SIM'ergence 2015 was successfully organised by SIMSREE

SIM’ergence is the annual flagship corporate event of SIMSREE which is organized by the ‘Corporate Relations Committee’ in association with the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange). With the aim of bringing about an interaction between management students and corporates, the event is being organized successfully since the past one decade. It is an annual academia-industry interface, wherein, the stalwarts of the Business and Industrial world come together to discuss various issues faced by different organizations and to identify what could be the future business trends. Continuing with this trend, SIM’ergence ‘15 was organized on the 13^th of March, 2015 at BSE’s International Convention Hall.  Keeping up with its tradition of having themes that are related to the contemporary industrial and economic scenario, the theme for SIM’ergence ‘15 was ‘Renaissant India: Development & Sustainability’.

India is on the cusp of reaping her demographic dividends. The Indian economy has metamorphosed into a knowledge economy steered by the services sector, leapfrogging the intermediate manufacturing driven stage seen in the developed economies. However, as we see the wage rates spiralling upward in China and the manufacturing sector in India getting a fillip, companies are now looking to manufacture in India and export.

The theme ‘Renaissant India - Development and Sustainability’ resonates well in the current scenario. As future managers, this is very relevant to management students.  With development comes the onus of sustainability. While a boost to manufacturing will add a new dimension to our growth story, we should not overlook our services prowess. The rapid growth of services in India is not only sustainable but is also poised to help drive manufacturing in the country.

SIM’ergence ‘15 provided the platform for the students to meet and understand the views of corporate stalwarts from across several industries which would guide them to prepare the necessary strategies when they actually start dealing with challenges in their corporate career. This grand event was witnessed by both 1^st & 2^nd year students of SIMSREE and by many students and professors from other eminent business schools from Mumbai as well.

The event started with the traditional 'Lighting of the lamp' along with Saraswati Vandana.

Dr. Sandhya Dhabe (Director, SIMSREE) delivered the welcome note in which she summarized the idea behind the theme of this event, wherein she said that true knowledge is a combination of classroom teaching and practical understanding.

 Mr. Shankar Jadhav (Head of Strategy at BSE & Director on the Boards of Bank of India Shareholding, Marketplace Technologies and BSE Investments). "How to improve infrastructure and employ more and more people every year is the big question, the young population thinks of getting jobs, we should change our mind-sets to think of how to create jobs." According to him, it is important to create jobs.

SIM’ergence'15 was honoured to have Mr. Raj Nair (Founder & Chairman, Avalon Consulting Group) as the Chief Guest for the event. Renaissant means rebirth, there is immense opportunity in the “New India”. While sentiments have been good in 2015, they will change in 2016. This can be seen on the BSE index as a parameter, which can be called as the temple of Indian capitalism. The Indian middle class is ever growing, predicting that nearly 80% would be middle class in next years.  He gave many examples including his own, citing the story of “Avalon” and motivating the students to emphasize that it is important for management students to understand the big picture and not get lost.

Mr. Satish Jamdar (MD, Bluestar) was the Guest of Honour at SIM’ergence ’15. According to him, with increasing growth, there is an increase in demand for skilled people, but there is shortage as many are unorganised and unemployed. Skill building is critical. He encourages students to add value to themselves by means of education. Sustainable inclusive growth would happen when maximum portion of the population participates.

Keeping in line with the theme, the first panel discussion was based on ‘Inclusive Growth: Role of Corporate India’.  The industry stalwarts participating in the discussion were:

1.       Ms. Amisha Vora - Joint Managing Director, Prabhudas Lilladher

2.       Mr. Anand Pillai- Sr. Executive VP, CLO, Reliance Industries Ltd

3.       Ms. Aparna Sharma - Country Head, HR, Lafarge

4.       Mr. Himanshu Goyal – Country Manager, IBM India

5.       Mr. Ullas Kamath, JMD & CFO at Jyothi Laboratories  (Moderator)

The esteemed moderator opened the discussion by discussing the topic and inviting all panel member to air their views.

Ms. Aparna Sharma started off the panel discussion by saying that sectors such as agriculture, energy, and infrastructure are the pillars to sustain economic growth and that the composition of these sectors is critical. Elaborating on this, she said that corporate India’s contribution should be to enhance productivity, reduce labour issues, focus on skill development, reskilling in the unorganised sector, participative leadership and reducing the gap between public and private sector.

According to Mr. Anand Pillai, “the Government has no business to be in business”. Academic institutions should be involved in imparting skills to students to remain competent in the industry and focus has to be tailored for the skill and not only for the purpose of seeking or getting a good job. The role of corporate India is to bridge the gap between corporate and college, motivate the people to be skilful and channelize corporate social responsibility towards this. He encouraged students to introspect.

Ms Amish Vora highlighted the fact that to pursue inclusive growth, India should focus on increasing financial literacy. People need to start saving and investing those savings. In view of this, she feels the “Jan Dhan Yojna” is indeed a step towards growth as less than 2% of our population have DeMat accounts. We need capital to grow and retail investors participating would be the key.

Mr Himanshu Goyal was of the opinion that perspective matters. Advancement of technology inculcates constant learning and advance planning of the needs of the industry. Industry and academics become one when the industry demands are put forth in the curriculum of the students. Due to the computer science subject, the services industry thrived. Vertical skill focuses on specializing while horizontal skill broadens horizons.

After this, the moderator, Mr. Ullas Kamath started the discussion by posing questions to the panel members - what should industry do to make people employable? Is India’s service industry threatened by China or Japan? What should the government of India do to ensure companies continue to grow?

He summed by emphasizing on the role of planning, the role of continuously honing skills, providing an ecosystem. “Why is it that South Korea, Japan became world class? India has lagged behind due to limited Government support, but collective intelligence in India is good”. The Build-Operate-Transfer model needs to be more willingly adopted.

There were various questions posed to all the panellists which they patiently answered and the students would have continued asking questions, was there no paucity of time. We are thankful to all the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules to interact with the students.

The topic for the second panel discussion was ‘Triple Bottomline – The Sustainability Mantra?’ which aims to discuss the 3 Ps – people, planet and profit as a sustainability strategy for companies. The industry stalwarts participating in this discussion were:

1.       Mr. Akalpit Gupte - Director Compliance at Deutsche Bank AG

2.       Mr. A.V. Suresh - President, International Operations and CEO, Eureka Forbes Limited

3.       Mr. Bhaskar Bhattacharya - AVP, CHR, Hindalco Industries Limited

4.       Mr. Praveen Vashishta - Chairman, Howden Asia & Middle East (Moderator)

5.       Ms. Shraddha Pradhan - Director- HR, Bristol-Myers Squibb

The moderator Mr. Praveen Vashishta kicked off the session by saying that in the 19^th century, profit was not the sole factor behind doing business, it was looked upon as a by-product of doing business. Sustainability is now being looked at seriously by many as now there are awards being given for sustainable practices and legislations are also being passed in support of sustainability. Sustainability can be difficult to measure. The 3 pillars of sustainability -people, profit and planet form the triple bottomline of a sustainable strategy.

Mr. A V Suresh explained the difference between CSR and sustainability saying that the 2% donated by companies is CSR but providing employment that results into growth in the community is a sustainable model. Every rupee spent by a company should be with a view of sustainable growth. People should be given the opportunity to earn. Raising awareness about the environment, educating others and investing in technology all lead to sustainable development.

According to Mr. Akalpit Gupte, the industry is driven by profitability. It is however importance to find out the ways and means by which this profit is generated. After the 2008 sub-prime crisis, banks changed business practices. The entire banking system needs to be remodelled for sustainability with more focus on ethics and values. Steps should be taken to change people’s mind set and make them think about how their actions affect others to make a more socially responsible society.

Mr Bhaskar Bhattacharya highlighted that most people start and end business with top line and bottomline and therein arise the problems and the concept of Triple bottomline came to be established. The Government earlier used to have only the fire department which later added the pollution control department and later still, renamed it as Environment department. All companies today have a department pertaining to Health, Safety & Environment. We must be sensitive from the perspective of greenery, pollution, clean water etc for the next generation.

Ms. Shraddha Pradhan added a psychological dimension to the discussion saying that sustainability is the responsibility of every individual for which values are list of Dos and Don’ts. A person’s conscience is the best guidance for responsible behaviour. A satisfaction survey mainly consists of customer, people, community, stake holders and shareholders. If the customer, employees and community are taken care of, there is sustainability. There is degree of correlation among these factors. 

The discussion threw up many insights like more transparency required in all transactions, sustainable development needing more awareness, education and advertisement. The panel agreed that if sustainability is practised the right way, it will not affect profitability. People and companies must be willing to change their mind-set and attitudes about sustainability and at the same time have courage to do so. There are many dimensions to sustainability and it is in the hands of the people and companies in a way to be the change they want to be. Many questions were posed to the eminent panellists by the student audience and the guests were very patient to answer them all.

All in all, the entire event was a grand success. Students of SIMSREE got a lifetime opportunity to interact with many industry stalwarts and that too on the single stage. They got tremendous amount of knowledge from the eminent guests that served the purpose of the event. SIMSREE thanks all the guest speakers who graced SIM’ergence ‘15 despite their tight schedules and making the event a grand success.