CONFLUENCE '15 - Annual Consulting Conclave by SIMCON

SIMCON-SIMSREE Consulting Club organised its Annual Consulting Conclave, Confluence on the 8^th of February, 2015. The event is in its third year. SIMCON has succeeded over the years in building strong and beneficial relations with corporates. The event is aimed at bringing management students and the corporate world together to generate insights into current happenings in the industry. Based on the theme “India -A Gateway for Global firms”, Confluence ’15 aimed at focusing upon the industry requirements and steps the government can take to ensure progress for the country.

The event began with the Welcome Note by Director of SIMSREE, Dr. Sandhya Dhabe. She introduced the theme for the event & highlighted the significance of relevance of the theme in present times.

In line with this theme the Chief Guest for the event, Mr.Vivek Kulkarni (Founder & Chairman, Brickworks India) spoke on the topic “Supremacy for India amongst emerging markets”. Mr. Kulkarni highlighted upon various statistics showcasing India as the path ahead for global growth. Even through google trends, India could be seen as being highest searched. Mr.Kulkarni also quoted IMF in saying “India’s economy will overtake China in terms of its annual growth rate by 2016.”

Post the Chief Guest speech, it was time for the first panel discussion. The topic for discussion was “India’s Investment Landscape –The Road Ahead”. The panel discussion consisted of the below panellists:

·        Mr.Girish Vanvari (Partner & Co-Head Tax, KPMG)

·        Mr. Prateek Pant (Executive Director, RBS)

·        Mr. Anant Gupta (Vice President, Kedaara Capital)

·        Mr. Santhi VIjetha (Director, Grant Thornton India)

·       Ms. Mukti Hariharan (Vice President, Credit Suisse) – Moderator

The panel highlighted the policy paralysis along with various other issues plaguing the scope of growth for India presently. Mr. Vanvari highlighted how they need to keep themselves on toes to understand the ever changing laws. He also threw light on the fact that the Companies Act 2014, was actually tabled in 2002, but was passed in its present form in 2014. This showed the policy paralysis prevalent in the governance of the country. The panel touched upon the topics of GAAR, GST and other such policies that prevent multiple investments in India along with how India has the potential to tap into multiple such opportunities with regards to FDI, FII through M&As etc. The discussion revolved around activities that would result in ease of doing business in India like Tax reforms, GST, single window clearance and other such activities. The wariness of the investors in investing in India was cited by examples like the Vodafone Tax case. The conclusion of the discussion was that unless India removes the road blocks, it would not attract huge investments. The first panel answered the queries put forth by the students from various topics such as Tax, GAAR.

The second panel discussion was more related towards how the industry needs to modify itself or suit itself to do business in India. The topic for discussion was “Adapt or Innovate - The Mantra for Survival & Sustained Growth’ from a marketing perspective. The panellist were:

·        Mr. Mohan V ( Former Executive Director/VP, HJ Heinz)

·        Mr. Vinay Gupta (Business Head, VG Retail Consulting)

·        Mr. Sandeep Zutshi (CEO & Co-Founder, Ascentaz Consulting)

·        Mr. Sunit Kishore (Head of Marketing, Novartis)

·        Mr. Joydeep Roy (Member of Governing Council, IIB) – Moderator

Discussion started with Mr. Roy giving a brief about the discussion and handing over the reins to the panellist one by one and keeping a check on the time at the same time. The discussion flowed in a question answer format where the moderator would ask a question in order to structure the discussion. Mr. Zutshi started with different types of innovations that we see in the world today- product, process, communication and technological innovation. Be it the Nirma case or the Balaji wafers case, product innovation is right in your face and hence the most visible. But given this fact, it is the technological innovation which retains imperious benefits and far-fetched benefits giving rise to a host of opportunities. The discussion moved then towards how Indian markets perceive any innovations. The session being an interactive one, the famous question of which of brick and mortar or e-retail industry would dominate in India came out. This was answered in different perspectives with Mr. Vinay Gupta explaining that the market always come to an equilibrium – eventually price would not be the competing factor but service alone would be the deciding factor. Mr. Mohan talked about how innovation is sometimes has to be achieved in the realms of the business and brand. Mr. Mohan talked about how Heinz had taken tougher route of launching ketchup in India; when it first launched its operations here; instead of making local tomato chatni which Indians are already fond of eating.  This is how brands operate in terms of maintaining their legacy along with driving innovations. Mr. Sunit Kishore steered the discussion towards the pharma industry and expressed how innovation is actually an over hyped word in the industry circles and how companies view innovation as just a task to do and hence do it for sake of it. This statement gave a very interesting path to the discussion and everyone started about their experiences of such incidence in their industries.

Overall the session was very interactive with students asking a lot of questions and the panellists and moderator answering them with patience. The students gained a lot of insights from both the panel discussions & from the Chief Guests addressal.