Mumbai Weekend!

I was in Mumbai in this weekend for interview in SP Jain Institute of Management Research. Interview went cool, everybody got fairly equal chance to speak up. Yet I didnt clear the first round of interview. Chalo. Yet to plan for fallback options. In short, questions asked to our group:

1. Tell about yourself and why MBA at this time?

2. There were specific questions on each of us - on dropuout years in career and job hops in career.

3. It slowly turned towards GD- Is social consequences need to be taken into account when Industry comes up with new products. Ex. Whether Ratan Tata should think about traffic congestion in cities if he introduces 1-lakh car to India. Whats your take on it?

4. why the specilisation in MBA? in my case, why marketing?

5. For work-ex people, why not you choose Executive MBA program? why do you want to do 2-year full time course.

Everybody got equal chance to speak and GD was well controlled. I spoke my heart, may be little crass, I believe. On hindsight, I could refine my answers for question and prepare well for always-asked questions type. Its was shocking and disappointing then. chalo. Life is full of battles where success and failure come in a wave.

 

 

[+] I lost my new Sony Ericsson K750i mobile to stupid pickpocketers in Mumbai sub-urban train. Thats the sickening part of whole weekend. Do you people know any way we could block the mobile instrument with the help of IMEI number or track the mobile's location with the same.

 

Hey buddies, here is an article which says Police traced the mobile with IMEI number and with the help of ISPs in AP, India. Link... And this article says tracking mobile with IMEI number is only on special investigation cases and upto operator's discretion. Link

 

Apart from all this, the day I lost the mobile, SE has release new model, the successor to K750i. Thats K800i with 3.2Mpizel camera and QVGS video.

Check this....

 

 

[+] Otherwise had a fantastic weekend in Mumbai with Anna, Anni and my nephew SriHari (7 yr old). We went into INS Viraat. (Bt.My cousin in Cdr in Indian Navy.) Had a party with Mel-jol group in Mumbai. Mel-jol means get-togther. There are about 15 families formed this group with plans to trip to Mumbai's previously unknown place. More later. bye for now. wish you all a great day!

 

[+] Happy End of this blog: My blog visitor status crossed 1000 mark. Its an interesting moment for me! I am always inspired by big guys in Blogworld with big numbers in web stat counter. I envy you all guys :) Gp, Visi, jayan .....

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Bird Flu Outbreak in India

Bird flu outbreak is the headline news in India now. India is 5th largest exporter of eggs and poultry products to the world and this incident will undoubtedly topple the poultry market and economy of poor farmers based on poultry fields. The world is keeping an eye on Indian developments on bird flu. Some recent big headlines on this issue are: CNN, BBC, ABC online,... I found the ABC online reporting 'India struggles to cope up with latest bird flu outbreak' as little disturbing. As the initial cases gets reported, the pandemonium caused by it is inevitable and I am sure that India will solve this issue soon.

Avian influenza is caused by Influenza A virus, reported first in Italy in early 20th century. It is present in different mutated strains all over the world. The virus strain reported in maharastra is H5N1 strain variant of avian flu virus. Indian health department is all out in field to cull 7 lakh odd poultry in and around the affected region. In shimoga district in karnatka, there was a sudden death of 15000 chicken reported, which later proved to be caused by common Infectious Bural Disease (IBD), rather than deadly avian flu.

Venkateshwara hatcheries, National Egg Co-ordination committee had staged a fight back with full page advertisments in newspaper claiming that avian flu outbreak in India is not true and it is drama set by multinational drug companies to sell their influenza vaccine. "DO not panic, do not inject yourselves with influenza or any other vaccine as you will show positive and then blame the chicken. You do not need any vaccine and there is no avian influenza in the country, and I appeal to the Government not to bring in any AI vaccine into the country. I will fight tooth and nail if they bring the vaccine."  This is the statement issued by Ms Anuradha Desai, Chairperson of the Rs 1,300-crore Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

[+] Bird flu's woe continues: As reported by NECC, the loss for last week alone is Rs.500 crores and if the trend continues for a 2-3 weeks, the accumulated losses will be around Rs.3000 crores. The report talks the about the effect in other industry too ( which is new news to me). The feeds for chicken (70% of Rs.35000 crore empire) is from maize and soya farms. So the affect in economy will not be restricted alone to Poultry farmers, it will reflect in multi-facets. Will continue to keep watch on the effect.

[+] Avian Flu outbreak, possible pandemic and how companies should plan for it, Risk management committee are the top dicussion topic among the Knowledge at Wharton University discussion club. Here is a report of the discussion.

[+] Hilarious forward email about bird flu outbreak

[+] Here is tag for discussion on this: Wish to hear all of your vociferous argments on an imaginative case study: 
how will you go about the issue if you are an owner of a poultry farm in India with waiting export order for Rs.10 crores for chickens.

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Poster Boy of IBM

Here is a soft copy of an old paper advertisement of IBM India. The poster boy in the advt is Jahir Hussain. We are from same alma mater Coimbatore Institute of Technology, India. He joined IBM after college, switched to R&D team of IBM , that is Deep computing labs. His research had culminated in filing for 2 patents on brain dynamics field. This advertisment is all about IBM boasting about Jahir's ability. I was enthralled on seeing this advt in all leading newspapers, it was a proud moment for all CIT-ians. I know its bit late to publish, but just now got hold of the advertisment's soft copy.
I always wish this advertisment to be part of blog. We are all proud of Jahir. Best wishes boy!

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My Nieces- Harini & Sakthi

Here are two cute little angels who makes my life more interesting. Harini is 1.5 yrs old and Sakthi is 2.5 years old.

 

 

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Good Time Bell!

Many of us would have seen this. This is part of great pizza hut tradition! Pizza hut is undoubtedly the best among the other pizzaraunts in wooing customers.

For those who dont know what all this about: Pizza hut is one of pizzaraunts chains present all over the world. Pizza hut is famous for its customer friendly features. This good time bell is also one among the customer feedback tools exist there. It will be there right on the entrance. When you leave, if you feel you had great time inside the restaurant, ring this bell. It will be duly complemented by the "thankyou" howls from pizza hut employees.

In marketing world, the managers often look for ways to bring in team spirit. In "Gung Ho" paradigm, Geese are shown an example of way to encourage team mates. Whenever a skein of geese cross some milestone, the lead goose will howl and all its team mates promptly follows it with huge howls. That their way to say: "Everything goes very well, keep up ypur good work folks". Next time, when you come across a skein of geese, listen to its howls and enjoy its team spirit. 

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Who Am I?

I am filling up the Interview questionnaire of SP Jain. It has some wonderful qualitative questions which taken me to introspection mode. Here are Q&A. My Interview is on February 26th in Mumbai. Will update you all folks on that. Thanks a lot for your valuable comments.

 

1. Explain a situation when you were a part of a team where the group process and/or intended outcome failed. What was your role, how did you contribute to the process or outcome, and what did you learn?

During third year in college, we were organizing the technical conference of Electronics Communication Engineering department. I was leading the organizing team as Chairman. We put forth three months of hard work in planning, sponsorship collection and organizing the function. We were progressing with system in place and with the guidance of our professors. On the eve of function, a political chaos brewed up in the state due to arrest of a political leader and there was mass violence following it. That chaos almost brought our conference to a halt. We had to run through the whole show without expected outcome and with minimum people. That situation was unexpected and unplanned, which shattered the morale of entire organizing team. On hindsight, after analyzing the failure, we found out the importance of adversity planning. Adversity planning should be part of system where we analyze the fallback option in each and every stage, incase of untoward events. That was added to the system exist in our college for organizing functions.

 

2. Explain a situation where you have brought about any improvement either in your self, work or society.

Volunteered as placement coordinator and worked with team of 24 members in my college’s placement cell during my final year in college. We worked with guidance of a professor as Placement Officer and a student leader as Placement Secretary. Started with brochure preparation and organizing workshops for students during the vacation preceding the placement season. We went to different cities inIndia to invite companies to visit our campus during placement season. I worked with 3 other members to invite IT and Engineering companies in and around Bangalore. That experience lay stepping stone in professionalizing my marketing skills. It helped us in evaluating corporate needs which we could leverage to mould our students during the companies visit in campus later. Worked with my team members to help our students to land in their dream job and to overcome their weakness in job search. We conducted mock interviews to help candidate to understand his weakness and leverage his strengths. The entire process culminated with record-high of 90% placements in different engineering stream in our college during 2001.

 

3. Describe an instance in which you took the strongest stand of your value system. What specific values were violated and what was at stake for you?

My value “never insult or denounce others and don’t ever bias a group for self interest” was tested strongly while I worked as Chairman- Students’ union and Chairman- Harmony organizing committee (Harmoc), in college for 2000-01. Organizing Harmony, the inter-college cultural function, was the biggest challenge before us. The monetary requirement for the function met by collecting sponsorships, for which all college students volunteer. As way of encouragement, Harmoc gave away the rights over entertainment stalls during function to group of students, who collected majority of sponsorships. Though started as a way of encouragement, the bidding process came with ill of causing enmity between students and group formation. During my period, we consciously discouraged student group’s dominance over the bidding and function. But in the day before function, the issue came up in a big way from my juniors. They unofficially formed groups and went for sponsorships, came to Harmoc over bidding rights. We were in dilemma of whether to encourage bidding process, bias a group or to lose all these students while organizing. After marathon discussion on night before Harmony eve, we arrived at common opinion: scrapped bidding and encouraged both groups to work in unison for function’s mission. The issue came out of blue and my value system guided me in arriving at the collective decision.

 

4. Give a detailed description of the roles, responsibilities and achievements at your current /last place of employment.(in not more than 300 words)

During tenure in my previous company, I worked in multiple roles viz., team member, senior engineer and team leader, as I progress in my career. As team leader and senior engineer, my responsibility is to analyze the project requirements, project planning, estimation of man-hours and resource requirements and the efficient performance metrics that can be achieved in given constraints. Project planning includes division of the project into tasks and assigning the team and resources for each task with challenging goals. In engineering perspective, my responsibilities are to implement the multimedia codec (speech, audio, imaging and video) in a given embedded system, that includes porting and optimization with different tools. Completed the project CDMA speech codec on given Digital Signal Processor in the capacity of Team Leader and with an efficient engineering team of 6 members in planned and systematic way. In business perspective, that delivery paved the way for continuous business with same client and established my organization’s efficiency and quality deep in customer’s mind. That success is what I value as my best achievement during my earlier tenure. This achievement had a lot of hurdles during the eleventh hour to cross. Those tough situations taught us the power of team more than individual contributors and that built the team morale. This achievement had transformed me from independent paradigm to interdependent paradigm.

 

 

Adversity faced in life.	Not faced adversities in my formative years, with due respect to my parents planning and sacrifices.
Distinct contributions to the society by you or your family members.	We are running a school in my native village, Akkur, for rural children. Family members are active members of Rotary club and contribute to society in different dimensions (medical, health, education & infrastructure)
My formative years…	Grown up with independent and entrepreneurship spirit. Got quality education and competitive environment to grow. Went for several opportunities in engineering college viz., student’s union and placement cell to nurture management and organizing talents. Learnt the importance of systems in big institution during ISRO tenure. Progressing in my career in high technology embedded systems domain as planned.

Feel free to post your comments.

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Cupid Strikes Back!

Valentine's day is around the corner. Happy Valentine's day wishes to all fellow bloggies! Historical background and actual meaning of the world as taken from answers.com:

 

val·en·tine (val'?n-tin') -
n.

1. 1. A sentimental or humorous greeting card sent to a sweetheart, friend, or family member, for example, on Saint Valentine's Day.
   2. A gift sent as a token of love to one's sweetheart on Saint Valentine's Day.
2. A person singled out especially as one's sweetheart on Saint Valentine's Day.

[After Saint VALENTINE.]

WORD HISTORY   Lovers and the greeting card industry may have Geoffrey Chaucer to thank for the holiday that warms the coldest month. Although reference books abound with mentions of Roman festivals from which Valentine's Day may derive, Jack B. Oruch has shown that no evidence supports these connections and that Chaucer was probably the first to link the saint's day with the custom of choosing sweethearts. No such link has been found before the writings of Chaucer and several literary contemporaries who also mention it, but after them the association becomes widespread. It seems likely that Chaucer, the most imaginative of the group, invented it. The fullest and perhaps earliest description of the Valentine's Day tradition occurs in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, composed around 1380, which takes place “on Seynt Valentynes day,/Whan every foul cometh there to chese [choose] his make [mate].”

[-] Wish no moral policing tortures to lovers on valentine's day this year. God damn those idiots in India! ( Three instance so far reported in web about moral policing from TOI, WebIndia and CNN IBN

[+] Swingers Dance school in Bangalore has special plans for ballroom dance on that day. Thought about it, not at all interested to attend a valentine's party as stag. ;) Chalo. May be later...

 

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Cats are better than Dogs!

Hey folks, found it to be too asbstrat to start discussion on. This is my GC topic in IMS CAT achiever forum held in Bangalore. Abstract topics are given to stimulate the creative aspect of management. Feel free to add your view in comments section.

 

Here are my views

• In animal world, cat is unique evolution which knows to be independent. Dogs are evolved as highly dependant organisms. Though dogs found to be better pet animals, cat's independant nature is always lauded by humans. Cats adapted themselved better to survival, if you throw cat from tall heights, it learns to land smoothly to see the world back again.
• Cats were icons of god in real life in past. Egyptian mummies were found to be preserved with Cat shaped coffins. Dogs dont have pretty great history behind them ;) Wink
• Leave alone the animal enviroment, cats are symbolised as CEO's of an organisation and dogs denotes the faithful workers in the crew. ofcourse intelligent and smart ceo is better than faithful worker in a co.
• CAT is entrance exam for IIMs and dogs can be compared with any other exam where you cram for long time. CAT brings out smart people from the big chunk of dumb humans
• Cat like sport persons are better than dog like sportsmen.
• Cat is associated with elegance like cat walk. Wont you dare to call miss world's walk a dog walk ;))

Funny topic, pretty abstract, yet i found it too interesting to have a chit chat. Feel free to post your creative views

 

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Smart World!

Last week, I received interview call from SP Jain Institute of Management Research for PGDBM (marketing specialisation). Hurray!  Will update you all folks about my admission status after my interview in Mumbai on 26th Februaury.

 

Participated in Achiever's workshop in IMS India this weekend. I worked with IMS for my CAT training and this is special workshop for people who got calls from IIMs and premier managmenet school in India. Saturday was on group discussion and sunday workshop was on personal interview.

 

Got chance to meet few smart CAT brains in country. I participated in a group discussion too, the topic for my group " Cats are better than dogs". ( Refer next blog for discussion on this abstract topic). Abstract topics are given in IIM calcutta a lot and it is meant to bring out creative aspect in management. My time with IMS is always proven to be inspiring and motivating and this workshop didnt fail in its mission.

 

The personal interview session was a cakewalk, helluva lot of times, I had attended interviews because of my work experience and i always found HR round or manager's  interview on qualitative aspect of a guy to be very easy and interesting to crack. Not at all a pressure interview. Though IIM's interview are supposed to be toughest nut to crack in this world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Salsa, Hip-Hop Weekend!

This is my best weekend in Bangalore, filled with fun, frolic, hip-hop and salsa! I started going for dance training from this weekend . The dance school (swingers, chennai) teaches hip-hop and salsa style dancing in weekends. Both are for non-professionals. I love dancing but never learnt it earlier.

HipHop is toughest of the two. Salsa is pretty romantic dance style. Salsa is typical party dance, which we dance with our partners. I enjoyed both. Salsa's music are pretty romantic which i never heard anywhere in public.

Me missing any hard physical activity for long time after entering software career. This training gave me perfect outlet to dance till i get tired down. And this weekend, I could catch up with lot of my frens out here in Bangalore.

[+] I met Jahir Hussain, my college mate. He is now with IBM research lab on deep computing out here in Bangalore. He was poster-boy for IBM a year back, done a helluva lot of research and got 2-3 patents in his kitty. Btw he is coming for Salsa training during my batch

[+] I met my college gang frens.My gang in college is christened as luvbulls. After long time, I am meeting my dear buddies. Not to forget, all are now become bigwigs in their own field. 

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WalMart's India Coming!

Hurray! Wal-Mart is gonna open store out here in India. Recently Indian goverment opened up FDI in Retail with 51% max limit incase of single-branded store. Sam's club, the wholesale chain from Walmart is the one mulled over the discussion here as the possible brand. I am an ardent fan of Sam Walton. Probably I list his "Made in America" book as the best inspirational book written on Entrepreneurship. Sam walton's brain child is the sam's club. Walmart outsourcing office is centred in Bangalore and Here is where Walmart is expected to open its first store. There could be no better place than Bangalore for this. Bangalore is capitol of new found IT economy in India. Bangaloreans spend a lot in shopping. Hurray! Meee Excited to shop in WalMart and will wait to see it happen soon! 

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Eleven with bike

I started with car driving training after coming to Bangalore. One innocent lady, who came for two wheeler driving license test, asked the training wala , "will RTO ask me to draw eight or eleven (11) with my bike ??!! ". ha, ha, ha ...
It all started with movie 'Indian' by Shankar & Kamal. In the movie koundamani (kollywood's legendary comedian) plays the role of fren of RTO (road transport officer). FYI, RTO office in India is written proof of bribery in government instituation. They demand money for all works to be carried out by them. Mani asks money with the person who came for driving license test, which the other guy wont accept. Mani irritatingly shout at him "First go draw 11 with your bike, Then I will give you driving license". He adds the way to put eleven with bike "Nera pooo (go straight), jump and turn 180 degree and come straight back again, thats eleven for you".

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