Adios (Farewell to Batch 2012-14)

Amidst cascading emotions pervading the territory of sequential nostalgia, a glistering ceremony was commemorated marking the adieu of the MBA batch of 2012-14. Their juniors left no stone unturned to make this auspicious occasion a day worth remembering for all the BITSians of the outgoing batch.

The ceremony started with a welcome speech by Prof. Anil Bhatt, HoD, Department of Management. He stressed upon the importance of integrity and quality among the students. His views were further reverberated by the wonderful magnificence of Mr. G. Balasubramanian, Chief Placement Officer, BITS Pilani. He cited examples of his own life to motivate the students to move ahead in life. His speech was followed by Prof. Arvind Sudarshan who gave us some insights about the Kartikeyan award. After that all the students of the 2012-14 batch were felicitated by different teachers for the different roles and responsibilities the students had held in their tenure.

The highlight of the evening was the Kartikeyan award. The award was given to Manikandan Ramesh, a 2012-14 batch student.

The ceremony ended with a wonderful video that took the entire batch of 2012-14 deep down the memory lane and feelings of warmth, love and friendliness floated in the atmosphere.
Finally dinner was served and the ceremony ended on a high note of appreciation and acknowledgement.

Indeed, a day well spent, a day well lived and a day well celebrated…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“Decoding the Future of Retail Industry”- A 2 Day Workshop

The Indian Business Market witnesses an ever changing, volatile environment and to keep the students abreast with the latest business trends, the Department of Management, BITS Pilani, organised a two day retail workshop on the theme “Decoding the Future of Retail”.

The workshop was presided by the keynote speaker, Mr. Devashish Dasgupta, Executive Director and Chief Corporate Public Affairs Officer, YUM Restaurants India and by the second worthy speaker, Mr. Amit Sharma, Vice President, Mall Business, Future Group. The event witnessed participation by students from both MBA and B.E courses. Students from BITS Hyderabad joined the workshop through Tele-Presence.

The workshop kicked off with a video celebrating the Golden Jubilee year of BITS Pilani and then Mr. Devashish Dasgupta enlightened the students through an interactive session, explaining how the food business works in India, emergence of Quick Service Restaurants and other formats, the business model of YUM Restaurants, various growth opportunities and strategies and how to understand the consumer need and palate.

Emphasizing on YUM Restaurants’ ideology of “Doing Business with a Big Heart”, Mr.Devashish shared a video with students, highlighting the special KFC restaurants, wherein specially-abled people are employed and how it is running a YUM Academy, to make such people more employable.

The Day 1 of the workshop ended with an interactive Q and A session between students and Mr. Dasgupta.

On Day 2, Mr. Amit Sharma, held an informative interaction with the students, explaining them the concept of Brand Image and Brand Building, the strategy of building innovative products and promotional tools and Future Group’s initiative on Brand Building by roping in Sachin Tendulkar and creating a “SACH” Brand.

The session then proceeded with a creative assignment in which students had to design a new KFC box meal with an appropriate promotional strategy. The workshop ended with result declaration, awarding of souvenirs and a vote of thanks by Dr. Leela Rani to both the speakers.

Pics from the event-

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

By

Niharika Singh                                    
MBA 2013-15

Guest Lecture on ‘Careers in Management Consulting’

A Guest lecture by Nirupam Anand on Careers in Management Consulting who is Consultant for McKinsey & Company, Oil & Gas Sector (UK) and a BITS Pilani MBA Alumnus.

He categorized his discussion on :

Basics of Consulting

Strategy

Private Equity due Diligence

The KPMG, Delloitte, Capgemini & Mckinsey & Company are major players in consulting. He shared various Position offered & steps to achieve those positions. A combination of Skill sets like Analytic Aptitude, Communication , Problem Solving, Client Skills & most important Leadership Skills can be a huge asset for a consultant.

He ended the discussion by sharing guidelines points on: If Company is Right to Invest? To answer this Question he mentioned- Assessing Market Attractiveness, Target Competitive Positioning, Perspective on Base Case(Restructuring Of Portfolio), Additional Value Creation Opportunity. He also suggested material to read, Book named The Firm n few HBR articles could be helpful in leaning according to him.

By

Vijay Kabra

MBA Batch 2013-15

Workshop on ‘Creating an Advertising Campaign’

If you had the perception that a person who can sit under the tree with a white piece of paper in hand and stare in isolation at the skies above, can be a great content writer for an ad campaign owing to his creative bent of mind, well then you must certainly meet Mr. Kishore Chakraborti, an ad-man with a vast experience of 25 years and still going strong! Mr. Chakraborti is currently serving as the Vice-President of McCann Erickson.

“When we talk about advertising, we are talking about commercial creativity”, reverberated the voice of Mr. Chakraborti whose sense of humor and humbleness connected with everyone in the audience and all those present were given an experience of life-time in regards to the world of advertising.

Some of the insightful content that can be derived from his spell-bounding speech is being listed as follows:

• Your product has a truth. You need to tell the truth to the customer. To tell the truth, we need to stop them, give them an authentic and entertainment value.
• A commercial needs to develop or take out the self-interest or need from ourselves.
• We need to understand what market involves-category, competition, market forces.

The mettle of the man was corroborated by the differentiation he had conceived between tea and coffee while explaining a case study on Nescafé. In his discussion on the case study on Nescafé, he explained in his own trademark humorous style as to how the brand, once being at the zenith of market share and customer satisfaction declined over time. And then he went on to show how an in-depth market research followed by a thoughtful advertising campaign changed the fortune of the brand. The case study indeed portrayed the power of advertising in building a brand.

He was a standing epitome of the adage that advertising is all about connecting with the target audience. In his one and half hour speech, an insightful knowledge of the world of advertising was shared with such simplicity that most people left the room, feeling a bit more inspired and a bit more sensitive towards the craft and trade of advertising.

As Mr. Chakraborti rightly points out, advertising is treated as a piece of small movie by the consumers. Well his session was no less than an aesthetic small movie for sure!

By

Victor Saha

MBA Batch 2013-15

“INNOVISION”-an OASIS ’13 event organized by Department of Management

Department of Management in association with “Nirmaan”- a BITS initiative, organised an event named as “INNOVISION” during OASIS 2013. This was a first of its kind event in which students from different courses (MBA,BE) showcased their creative & innovative skills in selling the Nirmaan products.

The event had two rounds (first being a knockout one). In the first round, the participants were given certain clues and the team had to make a picture using those clues. The most closely resembling picture was chosen as the winners. The teams who qualified from the first round entered into the second round where they had to sell products (ranging from handmade sweaters to scarves, beautiful purses etc) made by the local residents of Pilani. The collections made from event will be used for various other welfare schemes running for Nirmaan. Thus, BITS has again showed its selfless spirit of helping the rural people, thus catering for the social cause. Dr. R Raghunathan, faculty, Department of Management, was the honorable judge of the event and greeted the winners after the competition was over.

This was a prelude for the upcoming events as Department of Management, BITS Pilani is poised to organize one of its biggest management events- INTERFACE 2014, which is most likely to commence from 31st Jan, 2014. Since its inception, it has attracted various students from different B-schools like IITs, where they take part in different events organized by various clubs of HR, Marketing, Finance, Operations. The Management Department is also anticipating to conduct similar kinds of events in the near future and also to invite some eminent personalities from Industry as Chief Guests/Speakers. This will ultimately help the management students to interact & get some valuable experiences/insights from them and further during the internships/placements process.

By

Suvigya Raj Kaushik
MBA Batch 2013-15

Workshop on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship

Dr. Rajiv Gupta, one of the well-known consultants of our times, had visited our campus on 20^th October ’13 as part of WILP. He gave an insightful lecture on creativity, innovation and also on certain aspects related to entrepreneurship.

He started by explaining the power of ideas and how any new experience becomes a pattern in mind. He went on to explain the importance of asking questions and made an assertion that one should have more questions than answers!

He then switched in to networking and its types. According to him, networking can be classified into the following two ways:

1. Resource networking to gain resources or make a sale.
2. Idea networking to get and test ideas.

Dr. Gupta quoted several acclaimed personalities in the course of his 3-hour lecture, which filled the room with a sense of awe and appreciation among all those present during the session.

He then laid stress on working with teams, and important insights about selling any product. At the end he gave some useful information on creativity and entrepreneurship. He ended the session with the following quote:

‘Don’t ever be enamored by your first idea!’

But the audience was certainly enamored by this session of Dr. Gupta!

By

Mridula Grover
MBA 2013-15

Introduction to Advertising : A Guest Lecture by Mr. M. G. Parmeswaran

 Mr. M.G. Parameswaran is Executive Director and CEO of Draftfcb-Ulka Advertising,  Mumbai, a member of India’s third largest marketing communication organization, the  Draftfcb Ulka Group. Ambi, as he is known, is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Madras  (Indian Institute of Technology) and an Honor Roll Management Graduate from IIM  Calcutta (Indian Institute of Management).  In a career spanning three decades he has  handled assignments in marketing, sales and advertising with companies like  Rediffusion DY&R, Boots Company and UDI Yellow Pages before dropping anchor at  Draftfcb-Ulka Advertising over two decades ago.

We, the students of BITS Pilani got a great chance to listen to his brief insights about  Advertising and his experiences. The on-line lecture was made possible by the Industry  Linkage club in collaboration with Embryo club.

He briefed us about what is advertising, the Functions of advertising, the key role of an agency which is setup for the definite purpose and so on. He mentioned the names of the 5 largest advertising agencies of the world and the agencies that come under them in India.

The session was very productive and made us realize that Advertising is one of the various Input Functions for a product which helps in creating Output as the building of the Brand.

By

Mridula Grover

MBA 2013-15

Blame Bankers/Investors but ultimately it’s your Money : A Guest Lecture by Dr. Aswath Damodaran

 It was Dr. Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business to  deliver lecture on Living with uncertainty in investing and valuation. The lecture enlightened the  investment strategies, understanding Cash Flow, Valuation & Market Price. He started explaining by  practical examples of companies like 3M, Tata Motor, Amazon and Twitter and how valuation for each company varied as the situations varied. He highlighted ten ways to factor in uncertainty in valuations through these live examples. Also he discussed about his facebook valuation, highlighting how his valuation differed from the valuation performed by goldman sachs and other investment banks. He highlighted this case, and initial stock price was 45 dollars and after a period it dropped to 28 dollars which was the value he predicted the stock would be trading. This highlighted the students about difference in valuation and pricing of a company stock. The talk ended with a rapid fire question and answer session with the god of corporate finance and valuation!

It was pleasure to have him as our Guest as he has written several books on equity valuation as well on  corporate finance and investments and is considered the most eminent and respected academician in the field of corporate finance, valuation.

He is also widely published in leading journals of finance, including: The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of  Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.

He has been the recipient of Giblin, Glucksman, and Heyman Fellowships, a David Margolis Teaching Excellence Fellowship, and the Richard L. Rosenthal Award for Innovation in Investment Management and Corporate Finance.

Pictures from the talk-

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

By

Vijay Kabra

2013-15 MBA Batch

Interaction with Mr. Arun Sundararaman

 Mr. Arun Sundararaman is a leading practitioner of data warehousing and has been managing large, enterprise DW  projects involving design, development and implementation for clients in different industries in the US and the UK  for the past seven years. He currently leads the Healthcare Payer Informatics Capability at Accenture, Chennai. We  people got opportunity to interact with him. He had told the importance of Case Study with various data in it. He  discussed about the skills for Data Analyst/ Business Analyst / Data Scientist. Different Roles & Career Option in the  same field.

By

Vijay Kabra

MBA 2013-15 Batch.

Grand finale of BITS Pilani’s startup competition, Conquest 2013

The grand finale of the decadal edition of the highly successful startup competition, Conquest 2013, organized by Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership of BITS Pilani, was held on Sunday, 15^th September 2013 at FICCI Auditorium,   New Delhi.  The hottest startup of India award, sponsored by Groupon India was bagged by Freshmentors along with Rs 2 lakh in equity-less money, a host of resources with the runner up being iTraveller taking home Rs 1 lakh. India Rising Star Award, sponsored by Gandhi Capital was won by m.Paani.  In addition, the winners had Rs 1 crore worth of incubation opportunities by prestigious firms like Seedfund, Euphoria Consulting, Kae Capital, Sequoia Capital, Mumbai Angels and TLabs and Rs 2 Crore in resources by Groupon India, Amazon India, ScaleArc, Foradian, Pressdoc and many more.

Winners of The Conquest 2013 : FreshMentors

The grand finale, attended by over 400 people, featured brilliant pitches by the ten finalists, and also hosted two panel discussions:

1) Why do billion dollar startups not emerge from India?
2) First movers versus Fast follower startups in an unestablished Industry?

The Panelists were :  Amit Ranjan (Co-founder, Slideshare), Gautam Gandhi (India head, Google)  Rohit Bansal (co-founder, Snapdeal), Pranay Gupta (Partner, 91 Springboard) Bikram Bedi (Head Amazon India), Dev Khare (Principal, Lightspeed Venture Partners), Sandeep Singhal (co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners).

Prof. G. Raghurama, Director, BITS Pilani -Pilani Campus graced the occasion and was joined by Prof. Arya Kumar, Unit chief, ED&IPR Unit, for inauguration.

The process for the competition began in February 2013. After the startups registered at the Conquest 2013 website, personal mentoring sessions for the top shortlisted teams were organized across 5 major cities in India, wherein the teams had the liberty to choose their own mentors. The semi-finalists were asked to update their profiles including the progress made since the initial registration for Conquest.  Every team was also asked to submit a Video Pitch which was used as part of the evaluation process to select teams for the Grand Finale. All teams irrespective of their selection to the next round received detailed feedback from the judges.  In the final round of Conquest held in New Delhi on 15^th September 2013, the teams went through a number of simulation rounds where they were grilled by the Judges before the Winner was chosen.

Conquest 2013 had title sponsors Groupon India and co-title sponsors CoolAge, ScaleArc and Foradian.

BY

Dipesh Joshi

MBA Batch 2013-15