"Vodka Martini Shaken not Stirred"

Casino Royale..

2006-11-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

Its not Vodka Martini this time in new James Bond movie " Casino Royale" .... it is a little known french aperitif- Bordeaux's "Lillet" that got into limelight..
"Three measures of Gordon's (gin), one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shake it over ice then add a thin slice of lemon peel," Bond asks the waiter as he gets prepared to fight his adversary in a high-stake poker game.
The french drink maker is enjoying this reputation and tryin make out some business with this instant fame.
As a hard core Bond fan and a wine connoisseur I hope Bond wil ask the same drink in his next movies too...

Fresh from Project

2006-11-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

People...People..People...
I went for an internship at Technopak in Hyderabad. http://www.ksa-technopak.com/index.jsp..
the one and only one Indian consulting company in Retail domain (consulting in Textile & Apparel, Consumer goods, Healtcare n others too..)

Had a great time in HYD. Pradeep LV also joined in that ecstacy sharing. The trip went on well. I did few good things in my stay..
- Met JayaPrakash Narayan (www.loksattaparty.com) , had a great discussion with him
- Met Dr. Vidyasagar (http://www.atc.tcs.co.in/~sagar/) , Ex VP of TCS , with the help of Vikranth
- Networked with some key friends
- Gals, Pubs, Necklace road, HYD Central.... offfoooo....had too much fun.

Hey a good news from my side. My BPlan got selected for IIT - Bombay, Eureka. (http://www.iitbecell.org/initiatives/eureka.php) . Got to be der on Dec10th.

Latitude heat caught up the branding team. We all had a meeting yesterday discussing on what to be done and when to be done... got to do some serious work for it in a very short time.

BTW watched Casiona Royale.. its not that grt. no gadgets, no techie cars..only emotions..
worth watching DVD..dont waste goin to theater..
Chalo..catch up later...bye...

Recent M&A deals

2006-08-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

Just thought to update you all with the recent major mergers & equity buyouts happened inIndian business..There were around 320 M&A deals in the first half of 2006 of total worth USD 25.6 bln. 76/320 were cross border deals of worth USD 5.2 bln.
- Tata tea the worlds No 2 branded tea company (acquired Tetly, UK tea brand recently) is buying a stake of 30% in Energy Brands Inc, maker of Glacueau vitamin water in US. This is the largest-ever foreign equity investment by an Indian company.The only doubt for investors is how can Tata manage this business when it doesnt have any related experience even domestically..
- Dr. Reddy's bought Germany's "betapharm" from British equity firm 3i.- Suzlon acquired Belgium based Hansen Transmission.
- US oil major Chevron acquired 5% stake in Reliance petroleum
- Ranbaxy acquires 96.7% of Terapia from Advent International for US $324m
- Tata Coffee has bought the US-based Eight O'Clock Company (EOC) for $220 million.
- Aban Loyd Chiles Offshore is to pay $445 million to acquire a 33.76% stake in Sinvest, aNorwegian drilling company.
- Subex Systems Limited, the Bangalore based global telecom software product company, acquired Azure Solutions Limited, a telecom revenue-assurance company.
- Desperate attempts by UB group to enter the world wine market by buying Taittinger..(recently trying for some New Zealand wine company, whose founder died in a plane crash)
- The other big news is the failure of Jet-Sahara deal...Hutch Essar BPL deal

Note:- Guys you can ofcoz get this news by googling, but here my intension is to list down the most popular recent deals.Hope this info adds value to your IQ..

Gopi Krishna...

Effect of Globalization on Asian markets (India, Hong Kong, Japan) and the diary of recent Indian stock slump

2006-07-06T04:12:00.000-07:00

It’s true that opening up of capital markets i.e. attracting FIIs would improve a country’s economy, and India also opened up its markets since 1990’s. Since then FIIs invested heavily in Indian stock equity and the market’s dependency on the FIIs increased equally. With the help of globalization the stock markets around the world became correlated to an astounding degree. Now the correlation between DJ index and emerging markets indices is around 90% [1].

Fig. 1 shows the stock indices of BSE and DJIA since April 17th 2006. It can be observed that when there is a dip in DJIA by 1% there is almost a dip of 10% in sensex, Fig 2. The correlation between these two indices since April 17th is found to be 93%. The fact that emerging markets (majorly south Asian markets) are depended heavily on the US markets can be viewed from Fig 3. It can be interpreted that if there is a little dip in DJIA, soon afterwards markets in Japan, Hong Kong, and Mumbai will dip.

Figure 1: BSE Sensex and DJIA points since April 17th
Figure 2: DJIA and Sensex % change since last 3months

Figure 3: Stock indices of Japan, Mumbai, Hong Kong and US since last 3months

Generally Asian companies are listed through American Depository Receipts in US stock exchange. Almost all the top notch Indian companies that constitute the BSE 30 are listed through ADRs in US (there are approx 80). So if the Dow dips or rises, Indian ADRs too dance to the same tune (not always, but in general).
Its evident that globalization has interlinked countries to such an extent that any change in the major stock market will reflect changes in the others too. Trade and capital flows have increased to enormous volumes. As US accounts for more than 1/4th of the world’s GDP any little change in US stocks will immediately show on the other emerging markets. Increased investments in US will enhance software developments and BPO industries in India. Good growth in US economy will improve the tourism industry around the world. Any decision by US Fed (monetary policies) will affect the performance of other markets. Last month (May 06) when US Fed members hinted about the concerns of inflation, markets crashed across the world (of course little effect on European markets). Investors interpreted this to mean higher interest rates, more savings in the bank, lesser investments by public/firms, slower the economic growth. It may be that this is a test by US Fed to check their influence on other economies. Now US is in a position to threaten any country directly (war) or indirectly (hurting economies) and India may have to revisit their policies to reduce the influence of FIIs on the country’s growth.

Globalization brings in many advantages and Indian companies have gained hugely with the access to global capital markets. India itself is propelling with growth in all sectors because of the reforms bought in by government due to the pressure of FIIs. But there are also few disadvantages like loss of control on the nation’s economy. It would be better if RBI takes this point seriously and find out the ways to cut down the dependency of our economy on FIIs.
Inspired by an article by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar
1. Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar article on June 21st, ET.
2. Y.V. Sridhar, Market Mayhem, Frontline, June16, 2006
3. Google

Hurrayyyyyyy...Mittal Conquers Arcelor..

2006-06-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

This man is awesome..kudos to his determination. This is a rejoicing moment for all Indians as our own Indian; Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, went global and clinched the deal that was alluring him since 5 months..
Ending a 5 month hostile bid war Mittal merged with Arcelor today. According to the news, Mittal's stake will be 45 % in the new firm. He will be co-chairman with Joseph Kinsch and majority of board members will be from Arcelor.
Arcelor was planning for a merger with Russia's Severstal but many shareholders opposed the move.
Mittal Steel is already the world's biggest steelmaker. The deal with Arcelor has now gave birth to a new entity with an output 3 times larger than its nearest rival.
As a result of the deal, Arcelor will now have to pay a fine of 130 million euros to Russia's Severstal for breaching the contract. The new company will be called Arcelor Mittal.

The story of Man of the Steel...
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/the-story-of-the-man-of-steel/13832-7.html

More facts and news about the merger will be posted soon...

2006-06-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Great Lakes Anthem

This video is created by our seniors...check out and enjoy..

My frnd Manik

2006-06-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Manik Kinra..check out his blog on right side of this page in the "My fellow Bloggers section-Manik My Perspective" . This guy is amazing, his postings are cool. Actually I am getting inspired from him and tryin to post regularly...good work pal..get going...

BTW our Strategic Management classes are done and Organisational Behavior classes are going on with full pace..
Last 2 classes covered abt Managerial effectiveness, Environmental challenges and Learning Organisations...

Info abt Dr.Abdul Rasheed, Strategic Management prof from Univ of Texas at Austin
http://www.uta.edu/academy/html/rasheed.html

This is abt Dr. ISF Irudayaraj from XLRI teaching us Organisational Behavior ..
http://www.xlri.ac.in/scripts/facultydisplay.php?fid=37

The Last Strategic Management Class

2006-06-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Things I remember from todays class
MC Donalds in Russia
faced ingredients problems. Some of the ingredients that McDonalds uses ( such as potatoes) could not be produced by local farmers. Russian potatoes were to big in size, and could not be used to make a french fries. So, McDonalds had to ship potato seeds from Europe to reproduce them in Russia. McD did a research for more than 5 years on Russia to setup the shop there.

Sony- Columbia Acquisition (talks abt writing off bad debts)
On September 25, 1989, Jap electronics major Sony acquired the US-based Columbia Pictures Entertainment (Columbia), which also included TriStar Pictures, paying $4.8 billion ($3.2 bn in cash and assuming an additional debt of $1.6 bn) for it. Industry analysts felt that the acquisition cost of $27 per share paid by Sony was very high compared to Columbia's share price of $12 at the beginning of 1989. Moreover, Sony paid 22 times more than the company's annual cash flows at the time of acquisition.
As a result of a string of flop movies, in November 1994, Sony had to announce a $2.7 bn write-off of its investments in Columbia, in its quarterly financial report. It also showed an additional $510 million (mn) as operating loss (incurred from Columbia's operations during that quarter) in the financial report. For the financial year ending March 31, 1995, Sony reported a net loss of ¥293.36 bn compared to a net profit of ¥15.30 bn in the fiscal 1994.

Balanced Score Card
The full details of BSC can be found here...
http://www.balancedscorecard.org/basics/bsc1.html
I still need to read it and understand it properly.

Strategic Mangement Class

2006-06-09T02:45:00.000-07:00

What i learnt today? in Strategic management class
- The first topic I remember from todays class is about the McDonalds case in 1992.
An old day (Stella Liebeck , New Mexico) burnt her skin (3rd degree burns) bcoz of spill of McD's coffee, which would be generally of around 170 deg. Jury awarded her 160K for compensatory damages and 2.7 mln punitive damages. ( I did some research on this case..hehehe..)

- Qualcomm CEO Irwin Jacobs loosing his laptop in Sep, 2000 at a business talk.
(industrial espionage...). FBI investigated the theft, but clndt recovered it.

- What is "Kaizen"? - Its a jap term that means continuous improvement, taken from words 'Kai' means continuous and 'zen' means improvement.Kaizen strategy calls for never-ending efforts for improvement involving everyone in the organization – managers and workers alike.

- How can a public company go Private? - A public company can “go private” if it completes a transaction that results in its publicly traded securities being held by fewer than 300 persons.

- Books suggested by Dr.Abdul Rasheed...
" Coptation" - author not sure
" A Random Walk down WallStreet" - Burton G. Malkiel
"Hypercompetition" - Richard A. Daveni

- In hypercompetition , companies follow punctuated equilbrium process. A company cannibalises its own product and comes out with a new one, before its competitors would come up some thing new. This happens mostly in Hi-Tech companies like electronic and semiconductor products where the prodcut life is small and tech innovations are huge. For example Gillette came out with twin blade and three blade razors (Mach 3).
Recently in Sep 2005 they came out with 5 balde razor(Fusion) with and w/o power -" the future of shaving". This is a bit of too much innovation. BTW the biggest competitor for Gillette is Schick.

Bhavik Gandhi..1 Man, 1 Boat 3000 miles

2006-06-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

This guy is amazing. Found this while browsing, very interesting...
2000 people have sailed the globe,
1400 have climbed Mt. Everest,
450 have been into Space,
180 have been to the PolesTo date,
There have been only 32 successful attempts at rowing Solo across the Atlantic.
Starting from April 11th 2006, Bhavik will attempt to row 3000 nautical miles (5000 km) across the Atlantic Ocean, from Spain to Barbados. He will spend an estimated 90 days at sea in a 23 ft boat, rowing solo, non-stop and unsupported. Ocean rowing is the world’s toughest human powered endurance sport.
for more info..http://www.bhavik.com/crossatlantic/index.htm

Term1 ending and Examss coming up..

2006-06-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

Term 1 is gonna end on june 10th, with the exception of MacroEconomics exam. The subjects
covered in this term are - Philosophy - Business Statistics - Marketing Management - Financial Accounting and - MacroEconomics
The 2nd term subject "Startegic Management" has already been started. Its being taught by Dr. Abdul Rasheed from Univ of Texas Arlington.

More abt him at http://management.uta.edu/Dr.Rasheed/Home.htm

His first lecture was about "Strategic Intent" by Gary Hamel & C.K.Prahalad. Its all about how startegic intent makes the companies to strech their targets and set goal as to become a
gloabal leader.

One of the examples the authors discussed were abt "Canon vs Xerox" and "Kumatsu Vs Caterpillar".Also the article discusses about the war startegy (Sun-tzu, a chineese military strategist). Strategic Management is one of the subjects where my thoughts get provocked. It talks about war strategy, Game theory sort of things..(Age of Empires is a good strategic related game). Need to do alot of readings about these concepts.

We just had a class on "Competitive Advantage/ Michael Porter". It illustrates beautifully how
a company faces the competition and what kind of threats and barriers would be der for a
company to survive in the market. Its a good stuff to be read.People are all busy in preparing for the Term 1 exams (MacroEco & Stats)this weekend.

Next week we will be considerably free as we just have 1 class per day. Few are desperately looking ahead to visit their homes this weekend. I have decided to stick around and do some reading ...Chalo...OK ..got the FA class now..ciaoo..

Whats happening recently?

2006-06-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Hmm..Long time never wrote. I dont want to give time factor as the reason, but what to do not
able to find time to post regularly ( how come i can find time to booz an watch fanaa??
hehehe...)Wakey..lemme tell u abt the things happening...

Marketing Management-We had some awesome lectures by Dr.Paul. He was too good..taught us all the fundas of MaMa in exactly 20 days, including a project. The amount of learning I had is huge. Also the case studies discussed by him are eye openers. Particularly the case study on Starbucks is good.
It basically explains about why people go to starbucks and what it offers to customers. U know what, dont think that starbucks offers just coffee..it offers more than that..it offers "Lifestyle".People are not caring to spend 4$ on a coffee (u can get a happy meal in McD for 4$!!), they want some thing more. They want a good ambience to chit chat, to do business, to
party on bdays, to listen music (partner with Hear Music)...to have a new lifestyle.It same as what Theodore Levitt said in his HBR case study "Marketing Myopia"- Railways biz
never grown bcoz they never recognised that they are into transportation biz instead they were
thinking that they are into rail biz.
On 31st May, we (Punit vasu's grp & Our grp) did the Mama project on HeroHonda. All the basic MaMa concepts have been touched up on.
- Biz concept
- Marketing Strategy
- Segmentation
- Value chain analysis
- Product life cycle analysis
- Portfolio Analysis (cashcows, stars, dogs, ?)
- SWOT
- 4Ps
Overall the project was a good learning. Other grps did on Ford, Godrej Sara lee, Oracle
....covering almost all the major sectors.More about herohonda would be posted soon...

Financial Accouting
by Dr.SurySekar,Krishnamurthy. Nice, cool, relaxed prof..he is teaching accounting according to GAAP (American standards). Just recently we had an exam in FA, still awaiting the results. more abt the prof herehttp://business.fiu.edu/Spotlights/faculty_experts.cfm?lagDirectory=Display&User=1094226

MacroEconomics by RockyAfter a break of 10days rocky came back and we all were expecting that he would rip us. But he gave some soild lectures on Indian economy. He was amazing ..he opened up Indian economic facts from 1990 to present with great detail (including yearly CRR,SLR rates, agricultural growth rate...). We submitted assignments on IS-LM curve and India Succes story successfully.

Some news abt Glakeshttp://coolavenues.com/placements/2006/glakes_f_06_1.php

Few recommended readings for marketing suggested by one of the Guest Lecturer.
- American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
- World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
- Two billion new capitalists by Elyole Prestowitz
- Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt.

Thats it for now...

Marketing Management

2006-05-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

Dr. Paul R. Prabhakar is an Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart Graduate School of Business. Marketing Management is the first visiting faculty's lecture for us. The classes are going on with rapid pace and we need to do a lot of reading.
I personally feel MM lectures are quite interesting and exciting as the topics are totally new and Prof is really making us think (also no technical stuff..). Actually its because of Dr.Paul's teaching abilities. After attending MacroEco and Phil classes where the teaching was pretty heavy , MM classes are a big relief for us. Kudos to Dr.Paul. The kind of examples, case studies he is giving and the way he is relating the marketing concepts to real time scenarios is too good. Now I am slowly learning all the marketing terminology (cash cows, Stars, Relative market share, segmentation, customer retention..)
We also have to do a project applying our marketing knowledge and concepts like Value chain analysis, portfolio analysis etc.. Yesterday, he taught us abt Product Life Cycle and Consumer Adoption process.

He also told about future marketing ideas like 2 way interaction to identify and capture the customers.The usual media interaction doesnt give any opp to the customer to interact. If there is a chance for customers to step forward and show their interest in buying products, it would be a great benefit for the companys. For example, one of the ways it can be done is by cable tv medium. This idea is too good. I too got an idea like, companies can come out with customized ads and capture particular segments easily. By using Video streaming technology in handphones, entertainment industry like Bollywood can send movie ads directly to the moviebuffs and take the ratings for the movies or ask them to comment on the climax of the movie....Anyways..there is no shortage for ideas, technology is the only hurdle to do all these things. I hope these kinds of technologies will come out soon and marketing go digital....

Got to have lunch and attend the MM class...Ciaooss.. hey u can find more abt Dr. Paul in the below link..
http://www.stuart.iit.edu/faculty/fulltime_bios.asp?ProfID=18

Rocky Balboa

2006-05-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

Time: 1:24Am
Venue : Lake Superior

What the hell I am doin now?
-Hehhee..listening to linkin park and googling for macroEco info (IS-Lm curve). Damn!..life is hectic these days. Balboa is punching us with more and more projs. He gave a big blow yesterday, means.. gave 2 more projects to be submitted by June1st. Gosh..got to finish them up soon and prepare for Philosophy exam on this 26th.
Dr.Paul R.Prabhakar is gonna come tomorrow and he is also famous for giving truck load off assignments...
God shld help us now....
BTW Rocky's punch is like this...

Mittal-Arcelor Bid

For Biz stats -stock analysis proj, our group analysed Mittal Steel. As part of the assignment I also compared Mittal steel stock with Arcelor from the date of bid (Jan 26th). COmparison revealed interesting facts ...

- On the 27th of January, Mittal Steel announced a unique proposition to Arcelor shareholders (a bid of 18.6bn euros) to create the unmatched leader for value creation. Ever since Mittal steel announced its bid for arcelor, share prices of both companies have risen.
-It can be seen in the chart above, the stock prices are taken from European stock markets. Between the two of them, they have created euro 10 billion in value.
- Increase in consumer demand nullified the effect of ‘hostile’ bid process and solid confidence in the performance of both companies encouraged the investors to invest more in buying out the stocks, which resulted in increase in stock prices.
....Inspired from an article in Business World.

How popular Am I??

2006-05-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

Just was curious abt my popularity. Google gave these links...
All are majorly because of my conference papers and research work from IHPC.

http://www.ectc.net/techprogram/2006/session32.cfm

http://www.ectc.net/techprogram/2006/session17.cfm

http://www.imaps.org/imaps2006/tentative_program.pdf

http://www.ihpc.a-star.edu.sg/digest/digest_vol3.pdf

Note: searched with "Akella GK Viswanath"

Ni Hao Ma??

2006-05-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Zao Shang Hao - Good Morning guyss.. testing my chineese spoken abilities..

As said earlier, we had the 1st chineese class yesterday taught by Mrs. Devi Natarajan. She used to teach English in China for kids.
The class started with an introduction of chineese provinces and the instructor specially highlighted the importance of knowing hostile indo chineese boundaries for official purposes. We learned few words related to metals ( Panchloha)
-Jin-gold, Yin-Silver, Tong-Copper, Tye-Iron, Xi-Zinc and few Pin Yin words.

You know the meaning of BeiJing? 'Bei' in chineese is North and 'Jing' is Capital and "Zhong guo" is "Middle Kingdom" aka CHina. I think learning chineese for me would be a good bet as I can use it in the future if planned to get back to Singapore.

OK...got to go..

Xie Xie...........Zai Jian.....

Macro Eco project again

2006-05-13T01:28:00.000-07:00

It seems Rocky will keep us rocking through out the term. The new project is about "Critique of Classical Economics with Great Depression".
Its a grp project that can be done in 2hrs, but we took 8 hrs to finish it off. Chumma spent time in doing nottin. Anyways it was quite good in the end and we came to know something abt laissez-faire and Say's law.
Hmm..lots of reading have to be done, donno when can I find time.
Ciao..got to go for class.. catch up laterrrrrrrr...Bye.

An outsider takes on Japan

2006-05-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

This post is abt Carlos Goshn (spell it as 'gon'), one of my inspirational figures in Biz world. I raised a point in philosophy class last week that biz leaders doesnt get affected with "cultural changes" and Carlos is one such who being from Brazil, worked in US & Europe and joined Nissan, Japan and revived the company to make profits in just 19 months.

"An outsider takes on Japan" is an article in McKinsey Quarterly under Organisation/Change Management function on Nov 1 2001. Here are the parts of interview for sample thats published in McKQ. See the way he answered the Qs.

Interviewer: How do you describe the Nissan revival plan?
Carlos Ghosn: The plan is still, unfortunately, known for its immediately dramatic part. How do you make head count reductions in Japan? How do you reduce manufacturing overcapacity in Japan? How are you going to get rid of the seniority system in Japan? How do you establish performance-based management? So attention was focused on cost reduction, sales of assets, and how we are going to eliminate the keiretsu1 and develop other kinds of suppliers.
In fact, the Nissan revival plan is more a growth plan. Not only the good part but the part of growth that is a little bit more painful: shifting resources from where they are not effective today to where they’re going to be much more effective.

Interviewer: How have you managed to reduce the number of jobs at Nissan, given the Japanese tradition of avoiding straight layoffs?
Carlos Ghosn: In Japan, head count reductions are taking place, and we’re not planning to change that. The reductions are [coming] through retirement and preretirement [offers].
There is also relocation. For example, we’re closing the Murayama plant. We said to every single blue-collar worker who would like to be relocated in another Nissan plant, we will offer him a job. It happened that 80 percent of the people accepted a new job in another plant. So there’s 20 percent that we’re helping to find a job [with another company]. We’re helping them to reintegrate because they want to stay in Murayama.
Outright sackings of [Nissan] employees in Japan are not taking place. It’s not taking place, because I don’t think I need to do this. We can revive Nissan without that.

Interviewer: What attitude did you find at Nissan upon arriving?
Carlos Ghosn: This is something that is common; this is the biggest sign that a company is in trouble. Not just in Japan but everywhere. The biggest sign is when everybody tells you he is achieving his objective. Yet the company is in bad shape. Why? Because when you are in a situation where everybody feels good about what he is doing personally—or his section or his department or his country—all the problems are due to the neighbor or the colleague or somebody else who is blind about how much [trouble] he is creating. And the company suffers. This was exactly the situation of Nissan. Nobody felt really responsible for the situation of the company, and that’s why there was no sense of urgency.

Interviewer: What lessons have you learned on the job?
Carlos Ghosn: You have to make sure that you understand the cultural differences between Japan and all the cultures that I’ve been part of, whether it’s French or American or Brazilian or Eastern. Even though you know that, you can always fall into traps. At the beginning of the year in Japan, there are a lot of parties where people greet each other—suppliers and dealers, for example. It happened that we had the supplier New Year party at the beginning of January. And I was supposed to be in Brazil at the same time. I spoke to our people and asked if it was a problem if I didn’t go to the supplier party. They said, "Obviously, they would love to have you there, but if you have a fundamental reason, they will understand."
In an American environment or in a Brazilian or French environment, if you are absent and you have an excuse, it’s not a problem. But in Japan, you have to come. So this is something I learned: there are certain formal meetings or events that you cannot miss. You have to find the right balance, obviously. Even though you know the rules at the beginning, it’s not the same thing when you go through it [in real life].
For example, you know that the Japanese approach is very different from the French approach or the American approach. Japanese people want and need to spend a lot of time on a concept at the beginning. They need to understand the concept. What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? How do you want to do it? It takes much, much more time. [But] when they [the Japanese] understand and they buy in, they execute. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time checking afterward—the results will be here. The Nissan revival plan is going to be an excellent example of this.
In a Latin American country or even an Anglo-Saxon country, it’s different to a certain degree. People are very quick at the beginning. "We understand. We understand. You don’t have to continue. We understand." So the concept part and the decision part are very fast. The problem is that when they [Westerners] execute, you’re going to have to intervene many times to make sure that everybody is moving in the direction that you want the company to move in.
In Japan, I also discovered, if people don’t act, it doesn’t mean that they don’t agree with you. It means they don’t understand, which is totally different. This is the kind of thing that you learn—not in the books, but in your day-to-day practice. In this case, it’s Japan, but it could be in another country.

National Income & Stock analysis

2006-05-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

Fortunately we got a break for 2 days and plz dont think that all the people are chilling out. Bcoz, our dear Rocky(Macro Economics) gave us a great assignment and we are all scratching heads in doing it. God bless us.
Anyways the assignment is simple:
"A 3 page write up of Indian National Income from 1990-2006".
But, collecting, analysing and interpreting the data is a tough job for all of us as most of us not from commerce or economic bg.
With the help of google and frnds arnd , I came to know abt some useful sites today for economic related details. Listed are a few.
http://www.economywatch.com/index1.jsp
http://www.rbi.org.in
http://finmin.nic.in
http://mospi.nic.in
http://mospi.nic.in/2_macro_agg_curr.pdf

Other projects we got to finish in the near future are
- Stock analysis using Quantitative techqs
- How would be the economic situation of India by 2025, predict and prepare articles for Economic Times.
- Karma Yoga project (empowering the poor and needy)

As the days goes by we wld be loaded up with more projs. I wish that we all finish the projs on time and learn as much we can.
Signing off.............Vish.

Mr.Ratan Tata & other info.

2006-05-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

28th April:

We had the opportunity to meet the Titan, India’s most prominent Business leader: Mr. Ratan Tata. It was such a great chance to meet him, we felt as if our dream came true (he is one of the Biz leaders whom I admire). Actually, 25 of my group mates had the chance to meet him and my name was not in the lucky draw list, but some how I managed to slip in.

He was very charismatic, humble and damn friendly and was encouraging us very much by patting, smiling and answering patiently to all our questions. Even though his flight got delayed and got to go to Singapore that night, he cancelled his other appointments and made an effort to meet us. He is such a great personality and got this attitude of encouraging younger generation hoping that more Ratans would come up for the future India.
After the brief introduction, with out any time waste Uncle Bala asked Tata to share his opinions and Tata just spoke for 5 mins and opened the talk for Q&A session. It was a good 45 min session and all of the Crusaders and Junior Poineers stormed him with different range of topics like 1lakh car concept, handling diversified businesses, Mergers and Acquisition etc..

At the end of the session Tata promised us that he would come back again and would spend more time. Overall it was a great experience for all the Great Lakers.
Hoping that he would visit us again soon….

2nd May – 5th May

Full fledge classes have been started from 2nd May. The first official class our batch attended was on Philosophy by PGPM Director Dr. Venkat R. Krishnan ( his website- http://www.geocities.com/rkvenkat/ ). As part of this module we have to do a social project. Currently the lectures are going on Karma Yoga, Upanishads and letters by Swami Vivekananda, lot of reading to be done on these topics. Main aim of this course is to develop leadership qualities and this module would be extended for the next term as Transformational Leadership course. BTW this course is a first in kind to be introduced in any of the BSchools in the world. GLakes again proved that its diff from the rest by introducing this course (1st time by making Chineese class compulsory).

2. Quantitative Techniques by PK Vishwandhan. This subject is OK for most of us as a lot of ppl in the batch are with engineering background.

3. Macro Economics by Rakesh Singh. Today we had the first class. Damn, Rocky is cool and ruthless. The lecture started with “What is Economics?” and ended with an assignment and a mini project. Also lot of pre reading has been prescribed.

The basic funda in GLakes is that for every 1hr of lecture there would 4hrs of reading that has to be done. Gosh.. god knows how we would be doing all these assignments. BTW in GLakes there is a tradition of “Cold Calling”, so none will have any idea of whose turn it would be on a day.
That’s it for today.. shall come back again. Check out the pics of Ratan Tata's lec
Signing off….
Vish…

GLakes-IIT MOU, Adi Godrej at Convocation

2006-04-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

GLakes signed an MOU with IIT on 26th April. Some of the pics are attached.
The MoU will encompass joint work among faculty and students. It will also include sharing of academic and infrastructure resources, organising of joint events and programmes.

On 27th Adi Godrej addressed the Convocation for Class of 2006. Info abt it can be found at
http://www.pagalguy.com/index.php?categoryid=15&p2_articleid=369

Outbound experience

2006-04-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

Some of the visitors requested to post outbound experience. Sorry for responding a bit lately.

Details of Outbound trip
- The main objective of the trip is to make all the students get to know each other, build some team sense and prepare them both mentally and physically for the 1 year MBA course.
- The trip went for 3days in a resort in the outskirts of the city. The programm had all sorts of team building related activities and games, few of them are like- salsa dance class, trust building games, yoga, trekking, ice breakers etc.
- The best thing in participating in these activities is that you will leave ur shyness and stage fear and will come forward boldly to take up the responsibilities and coordinate well with the team. Actually by participating in these activities, I made frnds very easily and understood the dynamics of team work.
Some of the pictures from outbound trip are attached below.

Adi Godrej & Convocation

2006-04-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

Venue: Taj Hotel, Chennai
Guests: Adi Godrej, Chairman Godrej group, K. B Chandra Sekar, Chairman & CEO, Jam Cracker Inc, USA.
Mr Godrej in his convocation address asked outgoing students to follow 5 points
- Leadership by taking tough decisions
- Play to win and not to play dirty
- Taking big risks and be entrepreneurial
- Dare for mighty goals
- Make vocation a vacation

N.Shankar, CEO, Sanmar

2006-04-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

Time- 6:30pm
Venue- IIT auditorium

Today we had a great session with Mr. N Shankar , CEO of Sanmar group. This is the 3rd CEO meet in this week. Good to know about these companies in a CEO perspective.
Uncle Bala also gave a lecture today morning. This guy is awesome and he is full of enthu and energy. He just showed a video of some construction workers who built the house in 2 hrs 45mins and asked us to analyse the people, process, technology and knowledge parts of it.
BTW Sanmar got interests in Engineering, Shipping, Commodity Chemicals etc. It was a good talk by Shankar and we too interacted well.
Tomorrow we got inauguration of our batch by Ravi Venkatesan , CEO , Microsoft India. Eagerly waiting to attend his talk.

Chalo...good nite.

orientation pics

2006-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here are the orientation pics ..

Orientation@ Glakes Day 1

2006-04-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

Entered college at 930. Started with registration sessions followed with some ice breaking sessions too.Seniors were damn cool and they organised every thing very nicely. There was an introduction lecture by one of the senior Glimmer BRK.He basically explained abt the life at GLakes and how shld be the attitude of the students.That was pretty good and interesting.Compared ISB as a "bath tub" "Museum" and GLakes as "Crucible" "Laboratory" respectively.Had a Bakra lecture in the evening with one of the seniors acting as a prof. He asked us to write an exam in 15mins and solve a case study in 30mins. He made everybody a fool, but anyway it was great fun.

Chennai Chaos

2006-04-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

Came to Chennai yesterday morning. Chennai is F*** hot place with huge traffic and insane drivers.
Went to college. Met few seniors, enquired abt acco and loan stuff. Met Venkata Krishnan, PGPM Director. Too many new ppl, so hard to remember their names. Decided to stay near to college as it is more comfortable for the hectic time table.
Nyways...Shall come up with more info and pics very soon. Keep looking this blog for info on GLakes.

Self Made Man

2006-04-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

This sculpture which shows a rugged man chiseling himself out and making/carving himself is really a great one and the best one I had seen.

Phylosophically there is a lot that can be understood from that statue- that left to his own devices, man will use his God-given talents to be creative, productive, and prosperous. Using free will, he will better his own situation and that of those around him, thereby influencing in a positive way his own destiny.

This is amazing right??

Who is a Glimmer

2006-04-09T00:55:00.000-07:00

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A Glimmer is an MBA student from Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, India.
This blog would be about the experiences and life at GLakes, Chennai.