Cyclicity of Life as seen through SurveysPro !!

Among several things that I have learnt during my Marketing class, one thing stands out. Understanding of Product SPT, Product / Service bundle, Logit, and market research etc. is all fine. Those are transaction aspects. What I have learnt in larger context via my marketing services course is that life is a full circle and it all comes back.

While conducting project work on what shapes a customer to buy a car in India, we ventured to conduct a primary research that included a survey. SURVEY – I used to hate those mails for survey request and trashed them right away. But I realized the pain behind the same while preparing a survey myself. A lot of thought and analysis goes behind the same. Let me help you allay that pain, you are likely to face at some point of time in your career.

For a survey, you need access to a reliable survey making resource. During our search, we zeroed onto SurveyPro as a mode to prepare our survey based on its reliability and efficiency to provide skip logics within the survey.

You can access survey pro here. Now using this survey is very simple. You need to first create your user name and ID that will eventually lead you to the following page:



You can those go on to create a new survey for yourself. While building the survey, the website offers you option to include Skip Logic. Now Skip logic is one of key things you need to include in your survey since you don’t want your user, who already are doing a favor to open your stupid survey at first place, to go through random questions. Survey Pro provides the same to you quite efficiently.
Once your survey is prepared, you can open the survey for your friends to fill it up. This would require no registration from them and works out smoothly. You can edit / access your survey on time to time basis. In order to maintain data integrity, survey pro would not let you change the questions / options in the survey unless you delete the data collected for that particular question. We found this feature very helpful since you can’t, in thick of action, change the questions while some data has already been filled. It will simply lead to wrong conclusions later on. You can view total response to your survey in the main page as shown below:



Survey Pro offers a rich amount features and you view the same here . For those you just starting on your journey to start preparing surveys, Survey Pro also offer a wide variety of templates as well as tips & tricks of the game. We found information in most of the tips as well as best practices pretty helpful. You can access the same here.

Lastly Survey Pro offers you well complied bar charts and graphs to decode what has been running through your target segment’s mind. Overall, we were glad to use Survey Pro for our project that we hope to accomplish soon.

I shall certainly share the final report here but remember, Never ever delete a survey when someone asks you out. It all comes back :) !!

Go - Kiss the World - Subroto Bagchi !!!!

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.

My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.


As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not ”his jeep” but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply,” We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.

Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said,

“Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God’s speed. Go! kiss the world

So much for Organizational Structures :)

Quotes on Sachin Tendulkar

Have been away from my blog for a shamelessly long period. But this brought me back and hope I continue.

I guess even the non-cricket fans will like to read this because there can be a non-cricket fan in India but not a non-Sachin fan.

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"Nothing bad can happen to us if we're on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it."
- Hashim Amla, the South African batsman, reassures himself as he boards a flight.

"Sometimes you get so engrossed in watching batsmen like Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar that you lose focus on your job."
- Yaseer Hameed in pakistani newspaper.

"To Sachin, the man we all want to be"
- Andrew Symonds wrote on an aussie t-shirt he autographed specially for Sachin.

“Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don't know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their TV sets and switch off their lives."
- BBC on Sachin

"Tuzhe pata hai tune kiska catch chhoda hai?"
- Wasim Akram to Abdul Razzaq when the latter dropped Sachin's catch in 2003 WC.

Sachin is a genius. I'm a mere mortal.
- Brian Charles Lara

"We did not lose to a team called India...we lost to a man called Sachin."
- Mark Taylor, during the test match in Chennai (1997)

"The more I see of him the more confused I'm getting to which is his best knock."
- M. L. Jaisimha

"The joy he brings to the millions of his countrymen, the grace with which he handles all the adulation and the expectations and his innate humility - all make for a one-in-a-billion individual,"
- Glen McGrath

"I can be hundred per cent sure that Sachin will not play for a minute longer when he is not enjoying himself. He is still so eager to go out there and play. He will play as long as he feels he can play,"
- Anjali Tendulkar

Question: Who do you think as most important celebrity ?
Shah Rukh Khan: There was a big party where stars from bollywood and cricket were invited. Suddenly, there was a big noise, all wanted to see approaching Amitabh Bachhan. Then Sachin entered the hall and Amitabh was leading the queue to get a grab of the GENIUS!!
- Shah Rukh Khan in an interview.

“India me aap PrimeMinister ko ek Baar Katghare me khada kar sakte hain..Par Sachin Tendulkar par Ungli nahi utha Sakte.. “
- Navjot Singh Sidhu on TV

He can play that leg glance with a walking stick also.
- Waqar Younis

'I Will See God When I Die But Till Then I Will See Sachin'
- A banner in Sharjah

Sachin Tendulkar has often reminded me of a veteran army colonel who has many medals on his chest to show how he has conquered bowlers all over the world. I was bowling to Sachin and he hit me for two fours in a row. One from point and the other in between point and gully. That was the last two balls of the over and the over after that we (SA) took a wicket and during the group meeting i told Jonty (Rhodes) to be alert and i know a way to pin Sachin. And i delivered the first ball of my next over and it was a fuller length delevery outside offstump. And i shouted catch. To my astonishment the ball was hit to the cover boundary. Such was the brilliance of Sachin. His reflex time is the best i have ever seen. Its like 1/20th of a sec. To get his wicket better not prepare. Atleast u wont regret if he hits you for boundaries.
- Allan Donald

On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt in one of the stations. The train stopped by for few minutes as usual. Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century. This Genius can stop time in India!!
- Peter Rebouck - Aussie journalist

"Sachin cannot cheat. He is to cricket what (Mahatma) Gandhiji was to politics. It's clear discrimination. "
- NKP Salve, former Union Minister when Sachin was accused of ball tempering

There are 2 kind of batsmen in the world. One Sachin Tendulkar. Two all the others.
- Andy Flower

"I have seen god, he bats at no.4 for India"
- Mathew Hayden

"Commit all your sins when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed coz even the GOD is watching"
- A hoarding in England



NOW THIS ONE IS PROBABLY THE BEST AND MOST CUTEST OF THE LOT



"Even my father's name is Sachin Tendulkar."
- Tendulkar's daughter, Sara, tells her class her father's name after the teacher informs them of a restaurant of the same name in Mumbai.

A day at ISB !!

This post has been long overdue and something or the other kept me away from this. I finally get a chance to write about a typical day at ISB and here goes the same:-

7:15 A:M – The alarm goes off and I immediately put it back to snooze. It’s just 4 hours and this cruel mechanical alarm wouldn’t understand the benefits of a sound sleep. I and my snooze played for 3 more rounds till it told me that this is last time it will snooze. The battle is over. Snooze wins and I wake up. Get ready speedily with a fundamental objective – to get one cup of coffee before the 8:15 class and as usual, I missed.

8:15 A:M – First class – Organization Behavior and Prof. Pinto discusses the HR practices and people focus of GE leaders. Eye opener case in many aspects and learned some very practical insights in managing teams as well as organizations at large.

10:15 A: M – It’s 30 minute break between two classes and the time flies that included a small clarifying conversation with the Prof. and my breakfast.

10:45 A: M – Second class – Government, Society, and Business. Diverse topics such as Women Empowerment, Human Security, and Human Development Index were discussed by the prof. followed by Group Presentations by three groups. I wasn’t particularly attentive during the presentations part and have some fun with Saikat and Pranjal in the class

12:45 P:M – Hungry and Lunch time. Wrap up by 1:30 P:M and had some light hearted discussions with my classmates at lunch

1:30 P:M – I head to LRC to accomplish two things a) I wanted to revisit the GE case and compile the learnings from the case. I was pretty impressed with the class b) I have to glance through my CV for my Resume review session with Moi Foi consultants ISB has hired

2:30 P:M – I conduct 45 minutes discussion with Mr. Mandeep from Moi Foi about my career objectives, past experiences, way to represent my CV, and picked up couple of things to improve in my CV.

3:30 P: M – I reach back to my quad. My quad-mates were leaving for a session on Placement portal but I wasn’t particularly interested in the same. I spend next hour or so surfing on net, answering several pending emails, and calling couple of friends outside ISB. Also, worked on my CV and sent it across to few friends for review.

4:30 P: M - I opened McKinsey quarterly’s report on “Offshore and Captive Units” and gather few old articles. This is to prepare for my discussion with CTO of a large organization at pre-scheduled 6:30 P: M who agreed to speak to me previous day.

5:30 P: M – I am done with my readings and preparation. With one hour for the call, I decide to take a quick 45 min nap. It has been a long day already and I am running on 4 hours of sleep. I deserve more, I thought.

5:40 P:M – I get a call from the CTO to prepone the call as he would be engaged later. Thank God I prepared earlier. One part of me was happy, as now I will get free early and will be able to attend my dance class. Second part, awww… what about that 45 minutes nap.

5:45 P:M – Since call got pre-poned no-one else from my group could join me and I navigated through the call on my own. Extremely insightful & practical perspectives that will help in the project I am pursuing on Back Office and Captive units for my client.

6:15 P:M – The call gets over and I quickly rush to Recreation Center – elated that after missing two classes I will be finally able to catch up my Salsa. Spend next 1 hour – away from all sorts of distractions. No CP. No Management. No Best Practices. No Beta. No CAPM. No Experience Curve. No Bull-shit. Just one hour of pure fun.

7:30 P: M – I reach back to my quad and quickly compile the notes from my discussion with CTO and send it across to my group. Also, I set up agenda for meeting with client the next day.

8:15 P: M – Hungry and time for Dinner but the food hasn’t been delivered. I hang out a bit with people in lawn until food arrives at 8:40 P: M

9:00 P: M – After quickly having my dinner, I rush to Atrium to attend a session by Parthenon Consulting on Case Analysis. The speakers talked about the projects they were involved in, culture of Parthenon, and general aspects of Consulting. Ended the Session with a Hi-Tea with the Alumni from Parthenon!

10:20 P: M – I get in call with a junior from my undergrad college, who has been trying to contact me to seek suggestions and guidance on his ISB and MBA applications in general. Talked to him for 30 min and he seemed satisfied with some of my inputs. Hope it helps him. Always great to get in touch with people from your undergrad 

11:00 P:M – I head to LRC to finish off the Investment Analysis assignment only to realize I am not carrying notes required for the same. Kicked myself and headed back to my quad to wrap it up.

11:25 P:M – After some TP, four of us – Vinay, Sohel, I, and Rachit get together to discuss the assignment (Thank God Prof. allowed discussion for the assignment) and solved the questions. I wasn’t willing but Sohel pushed that we write the assignment in fair as well and finish it once and for all. The deadline is Friday 7:00 P:M but I am done by 2:00 A:M. Some rare moments that I have assignments done with such a huge time lead.

2:00 A:M – Time for a tea break and discuss several aspects of the Case Competitions and other ideas that are important to set agenda for the weekend.

2:45 A:M – All done and I face a dichotomy – whether to go for sleep and glance through the readings for tomorrow’s IT class. I choose the former only to be pulled out of quad by Niyaz for another(his) break. We sit out in the lawn and discuss how the day went. It is there it struck me that this discussion has been long overdue for my blog.

Thanks to Niyaz for showing up that I am writing this post. BTW, tomorrow class starts at 8:45 and it’s already 4:15. The same story awaits – wake up in morning, fight with snooze, loose, miss out coffee before the class, and ………………………

Subroto Bagchi's Commmencement Speech @ IIMB - 2004 - Go Kiss the World !!

Cam across this wonderful and inspiring blog post about Mr. Subroto Bagchi's speech at IIM- B. I have developed a deep interest in these speeches by great leader. Goes on a long way to put real things, especially for B-school grads, in right perspective. How can I not cover it on my blog. Here goes Mr. Bagchi....

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government – he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.
My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.
Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world."

Source - Original post at http://nirmala-km.blogspot.com/2004/11/subroto-bagchis-speech-iimb.html

The No: 2 Phenomena !!

A close friend gave an amazing perspective and followed up with the amazing and insightful piece of adds by AVIS rental car. I generally speak about Law of Average and perhaps these adds help put the same thought in perspective.



A connected thought shared by one of the professor "Your Biggest strength is your last failure and your biggest weakness is your last success" !! The No: 2 phenomena helps tie up this argument as well into a coherent story. So the moral is that continue to chase the No. 1 and if you are No. 1 - continue to set higher standards for yourself. The moment you rest, there is always someone trying hard to catch you up !!!!

Richard Bach's - The Bridge Across Forever

I finished up reading this amazing book by Richard Bach. As much I am awed by the story, I am ever further impressed by his unique writing style and insights. Some of the things I noted are:

1. The observer funda – Richard explains something and then prints what an observer, sitting on his shoulder and taking notes would have said at that time – Rates himself and notes the reactions of the situation. An insightful way to write the conflicting parts of yours.
2. He frequently talks of things that could have happened as Alternate Future.
3. Richard writes a letter to himself – when he was 20 years younger. Wow !!
4. Touches the gate and speaks to her love lady – someday you will be touching this gate along with me.
5. Says close your eyes and think that when I open my eyes, the world that I see, the moment I live is the world that I have created. How did it happen and what led me here? Then write about it. Beautiful.
6. The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.
7. Keep notes that capture thoughts. Turn them into stories n anecdotes. Remember n re-quote.
8. Can be a listener as well as a talker
9. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
10. Dream lady – should complement in every manner, should have stories that you can listen forever, should listen to your stories as if it excites her to hell, you can talk to her long after the food is gone, you can listen her the whole night, may be next day. It should be mystic, mutual, and very natural. Nothing fabricated.
11. Have u ever been so happy that you could not stand it and want it to end?
12. You have money, fine. But never try to use it to buy women.

37.5% MBA

They say, by this time, the worse is over. Dean’s projected happiness curve is set to rise and as Prof. Nerkar put across, with more than 33% done, you guys are good enough to run a business now. All sounds so glamorous and scary at the same time.

Term 3 started with a buzz in the student body - with more assignments submissions than total number of days in the term, with three out of four subjects heavily quant oriented, with advice from Alumni that Term 3 is the peak of your MBA life. If I were to follow the suit, I am glad that Term 3 is behind me now.

As I normally do after each term, this post is also going to be about my comments on each of the subject we studied in this term and other major events.

• Corporate Finance: - A very interesting course and important course to understand the nuisance of capital structures followed by various companies, the divided payouts, IPO’s etc. More than anything else, as Prof. Bhubna put up – the number of terms this course provides can help shut off any normal person easily -terms such as WACC, Beta, EBIT, EBITDA, Agency Problems, Levered firms, Un-levered firms etc. I personally liked the course as it helped understand the basic concepts one should be aware off for any managerial positions.

• Operations Management: - Pretty quantitative, interesting, and practical course. I have no intentions to further my skills in Operations Management but the concepts covered here will certainly be applicable in any B2C business. On top of everything, I have developed an incessant love for all simulation games and deeply enjoyed “The LittleField Game” in this course

• Managerial Accounting and Decision Making:- One of my fav course from the term, given that this course helped understand deep hidden nuisance in cost structure that will help refine decision making process forever. This course illustrates the concepts of Sunk Costs vs Variable cost and inspires several new thoughts.

• Entrepreneurship: - Well, my top pick from the last term. I have no intentions to start my business right after MBA but as Prof. Nerkar put up, the learning will fade but the cases will stay with you for life. A very inspiring professor who certainly motivated quite a few people to pursue entrepreneurial journey. The CP style in the class – a more of debate – rocked!! This class was really the one I used to look forward to do during the term!!

Other than these, I have been engaged with my ELP work for my Pharma client. It is quite an interesting project and I like the way the project scope is shaping up. Another major event of the Term was Bandhan. I was part of the core committee for organizing Bandhan and it was one of the best days I ever spend at ISB. ISB hosted a bunch of 300 kids on Independence Day. We had spend around 2 weeks to prepare and plan everything perfectly. Student Volunteers turned out in large number. The kids from various NGO stunned ISB with their speeches (in English), with their skits, songs, dance performance, and most importantly by beating ISB Class of 2010 in tug of war competition.

As we head into shortest Term at ISB (~32 days), ISB Class of 2010 is gearing up for new set of activities that are about to start – Resume Preparations, companies visiting for placement pitch, and more students discovering their interests and hence, commencing their placement preparation. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, the happiness curve is about to go up now and hopefully their will be more time to spend on extra-curricular & parties.

ISB Founding Dean Pramath Sinha: 'Over the Years, I Have Become a Student of Leadership' !!

According to Pramath Sinha, founding dean of the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB), the single biggest challenge in starting a business school in India was "building a great reputation in a short period of time." So far, the gamble has paid off: In 2008, ISB became the first Indian institution to be included by the Financial Times in its global ranking of the top 20 business schools -- only seven years after the school was launched. Sinha, who served as dean of ISB from 2001 to 2002 and continues to serve on the school's executive board, went on to become managing director and CEO of media conglomerate ABP Pvt. Ltd., and last year founded a new media company, 9.9 Media. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, Sinha answers questions about the genesis of ISB, what it takes to lead different kinds of organizations, and -- in keeping with his latest venture -- where he thinks the media industry in India is headed.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

India Knowledge@Wharton: As the founder and also part of several successful businesses in India and overseas, which is your favorite and why? And is there one that you wish you had not entered?

Dr. Pramath Sinha: Actually, I have not founded too many businesses. [9.9 Media] is the first real business, and then I was involved with the founding of the business school. So those are two of my entrepreneurial ventures. It is hard to choose between them. I guess till this thing becomes successful the ISB would have to count as the greatest journey, and it has been a fantastic story. When we started out we never imagined that we would have so much success so quickly.

It is like everything we thought of doing has worked, and you can get carried away in the success and say it was easy, but now that I am building this business, I realized that that was also not easy.

And sometimes, when I am getting disappointed in the second stint, I have to go back and remember that there were lots of setbacks even when we were trying to do the ISB, and there still are. I mean, this year's recruiting has been very tough.

Now Wharton or a Kellogg can afford to say, "Listen, we are a 50-year-old institution and one bad year is fine." But for us, as a 6-year-old institution, if you hit a bad year where a third of a class is not placed, you have to worry.

So I'd have to say I am very fortunate to have had the chance to do both, and I have really enjoyed doing both. This one is also at a different point in my life. So I am much more interested in issues other than just making the business successful. I have become over the years a big student of leadership, and so one of the things I am spending a lot of time on is how I get the best out of our people and help them grow at the same time. And so the flavor of what I am trying to do now is very different.

India Knowledge@Wharton: How did your role at ISB come about? What is the genesis behind this idea?

Sinha: It all started when I was an associate at McKinsey. I was drafted by Rajat Gupta to put together a plan for an international-quality business school that was supposed to come up on the campus of the IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] in Delhi. And Rajat being alum, the director of IIT Delhi had asked him to help out. So as a gofer in the office I got caught to do some grunt work. And that is how it all started, and then became an ongoing project, and I kept helping out. And then as I grew more senior at McKinsey, my responsibility on the project kept growing. As I became a McKinsey partner, I became the CEO of the project.

And then quite by providence, I think, both Sumantra Ghoshal and Dipak Jain, who were supposed to be the founding dean and the executive dean, respectively, for various reasons, as we got closer to the opening of the school, decided that they could not do it. And so in June of 2001, just before the school was to start, we were left high and dry without a dean, with 128 students, faculty, everything lined up, but no leader for the institution. And given where I had started I was so focused on this thing as a project that actually finding a dean was part of the project. I never realized that I could be the dean.

I was one of the founders and I was setting it up. The dean was always going to be an academic like Sumantra or Dipak.

Suddenly the board turned out and said, "Listen, we have no time, and you know the natural choice is Pramath, because he has actually built the school over these years." And it was true, I was very involved, and so I knew each of the students inside out, because I had led the whole admissions process, and interviewed all of them, and so on. And the students were happy that somebody familiar was coming into that role, because they were very concerned about what would happen to them after a year.

So that is how I became the founding dean, and that cemented my involvement in a way that continues even today. I cannot not be involved.

India Knowledge@Wharton: What was involved in recruiting Wharton and Kellogg to become partners at ISB?

Sinha: That is an illuminating story and really a great lesson in leadership, what Don Jacobs, the dean of Kellogg [at Northwestern University], always stood for. We were always very keen that we were a bunch of business guys trying to form an academic institution.

Of course, most people who started institutions would start it with their own name or their company name or their parents' name. So the Birlas and the Tatas were perhaps an exception, but businesspeople did not have a great record of starting institutions. So we knew that one of the ways we could bridge that perceived gap was to get great academic partners. And we also knew that that level of partnership would not be helpful to get from India. You really needed something that was not available, and that was truly aspirational.

So the idea of having a partner was first mooted keeping in mind that, one, we do not have the skills, and, two, if you are starting something new and you have somebody who has a great name, then that helps. So Rajat took on the burden of approaching some of the business schools because he was in the U.S., and as managing director of McKinsey he had direct access to most of these schools.

He started with Harvard and Stanford. He was on the board at Harvard and he very quickly realized that they would never do it and that even today they are much more conservative about lending their name, forget about even a second campus.

So he then went to Kellogg, where he had a relationship, having been based in Chicago for a lot of his life. And Don Jacobs, who was always a very different kind of dean and quite a visionary, who took Kellogg really from nothing to a top school, immediately jumped on the idea. His point was that, yes, we need to have presence in India, but I have all these Indian faculty who really want to go and teach. He saw it as a retention strategy for his faculty.

But then Don gave us an amazing piece of advice, and we always will be grateful to him. He said that if you just partner with Kellogg, you will become Kellogg in India.

We never wanted to be seen as a dependent. We wanted to be an independent institution that stood on its own legs and did not depend on a partnership. So he said, "You should get a second partner." If you have two partners then people will see you as an independent institution with multiple links rather than just this one umbilical cord.

So he picked up the phone and suggested that … I think he spoke to Tom Gerrity, who was the dean at Wharton at that time, and Rajat of course knew him, and then very quickly Gerrity agreed. Gerrity also came from a corporate background. So he saw this as a positive thing of having an alliance or a partnership and having the partnership with Kellogg, because at that time they were the number one, number two schools. So it was quite exciting for the top two schools in the U.S. to be doing something together in India. That is how it started, and it stood the test of time and continues to thrive.

India Knowledge@Wharton: I also remember there were some issues about the location, where initially there was some thinking about it being based in Bombay?

Sinha: Yes.

India Knowledge@Wharton: And then you ran afoul of the Shiv Sena. Can you tell us that story?

Sinha: Clearly, if you looked at the board, it was the "Who's Who of Indian Business." Most of them were from Bombay. So the bias was "Bombay does not have an IIM [Indian Institute of Management]. It is the commercial capital. A business school should logically be in Bombay." And so we never questioned that. We sort of assumed that it was going to be in Bombay. And sure enough we went through looking for land and so on, and, you know, the Godrejs and the Ambanis and the Bajajs, Mahindras on our board had access to … they knew exactly where land was available or not available. So in Navi Mumbai we identified a site. We got the site. CIDCO was the authority that was making the site available and we were almost ready to sign the contract.

In the final form of the contract they applied water and electricity and some other infrastructure development charges that were exorbitant. So in effect you were getting land for a song, but for services you were paying a huge amount of money. So we said, "Listen, this is unacceptable, and these CIDCO guys are just being unreasonable." At that time there was the Shiv Sena and BJP combined government, with the Shiv Sena being the power behind the scenes. And so our board member said, "Hey we all know Balasaheb [Shiv Sena, founder Balasaheb Thackeray]. We'll just go and talk to him and sort this out."

Unfortunately, they went to see him at a time when he was having a big gathering at his place. So there was an occasion to grandstand, and the press was there. So in front of all of these people he made a big deal about how the best business school in the world was going to get built in Bombay, and that they were involved in it and there would be 10% reservations for Maharashtrians by the way, and 50% for employees. And this came off the cuff, from the blue, and it was the next day published in Mid-Day, and it was all over.

This was clearly unacceptable to us. We had always said very clearly that this was going to be completely merit of credit. Can you then support the needy candidates? We will never allow any sort of reservation. So that is how it began and even at that point we were in touch with his sons or nephews or … I do not remember now, and they said, "Listen, we will find a way around it, do not yet give up." And we also felt if we put a little bit of competitive pressure, this thing will sort itself out.

So it was to put competitive pressure on Bombay, but never really to leave Bombay that we wrote a note to all chief ministers and chief secretaries around the country. Well, not all, but Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gurgaon, Haryana, and we said, "Listen, we are these guys, we have the partnership, we have the school, this is our vision, these are the people on our board," from Ratan Tata to Ambanis, to Bajajs, to Mahindras, to Parekhs and Kamath, and Lakshmi Mittal. By then the whole board was there. "And please see if you can give us appropriate land. We are looking for 100 acres of land."

And so one monsoon morning we flew from Bombay to Hyderabad, to Bangalore, to Chennai. But the first place we landed was in Hyderabad, and we were completely floored by the hospitality of Naidu [Andhra Pradesh's chief minister at the time, Chandrababu Naidu].

Now it is much more built up than then, and amazingly open, and he said, "Two hundred fifty acres is yours," and, "I will give you plus one of whatever anybody else offers. And we just knew that this was the right place and the right thing to do. And we came back from that trip. I remember we did a teleconference, and the board approved within a few months. We had possession of 250 acres of land which is prime land today for a business school.

India Knowledge@Wharton: Thinking back on the ISB experience, what was the biggest challenge? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from it?

Sinha: The biggest challenge was, "How do you build a great reputation in a short period of time?" I had studied a lot of the history of how our institutions got built. The one that I followed very closely was INSEAD [in France]. INSEAD was actually started in the early 1900s. The germ of INSEAD started then. And it took all the way up to the '80s and the '90s until it truly started getting counted among the top business schools in the world.

We looked at the London Business School similarly. We looked at IMD [the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland]. We looked at Kellogg. There were just no examples of institutions that in a period of two, three, four, five years would really catapult themselves into the world scene. We were very clear that we did not have a generation or a lifetime to realize the fruits of what we were trying to build.

So that was the single most significant aspiration and challenge that we had to overcome. Everything that went into the concept and the execution was really about fast-tracking and leapfrogging the generational time it would take to build a great institution. I am not sure we are there yet, but what we have been able to do we have done in very short order.

So I can talk about all the little things that went in, but the board, the partnerships, the one-year program, the focus on bringing in visiting faculty, everybody shot us down. Building the infrastructure? Big debate. "Why do we need such infrastructure? Let us just take a building and start." All those were huge trade-offs. One of the most prominent board members left the board because he fundamentally did not agree with the concept that we were going to put in our infrastructure first.

So, there were huge debates and trade-offs. The one-year program [idea] -- I facilitated that [discussion] with Kellogg and Wharton. What massive resistance. This is not [what's] done in U.S. academic circles...

Then, OK, if we agree on the one year, what is the core? Which courses will be taught in the core? Trying to bring about all kinds of other innovations started to become a challenge. How are we going to be different?

Somewhere I feel that on some of those we did not win the battles and we are not as different as I would have liked us to be. You fight those battles as you go along. But I think the fact that we went from zero to, or from nothing to 15th on the [Financial Times' ranking of business schools] is the challenge we had.

India Knowledge@Wharton: What is the way forward for ISB? Is it going to be one school that has gone from 128 to 400? Is it going to expand in terms of student numbers? Are other campuses being planned across the country?

Sinha: We are going ahead with a campus in Mohali.

Now, given where you are, if you know you are sort of theory-of-theory of constraints, then faculty is the big limiting factor. Students are not. Today we have 560 students, which is the capacity of the current infrastructure. We get almost 4,000 applications and the average GMAT of the applicant pool is about 710. So you could technically argue that there are 3,000 more students out there who we can admit if GMAT were the narrow measure, and I am not suggesting that. So you could really go bananas on the numbers.

If you look at some of the other schools, you look at an ICFAI [Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India] business school, they take 5,000 students a year. You look at an Amity or an IIBM [International Institute of Business Management]. They do similar thousands. Of course, we are talking a different quality, but I have no doubt that we can find very high-quality students in those kinds of numbers.

The other way we look at it is that if you look at the top 20 U.S. MBA programs and you say that there is probably an average of 700 to 800 students, then you are talking about 15,000 students. So if there are 15,000 students, even in the U.S., who are good enough to go to the top 20 schools, there must be at least that many in India who are not, and clearly we do not have that many seats at the highest level if you add the IIMs, ISB, Narsee Monjee, XLRI, Jamnalal Bajaj. You would not add up because those kinds are a couple of hundred each.

So the students are not an issue. Jobs, you can argue, may or may not be an issue, but I am hiring people from IIPM [Indian Institute of Planning and Management]. I never imagined that I would hire people from IIPM, but I can tell you I am, and they are very good. And I would hire such people from any such institution. I am sure people will be willing to … There are enough jobs out there. Maybe not of the price that the ISB today commands, but the real issue is at some point if you are going to be serious about giving good management education, where is the faculty?

So we are really limited by that, and I think as long as we can overcome that constraint we will be building more campuses.

India Knowledge@Wharton: How will you overcome that constraint?

Sinha: We are looking at various ways. We now have a pipeline of permanent faculty who want to move back to India. Initially it was tough, but today ISB has some 34 permanent faculty. It is a little bit of an exponential graph if you see at what rate people have come. In the last few years we have recruited five to 10 people a year. So for a 500-odd-student's class, a faculty group of 40 to 50 is fine, and these are all people from top schools -- Stanford, Michigan, Duke. Obviously, they are all Indians. Hopefully the pipeline of people wanting to do Ph. Ds and wanting to relocate in India will continue to grow, so that is one stream.

The other is trying to find gifted students from other disciplines, give them a bridge course at the ISB and then get them shipped off to Wharton or a Kellogg, help facilitate their entry into the DBA or Ph. D. in business program. So we are growing our own timber if you will, and I do not know if that is going to reach some scale soon, but clearly we are able to.

The third thing is that our visiting faculty model has really matured. When we started out, we just got such flak. Everybody criticized us and said, "How can you build an institution like this?" But it has become our biggest strength. Students do not want to let go of these wonderful guys who come from all over the world. Suddenly, what also has happened is, with that model and the interest levels in India, we are getting people from all over. You have people from China coming to teach here, from Australia and Japan. So you are no longer dependent on that NRI- Indian-U.S.-business-school guy who wants to move here.

The final thing is that there are existing Indian faculty who are getting to that age, either because their kids have gone to college or because their kids are getting to that age, who are now starting to say there is a creditable alternative there.

When we did the research in 1998-99, the top 20 schools had a hundred-plus faculty of Indian origin in just the top 20 schools. If you go today I would say that number would be more like 200. You will probably have 10 per school.

If you look below the top 20, and there are some pretty good schools below that, I am sure there are a few hundred -- I do not know how many exactly -- who are there, who one can tap in to. So in a way that one is a bit of a zero sum in the U.S., but what the hell? The students are here and the jobs are here. The research topics are here. So I think that will willingly attract. If you look at it from a sources standpoint, one is the new graduates, one is the existing faculty, and the third is trying to boost our own. One big challenge is that we cannot do Ph. Ds in our institution.

India Knowledge@Wharton: Why is that?

Sinha: Because of our regulatory. We are sort of under the radar. We are not approved in the true sense. But then that does not really help us because you do not want to inbreed either. You do not want to just create your own Ph. Ds, and that is what the IITs and the others have done.

Part of achieving greatness for us was not just being a great teaching institution, but really to be thought-driven.

Getting research going is a big challenge. So it is that twin challenge of getting faculty and getting research going that I worry about today. I think we are tracking it. I think the people we have are churning out some good research. They are getting some recognition. They are being funded, which is always a good sign. They are publishing in international journals, the top-five-type journals. So they are rightly incentivized. But we have not really successfully brought in senior faculty who can mentor these guys. You really need that whole ecosystem of the gray hair and young minds to make research happen.

India Knowledge@Wharton: In some ways, the challenge in the research front seems to be a little different from the challenge of recruiting faculty in the following sense. You take an institution like Harvard. Thanks to the connections of Mr. Mahindra, they have actually opened an office in India and they do a lot of research right there…. And Harvard would probably not be alone in this as you correctly said. India is now on the global map as an emerging business case to be studied and researched. What would be your competitive strategy in differentiating ISB research from what Harvard or Stanford or MIT or Wharton would do?

Sinha: This is a personal view, not an institutional view, because I have not discussed it with the academics or with the dean. But first, we always felt that the distinctiveness would come from our focus on India and the emerging markets. But as you said, others are also starting to do that. I think the difference is that because of our on-the-ground presence and our network, our access to people and companies is that much better. I think it is borne out by some of the stuff I have seen coming out of some of these research projects. The fact that we have faculty on the ground who are based here rather than people flying in is where the distinctiveness comes from.

I will give you the example of Shamika Ravi, who does microfinance. The way she has gotten plugged into the microfinance companies and NGOs, the way she has done impact assessment of their programs through her primary and empirical research and the way she has plugged into the public policy side in terms of the planning commission on the Ministry of Finance and the RBI and the policy and the planners and the government is the great example of how you can come up with something quite distinctive, which can only happen if you have people down here.

And not just presence here, because I am sure the center has research fellows or assistants, but really in that model the intellectual talent is there. The brains are there and they are using this as a base. That is where the difference will come. The visibility, the networks, the connections, the access to and the ability to influence I think ultimately will be different. And that is another big thing that business research or academic research in business is grappling with, is it not? Particularly in light of what just happened, are we researching real practical issues and what the hell where we doing, creating all these models and bringing the whole world down?

That aspect of it, which is the switch from pure, basic academic research for the sake of research and publishing to somewhat more applied -- and I say this carefully because it is still looked down upon.

But I think the stuff that she is doing is brilliant, and I am only singling her out because I am familiar with her work, but you look at a [Dishan] Kamdar or a bunch of other folks. They are doing fantastic work. That is what really makes me feel proud about the school, that we can point to people who now understand India and understand issues and can speak intelligently about it and engage, and it is not purely academic. She has done some work for example on how this National Rural Guarantee Scheme has in fact helped uplift the lives of the people in the villages.

I do not think even the government has evaluated their own program. So when I got it I just said, "Wow, this is great stuff." I did not know whether this was right or wrong. I am assuming given her intellectual caliber that it is. I just immediately sent it out to everybody I knew in government and said here is something. In fact, I had sent it to the Congress guys and said here is a campaign thing for you.

And you know, on the face of it, it is a little bit applied, but this is stuff that the world needs to know.

India Knowledge@Wharton: You said earlier that you are very interested in leadership. How is it different leading an academic institution compared to an entrepreneurial media company?

Sinha: It is not that different. If you had said something other than media then I would have said it is different. If you had said steel or pharma, I would have said it is different. I will tell you first where the similarities are. The biggest challenge is dealing with a situation where as a non-academic you are the leader, yet you have to be a servant to the faculty. If you do not understand that you are screwed in that model.

I keep repeating this to the so-called business side of the ISB folks. I tell them, "Listen, I sympathize with you, and in fact I was the dean and I came from the other side. But please understand that without these guys you will not be."

The analogy I often give, when I speak generally on management, is that academic institutions, hospitals, media companies are very similar because the hospitals cannot do without the doctors. Yet you do not want to make the doctor the head of the institute, right? ...

Similarly, in a media company, you are there because of the journalists and the content creators and the creative talent. It is too narrow to say journalists, but in what I do today, it is the creative talent and the people who can conceptualize and design and come up with those themes. Managing that creative side is what I enjoy and which is why I am doing media. I think that is why I was able to pull off whatever I did at ISB, because you really need to be a servant to that side of the business, because without them you do not exist.

I think the start-up phase was very similar in many ways. You had to get customers. You had to come up with a product. You had to sell it at the right price point. You had to make sure that the product got sold despite 9/11. The only big difference was that in the ISB case there was a start date and there was a finish date -- like you are on this train and once the train left the station … The train left the station the day you admitted 130 students.

In this case, if the train did not get started and you said, "Okay, I will start 15 days later," or if it did not pick up speed and you said, "Okay, I will sort of, kind of pick up." You could not do that. You could not say, "We will wait for the faculty to come." Right, the students will wait, or 9/11 happened so we will delay the start of the semester.… I remember I was in the U.S. when 9/11 happened and two of our faculty said they were not going to come…. And so early in the course, two of your star faculty say, "Sorry, cannot come," and that is when the visiting model [raises questions]. Who teaches? Do I go teach now? … So that was the big difference. It felt different because of that. You cannot get off that train or slow it down. But otherwise it is very similar, the risks that you have to take, the trade-offs you have to make, the fact that you try 10 things and only eight work, or two work, and the next time you have to again try to do 10 more things to make up for the eight things that did not work, and then again two work and then again you try 10 things. That is how it felt. At every stage there were problems, deadlines, missing people, not turning out to be what they were, under-delivering.

There was a day in October of 2001 when we did not have cash to pay our bills and salaries in the ISB. So that felt … I think I got my training in entrepreneurship there.

India Knowledge@Wharton: The media business today is in such turmoil.If you look at the developed markets, traditional media including well-known publications, companies, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journals, things are in shambles, online publishing is coming up but does not seem to be generating enough revenue to be able to make up for the loss from print. How do you view the media landscape and how have you been trying to find ways of creating and delivering value?

Sinha: This is an industry that is completely getting transformed by technology in ways that people anticipate but not quite imagine. The current downturn is accelerating that transformation while everybody knew that print was going to die, I think. At least abroad it has died, and it is hard to accept. It is really, truly hard to accept that would be the reality, but it is.

This combination of what the Internet has done and technology of handheld devices and accessibility 24/7, plus now I think this whole green movement has killed print forever, I think in the West. I should not say forever; it is too strong. It will become a niche thing and it will survive in small forms for people who can afford it, but those large mega-plays of media companies driving newspapers, the McClatchys and Gannett and the Tribunes and the New York Times, I think we are going to see the end of that.

Quite frankly it is a little bit like the horse carriage. It sounds dramatic to say that, and I am sure it did when people then said it, but I feel that it is going to be tough to recover from this blow. So what? I do think that we will move to very different economies of the business in the near term, where the value will really come from content packaging, content delivering, content in a way that you and I really like to see. So you will see a lot more innovation around that, in just the packaging and the delivery of content. This is a good example of what you are trying to do.

Look at what I am trying to do in a way. I think somewhere in my mind I have already adjusted for that dependence or lack of independence on print even in India. So I actually do not operate in the mass media space. I operate in the niche media space. And the way we look at our business is not in terms of our magazine, but in terms of the communities we serve. And for each of those communities we are totally agnostic about the medium through which we are serving them.

We have a print product and I do look at that profitability and the cost of that print product, but I really measure the overall profitability of my community, not of that print product. And therefore that creates a very different economic mind-set when you are looking at the business. Because now when I think of media for that community I am thinking events online and print, and in fact to enter that community the erstwhile media owner in my space would have said, "Take magazine, that is what we need." I will say let us go online, let us build the database, let us get online and then we will see about the magazine.

So I think that trying to replace the print with new media is just not going to work out. Unfortunately there is therefore going to be a lot of pain for people who are overcommitted to the print space, and I can see that I have talked to some of my friends over there and they are really struggling with this issue.

I cannot say that I have an answer for them, but I think that we are going to see a fundamental shift where I call it customized content on demand. That is the world that we are moving to. I do not miss a newspaper today because on my Blackberry I have this Mint button, and I can click it first thing in the morning when I am sitting on the loo and quickly scan through the news, and then if I do not see the newspaper, it is Okay. I mean, I have quickly got the gist of what is happening in the world.

That is scary in a sense because it really disintermediates the whole infrastructure of printing, paper. The editorial content is still there. So I go to Mint and not to ET. The question is how will they get paid? That is an open question.

*Disclaimer - Source from KnowledgeIndia@Wharton.com

Entrepreneurs and Risks !!

“You have to be risk averse to be a good entrepreneur” told my amazing professor of entrepreneurship. Sounds counter-intuitive but the real funda is that an entrepreneur thinks through everything, tried to cover himself for every aspect, and then implement his plan like hell. Same concept was reinforced in this amazing story of Mr. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO of Naukri.com. Check his amazing story here. Waiting for hear directly from Mr. Bikhchandani in ISB’s Media Conclave….More to follow on this.

Demystifying the Dragon - ISB's Emerging Market Club !!!

Emerging Market Club at ISB kicked off today with an interesting speaker series from Professor Ram. Prof Ram has an interest in entrepreneurship in emerging markets and he engaged the whole audience with his vivid description of anecdotes of his experiences in China and statistical data about China / India.

He opened up the conversation by stating that he continues to consider himself a student of China since its nearly impossible to understand a complex country like China in couple of years that he has spent there. Before China, Prof. Ram spent 21 years in India, 20 years in Europe, and 4 year in US. He worked as faculty at IESE Business School in Spain (One of my fav schools). He quoted some of the comments that his colleagues made – pun intended – that he is not qualified enough to teach management if he hasn’t been to China. Prof. Ram added humor to the discussion further when he mentioned that most Chinese, especially older generations, sing Indian songs from the movie “Awara” but they invariably make it sound ‘Chinese’. Further he mentioned that China especially Shanghai offers you infrastructure of developed countries of luxuries of developing countries i.e. Housel hold help!! He reflected that he has noticed three categories of Indians – in large numbers – in China a) Indian Business People b) Indians working in Indian MNC c) Indians working in top positions for US / European MNC. He was intrigued by the third category given that you don’t find similar proportions in India. That is reflective of demand supply and comparative language advantage of Indian Managers to integrate with Global economy.

The discussion became analytical from here on and Prof. Ram showed us several key data elements for India and China, providing his analysis and inference of each. Some of the figures that I noted down include:




* Chinese market is several times bigger than India since income level is higher in China
* Technology Diffusion: China has 10 times fixed landlines, 1.5 times mobiles. 4 times internet users
* Almost all women in China are working, huge labor force. Literacy, Healthcare, and gender equality drove the Chinese economy & were not a result of the growth.

India’s Advantages

1.Democracy – Slow but sustainable
2.Free Press
3.Younger Population – Advantage if employment gets up
4.Economy is dependent on Private Initiative
5.Lower Dependence on Foreign trade (37% vs 62%)
6.Stronger in Pharma & IT ( IT China – 8 Billion vs. 40 Billion)

India’s Disadvantages
1.Literacy
2.Healthcare for masses – Innovate at top but not for masses
3.Gender Equality
4.Fiscal Position – P & L statement
5.Infrastructure – Airports in 2/3 tier better than Delhi. Huge investment in Railways
6.Speed of political decision making
7.Manufacturing Costs – Gap is narrowed, if India moves quickly, we can expand a lot. Labor cost of china is going up as impact of single child is coming up. Labor environmental legislation that increases Chinese cost n leadership things cost based strategy is not sustainable.

Challenges to open business
1.Language
2.Unstructured business environment – Negotiation and Indian people are equipped. American/European are not.
3.Communication in queues – Seating arrangement in Dinner, Chinese will never say no, as they don’t want you to loose face.
4.Networking – Difficult for Chinese do business with stranger. They want to know you first.

Key Trends
1.Composition of Entrepreneurship is changing – More first generation, self motivated, young people opening start-ups on their own choice rather than opportunity driver model earlier.
2.In China, imitation with brief innovation leads to be good enough product to keep international MNC’s at bay. This is primarily due to the language factor e.g. Baidu, Tudou (Chinese Youtube), Dangdand. These companies although providing similar features to MNC, hold around 80% of Chinese market share.
3.In both the countries, growth in knowledge industry that requires less capital is also leading to more first generation entrepreneurs.
4.Growth of PE/ VC Investments in happening India and China. Early stage VC invests more in China than in India because it has higher diffusion of technology (Mobiles, Telephones, and Internet).

In all it was quite an informative and learning experience. I enjoyed the Dragon ride and hope to visit the country in near future. Hearing someone sing Chinese “Awara Hoon” would be pretty cool :P !!

PACIS Conference at ISB !!!

'PACIS conference was conducted for first time at ISB during July. Interesting set of events where Panel discussions were conducted among industry leaders from IT sector. I prepared a brief scribe of a panel discussion conducted by Mr. Bipin Paracha & Mr. Narsimha N'

On the third and the final day of PACIS conference, Professor Nishtha opened up the panel discussion introducing Mr. Bipin Paracha from Wipro & Mr. Narsimha N from Infosys. Professor Nishtha laid down the background of linear growth of employee count and revenues for Indian IT firms, an unsustainable business. Hence, the topic of the discussion was – Indian IT: Moving up the value chain.

Mr. Bipin Paracha (Wipro)

Mr. Bipin provided his insights into how the role of Indian IT is changing over time. He mentioned that IT has transformed from providing the ‘Mainframe’ oriented solutions to ‘helping businesses perform’ better. Prof. Nishtha then enquired about Wipro Consultancy and the acceptance of the same among the corporate. Mr. Bipin provided an excellent framework for Wipro Consulting position:-

Value Chain Progress path: - Provider > Contributor > Facilitator > Advisor > Change Agent

Further, Mr. Bipin emphasized the Wipro Brand has played a significant role in getting acceptance for Wipro Consultancy among clients. Along with Indian clients, Wipro Consulting is getting increased traction in Australia where bigger markets in US & UK still relate Wipro with only IT. However, Mr. Bipin was optimistic about a gradual diffusion process in these markets.

Mr. Narsimha N (Infosys)

To start with, Mr. Narsimha provided an account of gradual progression of Infosys. Initially, the company started as a cost arbitrage, with quality and quantity as its distinctions. However, the organization later realized the pivotal important to add more value to businesses and hence, moved from technology focus to Business solution provider. They focused o capturing the space before the execution stage that includes the elements of problem identification, problem solutions, and solution design.

Mr. Narsimha also mentioned that due to past success stories of solution implementation, Infosys holds an advantage over companies such as Accenture, as end-to-end solution implementers. He also suggested that within next 5-7 years, different Indian IT providers will differentiate in different capabilities and will offer a wide array of services.

Later, Mr. Narsimha also provided his insights about the growing trends in Industry due to emerging use of Profit revenue sharing model, where IT companies hold a stake in the game. For instance, TCS is conducting the Indian Passport project where TCS gets Rs.200 for every passport issued. These types of projects will bring more accountability and increased role of IT companies in various businesses.

Finally, before closing of the discussion, Mr. Narsimha reflected upon the opportunities provided by global recession. As industries change fundamentally and seek opportunities for cost reduction, it’s up to IT companies to up the ante and provide avenues for businesses to do so.

ISB Essay Analysis & Tips

Just thinking for a rare moment about the world outside ISB, especially about the aspirants who are eager to transition from the world outside to the universe inside ISB, I reflected on the Essays posted by ISB this time. I have taken a shot at analysis of these essays and hopefully will help some of the potential candidates.

Here you go:

Essay 1

Give 3 reasons as to why you should be selected to the class of 2011. These reasons should ideally differentiate you from the applicant pool and should be backed with some data. (300 words max)

This essay is direct challenge to candidates to state three to-the-point and specific things why ISB should worry about your candidacy and read your application any further. The fact that ISB has specifically asks for data to back up your claims demonstrates that you need to be direct in your approach and provide examples of your claims.

Explore your finest accomplishments and fit the best three here. It is important to maintain a fine balance among the points you choose. A good balance will consist of Professional demonstrating your uniqueness, Extra-Curricular manifesting your leadership potential, and Academic / Personal stories that personify you. You also need to consider that peer learning is a crucial aspect at ISB. While words will be scare, you also need to succinctly cover the ground about how each of your accomplishment will add value to your peers at ISB. Such corroboration and direct connection to ISB’s resources will provide a much more coherent view to your stories. Also, remember to take care of the overall structure of the essay through a short and crisp opening statement and a coherent & impressive ending statement.

Being the first essay, you need to create an impact on the reader and give her an “Aha” moment that makes her interested in you at the onset.

Essay 2

Describe a challenging assignment you have handled (at work or outside) to date. What were the challenges and how did you handle them. What were the personal learnings you derived from this assignment. (300 words max)

It is recommended to pick up a professional story either if you belong to non-traditional background (chance to score points on diversity) or if you handled a really challenging situation. If you have compelling story from your extracurricular, it will click as well. Many a times, in extracurricular setting you deal with people who have no formal obligation to respond to your initiatives. Such stories speak volume about your ability to influence people. The objective of this essay is to demonstrate your ability to take ownership, handle ambiguity to bring focus on the problem at hand, and take corrective measures to achieve your objective. Try to reflect to stories where you lead / contributed out of turn to a team rather than a stand alone accomplishment. Also, remember that a key challenge in this essay will also be to avoid repletion from the already stated stories in the first essay.

As for the structure of your response, read the question carefully as the structure is already inculcated in it. Follow the START framework (S – Situation, T – Tasks, A – Actions, R- Results, T- Takeaway) to craft your response. Don’t forget to devote a good chunk of space to the personal learning because the chances are that most of the candidates will come up with solid stories, it’s your learning and self-reflection that will give Adcom a peek into your personality.

Essay 3

Briefly assess your career progression till date along with your assessment of your future career goals. Discuss how your career goals will be met by the ISB’s one year program. (300 words max)

Aha! Finally, ISB has also come with a standard goal essay in sync with most global business schools. Ideally this essay is asked in 750-1000 words by most schools and ISB once again compels you to draft story of your lifetime in 300 words. Fun, isn't it.

While the structure is implied in the response, remember to address adequately each of the following five components:

Career Progression: Detail your career progression while keeping an eye on your goals and keep your theme limited to the same.

Goals (Short Term & Long Term): Be as specific as possible. Your short term goal shall be tangible and direct. Explore school's website or your contacts within ISB to find out exact positions offered at ISB and stick to the same. Further, avoid putting a blanket statement in your long term goal. If you came up with "I want to be CEO of XYZ Company" you need to think deeper.

Why MBA: If you have done good job in the above two section, you must have created a void by now that only a MBA education can fill in. Bring out the specific things you need from MBA that will bring you closer to your goals and this piece shall further your candidacy.

Why Now: It is extremely important to bring a crisp argument about why you think now is the right time for you. Don't make the mistake to leave a gap for Adcom to think that you need another year or two before coming to ISB.

Why ISB: Goes without saying, this aspect is extremely important and will speak volumes about your passion for ISB. An ideal strategy is to connect ISB's resources - Academic programs, Clubs, and Special programs to your specific needs. Attempt to write a paragraph with each sentence containing something unique about ISB.

Again, remember to take care of the overall structure of the essay through a short and crisp opening statement and a coherent ending exclamation statement.

Wish you Gud Luck! Interesting times await....

*Note - My analysis for ISB as well as for other international schools can be found at General Education's website as well. Click here to view the same.