Upcoming dialogues

Reports pending...

Ravi Vikram, HLL

22 Nov: Dr. PL Beena, "Mergers and Acquisitions"

Photos of earlier sessions

Dr. Liginlal, Wisconsin, 22 Aug 07

Development Dialogues

Mr.Swarup, Stark, 26 Oct 07

Mr.VSM Nair introduces Mr. Swarup

Dr. PL Beena, CDS, 22 Nov 07

"Mergers and Acquisitions"

CDS Working paper 355 (2004)

CDS working paper 301 (2000)

Global Financial Crisis and its Impact on India

30-Oct-2008, 4.30 pm to 6 pm

Press Club, Thiruvananthapuram

Invitation Photos Press : 1 2 .

Dr. Kannan spoke on the current global financial crisis in clear, simple and non-technical language.

Here are the major points:

* After the 1997-98 Asian crisis, the confidence in IMF among developing countries had eroded. One reason was that during the crisis, though IMF came to the help of these Governments, it had stipulated conditions like reducing Govt expenditure, currency devaluation, capital account convertibility etc. However, when US Government increased its expenses excessively the same IMF did not resort to any corrective advice / action. Possibly this was because US economy and global economy were booming,  US was the major share holder in IMF and US enjoyed substantial political clout.
 
* The "global currency" status enjoyed by US dollar was partly responsible for US government allowing govt expenses, debt and deficit to increase uncontrolled. 
 
* Forex reserves of many countries had become hundreds of billions of USD ($1.8 trillion for China, $900 billion for Japan, $300 billion (now 270) for India and so on. Most of these countries parked these funds in the US treasury providing a cheap source of credit to the US government, which in turn made these funds available to US banks at low interest rates. These banks in turn pushed the money down to even non-creditworthy (sub-prime) groups, predominantly the real estate sector, where prices where moving upwards driven by speculation. However, soon defaults from these sub-prime borrowers increased, growing soon into the sub-prime crisis couple of years ago. 

* In the meantime, investment bankers started creating “innovative financial products” packaging the above debts and selling them off, leading to a series of financial instruments with hardly any real collateral and multiple layers of leveraging.
 

* When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in Sep 2008, this led to cascaded effects in the financial sector, which was by now excessively leveraged and had created substantial fictitious wealth through financial engineering.

* The impact on India has arisen mainly from the free stock market access afforded to FIIs. The FII exposure of Indian stock markets was as much as 64% of the country's GDP (Although Dr.Kannan gave this figure, it may be a good idea to verify it). The FIIs brought in funds as they wished, drove the market up to 20,000 plus points (starting from around 8000 points) and during the crisis, brought it back again to 8000 - level, draining in the process, foreign exchange (about 10% of forex reserves). Some control over FII's access to stock markets may be in order.

* Hardly 5% of the people in India invest in stock markets (and they would be the losers in this crisis). The other 95% of the people invest in traditional assets like savings / FDs in commercial banks, post office, real estate, gold and so on which are relatively more real. Most of these people won't be affected; in fact the rise in gold and real estate prices would have increased the wealth held by several sections.

* Export oriented industry would suffer a set-back, although part of it would be offset by the depreciating rupee. Another problem faced by the industry was the loss of market capitalisation which suddenly increased their exposure to borrowed funds. Banks suddenly started demanding increased cover-up (de-leveraging) and this made access to borrowed funds difficult leading to a liquidity crisis for the industry. The private industry is hence unable and hesitant to make investments, despite the fundamentals continuing to be good in the real economy. Everyone bets for at least 7% growth in the year ahead, which is not bad anyway. Government should now make the first move now to infuse confidence in the system and once that happens the private sector will be forthcoming. This is the right time for Goverment to invest heavily, especially in infrastructure and other areas where the private returns are less than social returns. Money is not a problem, Indian public sector banks are now seeing a surge in investments from NRIs. Also, many of the Navaratnas are sitting on loads of cash, parked with the public sector banks, which they are not currently allowed to invest.

* Talking about the impact on Kerala, Dr.Kannan argued that if Government responds prudently and professionally, this is the right time to initiate new projects. Remittances from abroad are already increasing and the depreciating rupee has  brought in a windfall of around 20% in the remittances. Government need to provide a lead on how to effectively use those funds. Quoting figures, Dr. Kannan said 90% of NRI remittances into India are from West Asia and one-third of this flows into Kerala.

* The impact on employment would not, however, be positive, especially for export oriented segments, both traditional and modern. Hopefully this would be a short term phenomenon; Dr. Kannan saw this as an opportunity to correct the recent unbalanced growth in incomes (many participants did not like this idea).

* VHS adds: Looking into the future, Dr Kannan was of the view that the role of the Dollar as a global currency will reduce and it could be replaced by a basket of strong currencies consisting of Euro, Yuan, Yen etc. besides US Dollar.

Mr. G Vijaya Raghavan moderated the session, which was well attended by representatives from the media, government, industry and academics. The 45-minute talk was followed by 45 minutes of discussion.

Prepared by KGS

(If you remember anything further, please share. Use the box at the bottom)

The 2nd Leadership Series Lecture: See report Photos Press Reports: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Notes: (Batch 3 4). 

“The Wall Street collapse: The Genesis & The Lessons”

Mr. S. Sankaran; 24 Oct  ‘08,14.00-15.30hrs

The Speaker:

Mr. Sankaran is currently a management consultant. He had served in senior management positions in various multinational companies, both in India and abroad. He was the Chairman of CII –Kerala in 1997-98, and its Vice Chairman for 1996-97. He was also Member-Finance & Taxation Committee –CII, Kerala; Member – Taskforce-International Business Promotion, Chennai; Member- State Level Inter Institutional Committee- RBI; Member – Customs and Excise Grievance Cell, CC&E; Member- Peer Committee NAAC, Bangalore; Member - The Indian Council of Arbitration, Kerala

Session:

“How did United States and the dollar become the super power? What is the Wall Street collapse all about? What was the Genesis of the collapse & what are the lessons to be learnt from this?” These are some of the questions, every B- school student has and Mr. Sankaran’s session was just about that.

Mr. Sankaran started off by comparing the World of Finance to the Cosmic Universe which is very mysterious, dynamic, vast, unpredictable and imperfect. He elaborated on the human emotion of greed and its counterbalance emotion of fear, both of which can be attributed to be the prime reason for all financial crises.

The prospects of larger financial returns in cross continental trade saw international trade increase by leaps and bounds. With Bretton Wood agreement dissolved, Dollar emerged as a prominent currency for trade and international transactions. But the financial crises in South Asian Countries, Russia, Brazil, imbibed a fear, resulting in countries hording dollars and then parking them in US treasury bonds. With the yield for US treasury bonds diminishing, the lucrative mortgage US market started attracting these fund. A series of complex derivatives kept the money supply, but eventually liquidity crunch at one end, resulted in a domino effect and the collapse of an entire financial domain.

He gave couple of parameter which could be a signal to financial crisis (a) a country’s budget deficit and debt rises above normal limits (b) the total market capitalization exceeds GDP by 20% (c) sharp increase in the prices of gold.

It is a myth that markets can be self-correcting. Markets have to be regulated. A regulated market is one of the reasons that the impact of this financial crisis will be limited on India. Like all other crisis in the past, this too will pass. But there are important lessons to be learnt. Chanakaya, in his Arthashastra talk about creating wealth. Real wealth can never be created through speculation but only through productive work. Countries and companies should invest in creating real wealth.

Prepared by Madhuvanthy,PGP'08

Edited by Mercy Mathew

National Education Grid and the challenge of Change Management in Indian Higher Education.

Dr.K.R.Srivathsan,

Director,IIITM-K

17-Oct-'08,16.20-18.20hrs

The World of Education is undergoing a rapid and quiet transformation:

How do we in India take advantage of this and synthesize a new framework of providing 'QUALITY EDUCATION TO ALL, INDEPENDENT OF GEOGRAPHY'?

Session: The session began with the speaker throwing  light on how the big opportunity for India would come

 from an education revolution which we must undertake as our prime national endeavour.He then briefed us about

 the sad state of our education system which according to him is no longer learning centric, instead the students are merely

 programmed to answer questions.The speaker emphasised more on how quality education would help graduates

 become employable.He explained on how it can be made possible by "thinking differently" and also by insisting

 on the developments in connectivity,content and collaboration.

Finally he made the students understand that the time has already come to revitalize and energize the

Education Systems as the driver of development.

Prepared by Deepa Menon,PGP'08.

Edited by Myhtili Kesavaswamy

Corporate Communication – ASB Master Class

(Photos)  

 By Joseph Fernandez, head, Corporate Communications, UST Global, Trivandrum.

01-Sep-'08,3.10-5.20pm.

George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Corporate communication is no exception to this illusion, with many believing that once the branding process is over, nothing needs to be done. But the reality is otherwise.

Speaking to the ASB family and guest from Technopark companies, Mr. Joseph Fernandez, head of the Corporate Communications function at UST Global, used allegory of individuals and their act of communication to illustrate the importance of corporate communications and its various facets. For an individual, the act of writing the full name, with the surname/last name/family name, is a way of expressing a sense of belongingness to the family, the community, religion, nation, etc. Similarly, organizations need to build a sense of belongingness or association for its employees, its customers, the society, investors and the various stakeholders. And again, the way in which an individual communicates with the family members, acquaintance and outsiders differs, so does the way corporate communicates with its various stakeholders.

Citing the example of Kongo Gumi of Japan, which by the virtue of its 1400 years of existence is also the oldest business enterprise in the world, Mr. Joseph inferred to the audience that the journey of business communication is also that old. But over these 1400 years, it has undergone a complete transformation.

With regards to India, there are three events that have greatly transformed the way organizations communicate. The first was the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991; the second the World Wide Web (www) going online in 1993 and; the third was VSNL offering internet services in 1995. All these lead to corporatization, digitalization and globalization of India business, which helped them to be at a competitive advantage with regards to many companies from developing countries.

In such digitized and globalized environment, how does a business communicate or what is the function of corporate communication? The function has remained the same, communicating with the various stakeholders of the company.  So the core remains the same, but the way things are done changes.

There are three essentials for corporate communication

1. It is a management function – corporate communication has to be owed by the CEO or a senior level executive

    

2. Businesses need to have a clear communication Strategy

    

3. The possibility of evolved response has to be built into the strategy

    

Mr. Joseph then drew various examples to illustrate how corporate communication happens in UST Global.

 Sub-Prime Loans Crisis in US and its Impact on Global and Indian Economy

Dr. SankaraNarayanan, College of Business, NMIT, Bangalore

14 & 15^th Nov’07,

session: Dr. Sankaranarayanan spoke on "Sub-Prime   Loans Crisis in US and its impact on the Indian economy."  The session started with an explanation on mortgages and servicing of loans to less credit worthy customers.  The discussion highlighted the processes involved in granting a loan, calculating down payment, fixing rate of interest, and refinancing of loans.

    The workshop brought to light the factors that led to the creation of Sub-Prime loans, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), and Securitization. Some important articles from New York Times dating from 1999 to 2006, citing possible crisis emanating from sub prime lending were discussed. It was observed that Securitization has proliferated into the markets to an extent where it had become difficult to identify the original lender of the loan. This led to loans being written-off, thereby causing losses worth billions of dollars.  The focus has shifted from collection of loans from original defaulters to writing-off of the investments in form of CDOs and other collateralized debts.  The speaker highlighted the possible repercussions of sub-prime lending in the Indian economy.

    Several numerical examples were discussed to understand the creation and issuance of loans. The calculation of Equated Monthly Installments (EMI), effective rate of interest, loan refinancing and evaluation of different choices was also dealt through the examples.
    It was followed by a panel discussion on the sub-prime lending, in the light of 7 parameters for identifying crisis – growth, complexity, absence of safety buffers, cognitive bias, incompetent leadership, trigger mechanism, and the role of leadership.

Prepared by Swaminathan,PGP'06.Edited by Rakesh Nair

Applied System Thinking

R.Narayanan,TCS,Trivandrum

03 Dec-'07,15.30-17.00hrs.

R. Narayanan is currently the Vice-President (Learning & Development) at TCS. He is responsible for planning, delivering and measuring Induction and Continuous Learning initiatives of all TCS associates in Technology, Domain, Management and Soft skills. A Master’s in Mathematics with additional diplomas in Statistics and French, he has more than 35 years' experience with IT and specially Software and before joining TCS, he had a glorious stint of 26 years with the Indian Space Research Organization.

Session:The two hour long session, focused on “Applied System Thinking” started with the question – ‘Who is a consultant?’ Mr. Narayanan then helped the class explore the job of the consultant from the perspective of the client as well as the consultant. For all the successful assignments, there are well defined deliverables, the assignment is completed on time, within budget, solution fits the need, there are no post implementation problems and benefits exceed business case and can be sustained over time. But the industry is not immune to failures and bad clients always blame the consultant and bad consultants always love bad clients

 Discussing the causes of failures, Mr. Narayanan elaborated on the ‘Gaps in Consultancy’ – Cognitive, Perception, Communication and Implementation. Added to this, the environment itself is changing. In such a complex and dynamic environment, Systems Thinking provides tools to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us to see how to change them effectively. Systems Thinking was defined as “a multidisciplinary approach to the study of innate complexity which by synthesizing systemic findings from the natural, social, technological, behavioral, life sciences and other specialized fields brings holistic perspectives to the solution of problems within a general context.” To make it more real, using a multi-level reasoning framework, Systems Thinking approach was applied to problems like Traffic dynamics, Primary education and Market intelligence. The session concluded with, Mr. Narayanan answering students’queries.

Prepared by Neeraj Kumar, PGP06 Edited by Mercy Mathew

Also see A*** B* C***** D***** E

F** .

 Case Analysis

Why & How..?

Prof. K Balakrishnan, SDM-IMD, Mysore,

24 Nov ’07, 14:15-18.30hrs.

Speaker: Prof.Balakrishnan has twenty-two years industrial experience across various sectors, functions and organizations such as Blue Star Ltd, Sanmar Group and Escorts Ltd. Was the COO/CEO of Century Wood Ltd. & Raman Boards Ltd.  Set up India’s first automated solid wood furniture facility as agreen field 100% EOU. Currently he is working as a faculty at Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development, (SDM-IMD) Mysore. After joining SDM-IMD, he has published over 50 papers and articles. He is a resource person with the UGC Academic Staff College and teaches as visiting faculty with KIAMS & IIMB.

Session: Explaining the origin and need for case based teaching in management education, Mr. Balakrishnan, made reference to the relevance and importance of case-based teaching process in grooming future managers. Case studies help in simulating real issues/problems in class room setup and facilitate decision making. Though there need not necessarily be a right answer to the case problem, there is the right way to case analysis. He talked about the cognitive biases that affect decision making and how students can avoid such biases. He also discussed a framework for case analysis. Towards the end of the session, two case studies were analyzed using the same framework. 

Prepared by Viju ThomasPGP07

Edited by Mercy Mathew

 "Knowledge Management: Emperor's Missing Cloths"

VSM Nair, VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd, Trivandrum: Oct19th, 2007 

Speaker: Mr. VSM Nair has about 35 years of experience in industry and consulting, specialising in industrial projects. He has worked with Tata Economic Consultancy Services, KITCO and KSIDC before promoting VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd in 1997 along with Mr. G Vijaya Raghavan.

He has since consulted on several national and international projects, with focus on technology parks and sectors like IT, tourism, media and entertainment. 

At the outset, Mr. Nair explained the importance of updating our knowledge to survive in this rapidly changing world. According to him, Knowledge is an asset as well as

the key to survival. He pointed out that knowledge is different from data and information.  Further, the difference between the explicit and the tacit knowledge and why it is difficult to codify tacit knowledge were dealt with. He briefed upon the commonly found knowledge management practices in organizations like creation of knowledge databases, knowledge mapping, appointing Chief Knowledge Officer(CKO), Communities of Practice .The challenges associated with installing and managing such practices were also touched upon. He further talked about the benefits of knowledge management that is how to minimize loss and risk, improve organizational efficiency, or embrace innovation. Knowledge Management efforts and initiatives add great value to an organization. Finally, the session concluded with a discussion on "whether knowledge is divisible".

Prepared by Vinit ,PGP06-08 and

Edited by Rakhee Sudhir

Luck favours the daring and the hardworking

Raj Rajkumar, Partner, Symphony Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd.

Sep 17th, 2007

Speaker: Mr. Raj Rajkumar has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kerala, India, an MS in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He is a partner with Symphony Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd., Singapore. Raj is involved in evaluating and executing new transactions on behalf of Symphony and sits on the boards of portfolio companies in India, Singapore and China. Prior to joining the Symphony team in 1999, Raj was a member of GE's Corporate Initiatives Group based in Hong Kong where he was responsible for Six Sigma initiatives across Asia. Raj has also worked with Symmetrix, a Boston-based management consulting firm and in line-management at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in Japan and the United States.

Session: The one-hour session began with Raj taking the audience through his inspiring career trajectory shaped by what he described as random events. He narrated the sequence of events that led to his choice of Japan for the first job after MS and later building a career in finance. Reflecting on how his own career prejudices, as a student and young professional, melted down in later years, as he himself turned out to be thriving in the very same jobs, Raj advised the students against letting pre-conceived notions stunt their careers. He said, "Random events are more capable of taking your careers to greater heights than planned ones. Benefit from the unknown unknown."

Karthik thanked the speaker and the audience.

Prepared by KG Satheesh Kumar

The Indian IT Industry

VSM Nair, VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd, Trivandrum: Sep 7th, 2007

Speaker: Mr. VSM Nair has about 35 years of experience in industry and consulting, specialising in industrial projects. He has worked with Tata Economic Consultancy Services, KITCO and KSIDC before promoting VMA consultants Pvt Ltd in 1997 along with Mr. G Vijaya Raghavan. He has since consulted on several national and international projects, with focus on technology parks and sectors like information technology, tourism, media and entertainment.

Session: The session started with the speaker introducing about the characteristics of software industry, evolution of software industry. The session also talked about the strength of Indian it industries which tells that India has got the most CMM level companies this is because of India is a country which has got lot of talents in all sectors. He also mentioned about which are all areas India is concentrating and from which are all countries the revenue is coming most. It also mentioned about the various eras how the it industry developed. In this he mentioned about the quality of the software, India’s strength in this sector compared to other countries. At last he talked about the threats, challenges faced by Indian software companies in the future.

Prepared by Vinod.S, PGP06-08

Interacting with Industrial Experience

Ram Srinivasan, Catisa, Geneva, 03-Aug-07, 14:30-15:40hrs:

Speaker:  Mr. Ram, having started his career as an Investment Banker with Morgan Stanley has a Management degree from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania.  He has been a banker for 22 years.  He is currently associated with CATISA, a family based conglomerate.

Session: The hour long session started with the speaker introducing himself and opening the floor for discussion.  Our students started with questions ranging from the business of CATISA, his experience & learning in Investment Banking, from there on towards banking sector in India.  There was also a discussion on the retail segment.  It was about the big players wiping out the corner grocery stores.  Some students supported it as an opportunity for better customer service & wider choice, more open economy.  Some of them also felt that the grocery stores shall co-exist given the dynamics of Indian consumer market.  There was also a discussion on the Asset Reconstruction companies in India, as a potential and upcoming line of business with the parallel drawn towards the Private Equity Investments.  It also dwelt on the strengths of Indian banks and not favoring the possibility of Indian banks looking up for foreign tie-up’s to consolidate their positions.  The students also got a chance to speak about their aspirations.  At the end, vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Swaminathan, student of Asian School of Business.

Prepared by Swaminathan, PGP06-08

CAREER DECISIONS DURING DIFFICULT TIMES

Speaker: Dr. Fenn B Mathai

Dr.Fenn B Mathai, Head of TALK SHOP

09-Jan-2009,14.00-16.00hrs

Given the present economic recession, job prospects are dull. But that should not deter a student from nurturing a dream and working to make it real. This was the underlying theme of the talk given by Dr. Fenn B Mathai to the students at ASB.

Citing instances from his personal life and experience - as a father, teacher and human being, he wanted students to appreciate each big and small, good or bad experience in their lives, as all these help in shaping their character and destiny. Once when he was working as a CEO of a company, his Executive Manager, in the presence of the client said, “Whatever you said was bullshit, sir”.  To anybody, such a comment on the face, in the presence of the clients can be a rude shock. At this point, Dr. Fenn brought in an alternate perspective. Each individual has his or her own opinion and one of the essentials in mentoring a subordinate is to encourage them to value their opinion and develop the courage to question the existing norms/ systems / practices. Then only they can innovate and be creative. But the courage to ask question does not come naturally to most. Like the cockroach, illustrated in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, we all are comfortable living in shadows and cracks and have to be constantly pushed and challenged to make us come out of our shells.

He encouraged the students to explore things they really enjoy doing and insisted that their career choice should be based on the same. Ambition and drive can help anybody achieve whatever one wants in life. As management students, each and everyone should understand the management is not a subject of what to do but a set of tools of how to do things. He stressed on working for what we love rather than trying to love what we work for.

Prepared by VishnuPrasad,PGP'08

Edited by Ms.Mercy Mathew

Challenges in HR

Mr. Santhosh, HR Manager, UST Global, Trivandrum

07 -Nov-'08,15.10-16.10hrs.

Mr. Santosh started by saying that there is a great demand for “good” HR professionals. He defined a professional as a person who has unchallenged mastery over his knowledge and that mastery comes through relentless pursuit of upgrading oneself. A sculptor and a quarry worker both deal with rock, but the glory achieved by the sculptor is far more than that of a quarry worker, because of his mastery, his pursuit for perfection, a focus on career rather than job. The world of business in no different. In any job, one’s performance is measured by one’s contribution/output and if one is unable to prove one’s competence, the business will throw him out. Each one is the CEO of one’s career and it is up to the CEO how he launches and manages the business (career).

It hardly takes 55 seconds to fire an employee but it takes hours, months and days to groom a candidate into an asset for the company. That is the biggest challenges for the HR, building the human assets of the company and nurturing them. The problem aggravates when the candidates lacks depth in their knowledge, the interests doesn’t match the career requirements, and pay packages take prominence in career choice.

Speaking on retrenchment, he said that except for poor performance of the candidates, retrenchment can’t be done if company is profiatble. He stressed the importance of studying Labor laws (Industrial Disputes Act, Provident Fund & Gratuity Act and Maternity Act) for an HR manager.

It’s not the questions of capacity or capability but the question of intent. Every Morning in Africa a deer wakes up.It Knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up.It knows it must run faster than the slowest deer or it will starve to death. It Doesn't matter if you are a lion or deer, when the Sun comes up you'd better be running. He recommended the book “HR Value Proposition” by “Dave Urich” to HR students.

Prepared by Nikunj Barnwal,PGP'08

Supply Chain Management

Karthik Kumar

General Manager,DCBL

 31 Oct'08,16.20-17.20hrs

Speaker: Mr. Karthi Kumar is a man of very rich industrial experience. Presently, he is the General Manager- Purchase, at Dalmia Cement.

Session: Mr.Karthi Kumar started the discussion by talking about the way in which products are priced. He explained how the seller’s and the buyer’s expectations of the pricing are always in opposite ways.

He spoke from his experience about the purchasing functions and the traits that an individual must have in order to maneuver this career efficiently.

He gave us an idea of about how the company comes to a conclusion on which are the areas where costs can be effectively managed in order to reduce the overall operating costs.  The various alternatives that he and his team posed to the top management and the pros and cons of each of these were also highlighted. Several real life examples from Dalmia cement and several other companies were quoted which served as  learning experience.

The supremacy of major players like Reliance in the Indian market and their ability to waive laws and regulations of the country in favor of them were also quoted in a very realistic and interesting manner.

Mr.Karthi explained the establishment of Saint Gobain glass in India and its emergence as the number one manufacturer of floating glass in the country today.

Overall the experience with Mr.Karthi Kumar was truly enlightening. It helped us see many concepts learnt in classrooms in the light of practicality.

Prepared by Vanaja Varghese,PGP'07

Edited by Mythili Kesavaswamy

Business Ethics: An Oxymoron?

A face-to-face with Prof. Subramanian Sivaramakrishnan

(Photos) 

28 September 2008

Speaker: Associate Professor of Marketing at the Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba. (A Ph.D. in Marketing from Penn State University, an MBA from Bharathiar University)

Can Business and Ethics go together? Where do we draw the line? Is it possible to do business, being completely ethical? Do ethics mean the same to you and me? These are questions that keep popping up in every management student’s mind.

Session: The session by Prof. Subbu threw light into how some businesses promote their products, but in an unethical manner. He talks of the legal but unethical practices and also the grey area practices (Psychological Discounting, Puffery, Subliminal advertisement, Targeting Children etc) in business. Having talked about the unethical practices prevalent in business, Prof. Subbu also made it dawn on us that customers are not angels either! He went on to talk about how ethics differs from people to people.

Finally, he is of the opinion that we, as customers, should be equally responsible so that the marketers do not exploit us.

“Ethics is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feeling”- Valdemar W. Setzer, Brazilian anthropologist.

Prepared by

Rubini Priya & Lekshmy R Nair

PGPM 2008-10

Some Critical Reflections on the Development of Industrial Enterprise in India.

Prof.Raman Mahadevan,Institute of Development Alternatives,Chennai.

09-Jan-'08,11.30-13.00hrs.

Profile:Prof Raman Mahadevan is a senior economic and business historian based in Chennai. His principle areas of interest are industrial history; evolution, growth and structure of Indian Capital and labor history. Much of his work pertains to Southern India. He is deeply interested in the present and especially in understanding how the past influences the present. Some of these concerns were reflected in his fortnightly column 'Past is Present' that used to appear in the 'Financial Express'. He has worked in several institutions of repute across India including a brief stint at IIM Bangalore and a fairly long innings at CDS Trivandrum.

The session then laid focus on the major industries, the regions where they were mainly prospering, followed by reasons for shift from exports to manufacturing. The speaker then talked about the state of poor capital mobilization and the rise of the merchant community, who fueled internal trade and industrialization. This was followed by examples of Indian companies that have existed for over half-a-century and are successful. He also elaborated on the enormous contribution made by those entrepreneurs.

The focus then shifted to the period of 1980s - lifting of controls, electronic revolution, the relevance of knowledge capital, computerization and growth of IT sector in a small way. Finally the session ended with brief talk on agricultural sector, the use of new technologies for production of high yielding crops and use of a part of the surplus generated from agriculture to build and promote industries.

Prepared by Vinita George,PGP'06.Edited by Ms.Mercy Mathew

 International Branding

Prof. K. Balakrishnan, SDM-IMD, Mysore,

24-Nov-’07, 9:15-12:15hrs

Speaker: Prof. Balakrishnan has twenty-two years industrial experience across various sectors, functions and organizations such as Blue Star Ltd, Sanmar Group and Escorts Ltd. Was the COO/CEO of Century Wood Ltd. & Raman Boards Ltd.  Set up India’s first automated solid wood furniture facility as agreen field 100% EOU. Currently he is working as a faculty at Shri. Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development, (SDM-IMD) Mysore. After joining SDM-IMD, he has published over 50 papers and articles. He is a resource person with the UGC Academic Staff College and teaches as visiting faculty with KIAMS & IIMB.

Session: As Indian companies go global, they face the challenge of branding – should their international branding be extension of their existing branding strategies or should they adopt an altogether different approach. This was the focus of the session on international branding by Mr. Balakrishnan. He started by explaining the basics of branding - the difference in creating a brand in the commodity space and a branded space - and the issues in developing an international brand architecture, the different levels of branding, number of brands in each level, etc. Through examples and videos, the Indian perspective and approach to international branding was made easy for the students to understand. Towards the end, Mr. Balakrishnan answered to students’ queries.

 Prepared by Radha.R,PGP'07.

Edited by Mercy Mathew.

Branding Destinations

First Leadership Series Lecture

"World out there is waiting for you... Go! Get it!!"

S. Ramadorai – CEO, TCS

22nd October, 2007 at ASB
See report and photos of the 1st Leadership Series Talk by Dr.S Ramadorai on 22 Oct 2007
Dr. S Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has been associated with TCS for the past 30 years, joining TCS as a trainee engineer. He took over as CEO in 1996 and has been instrumental in building TCS to a $3.02-billion global software and services company with a talent base of over 68,000 associates and a geographical reach of 35 countries. He has now set his sights on ensuring that TCS is among the top ten software companies in the World.  

Dr.Ramadorai reflected that the conditions prevailing in India was very promising and that the country’s intellectual capital would enable it to become a super power in the years to come. According to him the global leadership position which India holds today is the result of innovation and hence managers should be moulded to cater to the rapid changes taking place in the field of technology and business. He also insisted that the courses taught in the educational institutions should reflect such changes and a multi disciplinary approach should be followed. He opined that IT was at the heart of every domain and to become successful managers, one needed to develop multidisciplinary skills, domain expertise, an understanding of business processes, an innovative mindset, global outlook and the art of communication. The speaker urged the students to carve out paths for themselves and to be venturesome.

Prepared by Shalini and Asha Sukumaran PGPM07-09.

Edited by Rakhee Sudhir.

Power Sector in India

Dr. Jayashankar .B .Nair, Sr. Economic Analyst,

Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission

Sep 21, 2007

About the speaker: Dr. Jayashankar B. Nair is  currently on deputation to Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission as Senior Economic Analyst, from the  Directorate of Collegiate Education, Govt. of Kerala. He was involved in the power sector reforms in India for about 8 years and actively participated in the reform process of three states such as Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. In his various capacities with the organization, he was involved in the formulation of power sector reforms, system planning, financial analysis, tariff development (for generation, transmission and distribution) and economic regulations.

Dr.Jayashankar talked about the status of the Indian Power Sector, its regulations and reforms, the various Regulatory Commissions and finally exposed the status of the Kerala Power Sector.

The session kicked off with the evolution of the Indian Power Sector and the speaker elaborated upon the growth it had attained in the last 50years, due to huge amounts of investments.

Dr..Jayashankar also highlighted the fact that out of the total of 180 million households in India only about 80million accessed electricity. He also brought to light that the per capita consumption of electricity is very low in our country. Answering to why there is a supply demand issue in the sector, he pointed out that peak shortage and energy shortage were the factors contributing to it. The new policy of providing electricity to all by 2012, he said is a highly ambitious objective and with investment costs and political barriers as hurdles, the objective seems rather too far from achievement.

Later, Dr.Jayashankar talked about how the   Indian Power Sector under went drastic development due to the various reforms that took place over the years-the Electricity Supply Act 1948 (based on the UK model), the formation of the State Electricity Boards, the NTPC, The Electricity Regulatory Commission Act 1998(a replica of the US model) proposed by Dr. Manmohan Singh, to name a few. It was then followed by the second generation reforms that came into picture promoting competition in the sector, which is largely a monopoly.

 The issues faced by the power sector in our country, like lack of information symmetry and incentives to efficiency, complexity in control and lack of incentives to optimal investment were then discussed.

Finally, the speaker revealed the status of the power sector in Kerala, the only state that had recorded a 100% metering in India with a collection efficiency of 90%. Though the loss level in the sector was comparatively low, the operating expenses were high in the State. 
He concluded with a note that even now, uninterrupted power supply remains a dream yet to be fulfilled.

Prepared by Janu, PGP06-08

The Importance of safeguarding your personal information

Prof.Divakaran Liginlal, Assistant Professor (Operations and Information Management), Madison School of Business, University of Wisconsin.

22-Aug-’07,15:30-17:30hrs.

Speaker: Prof. Lal holds a Doctoral Degree in Information Systems from the University of Arizona. He has many published research works to his credit. He was conferred with the Mabel Chip man Award for excellence in teaching from the Madison School of Business, 2007 and also the University of Arizona Foundation Award for Meritorious Teaching in 1998.

Session: The session started off with the need to protect personal information. The speaker forewarned the audience about the consequences of different types of identity thefts. Prof. Lal introduced the concept of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and how it invades one’s life. The hidden dangers associated with information disclosure on Social Networks were elaborated upon. Later, Prof. Lal dealt with the relevance of Identity Management Systems (IMS) and its core functionalities. The strengths and weaknesses of the Standard Authentication Systems - Possession based and Knowledge based, were then discussed. Subsequently, the modern technologies of authentication (Bio-metrics and DNA based check) were also covered. Towards the end of the session, the speaker stressed upon the Two Factor Authentication System, as a means to assure higher levels of validation/authentication.