an executive juxtaposed with a number of machines, Sharma says that his art is all about integrating man and machine . “ Society is made up of all classes and they together perform a function. White collar job is not the only important job, and I try to show this in my paintings. Each painting is kind of divided into two areas, depicting various men and machines at work,” he explained. His inspiration he says is his life spent in an industrial town where he saw man and machine from a very close quarter. Sharma found the ISB community to be very interactive. He was asked a lot of questions, and the ultimate aim was to have fun while learning.

Graffiti artist Aviral Saxena is an National Institute of Design (NID) graduate and has worked for Channel V, Disney etc. “I have been a graphic designer and so I love to play with letters and work around typography,” he said, working at his art which was a graffiti symbol in acrylic. He explained that his form of art was actually graphic writing, also known as “tagging.” The writing spelt ‘Spambam’ which was his nom de plume – the name he is known by, in the graffiti world. “Students here were really creative, some of them were so good with the can just on the first take,” he mentioned.

Both the artists conducted two interactive stencil art workshops while at the ISB. Children spouses, students participated in these workshops with full vigour. Finally, the duo displayed their individual art work to the community and also held a slide show presentation of their previous works.

ISB Hosts Second Invitational Conference on Family Business- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:40:51 GMT

To understand the unique challenge faced by family businesses in Asia, the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently hosted the Second Invitational Conference on Family Business. The theme of the Conference was ‘Building a lasting Family Business- Dream to Reality’. The three days of interactions and thought provoking sessions, proved to be a great platform for sharing insights and intensifying dialogues about topics related to Family Business. Academia from around the globe, family business owners, professionals, researchers, family business advisors and policy makers came together to perpetuate thoughts on how to develop and sustain entrepreneurship in business families, how to manage transitions across generations, what are the challenges of writing a constitution, family philanthropy, how to balance freedom and control, qualities of an effective board member, among other themes.

The Conference was held under the auspice of the Thomas Schmidheiny Chair on Family Business and Wealth Management at the ISB. The Chair is supported by Dr Thomas Schmidheiny, Former Chairman, Holcim, and Chairman Spectrum Value Management Limited, Zurich.

Day one consisted of an Academic Conference where more than 25 case studies were presented by academics from India and outside. A workshop on case method of research for authors was also conducted. The next two days of the event comprised Business Conferences where eminent representatives from business families, academics and consultants deliberated on various topics related to Family Business in separate sessions. Some of the themes were ‘Family Wealth–Creation, Preservation and Growth’, ‘Family Governance–Areas of Challenge’, ‘Family Governance-Writing and Living the Constitution’, ‘Family Tradition, Values and Leadership’, ‘Your Board – How Independent is It’?

Dean Ajit Rangnekar, in his address, said that most B-schools look merely at the top end of the business spectrum, though the vast majority of industry in India is family managed. “Western educational thoughts have focussed more on professional organisations, so we felt that at the ISB we should contribute significant time and interest to the issues and challenges of family business,” he said. Dean Rangnekar also mentioned about the importance of being ‘honourable’ in a family run business. How to operate with the highest standards of integrity, how to leave a greater legacy in society in large, were some points to ponder about during the Conference, he noted.

Professor Kavil Ramachandran, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management at the ISB, outlined the relevance of the Conference saying that it was part of the extensive research being done by the Chair in the area of family business in India, and that the emphasis was on research and disseminating knowledge at a platform such as this. He also presented a background of family run businesses in India, sharing facts and figures about profitability, growth structures, risks, contribution to GDP etc.

In his keynote address, Dieter Spaelti, Managing Partner, Spectrum Value Management Ltd, among other insights, shared that family business is linked to family wealth management, and that there was an information and research gap in the field of family wealth management. “Business families may find themselves in a situation where they have to think of a set-up for managing their assets,” he said. He also introduced the concept of ‘family office’. Spaelti shared some “personal lessons learnt as a CEO of a family enterprise”. Some points shared were that capital for wealthy families must include human and social asset and not just financial asset, for a successful family office one should sail and not drift nor lie at the anchor, change and adaptation are the only constants in a family business, a conservative approach to publicity is recommended, and finally one should stay humble.

Spaelti also noted that in contrast to the in-house portfolio management of private banks, family businesses must adapt an integrated and holistic approach to wealth management. “For wealth preservation the time horizon should extend across several generations as opposed to private banks where the time horizon spans only for one generation,” he said.

Also present on the dais was Nigel Nicholson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School. Professor Nicholson gave an overview about family businesses at conflict. He said that conflict is a healthy force within human society, and that the experience of overcoming the conflict can actually be a learning force for the family. He also shared reasons for leadership failures and the external and internal forces that lead to such kinship conflicts, and how conflicts escalate and create warfare due to bad process and bad control. Leadership failures, according to him, comes either from failure to read a situation and adapt accordingly, or failing to find a purpose and exercise ones’ will. “One is either too adaptive or too assertive,” he said. To be good leaders one needs to do a self-analysis, have good mentors and role models, and have projects and experiments, he concluded. He also threw light on the concept of ‘emotional ownership’, without which there is no future in family firms. Other tips to avoid conflicts were - “governance solutions should be organic, do regular risk assessments, watch out for warning signs, don’t be too insular, set rules to make everyone a winner etc”

During an address on Joint Ventures as a route to growth, Farhad Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall Pvt Ltd, spoke about the necessity of “fairness, integrity, trust and transparency during joint ventures in a family run business, as “trust can be broken in an instance. “Joint ventures tend to work better if the partner is also from a family business,” he said, adding that in a joint venture one should sand up for what is right, but also be gracious enough to compromise from time to time.

Other noted speakers during various sessions were Feroz Rahim, Group Managing Director, Rahimafrooz, Bangladesh, Roger King, Professor, (HKUST), Hong Kong, Sangita Reddy, Executive Director, Apollo Hospitals Group, KL Rathi, Executive Chairman, Sudarshan Chemical Industries, BK Jhawar, Chairman, Usha Martin Limited, Anand C Burman, Chairman, Dabur India Ltd, Arun Bharat Ram, Chairman, SRF Ltd, Professor SK Chakraborty, IIM, Kolkata, Arvind Singh Mewar, Chairman, MMCF, Udaipur, Sushil Handa, Founder & CEO, Claris Lifesciences Ltd, Mohan Reddy BVR, Chairman, Infotech Enterprises Ltd, Rajesh Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, EMCO, Nabankur Gupta, Ex-President, Raymonds.

Burman mentioned that family businesses provide a strong backbone to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive among those family members who want to start up on their own, and that it is very important to create a framework for the optimal development of the family’s business and financial interest. The biggest obstacle, he shared, was to convince everyone to separate management and ownership issues. Also the constitution can’t be so rigid so as to regulate ones life as an individual, he added.

Reddy, in her presentation, shared that the concept of the “family” at Apollo, spreads to 63,000 family members – all those who contribute to the vision of the company and play a role. “As you move to complex structures in a family run business, articulation of ideals and ideology, the need to come together and the necessity to have common values become more and more important,” she said.

Eminent Chairs during various sessions were Dean Ajit Rangnekar, Professor Naga Lakshmi Damaraju, ISB, Ranjan Das, Professor, IIM Kolkata, Anil Sainani, Director, S&S Empowering Solutions Pvt Ltd, Kumar PM, Executive Director- GMR Group, Vijaya Marisetty, Professor, ISB, Nabankur Gupta, Ex-President, Raymonds

On Day two, the Valedictory Keynote Speaker was MM Murugappan, Director, Murugappa Group. The fourth generation leader of his family enterprise, during his address said, “It is important to share with society the fruits of effort built over generations and set standards and a context for the succeeding generation.” He stressed on the importance of family philanthropy. “Succeeding generations of society in large will not remember us for the wealth that we had, created or generated. They will remember us for the institutions we created for public good,” he said. He added that philanthropy has ‘charity’ embedded in it, and is for the development of the society, which in turn is important for businesses. “Success of an Indian business has to be rooted in our culture, and philanthropy is a part of that culture. We got to do things with a feeling of abundance and give with sensitivity and not expect anything in return,” he said. Murugappan mentioned that there will be no markets to address unless we have a sustainable economic development because “we don’t do business in markets but in societies.”

Professor Ramachandran in his closing remarks mentioned that the Conference was “an instructive and interesting three day proceeding, both practice wise and academically.” Synergy is symphony, he said explaining that like in an orchestra, different instruments produce harmony together, and similarly in a family business everyone together can provide the power and energy. “We have to work together to achieve that symphony, and that is where the essence of governance and consultation and regular processes built into the family proceedings become relevant", he pointed out.

Dubai Alumni Celebrate FT 15 Ranking- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:36:48 GMT

What better way to celebrate the excellence of your alma mater than to do it in the exciting city of Dubai. And what better manner to capture the ecstatic sprit than to come together for a Dhow cruise along the Dubai creek, under the lovely evening sky. Gliding on the serene waters and soaking in the sights of the Dubai skyline-it was an evening to remember for long.

The setting was to commemorate the recent Financial Times (FT) 15 rankings that the Indian School of Business (ISB) achieved. Organised by the Middle East alumni community, the event saw active participation from the alum community there. Most alum arrived with their families and a few also flew in from neighbouring GCC countries to be a part of the event. The total group size was close to 50 and it also included various distinguished guests from the ISB corporate linkages including, Arthur D. Little, PRTM, Alvarez & Marsel, Abu Dhabi Accountability Authority, Oliver & Wyman, Artaaj & TIE.

The event was structured as an informal dinner cruise. In his welcome talk, Amit Pathak, President, Middle East Chapter, mentioned his gratitude to the ME alumni community for their enthusiastic participation in the FT 15 celebrations. “Special mention must go to the organising team including Mazahir (06), Piyush (08), Karthik (06) & Siddharth (07). I also thank K Hari and Prashanthi from the ISB for their support in making this event successful," he said.

"The FT 15 Dubai Dhow cruise dinner was a great forum that helped to connect the Middle East alums. The attendees included people right from the founding batch through to my batch and we also got the opportunity to interact with some of the recruiters from this region,” remembers Nadia Eesa, Class of 2008. Kaushik Gopal, Class of 2006, added, “It was such a memorable experience and it was great to see such a healthy ISB presence in the Middle East. May there be more!”

The guests were gifted ISB branded memorabilia. Doing the honours was Puneet Dhamija, Class of 2002, the senior most ISB Alumnus present at the occasion. The ceremony was followed by dinner accompanied by live western music. The ISB alumni found yet another happy occasion to come together through these celebrations.

CAF Hosts Third Annual Joint Conference on Emerging Market Finance- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:09:08 GMT

The Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), the Financial Institutions Centre (FIC) at the Wharton School, and the Swedish Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) at Stockholm, organised the third joint conference on Emerging Market Finance. The Conference was hosted at the ISB campus during March 20 - 22, 2009. This year’s conference focussed on two special areas of interest - China’s Financial System and Comparative Financial Systems.

It must be mentioned here that starting in 2007, the CAF, the FIC, and the SIFR have been organising similar conferences in the area of emerging market finance. The conferences are annual in nature, held in spring, and rotate between Philadelphia, Stockholm, and Hyderabad.

“It is the first time that a research conference almost exclusively devoted to China’s financial issues, and attended largely by Chinese scholars from mainland China, is happening in India. It becomes more important as China has a pivotal role in the current global meltdown,” conveyed Professor Sankar De, Executive Director, CAF.

The high point of the Conference was a special address by T N Srinivasan, Samuel C Park Jr Professor, Yale University, and a renowned scholar in development economics and international trade. The topic of the address was ‘Changing Interface between Financial and Real Sectors: Lessons form China and India.’ The keynote speech focussed on the real and financial sector linkages in the current global economic crisis, and its impact on India and China. In the current global economic scenario where the financial crisis has severely impacted GDP growth rate in practically every country in the world, the importance and topicality of the subject was well received by the participants and audience.

Professor Srinivasan mentioned that the impact of the financial crisis in India was minimal as our financial system has been protected by the prudential regulatory norms and controls of the RBI with its excellent governance. He also mentioned that while India’s financial integration with global economy happened faster than the real integration, China is more integrated both financial and in real terms.

“The dimension of the crisis is changing in the wrong direction, every moment the projection and prognosis is getting worse,” he said. Professor Srinivasan referred to the IMF prediction that the US economy may improve by half a percent in the third quarter of 2009 and by 1.5 percent in the last quarter. This would cascade into the Indian economy to recover by the year 2010-11. He mentioned that this recovery would be possible only if the government elect has the Indian who is poor at its heart and is not myopic in its intentions. Professor Srinivasan rejected the theory that India and China has decoupled itself from the global economy, and that what happened to the world economy no longer drives the growth of India and China but vice versa. He added that given the supply constraint, the 9 percent growth that India has projected for the last three years was actually unsustainable. The need he felt was to address supply constraints, and simply pumping money into domestic markets would not really help boost the economy.

“I see light at the end of the tunnel and I hope we can come out of this crisis, and I hope it doesn’t leave behind residue of hastily implemented and ill thought-of reforms,” he concluded.

The Conference comprised three thematic sessions under which papers were presented by well-known global researchers from premier institutions. The first session was on Global Financial Markets. Papers presented during this session included Global Market Integration: An Alternative Measure and Its Application by Kuntara Pukthuanthong-Le (San Diego State University) and Richard Roll (UCLA), Sovereign Wealth Funds: Their Investment Strategies and Performance by Vidhi Chhaochharia (University of Miami) and Luc Laeven (IMF, CEPR, and ECGI) and The Real Effects of Foreign Banks by Valentino Bruno (American University), Robert Hauswald (American University).

The second session was on Corporate Governance in Korea. Papers read out consisted Does Corporate Governance Risk at Home Affect Investment Choices Abroad? by Woochan Kim (KDI School of Public Policy Management), Taeyoon Sung (Yonsei University) and Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University, NBER and CEPR), and How Corporate Governance Affects Firm Value: Evidence on Channels from Korea by Bernard S Black (University of Texas), Woochan Kim ( KDI School of Public Policy Management), Hausung Jang (Korea University Business School) and Kyung Suh Park(Korea University Business School)

The third and final session was on China’s Financial System and was subdivided into three parts - Corporate Governance, Banking and Market Microstructure. The papers presented under - Internal Capital Market in Emerging Markets: Expropriation and Mitigating Financing Constraints by Joseph Fan (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Li Jin (Harvard Business School) and Guojian Zheng (Sun Yat-sen University), and The Monitoring Effects of Fund Involvement on Earnings Informativeness and Executive Compensation: Evidence from Chinese Public Companies by Shujun Ding (York University), Chunxin Jia (Peking University) and Zhenyu Wu (University of Saskatchewan), Information from Relationship Lending: Evidence from China by Chung Chang (China Europe International Business School), Guanmin Liao (Central University of Finance and Economics), Xiaoyun Yu (Indiana University), and Zheng Ni (Tsinghua University) and Bank Loans with Chinese Characteristics: Inside Debt, Firm Quality, and Market Response by Warren Bailey (Cornell University), Wei Huang (University of Hawaii), and Zhishu Yang (Tsinghua University) Dynamic Short-Sales Constraints, Price Limits and Price Efficiency by Tse-Chun Lin (University of Amsterdam), Price Discovery and Information in an Emerging Market: Evidence from China by Jingyun Ma (Tsinghua University), Peter Swan (University of New South Wales), and Fengming Song (Tsinghua University)

The conference programme committee includes Viral Acharya (NYU), Sumit Agarwal (Federal Reserve Bank Chicago and ISB), Franklin Allen (Wharton), Ulf Axelson (SIFR), Bhagwan Chowdhry (UCLA), Sankar De (ISB), Mihir Desai (Harvard), Joseph Fan (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Ravi Jagannathan (Kellogg), Kai Li (UBC), Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard), Vinay Nair (Wharton), Jun “QJ” Qian (Boston College), Eswar Prasad (Cornell), Krishna Ramaswamy (Wharton), Antoinette Schoar (MIT), Hyun Song Shin (Princeton), Per Strömberg (SIFR), Raghu Sundaram (NYU), and Shangjin Wei (Columbia).

GSVC Asia Regional Round - Harnessing the Power of Good- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:44:30 GMT

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) Asia Regional Round, hosted by the Indian School of Business (ISB), on March 20-22, 2009, once again brought together the academic and the financial worlds to support the creation of sustainable social ventures. The GSVC is a global forum for entrepreneurs to showcase their plans, and for investors to support groundbreaking social ventures. It began in 1999 as a student-led initiative at the Haas School of Business, California, USA. In July 2005, the ISB was invited as an affiliate, and has, since the last two years, hosted the Asia Round.

This year the ISB had received 50 business plans from five countries. Panels consisting of 20 ISB alumni and 25 experts from social sectors short-listed 18 plans, based on a reading of these plans and active deliberations. Invited at the Asia Regional Round to make a presentation of their B-Plans were teams from the University of Hong Kong, International Space University, Strasbourg, France, NCCU Taiwan, BNU Beijing, NMIMS, Mumbai, IIM, BITS Pilani etc.

Professor K Ramachandran, Associate Dean, ISB, in his welcome speech mentioned that the ISB itself is an example of a social venture funded by the private sector that put in their money without expectations of any specific rewards. He also pointed out that there is an element of entrepreneurship present across every thing at the ISB, and that there is a constant process of innovation here to stay at the top.

The other highlight of the event was a Speaker Series on ‘Harnessing the Power of Abundance,’ chaired by Chandrasekar V, Executive Advisor, Indu Centre for Infrastructure and Real Estate, ISB. Panellists comprised Ranganayakulu, Founder President, THRIVE, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor, IIT-Madras, Sonjoy Mohanty, CEO, A Little World, and Lakshmi V V, Co-Founder, Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust.

The panellists drew examples from their own experiences about harnessing the power of good, recounted inspirational stories about entrepreneurs, and underlined the fact that while there is significant enhancement in incomes in urban India, changes in rural India incomes are still too slow. They also spoke about support mechanisms like micro equity fund, rural mobile mentor clinics etc., created to help rural entrepreneurs. Other points deliberated upon were about how the per capita resource consumption of China and India is worrisome, and that rural India can become a ‘preferred place’ to stay, with access to proper education, health facilities etc. They agreed that the need was to re-define development, and challenge the paradigms of the Industrial Revolution that is ingrained in modern society.

This was followed by a panel discussion on “Funding Opportunities for Social Enterprises." The session was chaired by Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director, Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, ISB. He gave a start to the discussions by positing questions like – “Is funding sufficient? Is social venture different from other ventures? Do these ventures simply relate to social issues or should they create prosperity for all section of society?” The other panellists comprised Sohini Bhattacharya, Director-South Asia Partnerships, Ashoka Innovators, Anne Henricot, Executive, Marie and Alain Philippson Foundation, James Tooley, Professor, Newcastle University and Pooja Warier, Co-Founder, UnLtd, Journeys for Change.

Henricot spoke about the working of her foundation and how the personality and the vision of the leader who leads the venture is critical to any social venture. Tooley said, “If you are committed to seeking funding, the fact that you are passionate about, and sleep, drink, and eat your project will make all the difference.” He also explained the investor’s stand point. “They are people who want to make a difference and want to make a move from being ‘successful’ to ‘significant.’ They are looking for an idea which can make them credible and important. So, never underestimate your idea and what value it holds for the investor," he said. Bhattacharya spoke about some of the challenges that an individual with ideas face – “In the Indian context, seed funding is very rare, sources of information are not credible, one has the idea and the passion but lacks technical skill sets, limited access to mentoring etc.”

Some of the ventures presented during the two day event were Pioneer Healthcare, by a team from the ISB, which was about creating a network of hospitals in a hub and spoke model, combining best medical facilities and knowledge, augmenting each other to provide effective primary healthcare in rural areas. ArtIsAn Art, also by Team ISB, was about promoting handicrafts through providing design support and market access thus, ensuring higher income for rural artisans. Go Cars, another Team ISB plan, was about a mobile based car pooling service that facilitates shared transportation in real time, providing mutual benefits to both the ride-giver and the ride-seeker. Students from the University of Hong Kong presented the interesting plan Water Lifting Device, which was about creating efficient and convenient water lifting devices which will address the water shortage problem in India. Go for Social Innovation was about an enterprise that will provide social entrepreneurship training programmes and access to resources for Chinese college students presented by BNU, Beijing, China. International Space University, Strasbourg, France presented Ability - Digital Bridge, which was a holistic approach for ICT product to bridge disability digital divide through text to speech to sign language conversion and vice versa. Ummeed by SPJIMR, Mumbai, India, was about providing bio-degradable, sanitary napkins that are economical to low-income rural women thus, addressing hygiene and reproductive health issues.

The winners of the GSVC Asia Regional Round were two teams from the ISB – Pioneer Healthcare and Art IsAn Art and the team from SPJIMR, Mumbai, India with their plan Ummeed. Winning participant Ritu Garg, Class of 2009, spoke about her plan Pioneer Healthcare which was conceived with fellow mates Radhika Vasanthakumar, Ritesh Dogra and Manish Laligam. “It was a great experience. We got lot of encouragement and mentoring from the judges. Our plan is spearheaded by Radhika and her 20 years experience in rural healthcare. This alone was one of the biggest strengths of the team. Added to that was our passion and commitment towards the project and the detailed feedback by judges which has helped us immensely.”

The winners will now move to the Global Finals at Haas which will be held during April 2009.

Alumni Bags Award at International Map Forum Conference- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:54:16 GMT

ISB Alumnus from the Class of 2002, Ashish Sonal, who is the Founder and CEO of Orkash Services Pvt Ltd, was recently recognised at an international forum. Orkash Services bagged the award for the 'Best Technical Paper Presentation', from amongst 90 technical presentations, at a recently organised four-day annual Map World Forum Conference. The Forum is one of the successful international platforms for ideating and sharing geo spatial technological breakthroughs. The annual event saw a participation of 1700 international GIS-community members and global companies spanning across more than 40 countries. “As a two year old company, this award is a great boost to our motivation, and recognition of the R&D work of Orkash,” says Sonal.

Orkash’s winning paper titled ‘Intelligence Creation Through Integrated Semantic Expert Systems on Geo-spatial Platforms’, showcased the ‘proprietary technology’ developed by Orkash. This technology integrates semantic search, knowledge extraction, artificial intelligence based expert systems, and geo-spatial data mining systems and visualisation over a Web 2.0 based platform. The technology has been rated highly both for its cutting edge innovation as well as scalability for mass adoption.

Sonal has pioneered the concept of integrating the fields of business intelligence, market intelligence, competitive intelligence, and operational risk management through the use of information technology based decision support platforms. His consulting experience ranges across private equity and M&A, IT and offshoring, mining, oil and gas, pharma and biosciences, real estate, retail, FMCG, and various governmental and non-governmental organisations. He has also advised the senior management of Fortune 1000 Companies in emerging markets, covering their strategic business intelligence and risk management requirements.

Jai Ho ISB Juniors- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:56:56 GMT

While either of the parents was braving the pressures of academics and placements at the Indian School of Business (ISB), their little ones were trying to catch up with the peacocks and dance with the monsoon frogs on the campus. On the eve of every Graduation Day, these little children are felicitated by the School. It is a small token of our affection shown towards these little ones, who by their sheer presence add a warmth factor to the ‘family friendly’ environment of the campus.

This year too, on the evening of the ISB Juniors Day, around 70 children, along with their proud parents, assembled at the newly inaugurated Amphitheatre. Filled with enthusiasm and excitement, these little ones stole the show dressed in their own graduation gowns and fairy frocks.

The evening saw a well thought of and an extremely entertaining programme – children recounting about what they loved best about the ISB, a Kashmiri dance put up by little girls, a fancy dress programme, and a choreographed dance performance on the recent hit “Jai Ho”. Around fifteen mothers with children less than three years old were on stage with their babies, doing an impromptu ball dance. The performances were greeted with applaud and with cheer.

“I like the ISB because it makes my papa study more. And I’m also graduating with my papa. I’m going to Class 1 now,” prattled Dayatri, daughter of student Rohit Kapoor. “Everyday when I wake up in the morning, I see peacocks and when it rains I see frogs. The ISB is a lovely place and is the best place to stay,” said little Nandini, daughter of Tarun Agarwal trying to recollect her best memories. Dean Ajit Rangnekar while acknowledging the contribution of the little ones during a stressful year at the ISB, handed out mementos of appreciation to each of them and said, “The ISB spouses and children rock, and the Class of 2009 rocks.”

Professor of the Year 2009 - Full Marks to Strategy and Negotiation- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:07:18 GMT

The Class of 2009 at the Indian School of Business (ISB), nominated Professor Prashant Kale as the ‘Professor of the Year for Core Courses’, and Professor Dishan Kamdar as the ‘Professor of the Year for Elective Courses’.

The Professor of the Year Award at the ISB is a token validation by the students about the excellence of their chosen mentors. It is also an expression of gratitude to the faculty who manage to create an unequivocal impression on the student body. Each student nominates one professor for the Core Terms and one for the Elective Terms. The results are tallied and announced to the ISB community, a few days ahead of the Graduation Day.

Professor Kale is a Visiting Professor at the ISB and an Assistant Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business at Stephen M Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He receives this honour for his exceptional delivery of the course ‘Competitive Strategy’.

When contacted, Professor Kale said, “The ISB is regarded as one of the top business schools in the world and I am honoured to receive this award from the students of this elite institution. A teacher is only as good as his students - thus the credit for this award must also go to all students, who through their commitment and contribution to class discussions played a vital role in enriching our collective learning experience in class.”

Professor Kamdar is an Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at the ISB. His nomination is of special importance as it is the first time that a Resident Faculty has been chosen by the student body to receive this distinction. Professor Kamdar was nominated for his delivery of the course “Negotiation Analysis.”

Holding the award Professor Kamdar said, “This is better than the Oscars as it comes from my students, each of who will now play an integral part in shaping India’s future. It is also a great honour to be chosen among a pool of extremely high quality resident faculty here at the ISB, and I dedicate this award to them.”

Some qualitative comments about the chosen mentors, submitted by the students along with their nominations:

Professor Kale -

“Awesome insight of why some businesses succeed and some fail”

“The cases he discussed are etched like video tapes in our memory. French wine industry, Dominoes pizza, Southwest, Apple computers, there are so many!”

“There were so many "aha" moments in his class. The discussion would be structured despite marks for class participation. It was an amazing experience!”

“Exceptional clarity of thought, crisp delivery and articulation and perfect control of class participation”

“Brilliant method of teaching... very interactive... makes students actually THINK.”

“2 hours seemed so short...”

Professor Kamdar -

“Professor. Kamdar’s innovative teaching methods and practical application of concepts learnt during class grounded the learnings better which will be easier to remember when confronted with in real life.”

“His interactive teaching sessions were full of unexpected events that kept us on our toes. One of the most entertaining and informative classes that I've taken at the ISB.”

“The effort he put in to teach the students was amazing. The focus in his class was solely on learning and not on grades. Extremely inspiring professor.”

“There was lot of value addition in his classes. And I could correlate it with the situations that I have faced or I will be facing.”

“Very effective teacher, tremendous class presence, excellent pedagogy, very organised and ready to help.”

“Great fun, very approachable!”

"We are all unique" - The Young Leaders and the Torch Bearers 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:03:12 GMT

At an evening award ceremony, a day prior to the Graduation Day at the ISB, twelve Young Leaders and 46 Torch Bearers from the outgoing Class of 2009, lined up inside the School Auditorium to receive their rare felicitation. The award ceremony recognised their leadership attributes, commitment, and relentless participation in various student activities. The recipients of this honour have, throughout a rigorous academic year, consciously taken out time to organise seminars, conclaves, student events, and have taken full charge during many extra curricular activities. After a careful and special selection procedure on the basis of the volunteer hours the students put in and helped with various activities such as placements, admissions, clubs, ISB blogs, summits, conferences, events, communications, winning B-school competitions, special initiatives, etc. the selection committee handpicked the winners. At the award function, Professor N Viswanadham, Executive Director, Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS), also Chair Person of the selection board for these awards, gave away mementos and certificates to this deserving group of students.

Recipient of Young Leader’s award Kaavya Kasturirangan said, “To be recognised among such a distinguished peer group, is an honour in itself. The award is a huge morale booster and I will aim to live up to expectations placed upon me.”

Added Young Leader Ritu Garg, President of the Healthcare Club at the ISB, “It is a recognition and appreciation of our efforts to make the Healthcare Club one of its kind in India. Many doctors and healthcare professionals now want to explore opportunities in corporate healthcare. This is because we managed to organise many events which brought together industry leaders and stalwarts from the healthcare sector.” Gautam Chopra is also one of the ISB Young Leaders 2009. He said, “This award has instilled in me even more confidence to face future challenges and emerge a leader in difficult situations. To stand out among the best, one naturally has to do something that is not only different but has the wherewithal to motivate others to believe in it. This in my view is what is required to earn the ISB Young Leader Award.”

His colleague and fellow Young Leader, Karthik Chaitanya Valluru, who was also the President of the Consulting Club at the ISB, added, “The ISB experience is all about challenging the status quo, taking risks and re-defining the limits of your personal boundaries. The School is filled with many bright minds bubbling with amazing ideas, and as the Club President, I saw my role as being one of a facilitator creating a platform to channel the enthusiasm and energy for the better.”

Torch Bearer Amrita Banerjee noted, “If there was one thing I knew from day one at the ISB, it was that I am never going to get such a mix of people to interact with ever. Hence, the idea was to get to know as many of them as I could. The best way to do this was to get involved in everything possible. Thus I participated in and organised as many events as could fit into my 24hour day. It does take up a lot of time and effort, and an award like the Torchbearer’s Award is a recognition which makes it worth it all."

Torch bearer Daniel Gete summed up the evening’s mood beautifully. He confirmed that at the ISB one always feels that he / she is a relevant player. “We are all unique. We all have the right to speak out. And each of us adds up something new to the ISB family. The School is not made of some professors, a bunch of students and staff. We all are managers dealing with business issues. Our work and initiatives here are the result of the common efforts of a very active and committed pool of men and women working together and learning from one another. The ISB has been a completely life-changing experience.”

ISB Young Leader:

Chandrakanth Chereddi
Deepika Bhasin
Gautam Chopra
Gourav Ray
Jacob Joseph Kandathil
Kaavya Kasturirangan
Karthik Chaitanya Valluru
Mita Bedi
Rajarshi Ray
Ritesh Dogra
Ritu Garg
Rohit Kapoor

ISB Torch Bearer:

Aditya Harlalka
Ajay Arora
Amrita Banerjee
Ankita Gupta
Anubhav Goyal
Anuj Srivastava
Anurag Garg
Anurag Krishnan
Aparna Panwar
Aradhana Sharda
Biyas Roy
Chandrani Chakrabarti
Daniel Gete
Debottam Datta
Deepak Vijay Bhatia
Deshbandhu Bansal
Jitin Sethi
Kanchan Lall
Kedar Shashikant Sule
Madhu Raghunathan
Mahima Nanda
Mayank Kumar
Nalin Kant Srivastava
Navin Rajaram
Nihal Kashinath
Niharika Pande
Nimesh Harshad Mehta
Pragati Lodha
Prasad Deshpande
Prashant Lavti
Prashanth Hariharan
Prashanth Purushottam
Radhika Vasanth kumar
Rahul Kumar Rathi
Rajeev Ram Ramprakash
Rakesh Gupta
Rishi Dhand
Sabin Joshi
Santoshi Paul
Saurabh Kapur
Sharvari Nerurkar
Shiladitya Mallik
Ujval Nanavati
Vinay Shenoy
Viren Wilfred Rasquinha

Our Own Amphitheatre- Legacy by the Class of 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:55:03 GMT

Every year the outgoing Class at the ISB leaves behind its mark and memories on the ground of its alma mater. This year the Class of 2009 came together to sponsor and instate a state-of-the-art amphitheatre on campus. The ‘Class of 2009 Amphitheatre’ was inaugurated on April 2, 2009, by Dishan Kamdar, Associate Professor, Organisational Behaviour, and ISB. Professor Kamdar is also the chosen Professor of the Year.

The amphitheatre is designed to accommodate more than 400 people. Surrounded by lush green landscape, it is a perfect location for screening movies, football and cricket matches, and live concerts. The evening’s inauguration was followed by performances by the Music Club at the ISB. It was a life-time experience to be sitting under the blue canopy of twinkling stars and hear the group playing instrumental, classical and rock numbers. A presentation about the Class of 2009 and their life at the ISB during the past one year brought in huge waves of nostalgia.

“The amphitheatre was an impossible task that was completed in 20 days. At all time there were at least two student project managers on site. We are glad we have made it and hope that the successive classes see it as a legacy,” said outgoing student Jacob Kandathil.

Graduation Day 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:47:39 GMT

ISB to Foster Research on Service Sector through the IBM Shared University Award- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:11:26 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB) is the recipient of the Shared University Research(SUR) Awards 2009, sponsored by IT major IBM. The IBM SUR Awards is a worldwide equipment award programme designed to promote research in areas of mutual value and interest to IBM and universities. The ISB bagged this prestigious award to foster research on service supply chain management and service operations management.

“The service sector accounts for most of the world's economic activity, but is the least studied part of the economy. The SUR grant complements the ongoing Open Collaborative Research (OCR) between IBM and the Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the ISB, in the area of service interaction networks,” says Professor N Viswanadham, Executive Director of GLAMS.

Professor Viswanadham further explained that a service interaction network is a new modelling paradigm developed in the OCR for analysing service orchestration. The service interaction network model developed by GLAMS and IBM, captures the past interactions of the service providers and also the outcomes of the interactions. “This is similar in spirit to the social network analysis but with significant differences. Analysis of service interaction networks can help in forming better teams, identifying service providers that need special attention, and also in preventing cartelisation of some service providers. This research is applicable to any service industry where the service delivery process is modular and orchestrated with different service providers,” he added.

The SUR grant by IBM will also support workshops, tutorials, and research in this emerging area of service science.

"Entrepreneurial Drive is the Engine of Markets", says Goldman Sachs Chairman at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:02:05 GMT

Full Speech

Present at the Indian School of Business (ISB) was Lloyd C Blankfein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. During his visit, he interacted with the participants of the ISB Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Programme and also addressed the ISB community on the topic, ‘The Importance of Entrepreneurialism to Economic Growth.’

The ISB is a partner in 10,000 Women, a global initiative by Goldman Sachs, to provide business and management education to 10,000 female entrepreneurs. This partnership is the most recent collaboration in the longstanding relationship between the ISB and Goldman Sachs, dating back to 2001. Blankfein is also a member of the ISB Governing Board.

Through 10,000 Women, the ISB is training 60 women per year in a 150 hour certificate programme in entrepreneurship. Twenty nine women graduated in January 2009 and 29 more women will graduate in May 2009. Blankfein interacted with the 10,000 women scholars, who recalled their experiences during the programme and its impact on their individual business. “Their stories are nothing short of remarkable. These are individuals who are working to improve the standard of living for themselves and their families,” he said about the group. He added that Goldman Sachs is making this investment in women entrepreneurs because it sees a powerful connection between growth and empowering women. Research conducted by Goldman Sachs, the World Bank and others has shown that investing in women improves standards of living, not just for individuals, but for their communities. Women tend to invest in the success of their families and those around them. This leads to healthier, safer, better educated families and more prosperous communities.

During his key address Blankfein emphasised that, “Entrepreneurial drive is the engine of markets. It breaks conventions. It forges opportunities. And, it fosters growth.” He also mentioned that the ISB has been a leading cultivator of entrepreneurship in India and throughout Asia. “Through dedicated resources like the Alum Entrepreneurship Showcase and the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurial Development, the ISB makes tremendous contributions to the Indian economy,” he added.

Blankfein drove home the point that during the present times of economic stress, there is a natural tendency to pull back and constrict funding. “The stakes are enormous. And the challenges to our global economy are significant. But the look of hope and the mark of progress in an individual are infectious. All one has to do is spend an hour on the campus of the ISB, and you can’t help but have a renewed sense of confidence and optimism,” he mentioned. Blankfein also participated in the ISB’s celebration of Earth Day.

For further information on the 10,000 Women programme, please visit www.10000women.org.

On Earth Day ISB Works towards a 'Green Generation'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:20:51 GMT

The ISB community celebrated Earth Day on April 22, 2009. The first sapling was planted by Lloyd C Blankfein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc, who was present on the campus the same day.

An enthusiastic group of students, faculty and staff members gathered near the Children’s Park on campus, all ready to plant their very own tree and make their mark on grounds of the ISB. People turned up in huge numbers to do their bit for mother earth braving the scorching heat. This year fruit bearing trees like mango, chiku, orange and jack fruit were planted.

For many of the students present, it was their first experience of planting a tree. One of them commented that to plant a tree correctly was not really an easy job. “But I am looking forward to coming back in the years to see how well my tree has grown,” he added.

“We plant trees on Earth Day every year at the ISB. I’m looking forward to seeing the little plants grow. We have planted mango trees and other fruits this year. So, I think this will become the most frequently visited area in the campus soon,” said M R Rao, Dean Emeritus, ISB, who was an active participant at the venue.

“Planting trees is just our small way of giving back to the planet that we live in,” added Kshitij Srivastava, Class of 2010.

Everyone present made a pledge to plant more trees in June during the Green Day Celebrations at the ISB.

The Class of 2010 - An Overview- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:42:35 GMT

Class of 2010 Graphs

The newest members at the Indian School of Business (ISB) are the 579 students from the Class of 2010. A week now at the ISB, the new Class comes from a myriad of functional, industry and academic backgrounds. It is a group of students diverse in interests, ambitions, and points of view. Together they bring to the ISB the strength of diversity, in terms of professional and cultural perspectives.

This year the mean age of the new batch is 27 years, with maximum age being 39. The GMAT average is 716, with 22 percent scoring 750 and above. The Class has an average work experience of five years. There are 336 students with international work experience, while 17 students were self-employed before joining the ISB. 26 percent of the total body of students are female, and 28 percent of the Class is married. The Class of 2010 represents work functions as diverse as IT Consulting products, Law, Media, Communication, Medicine, Marine Engineering, Consulting, Finance etc., and together they strike a right balance between technical and non technical backgrounds.

This year athleticism is a hallmark for many of the incoming students. So, we have here the youngest volleyball referee at a Men's Olympic Gold Medal Match, a marathon runner, and a scuba diver. Adding to the new Class’s character is the lead singer of a band, winner of an international creative painting competition, and the promoter of a housing and infrastructure company.

The Class is chequered with the genius of a University Gold Medallist in Pharmaceutical Sciences, a GE Innovator award winner who has filed 8 patent applications, a 6 patents holder in semiconductor industry. Not to beat the ingredient of valour, the new Class boasts of a winner of the President's Police Medal for Gallantry, a recipient of medals for leading 106 men in counter insurgency operations, and a Siachen Glacier Medal Award winner.

'O Week' - Class of 2010 is Back to School- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:44:38 GMT

The ‘Orientation Week’ at the Indian School of Business (ISB) is about starting out ‘amazing’ and ending up ‘outstanding’. For the new Class of 2010, ‘O Week’ meant 25 events, rolled out during seven days. A preamble to the hectic pace at the ISB, it means that when students commence the first semester, they are already 'in the know'. ‘O week’ warms them to know where people and stuff can be found, how to get from A to B, where to find help and assistance.

On April 11, 2009, 579 freshers gathered at the School’s Khemka Auditorium, where Dean Ajit Rangnekar addressed the new Class, welcoming each of them followed by a small presentation by the Graduate Students Board, a presentation on the ISB’s Portfolio Faculty Model by Professor Ravi Bapna and a grand welcome dinner for the Class of 2010.

The week comprised an endless event list of entertainment, club presentations, leadership development programmes, competitions, interactive activities etc. Students were divided into 8 sections and each section was led by 10-12 alums. The week kicked off with innovative, funfilled games to break the ice and also to set the pace for the entire year at the ISB. Gyan sessions, a brief on the achievements of the section in the last academic year, a presentation on ISB traditions, an impromptu tutorial on section chants, campus tours, treasure hunts to familiarise students with the campus, were a few highlights of the ‘O week’.

“The class of 2010 seems like a very initiative-taking batch. In just two days they managed to change three section chants, which have been there for years. The section I am leading has two national level Bharatnatyam dancers, the youngest volleyball referee at a Men's Olympic Gold Medal Match, etc. It is a very diverse batch and I am very glad that diversity at the ISB is increasing” said alum Rajarshi Ray, President of the Net Impact Club, Class of 2009.

“The orientation programme has been very well arranged. The clubs and the presentations made by the Centres of Excellence were very impressive and it just added to the idea I already had about ISB”, said Sumedha Chakraborty, Class of 2010. Said Rishika Chandan, Class of 2010, “O Week was a very well thought out and well structured programme. It was very strenuous but it has taught me how to get the right balance.”

At the end of the ‘O week’, students are geared to enter a period of personal transformation as they acquire new skills, knowledge, freedom, confidence and as with any new adventure, it pays to acquire all the knowledge before you set out on the next journey.

Transcending Borders - International Students at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:28:44 GMT

The new Class of 2010 at the Indian School of Business (ISB) has a considerable size of international students. The number of international students in the present batch has actually gone up by 80 percent as compared to last year.

On campus are students, from Spain, Nepal, Canada, Brazil, USA, France and Ukraine. The ISB has had a long tradition of integrating international students into its composition. Right from the first batch in the year 2001, international students have been an integral part of the ISB community. “I was a little nervous about coming to India by myself, but after one week I am very confident that I have made one of the best decisions of my life,” said Mark Warren Gardiner, from Canada. “Not only are the facilities world class, but I have met a student body that is very intelligent, highly driven and have made me feel very welcome.”

What makes them choose the ISB as a desired destination for management education over places closer to their homes? “I chose the ISB because I was looking for a one year MBA programme in Asia, especially in India, since I have been working in the IT sector. Once here, you realise you could not have made a better choice. The ambience, the campus, the facilities, the conferences and over all the possibilities offered by the ISB are incredible,” said Carmen GarcÃa Herrero from Spain.

The ISB campus is already a big hit with all the international students. Pedro Henrique Lemgruber Vilela from Brazil says, “The school infrastructure is excellent – full of nature, animals, peace, no cars and traffic, recreation, family friendly surrounds, etc.” Pedro also says that, “The ISB is a great institute for every international student who is looking for an opportunity to develop not only technical business issues, but also as a person and human being.”

Thomas Raymond Hyland, from the USA, sums up the new experience of studying in a new land beautifully. He says, “The future of humanity rests on the shoulders of leaders that can transcend borders and gravitate towards complex issues, wherever they exist. Since there is no substitute for experience, and since one cannot begin to learn about other countries or cultures without full immersion, there is only one option if one has to understand the world’s most important economic, political, and social growth story over the course of our lifetimes – the ISB.”

A Second Innings in Business- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:57:57 GMT

It’s back to school for 17 entrepreneurs who have joined the Indian School of Business (ISB) this year. As new challenges emerge on the business front, more and more CEOs and managing directors are finding the need to get back to business schools.

CEOs, managing directors, managing partners, directors from enterprises like the pharmaceutical industry, jewellery business, brick manufacturing company, textile mills, educational institutes, real estate development etc., are now part of the Class of 2010 at the ISB. And they are not reluctant to admit that they need to learn, re-learn and equip themselves with key tools of business and management education.

“I come from a conventionally-run family business background. I have handled many roles in the business. However, I felt that my work was getting limited and redundant. I was looking for a change in my focus, and what better than to take a short time span off and reflect on where you really see yourself in 10 years. Putting it in a nutshell, I am here to refine my learning experience and to take my work to higher levels,” says Adarsh Gupta, who was the managing partner at a textile mill.

“Due to various factors, my business did not provide me with any growth opportunities. Thus, I was forced to explore new avenues by way of planning a new entrepreneurial venture. Given the ISB’s focus on entrepreneurship, it was the most preferred choice,” adds Gautam Aggarwal, who has been a partner of a brick manufacturing company.

So, how does it feel to traverse from the boardroom to the new classrooms? Tanya Ramesh Rawal, who has been working with her family run garment exports business, says, “I have been at the ISB for almost two weeks now, and so far the experience has been brilliant. Nowhere else have I seen such unity, bonding and passion amongst alumni, students and faculty. I’m sure that the next 12 months will be a life altering experience for all of us. More than anything else this will be a journey of self discovery and pushing our boundaries to make us emerge as stronger and wiser individuals.”

Through their one year at the ISB, this group of students, with their experiences in a self managed enterprise, will get a splendid opportunity to build goodwill in the industry and gain knowledge, confidence and experience to succeed in their road ahead. Further, it will impart to each of them a professional learning of business and help them rejoin the economy with advanced knowledge of business practices.

Asia's Best Entrepreneur Comes from ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:08:41 GMT

Alumni Vivek Pahwa from the Class of 2006, has been named as Asia's Best Entrepreneur in a recent poll conducted by Business Week. He has been selected amongst 26 accomplished Asian entrepreneurs. A Mechanical Engineer from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Pahwa worked in his family-owned manufacturing business for 2 years before he joined the ISB. Post ISB, he started a social networking site in India called DesiMartini.com., which he later sold to HT Media. Always harbouring a penchant for connecting people digitally, Pahwa next created SecondShaadi.com, a matrimonial site for people looking for a second marriage. The site on date records 70,000 registered users. His third site, Gaadi.com, is a research base for those who are looking to buy a new car. Five months old now, Gaadi.com is a leading automobile web site in India. In an exclusive chat Pahwa shares the ingredients that go in the making of a live-wire entrepreneur.

You are the face of today's young entrepreneur. Was it taking a risk alone? How did you get there?

I would say it has been a combination of passion, risk taking, and a commitment to build something big and different in this space in India. Risk taking is just one aspect. Dealing with uncertainty of going down an uncharted path, and sticking with the decision, and having the fortitude to wait for results is very important. At the end of the day, hard work combined with intelligent strategy does pay dividends in one form or the other, but like in everything else, results come in much later than the effort.

How did ISB fuel your entrepreneurial quotient while you were here? Share with us any such inspirational moment that you had experienced while at ISB.

ISB has been an important part of the journey. An MBA definitely does make you more confident at a younger age, of taking important strategic decisions in business. Albeit largely hypothetical in class, you do relate to these aspects of your learnings at different points. Financial learnings and a financial bent of mind is extremely important to the success of any business, and that was a crucial learning while at the ISB. One additional advantage there was the network. For me at least, the ISB network has been crucial in some of our early successes. It sounds very clichéd, but in this case, the ISB alumni network has been one of our biggest assets. So much so, three of our co-founders are ISB alums.

A quick look at your journey from Desi Martini to Second Shaadi .com/Gaadi.com.

The journey has been an interesting one. Personally, I have learnt a great deal through each venture-on picking the right people, working with and motivating teams, picking the right ideas, facing challenges in execution and the critical factors required for success. I have developed a deeper understanding of the space we operate in which helps through the process. Each success gave us the confidence to build on them further. However, each venture was a different ball game with its own challenges and rewards. My current focus is to grow revenues, and invest in new emerging areas of opportunity for the future. The real growth in our businesses would be seen in the coming years.

The road ahead now for Asia's best entrepreneur in the present times of slowdown.

The space we operate in is emerging as a relatively new medium. There is so much scope for growth, that it is hard to imagine a slowdown. Nobody really knows the extent of the slowdown at this stage. For us, this is the time to invest in products which have strong business models and provide value to users, and at the moment we see tremendous opportunity around us, despite the slowdown.

A Visit from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:36:44 GMT

Twenty three management students from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) recently visited the Indian School of Business (ISB). India, an emerging and fast growing market which is culturally very different from China, was the preferred choice for the group over Singapore and Taiwan.

“Most of the students were keen to visit India. Out of 46 students, 23 have come to India, 11 have gone to Singapore and 12 to Taiwan. This shows the level of interest the students have in studying the Indian economy,” said Murtuza Jabalpurwala, one of the students from CKGSB. “India is also culturally very different and we wanted to get a first hand knowledge about the Indian culture and economy, and also the fact that after China, India is the next emerging market,” he added.

“On Chinese New Year, a lot of students had watched the movie "Slumdog Millionaire." After that the Indian students at CKGSB were asked a lot of questions about India, the economy, the culture etc. That was kind of a decisive point when we chose to visit India over the other countries,” said Dhaneek Satra, also from CKGSB.

The ISB and CKGSB have been partners for the Student Exchange Programme. Organised by the department of Co-Curricular Activities at the ISB, the aim of the programme was to help the visiting students get a global perspective, learn global best practices and a chance to experience another B-school situated in an emerging economy. While at the ISB, the group also attended lectures on the IT industry in India.

“The ISB is ranked Top 15 among B-schools and is one of the top schools in India. It is also very similar to CKGSB. In January, one of our alumni came here on an exchange programme and went back with a very high opinion of this place,” noted student Ryan Li.

“India is now entering the growth phase, whereas China is already in that phase and is going to mature soon. Indian infrastructure is not very good but the economy is still doing well. And this is possible because of the democracy. The visit to the ISB has helped us understand the country’s financial system and the market. We are also going to study some home-grown brands like Infosys and Bisleri,” added Satra.

At the end of the visit the students will make a group project report about their learning of India’s political and economic system. One of the visiting students said, “India and China being neighbours, we think we should know each other more.”

A Talk on Media and Diplomacy- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:54:27 GMT

Ambassador of India to Israel, Navtej Sarna, was present at the Indian School of Business (ISB), to give a talk to the student body on "Media and its Role in Diplomacy." Sarna has served as a diplomat in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Tehran, and Washington DC. He has been India’s Foreign Office Spokesman in New Delhi for six years, the longest serving spokesperson. Before being appointed as the MEA spokesperson, he served as Minister (Press) in the Indian Embassy in Washington. He is also an acclaimed author and columnist.

With a leg each in Diplomacy and Media, Sarna said that he “survived” in his role as a spokesperson while dealing with an “amorphous and unpredictable” industry of the Media. Drawing parallels between the worlds of Diplomacy and Media, he said that in present times, whichever sphere of work one belongs to, everyone has an interface with the media, and to deny this fact is no longer possible. Diplomats, like the Media, are basically communicators and messengers who communicate the image, interest, displeasure etc. of ones’ country, he explained. “These two worlds are based on communication, they are sister worlds and should be best of partners, but I believe they are more step sisters," he noted. The reason for the differences, Sarna noted, were that the traditional mould of Diplomacy has always been ‘work done behind closed doors.’ The classical image of diplomacy is that of a Diplomat sitting in a dark suite writing secret telegrams. In contrast, the Media has one objective – get a story and tell it. And thus, the conflict arises when one is trained to hide and the other is trained to convey.

Sarna said that the two seemingly irreconcilable worlds could live as adversaries, but in today’s world where technology has resulted in an exponential growth in the quantity of media, this is not doable any more. “Twenty five years ago there used to be one camera. Today there are at least 25 live cameras, then there are agencies, online newspapers etc. It has changed the speed of delivery, there is no time to recover," he said. “Technology has had its impact on our jobs. The job of a Foreign Office spokesperson does not remain that of a reporter but is more analytical now. It demands that he adds value to the news, analyse the political impact etc.”

Another observation made by Sarna was that the interest in foreign affairs among the Indian media has increased. “We have aggressive, competitive, young media people today, and foreign affairs are no longer the preserve of Diplomats and senior editors. The best media beat today is foreign affairs and not many would want to cover agriculture and railways,” he said.

Sarna also shared some tips on how to deal with the media, "They are not your adversary ,you have to co-opt, realise that they are doing their job, the Media on their part should realise that being a Diplomat we can say only this much, end of the day it is about human relations and making friends and dealing with them as professionals, respect their deadlines, say a ‘no’ quickly, don’t adopt an attitude, be direct, learn to differentiate between print and television journalists, and last don’t take the press for granted."

His talk was followed by a very interactive Q & A session on issues as diverse as media regulation, Indo-Israel relationship, Nuclear deal with the US, role of a diplomat in a hostile situation, etc.

'Transforming Companies to Sustain High Performance' - A Discussion with Michael J Christenson- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:02:50 GMT

Michael J Christenson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Computer Associates (CA) visited the Indian School of Business (ISB) on April 29, 2009. Christenson, who was responsible for CA's worldwide sales, marketing, technical services, customer support, employee training, business development and strategic alliances of the organisation, addressed the students at the ISB with the knowledge to improve performance and maximise their full potential during times of adversity, changes and reorganisation.

During this period of economic uncertainty, many organisations are looking for ways to guard the hard earned dollars and cents. As the corporate agenda is slowly shifting from the growth to preservation mode, Christenson looked back on his five years at CA, and shared with the students his experience and how they did things differently. “For 25 years CA was running on one business model – Go buy customers, go buy technology. It was very important to transform the organisation. First, we re-engineered the sales organisation - defined our customers, built in a sales system and created a very clear quantitative benchmark to know exactly what we want to accomplish,” said Christenson.

Initiating innovation during an economic downturn may be viewed as too expensive, but the pursuit of high performance cannot be put on hold. “Development organisation re-engineering was the next step,” added Christenson. “We went in from the acquisition model to innovating our own technology. And modernisation of infrastructure was the final step and this was absolutely critical. CA has been doing this re-engineering for about three years now, spending $ 300 million (10 percent of the total operating expenditure.)”

Christenson summed up the address by saying, “Simplify processes, define processes and get rid of inefficient processes to run the business efficiently."

Senior Diplomats Attend Management Development Workshop at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 01 May 2009 17:51:56 GMT

The Centre for Executive Education (CEE) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently conducted a Management Development Workshop for senior diplomats in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. The aim was to provide the diplomats with perspectives and insights on key aspects of the Indian and the Global Economy, Trade and Investments, Energy Security policies pursued by different countries, all which will help them pursue the agenda of Economic Diplomacy more effectively.

The broad focus of this programme was to get senior diplomats to develop competencies and skills that focus on three objectives - first, economic and energy related policy issues, which are within the domain of foreign policy, second, long-term policy analysis and decision-making, and third, leadership skills to motivate and lead people working with them, and for influencing multiple stakeholders.

The group was also updated with current practices in the areas of Strategic Management and Leadership, for effectively engaging with their own teams as well as Indian communities in their host countries, dealing with uncertainty while pushing for long-term policy changes, and for negotiating and influencing their counterparts in different countries.

Professor Krishna Kumar held a session on ‘Economic Diplomacy’ where he discussed topics in global economic policy and relations, that would facilitate Joint Secretaries and Envoys to proactively promote economic co-operation with the countries of their accreditation. Another session on 'Energy Policy' by Professor James Bartis, Senior Policy Researcher, RAND, tackled issues on global and regional demand for energy, the energy security issues associated with dependence on energy imports, etc. He helped the group understand the nexus between foreign policy and domestic energy policies and guided them on how to frame opportunities for international collaboration that benefit India. Professor Atul Nerkar conducted sessions on 'Strategic Decision Making and Implementation,' and an intensive session was undertaken by Professor Sudhanshu Palsule on 'Leadership, Change Management and Power and Influence.' Professors Steven W Popper, and Robert J Lempert, both from RAND Corporation, held sessions on 'Scenario Planning.'

In addition to the class-room based discussions, there were few Guest Speaker Sessions and an interactive panel discussion and dialogue with the diplomats, to help participants appreciate divergent and rich perspectives brought in by the panel members who came from diverse backgrounds.

'Winning in India' - The story of Coca-Cola in India- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:18:06 GMT

A steady, growing, up-and-coming market, reliable business community, intellectual manpower, engineering expertise and a liberal economic system has made India a very attractive destination for business. To talk about how global companies like Coca-Cola strategise and adapt to growing economies, Atul Singh, President and CEO of Coca-Cola, India, visited the Indian School of Business (ISB) on May 6, 2009.

“I have heard so much about the ISB. The number of students at the school is increasing every year and it is a tremendous achievement that the school has put together to get so many students. This is truly a world class institution,” said Atul Singh. "You folks have such a privileged future. Now people would give their right arm to be in India, study in India and work in India.”

Singh shared with the students, his journey with Coca-Cola and why everybody is excited about India. The three most important factors that Singh discussed were the opportunities that India has, how Coca-Cola markets in India and Indianness. “Being successful in all the three is important. You may do a very good job of marketing in India but if you are not Indian or seen as an Indian or as a local insider over time, you may not be as successful or as sustainable,” said Singh.

Talking of the opportunity that India has, Singh stated four macro factors that are in favour of Coca-Cola in India - long term economic prospects being buoyant despite the current slowdown, rise in India’s middle class population (according to a McKinsey study it is expected to grow from 50 mm to 585 mm by 2025,) rise in households that can afford discretionary consumption (from 8 mm to 94 mm by 2025) and young India being the new consuming class (10 percent of the world is an Indian under the age of 25.)

With the tremendous opportunities that India has to offer, there are still challenges one has to face. “Retail is all fragmented, poor infrastructure, operating environment is challenging and baffling, distribution and high price sensitivity are a few,” said Singh. Despite all, the economy is growing and how Coca-Cola markets to India is a question a lot of people ask. “If we put all the complexity and challenges, there is no one India. Our tastes and habits are different. When you have multiple fragmented audiences you need something to bring them all together. You look at passions, something that unites everybody. And it is cinema and cricket in India. There are other passions, but these are the two that we work with,” added Singh.

Commenting on advertising, Singh said, “There are more than 300 television channels in India. So, we look where people are watching the most and advertise there. From pure television we are also advertising on Facebook, Twitter etc.”

Singh concluded the session by presenting television commercials of Coke, Maaza, Minute Maid, Thums Up, Limca and Kinley. A small clipping on Coca-Cola’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was shown to the students as well. “We have built a CSR framework where we are going to be working on the work place, market place, environment and community and we want to operate as an institution in India.”

Visiting Scholar at the ISB studies Indian Economy- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:06:58 GMT

Professor John Leahy has joined the Indian School of Business (ISB) as a Visiting Scholar. He is visiting the ISB till June 18, 2009. Leahy is the Professor of Economics at New York University. A PhD in Economics from the Princeton University, 1990, Leahy has done his Masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, 1986 and Bachelors in History, German and Math from William's College, 1984. His research interests are in the areas of Macroeconomics, Economic Theory, Urban Economics and Behavioural Economics.

Every year the ISB hosts a number of Visiting Scholars to pursue their research at the School. To study the Indian Economy and how different it is from the US Economy, Leahy has visited the ISB as part of his research. “One of my goals in visiting the ISB has been to learn more about the Indian Economy and Indian economic growth. India has been undergoing dramatic changes over the past decade. It is a fantastic success story. At the same time high growth tends to obscure other problems, which makes it interesting. I have found interacting with the students and faculty a richly rewarding experience,” said Leahy.

Leahy is also the Co-Editor of American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and a Consultant with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has worked on a number of publications and papers and has also received many awards for his excellence in teaching.

Top Researchers Participate in Summer Research Conference 2008 in Finance- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:39:25 GMT

The Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), hosted the Summer Research Conference 2008 in Finance during August 7 - 10, 2008. The Conference started with a reception for the participants on the evening of August 7. Paper presentations and discussions took place on the following three days. The Conference was held in the Academic Centre on the ISB campus in Hyderabad, India.

The theme of the Conference was Recent Advances in Corporate Finance. As in the past years, finance researchers from across the world submitted papers to the Conference. An international committee of experts selected fifteen papers from those submitted. The committee included Viral Acharya, Franklin Allen, Arnoud Boot, Glenn Boyle, Bhagwan Chowdhry, Stijn Claessens, Francesca Cornelli, Sudipto Dasgupta, Asli Demirguc-Kunt, Joseph Fan, Charles Hadlock, Thomas Hellmann, Kose John, Han Kim, Kai Li, Vojislav Maksimovic, Tom Noe, Terry Odean, NR Prabhala, Manju Puri, Subrata Sarkar, and Anjan Thakor.

The selected papers included theoretical as well as empirical papers. Papers with a focus on new ideas and concepts, or cutting-edge tools and techniques of analysis, figured prominently. Significantly, the conference included a full slate of papers on financial crisis, currently the most hotly debated finance topic. The selected papers were presented and discussed in five sessions:

Institutional environment
Corporate governance
Credit decisions
Investment decisions
Financial crisis

Professor Michael Brennan (UCLA and CAF Academic Fellow 2008) delivered the keynote address at the conference. Apart from ISB faculty, the paper presenters and discussants at the Conference included a roster of top researchers in corporate finance based in Asia, Europe, and North America, including three past Presidents of the American Finance Association: Franklin Allen (Wharton), Michael Brennan (UCLA), and Richard Roll (UCLA). There was a USD 5,000 award generously funded by Citigroup for the best paper presented at the conference. An award committee consisting of Michael Brennan, Chair, Sumit Agarwal, member; Federal Reserve Bank Chicago and ISB) and Rambhadran Thirumalai, member; ISB gave the award to Benjamin Keys, Michigan, Tanmoy Mukherjee, Sorin Capital Management, Amit Seru, Chicago, and Vikrant Vig London Business School for their paper Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence From Subprime Loans 2001-2006

All participants were of the opinion that it was a very high quality Conference. The presentations and the discussions at the conference were lively, thought-provoking, and cutting-edge. Following the Conference, Franklin Allen wrote back to the conference organizers, “It has been a long time since I have been to a conference with such high quality”.

For more information about the conference, please visit the conference website http://www.isb.edu/financeconference2008/index.shtml

Second Annual CAF - FIC - SIFR Conference- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:54:42 GMT

Venue: Swedish Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) at Stockholm

Starting 2007, the Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, the Financial Institutions Center (FIC) at the Wharton School, and the Swedish Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) at Stockholm will organise joint research conferences in the area of emerging market finance. The conferences are annual,held in spring, and rotate between Philadelphia, Stockholm, and Hyderabad.

The second CAF - FIC - SIFR conference was held in Stockholm, April 17-19, 2008. The theme for the conference was Emerging Market Finance.

Summer Research Conference 2007 in Finance- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:33:40 GMT

World Environment Day at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:51:51 GMT

On the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5, the entire community at the Indian School of Business (ISB), came together to participate in a tree-planting ceremony.

The event saw an impressive turnout of students, faculty, and staff, each eager to do their bit for a greener campus. The group planted saplings inside the School campus. The ISB is the epitome of an environment friendly campus with over one lakh different varieties of plants, and this year to spread and renew the green culture, colourful Gulmohar and the tall Peltophorum saplings were planted in the campus. To create more awareness about energy efficiency, products like solar lamps were also displayed at the School, as part of the Environment Day celebrations.

“Planting trees is a great initiative by the ISB. Trees play an important role in preventing global warming. As trees are an integral part of the water cycle, they can help solve the water problems in most parts of India. We are here to ensure that we do our bit for the environment,” said Nishant Banore, Class of 2010.

“Trees provide several benefits to human beings and each one of us needs to plant more trees for a better tomorrow,” added Shruthi Manisha, student spouse.

This day is not an isolated event and the ISB community continuously, throughout the year, strives to do its bit to carry forward the green culture. A case in the point is that plastic bags are not used anywhere in the campus. Recently jute bags were distributed to the students, resident spouses, faculty and staff members as part of the ISBs green initiative.

“The ISB campus is very green and beautiful and it is an honour to make it even better,” said Yannick Even, Class of 2010.

ISB Launches 'SBI Cell for Public Sector Leadership'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:38:00 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB) in association with The State Bank of India (SBI), signed a MoU to set up a Research Cell on Public Sector Leadership in India at the ISB campus. The MoU was signed by Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB and R K Sharma, Chief General Manager, SBI, Hyderabad Circle, in the presence of O P Bhatt, Chairman, State Bank Group and other top officials from SBI and Governing Board members from the ISB.

The cell titled ‘SBI Cell for Public Sector Leadership’, will focus on innovation, change management, organisational transformation, leadership comparisons between public and private enterprises, managerial mindsets and risk taking in middle management and will function under the aegis of the Centre for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) at the ISB.

Making the announcement, Dean Rangnekar said, “We are privileged to be associated with the SBI for conducting research on Public Sector Leadership in India. The PSUs have played a very important role in ensuring inclusive growth in India. At the same time, they have adapted to meeting global opportunities and challenges. This need for ensuring inclusive growth, while meeting domestic and global competitive pressures has put enormous leadership demands on the PSU. The ISB will create a knowledge repository on these leadership issues especially in India. The objective of this research cell will be to draw lessons from the performance of successful PSUs, identify areas for further improvement in their performance, and contribute lessons for the private sector and how they both can work collaboratively towards inclusive growth.”

SBI, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities, set up a Research and Development Fund with the primary objective of supporting research work related to the banking industry and emerging financial scenario. Under the Fund, research grants are extended to universities and reputed academic and research institutions for undertaking research projects and as part of this CSR activity, SBI has partnered with the ISB. “We are proud to be associated with the ISB to set up the ‘SBI Cell for Public Sector Leadership,’ which will focus on Public Sector Leadership and the various related issues which would form the topics for research and case studies undertaken by the Cell. The outputs would be of relevance to industry in general and public sector enterprises in particular,” said Bhatt.

As a part of the launch, a high profile executive roundtable was held which saw participation from the heads of 30 top PSUs in the country. The session included debates on topics such as – ‘Are Indian PSUs equipped to exploit new opportunities,’ ‘Deal with the new challenges optimally,’ ‘Identify organisational challenges,’ ‘Discuss the role of leadership and Strategy for PSUs to maintain a balance between achieving their objectives of performance as well as social responsibility.’

ISB launches the Biocon Cell for Innovation Management- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:05:03 GMT

The Indian School of Business (ISB), in partnership with Biocon Limited, launched the Biocon Cell for Innovation Management (BCIM) to promote innovation in business. The Cell will be established under the aegis of the Centre for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC) at the ISB.

The primary objective of the BCIM will be to foster innovation and link it to operational excellence. The Cell will also help organisations with issues like the gaps in a company’s ability to innovate, assessing the required understanding to manage and mitigate risks associated with innovation and how to produce high value, high quality, strategic innovation at low cost. Biocon will contribute an initial investment of Rs 1 crore to set up the Cell and will provide further funding later.

The partnership between Biocon and the ISB further strengthens the trend started by the ISB when its founding fathers attracted the support of the industry to establish a business school of international quality in India. “The ISB ushered in several innovative practices in Indian management education. We are proud to partner with Biocon for setting up a Cell for studying innovation and spreading the knowledge of the process that underlies innovation. It is a befitting partnership for I know that innovation is in Biocon’s DNA. I am confident that this Biocon Cell within the CLIC at the ISB will produce high quality research and educational output in business innovation,” said Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB.

Commenting on the new initiative, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon Ltd and Executive Board Member, ISB, said, “We have to find new solutions for the unique challenges we face in India and innovation is the key to forge this. At Biocon, innovation has been our driving force right from inception. I would like the Biocon Cell for Innovation to understand the process of innovation and create and develop champions who will make innovation a part of company culture.”

Professor Prasad Kaipa, Executive Director, CLIC, ISB and other prominent industry leaders and academics in the area of innovation and strategy will comprise the Board of BCIM. “India and other emerging markets have developed breakthrough ideas in the process of facing challenges unique to their countries. BCIM will focus on understanding and streamlining these knowledge processes through research. We will discover best practices, success stories and processes that have worked for various organisations and prepare a framework that can be implemented by any company across the world,” Professor Kaipa said.

A Gold Milestone for the ISB Net Impact Chapter- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:31:43 GMT

The Net Impact Chapter at the Indian School of Business (ISB) was recently recognised as the ‘2009 Net Impact Gold Chapter’. The ISB chapter achieved the gold status, from its previously held bronze rating, in just a year's time, and is now one among the world's most acclaimed chapters. Gold Chapters, according to Net Impact, are defined as chapters that meet and significantly exceed Net Impact Central Chapter's requirements. Gold Chapters make outstanding contributions to the entire Net Impact network. It is note-worthy to mention that this year, only seventeen percent of graduate chapters worldwide achieved silver status and seven percent achieved the coveted gold status.

As a Gold Chapter, the ISB Net Impact chapter will now receive honours such as promotion in the Net Impact conference guidebook, announcement in the annual Business as Unusual Guide, a sum of $400 in conference discounts for members, a letter from Net Impact Executive Director, Liz Maw, to the administration announcing the chapter’s achievement, a special logo created by Net Impact Central for ISB chapter to use in communications and branding and media outreach.

Says Rajarshi Ray, the Chapter President from the Class of 2009, “The Net Impact Chapter at the ISB was Asia's first chapter and has also been a pioneer when it came to instituting several first best practices. Several new activities like campus greening, social advocacy and communications were added to the club last year and the number of events and impact achieved doubled from that of the previous years. More importantly, turning gold from bronze, bypassing silver completely in a year's time is an achievement that doesn't belong to the class of 2009 alone, but also one that is to be shared with all previous batches, the ISB faculty, staff and student spouses.”

Net Impact is an international not for profit organisation with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world. At the ISB, the Chapter’s mission is to inspire student interest in applying business skills towards positive social impact and to promote awareness of socially responsible and sustainable practices. With 200 members, the Chapter focuses on NGO capacity building, pro-bono consulting, social entrepreneurship, career, social sensitisation and advocacy, community events, campus greening, fund raising, marketing and communication.

“The gold status shows how the entire ISB community works towards social causes. This will definitely make the ISB an ideal place for social sector employees, and will get the School good leverage among other institutions worldwide,” said Nishant Banore, Class of 2010.

During the academic year 2008-2009, the ISB Chapter rallied their campus, surrounding community and businesses in India to help the state of Bihar during the devastating floods, which claimed more than 2,000 lives. They raised about $22,000, secured four tons of supplies and even coordinated their own supply chain. Apart from this, the Chapter also organised many activities throughout the year such as Bandhan (an initiative for underprivileged children), blood donation camps, tree plantations on campus, campaigns to reduce plastic bag consumption, etc.

The recognition is truly a well etched out milestone for all the members!

A discussion on the 'Indian Perspective of Wealth Management'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:06:20 GMT

During a recent visit at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Pallav Sinha, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Fullerton Securities and Wealth Advisors Limited, India, interacted with the students and discussed with them the ‘Indian Perspective of Wealth Management.’ Calling it a privilege to be at the ISB and to address the students, some of the topics Sinha discussed during the session were - the different segments in business, importance of customer relationship, the formula for success etc.

Talking about the philosophy of Fullerton’s business and what kind of space it has in the Indian market, Sinha said, “Most of us have heard of fortune being made at the top of the pyramid and at the bottom of the pyramid. But there is a huge business opportunity in the middle segment, which often tends to be ignored. This is not a prime target market for a majority of the people.” According to Sinha, it is possible to make huge business propositions in this segment for a variety of reasons - there are very few people here like the micro-finance companies, small personal loan companies etc., that target the lower income. Sinha calls this the ‘underserved segment’ and calls the one right on top the ‘spoilt for choice segment,’ as every financial services company and bank targets this. “It is important to understand what each segment requires, and quite obviously at the bottom it is more basic needs and as you go on top it gets sophisticated,” added Sinha.

Retail financial service players find it extremely difficult to enter at the sophisticated level and create product structures and a business proposition there. Entering at the middle segment is the best option for a new entrant because it allows one to acquire new relationships and deepen them over a period of time. “It is a great strategy for acquiring entry and new customers, because in consumer business the number of customers define your success factor,” mentioned Sinha.

The other important factor Sinha discussed was customer relationship. He said, “One should be able to measure customer profitability, and in my experience it is extremely difficult to measure it because all financial services and banks are sometimes unable to identify how many products a customer has. “As it is not possible for one entity to deliver multiple products, according to Sinha, the recipe for success is to identify customers across products and deliver. Customers should be able to get all the information they require from one person at one point.

Sinha ended the session by sharing the four most important factors in business execution and implementation, which are customer experience, product programmes, sales and pricing. “It is important to have an implementation plan. Here, there is no scope to do different things but it is about doing things differently like reducing cost of acquisition, looking at credit margin and not credit losses etc. At the same time it is very important to define your unique value proposition to tell people what you stand for in the market. But it can never be static. You need to constantly revaluate it and fine tune it,” concluded Sinha.

The highly interactive dialogue ended with a Q&A session.

C K Prahalad Shares Vision of 'India at 75'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:21:37 GMT

Full Text of Address by CK Prahalad

C K Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished Professor of Strategy, University of Michigan, and one of the most influential thinkers on business strategy today, addressed the community at the Indian School of Business (ISB). The theme of his talk was his vision of ‘India at 75’. The Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) ‘India at 60’ celebrations at New York saw the genesis of this vision, which focusses on what India can accomplish in the next 15 years, and more importantly, what it will take to accomplish these goals during that period.

Prahalad recreated his shared inclusive vision about India at the event at ISB, organised in partnership with CII and Young Indians (Yi). “I will start with the conclusion and then work backward,” he opened his talk with these lines. The conclusion, according to him, was that India should have the right and the ability to “shake the emerging world order” - be it in the area of human rights, world trade, agri-policy, IP, etc.

“I believe there is a whole host of issues that the world is grappling with, and India along with some other countries, should have the rightful place to set the stage of how the world will be in the next 50-60 years,” he stated.

According to Prahalad, India must shape this emerging world order and not be a passive recipient. To this end it needs three pillars – “economic strength, technological vitality (not just innovation and science but contribution to fundamentally new ideas), and the third and most critical pillar being moral leadership”.

The need was, Prahalad explained, to leverage India’s strength - its huge population base. “We can create 200 million graduates and 500 million trained professionals in every field of human endeavour,” said Prahalad. According to him Indians working in any field, needed to be trained in global standards, be equipped with professional conduct and ethics, and compensated properly, and then each of them will be able to compete with anyone in the world. “Very few countries in the world can aspire to be so. And if we succeed, we can become the intellectual hub of the world, and it will change the quality of life of every Indian,” he noted.

India at 75, according to Prahalad will have 30 of its business companies listed in the Fortune 100 firms of the world, and it can create 10 percent of world trade. Further, India will become a source of global innovations - new businesses, new technologies and new business models. “I believe India can be a source of both institutional innovation like public private partnerships, and partnership with biz and civil society, as well as new biz models,” he said.

The Bottom of the Pyramid, according to Prahalad, was a huge source of innovation, and not just a market or micro producer. “I believe we have the opportunity to become the first country to provide world class education, healthcare, good energy and transportation, and do it in a sustainable way. I believe there can be a great flowering of intellectual energy, art, literature, etc.”

He explained that the greatest strength that India has is its secularism – the multiple rituals, languages, and customs – the diversity held together with a common idea. “We can leverage diversity and become the benchmark country in the world, as 90 percent of the conflicts of the worlds are due to inability to cope with diversity."

After this Prahalad set the audience at the ISB thinking on - “If this is the prize and potential of India, how do I get there? What am I willing to do that’s different?” Some of the principles he shared were –“You need to have an aspiration which is larger than your resource base - that is the definition of an entrepreneur. The problem is not resource but imagination, inventiveness, and shared aspirations.”

“You cannot get there from here. You have to imagine India at 75, and then fold the future in. We need to fold in the future rather than extrapolating the past. We have to take small steps and clear steps, but move with a sense of urgency and purpose. Some steps may be experimental. Next, do not only focus on best practices. If everybody benchmarks, the rest will gravitate towards mediocrity. So I suggest a focus instead on ‘next practices’,” he said

According to the seer in Prahalad, in the year in 2022, abject poverty will not be the issue of concern in India, but a bigger monster will be income inequality and lifestyle inequality, urbanisation and the emergence of universal aspirations, a dramatic change in price-performance relationships, and ecological crisis. “We need transparent solutions and transactions,” he urged. He said that there was a need to regulate the private sector more sensibly. “Use civil society to check and balance what the private sector is doing. Together the government, the private sector, and the civil sector can enable growth and opportunity for all, but with an honest regulatory process,” he noted.

In conclusion he shared some more insights– “Incrementalism will not get us there. To become a leader in the world we must begin by creating a shared commitment to aspirations supported by creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We need to have a shared understanding of the goals not of the means.” He declared that India needed a minimum of 500 new cities to accommodate migration, “otherwise every city will become a slum – and it is the human conditions I worry about, not the slums.” Finally, “Corrupt nations don’t develop human capital and corrupt countries are not rich – corruption is a way of managing shortages not about human character.”

There was a need to change mental models of what India is going to be, Prahalad felt. He shared with the audience his notion of an innovation sand-box. That is how to operate and innovate within given constraints. “Work within these constraints. As long as we innovate within those constraints we will do exceptionally well," he said.

“If we cannot imagine this India, we cannot create it. Imagination and belief in India’s true destiny is what we need,” these were the inspiring words he left the audience with.

Intel Corporation's Executive Vice President at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:01:17 GMT

June 18, 2009: Arvind Sodhani, Executive Vice President, Intel Corporation and President, Intel Capital was at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently for an interactive session with the students. He discussed with them the importance of investing in technology innovation, perspectives of global economy, opportunities in India, and opportunities for young leaders, etc. Sodhani was accompanied by Sudheer Kuppam, Managing Director, Intel Corporation (India, Japan and South East Asia), Amit Behl, Director, Intel Capital India, and Mahesh Vaidya, Director, Intel Capital.

Giving a brief introduction about investments, Sodhani spoke about the current economic scenario and how Intel invests in technology. Intel is into the venture investing business, promoting companies and investing in startup companies, ranging from zero to $ 100 million revenue. “A lot of people do not understand why a corporation has to invest in startup companies. Years ago, Intel came to the conclusion that it will not be able to do all the R&D work to grow the PC eco system.” He also said that, “In the 1980s, operating systems were only available in English. If you wanted one in Chinese, nothing was available. So we invested in a company in China and made the operating system available in Chinese. That got the Chinese market going in the PC space. So what we do is to try and invest in startup technology companies that will help the PC ecosystem.”

As a technology, Intel is all about mobility, laptops, and handheld devices. It is into promoting technologies that compute and communicate and has also invested in the digital enterprise area. “Our aim is to get the PC into the living room in one form or the other. We have also invested in consumer internet and recently started investing in clean tech and green tech, because we believe that it intersects with computing in a major way in the near future,” added Sodhani.

According to Sodhani, for a corporate venture organisation to survive, it is not enough to just produce a strategic return, but also a financial return. Intel’s charter is to invest in companies that are strategic to its objectives, as well as making sure that it is making risk adjusted returns for its shareholders. Talking of Intel’s investments and its achievements, Sodhani said, “In 2008, we invested approximately $ 1.6 billion and this makes us the largest technology investor in the world. We invested in 62 new companies, $ 436 million in new companies, and 19 acquisitions. We are roughly investing about a billion dollars in 100 startup companies throughout the world.”

Sodhani also discussed Intel’s presence in India. Intel has been in India since 1998 and has invested over $ 200 million in 60 companies and is looking at getting the PC penetration up in the country. “PC penetration in India is one of the lowest in the emerging economies that Intel is investing in,” mentioned Sodhani.

Sodhani concluded his presentation with his perspective on the global economy. “Startup investors have to be at the micro level and it is important to make sure that the company you’re investing in is going to be successful. Startup investing is a very risky proposition and most startup companies fail. So you are dealing with a micro level problem. But as a large global investor you also have to deal with the macro level problems, look at countries that are growing, shrinking etc,.” he said.

Sodhani also launched this year’s activities of the Entrepreneurial and Venture Capital (EVC) Club at the ISB. The Charter of the club is to facilitate the spirit of entrepreneurship among the members of the ISB community.

ISB Faculty conferred the '2009 William W Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:03:31 GMT

June 15, 2009: Anand Nandkumar, Assistant Professor, Strategy, at the Indian School of Business (ISB), has recently won the prestigious ‘2009 William W Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award’ from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). This is an annual award (typically one or none) given to a dissertation which in the committee’s opinion, is the best in Management Science to come out of CMU in an academic year. The Award Committee, consisting of two faculty members each from Tepper School of Business and Heinz School of Public Policy and Management Studies, selected two winners this year.

Professor Nandkumar’s dissertation, ‘Securing their future? The role of markets for technology, organisation capabilities and opportunity costs on business model and performance in the information security market,’ was approved by Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. The dissertation was based on a hand collected data set of the US information security startups, put together over a period of three years.

One of the essays of the dissertation explains why entrepreneurs who have other valuable alternatives besides running a startup not only tend to fail more but also succeed just as much. “In modern industries, we see many successful startups being sold off at a premium. This in fact in industry circles is counted as a success. These are typically firms that are started by entrepreneurs with lots of prior experience. However it is not always the case that such entrepreneurs are successful. Many of them fail very early as well. A key challenge that determines success or failure is keeping cash burn rates at acceptable levels while still attempting to grow fast,” said Professor Nandkumar.

This essay theoretically explains many of these stylised facts. “Many modern startup firms, to get rich fast, do not want to hang around for too long. This is because hanging around is also costly, especially for those that have other valuable alternatives such as working for an established firm. Such entrepreneurs give themselves a short time frame to try out the entrepreneurial idea and if they can’t succeed within that time frame, they just get rid of the startup and move on. This view is at odds with current thinking in the literature, which is that entrepreneurs start firms and stay on as entrepreneurs until they fail,” added Professor Nandkumar. Another contribution of the dissertation is developing an understanding of how the nature of entrepreneurship and competition changes when there are upstream markets for technology.

Professor Nandkumar’s areas of research interest span entrepreneurship, innovation and economics of technological change. Talking about the research advantage at the ISB, he said, “The ISB is very serious about research and it has been extremely supportive of my research. One of the key components of research is exchange of knowledge and ideas. The presence of a very energetic and knowledgeable set of peers, as well as the access to visiting faculty, many of whom are very established researchers, is a great platform to accomplish something meaningful."

La Caixa Scholarship for the ISB students- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:05:10 GMT

June 12, 2009: In a ceremony chaired by the King of Spain, La Caixa, currently Spain’s leading savings bank, awarded 136 postgraduate scholarships to college students at various universities around the world. In the distinction list were three students from the Class of 2010 at the Indian School of Business (ISB).

The reigning King of Spain, Don Juan Carlos, was present at the award ceremony. King Juan Carlos in his message encouraged the fortunate students, to take this opportunity, to deepen interest in the areas of innovation and research, at a time of economic downturn all over the world and especially in Spain.

The ceremony was also attended by the President of the Bank, Isidre Fainé, and the Directors General of the Foundation, James and Joan Maria Nin Lanaspa and the President of the Generalitat, José Montilla, and Minister Education, Ángel Gabilondo.

These scholarships, which began in 1982, have their main destinations in the most prestigious colleges around the globe - the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, and India.

This year Ricard Aguilar, Carmen Garcia and Carmen Rider, all from the Class of 2010 at the ISB, were considered worthy of the scholarship. The La Caixa scholarship covers the entire fee of the PGP course, one return trip to Hyderabad, endowment of 910 euros per month, single initial allocation of 1,050 euros, cost of student visa in India, and sickness/accidents insurance in India.

“I was really looking forward to studying at the ISB and having an Indian business experience. I feel extremely fortunate for having been awarded with a scholarship to do it. Furthermore, being congratulated by our King shows the importance of this award,” said Rider.

“Thanks to the scholarships awarded by La Caixa, I have been able to study at the ISB. It has been one of my goals to do a Post Graduate Management Programme in an Asian emerging country,” added Garcia.

The participants who qualified for this scholarship came from diverse fields like Engineering, Business Administration, Music, Audio-visual Communication, Biology, Architecture, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics and Law among other studies.

First International Conference on Entrepreneurship at the ISB - Focus on Policy Framework- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:09:45 GMT

June 6, 2009: The First International Conference on Entrepreneurship policies was hosted at the Indian School of Business (ISB) between June 5-6 2009. The theme of the Conference was 'Catalysts of Entrepreneurship - Policies for Growth'. The Conference was organised by the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) at the ISB, in partnership with the RAND Corporation and Legatum Institute.

Education and a sustainable infrastructure ecosystem, aided by appropriate policies, can generate the next wave of great entrepreneurial activity in India - this thought alone motivated the theme for the Conference. The two day symposium witnessed the coming together of policy makers, industry, academia and entrepreneurs, who shared a common forum to deliberate on and evolve an effective, pragmatic and comprehensive set of policy recommendations to promote entrepreneurship in India. It also aimed to recognise the opportunities available for an entrepreneur in India, and how an innovative policy regime can best take forward such opportunities.

In his inaugural address Dean Ajit Rangnekar said, “Entrepreneurship was the first focus area for ISB when it was setup. Hosting India’s first International Conference on Entrepreneurship is like coming a full circle for us, but believe me this is just the beginning.”

An overview of the Conference and a sum of the entrepreneurial activities at the ISB was delivered by Dr Krishna Tanuku, Executive Director, WCED. He said, “About a third of the US Economy, that is $ 4 trillion, comes from companies that are less than 25 years old, showing that encouraging entrepreneurship has a huge multiplier effect on the economy. Using that as a benchmark for India, the opportunity for new Indian entrepreneurs including the growth opportunity in SME sector is about $ 500-600 billion in the next eight to ten years. Entrepreneurship at the ISB is supported through various initiatives and programmes supporting enterprise creation and enterprise growth. We accomplish that through people and partnerships.”

A talk by Bruce Nardulli, Director, RAND-Qatar Policy Institute and Senior Political Scientist with the RAND Corporation on ‘Entrepreneurship-Global Trends in policies set the tone of the Conference. He mentioned, “RAND is engaged in some pioneering research work around the world, where we partner with the best institutes. In India, ISB has world class faculty and students, and that makes it the perfect choice for doing the kind of work that we want to.”

This was followed by a keynote address by Nagarajan Vittal, Former Central Vigilance Commissioner, Former Chairman, Public Enterprises Selection Board. Vittal spoke on ‘Entrepreneurship and policies in economic growth’.

A session on ‘Overview of ISB-Rand Research Findings’ provided a summary of key findings by ISB-RAND researchers on the existing policies and gaps in promoting entrepreneurs development in India. It also identified areas for further research. During the research overview, Krishna Kumar, Senior Economist, RAND and Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy said, “The examples of Ireland and South Korea, amply demonstrate that the right policy measures from the government can help entrepreneurs succeed, which in turn massively benefits the economy and society as a whole.” Fred Kipperman, Fellow, RAND-Kauffman Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy, US, Shamika Ravi, Assistant Professor, Economics and Finance, ISB and Liz Brown, Doctoral Fellow, Pardee RAND Graduate School were the other panellists for the session.

The highlights of Day two were the keynote address by Evan Feigenbaum, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, US. He mentioned in his presentation about his experience in the US government and the bind between the US and India. He said, “When I served in the US government, until just a few months ago, I did have the privilege of helping to push forward the strategic partnership between the US and India. Like entrepreneurs, who question assumptions, take risks, and ultimately turn big ideas into path-breaking innovations, those of us who have worked on behalf of US-India relations have, in some sense, been entrepreneurs. Much like the entrepreneurs in this room, both governments have had to turn bold ideas into policy innovations. And the US-India relationship itself became a kind of exercise in entrepreneurship.” Feigenbaum added, “We have 95,000 Indian students in the US – more than from any country in the world. We have nearly three million Indian-Americans, who’ve played a vital role in forging closer ties between our countries. And for its part, India has made great strides in welcoming non-resident Indians living in the United States and elsewhere to become entrepreneurs here in India.”

Another session on research findings, presented a summary of ISB-RAND key findings. It was about how policies influence entrepreneurship. Panellists for this session were Reuben Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Emerging Market Solutions, ISB, Neeraj Sood, Economist, RAND and Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School, Arnab Mukherjee, Pardee RAND Graduate School, IIM-B and Krishna Kumar.

During the session on ‘Entrepreneurship in India’s educational sector-policy framework, panellists addressed the effectiveness of current policies to spur entrepreneurial activities in the education sector in India, how India can encourage entrepreneurial approaches to bridge both skills and competencies, what policy changes are required, the role of government, how to replicate successful models of entrepreneurial ecosystem etc. The session was chaired by Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Co-founder, Teamlease and also serves on the Prime Minister’s Skills Commission. Other panellist comprised V Raghunathan, CEO, GMR Foundation, Parth Shah, President, Centre for Civil Society, Economist and Former Professor, University of Michigan, Anand Sudarshan, MD and CEO, Manipal Education and Shantanu Prakash, Chairman and Managing Director, Educomp Solutions Limited.

This was followed by another session on ‘Entrepreneurship in effective infrastructure development - policy framework.’ The session was chaired by Sushil Handa, Chairman, Claris Lifesciences and the panellists were Jonathan Zasloff, UCLA Law School and the Ziman Centre for Real Estate, US, B P Acharya, Chairman and Managing Director, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) and Reuben Abraham. This session attempted to address policy related issues required to build a strong entrepreneurial focused network of entrepreneurs and SME for faster and efficient implementation of mega infrastructure projects. Highlighting the role of entrepreneurship in infrastructure development, Acharya said, “Very often, we lose hope saying that the Indian infrastructure cannot be improved. But right here in Hyderabad we have shown that it is possible through public-private partnership and the model can be replicated all over India.” Speaking of public-private partnerships, Acharya added, “If the government alone has to do everything it is not possible. There is a shortage in infrastructure and the government budget and this is where private sector participation is required. There were a lot of inefficiencies in public policies and the way they were implemented. And that’s when we felt we could learn from the private sector. The main goal of public-private partnerships was to attract private capital and efficiency for infrastructure projects.”

A final session on ‘The journey to action’ was chaired by William Inboden, Senior Vice-President, Legatum Institute and the panellists were Som Mittal, President NASSCOM, Professor M R Rao, Dean Emeritus, ISB, Sushil Handa, Chairman, Claris Lifesciences and Manish Sabharwal. This panel kind of summed up the key points discussed during the previous panels. It sought to provide guidance to various key stake holders to develop a time bound action plan. Panellists highlighted key policy changes needed and provided a basis for a constructive dialog between policy makers, industry, and other stake holders of entrepreneurial ecosystem. During the discussion Mittal said, “Most of us think entrepreneurship is about taking money from a VC, putting up a company and taking that risk. But people like me, who have never set up a company, have been an entrepreneur all my life setting up new projects. I think there will be two kinds of entrepreneurs, one who will branch out and setup something on their own and others who will become entrepreneurs within a company.” Mittal concluded with the thought that apart from risk and creativity, which are considered to be pillars for entrepreneurship, there is also the capability to take frustration.

Israel Ambassador to India at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:54:22 GMT

June 26, 2009: His Excellency Mark Sofer, the Ambassador of Israel to India, was at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently. This was his first visit to the ISB and he was accompanied by officials from the embassy and the Indo-Israel Chamber of Commerce. The visit was primarily to acquaint himself about the ISB and learn more about the programmes and research at the school.

The visit included a tour of the campus and a discussion with the senior officials of the school. In an insightful interaction, Ambassador Sofer shared his thoughts on the Indo-Israel relationship. Talking of the ISB, Sofer said, “This institution of excellence is the example of ‘Shining India’ and I look forward so much to enhancing our cooperation.”

He also mentioned that he plans to continue strengthening the relationship between the two countries, especially through education. Present at the discussion were Dean Ajit Rangnekar, Professor M R Rao, Dean Emeritus, faculty and other senior officials of the ISB.

Net Impact Club organises blood donation camp- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:19:54 GMT

June 19, 2009: More than 190 units of blood were collected at a blood donation camp at the Indian School of Business (ISB). The camp was organised by the Net Impact Club, one of the many student clubs on campus. “The ISB Net Impact Chapter for this year's batch has kicked off with this Blood Donation Camp. It speaks volumes of the interest at the ISB to give back to the society. Hope we have saved a few lives today with this drive,” said Nishant Banore, President, Net Impact Club at the ISB.

The camp once again proved the spirit of giving amongst the ISB community. Students, faculty, staff and resident spouses at the ISB actively participated in this noble cause of being ‘life savers.’

The camp was organised in collaboration with the Red Cross and was a great success. “This was the first time I was donating blood and I panicked a little, but the enthusiasm the ISB community showed inspired me and I felt really good after donating blood,” said Arundhati, Assistant Director, Information Services, ISB.

The blood donation camp, held every year at the ISB, is one of the initial events organised by the Net Impact Club. Planning for this event had begun about two weeks in advance with volunteers from the student community working on logistics, gathering donors etc. The Net Impact Club this year will be run as a professional organisation and will focus on providing students a platform to use their business skills to launch a career in the social sector. “Net Impact at the ISB has great ideas for the social sector. The Blood Donation Camp – our first initiative on campus shows the dedication at the ISB and we aim to continue to work as fervently towards the betterment of the society. I hope we made a difference today and touched a few lives,” added Janani Hariharasubramanian, Class of 2010.

Vice Chairman of IndiaCo Ventures Limited at the ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:31:38 GMT

June 30, 2009: Rahul Patwardhan, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, IndiaCo Ventures Limited, was at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently to interact with the students. The session was organised by the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) club at the ISB, one of the student clubs on campus.

Patwardhan started the session with the significance of product ideas and his intent to change the number of service plans to interesting product ideas. He said, “Most of the business plans that we have seen have hovered around services. One of the biggest challenges today is coming up with a good product idea.” He added that most people tend to go to the Technology Development Board and find out about the different technologies available to discover if there are possible product ideas. Patwardhan said that he preferred going the other way around – finding out a niche problem that needs to be solved. For example, it could be as simple as making sure ink is non depletable as most of the ink on notes and security papers today wears out.

During the highly interactive session, students came up with some business plans and Patwardhan discussed the feasibility of the plans. According to Patwardhan, the most important things that one needs to look at while initiating a business plan are feasibility, market size, and if a similar product already exists in the market. He also said that it is very important for a product company to create a good deterrent. Technology and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) can be valuable in creating barriers for other people to enter.

He also spoke of an analysis called Competitors Partners Collaborators (CPC) report. “If you are planning an interesting product idea using technology then you analyse your technology play using a map called a CPC plan. So, depending on how you want to build your company, you inherently build these into the plan from day one, assuming that you know he is going to be your competitor or partner,” added Patwardhan.

Patwardhan concluded by discussing the importance of IPR. “IPR is the way to go and we primarily focus and invest in companies that have inherent IPR or are able to bring in IPR.”

Research Seminar on The 'A-ha' Moment: Discontinuous Learning of Product Features- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:57:28 GMT

July 6, 2009: Arun Lakshmanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University at Buffalo School of Management, The State University of New York was at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently to present his research -The 'A-ha' Moment: Discontinuous Learning of Product Features.

The ‘a-ha’ moment - an experience where revelation comes to you suddenly or when a long-sought answer suddenly jumps to mind. These moments are moments of insight that make you exclaim, ‘Aha!’ Lakshmanan's research investigates how consumers learn to use a product feature and the impact that the learning process has on acceptance of new products. Development of proficiency has been assumed to follow a power law trend, with the largest gains occurring early in the product’s usage followed by monotonically decreasing performance improvements over trials.

“Research has to do a lot with product usage in addition to attitudes, persuasion or memory. People often face problems with new products. I see this as an opportunity to market new products and get new technology to be adopted,” said Lakshmanan. Speaking of knowledge, he said that one way to look at it is ‘what' knowledge - which is primarily about the product. The other is ‘how-to' knowledge - which is to do with product usage. Some of the research questions that he is trying to address are if consumers are learning to use products in different ways, what underlies discontinuous learning, how insight driven learning affects emotions, intentions, etc.

This paper proposed an alternative process in which skill acquisition of individual consumers exhibits a discrete step function which corresponds with a moment of insight. The learning process also has consequences such as performance, perceived ease of use and usage intentions, which were explored in a series of lab experiments.

'An entrepreneur learns from mistakes,' - Jan Baan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Cordys- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:16:55 GMT

July 9, 2009 : “They dream and from that dream they dare to start,” shared Jan Baan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Cordys, during an interaction with students at the Indian School of Business (ISB). During his visit, he was accompanied by Jason Martin, Buford Alexander and Robert Ridout, Supervisory Board members of Cordys. The talk was organised by the Business Technology Club, one of the student clubs on campus.

Baan shared his views on entrepreneurship and highlighted instances from his personal journey as an entrepreneur. He started the talk by noting that entrepreneurs often do not know what they are doing. “I started my business by accident. I was dissatisfied as an employee. I had a vision and hence started my business,” he said.

Baan said that entrepreneurs should always learn from their mistakes. As an entrepreneur, one has to make mistakes and should allow people to make mistakes. He also stated that an entrepreneur should know his weaknesses but have charisma to motivate people. Speaking about what an entrepreneur should never do, Baan said, “I see some new entrepreneurs starting businesses, and they start with IPO. That’s something one should never do.” Opening the floor to the Supervisory Board members, Baan concluded by saying that the most important thing in an entrepreneur’s life, the most significant asset, is time, as no one has control over time.

Jason Martin, Managing Director, Argonaut Private Equity shared the private equity and venture capital perspective in a business. He said that there have been some interesting challenges over the last couple of years on the private equity and venture capital side. He concluded by saying that a venture capitalist’s job is to make sure that entrepreneurs do not make mistakes.

Ridout, a recognised leader in outsourcing, spoke about the role of IT as an enabler. He shared pointers about how to use IT in business, its impact on the business’s success, and IT as a career option.

Alexander discussed Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). He said that the most important rule for M&A is to know one's own business best and then look at somebody else’s and know what to do with it. “Timing is very important and buying at the right time is crucial. If you are going to do M&A, every company should have its list of targets and then wait till the opportunity arises.”

The session ended with a volley of Q&A.

Industry Panels Discuss Societal Value, Globalisation And Impact Of Information Technology During PACIS 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:05:33 GMT

July 12, 2009 : A key panel at the PACIS conference focussed on the ‘Societal Value of Information Technologies’ with well known business leaders, Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Co-founder, Teamlease, S Sivakumar, Chief Executive, ITC Agri Business Division, Shrihari Kulkarni, Vice President, Projects and New Initiatives, Comat and Dr Balaji Utla, Chief Executive Officer, Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI), participating in the discussion. The panel addressed the main challenges and ideas that can transform the impact of IT on society.

Kulkarni said that the social impact of IT in India is a unique story because of the country’s distinctive blend of respect and fascination for tradition. He said that the entire IT strategy of the country is a catalyst for growth and would have an impact on overcoming the various divides in the country. Sabharwal then talked about the labour market in India, the concept of ‘learning for earning,’ and the importance of education reforms. “What’s happening in India is not once in a decade or once in a millennium, it is once in a lifetime,” he said. “Places like the ISB and PACIS are wonderful examples of what can happen when technology and entrepreneurship converge, and that’s really how we are going to get the Indian state to work better,” he concluded.

Sivakumar talked about the Indian agricultural context - what IT can actually do in this sector, what was physically being done on the ground through ITC Choupal, and about the road map ahead. Utla then shared his journey with HMRI and talked about the healthcare needs of people in India, the healthcare sector and the impact that HMRI has made in the sector. “No society can ever be healthy and wealthy unless it handles its healthcare and education problems,” concluded Utla.

Ravi Bapna, Executive Director, SRITNE, who chaired the panel, summarised the discussion. He said, “For those of us who have studied business value of IT, the role of organisational compliments in deriving value is very significant. It seems like there is a natural extension to societal compliments, and we saw four very good examples during the discussion. Technology is there but what we have to do is other things- whether it being working with the government or creating awareness. This can be an interesting area for research.”

The second panel discussion on ‘Globalisation and its impact on IT Management Principles,’ comprised Umesh Jain, President and CIO, Yes Bank, Kush Desai, Managing Director, SAP Labs India Pvt Ltd, Bipin Pendyala, Vice President and Site Manager, CA and Hari Kumar, Managing Director, Deloitte, US. While Jain introduced the challenges of globalisation, Desai spoke about the different models of IT engagement. “Globalisation is a cumulative effect of evolving technology, markets and changing political climate. For me globalisation means there is no territorialisation,” said Pendyala. Talking of clients and their expectations, Kumar discussed the concept of an educated client. He said, “A smart customer is one who does not give you the answer. They don’t want yes as an answer from you all the time and want you to challenge them.”

The third industry panel discussion on ‘Moving up the value chain for IT service providers’ had M Narsimha, VP and Centre Head, Infosys, President, HYSEA and Bipin Paracha, Partner, Value Realisation, Wipro Consulting contributing to the discussion. Paracha gave the past, present and future perspective of IT. He said that earlier IT purely focussed on operations as service providers, then slowly it moved up the chain as a facilitator and advisor and now it is the change agent. Narasimha shared his views on how IT companies are now delivering business solutions. He said, “If one has to move up the value chain, it is important to get closer to the core business. At what stage of the business you get engaged is very crucial and consumer service gives you the opportunity to get engaged earlier.” He also said that it is difficult to convince customers that you can give business solutions because IT companies are branded as IT service providers.

Founder of Net Impact on ISB Radio- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:24:55 GMT

July 13, 2009: Dr Mark Albion, Founder of Net Impact recently spoke with Nishant Banore, President of the Net Impact Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in a programme organised by the Radio Club, one of the student clubs on campus. Albion spoke about what motivated him to start Net Impact, how it evolved, its objectives etc.

Speaking of how Net Impact started, Albion said that in 1987, he was part of a group called Social Venture Network (SVN), which uses business as a force for social economic justice. “We wanted business schools to focus on people and not on profits. This was more like an anti-greed movement focussing on the quality of life of people and the planet,” said Albion. “I was a nationally known Professor at Harvard Business School and I would get a lot of letters from students saying that they wanted to do more than just make money. They wanted to do something that made a difference to those in need and find more meaning in their life,” added Albion. Albion also cited that when he was at Harvard Business School, he felt that he was doing well on the money side but felt that his work did not have enough meaning either - that is, Net Impact was as much for him, a "conflicted achiever" he calls himself, as it was for the students. So, Albion and other SVN members, along with a handful of interested students, began what became Net Impact.

Net Impact has spread widely all over the world. Has it changed any way from its objectives, asked Banore. Albion replied saying that, today it is certainly a lot different from what it was envisioned to be. He said that Net Impact was formally launched in 1993 with a vision to develop a community of students from around the world to help and support each other as they embarked and lived through these challenging career paths of integrating money and meaning. “I wanted to change the way business was being done. And in order to do this we had to work with the next generation – people in the business schools, help and support them in using business as a force for social justice.” Albion added that by 2022 there would be a lot of companies running business in a different way—in large part because those young Net Impact students were now leading those companies.

The ISB Net Impact Chapter was the first in Asia and Net Impact had not spread too much in Asia as much as in the US. Adding to this, Albion said that it was very important to connect with the local professors and school administration to keep the continuity of the chapters, but at the same time expanding globally was also very important. “Expanding in India and other countries depends on what people want to focus on and whether Net Impact provides the right vehicle to fulfill those needs as it relates to creating economic and social value. Net Impact will be a lot of what you want it to be and you will have to decide what you want to work on,” Albion said. One of the examples he mentioned here was that of UCLA Anderson School of Management, which wanted to focus on high school education. They developed a very strong programme where the MBA students got involved with teaching in high schools.

At the end of the talk, Albion, who is now leading a "Net Impact" initiative for an entire undergraduate and graduate school, Babson College, congratulated the ISB’s Net Impact Chapter on achieving the gold status. “It is great and exciting to know that the ISB Net Impact Chapter achieved the gold status and this shows how one or two people can make a difference in their world, and in so doing, in our world too.”

Programme On 'Achieving Supply Chain Excellence' For Top Executives- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:01:27 GMT

July 14, 2009: Thirty five top executives from one of the largest media houses in the country were at the Indian School of Business (ISB) for a programme organised by the Centre for Executive Education (CEE) on ‘Achieving Supply Chain Excellence.’ The programme was held between July 6-9, 2009.

The programme’s main objectives were to measure and enhance the value created by the Business and Commercial (B&C) function for the organisation, to upgrade the competency level of the B&C leadership team and to align to global best practices in the discipline of supply chain management.

“Our objective was to have an increased level of team building. The approach to this programme has been through case studies and this was a fabulous way for people to understand the importance of collaborating. One of the key takeaways was the model on competitive collaboration and that has helped us understand the supply chain in a more structured way. The whole programme and approach has been outstanding,” said Mohit Jain, Chairman, Newsprint Committee, The Indian Newspaper Society.

Faculty for the programme was Professor Timothy M Laseter from the Darden School of Business. One of the sessions – ‘Challenges of Emerging Markets,’ was led by
N Viswanadham, Clinical Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies at the ISB. The three day programme included 13 sessions and participants were divided into teams. The learning teams selected a supply chain improvement project to examine during the course of the three days with a report-out during the final session on whether to pursue the project and an action plan for doing so.

Speaking of his experience, Laseter said, “One of the greatest values of such programmes is the ability to get things together, networking with people and the greatest advantage of this programme was that I could see a lot of teamwork.”

Some of the topics discussed were driving cross-functional change for supply chain excellence, demand uncertainty and profitability, media sourcing best practices, strategic outsourcing, information technology for dynamic supply chains etc. During the final session, each team presented five slides designed to make a case for change. The slides described the aim and scope of the proposed projects, shared internal and external data regarding the magnitude of the problem, the reason to change and action plan for moving forward.

At the end of the programme, one of the participants LVM Kishore said, “The programme has been of immense value as it was interspersed with practical values. Everything we learnt was very useful and could be implemented in our work.” He added, “The focus on cost slicing and dicing will be used in our everyday analysis of category procurement. The simulation exercise and the modified negotiation exercise brought out the known concept in a new perspective of inventory, capacity allocation, forecasting and other elements of supply chain.”

CAF Hosts Summer Research Conference on 'Recent Advances in Corporate Finance'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:19:47 GMT

The Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted its annual flagship Summer Research Conference 2009 in Finance during July 16 - 19, 2009. The theme of the conference was ‘Recent Advances in Corporate Finance.’

The conference papers presented, comprised theoretical and empirical research in the area of corporate finance. They focussed on new ideas and concepts in the area of corporate finance and also presented cutting-edge tools and techniques of analysis. These papers were chosen by a committee of experts from amongst a large number of submissions from finance researchers across the world. An address by Keynote Speaker Ravi Jagannathan, Mercantile Exchange/John F Sandner Professor of Finance and Co-Director, Financial Institutions and Markets Research Center, Kellogg School of Management, was another high point of the conference.

The papers presented during the conference were based on the following themes - ‘Corporate Governance at Home and Abroad,’ ‘Product Markets and Ownership Choice,’ Law, Institutions and Finance,’ ‘Incentives and Compensation,’ and ‘Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences.’ The above sessions were chaired by Bhagwan Chowdhry, University of California, Los Angeles, Ravi Jagannathan, Reena Aggarwal, Georgetown University, Sudipto Dasgupta, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Franklin Allen, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania respectively.

Ravi Jagannathan delivered his keynote address on the pressing and relevant topic, ‘Why are we in a recession? The financial crisis is the symptom not the disease.’ His talk was based on his work done in collaboration with Mudit Kapoor, Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy, ISB, and Ernst Schaumburg, Assistant Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management.

Jagannathan questioned the widely held belief that easy credit and lax regulation caused the financial crisis. He said deeper underlying driving forces, like changes in geo-political organisation of countries, including the opening of China and India and technological innovations in the communication and transportation sectors, led to the crisis. Because of these factors, Jagannathan explained, there was a huge increase in the world’s labour supply in a very short time period. “Inability of existing financial and legal institutions to cope with this change is the reason for recession,” he said. He added that Wall Street financial engineering, in addition to easy money policy response, channelled the savings from developing countries to the US, fuelling the housing market bubble, which hid the problem for a while. Jagannathan concluded that the US fiscal policy response after World War II has provided a lesson in dealing with the crisis.

Apart from the ISB faculty, the conference programme committee included Viral Acharya, London Business School, Franklin Allen, Arnaud Boot, University of Amsterdam, Glenn Boyle, University of Canterbury, Bhagwan Chowdhry, Stijn Claessens, University of Amsterdam, Francesca Cornelli, London Business School, Sudipto Dasgupta, Asli Demirguc-Kunt, World Bank's Development Economics Research Group, Joseph Fan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Charles Hadlock, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Kose John, New York University Stern School of Business, Han Kim, Stephen M Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Kai Li, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vojislav Maksimovic, Robert H Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, Tom Noe, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Terry Odean, Haas School of Business at the University of California, NR Prabhala, Robert H Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, Manju Puri, The Fuqua School of Business, Subrata Sarkar, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research and Anjan Thakor, Olin Business School.

The 5,000 US Dollar Citigroup Award for the best paper at the conference was presented to Radhakrishnan Gopalan and Todd Milbourn from Washington University - St Louis and Fenghua Song from Pennsylvania State University for their work ‘Strategic Flexibility and the Optimality of Pay for Sector Performance.’

(For Conference Paper Abstracts)

Theatre, God and MBA- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:24:56 GMT

July 24, 2009: What connects God, creativity, and a group of management students? The answer is simpler than any philosophical or metaphysical gobbledygook that might crop up in various minds - the Theatre Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) is involved in a series of play reading sessions of Woody Allen’s one act play, ‘God’. The aim is to discover the thespian amongst the students, and work towards taking the play on to the stage soon.

Students gather at the School amphitheatre to delve into the satirical humour of Allen. For some time, the intricacy of the “play within a play," the storyline, the bonhomie of the dramatic personae takes precedence over extra reading and assignment deadlines. For a few, the reading session is a chance to hone acting skills; for many, it is a debut into the magical world of expressions. It is a chance to unwind and enter into a fictitious world, where imagination takes centre stage. The play ‘God,' which carries the signature abstractness of Woody Allen’s work and his own blend of quirky humour, was an apt choice to shed inhibitions and fears. The different interpretations that the participants came up with about the characters, reflected not only the numerous ways in which the characters could be dissected, but also gave a peek into the ‘real’ people behind the future business greats!

“Play reading is fun and is especially entertaining when we end up playing characters that aren’t anything like us in real life. Dialogues such as ‘I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving dishes for Chinese restaurants,' leave us in splits quite often,” says Nagamanjunath Shivakumar, Class of 2010, now a regular at the play-reading sessions.

This year the Theatre Club started with an informal workshop, where it engaged a theatre professional to mentor the participants on how to approach particular situations, how to get into the skin of characters, how to modulate voice while delivering dialogues, etc. The group then watched Allen’s play on YouTube. Once they had acquired a broad understanding of each character, students took turns reading different parts. “We had a lot of fun, got to know a few more people on campus, and a little bit more of each other. A few more such fun filled sessions are in the offing, with ideas of having public reading sessions germinating,” says Vignesh Ramakrishnan, President of Theatre Club, Class of 2010.

“The artist within us got a chance to seamlessly connect with the characters of a play from a bygone era. We learnt the nuances of emoting our characters and giving them subtle expression by our voice and emotions. With the artist within us truly awakened, we could only ask for more to come,” concludes student Jaydeep Deepak Mody.

A Salute to the Kargil Heroes- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:24:37 GMT

July 28, 2009: The Indian School of Business (ISB) community joined the rest of the country, in paying homage to the brave souls who held the Indian flag proud after India’s significant victory in Kargil in 1999 – a war that most of us watched unfolding in our living rooms.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Kargil Diwas, an elite delegation of around 30 of the finest officers of the Indian Army, Navy and Air force from the College of Defence Management (CDM), Hyderabad, were honoured at the ISB on July 26, 2009. The event was organised by the Senior Executive Club, a student organisation comprising students with over eight years of work experience. The club works towards acclimatising the industry with the school. With a few students from the army in the present class, the stories that were brought to light were those of their soldier friends and the victory of human spirit. This offered the international students at the School a human perspective of a war that was extensively covered by the media. Leading the delegation, Rear Admiral VS Batra, Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM), the current commandant of the CDM, said, “It is time that the corporate world joins hands with us in the nation building process.”

Lieutenant General SRR Aiyengar, Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM), Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM), VSM, an expert in defense strategy spoke about the leadership challenges during the war and the nature of national defense strategies and its impact. He discussed how management is executed in armed forces and spoke about the sterling leadership shown by every military person on the front. He concluded by saying, “India's stance of not crossing the Line of Control (LoC) actually elevated her in terms of ethics in the eyes of the world.”

The event concluded with the playing of the national anthem and a vote of thanks by Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB.

CAF Hosts Summer Research Conference on 'Recent Advances in Corporate Finance'- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:34:42 GMT

Key Note Address: Why are we in a Recession-The Financial Crisis is the Symptom, not the Disease!

July 20, 2009: The Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted its annual flagship Summer Research Conference 2009 in Finance during July 16 - 19, 2009. The theme of the conference was ‘Recent Advances in Corporate Finance.’

The conference papers presented, comprised theoretical and empirical research in the area of corporate finance. They focussed on new ideas and concepts in the area of corporate finance and also presented cutting-edge tools and techniques of analysis. These papers were chosen by a committee of experts from amongst a large number of submissions from finance researchers across the world. An address by Keynote Speaker Ravi Jagannathan, Mercantile Exchange/John F Sandner Professor of Finance and Co-Director, Financial Institutions and Markets Research Center, Kellogg School of Management was the high point of the conference.

The papers presented during the conference were based on the following themes - ‘Corporate Governance at Home and Abroad,’ ‘Product Markets and Ownership Choice,’ Law, Institutions and Finance,’ ‘Incentives and Compensation,’ and ‘Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences.’ The above sessions were chaired by Bhagwan Chowdhry, University of California, Los Angeles, Ravi Jagannathan, Reena Aggarwal, Georgetown University, Sudipto Dasgupta, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Franklin Allen, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania respectively.

Ravi Jagannathan delivered his keynote address on the pressing and relevant topic, ‘Why are we in a recession? The financial crisis is the symptom not the disease.’ His talk was based on his work done in collaboration with Mudit Kapoor, Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy, ISB, and Ernst Schaumburg, Assistant Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management.

Jagannathan questioned the widely held belief that the financial crisis caused the global recession. He said there are deeper underlying driving forces, like changes in geo-political organisation of countries, including the opening of China and India and technological innovations in the communication and transportation sectors. Because of these forces, Jagannathan explained, there was a huge increase in the world’s labour supply in a very short time period. “Inability of existing financial and legal institutions to cope with this change is the reason for recession,” he said. He added that Wall Street financial engineering, in addition to easy money policy response, channelled the savings from developing countries to the US, fuelling the housing market bubble, which hid the problem for a while. Jagannathan concluded that the US fiscal policy response after World War II has provided a lesson in dealing with the crisis.

Apart from the ISB faculty, the conference programme committee included Viral Acharya, London Business School, Franklin Allen, Arnaud Boot, University of Amsterdam, Glenn Boyle, University of Canterbury, Bhagwan Chowdhry, Stijn Claessens, University of Amsterdam, Francesca Cornelli, London Business School, Sudipto Dasgupta, Asli Demirguc-Kunt, World Bank's Development Economics Research Group, Joseph Fan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Charles Hadlock, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Kose John, New York University Stern School of Business, Han Kim, Stephen M Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Kai Li, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vojislav Maksimovic, Robert H Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, Tom Noe, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Terry Odean, Haas School of Business at the University of California, NR Prabhala, Robert H Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, Manju Puri, The Fuqua School of Business, Subrata Sarkar, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research and Anjan Thakor, Olin Business School.

The 5,000 US Dollar Citigroup Award for the best paper at the conference was presented to Radhakrishnan Gopalan and Todd Milbourn from Washington University - St Louis and Fenghua Song from Pennsylvania State University for their work ‘Strategic Flexibility and the Optimality of Pay for Sector Performance.’

(For Conference Paper Abstracts)

Demystifying the Dragon - What the world can learn from China- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:36:01 GMT

August 3, 2009: In a talk organised by the Emerging Markets club and the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) club at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Ramakrishna Velamuri, Visiting Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the ISB, spoke about ‘Demystifying the Dragon- What the world can learn from China’. Velamuri is also an Associate Professor at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).

Stating that he was a student of China and not an expert on China, Velamuri outlined some of the differences between the two largest emerging markets – higher rate of migration of labour from agriculture to Industry in China, lower percentage of labour force in the service sector in India and lower capital efficiency in China. “China had to invest a lot more to maintain its nine to ten percent growth,” he said. He added that even though India had the advantage of having a younger population, China scored in the areas of technology diffusion, gender equality and healthcare. “Literacy, health care and gender equality were the drivers of economic growth, not the consequence of economic growth,” he said.

Velamuri said the democratic system of government, a free press, dependence on private initiatives compared to government measures and lower dependence on foreign trade were some beneficial factors for India. He added that the historical neglect of primary education, delivery of healthcare to the masses, gender equality, physical infrastructure, speed of political decision making and manufacturing costs were some unfavourable areas for India vis-à-vis China.

The Emerging Markets Club is focussed on the rapidly changing face of the global economy and the increasing importance of the emerging economies in global affairs. And the EVC club focusses on encouraging and fostering entrepreneurship among the student body, provides practical learning opportunities to minimise risk and maximise success in ventures, and facilitates interaction with experienced entrepreneurs, industry experts and venture capitalists to gain insight and inspiration.

Friends with Snakes- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:30:54 GMT

August 05, 2009: “In case you come across a snake, stay calm and attempt to move away. Remember the snake is more scared of you than you are of it,” advised Major Rajiv Menon from the ‘Friends of Snake’ society.

The mere sight of a snake strikes terror in the hearts of people. So how can one be friends with them? To spread awareness about these misunderstood creatures and to eradicate age old myths and misconceptions about them, members of the ‘Friends of Snake’ society were at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently, for a live demonstration.

An eco-friendly environment, the ISB campus hosts several species of flora and fauna including a variety of snakes. Students, resident spouses, children and staff gathered to see the different kinds of snakes that were brought by the group. Though most of the children were scared initially, one could see their excitement and eagerness to have a closer look at the snakes and even touch them.

“Can we keep one as a pet," said three year old Atman Deshpande, one of the children that attended the programme. “I thought my son would really get scared but he was full of enthusiasm. He came home and said that the snakes reminded him of Kalia Nag, a mythological story. He in fact went and touched the python,” said Aparna Deshpande, Atman’s mother.

How to identify a poisonous snake from a non-poisonous one, what precautions to take when you see a snake and first aid measures in the event of a snake bite were some of the things that were presented by the group.

“The programme not only helped me to be better prepared when I encounter snakes, but also helped demystify some of the misgivings about snakes,” said Rahul Bhuman, Class of 2010.

Green Wine, Bronzeback tree, Checkered Keelback, Striped Keelback, Indian Rock Python, Spectacled Cobra and Russell ’s viper were some of the snakes shown during the demonstration.

ISB Faculty receives Distinguished Honour- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:54:05 GMT

August 07, 2009: N Viswanadham, Clinical Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), has received the Distinguished Alumni Award for the year 2009 by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and the IISc Alumni Association.

The award was presented to Professor Viswanadham at a ceremony at the IISc on August 1, 2009. He has previously received the IISc Alumni Award for Excellence in Research, IBM Faculty Research Award (four consecutive times from 2006-2009) and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer 2007-08.

“Professor Viswanadham has distinguished himself by his outstanding record and rich contributions to the Indian Institute of Science in various capacities,” the award citation said.

Professor Viswanadham teaches a course on Global Operations Management at the ISB. He is the author of three text books, six edited volumes, more than 85 journal articles and 120 conference papers on automation. His latest book, ‘Analysis of Manufacturing Enterprises – An approach to leveraging the value delivery processes for competitive advantage’, examines recent research and industry trends in global manufacturing networks.

A talk on the Indian Healthcare Industry- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:33:36 GMT

August 12, 2009: In a recent talk at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Ranjit Shahani, Country Head, Novartis, spoke about “Indian Healthcare Industry & Careers in Novartis”. The talk was organised by the Healthcare club, one of the student clubs on campus.

Shahani was President, Organisation of Pharmaceuticals Producers of India (OPPI) from 2001-2007, is immediate Past President of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Past President, Swiss Business Forum, and was on the Council of the International Federation of Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA, Geneva). He is a thought leader in the pharmaceutical industry and has been actively involved in lobbying for a strong product patent law in the country and data protection and liberalisation of the price control mechanism for pharmaceuticals. He has also strongly canvassed for deterrent legislation against counterfeit drugs.

Shahani started the session with an overview of the pharmaceutical industry in India. He said it was a much regulated industry with several laws in place and the drugs were price controlled. Identifying patent laws as one of the challenges in the sector, he said that protection for incremental innovation was lacking in Indian patent laws. “Innovation is central to the pharmaceutical industry,” he said. He further added that counterfeit drugs, high import tariffs on life saving drugs and data protection are some of the other challenges in the sector.

He then went on to talk about Novartis, which he said was in the curing and caring business. He said that research based pharmaceutical business, the vaccines and diagnostics industry, Sandoz which covered the generics business and the consumer health business were the four pillars of Novartis. Talking about why corporate citizenship was needed, he said, “Because fundamentally it is the right thing to do.”

Vivek Devaraj, Head, Global Development Operations India, was also present at the event. The Novartis executives answered a volley of questions from the students after the talk concluded.

Deans from Kellogg visit ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:30:19 GMT

August 13, 2009: On a visit to the Indian School of Business (ISB), Donald P Jacobs, Dean Emeritus, Kellogg School of Management and Dipak C Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management had an interactive session with the students. The students welcomed the Deans with a standing ovation and a round of applause.

Dean Jacobs has been a part of the Kellogg faculty since 1957, and was Dean from 1975 until 2001. Dean Jain has been the Dean of Kellogg since 2001. Dean Jain has been part of the Kellogg faculty since 1987 and is also Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies and a Professor of Marketing at the School.

Recounting his association with the ISB, Dean Jacobs talked about how far the School has come since his first visit to the campus, when it was just a field of rocks. Dean Jain, in his anecdotal talk, told students, “The challenge ahead of you is never greater than the force behind you.” He added that the Governing Board, the faculty, Kellogg and the ISB were all forces the students could count on. Dean Jain talked about his relationship with the ISB since its inception and how the idea for a world class business institute was born and implemented.

“We’ve been here for the last four months but none of us really knew the history of the School in the kind of detail that these guys told us. It felt really nice knowing the kind of challenges the School faced while coming up,” Sonali Chhabra, Class of 2010 said. “Dean Jacobs is very inspiring. I’ve heard Dipak Jain speak before and he was as inspiring as ever. I hope I get to hear him again."

The session concluded with the Kellogg Deans answering questions on a range of topics, from the challenges ahead of the ISB to the impact of the recession on management education.

Bandhan 2009 - Freedom Bonds- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:18:24 GMT

August 15, 2009: Every year, the community at the Indian School of Business (ISB) celebrates Independence Day by sharing their freedom with those who need it the most. Bandhan, a student led annual initiative, brings together local underprivileged children to spend an entire day on the campus.

This year, over 300 children, between 7 to 14 years of age, came from 7 different NGO’s across Hyderabad. Some of the organisations were Denvar School for the Blind, Sweekar, Don Bosco Navjeevan, Akshay Akruti, Naandi Foundation, and Kare School.

Student volunteers have been working tirelessly for weeks to organise this annual tradition, in spite a very demanding academic schedule. “Bandhan enables us as a group to make a difference, to motivate and to gift smiles to those who need it the most. We hope to further develop the relationships with these organisations by contributing our knowledge and help,” said a student volunteer from the Class of 2010.

During the course of the day, students engaged with the little guests through various fun and creative activities and cultural events. The children were divided into four groups and each group was owned and managed by different student teams. The entire day was packed with games like three-legged race, dodge ball, dog-and-the-bone, tug-of-war and activities like finger painting, clay modelling, card making and food art. By the end of the day, one couldn’t make out who was enjoying more – the students or the guests!!

The day ended with the grand finale – a show-stopping cultural programme put up by the children and ISB students at the School’s Khemka Auditorium. The podium at Khemka, which has witnessed engrossing seminars and sombre conclaves, that evening resonated with a tabla recital, a skit on national integrity, a dance performance in perfect rhythm and more by a group of specially-abled kids.

Bandhan 2009 was supported by the Student Life Council (SLC) at the ISB and various social clubs like Sports Club, Arts and Creativity Club, Music Club, Dance Club, Theatre Club and the Photography Club along with the Spouse and Family Association (SFA).

The Photography Club held an exhibition ‘The Best of ISB’, which showcased the best of the photographs shot by the ISB community. The proceeds from the sale of the photographs would be used to support Bandhan in the future.

The day was summed up by a quote from Kare School: “Children enjoyed the event and are very inspired by the Bhaiyas and Didis they have become acquainted with. They have been inspired to study well and make their careers.”

MP from UK visits ISB- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:23:04 GMT

August 26, 2009: Charles Clarke, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom visited the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently.He said he was at the ISB because of his interest in finding out how to bring together traditional education values and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Clarke is a Member of Parliament for Norwich South. He worked as a researcher and then Chief of Staff to former Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, from 1981 to 1992. From 1992 to 1997, before his election as a Member of Parliament, he was Chief Executive of Quality Public Affairs, a public affairs management consultancy.

In an interaction with the students, he said we lived in a world of unbelievably fast change – social, economic, technological and political. That rapid change can be very destructive and can leave whole communities destroyed. “But change is inevitable and the central weapon to deal with this change is education,” he added. “If you don’t invest in education, you will be left behind.”

Identifying the retaining of teaching talent as the biggest problem in education, he said that it was necessary to invest a lot of resources in initial teacher training and their development afterward.

In answer to student questions, he recalled his experiences in dealing with the aftermath of the bombings in London in July 2005 as the Home Secretary. He also talked about the problem of bureaucracy and said that technology was the best tool to combat it.

SRITNE Hosts Conference to Explore a Global Model for IT- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:13:34 GMT

July 12, 2009: The Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), in partnership with Association for Information Systems (AIS), hosted the Pacific-Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS), a premier annual Information Systems (IS) conference. The three day conference, from July 10 to 12, provided a high quality forum for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to meet and exchange research findings and ideas on key issues in IS, and explored the supply and demand of IT services within and across countries. This prestigious conference was held for the first time in India and was sponsored by Deloitte.

The theme of PACIS 2009 was ‘IT Services in a Global Environment.’ The Information Technology (IT) function has evolved into an increasingly service oriented and global model, and this thought set the theme for the conference.

A day prior to the conference, a Doctoral consortium was held at the ISB, which provided doctoral students in the field of IS with an opportunity to share their research ideas and to receive high quality feedback and support for their academic work. The conference witnessed the coming together of about 200 researchers including faculty, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows from the Asia-Pacific region and North America.

The conference was inaugurated by Hyderabad based entrepreneur and philanthropist Srini Raju, who donated a capital grant to SRITNE to facilitate further its work in research, education, and outreach. In his inaugural address Raju mentioned, “India has been doing very well in IT and even the telecom industry. Being a large country, about 70 percent of the population stays in rural areas. Something that everyone there owns is a mobile phone and this is one major IT penetration into rural India. Recently banks have also started using mobile phones and other technology to reach out to people in remote areas. I’m sure that during the next two days of the conference more similar thoughts on the innovative use of IT will be shared.”

In keeping with SRITNE’s mission, three panel discussions by eminent business leaders were held. Welcoming the panelists to the ISB, Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB, shared his experiences in the IS sector, in Hong Kong and East Asia. Talking about the impact of IS, he said, “There was a major revolution in the world’s acceptance of India as an academic and intellectual force. For a long time, India was thought of as an underdeveloped, a ‘will never develop’ kind of economy. The initial IS boom and the Y2K changed the entire paradigm about the Indian IT people. What the IT revolution did was to throw up a new generation of educated entrepreneurs which in turn brought about a social revolution.”

The conference also saw various cutting edge research papers on a wide array of topics such as Human-Computer Interaction, Collaboration and Knowledge Management, Economics of IS and Digital Goods, IS Security and Privacy, IS in developing countries and Management, Innovation and Governance of IT Services, etc.

ISB Hosts Global Organisation Development Summit 2009- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:37:27 GMT

August 25, 2009:The Indian School of Business (ISB) hosted the Global Organisation Development Summit (GODS) between August 19-22, 2009, in association with International Organisation Development Association (IODA) and Asia OD Network (AODN). The Summit brought together IODA and AODN together for the first time.

The theme of the Summit this year was ‘Fusion of Eastern and Western Principles-Creating Sustainable Development in OD’, with a focus on strides made in the Indian OD spectrum. The Conclave saw a host of speakers from the Asian sub-continent, including Professor Prasad Kaipa, Executive Director, Centre for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) at the ISB; Professor Ramkrishnan V Tenkasi, Benedictine University; Professor Udai Pareek, Indian Institute of Health Management Research and Willie Marais, a practicing OD professional.

GODS 2009 kick-started with a workshop by Ann Clancy on ‘What You Pay Attention to Grows: An Appreciative Coaching Perspective’. During the proceedings of the four day summit, Dr Udai Pareek, regarded as the pioneer of HRD movement in India, shared the evolutionary story of OD in India. “OD is an approach to bring about organisational change by applying behavioural science. However in India OD still remains confined to organisational structures. It must move out of the corporate world into the national life,” he said.

Keynote speaker O P Bhatt, Chairman SBI, in his presentation titled, ‘SBI- The Transformation Story’, recounted how change management transformed a loss making PSU into an exemplary banking institution. He recalled that in 2006, SBI was faced with a steady erosion of market shares, had a poor image, had technology that did not work, had demoralised employees and outdated processes. “Unlike other turnaround stories, SBI never had any major crisis; we were just in a benign state. While most turnaround stories are painful, at SBI there was not even a single lay off. We just decided to be iterative and evolutionary in our change process,” Bhatt said. Finally, he spoke about some of the lessons learnt from the SBI change story – ‘change is a continuous process, invest in people by mentoring and training them, anticipate need of customer, initiate broad based actions’ etc.

In another keynote address, Professor Ram Tenkasi, spoke about the role of contextualisation in the effective implementation of large scale planned change. “Regardless of how accurately a top manger thinks about large scale planned changes, and implements it through various training and educational activities, there is a pretty good chance of failing.” The gap, he explained, was a need to contextualise the changes at the level of each performing unit. “It is important to craft the model and then actualise the model. And remember that these changes are just a means to an end,” he elaborated. He also noted that in large scale planned change, there are not too many differences between the east and the west, but is fairly common and non-relativistic as far as cross- culturisation is concerned.

Professor Kaipa gave a keynote address on the topic, ‘Wisdom approaches to igniting the genius within’. “Wisdom perspectives is a hot research topic that can make a difference in both the east and the west,” he said. Applying Indian wisdom perspectives to organisational development, he outlined six important factors – Perspective or shared vision (Jnanam), Actions (Karma), Ownership or role clarity (Karta), Discernment (Buddhi), Fortitude (Dhruti) and Motivation (Sukham). “Any project that you start, you need a vision and that vision needs to be a perspective shared by everybody,” he added.

Girish Vaidya, Director, Infosys Leadership Institute, Dr Sujaya Banerjee, Chief Learning Officer, Essar Group and Dr Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Private Limited were some of the other speakers at the Conference.

Innovation in Emerging Markets- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:52:53 GMT

September 8, 2009:The Emerging Markets Club and the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) Club hosted a talk on ‘The Changing Face of Innovation in Emerging Markets’ by Dr Vinod Jain, Director, Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently. Dr Jain spoke about the need for innovation, the globalisation of innovation, open innovation, innovation in emerging markets and the latest trends in innovation amidst global shifts in economic patterns.

He said that in the business world, the answers have changed this decade but the questions are the same. He said that until now the bulk of innovation took place in the west and flowed to India, China, etc. “But now, innovation has reversed its course and that has caused a bit of heart ache in the west,” he added.

Previously, new ideas would come from highly developed countries and knowledge intensive tasks would stay at home but now that is changing fast. “With globalisation, ideas are emerging from unexpected places and flowing around the world by a mobile diaspora of knowledge workers,” he said. For example, the United Kingdom is seeking collaborations with countries like India and China. He cited several examples of how innovation is being globalised – Intel’s latest chip is designed in Bangalore, General Electric has its largest research centre at Bangalore, Microsoft has research centres in India and China, IBM has 100,000 foreign employees.

Dr Jain also outlined the concept of open innovation, a price based innovation. In a world of widely distributed knowledge, a company cannot rely entirely on their own research, and might need to buy or license processes and inventions from other companies or individuals. The key business concept here is collaboration and outsourcing is done only for research and not for any other purpose. Payment is made for the solution, which then becomes the property of the company.

He said that India was very good at some dimensions of innovation like financial market sophistication but bad at some like market efficiency. He concluded that regulatory hurdles, corruption, and labour issues were the three biggest concerns holding India back.

ISB launches iDiya - a social venture competition- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:45:53 GMT

September 9, 2009: The Indian School of Business (ISB) recently launched ‘ISB iDiya’, a competition that seeks ideas for self sustaining social ventures from working professionals in India. The initiative, that seeks to promote social entrepreneurship, is being led by students of the Net Impact Club – a social responsibility club at the ISB.

“We would like to encourage social entrepreneurship amongst youth in India through ISB iDiya. We hope that new age business models from young people will change the social sector scenario in India. This initiative will support aspiring entrepreneurs from idea generation to execution through mentorship and entrepreneurial training,” said Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, ISB.

The Competition seeks to court innovative social venture ideas from working professionals in private, public or not for profit sectors around the country and aims to create high impact, economically feasible and sustainable social enterprises. It was flagged off by Vijay Mahajan, Chairman and Founder, Basix, on September 7, 2009 at the ISB campus. “The world of business is not always about maximising social good. If you want to work with social entrepreneurship, the fuel for this has to be commercial,” he said.

The top five winning teams comprising two to four participants will participate in a week long boot camp where they will get to interact with industry leaders, venture capitalists and mentors. They will also receive mentoring support after the competition. Visit www.isb.edu/iDiya for more information.

ISB is partnering with Acumen Fund, Google, Deloitte, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intellecap, Seedfund, Unitus, and Venture East on this initiative.

Indian Capital Markets - 2020- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:47:04 GMT

September 16, 2009: The Finance Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently organised the ‘Capital Markets Conference 2009’, with the theme ‘Indian Capital Markets – 2020: Fueling the next wave of growth’. The Conference brought together some of the best minds from various domains of Finance like Asset Management, Insurance, Investment Banking, Brokerage, Exchanges etc.

Professor Rammohan Rao, Dean Emeritus, ISB, was the keynote speaker for the Conference. He began the Conference by presenting an overview on how Indian capital markets have evolved, where they stand today and where they should be headed going forward.

This provided the context for the first panel discussion of the day titled ‘Fostering Growth through Enhanced Capital Raising Avenues’. The panellists for this discussion, which was moderated by Rajesh Chakrabarti, Assistant Professor of Finance, ISB, were Shrenik Khasgiwala, Director, Enam Investment Banking, Bandi Ram Prasad, President, Financial Technologies, Sameer Shah, Managing Director & Head, Global Equity Services – Asia Pacific, Deutsche Bank and Narendra Negandhi, Chief Financial Officer, HCC Real Estate Ltd.

Khasgiwala and Shah discussed the evolving needs for fund raising among Indian corporates and the need to synergise it with the range of asset classes available in a globally integrated financial sector. Prasad gave a global perspective on how smaller specialised exchanges are making a difference around the world and in Asia in particular by bringing down the cost of capital for SMEs and instilling greater transparency and market efficiency. Negandhi gave his insights into the important factors large corporate houses have to take into consideration when they are raising capital.

The focus then shifted to the question that is uppermost on the mind of all asset management companies through a panel discussion titled ‘The New Alpha – Hunt for the Next Big Investment Story’. The panellists for this discussion, which was moderated by Nikhil Vora, Managing Director-Research, IDFC SSKI Securities, were Anantha Narayan, Senior VP and Head of Research, ICICI Securities, Sashi Krishnan, CIO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, Deven Sangoi, Head-Equity, Birla Sun Life Insurance, Sanjay Sinha, CEO, DBS Cholamandalam and Murali Krishnan, Head of Research, Ambit Capital.

Krishnan began the discussion by presenting picture of the changes happening in the Indian economy and the willingness of individual investors to direct a greater proportion of their savings to various financial instruments, with most of the savings still going to bank deposits. Narayan talked about the tremendous growth opportunities in building the next generation of green technologies, education and numerous initiatives to fully integrate rural India into the overall economy. Sinha felt that the underlying theme running across all these initiatives was the fact that they relate in some way or other to sectors where the government is either planning large investments or where they are planning to make way for the private sector to come in via disinvestment. Murali Krishnan felt that we will see far-reaching changes in the composition of the economy on the back of consumption-related growth. Sangoi brought forth the point that making an exit from a sector at the right time requires as much judgment as getting into it.

The Conference ended with two parallel break-out sessions between the students and the panellists on the themes of Equity Research and Sales & Trading in Equity markets.

Aikya 2010 - Homeward Bonds- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:42:38 GMT

September 18, 2009: AIKYA, the host family network of the Indian School of Business (ISB), was officially launched for the Class of 2010 on September 13, 2009. This is the sixth year of the network, and several new families have been added.

The Sunday evening saw some great cultural performances by the students and was attended by the host families, students, faculty, and other members of the ISB community. The event was hosted and coordinated by the department of Co-curricular Activities (CCA) at the ISB.

The Programme is a unique way of bonding between leading families in Hyderabad and the ISB students. Through it, each student is ‘hosted’ by a family for the duration of their study at the ISB. Students get a feel of Hyderabad’s way of life, its corporate arena, and discover its resplendent cultural past. It also familiarises students with Hyderabad’s way of life and home-cooked food. Students find themselves invited into the host household during festivals, holidays and weekends.

“As we live far from home and in a fully different culture, establishing new ties with Hyderabad's business families is another great experience ISB provides us. It gives us not only a real understanding and a concrete contact in Indian business but, more importantly, personal ties with an entrepreneurial Indian family and a dive into Indian culture that we can enjoy throughout our intense study year,” said Yannick Even, Class of 2010.

Great Green Business Ideas- News, The Indian School of Business offers media professionals a host of support in the form of press releases, photographs, quick facts, among others to enable you to know more about the School.(Media)- Indian School of Business (ISB)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:12:59 GMT

September 22, 2009: The Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (WCED) at the ISB, along with the EVC Club, recently hosted a talk on ‘Green Business Ideas’, to assess if the green market makes good business sense. The Talk was the debut event of the Start up Forum of the WCED. The Forum is an initiative of the WCED to create an ecosystem for enterprise creation by connecting innovation and ideas in new and existing segments. The Forum, through its various and continuous activities, plans to bring industry experts, financial institutions, corporates, entrepreneurs and students together to exchange ideas, interact, identify new entrepreneurial opportunities and network.

The speakers at the event were Sreekanth Beeram, Investment Manager, Ventureast, Sekhar Nori, Managing Director, Skyshade Technologies, and Vice Admiral A K Kalra, Grene. Gireesh Shrimali, Assistant Professor, ISB moderated the discussion.

The discussion spanned topics covering choosing a business opportunity in the green energy sector, challenges in the space, marketing and funding strategy for startups in this sector, etc. Krishna Tanuku, Director, WCED said, “The main motive of the Forum is to introduce our students to opportunities and challenges when starting a venture. Green Energy is a great area for entrepreneurs to come and play in, and India and ISB can take leadership in this venture.”

He explained that going forward, the WCED will identify specific market needs and encourage start ups and entrepreneurs, will engage investment community, create a body of knowledge around this area and maybe incorporate it in the general management curriculum soon.

Some of the takeaways from the speakers were-

There is lot of potential in India to produce power but one has to decide which kind of power to shift to – nuclear, solar, hydro, energy from waste, or a combination of these.
The future renewable energy sources in India will be mainly solar and micro grids.
Solar policies in India are still rudimentary.
When an entrepreneur comes to a VC, he must either be highly specialised (offer unique solution) or needs to have scale (a business model which will scale up).
There are various new and interesting financing models in this space, carbon credits being one of them.

Professor Shrimali noted that VC s are getting saturated, as large number of companies are getting into the solar space. Also, there was an interesting trend evolving of cities getting involved with solar, as property owners are getting discounts on property taxes if they used solar power. Further, peak power is costing a lot to industry and they are willing to pay for solar. etc. “Solar is clearly here to stay. Everyone is talking about solar. But we need to figure out how to integrate renewable energy with the grid, we need expertise to build technology around this,” he said.