SANKALP '12

SANKALP ’12!

Saturday 25^th February, a very anticipated day for SIMSREE students! For the first time in the history of SIMSREE, there was an event hosted by the Students’ Social Responsibility (SSR) Committee, SANKALP. SANKALP was drawn up with an aim to spread awareness through a larger involvement of students, not only from Mumbai, but across India.

To achieve this, a Print and Video Ad competition, Parivartan (A change), was organized. The participants were expected to make a creative ad, showing awareness about the various addictions leading to cancer. The event got over 50 entries from across India. Mr. Ankeet Dave, a media consultant with CPAA – Cancer Patients Aid Association was the guest of honour for this event.

 The other competition was Chanakyaneeti - a Case Study competition. B-School students were given a live case study of an NGO and asked to come up with a marketing and Operational solution for better sales of the NGO’s products. Again, there were over 50 entries pan India from various management institutes like IIMs, S. P. Jain, NITIE & NMIMS, among others. 5 finalists were selected, who came down to SIMSREE on the 25^th to present their solutions. The eminent  judges for the event, Ms Divya Chaudhary, Mr. Aughi Dalton, Ms. Anuja Mutha, Mr. Ravi Naidu and Mr. Aashish Pawaskar had a tough time deciding the winner but after a long discussion, Team Zenith from National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management, Hyderabad, won the first prize, worth Rs. 7500.

The last part of the day was a panel discussion. Eminent personalities like Mr. Bharat Nadkarni – Former  CSR Head, Tata Power, Dr. Pankajaksham – Dean, HR Department in Welingkar , Ms. Deepika Mandrekar – Volunteer with the Aseema Foundation, Mr. Bhagirath Shanbagh – Head, Talent Management at Larsen & Toubro EBG, Mr.  Krishnaraj Rao – An RTI activist, Mr. Swapan Garain – A Social Entrepreneur, Mr. Mahendra Narang – Program Director at Tata Power & Mr. Sanjaya Pradhan – Co-ordinator of Community Relations at Tata Power, graced SIMSREE with their presence. They had an intriguing and animated discussion on the topic – ‘Social Responsibility a hype? Do crises affect Corporate Social Responsibility?’

The SSR Committee is grateful for the immense support that it received from the Director, Dr. Khan and all the faculty members as well as from the students, without which, this event would not have been so successful.

Nupur Khare

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SIMERATIONS 2012 ..... Back to the future

The most awaited event at SIMSREE, Simerations, the inter-collegiate event was successfully held from the 17^th to the 19^th of February 2012. Simerations is the flagship event of Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education (SIMSREE) organized by the Student Events Committee.

The Youth festival was a three day celebration, which consisted of events ranging from Management to Sports to Cultural and Literary. A combination of all these four categories coupled with the most abstract theme called “Back to The Future!!” created the perfect mix of events. “The future is only the past again, entered through another gate”clearly reflects the theme of our festival.

The inauguration of the festival was done on 17^th feb by the General Secretaries of the college. For a student run institute like SIMSREE, this was the perfect start. The opening competitions of Simerations’12 were, Mock Stock and Cricket Qualifiers. These being the crowd pulling events, were houseful. Mock stock saw about 15 teams of 3 participants each and cricket saw an unbelievable crowd of about 45 teams with 5 boys and 1 girl in each team to pump up the glamour factor.

The other events were Table Tennis and Antichess. These events were followed by Cranium hosted by our very dear alumni Mr. Kartik Ramaswamy. In the evening the Group Dance and Fashion Show competitions were held followed by a DJ Mix. The group dance was judged by Mr. Akshay Dhoke, a professional choreographer. The fashion show was judged by Miss Patil who is a fashion designer herself and is also an Ex faculty at L S Raheja College.

It got even better on the second day with amazing sports events like Blind Volleyball and Rink Football. The Management event ‘Home Coming’ was held where, the partipants assumed the roles of representatives of companies and had to make a petition to back “Regretted Attrition”. The event was judged by our dearest Prof. Cabral and Mr. Somesh Roy, the Deputy General Manager, HR at BPCL. The afternoon saw an interesting turn of events with the Salsa Workshop, in which around 20 couples participated. Solo and Duet singing competitions followed which were judged by Timothy Sir, a stalwart in the music industry. The evening saw the performance of the very popular and the very amazing band “Ehsaas”. The crowd let their hair down while the band gave a rocking performance.

19^th feb was the final day of Simerations. In the morning, the finals of various sport events like Cricket, Rink Football, Table tennis and Anti-chess were conducted. The management event for the day was ‘Tod Mod Ke Jod', which had a very new concept of taking a popular company and diversifying it to sell a product out of its line of business using its core competencies. The event was judged by Mr. Unmesh Diwan who is an alumnus of the 2008 batch and a partner at URSA Associates. Business Quiz and the Spent-Quiz were crowd-pullers. The final night witnessed the grand DJ Wars Nite. The competition had 8 DJ's competing against each other. It was a fitting finale for the 3 exhilarating days.

The grand success of Simerations'12 speaks volumes about the dedication and managerial skills of the Students Events Committee, the student body that toiled hard right from the inception to the execution of the event. The constant support and guidance provided by Director Sir, Dr. M A Khan and all the faculty members played a huge role in making this event successful.

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E Week 2012

Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education is a unique B-school in the sense that it has “Entrepreneurship” in its name. SIMSREE has always believed in encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurial spirits of the students. We have a dedicated student body called the “E-Cell”, which aims to promote entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship in students. The recently concluded annual flagship event of the E-Cell “E-Week” was a great success.

 The inaugural ceremony of the E-Week was graced by the presence of Mr. Kunal Shah, founder of Freecharge.in. Mr. Shah addressed the audience and spoke about his journey as an entrepreneur. He explained that it requires a lot of efforts and dedication to become a successful entrepreneur, but the journey is nevertheless rewarding. He also insisted that it is necessary to discard the fear of failure out of one’s mind in order to become successful. He advised the young students on what to expect and what not to expect during their entrepreneurial ventures. Mr. Shah’s address was both enlightening and motivating for the budding entrepreneurs.

The inaugural ceremony was followed by the event called “Idea Generation”, where the participating teams had to spontaneously generate business ideas based on a theme that was decided by the judges. The judges for this event included Mr. Ninad Deshmukh, owner, Uniheal Foods, who is also an alumnus of SIMSREE and Mr. Dhirwani, who is an entrepreneur in the field of exports, textiles, finance and hospitality. Due to the enthusiastic participation of the students and the able guidance provided by the judges, the Event Generation competition turned out to become a success.

The B-Plan competition was scheduled for Day 2 of the E-Week. The shortlisted teams had to present their B-Plans in front of the judges and each plan was examined by the judges in terms of its feasibility. The B-plans were in various different sectors ranging from Health, Education and Power to Mobile solutions and Pearl Farming. For the initial round, Executive Summaries were called. Out of them, 22 teams were selected for the second round wherein their B-plans were shortlisted and final 8 teams were invited on campus to present their B-plans in front of judges. ‘Team Gladiators’ from SIMSREE, Mumbai and ‘Team Sunshine’ from KJSIMR, Mumbai won the first and second prizes, respectively.

The esteemed judges for this event included Shweta Aggarwal- Regional Manager, India Angel Network, Parag Sheth - Co- Founder Pacecon Technosys, Amit Kulkarni- Co-Founder Pacecon Technosys, Rohan Deshpande- CIO Oglivy India Ltd. Apart from evaluating the B-Plans presented by the teams, the judges also provided some valuable advice to the students.

Business Badshah was the grand event planned for the 3^rd and final day of the E-Week. The ability of the teams to make money out of an idea within a specific time period was put to test in this competition. The judge for this competition was Mr. Jai Mamtani, Co-founder, Volanse. The participating teams were given Rs. 100 and told to maximize the investment. The teams performed various activities on streets of Mumbai like selling candies, selling chana, guiding the tourists, performing street dance, selling chocolate gift-cards specially made for Valentine’s Day, etc. And the returns generated ranged from 500% to whopping 7000%. Three winners were chosen based on criteria like innovation, RoI, concept, etc. The enthusiasm of the participating teams and the valuable inputs provided by Mr. Mamtani, made this competition a grand success. It was a fitting culmination for the E-Week. All the hard work put in by the students for making the E-Week a successful event paid off as the event turned out to be a bigger success than was anticipated. It also set the students thinking about entrepreneurship as an attractive career option.

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SIMSREE runs in support for the dream of The Epilepsy Foundation

Sunday, 15^th Jan 2012 saw a new spirit of Mumbai. Over 30,000 Mumbaikars woke up to a morning filled with the enthusiasm and joy of running. The students of SIMSREE were in the forefront of the dream run, as they ran to promote Epilepsy Foundation that is a non- profitable charitable organisation working for the cause of people suffering from epilepsy.

 The SIMSREE contingent saw a turnout of over 90 students who along with other members as well as patients of the Epilepsy foundation formed one of the most enthusiastic team at the Mumbai Marathon. The 7 km long dream run proved to be hardly a challenge to the students from SIMSREE, who kept shouting slogans related to epilepsy awareness throughout the marathon.  The marathon experience was truly delightful for SIMSREE as they managed to have fun and more importantly also promote a noble cause. 

While SIMSREE has always been an active supporter of social causes, through the marathon we have taken our association one step ahead and proved that along with being among the best B-Schools, we are also the most socially responsible one. We are also grateful to Dr. Nirmal Surya, for all his support towards us. SIMSREE looks forward for more opportunities to show our humanitarian side.

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Guest Lecture by Rajnish Borah

The junior batch of SIMSREE had the opportunity of attending a session by Mr. Rajnish Borah on “Careers in HR”. Mr. Borah has close to 15 years of experience in Human Resource Management and has handled diverse HR roles. He is currently working as Head, HR, L & T General Insurance.

He insisted that the session should be interactive and started by asking the batch what they know about the various HR functions. Following which, he enlisted for the students the various specializations within HR such as Recruitment, Talent Management, Employee Engagement, HRIS, Compensations and Benefits, HR Analytics, Training and so on and spoke briefly about the role of each specialization. This helped in clearing whatever confusion the students had in mind about these specializations. He said that all the HR roles can be divided into four distinct categories: Administrative Expert, Employee Champion, Change Agent, Strategic Partner.

He also shared with the students the attributes required for becoming a successful HR professional. He stated that the ability to understand business is extremely crucial for an HR Professional to succeed. He also said that along with an in-depth knowledge of HR practices and the ability to successfully deliver them, a successful HR professional also needs to have a great amount of personal credibility. He said that although, traditionally, HR as a function has always been relegated to the back-seat and left out of strategic decisions, things are changing now because talent has become an extremely critical aspect of business.

Towards the end of the session, he enthusiastically answered all the questions posed by the students. The session certainly provided the students with a clear understanding of the evolving roles in HR. We look forward to more such interactive and insightful sessions.

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Finance Summit - FISCUS 2011

SIMSREE Finance Forum, the Finance cell of Sydenham Institute of Management Studies Research & Entrepreneurship Education (SIMSREE) organized the Finance Summit “FISCUS ‘11” on 1st October at Indian Merchants Chambers (IMC), Mumbai. FISCUS ’11 brought together students and finance stalwarts on a common platform to discuss a vital issue in the field of finance. The list of speakers included eminent personalities from the world of finance.

Mr. Suresh Kotak

The Summit commenced with the inaugural speech of Mr. Suresh Kotak, Chairman, Kotak & Company. The Morning Session on “Financing the Corporate Needs of India Inc” was chaired by Mr. Gautam Patel, Advisor, Battery Ventures & Managing Partner, Citta Capital. The other Panelists included Mr. Manish Arora, Executive Vice President, Country Head-Product Development & Sales Effectiveness, Yes Bank, Mr. Bharat Sampat, CFO, DCB Bank, Mr. Sunil Sapre, CFO, CEAT, Mr. Vikram Gupta, CFO, Essar Shipping Corporation and Ms. Jayashree Ramaswamy, CFO, Dun & Bradstreet.

Panel Discussion- Morning Session

The Afternoon Session on “Developing the Indian Capital Markets” was chaired by Mr. B. Madhuprasad, Vice Chairman, Keynote Corporate Services. The other eminent speakers included Mr. Prashant Shetty, CEO, IDFC Capital, Mr. Rajiv Anand, CEO, Axis Mutual Fund, Mr. Sunit Joshi, Head-Capital Markets Group, SBI Capital Markets and Mr. Subrata Ray, Sr. Vice President, ICRA. There were Keynote Addresses by Mr. Viney Kumar, Executive Director, IDBI Bank and Mr. Sanjay Jain, Managing Director, head-Global Capital Markets, JM Financial on both the topics respectively.

Panel Discussion- Afternoon Session

All the hard-work put in by the students in organising the event paid off as FISCUS 2011 turned out to be a grand success. The event was enriched by the variety and depth of industry experience of the various panel members, panel chairpersons as well as the keynote speakers. FISCUS 2011 has certainly raised the bar and will serve as a benchmark for all the future finance summits as well as all the other corporate events organised by SIMSREE.

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Foundation Day Celebrations

The auditorium at Sydenham College played host to a talented display of performances by the students of Sydenham Institute of Management, Research And Entrepreneurship Education (SIMSREE).

In keeping with the SIMSREE tradition, Foundation Day saw students dressed in traditional attire. The evening began with a Saraswati Vandana and the lighting of the ceremonial lamp. The proceedings were attended by the SIMSREE Director Dr. M. A. Khan along with other faculty members. Former students of SIMSREE were also present in the audience-it must have surely been a walk down memory lane for them. The rest of the evening consisted of a cultural performance, largely organized by the 2011-13 batch of SIMSREE. There was also a short ceremony felicitating the faculty and winners of various awards during the last academic year. The surprise package of the evening was a short address by our most recent alumni (of the just graduated 2009-11 batch).

This was a great opportunity to familiarize the new entrants with SIMSREE tradition. It was surely a memorable evening and was enjoyed by all.

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