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The inaugural ceremony of the SHRM chapter of TISS was held at TISS itself. Ms Nina Woodard, Executive Director, SHRM, pointed out that American industries didn't yet understand how to do business in India and SHRM would be the platform that would bring about a transfer of knowledge, both to and from India and the US. TISS' own Professor Vijay Kumar will be the dedicated faculty for the chapter.

What is SHRM?
SHRM is the body of Human Resources, founded in 1948 by a group of human resource professionals in the US, who aimed to change HR from just a job to a profession. In fulfilling this attempt and advancing the profession, the organization provides current and comprehensive research and information on best practices of organizations, arranges conferences to facilitate transfer of knowledge among industry professionals and also provides certifications. It brings out an online HR magazine, weekly e-bulletins and regular pod casts and web casts. Today, it has 225,000 members of which 85 percent are in the US. Many Indian HR professionals are a part of this body and students too can join. Besides the reduced membership fee and complete access to resources, they can avail of access to other members in the global community, buy discounted books and attend conferences at special rates.

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In the TBLA contest, participants were invited to present ideas on the theme of 'Globalization — identifying global growth opportunities for the Tata Group'. The teams were given the challenge to present a business case on the opportunity for the Tata Group to grow globally, which could be organic or inorganic. The winners were handed over the trophy and cash prize of Rs 1 lakh by Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons.

Unlike regular quizzes, ETCiti grandmasters had rounds that made participant think rather than just recall. The championship started with the online case study. In the sixth round called 'stalemate', teams had to come up with a one-minute strategy on developing an idea. Winners were awarded a Zen Estilo each and Acer laptops and also job offers from Citi.

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Mr S Sivkumar, Chief Executive, Agri Business at ITC and the brain behind the e-choupal initiative was the keynote speaker. He talked about the evolution of marketing thinking considering the social marketing network in rural India and how firms can make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

In the SMIA competition, 18 companies that applied this year include Microsoft, Marico, Mahindra & Mahindra, Motorola, Pentland, Ginger, Tech Mahindra, Corporation Bank, Tata Steel and Bank of Baroda. Four companies namely, Marico, Motorola, Ginger Hotels and UK-based Pentland, were short listed to present their case on SMIA 2008. The result declared Marico as the winner for its advanced IT-based Sales Information System with Motorola as the runner up for the impact of their marketing initiatives.

Also, the event had a panel discussion of industry experts, discussing how to make marketing accountable to the business. The discussion ranged from the limitations of quantitative metrics in marketing to Brand Equity and how to effectively leverage its benefits for business.

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He enumerated the steps involved in executing a deal and from there on to the completion of the merger. He explained how the process of due diligence before the merger requires extensive role of HR, and how it can significantly alter the course that the prospective deal would take, by influencing valuations through human capital metrics.

While talking about M & A failures, he warned the students against using statistics from western countries. “There is hardly any research or, for that matter, mergers in the domestic context and it will be pre-mature to juxtapose the western context onto ours,” he said.

“All M & A's begin with some tangible business need”, he stressed, and “hence it is important to view HR only as a spoke in the wheel of organizational wheel”.

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The opening panel debate 'Global Finance: The Issues' will be chaired by Dr Noreena Hertz, CIBAM's Associate Director and an expert on economic globalization. There will be a panel discussion on the long term prospects of global financial markets. The panel will include Chen Zhao, Managing Editor, Bank Credit Analyst, Dr Peter Warburton, Director, Economic Perspectives Ltd and Member of the Shadow Monetary Policy Committee and Jonathan Garner, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley. They will analyze the evolution of the Global Credit Cycle, and discuss whether the boom in emerging markets domestic demands are capable of both mitigating the downturn in the United States and keeping global economic growth at reasonable levels in the short to medium term.

Day two will cover discussion on 'Global Finance and the future of private equity' and 'Global Finance: credit crisis'. Panelists and presenters will discuss quantitative fund management, credit ratings, in particular how the current environment is shaping rating agencies and whether private equity can still justify its role in the economy and society. In addition they will consider how the rise of China has inadvertently contributed to the world's current economic crisis and why credit policy is now too important to be left to central bankers.

Commenting on the event, Dr Christos Pitelis, Director of CIBAM, said “The reasons behind the current problems in the financial markets, and to what extent private equity and securitization have contributed to these, are all issues that businesses, governments and civil services should to be aware of. We hope that the symposium will encourage dialogue and collaborative opportunities between representatives from these communities in dealing with the challenges presented by the ongoing turmoil in the world's economic climate.”

Information about the event:
The CIBAM Global Business Symposium convenes twice a year at Cambridge. Key note speakers are invited to address the Symposium on a matter of topical interest chosen by the CIBAM Global Advisory Board.

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The curtain raiser for the event witnessed Mr Siddharth Gautam, News Coordinator, Times News Network, as the Chief Guest. It was followed by the commencement of the competitions, the first being Protostar. Protostar, an HR consultancy game, was based on 'How to improve recruitment and motivation practices at DRDO'. The winners were part time MBA students from DoMS, IIT Delhi. Day one also saw the launch of the flagship event, iMA Big Bang, a personality test.

Day two began with the Inaugural Ceremony and registrations of students. Parivartan was formally inaugurated by Punjab & National Bank CMD, Mr SS Kohli who gave insights on the Indian business scenario and the challenges faced by the Indian economy. Also, there was Business Plan competition, Poseidon, based on a Telecom case presented by Tata Indicom. The panel of judges for Poseidon included experts from Tata Indicom and Alcatel Lucent. The event was won by NITIE. Radio Mirchi had set up a radio station in the venue and students went live on air in a two hour show. Cygnus, the case quest, which involved presentation of cases in unique format, was an interesting experience for the participants. The judges from PWC declared IIFT Team, the winner. Another major event, Triton, the entrepreneurial challenge started earlier in the day. After all the quests and conquests, the day's events concluded with the DJ nite.

The last day of Parivartan was filled with activities like Quiz, discussions and interaction series. The Business Quiz was hosted by quiz master Avinash Mudaliar. This was the event with maximum on the spot participation of more than 40 teams. The media conclave held a panel discussion on 'The Media-Business Confluence' by Journalist Dr Ved Pratap Vaidik and Mr Sanjay Salil, MD, Media guru Consultants Pvt Ltd. Following this was the DRDO media conclave chaired by Shri Narang, Chairman of DRDO. It had representation from both DRDO and the Media. The last day also saw the crowning of the winner of Big Bang, from DoMS itself, after three days of effort. The event Triton was won by team from IMT Ghaziabad. The day's events culminated with a corporate dinner held at the Air Force Golf Course. It was an enriching experience for the students to interact with all the guests and learn from them of their experiences.

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Announcing the launch of the new Centre, M Rammohan Rao, Dean, ISB, said, “Launching the Centre for Leadership is in sync with our vision to groom business leaders for India and the world. We want to create thought leaders who will be able to change the way businesses are run in the future.”

According to the press release, the CLIC intends to follow an Integral Approach, which is based on the integration of knowledge from wisdom traditions, scientific research, and contemporary management practices. This approach will refine the leadership personality by combining leadership, change, and innovation with the body, heart, and head respectively. It will specialize in researching and developing models and tools to understand and influence the Indian mindset. It plans to work closely with companies, Government, Educational Institutions, and NGO's in the areas of change management and innovation. It will execute applied research projects, develop special programmes, projects to increase organizational effectiveness, and create new repositories of knowledge. In addition to this, the Centre also plans to introduce new elective courses in the Post Graduate Programme and Executive Education courses and conduct joint certificate courses in association with the industry.

Dr Prasad Kaipa, has been appointed as the Executive Director of the Centre of Excellence for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC). Speaking on the occasion he said, “CLIC aspires to ignite the genius within individuals to become extraordinary global leaders. We will work with individuals and organizations and develop best practices to truly build on the India Advantage.”

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The keynote address introducing the theme of the conference was given by Dr PN Mukherjee, Chairperson-SCM & TQM at NMIMS. Mr Suresh Lulla, Managing Director, Qimpro Consultants Pvt Ltd, spoke on the evolution of quality over the last few decades and its significance in the current business environment. Corporate leaders that attended the conference include Mr Ranjan Acharya, Corporate head, HR, Wipro Corp., Mr Thomas Varghese, Executive President, Aditya Birla Group and Mr Vinod Vohra, Chairman, Repro (I) Ltd. Corporate Houses such as Repro India, CEAT, ICICI, ABB, Oracle Management also made their presence felt by participating in the event. Conference also witnessed paper presentations from students, faculty and corporate leaders.

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The welcome address was given by Prof M Sankaran, Director, BIM. The conference was inaugurated by the Vice-Chancellor of the Bharathidasan University, Dr M Ponnavaikko. He spoke on the importance of continuous learning, decision-making and management research. Mr GK Agarwal, Executive Director (HR& PMI), National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd, discussed about the rising intellectual capital in India accompanied by vast practical knowledge and emphasized the role of R&D; in India. 57 research papers from all functional streams of management were selected for presentation in the event.

Participants in a panel discussion on 'Women in Management' discussed about presence and participation of women in key management positions in the corporate world. The panel included Ms Pamela Ramalingam, Director, iSoft Technologies, Ms Uma Baskaran, AVP, AXIS Bank, Dr N Manimekalai, Director, Centre for Women Studies, Bharathidasan University and Ms Lalitha Natraj Head, BIU, ICICI Bank.

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TVS Capital, part of the TVS group has instituted a chair professor of entrepreneurship to drive focused research on formulation of strategies that can help strengthening the ecosystem for entrepreneurship in India. Rs 1.2 crore has been earmarked by TVS Capital Funds, founded by Mr Gopal Srinivasan. The funds are primarily for research and targeted at role model entrepreneurs.


In his address to the students, Prof. Prahalad said “Entrepreneurs are needed in a society that has resource constraints. They are important because they have aspirations that lie outside the resource space. Therefore, they innovate within constraints. Entrepreneurs don't benchmark best
practices, but create the best practices.”

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The International Workshop on Accreditation will be inaugurated on 3rd March by Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar, Member, Planning Commission and the Guest of Honour will be Prof Sukhdev Thorat, Chairman, University Grants Commission. The two days are slated for discussions and debates on accreditation by international and national speakers and also the sharing of experiences of accreditation by deans and directors of various B-schools like ISB, MDI, ICFAI, IMT and SIESCOM. The concluding session of the workshop will be an interactive session of the participants with the accreditation agencies.

Why is Accreditation important?

With over 1500 B-schools in the country, each school tries to create strong competitive differences to attract the best of talents in students, faculty and corporate. Accreditation is one such benchmarking measure that has helped several schools in competing on a level playing field. National accreditation agencies such as NBA of the AICTE and NAAC of the University Grants Commission have been trying to assess schools on parameters such as curriculum, teaching, research and consultancy, infrastructure, student progress, governance and innovation.

Besides the national accreditation bodies, global accreditation is a new buzzword among management schools today. In addition to providing a stamp of approval on an institution's systems and processes, it also provides mobility for students and teachers in a global international arena. To be considered in an international forum, global accreditation is today becoming a much required benchmark.

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The CAT applicants who were shortlisted by IIM-K for the GD/PI process were asked to register for the programme. All the mentors helped their respective mentees by sparing time for queries, responding online via chat and answering telephone calls.

“My mentors were very friendly and helped calm my nerves both during preparation and on the big day. My interview was at Kozhikode campus and my mentor had specifically come to meet me there despite his busy class schedule and give me his last few words of advice. This kind of commitment was amazing to see”, remarked one of the mentee.

"We thought that this would be an ideal platform for students to air their queries and clear any apprehensions regarding the GDPI process. We plan to improve the programme further in the future based on feedback received from the aspirants", said Gautam Bhatt, member of Students' Council.

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Various leaders in the fields of Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology & Operations were present to participate in the event. The conclave witnessed discussion on topics influencing modern day business such as the power of HR, International Marketing, how to build brand equity overseas, CRM, Visual Communications in the 21st Century and Trends in the Pharma sector.

Mr Deepanshu Sharma, General Manager, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Bangalore spoke on Customer Centric Innovations (CCI) and the growing importance of innovating continuously and keeping the customers needs in focus. Mr Harbhajan Singh, HR Head, Honda Motors and Scooters India discussed about the HR trends. Mr Yugal Sharma, Regional Director, India & South Asia, Polycom (UK) India, explained various latest technological advancements, specifically in video conferencing, its increasing business usage and penetration in the market. Other speakers included Mr Rajesh Jain, Vice President & Head Research SMC Global Securities Ltd, Mr Rajbir Singh, Practice Director, HCL Technologies, Mr Ambareesh Dixit, Head, Business Communication Products, Sony India Private Limited and Mr Pravin Tripathi, SBU head from Ranbaxy Cardiovascular. Various other topics discussed include Entrepreneurship, importance of Customer Relationship Management, and growing trends in the pharmaceutical market.

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With an objective to become a platform to identify country's diverse and creative talent, this film festival shall make an effort to evolve Ahmedabad as an Independent film capital of India. This festival intends to draw film makers from across the globe and from various demographics to showcase their passion and creativity. This festival also aims to educate masses about the nuances of a Short Film.

Talking about this initiative, Shiladitya Bora, Founder, FulMarxx shares, “Our fest is certain to be an eye-catching success. So far in our debut year we have already generated a vast amount of interest from the film making community and media outlets. In India, when we talk of short films, a majority of people think that it's a documentary film, it's an art film, it cannot be entertaining, and it needs to have a socially relevant message. We at FulMarxx are not in full agreement with this. We see short films as an entertainment medium complete in itself."

The festival will witness competition across four categories: (i) Micro Shorts: run time up to 10 minutes; (ii) Mini Shorts: run time up to 20 minutes and (iii) Long Shorts: run time up to 30 minutes (iv) Full Shorts: run time up to 45 mins. A total of 10 films will be short listed in each category for the final screening at Wide Angle, the festival venue. The festival accepts all film styles: Documentary, Experimental, Animation and Narrative.

FulMarxx is the first company being incubated by MICA-EDC, which is a Centre of Excellence of MICA supported by Department. of Science & Technology, GOI. MICA-EDC has been set up to establish world class, innovative communications enterprises across the country to provide cost effective communications solutions to indigenous businesses. Mr. Bora is a student of Post Graduate Programme in Communications Management and Entrepreneurship (PGP-CME). The students PGP CME are currently working on 26 new venture ideas in communications management. For more information visit www.fulmarxx.net

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This year a total of 344 students participated in early phases of the Competition with Internet concepts dominating the field again as they did nearly a decade ago. Ideas centered on IT, life sciences and consumer products were also popular in the early rounds. For the semi-finals, judges chose ventures in medical devices, regionally focused services, disease management therapies to serve specific market niches. Only one energy related concept was selected.

Among the Wharton Business Plan Competition semi-finalists six teams are led by undergraduates, seven are members of the Wharton Venture Initiation Program educational incubator and at least one completed the Wharton Small Business Development Center's business planning course. Some of them include:

• SmartSock: Prosthetic sock alleviates discomfort for below-knee amputees
• SCM Inc: Makers of the 'Brallet,' silicone breast enhancer inserts and a wallet that a woman can carry in her brassiere
• Organ Transplant Technologies: Device and solution for preserving organs during transplant transport extending time organs remain viable
• Waterways: A sustainable approach to bottled water offering vending machines for locally sourced filtered water, bottled on demand in a low-waste recyclable bottle
• Sustenance Health Food: Food products for growing diabetic population in Southeast Asia.
• FlyBy: Non-intrusive visual commercials for free ad-supported music to listeners using portable devices, personal computers, and the Web.


The Wharton BPC program is made possible through corporate sponsorship support, including from Gold Level sponsor Schering-Plough and Silver Level sponsor Johnson & Johnson. Like all sponsors they will gain visibility throughout the year-long Competition and at the Venture Finals. The Venture Finals, the Competition's culminating event, consists of the eight finalist teams, selected from among the 25 semi-finalists, facing off with 20-minute presentations to distinguished judges. Those judges, drawn from the business and venture capital community, evaluate the persuasiveness and viability of each business plan. Finalists will vie for $70,000 in cash prizes and in-kind awards including a $20,000 Grand Prize. The Venture Finals takes place April 30 at the Wharton School's Dhirubhai Ambani Auditorium and annually attracts over 200 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investment bankers, alumni, faculty and students.

For the past decade, the Wharton Business Plan Competition, which is open to any University of Pennsylvania student and managed by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, has seen numerous student teams go on to become successful businesses including PetPlan USA, PayMyBills.com, BuySafe, NetConversions, Stata Labs, DealMaven, Verge Solutions and MicroMRI.

For more information on the Wharton Business Plan Competition, go to:
http://bpc.wharton.upenn.edu.

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The hikes were announced on Tuesday following a board of governors' meeting at the institute. IIM-C director Shekhar Chaudhuri said: "Costs have risen and are expected to increase even further once the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations are implemented, which will increase all salaries at the institute."

He added: "The decision was also taken keeping in view the fee increase at IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore and other institutes." IIM-Bangalore, in fact, has increased annual fees for first-year students to Rs 3.5 lakh.

Moreover, IIM-C incurs a deficit of Rs 1.5 lakh on every student each year. "The cost of teaching and hostel facilities, together with other privileges for students, amount to a staggering Rs 3.5 lakh every year. The fee increase will help us meet growing expenditures, while providing students better opportunities and improved facilities," said IIM-C chief administrative officer Dinesh Verma.

The fee hike will also allow Eastern India's premier business school more freedom, while making budgetary allocations and make it more self-sufficient.

IIM-C has also brought about a change in the need-based scholarship scheme. So far, students from households with annual incomes of up to Rs 2 lakh were eligible for scholarships offered by the institute. From this year, the eligibility margin has been increased to Rs 4 lakh.

"There are at least 25-30 students whose fee was waived every year. The new scheme will encourage more students from financially weak backgrounds to seek admission," added Shekhar Chaudhuri.

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To select students in the two-month course, MDI has been chosen and awarded the consulting project for designing curriculum and conducting the aptitude test. All IIMs participated in the bid, and after bidding, MDI and IIM Banglore were selected for proceeding further in the matter and commence the first program training 1000 revenue officers with 11 to 16 years of experience at level of Joint and Additional Income tax Commissioners.

MDI will start the first fully residential program from March 31, 2008 for 40 IRS officers. The participants will have four weeks training in MDI and two weeks exposure abroad. MDI has planned international training for the first batch on specialization module, Taxation Policy and Revenue Financing, at Duke University, USA. In the last week, the batch will assemble at National Academy of Direct Taxes Nagpur for presentations and feedback. MDI team will also join the feedback session. MDI plans to conduct four such programs each year. The course costs Rs 15, 407, 60 for every trainee.

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A total of ten students participated in the event conducted by Certified Assessors Mr Shankar Subramanium (TISS Alumnus) and Mr Bilol Bose (XLRI Alumnus) who now own Changeworks. They sought to identify the areas of weakness and strengths for each of the participants. This was achieved through three activities followed by objective feedback at the end of the event.

The activities included a role play, a group task and an individual task. The assessors created life-like situations in which the participants were made to exhibit their real selves and inherent behaviours. That's when the assessors observed and interpreted the latent behavioural patterns. The two assessors gave their integrated observations and explained how each observation had implications on not just the career front but also for the personal lives of the candidates. After-all, while HR provides tools for learning to others in the organization, there is no excuse for it to not allow itself to be continuously re-tooled. And in the end, it was just the HR vernacular of the phrase that was proven right: 'All's well that ends in a Feed-back'.

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The event saw presentations from various leaders like Mr Rajesh Kalra, Client Partner, Bristlecone International, Mr Suprajit Ganguly, Head Service Delivery, Future Group, and Mr Aditya Pickle, Principle India Business, Aqua Logistics. In the presentations, students were made aware of the recent advances in fact-based methods for supply chain management which have opened up opportunities for its coordination with demand management. The developments include:
• Transforming the company's business from a push to a pull system to synchronize supply with demand
• Implementing postponement strategies that delay product customization to reduce the impact of volatile demand
• Contingency planning for the acquisition of products with short life cycles

The presentations were later followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mr L Ganapathy, Professor, NITIE. The topics of discussion included major cost cutting areas in FMCG, applications of VMI (vendor managed inventory), information sharing between FMCG giants and retailers, risk management techniques undertaken for DDSN, demand planning techniques adopted in India versus Western world.

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Systems Continuum 2008: Systems Continuum will explore different aspects of Information Technology and Information Systems in business by initiating discussions on current topics. It will include a series of lectures and panel discussions on the theme 'The Evolution of IT in the Changing Macroeconomic Scenario'. In line with the theme, the Continuum will have lectures on topics such as 'Impact of Rupee Appreciation on Indian IT and new business drivers in current scenarios', 'Talent crunch and spiraling wages: how to tackle the deadly duo in the present scenario?', 'IT market in India- can rising domestic demand curtail the IT crisis', 'Leveraging International e-business strategies for the Indian Customer' and a host of other issues.

Speakers for the this seminar include Mr Prasad Ram, Center Head, Google India; Mr Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, EBay; Mr Pranesh Anthapur, COO, Yahoo India; Mr Vivek Mohan, Country Head, Alcatel Lucent India; Mr Pankaj Dhume, Vice President, Global Practices, BMC Software; Mr Akhil Aggarwal, Vice President, Virtusa; Mr. Anurag Singh, Vice President, Headstrong; Mr Rajdeep Sahrawat, Vice President, NASSCCOM; Prof Deepak B Phatak, Chair Professor, KReSIT

Consulting Continuum 2008: When the organizations hit the glass ceiling in terms of ideas, consultants are roped in to bring in a new perspective and fresh ideas. The seminar on the theme, 'The restructuring of organizations to make the most of India's current growth scenario' will try to look into the role of consulting firms in establishing foreign firms in India and in helping Indian firms globalize. Given the socio-economic structure of the country, the challenges faced by the companies are diverse. The role of a consultant as a guiding force thus becomes pivotal.

The seminar will provide insights to the working of a consultant and the current macroeconomic scenario. The speakers for the event include - Mr Sadeesh Raghavan, Managing Partner, North Asia and South Asia, Accenture Business Consulting; Mr Sanjay Kulkarni, Managing Director, Stern Stewart & Co India; Mr Adithya Bhat, Director, Protivity; Mr Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak; Arvind Mahajan, Executive Director, KPMG Advisory services; Mr Parmeet Chadda, Director, Strategic Decision Group.

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