Guest Lecture by Mr. Sanjay Deshpande

It was a privilege for SIMSREE batch of 2012-14 to learn entrepreneurship lessons from Mr. Sanjay Deshpande, Chief Innovation Officer and CEO, Uniken. The topic for the session was “Innovating in India for global markets: Challenges and Strategies”.

Mr. Deshpande started the session with a brief description of his career growth from Tata Research Centre to Infosys and then to Uniken. He explained the work culture at Uniken and how they transform a new idea into reality. Through interactive discussion he pointed out the three buckets which act as hindrances for innovation in India – Underutilisation of talent, poor financial eco-system and acceptance of new products by the targeted population.

He emphasized that implementation and execution of any new idea is more important than just innovation. It is also very important to select which idea should be taken to the market and which should not. This decision depends on three parameters – frictionless sale i.e. how difficult will it be to sell, competition with a big brand and cost & time needed to commercialise the idea.

Some of the misconceptions, according to him, that an entrepreneur has are – “if you show the idea to a Venture Capitalist, you will get money” and “only techies can be innovators”. Then he threw some light on the term – reverse innovation which means to innovate for local market and then expand it globally. He also elaborated how important it is to have patience and stay alive than focussing on breaking even in shortest time. The he described the bureaucratic hurdles in the innovation process and how one needs to pick and choose his battle to avoid it.

The floor was then opened for questions and he satisfactorily explained the ways to be sustainable and survive the chance of failure. The session was motivating and inspiring and we expect many such sessions in future.

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Usher '12

SIMSREE expanded its horizon and added a new feather to its hat with the successful execution of USHER’12 on October 19, 2012. The Junior Corporate Relations Committee stretched its wings and took USHER’12 to a new echelon making it a National Intercollegiate Management Event. USHER was aptly nucleated by various management events like The Hunting Spree, Ad-Diction, Sell it @ SIMSREE and the pinnacle was marked by a Panel Discussion on ‘Scaling new heights in Public Private Partnership’. SIMSREE witnessed the budding managers of India thinking out of box and channelizing their management knowledge to compete for the top prize. The sponsors for the event included Essel World, Bank of Maharashtra, Akbarallys and Markiv’s Restaurant.

After the inauguration, this grand day was started with a challenging competition of Hunting Spree where teams were given a company in advance and had to rack their brains to come up with potential Mergers & Acquisition ideas for that company. The judges of this event were Mr. Vikrant Narang, Director- Investment Banking at Barclays Capital and Mr. Chandrasekharam Tatapudy, a Business Strategy Consultant who is the Co-founder and CEO of Yasham P2D Lifesciences Pvt. Ltd. The shortlisted teams came up with very unique acquisition prospects of both Public and Private sector companies and included participants from institutes like Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management, Great Lakes Institute of Management, NMIMS and our very own SIMSREE. The teams supported their idea with sound financial, technical and economic analyses and outlined the entire timeline of events that would happen during and post the merger of the two companies. The winning idea was the acquisition of the company Amrutanjan by Dabur which was presented by the team High Betas from NMIMS, Mumbai. Other ideas included acquisitions of Prizm Payments by TATA Communications, Yebhi.com by Flipkart and Aleris International Inc. by Vedanta Resources Plc. 

After a sagacious financial event, it was time for the right half of the brain to shine and our marketing knowledge was put to the test by Ad-diction, an ad-centric event which saw an even contest between nine teams from across the country. The preliminary round Ad-entify got the participants and the audience to walk down memory lane and identify all those nostalgic advertisements that we grew up with. The final round saw the five finalists putting concerted efforts for launching a product along with its marketing mix, envisaging a leading apparel brand launching tyres, or a leading plastic manufacturer entering the watch market. Startling and conspicuous concepts came forth, which even impressed the judge Mr. Gagan Gupta, Product Head at Tata Motors. The team that pocketed the 1^st prize was Sparta from SIMSREE while Aetos Dios from SIES, Navi Mumbai bagged the Runners up position.

Selling, convincing and negotiating skills were then put to the test with the concluding competition, Sell it @ SIMSREE.  A unique competition that required each team to manufacture a product made out of only paper or aluminum foil within a time span of just 30 minutes. The cinque rival teams were Team Mavericks - KJ Somaiya, Team Aetos Dios - SIES, Team Zealots - SIMSREE, Team Three Musketeers - XIMR and Team Rockstars - SIMSREE. The 30 minutes of brain racking brought spectacular products to life, ranging from personalized gifting products & accessories, paper trays and mobile phone holders to Tequila shot glasses and flower bouquets. After the demonstration of their product, each team was given an opportunity to present the various aspects that they would follow to promote, target and sell their products and their expected revenue. The judges Mr. Heramb Ranade, Chief Marketing Officer at Tikona Digital Networks Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. Hrishikesh C. Rumde, respected alumni and Founder/Promoter, Zelos n Zest & 3 Monkeez, were very impressed to see the spectacular & innovative ideas which were on show. The phenomenal talent of team Aetos Dios won the hearts of not just the audience but also the judges and came out as winners for the viewer’s choice award as well as the jury award with their concept of mobile bag holder. This event brought the entrepreneurial abilities of various students and encouraged them to expand their ideas into the market.

The exciting and fun filled competitions were followed by a very enlightening panel discussion on the topic, ‘Scaling new heights in Public Private Partnership’. Eminent personalities like Mr. Bhupen Dalal, Chairman at Foods and Inns Ltd., Mr. Narayan Hariharan, President of Corporate affairs at Adani Enterprises, Mr. Kapil Mehra, Associate Director at Kyori Oremin Ltd., Mr. Kalyan Prasath, Sr. Vice President at ICICI Prudential AMC Ltd., Mr. Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Associate Vice President of ABG Cement Ltd. were the part of the panel and Mr. Darryl Cabral, Director at HR Total Solutions was the moderator of the discussion. The discussion was based on the pros and cons of Private Public Partnership and how it can shape the future development of the economy. The discussion covered topics from myriad sectors such as aviation, coal, power and infrastructure. All the panelists agreed that Public Private Partnership is necessary for cost effectiveness, quality and growth of the economy.

All in all, Usher 2012, which could not have been possible without the efforts of the Corporate Relations Committee, was a huge success and was admired by one and all.

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SIMSREE ANNUAL FINANCE SUMMIT FISCUS'12

SIMSREE witnessed cynosures of the industry at FISCUS’12, the annual Financial Summit. The presence of Guest of Honour Dr. Subir Gokarn, Deputy Governor, RBI sparkled the sombre milieu along with Chief Guest Mr. Ramesh Chandak Managing Director & CEO of KEC International Limited (KEC) and Keynote speaker Mr Nilesh Shah, Director Axis Direct. It was a lifetime opportunity to listen to veteran Dr. Subir Gokarn speak about “India: 6% Growth, The new Comfort Level?” He very succinctly put forward the analogy between Policy Makers and Managers while elucidating the ingredients of growth. He listed down the various macro factors that needs to be addressed for sustainable increase in growth rate. The intricate concept given by Dr Subir Gokarn was further explained in a very lucid manner by the Mr Ramesh and Mr Nilesh Shah.

Hon' Deputy Governer RBI Dr Subir Gokarn

In his addressal, Mr. Ramesh Chandak spoke about the impact of the Power sector which is one of the most critical growth drivers for a country. He started by talking about the recent major fallacies in the sector including the massive grid failure and Coalgate scam and its implications on the overall health of the country and its economy. He pointed out that in comparison with the global leaders, India stills lags far behind in the per capita power usage with a stark difference in the demand and supply. According to him, for addressing these vital issues we need an integrated energy ministry and a developed infrastructure to reduce distribution losses.

Mr. Nilesh Shah addressed students on the topic of benefits of capital market for growth of Indian economy. He emphasized the point that development of domestic capital market is the need of current economy to encourage entrepreneurship. He also said that we have a deep potential for capital market in India and it will start benefiting the economy if more people start investing in the debentures, equities, bonds, securities etc. instead of creating physical assets in terms of gold, silver and diamonds. Mr. Shah talked about the significant role that debentures would play for sustainable growth. He gave an example of how TUF i.e. Technology Upgradation Fund for textile industry played a major role in sustainable growth of the textile industry in India in the times of inflation.

What followed was one of the most engaging discussions that students of SIMSREE had ever witnessed. The panel discussion included corporate stalwarts like Mr. Gautam Patel, MD Zodius Advisors (Moderator); Mr. Ritesh Kumar Singh, GM & Group Economist Raymonds; Mr. Anay Khare MD-Corp fin-IB, Enam Securities; Mr. Sundarapandian Vishwanathan, VP Capex controlling Head, ACC; Mr. Sidharth Punshi, MD Investment Banking JPMC; Mr. Paresh Patel, Founder and MD Sandstone Capital and Mr. Manishi Raychaudhari, MD BNP Paribas Securities. Each of the panelists while talking about their area of expertise mirrored the sentiments of Dr. Gokarn. They stressed on the need to extend the reforms in retail and aviation industries to infrastructure and other major growth inducers for the economy. They spoke about how targeting untraditional markets for exports and disinvestment by the government to fund infrastructure development in the country can help the economy grow at higher rate and sustain it. The discussion and the  Question & Answer sessions that followed was carried on in a crystal clear manner that captivated the attention of novice in the field of management helping them to grasp the current trend of Indian economy.

Panel Discussion

Fiscus‘12 thus turned out to be a grand success owing to the relentless efforts of the members of the Finance Forum, the constant support and guidance of our Director, Dr. M A Khan and all others who contributed to this successful mega event.

Dr Subir Gokarn with SIMSREE Finance Forum team

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Guest Lecture by Mr. Sandeep Mangle

On 30^th September 2012, the SIMSREE batch 2012-14 had the pleasure to have Mr. Sandeep Mangle, Manager - Supply Chain Excellence at BASF India Ltd and 2005 alumnus. He has an Industry exposure in fortune 500 MNC's in chemical sector with key focus on marketing strategy, business development & business operations.

            Mr. Sandeep started the session by a brief presentation on the things that one shouldn’t miss in an MBA course. During the presentation Mr. Sandeep conjured up the memories of his own college days which was a good-to-hear experience. He went ahead and explained the importance of four things viz. ‘Passion’, ‘Team work’, ‘Believing in Yourself’ & ‘Leadership’ in  corporate life.

 

            Mr. Sandeep shared a lot of practical knowledge & experience which was really valuable. He explained in detail all the profiles that are available for a marketing graduate viz.  Business/Marketing analyst, Product manager, Group product manager, Marketing manager etc.  He got down to the nitty-gritty details regarding all the profiles and clarified on what an MBA should expect from these profiles, a typical day at work and much more.

            Later he elaborated on “Supply Chain Management (SCM)”. He even showed the batch a small movie that helped in understanding what a supply chain manager has to deal with, by taking example of a packaged drinking water bottle plant. The movie even clarified the role of supply chain management in service industry with an example of hotels. He then gave an idea of the profiles that one might take up in a supply chain domain.

            Some other topics that he touched upon were Supply chain strategy and processes which includes Order management & customer services, SCM strategy & consulting, SCM integration and analytics etc. He then showed another video that depicted the efficient supply network planning of Procter & Gamble, which was really interesting. The lecture turned out to be very informative and beneficial to the batch in terms of the learning that it provided. We look forward to more such sessions on diverse domains on knowledge.

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Guest Lecture by Mr. Rajesh Nair and Ms. Deepali Naair

With the spurt of competition in the current market scenario every brand wants to offer something distinct from others, and as a result branding has become an integral part of any product/service. Thus specialized brand management and marketing is required for any brand to stand out in the clutter. The concepts like Sales, Brand Management and marketing, for us were different colors of the same spectrum called Marketing. These individual concepts were beautifully elicited by our esteemed Alumni of 1993 batch Mr. Rajesh Nair and Ms. Deepali Naair to the students of the 2012-14 batch on 30th September. Mr. Rajesh Nair is currently the General Manager (Corporate Human Resources) at Tata Motors, Heading Talent Acquisition, Employee Engagement and Employer Branding. He is associated with Tata Motors from past 19 years where he has served a diverse profile portfolio. Ms. Deepali Naair is currently the Country Head - Brand & Corporate Communications at L&T General Insurance Company Ltd, before which she has been associated with various companies and sectors. Her last assignment was with HSBC Global Asset Management India as VP & Head of Marketing. 

The theme of discussion was "An overview of Careers in Marketing", "Trends in Digital Media and Social Media Marketing from career perspective". Mr. Nair set the ball rolling by asking a penetrative question that "How many want a career in Marketing?", this incited an insightful discussion of Sales V/s Marketing. Both of them explained the need of starting one's career with a sales stint to understand the market and consumer behavior at the grass root level. Sales gives us a completely different flavor of customer needs, while marketing is the support function to improve sales of goods/products. Also, ways to make the transition from sales to marketing were discussed. Focus and dedication were the key points when it came to shift in career opportunities and growth of individual. It was succinctly put as "It's okay to be confused, but the problem is many don't realize that they are confused!"

Ms. Deepali Naair emphasized on Brand Management as a career opportunity and stressed the importance of managing oneself as brand. She explained the depth of social media in critically maintaining our profile and brand. Coming to this a discussion was evolved upon the expanse of digital media and how it is different as compared to the traditional media. Same principles of traditional marketing cannot be applied, as it is more viral and complicated.

Towards the end Mr. Rajesh Nair and Ms. Deepali Naair answered several queries put forward by students. By the end of the discussion all the students were awed by the simplicity and clarity of thought they had. All of us are eagerly looking forward for many more sessions like this one.

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