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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

On campus interaction with alumnus, Mr. Manzil Kohli

Hi All, Meeting an alumnus is always a fruitful experience, more so when the alumnus possesses a personality as dynamic as Mr. Manzil Kohli. One of the most active alumni of our MBA programme, Mr. Kohli is 2006 batch pass out. From being a core member of Antaragni, Techkriti and other student bodies to arranging many pan-IIT meets in US, Mr. Kohli always seems to be in thick of things. He joined IBM after completing his MBA and is currently in Indianapolis, USA working with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He is influential and has very good rapport with a wide IIT Alumni base. There was an air of excitement in the current senior and junior batch of MBA, who had gathered in the amphitheatre of new IME building. Smartly dressed, Mr. Kohli didn’t make us wait for long. The session began with each one of us introducing ourselves to him. Though he planned to interact with us through a presentation, the stitches in his mouth prevented him from doing so. Yet, he spoke about his life in and out

Seminar: Innovative ways in Project execution (IOCL)

A seminar on “Innovative ways in Project execution- IOCL” was organized by the IME department. The speaker was Mr. Vineet Singhal, who is the Chief Project Manager at IOCL. Mr. Singhal has worked in diverse roles in the industry ranging from handling of EPCM consultants,plant maintenance management to estate management. The talk kicked off with an overview of the company i.e. how IOCL came into existence, location of its various refineries and its Supply Chain Management process. Then Mr. Singhal mentioned the various drivers for diversification into Petrochemicals ranging from renewable energy to Nuclear Power. The discussion highlighted the project attributes, constraints and project management framework in general and its implementation in various projects of IOCL in particular. Mr. Singhal gave an insight of the project management system in refineries division. He mentioned that fixed price contracts transfer the risk to the seller. The students were enlightened about an extensiv

Prabandhan 2011: The annual management conclave

Prabandhan 2011, the annual management conclave of IME, IIT Kanpur was organized on 29th and 30th October 2011. This year’s ‘Prabandhan’ was based on the theme: Innovation. The conclave encompassed a wide range of events and activities such as guest lectures, online contests and a workshop based on Innovation. The event flagged off with the opening address by Prof. N.K Sharma, who talked about various facets of Innovation based on his experience, and wished Prabandhan 2011 a great success. Mr. Vishal Sharma, Director, Deloitte Consulting started the guest lecture series by delivering a talk on“Innovations in IT to achieve business results”. He enlightened the audience about the way in whicha CIO’s role has evolved in the organizations over the years. He further discussed the various drivers of Innovation in Information technology. The lecture series next had a session with Prof. Jayanta Chatterjee and Prof. Satyaki Roy. This session invited application oriented participation fro

The News: In Retrospection.

It’s a bit late this time around ...but I have a number of good news to share ... all are etched in everyone’s memory and can be recited without any hiatus... such was the charisma of events and so was our euphoria... The IME party...the scintillating IME party ... conspicuous presence of all IME students, professors and their spouses mixed with flamboyant performance by students made it one of the memorable events in our premature IIT Kanpur life... It helped the students and the professors come closer. The excellent mimicry, poem citing and dialogue delivery by students left everyone mesmerized and took every professor back to their own student life (well, I guess so ;))... The party ended with few other-than-academic words by the professors. The party was followed by small (sic!) Dussehra break which was first opportunity before us to head for home leaving all books and assignments locked in our hostel. We came back and as if people knew that the break was not enough to re-en

A seminar on “Cultural intelligence and communication for global effectiveness” at IME, IIT Kanpur

A seminar on “Cultural Intelligence and Communication for Global Effectiveness” was organized by the IME department, IIT Kanpur. The speaker was Ms. Shoma Mukherjee, who is a well-known consultant for MNCs and practices in the field of Business Communications, HR and Finance. She introduced the topic by mentioning that people from different cultures differ in a variety of ways. This means that there are several challenges in cross cultural communication in terms of communication style, attitudes towards conflicts, and approaches to completing tasks etc. And thus, in this globalized world, it becomes highly imperative to have an insight of these issues and make a conscious effort to overcome them She went on to explain the Iceberg model of culture, which identifies a visible area consisting of behavior or clothing or symbols and a level of values that is invisible. Also she discussed Hofstede dimensions to distinguish between cultures which comprise of Power distance, Individualism, M

A guest lecture on "Role of absorptive capacity in new high-tech product development" at IME, IIT Kanpur

A guest lecture was organized by IME department on 8th September on “Role of Absorptive Capacity in New High-tech Product Development”. The speaker was Mr Shashi Shekhar Mishra, who is a doctoral candidate in marketing area at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, and his doctoral research is in new high-tech product development process. The seminar began with an introduction to technological innovations and their transformation into successful new products, which is indispensable for high-tech firms. Mr. Mishra said that the researchers and practioners have well recognized the importance of firm-level technology acquisition intent (TAI) for successful realization of new products across various high-tech industries. Extant literature suggests the role of firm’s dynamic capabilities on new high-tech product development (NPD) process. Higher firm-level absorptive capacity is prescribed to stimulate firm’s external knowledge acquisition and overall performance. However, he also sai

A seminar on "Market Basket Rules as Input to Improve Inventory Performance" at IME, IIT Kanpur

IME department organized a seminar on “Market Basket Rules as Input to Improve Inventory Performance” and invited Dr. Pradip Kumar Bala to deliver his valuable lecture on it. Dr. Bala is associate professor at IIT Roorkee in Department of Management studies. Dr. Bala introduced the association rules, also known as market basket rules, in the context of retail items. Market basket rules have been widely used in marketing, shelf allocation in retail stores, web designing in commerce etc; however, according to him, the works on applications of these rules in the area of operations management have been limited so far. He mentioned that recently a few works with applications of market basket rules in inventory management have been applied. According to him, the knowledge of correlated items in the form of association rules can be of tremendous importance in designing inventory replenishment policies and hence, it must be accounted for. The research incorporated in his current work makes

Latest edition of monthly IIT Kanpur e-Newsletter: Avant Garde is out!!!

Well, the wait is over... The “team” is out there with a fantastic September edition of IIT Kanpur e-Newsletter: Avant Garde The world has been witnessing change of late in the form of Jasmine revolution, Wiki-leaks, Japan’s crisis and several other events of big and small scales... India also saw, and continues to see, a “change” in mindset against corruption... and so “the change” has not been elusive to Avant Garde as well. Avant Garde, with few new enthusiastic and energetic editors and equally ecstatic contributors, looks at its new level in this edition. The articles on Hero-Honda split, technological revolution of tablet-pc, and change in attitude of people toward corruption by MBA 1st year students; insight into Strategic Process Improvements in Internal Operations‘ (Apollo Health Street) by Nabarun Sengupta (MBA 2nd year) truly exemplify the theme of this edition: “Change: the eternal constant”. I, personally as well as on behalf of PR and media cell, congratulate the

Alumni Interaction @IITK - Visit by Shamim Akhtar (MBA 2007)

It was a dull, humid Sunday evening and despite the dullness in air, there was a buzz of excitement among the students of MBA2013 and 2012, who had gathered in front of canteen of Hall 8. We were all very eager to meet Mr. Shamim Akhtar, an alumnus of MBA, batch of 2007, from IIT Kanpur. He has worked in SBI Caps for 3 years after his MBA and is currently working in Arab National Bank in Saudi Arabia. After a wait of around 15 minutes, Mr. Shamim – a very young looking, smartly dressed person - reached the canteen. He was quickly introduced to us by a student from our senior batch after which we all settled in a circle in the open air and the much awaited informal session with him began. After a self intro, he was bombarded with questions from everybody who had gathered. He patiently explained to us the career path he chose and how he had crafted it through the MBA course and means of various certifications. He discussed with us the importance of various certifications highlighting m

Rocking Freshers Nite '11

After a month long storm of unending cases, presentations and surprise quizzes, MBA freshers got their first opportunity to party at IIT Kanpur. The much awaited fresher’s party was thrown by seniors on 20th August at the old Students Activity Centre of IIT-K. The welcome party was marked by mile wide grins and high spirits with Rubal and Arpita being the comperes of the night. Each of the juniors had to take the stage one by one but the catch was to ‘Strictly come Dancing’. Everyone got to see the widest range of dance forms at a single place ranging from salsa, bhangra to someone barely shaking a leg. The seniors pitched in to break the ice and convince even the most resolute. Then, everyone had to introduce themselves, where juniors were asked about their relationship status, interests etc. People came up with amusing responses for status ranging from “Complicated” to “Confused”. Each of the junior was given interesting tasks to perform and showcase his/her talent as a means

Seminar: Some aspects of liquidity of stocks in the Indian stock market

Speaker :Dr.Devlina Chatterjee Indian Institute of Science Bangalore Background of the Speaker : Devlina Chatterjee got her BTech in Agricultural Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1989. She subsequently got a PGDM (Agribusiness) from IIM Ahmedabad, MS degrees from Penn State University (Agricultural Engineering and Agricultural Economics), and her PhD in Management Studies from IISc Bangalore in 2010. She also worked in industry for a total of eight years at organizations like IFCI, New Delhi; GE Capital, Bangalore; and Antrix Corporation, Department of Space, Bangalore. Her work experience in these organizations has included evaluation of project proposals, statistical analyses of credit card business data, and contractual negotiations in the space image marketing business. The seminar : Dr. Chatterjee began by stating the focus of her study, the liquidity of individual stocks traded in electronic market. She went on to quote Black and Kyle to elaborate on liquidity. According to Blac

Finatics Lecture Series – Sustainability Strategy and Triple Bottom Line Reporting

Speaker Details : Mr. Anindya Sengupta, Manager-Sustainability & Climate Change, PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Sengupta has been Assistant Manager in IOCL and is currently working on Greenhouse Gases credit programs, GRI-G3 Sustainability reporting. After immensely informative sessions by Mr. Alok Sheel, Ms. Shivani Datta, and Mr. Manu Maudgal, Finatics Lecture Series came to the last lecture of the day, and one on an important emergent phenomenon of Sustainability Strategy, which is being taken up very seriously by the corporations and brands globally. The lecture was organized into three sections: Sustainability and Triple Bottom Line basics, Sustainability Reporting and Global Reporting Initiative, and discussion of some of the related recent issues. Mr. Sengupta began with the introduction of Sustainability Strategy and explained the importance of the same in the current industry scenario. He explained how various brands are taking up this issue and utilizing it to their

Finatics Lecture Series - Carbon Markets and Clean Development Mechanism

Speaker Details: Ms. Shivani Datta, Manager, Climate Change & Sustainability Services from Ernst & Young Pvt. Ltd. Ms. Shivani Datta presided over the talk about CARBON MARKETS and CDM among an eager and enthusiastic student crowd. She started off her talk by reiterating the present Global concern about over-consumption of resources, contribution by industry on climate change, how the roadmap was laid particularly in the last two decades to tackle Climate Change internationally through various summits organized by UN starting off with the RIO Earth Summit and birth of UNFCCC in 1992 and how the KYOTO Protocol got its acceptance worldwide in 1997 till the end of its first commitment period in 2012. The green house gases and its global warming potential over the last century was also enumerated thereby giving a brief summary of the articles to be followed and the roles of both the developed and developing countries according to Kyoto Protocol. This is where the speaker started

Finatics Lecture Series - Harnessing Markets for Climate Change Mitigation

Speaker : Manu Maudgal, Indo German Energy Programme, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, NewDelhi Climate change is a burning topic, which deserves the attention of both activists and Governments together. Governments nowadays understand the challenges of climate change and they are ready to include it in their growth plans. The speaker, who holds a key position in German Society for International Cooperation (GIC), has experience in multiple roles and gave the audience an introduction to the current scenario of the crisis in the world, energy crisis, water shortage and global warming; all three occurring at the same time. He explained the need for becoming a ‘low carbon economy’ and how it can be achieved by in three steps; neutralizing things which can be neutralized, reducing those which can be reduced and finally replacing them with which we can’t do the above two. He also raised the concern, “Is producing more and consuming more” a real growth or is it just an increase in national GDP.

Finatics Lecture Series - The Global Financial Crisis, Sustainable Growth and rise of G20

Speaker Details : Mr. Alok Sheel, Joint Secretary, Dept of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Govt of India. Mr. Sheel has been handling Govt of India's relations with the G20, the World Bank and other multilateral financial institutions. Mr. Sheel discussed the various aspects of global financial crisis, its causes, structural changes through the world economy and the rise of G20. Besides this, some key takeaways or lessons learn in terms of policies implemented during crisis and its significance for India, the ways in which this recession has affected the globe and how can G20 help world back on its pre-crisis growth curve were discussed. The major incidents which preceded this crisis were low cost of capital, increasing risk tolerance, low interest rate which discourage savings and encouraged leverage and finally, lax financial regulation from US government. But, the major event which triggered of this domino effect was US subprime housing crisis. Although, subprime housing

Finatics - MBA Annual Financial Conclave

MBA, IME Department, IIT Kanpur presents APRIL 9 , 2011 http://www.iitk.ac.in/ime/MBA_IITK/finatics/ Marketed By: Dare2compete.com Prizes worth 45000 to be won !! ON-CAMPUS LECTURE SERIES  CDM Project Consulting, Sustainability, and Project Viability By Ms. Shivani Datta – Manager, Climate Change & Sustainability Services, Ernst&Young  Policy Analysis & Development for CDM, Sustainability Initiatives in Industry, and the role of regulators in carbon markets By Mr. Manu Maudgal – Technical Expert, Indo German Energy Program, GIZ GmbH  Environmental Finance and Green Accounting By Mr. Anindya Sengupta – Manager, Climate Change & Sustainability Services, PriceWaterhouseCoopers  Global perspective of macro-economic policy initiatives, challenges related to sustainability and Indian policy in G20 Mr. Alok Sheel – Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, GoI ONLINE EVENTS Weather Trading: Weather derivatives are the first financial tool available to risk manager

Seminar: Financial Risk Management: A Brief Overview

Date: 14th January, 2011 Speaker: Dr. Puneet Prakash About the speaker: Dr. Puneet Prakash is an Assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University since 2005. He holds a Ph.D in Risk Management and Insurance from Georgia State University, an MBA from IIFT, Delhi, PG Diploma in Development Policy (IGIDR), and M.Sc. (5-year Integrated) from IIT, Kanpur. He is also a visiting faculty to IIT Kanpur, Fall 2009. Abstract of the talk: The seminar started with a brief discussion on market and the categorization of market participants into risk averse, risk neutral and risk seeking behaviors. Dr. Prakash then proceeded to discuss the Modigliani – Miller theorem that Corporations are risk neutral and that if investors want to manage risk they could do it as an individual rather than through the company. The underlying assumption is that a company and a individual have the same capability to manage risk. As this assumption is not a universal truth, not all corporations are risk neutral. Any

Seminar: Dynamic Credit Rating Standards- Why do they vary over time?

Date : 7th January, 2011 Speaker : Dr. Puneet Prakash Biography of the speaker: Dr. Puneet Prakash is an Assistant professor, 2005 – current, at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has done his Ph.D in Risk Management and Insurance from Georgia State University. He completed MBA from IIFT, Delhi, PG Diploma in Development Policy (IGIDR), and M.Sc. (5-year Integrated) from IIT, Kanpur. He is also a visiting faculty to IIT Kanpur, Fall 2009. Abstract of the talk: In the paper mentioned, it is examined as to why credit rating standards change over time. Drawing upon the literature on certification intermediaries, it is argued that rating standards are related to the economy-wide credit quality distribution, and as the distribution changes, so do the standards. Empirical tests verify this predicted relationship. In particular, with a rise in economy–wide dispersion of the distribution of credit quality, rating standards become more stringent. However, an increase in mean probability of ec

Seminar: Integrating Global Marketing and R&D Management at Novartis

On 29th Dec. 2010, Dr. Subhanu Saxena, the Global Head of Marketing and Sales, General Medicine of Novartis visited the department and provided insights into pharmaceutical industry. During his long career at Novartis, he has handled many challenging roles, dealt with diverse business conditions and travelled to various parts of the globe. His commitment to the field of healthcare is supplemented by his passion towards ancient Indian literature and philosophy. The seminar was aimed at sharing the speaker's insights in the healthcare industry and share with the audience the various challenges, innovations, technological initiatives and management practices prevalent at Novartis. Dr. Saxena began by sharing with the audience some information on the healthcare industry in general, and Novartis in particular. The high financial margins of Novartis are indicative of the robustness of business along with diversification of interests to strengthen revenue flows of the company. The amount