Coffee With Alumni - Mr. Sameer Kanwar

On 25^th July, the budding management aspirants of SIMSREE were pleased to have the opportunity of interacting with Mr Sameer Kanwar, an alumnus of the 1995 MMS Batch. Mr. Kanwar is currently the General Partner at Basil Growth Corporation. Previously, he was the Director at Powerdesk. In the ‘Coffee With Alumni’ session organised by the Alumni Committee in the college campus, the students had a very friendly and meaningful conversation with Mr Sameer over coffee and snacks.

With about 20 years of expertise in the information & technology and services and a great deal of experience in the private equity sector, Mr. Kanwar shared with the students an overview of his entire corporate journey. He spoke to the students about the immense learning he gained in his career including his one year stint in the core IT sector at Essar Information Technology Ltd, where he realised the need to bring about a change and thus decided to plan for MBA. He also spoke about how it was to be a part of Parametric Technology Corporation as the Regional Manager and head things there. He shared his experience about being a part of the merger which took place between APAR Tech and NESS Technologies, during his stint at NESS Technologies.

Mr Kanwar gave a brief overview about how things work in a private equity firm and how the entire process of selecting, accepting and rejecting the decision of investing in a particular start up or a firm goes about. He explained the risks involved in making such decisions and also the future scope in it. Replying to a volley of questions and clearing the doubts of the students, the session came to an end.

With the industry insights gained through this interactive session, the students enjoyed the session and benefitted thoroughly. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Mr Sameer Kanwar for agreeing to spend time with the students.

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Coffee With Alumni - Ms. Nafisa Thingna

It was a bright sunny day in the month of gloomy July when a few chosen students got an opportunity to meet Ms. Nafisa Thingna (Vice President at The Times of India), alumna of the 1984 batch. The Coffee with Alumni session, organised by the Alumni Committee of the college as a part of the induction program, took place on 27^th of July, in the conference room at our very own institute. Having over 28 years of experience with Times Group and in the media marketing sector, Ms. Thingna gave us a peek into the management world. The session was engaging as she answered our curious questions and also shared her knowledge with us.

The session began with Ms. Thingna giving us a brief insight about her company, her career, her role as the Vice President. The details she shared about career growth paths and various opportunities in the industry, were particularly motivating and intuitive. Over the course of interaction with students, Ms. Thingna shared her experiences about marketing strategies, role of the salesforce and TOI initiatives in CSR. She also enlightened us about revenue gathering, changing media trends, differential editorial policies, advertising strategies and diversification of print and digital media. Ms. Thingna even tackled the divisive questions and topics in a poised manner.

The students found the session immensely beneficial and look forward to more such interactions. We are extremely grateful to Ms. Thingna for taking time out of her busy schedule and spend time with the students.

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HR Conclave'15 - Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders

The Corporate Relations Committee of SIMSREE organized its 1^st major event of the new academic year, HR conclave on 10^th September 2015 to discuss various aspects of leadership and its effect on organizations. The HR conclave is an annual event where HR heads of reputed companies assemble at SIMSREE to express their views on a topic that has relevance to the current market scenario. The topic for this year’s HR conclave was “Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders: Learning from the past”. The guests that graced the college campus for this event were: Mr. C Srinivasulu (Vice President - HR, Lupin Limited), Mr. Atul Joshi (Head HR (Automotive Division), Mahindra & Mahindra), Ms. Meena Jagtiani (HR Advisor - Projects, Group Human Resources, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt. Ltd), Ms. Diptii Das (Head HR - South Asia, Aramex International) and Mr. Srinivas Chunduru (Chief Human Resources Officer at the Piramal Group). 

                           

(From Left to Right :  Mr. C Srinivasulu, Mr. Atul Joshi, Ms. Meena Jagtiani, Ms. Diptii Das, Mr. Srinivas Chunduru)

The panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Jagtiani who gave a brief introduction of the topic to the students. After the introduction, the discussion was started by Mr. Srinivasulu who being a home-grown leader himself, shared his thoughts on how a company can groom its employees through succession planning and leadership identification processes by giving an example of Sundar Pichai. The discussion was followed by Mr. Joshi who gave an insight to the new trend of Gen-Y leaders. Ms. Das who spoke next, made the atmosphere lively with her highly energetic talk on the current volatile world and how a leader who has a hybrid portfolio is best suited for this environment. Mr. Chunduru stressed upon the importance of values like integrity and humility which are essential for any leader in today’s world. The discussion was then concluded by Ms. Jagtiani by expressing her views on the trends of future, loyalty and leaders.

The crux of the discussion was whether a company needs a home-grown leader to tackle the challenges arising due to a global and complex environment or a lateral hire who has a vast experience across industries and organizations. The panel unanimously acknowledged that the most significant thing that mattered while electing a leader were his/her innate qualities like humility, general management skills, professional competence etc. though both company loyalists and laterals had a few distinct advantages which made them more suitable than the other in a few instances. The other part of the discussion was on the challenges faced by women leaders in the industry and ways to overcome it. 

                                 

The discussion was followed by a Q&A round for 30 minutes. It was a great and insightful session for the first year students. “The various facets of leadership became very clear to us” quoted one of the students.  They also got a chance to understand the expectations and qualities that organizations look for in a leader which is a vital part of corporate life.

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Guest Lecture by Ms. Monica Tata

The Corporate Relations Committee, SIMSREE was honoured to have Ms. Monica Tata as a

guest lecturer on the campus on 23rd July 2015. Ms. Tata who has over 25 years of

experience in the industry gave her insights about the Media and Entertainment industry.

She has been featured in the ‘Next 30’ most powerful women to look out for in 2010 and

was also featured in the top 50 influential women in media, marketing and advertising by

IMPACT in 2012 and 2014.

Ms. Monica Tata spoke about her splendid journey in the industry. Ma’am started her

career in the Dalmia group and quickly went on to win the Star Sales person award in 1991.

After her stint as a sales person, she made a career shift to advertising within the same

company, and then began her splendid journey in the industry.

She also spoke about how STAR changed the way Indians viewed television entertainment.

She was the second employee of STAR in India and worked as part of the leadership team at

STAR and was instrumental in increasing sales, effective negotiations, profit and loss

analysis and strategic implementation of business operations. After working in STAR, she

moved on to work with HBO and served as a Managing Director and was responsible for the

launch of HBO Defined HD that led the way in airing  popular series like Game of Thrones,

Better Call Saul, etc. Ms. Tata then discussed in depth about TRPs and advertising sector in

India.

The overall session was very engaging, as students asked many questions related to the

industry and Ma’am answered all the questions patiently. Ms. Tata reiterated the fact a

number of times, that follow your dreams through crests and troughs of life. We thank Ms.

Monica Tata for taking time out and sharing her knowledge and thoughts with the students.

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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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