Seminar: Vodafone COO on telecom sector at IME department, IIT Kanpur

It was a clear sunny afternoon of February and the students of IME department, IIT Kanpur were eager and enthusiastic to meet Mr. Ravi Santhanam who is current COO of Vodafone, UP East circle. An IIM-C graduate, he has previously held several key positions at Reliance Communications.

Mr. Santhanam talked about the present scenario of telecommunication industry. While presenting a macro level environment analysis of industry he talked about key micro level issues the industry is facing. He said, although telecommunication sector has seen phenomenal growth in recent decade and seems to be very lucrative, its growth is dependent of various infrastructural and regulatory issues. The sector is unique in terms of licensing, lobbying, high capital intensive, continuous investment due to technology change, rent-seeking behavior and fight for finite communicable spectrum. The fight for customers and “online-ization” of services like banking, ticketing etc keep the industry on its toe for continuous research and innovation to provide the best service to the customers. The provision like Mobile Number Portability has only increased the need of providing better-than-others services to the customers.

Coming to competition, Mr. Santhanam emphasized on the intensive competition that is being faced by the Indian telecom industry. He expressed concern over the unhealthy competition due to the presence of many telecom players. He said that the number of operators should not exceed 4 to 5 which is the case with other countries which are very successful in telecom as compared to India.

Telecom services deal with a lot of uncertainties. Policies have to be in sync with technology. Any change is technology would trigger radical changes in policies. The sector involves huge amount of dynamism - uncertainties in bandwidth, uncertainties in costs incurred in the services which delight the customers etc.

Mr.Santhanam then moved on to the basic mantra for success in telecom service offerings i.e. minute based methodology and value added services. It is easier for a common man to evaluate his expenses on number of minutes he used the service than the number of bits he used for GPRS based services and online applications such as Facebook. Migration for telecom from minute based to data based is challenging and unimaginable at this point in time. He said that since there is huge level of post purchase customer engagement in this sector, there is still a lot of scope in value added services which the telecom sector can think of implementing.

Towards the end, queries from faculty and students of the department churned out some interesting perspectives in the seminar. Mr. Santhanam concluded the seminar by citing the importance of maintaining uniform experience at all touch points in telecom industry.

Later, a vote of thanks was given by Prof Uday S. Racherla, IME department.


Contributed by:

Monica Agrawal
PR and Media Cell
MBA, 2013

The Admission Season...

Of late it has been in fashion to exaggerate about the chilling cold of IIT Kanpur and believe me they are not wrong. We witnessed a few completely foggy winter days. The dancing fog in and around the hostel lobbies reminded us of Harry Potter’s foggy school... but all this could not restrict us from enjoying the weather...sometimes played football even in 20-30 metre visibility.

But,here, we don’t want to talk about the winter season. we want to talk about another season: The Admission season.
The admission season is back again... candidates are curious as to which college they would end up getting a seat in. The years of preparation is at stake... emotions are pigmented in colours of nervousness, eagerness and uncertainty... queries are galore just to sense whiff of success from one’s dream college... all suffice to make us nostalgic about our very own “season” last year...
IIT Kanpur has also tightened its belt to welcome the new members in its fold. IITs, as is known to all by now, are accepting CAT score for admission into their MBA program. IIT Kanpur has set its own criteria for admission. The distinguishing point is that a cap in terms of 10th, 12th and graduation marks has been introduced. Girl candidates have been encouraged for admission by waving off their application fee (we do appreciate this step! ;))

We here at IIT Kanpur have been trying to answer the queries of candidates at various fora namely Pagalguy.com, Facebook etc. We do encourage the candidates to ask any query regarding admission. We try our best to answer them to the best of our knowledge, as quickly as possible.
Despite many changes have been alluded by our faculty members at different fora regarding the kind of candidates (in terms of experience and past academic record) they are looking for, it’s still to be seen which “breed” of candidates carries the prestigious legacy.
I, on behalf of MBA- 2013 and PR & Media team, wish all the luck to the candidates and hope that they get what they deserve.
Hoping to see u here!


Contributed by:

Hitendra Kumar
PR and Media Cell
MBA, 2013

Workshop On Stock Market Analysis

Business Club organized a workshop on Stock Market Analysis on 7th and 8th January. The workshop was conducted by professionals from Stock Market Institute, Bangalore. The idea behind the workshop was to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical scenarios of stock market and other financial aspects. The workshop covered the basics of stock analysis and the fundamental and technical analysis of stocks.

Before discussing the technicalities of the subject, the speaker mentioned that stock markets are all about handling emotions. Further he talked about the role of various participants involved in the process ranging from SEBI, Brokers and Clearing houses. The cycle of stock market was then explained which comprises various stages such as Euphoria, Skepticism, Pessimism etc. Beginning the discussion on fundamental analysis, the speaker highlighted the top down and bottom up approaches. The overall objective in fundamental analysis is to evaluate the strength of the company by means of financial statements, financial metrics and business trends. The relevance of valuation ratios such as P/E ratio and Earnings per share was emphasized upon.

On technical analysis front, the audience was introduced to the concepts of Japanese candlestick formation. Apart from several other concepts, most importantly, the audience was given a number of valuable trading and investing tips from the experts. The students had an opportunity to experience real time trading which enabled them to apply the learnt concepts. The two day session concluded with a panel discussion and freewheeling queries from the audience.


Report prepared by:

Alok Jain
MBA Batch of 2013
PR & Media Cell

December issue of Avant Garde is out!!!

The December issue of Avant Garde is out. Follow the issue at:

http://www.iitk.ac.in/ime/MBA_IITK/avantgarde/?p=539

Do leave your valuable feedback.

PR and Media cell wishes you all a happy reading


Contributed by:
Hitendra Kumar
MBA-2013