IIT Kanpur MBA Blog

The 27th of September marked the beginning of the much awaited 8th edition of the Annual management conclave of IIT Kanpur, Prabandhan. The MBA students of IIT Kanpur, hosts to this event, gave a warm opening speech, introducing esteemed faculty Dr. Rahul Varman, Dr. Devlina Chatterjee and keynote speaker of the day Abhinav Johri. The conclave began with the auspicious lighting of the lamp followed by insightful speeches by Dr. Varman and Dr. Chatterjee. The event hosted Mr. Abhinav Johri, currently director and practice head at EY India as he spoke about Versatility and it's paradox in changing times. Mr. Johri began by telling us a little about himself and his journey. As he described how his organisation worked and what the consulting business was like, he described his ideas on how times haven't really changed at all. After all, the first AI code was written in the 60s and other such examples which never really appeared all of a sudden. He sh...

MBA IIT Kanpur was honored to have Mr. Amol Padhye, Head, Market risk, HDFC Bank, for a guest lecture on the topic - “Current market evolution and volatility” on 18 th  August 2019. Mr. Amol Padhye has more than 16 years of experience in capital market risks management domain which includes: Market and liquidity risk, Bank credit assessment and limit setup, Bank credit rating modeling, Treasury, ALM, Enterprise risk management. Currently he is the head of market risk at HDFC bank. In the past he was associated with EY and BNP Paribas, India in senior leadership roles in the risk domain. Mr.Padhye opened the lecture with a question: “What is Market?” He then placidly listened to our answers and elucidated his understanding of markets and the domain of market in which he deals. Discussion then moved on to understanding the past events that affected the economic growth of our country. It was very stimulating to see and justify the ups and downs in economy and its correla...

MBA IIT Kanpur was honoured to have Mr. Sandeep Verma, President, Bajaj Consumer Care, for a guest lecture on the topic, ‘How to Re-position Brands - Learnings From Successful Global Case Studies’ on 11 th August 2019. Mr. Verma has an experience of 20 years in FMCG industry across diverse roles in Sales, Brand Management, Category Management, and various P&L stints handling multiple brands. Currently, as the President to Bajaj Consumer Care, he looks after the management of the P&L of the company, international business, mergers and acquisition, mentoring start-ups, etc. Before joining Bajaj Consumer Care, Mr. Verma was working as the Marketing Director of HUL and has handled multiple brand management like Sunsilk, Lifebuoy, Vim, and Domex. Since the very beginning of the lecture, Mr. Verma’s jovial nature transpired the hall. He began the talk by explaining what does an excellent ‘brand positioning' means. If every stakeholder (including the CEO, brand manag...

It was our privilege to invite Mr Mahipal Nair, Chief Human Resource (South Asia/India) – Nielsen, for a guest lecture on Organizational health at MBA IIT Kanpur on 3 rd August 2019. Mr Nair has been associated with Nielsen since 2006 in various HR roles of increasing responsibilities. He is responsible for all people processes including leadership & talent development, transformation & change management. Mr Nair commenced the lecture by drawing a parallel between organizational health and human health. He extended the discussion by defining the factors, which affect human health, after bifurcating them as internal and external factors. Internal factors being psychology, beliefs etc. whereas external factors being climate, demography etc. This comparison served as a base point for further lecture. He then moved the focus of lecture to analyze the qualities of a successful organization by discussing over the best team we could remember and then he made his po...

On 9th Feb’19, we were honoured to have Mr Anurag Joshi, Head - Global channels and Business Development,  Bharti Airtel for a guest lecture on B2B marketing in the Telecom sector. He is a Sales and Business Development professional and has experience with assignments in new geographies and developing existing business revenue streams. He has worked in areas of Sales and Business Development, Partner Relations and Alliances, Joint-Go-to-Market, Product Marketing and Product Development/Management with explosive growth mandate. He initiated discussion by learning about the expectations of the crowd. He gave a brief introduction of his corporate journey so far and how fulfilling his job in sales and marketing has been so far. He explained different services like Data Centre and cloud, IOT, Enterprise Mobility, UCS, Cyber Security, and Connectivity. Further, he went on to describe different segments in telecom such as infrastructure, equipment, and services using real-time e...

We were graced with the presence of Mr Vikram Singh on 20th January’19 Account Director - L&T Financial Services, for a corporate seminar at the IME Department. He has over ten years of experience in Banking, capital markets, treasury management and private equity funds in esteemed organisations like HDFC Bank and Reliance Capital. He kicks started with the seminar with the introduction to every student of MBA-IIT Kanpur. His interest developed into AI with investments in technological start-ups. Mr Vikram Singh first focused on how AI is soon going to a General-purpose-Technology and touched upon the recent developments in the field of AI. His examples about firms like Fincorp showed how AI is exploding in the field of finance. AI has increased risk management, helped in agile growth with the development of Deep Learning and Machine Learning. Chatbots being used by various banks are incredibly useful, e.g., Eva for HDFC.  Paypal is using deep learning techno...

The speaker for the seminar was Satish Rajarathnam, HRBP of Cognizant . The topic for seminar was divided into three heads: Region wise analysis of the world, Political risk at present and vertical view of the financial services. Discussion started with the analysis of the economic condition of various region of the world (US, Euro, UK, Asia). Thereafter, the focus of discussion shifted to contemporary political risks (for example: Brexit, US-China trade war) occurring due to the changing economic condition in various regions and its impact on the Indian economy. Later, there was a brief discussion about various financial services and how they are impacting global economy . Speaker also enlightened us about the three types of disruptions that are essential for the overall development of a company. The three disruptions are as follows: Business Model Disruption, Operating Model Disruption and Technology Model Disruption. Learning: A company must cause disruption in a...

28th September'18 marked the initiation of the 7th edition of Prabandhan, annual management conclave of DIME, IIT Kanpur, presented by Maruti Suzuki- Way of Life. The opening ceremony began with insightful words by Dr, Amit Shukla, faculty coordinator for Prabandhan, followed by a short address by Dr Deblina Chatterjee. This event was marked by the presence of Dr Tapan Sahoo, Senior Vice President (Engineering, Design, R&D), Maruti Suzuki- Way of Life. He shared his perceptive thoughts on "Sustainability and Innovation: An auto industry Perspective". His thoughts VUCA world struck a chord with students which shows two sides of the same coin - "Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity" or "Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility". He shed light on various core values and core philosophy that act as a pillar for sustainability in the automobile industry, notable ones being, customer obsession, innovation, networking and learning. One has t...