Guest Lecture by Mr.Avinava Banerjee (Group Manager, Business Analytics and Strategic Planning at HUL)

On 26th July 2015, the Corporate Relations Committee of SIMSREE organized a guest lecture

by Mr. Avinava Banerjee as a part of induction process of the new batch of 2015-17. Mr.

Avinava Banerjee is currently the group manager, business analytics and strategic planning

at HUL.

Mr. Banerjee commenced the lecture by giving the commandments of success in the

corporate world and discussed the importance of prioritization of activities for next two

years. Sir also discussed the importance of having a definite goal in life. Mr. Banerjee

outlined his illustrious life and gave various examples which were extremely helpful to

understand the importance of passion, resilience and sustainability in one’s life.

Mr. Banerjee then discussed the specifics of marketing analytics and how the evolution of

big data techniques has helped to understand the market behaviour more closely. He also

spoke about the cloud services which are getting more and more popular these days and

how these techniques have increase the effectiveness of operation of the data.

Sir discussed how the big data is used by the companies to understand customers and

discussed a few applications of the big data which are popular these days. Mr. Banerjee also

discussed the future prospects of the big data and cloud technology and how the effective

use of this can help add value to human life.

Mr. Banerjee’s enthusiastic personality created a wonderful learning environment. The

session was interactive, insightful and the students indeed learned a lot from it.

Read More

CII-IWN-SIMSREE event: Aakaar – NGO Mentoring Meet

The Indian Women Network (IWN) wing of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with SIMSREE and Women’s India Trust (WIT) organized an event named ‘AAKAAR’- NGO mentoring meet, on 10^th September, 2015 at SIMSREE. The aim of the event was to invite Self Help Groups (SHGs) run by women making products like handicrafts, torans, kurtis, imitation jewelry etc. and present to them various marketing and financial alternatives along with some product development ideas which can enable them to scale up their business. National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) as well as EBay also extended their support for the event. The event had participation from 16 NGOs who came from Mumbai and the nearby areas including Karjat and Mahad. The Student Social Responsibility (SSR) Committee along with more than 50 student mentors from SIMSREE will be actively working with the NGOs over the period of 1 month to ensure proper implementation of the plan suggested during the event.

The event saw an active participation from the industrial world. Ms Pallavi Jha, Chairperson, CII IWN and Chairperson and Managing Director of Walchand Peoplefirst Ltd. with her welcome speech inaugurated the event. This was followed by the speech of Ms Shyamala Nath, CEO – Women’s India Trust in which she praised the women NGOs for their courage and determination. Dr.Manoj Bhide, Director, SIMSREE and Ms Sangeeta Pandit, HOD, Finance also addressed the gathering thanking all the concerned teams for their presence in the initiative.

A special presentation was done by Mr. Abhay Bhat, Head of Seller Services, India, EBay. Mr. Abhay helped the audience understand the Ecommerce selling process, encouraging the NGOs to list their products online in order to attract more customer base. SIMSREE students also presented on the basics of business finance and marketing, giving the details on how potential markets can be tapped and business processes can be made more efficient. Ms Monica Lakhmana, Founder, Monica Lakhmana Foundation concluded the first half of the event by focusing on the possibilities that the session provided and also by thanking everyone for their contribution.

       

The second half of the event had a session where in students from NIFT and SIMSREE interacted with the NGOs. The students from NIFT focused on the product development perspective. Groups of students from SIMSREE were assigned specific NGOs and the interaction helped the students understand the NGO allotted to them along with their limitations and growth opportunities. The students suggested them financing and marketing strategies based on the interactions with NGOs. It helped the NGOs to not only develop a completely different perspective about the local market and its opportunities but also learn digital marketing. 

The SSR committee along with the help of the student mentors from SIMSREE, under the guidance of Prof. Sangeeta Pandit, will assist the NGOs in implementing the ideas, over a period of the next one month.To summarize, it was a great interaction between the corporates, the NGOs and the students of SIMSREE. 

Read More

SIMSREE Organises An International Business Simulation Workshop - Storewars

Storewars is an international, dynamic, live action total business simulation, where participants take charge of a $600m virtual FMCG company and by developing strategies, negotiating and making decisions to determine its success. It focuses mainly on the aspects of retailer-manufacturer interactions. The workshop is conducted throughout the globe touching more than 40 nations. In India SIMSREE is the only B-school other than SP Jain where this workshop is conducted.

The Store wars at SIMSREE, which was conducted on 23^rd and 24^th August began with a gush of anticipation, excitement and some cunning strategies based on the study material sent to the participants a couple of days before the event. Before we begun the workshop, the host – Prof. Umesh Dhand, explained the rules, the possible routes of winning and certain basics about the software which we were about use. After that, the participants were randomly divided into five different groups. Out of these, two groups of five each were the retailers and three groups of four each were the manufacturers. The role of the manufacturers was to make products considering all the costs and sells it to retailers negotiating on shelf space and promotional activities while the role of the retailers was to acquire products, sell shelf space and introduce and brand new products. The purpose of this was to make the management students understand the company operations from the top as well as to see the perspectives of the manufacturers, retailers as well as of the consumers. Since it was totally a risk free environment for us, it was a good test of the implementation and execution of our decisions.

 All the teams had an option to opt for reports coming from the market research giving them a market share of each product from the 2 segments - packaged food and detergents. The entire workshop consisted of 3 periods of 6 months each where inventory-management, market share, EVA, NOPAT, customer mind space were decisive factors determining the success of a company in a given period. In the end Manufacturing 1 and Retailer 2 were the winners in their respective categories after 2 exhaustive days of negotiations, brainstorming and strategies. It was a great experience for both the seniors and juniors - some got to revive their concepts while some got an understanding of retail sector negotiations.

We thank the organizers of SIMSREE for providing us with hands on experience on this business development model via software simulation of international standards.

Read More

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.

Read More

Sankalp 2015: Social flagship event of SIMSREE

Thoughts do more. Words do much. Actions do much more

Following the above quote, the Student Social Responsibility (SSR) Committee organized the annual social flagship event of SIMSREE i.e. Sankalp on 7^th March 2015. The theme Sankalp’15 was ‘Theory into Practice’, which means not just giving ideas, but carrying out necessary actions to implement them. The theme highlights how each individual can make a huge impact in bringing out a positive change in the society.

In line with the theme, the SSR committee came up with an initiative ‘LAKSHYA- aim to educate’. ‘ LAKSHYA’ is an initiative wherein the students of SIMSREE will be actively involved in educating the children of a local BMC school, with the ‘Lakshya’ of enabling them to not only clear 10^th grade, but also develop a strong foundation for the bright and promising future that awaits them. This will be implemented from July 2015 at SIMSREE.

The Chief Guest for the event was Dr. Madhav Chavan, CEO and Co-founder of Pratham Education Foundation. He is also a former Member of the National Advisory Council of India and member of the governing council of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission (SSA) of the Government of India.

The event started with an address by our Director Dr. Sandhya Dhabe introducing the theme of the event and emphasizing its importance. Our HOD Finance, Prof. Sangeeta Pandit, explained the students the importance of being involved in social activities. This was then followed by an inspiring speech by our chief guest focusing on the need and methodology of educating young kids. His emphasis was on motivating the kids to learn, rather than focusing on how to teach them i.e. do not teach them concepts, but increase the curiosity in them so that they will learn even when you are not there. This will also help the mentors learn a lot in the due course. He urged the students to actively volunteer in this initiative. Also, it was very kind of him to extend his support for the implementation of ‘Lakshya’.

After the initial inauguration, we moved to the final rounds of the competitions held during Sankalp’15. SSR committee along with ESSAR FOUNDATION organized the social b-plan competition, which saw the highest participation among all competitions. Top 5 teams were chosen for the final round, which was judged by Mr. Neerav Parekh (Director, Iksula) and Mr. Nilesh Halde (Director, AppLions Pvt. Ltd). The teams presented their ideas of a socially motivated profitable business plan, with top 2 teams being declared as the winners.

  

Other competitions included

a.       A case study competition: Solving the issues of secondary education in government schools in India (in line with the initiative Lakshya)

b.      Social vision competition: What will be your tipping point? (inviting people to share their socially motivated dream)

The case study was judged by our HOD Finance, Prof. Sangeeta Pandit and Dr. Arvind Dhond (President and Treasurer of all India Teachers Association), where top 6 teams presented their solution.

 The ideas and enthusiasm of the participants in each of the competitions, the involvement of the jury and the support of ESSAR FOUNDATION significantly raised the standard of the event. We would also like to thank the students of SIMSREE for their active involvement in the initiatives and events by SSR committee.

“We are all born with a divine fire in us. Our efforts should be to give wings to this fire and fill the world with the glow of its goodness.”

-A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Read More

OSTC UK organises Open Day for SIMSREE students

Onscreen Trading and Trading Connections i.e. OSTC had invited the students of SIMSREE to its premises on the 13th of January to interact with them and provide them with insights on how the world of trading moves as a juggernaut and also provided a hands-on-experience on the intricacies of trading at live terminals.

The visit commenced with a short presentation by Mr. Chintan Thakkar, wherein he started by describing in brief about the founders of the company and the course through which the company progresses, from a small office in the UK started by 4 friends to a multinational corporation. The students were very fascinated by the world of proprietary trading and had several doubts regarding the same as a career option. Mr. Thakkar clarified these by explaining the functioning of the organization and the duties and responsibilities of a trader.

Some students from the delegation, having prior experience in trading, shared some of their own experiences in the field. Subsequently, Mr. Thakkar explained the career growth that the vocation of trading offers and what would the career trajectory look like for a fairly successful trader. He emphasized on the importance of discipline in trading; OSTC lays greater emphasis on sound strategies in trading rather than one-off gains.

This was followed by an explanation of the trading terminals used at the OSTC office and the different types of trades carried out. After a short introduction about the bid and ask rates of various asset classes and the rules that are to be followed by traders, the students were allowed to try make trades on the terminal. This was perhaps the most exciting part of the open day experience for the students since most of them had never operated a trading terminal before, most certainly not on the scale that professional traders at OSTC were used to.

OSTC organized an hour long trading competition among the student delegates to trade four different products out of the 100 plus products that OSTC traders work with, in a way that would maximize gains by hedging risks efficiently. The announcements about key macroeconomic indicators kept beaming across the PA system and kept the students on their toes. At the end of the trading hour, the students were very enthused and the team with the highest gains was awarded a surprise present from OSTC.

The open day ended with the students being allowed to recce the OSTC office and interact with traders to further understand how trades were carried out. This concluded a very engaging and informative open day and SIMSREE students were thankful to Mr. Sanket Joshi and Mr. Chintan Thakkar for making it happen.

Read More

Guest Lecture by Dr. S. Srinivasan

On Wednesday, 7th January 2015, Dr. S Srinivasan delivered a lecture at SIMSREE on the topic of 'Stress Management by Staying Alert'. He is the Chief Learning Officer at Wockhardt Foundation and MD at Wellness Consultant and has four decades of experience in healthcare and human behaviour.

He started off the discussion on a lighter note by explaining how stress forms an integral part of our lives. He stressed upon the importance of wellness and life skills by demonstrating several examples. Striking a balance between work and personal life is of essence and stress management involves mutually balancing the two in order to lead a stress free life. Stress is not what happens to us but how we react to whatever happens to us. In order to manage stress, we have to manage our reaction and not the stressor. And only an alert mind can manage its own reaction. So it is imperative that we stay alert and control our emotions and reactions to a particular situation.

He further emphasized the importance of 5S management in lifestyle which includes – sleep, sex, snacks, stamina and spirits. By using the 5S, we can manage the 6^th S i.e. soft skills and get ready to tackle the 7^th S which is ‘Stress’.

Dr. Srinivasan explained the concept of 'Amygdala effect' and also how different parts of the brain help generate different emotions and responses to a particular situation, sometimes increasing the stress levels. He emphasized upon the difference between 'high road' and 'low road' and how managing the two leads to effective management of individual stress levels. He then shared some anecdotes of how people who overcome their limitations and inhibitions lead a 'Balanced Life'.

We are really thankful to him for giving us great insights into the literal meaning of the word 'Stress' and giving us some tips in order to overcome it. The entire session ended on a positive note and it turned out to be a great learning lesson for all of us.

Read More