Runbhoomi

SIMSREE’s first-ever Inter-Collegiate Cricket Tournament – RunBhoomi was held at Oval Maidan, Churchgate. The tourney, spanning 4 days from 18th to 25th February 2013, was organised by the Student’s Events Committee of SIMSREE and it included teams from the best management & engineering colleges from Mumbai. The event was sponsored by Royal Arya Motors (Mulund) with style partner Spykar, food partner Markiv’s and merchandise partner Tucks & Bucks. 

It was a ‘clash of the titans’ with teams from the top-rung Mumbai B-schools fighting the best of engineering colleges to win the coveted RunBhoomi trophy. The tournament was spread over 4 days with 3 rounds of elimination – group stage, semi-finals & the final. The matches were held at the iconic Oval Maidan at Churchgate, the centuries-old ‘home of cricket’. Each match, by itself, was a nail-biter & a display of amazing cricketing talent by all teams. The matches were played under the keen eyes of MCA certified umpires. The tournament was a perfect stage to showcase the competitive spirit as well as the teamwork required by all teams to complement their on-field skills. 

The final match was played between Vidyalankar Institute of Technology (VIT) & Mumbai Educational Trust (MET) – the perfect ending of engineering versus management!! VIT won the toss & elected to bat first. They put up a daunting score of 150 in 22 overs. MET faced the target aggressively with excellent batting too but fell short of the target by 30 runs. It was a resounding victory by VIT with an all-round display of top notch batting, bowling and fielding excellence. 

The elegant RunBhoomi Trophy was presented by Mr. Bharat Nadkarni – the honourable guest for the event. Currently the head of CSR division of TATA Power, Mr. Nadkarni is an avid cricket-lover having not only played on the Oval Maidan himself in his former cricketing years but also played in Ranji Trophy. He was also the chairman of Mumbai Selection Committee (1992- 2005). 

RunBhoomi 2013 closed on a triumphant note not just for the winning team but also for the ecstatic organizing team – for the smooth run of the entire event! 

Eagerly awaiting next year’s edition of RunBhoomi to be more action-packed, more fun but no less awesome than 2013!

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Literathon 2013

The 'Sydenham Management Review' (SMR) committee of Sydenham Institute of management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education has successfully organised and completed Literathon 2013 on 19th Feb. Literathon is an intercollegiate literature event. The SMR committee's objective behind organizing such event was to encourage future managers to improve their reading and writing skills. The event had two competitions Bibliophilia (Book Review) & Acumen (Research-Articles Writing). Students from different parts of the country participated in Literathon where their business acumen was put to test. 

The event’s highlight was the presence of eminent industries personalities, Key note speaker: Mr Vikram Sampat, VP - Business Strategy, Reliance Industries Ltd. – Polyester Chain. 

Mr Vikram Sampat elicited his life experience and connected it with the importance of reading and writing in one life to become a successful manager. 

Bibliophilia (Book Review competition) 

The participants had to select a book, from the list of books given, for review and submit a book review document. This part is the crux of the review. Here, a candidate should do his/her own research to discuss the theme, assess the author’s ability to express the theme and provide an opinion of the book. It was indeed a delight to see Mrs. Reva Prakesh – CEO, Verite HR Consultants, Mr. Kapil Mehra – Director (Business Development); Kyori Oremin Limited and Mr. Vipul Saxena – Group Head HR at Ashapura Industries guide the budding managers on the intricate details of Book Review. 

The stars of Bibliophilia were Jahnavi Vihari from Welingkar Institute of Management and our own SIMSREE-ite Tanvi Vedak 

Acumen (Research-Articles Writing) 

Acumen - an article writing competition aimed at providing a platform for young management students to present their ideas and views to the business community. Acumen presents an opportunity to pen one’s ideas and thoughts on some of the interesting themes across all verticals of management in the form of articles. 

The event was graced by Mr Alok Churiwalla - Managing Director at Churiwalla Securities Private Limited, Dr Samantha Rudra – Global Head at VFS and Mr. Hemanth Dande – President at Raptakos, Brett & Co. Ltd. 

SIMSREE again witnessed victory with Vernon Fernandes & Mughda Phatak bagging the first prize and Dhruv Talwar & Abhishek Choudhary from SIBM, Pune bagged the runner’s-up position. 

SMR’s Literathon’13 saw participation from esteemed colleges and presence of industry dignitaries that made the event a grand success.

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E Week 2013

There was a lot of hustle & bustle on campus at SIMSREE as the Entrepreneurship Cell celebrated its annual flagship event, E-week 2013. The spirit of entrepreneurship could be smelled throughout the course of the 2 days – the 16th and 17th of February. We had the pleasure of having distinguished personalities from the industry who graced the occasion.

As our Chief Guest and Keynote speaker we had Mr. Arvind Jolly, the founder and chairman of Jollyboard Ltd. He shared the entrepreneurial journey of his father in the construction business and his self-journey in the plywood export business. Along with him, we were privileged to have Mr. S.V.Divaakar, the Managing Partner of Ace Global Consulting as our Guest of Honour. He enthralled the audience with his eloquent speech. Sir took us through his experiences in the different spheres Business right from Petrochemicals to Consulting.



While we had eminent people with lot of industry experience as our guests for the inauguration function, we had three young & dynamic entrepreneurs as panelists on board. The panel discussion revolved around the topic – “Changing Face of Indian Entrepreneurship – Past, Present, Future” and was moderated by Mr. Mahesh Ranka, famous personality from Sports and Celebrity management sector. We had different views from diverse sectors on the topic, by the panelists –

1) Mr. Siddharth Shah, Founder & Chairman of Dialhealth
2) Mr. Vivek Bhargava, CEO - iProspectCommunicate
3) Mr. Akhil Aryan, CEO & Co founder of Ion Education



All of them started out early and have already made a mark. They discussed the use of modern technology and the benefits and application of digitization to their respective sectors. They emphasized the inevitability of changing the traditional mode of doing business and adapting to the new style of the present & future. Mr. Ranka efficiently concluded & summarized the discussion.

Soon after the panel discussion was the 'Twister Case Study' competition where 4 teams, that were shortlisted for the final round, presented the strategies that can be used to increase the sales of Lawrence & Mayo in their new sections - watches and pens, cost effectively. The competition was judged by the marketing director of Lawrence & Mayo, Mr. Vivek Mandonsa. All the four teams: Simarc (SIMSREE); Old Monks (SIMS); We Inc (Welingker); Blaze (MET) presented multiple strategies on the given topic. At the end Mr. Mandonsa gave personal feedback to each team mentioning what good points team had presented, what were the points they missed, what were the points they went wrong and explained how they should look forward to such a problem. In the end Team Old Monks emerged as winners with Team We Inc being the runner up and Team Simarc getting the 3rd place. Two students from the crowd were also given prizes for giving some innovative ideas on the topic. Participants and students gained a lot of learning from this session.

The 2nd day began with a workshop by Mr. Gautam Patel, MD of Zodius Capital. It was attended by 43 students from different educational campuses across Mumbai. Sir touched upon different topics like the role & expectations of Venture Capitalists from budding entrepreneurs. Also, he stressed the importance of having an efficient team & an unbiased Board of Directors. In addition, we got insights on the process of valuation of a business.

The last phase of the E-week saw participants from B-schools across the country competing in the B-plan event – Ideator. As judges for evaluating the teams, we had 2 eminent personalities – Mr. Nitin Mukadam, Mentor - Strategy Advisor at LocalBanya and Mr. Ashish Dave, a VC with the Mumbai Angels. Team Rusting Leaves from SIBM Pune emerged as winners due to their innovative & feasible idea & pitch.

The E-week 2013 thus turned out to be a great success. The efforts of the E-cell members were highly appreciated. We hope to organize many such events in the future on an even larger scale and add to the already established name of Brand SIMSREE.

Mr. Ashank Desai, Co-Founder of Mastek Ltd., paid a short visit and recounted some of the memories of his entrepreneurial journey. Mr. Desai mentioned how his then batchmates from IIM-A are still in business with him, thus emphasizing the importance of team building. He touched upon many topics like importance of ethics, doing business on your own terms and developing work culture at your organization.

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Workshop on Digital Marketing

On 15th February 2013, SIMSREE students got an opportunity to attend a workshop on Digital marketing conducted by speakers from Softpro. Softpro is an Internationally reputed Computer Training Institute of Mumbai, with over 15,000 student base and 20 years of reputation for imparting Quality Education in 43 different Computer Courses: Professional, Short term, Career driven, Job & Business Oriented courses for Students, Professionals, Businessmen, Homemaker, as well as for entire family in the field of Office Automation, Digital Marketing, Msoffice, Advance Excel, Internet Technology, Web Designing Courses, Graphic Designing, Autocad Training, 3D Max Training. It is a IT Training & Web Designing Company, established since 1992, with Offices at 3 prime locations of Mumbai: Fort, Dadar & Andheri. 

Mr. Dipen Mashru accompanied with Mr. Akshay from the institute had come over to conduct the workshop. Mr. Akshay, who mainly conducted the workshop, has over 12 years of experience working in the technology industry delivering world leading technology solutions across a range of business sectors. He has recently launched a Search Engine Optimization platform to top blue chip companies which provides a suite of SEO, SMO applications. Furthermore, he head's a SEO & Web Designing Company in his free time. He is one of the pioneers of Digital Marketing Training Institute. 

The knowledge of about 50 hours was tried to cover in brief within 3 hours by the speakers. The contents of the workshop revolved around marketing, digital marketing, SEO, SMO and off page and on page optimization. 

First the speaker began with Search Engine optimization and explained to us that how it is useful to make our product/ service more visible through the organic search. Then he explained the difference between off-page and on-page optimization. He covered topics like web-directory, classifieds, social bookmarks and viral marketing. He also spoke about internal linking, header tags and picture optimization. 

The world moves online and Digital Marketing principles are being adopted everywhere. So the importance of social media is increasing. Almost the entire chunk of potential customers of many brands is seen active on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. So it has become very important for the brands to grab their attention there and increase visibility through those sites. This makes the Social media optimization very apt in today’s brand conscious world. The speaker thus gave us insights about the ways to market on social media sites, Google ad-words, and concept of pay per click. This was followed by an introduction to display and search networks, geo-targeting, Facebook analytics, twitter analytics. He also elicited the importance of Google analytics which is for free and can help us to obtain the details of visitors, bounce rates, filters, etc 

While telling us about affiliate marketing, he told us that it is used for promoting other brands and earn commission if sale is made; it is done by using a special link code. In this way both the advertiser and publisher are benefited. E-mail marketing, Google Ad-sense account creation and display targeting were a few other related things we learnt about. 

In this way these three hours of the workshop opened up a wide horizon for the students to learn and also left us curious encouraging us to learn more. The session was very informative and interesting and we look forward to more such sessions.

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First Ever "HOUSE CUP" at SIMSREE

SIMSREE hosted its first ever HOUSE CUP – an intra-collegiate multi-sport competition on 6th& 7th February 2013. The event, spread over two days, saw the students compete amongst themselves over a plethora of indoor and outdoor games – cricket, volleyball, football, throw ball, table tennis, carom, snooker and chess. The games were held in the college campus and the classes were divided into “houses”. The entire event was wonderfully planned & co-ordinated by the SIMSREE Student Events Committee.The flagship SIMSREE House Cup was won by the PGDBM class of 2012-14.

The games started bright & early on Wednesday morning (6th) with the group stage matches of table tennis & cricket happening simultaneously along with the other indoor games as well. There were multiple teams participating from each house – MMS1, MMS2, PG, Seniors (batch of 2011-13). The games saw participation from around 140 students. The students not only got a chance to loosen up and display their sporting abilities but also a platform to showcase their competitive streak, strategic & planning capabilities.

The enthusiasm of the students was boundless with back-to-back matches happening in each sport and the games continuing well into the evening. While the single-player games gave them an opportunity to compete & excel on an individual level, the team sports required the students to collaborate and compete as a group and develop their teamwork skills.

The participants had to follow strict rules per game which sometimes resulted in interesting appeals and counter-appeals. The match referees (volunteers & committee members) surely had a tough time containing the combative side of the students but they did a splendid job maintaining order & upholding the rules. Each player/team was spiritedly cheered on & encouraged & there was a general sense of camaraderie and friendship amongst the students in spite of the competitive nature of the event.

The entire event was beautifully executed and managed by the Students Events committee with immeasurable help from the infrastructure committee and the volunteers. They did a commendable job of planning the matches, maintaining the scores & order, organizing all the necessary infra and equipment required for each game.

The event ended with the handing over of the SIMSREE House Cup winner’s trophy to the PGDBM 2012-14 batch by Prof. A. Pawaskar & Prof. R.K. Shrivastava.

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SIX SIGMA - Green Belt Certification Drive

It gives us great pleasure to announce that SIMCON – SIMSREE Consulting Club has successfully hosted Green Belt Certification drive with the help of Benchmark Six Sigma. During this workshop spanning 4 days (23rd, 24th, 26th and 27th) 24 students witnessed some amazing teaching skills from none other than CEO and Lead Facilitator of Benchmark Six Sigma, Mr. Vishwadeep Khatri.

Mr. Vishwadeep conducted all four days of the Workshop at SIMSREE. It involved entire course of green belt certification. With the help of state of the art technological teaching & practices he ensured that students are given all the knowledge and expertise needed by Six Sigma practitioner. He built on the basics of statistics that the students were already aware of, to give them a holistic knowledge of how the theory learnt could be applied when faced with complex Managerial problems. He kept the sessions interesting by keeping the students on their toes with quizzes and impromptu competitions. All in all, he ensured that all four days of learning will be remembered as pleasant & knowledgeable experience to all students. 

Mr. Vishwadeep was also pleased with the Batch's performance and quoted that with 'greater attention spans, general punctuality and willingness to learn', SIMSREE students were easily among the Top 10% of all the Green Belt Batches.

Just after conducting guest lecture by the well-known consultant of leading consultancy firm Deloitte SIMCON has taken a big forward leap by completing SIX SIGMA certification drive successfully

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Guest Lecture by Mr. Harish Hulyalkar

Over the years, Mergers and Acquisitions have helped many companies improve existing production and marketing operations to propel growth. In fact, M&A activity has become an important ingredient of business strategy.

And hence, on Sunday, 27th January, 2013, the SIMSREE Corporate Relations Committee welcomed Mr. Harish Hulyalkar - Director, Mergers & Acquisitions at Citi Investment Banking to give the students 'An overview of Mergers and Acquisitions' from a career and practitioner's perspective. He has been part of the advisory team for the Diageo-USL transaction, Wipro demerger, Vedanta group reorganisation and Moody's acquisition of Copal Partners.

Mr. Harish commenced the session by explaining some of the skill sets required to succeed in this field and where such skill sets may be applied. He gave a broad overview of the functioning of an investment bank and also showed the students how M&A fits into the business model. He then went on to highlight some of the common trends seen in M&A activity over the last two years. He noted that the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy has had a negative impact on the M&A flows into Asia in 2012. Mr. Harish then cited some of the primary reasons which drive a company to be invloved with M&A activity. Lastly, he touched upon the process followed while doing buy and sell-side transactions and showed how a financial advisor can add significant value to such transactions.

It was a very interactive and enthusiastic session and the students will surely look forward to more of such lectures in the future.

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