Guest Lecture by Mr. Surya Prakash Mohapatra - (Head-Knowledge and Capability at Hewlett-Packard Global Business Services, India)

On 24th July 2015, SIMSREE’s Corporate Relations Committee organized a guest lecture

by  Mr. Surya Mohapatra. Mr. Mohapatra is the Knowledge and Capability Head, Global

Business Services, Hewlett Packard, India. He discussed the changing trends in the Human

Resource processes with the development of new technologies and social media. The speaker

made a very effective delivered speech and explained the scenario (VUCA- Volatile Uncertain

Complex and Ambiguous) in the present organizations. The organizations today are operating in

a difficult environment where the organizations have to be constantly updating the processes

as per the industrial trends.

Mr. Mohapatra spoke about the changing business environments and the need to

restructure the policies of the organizations. It is important for them to update policies with the

employees at the center. The employees are the most important resource of the organization

and it is important to give them a secure, happy and improved working conditions. The

organizations are finding it difficult to manage the employees and are breaking into smaller

organizations or flat hierarchy organizations. The mergers and acquisitions have also made it

important for the organizations to ensure all the employees are in line with the organizational

He elaborated the use of social media in the recruitment process.  With most of the

employers using LinkedIn and other social media portals to hire professionals, statistic says that

80% organizations use social media for recruiting professionals and 95% of them use linkedin.

The organizations now have a defined budget and a structured approach for the recruitment

process. It is important for HR professionals to combine the company goal with the acquisition

of the best talent to ensure growth.

Mostly HR professionals look for a candidate that meets the employer brand and the

required talent brand and to keep them with the firm HR should know how to decide the vision

of the company with a defined strategy that touches large number of employees.

The HR professionals have a very important role in collaborating and ensuring employee

engagement. The most important thing for an organization to ensure a higher retention rate is

more employee engagement. The company must value an employee and the employee must in

return ensure complete productivity for the organization growth.

To train these individuals HR must understand the power of videos. Earlier training used

to be one to many now a days it is many to many and is subdivided as pre-training, actual

training, and post-training.

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Guest Lecture by Mr. Nalin Jain (Director Finance, Volkswagen Group Sales India)

On 25th July 2015, the Corporate Relations Committee of SIMSREE organised a guest

lecture where Mr. Nalin Jain, the Director Finance, Volkswagen Group Sales India was

invited as a guest to address the speaker. The topic of discussion was ‘Strategies for

attaining and sustaining leadership’ in the industry. Mr. Jain shared his insights and

observations drawn from his corporate experience.

 He highlighted the qualities of a good leader and defined a leader as an individual,

who functions in the present moment, is aware and conscious of what is happening around

him or her and believes in democratization and he also discussed how an individual is

expected to know the basics and deliver value as soon as they join the organization. The

functions of a good leader according to Mr. Jain involve visioning, sense making, inventing

and relating with others. Mr. Jain explained that one should think through the situation and

not react instantly. This will help solve the conflicts which generally arise in an organisation.

He discussed sense making and ladder of inference to the students. He explained

that the ladder of inference is a tool that helps leaders balance inquiry and reach

appropriate logical conclusions. He then explained the enacted system predominant cycle

which is a cycle of interaction between habitual artefacts, habits of actions, habits of

thoughts, consequences and actions and includes 3 steps of studying the generative

structures, then analysis of patterns of behaviours and then adapting the reactions to it.

It was an interactive session where Mr. Jain interacted with the students and

addressed the queries and doubts. The session lasted for about an hour and the students

learned from Mr. Jain’s insights, experience & enthusiasm.

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Guest Lecture by Mr. Kiran Khalap (Co-founder and MD, Chlorophyll Brand Consultancy)

Mr. Kiran Khalap visited the SIMSREE campus on 29thJuly, 2015 to deliver a lecture which was 

organized by the Corporate Relations Committee. Mr. Khalap is the co-founder of Chlorophyll 

Brand Consultancy, which has defined and differentiated over 200 brands and created over 40 

brands from scratch. He has also been the Chairman of ACSAC, a committee led by the Unique 

Identification Authority of India, to define and create the brand in 2010. 

With his background and experience in the field of branding, he definitely cleared a few myths 

regarding the branding of a product. He defined the concept of a brand as an unchanging idea, 

with logo and advertising just facilitating in conveying what the brand really stands for. He 

stated that a real brand is the experience. This idea was amplified by the example of Apple 

changing its logo through a series of changes from Newton under an apple tree to the current 

logo of an apple halfway eaten. Another example supporting this idea was brands getting their 

names changed like the transformation of Hutch to Orange and finally to Vodafone proving that 

in spite of these changes, the experience provided by them remained the same, therefore was 

easily accepted by the customers.  

Throwing light upon corporate brands, he discussed that corporate brands are as important as 

product brands. In fact, the corporate brand is the new product brand and that the company 

may be the legal owner of a brand, but the customers are its real owners. 

“Products are created in the factory but brands are made in the mind” would be the perfect 

one line summary of the idea he conveyed throughout the interaction with the students. This 

session was met with a lot of quality questions and equally interesting answers and was an 

enriching experience for all the students.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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