Prabandhan 2018 Event Report

The Department of Industrial Management and Engineering, IIT Kanpur hosted the 7th edition of prestigious annual management conclave, Prabandhan’18 organized by MBA students and ‘Maruti Suzuki- Way of Life!’ in association with powered by Business Standard, Insight Out, from 28th September’18 to 30th September’18. The three days comprising Prabandhan were a compilation of events ranging from fields of Marketing, HR, Finance, Analytics and Operations which provided a platform to students of numerous business schools to compete with each other in diverse fields. The days were also marked by the presence of industry bigwigs who helped guide students on manifolds of industry experiences. The event saw MBA IIT Kanpur partner with Human Capital Magazine as  ICRA Management Consulting Services and LHF as knowledge partners.

Day 1 (28^th September 2018) The ball at IIT Kanpur was set rolling during the opening ceremony for Prabandhan 2018 by dignitaries from Maruti Suzuki India, Professor Amit Shukla, and Professor Devlina Chatterjee. Professor Shukla, faculty coordinator of Prabandhan 2018 spoke about the standing of the department and the vision of being best-in-class in the industry. Professor Devlina Chatterjee of the department of IME spoke on the history of Prabandhan and its journey through the years. The opening ceremony saw Dr Tapan Sahoo, who is the Senior Vice President (Engineering, Research, Design and Development) at Maruti Suzuki, a seasoned professional from the automotive industry in the areas of Technology Management, Product Design and Development speak about sustainability and innovation in the automotive industry and the pillars of sustainability to last across the domains of industry. The VUCA (environments with a varying degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world as per Dr.Sahoo can only be handled by having clarity of thought and vision. Developing new business models, instead of viewing sustainability as a compliance objective will lead to a truly developed world. This session was also attended by Mr.SatishRajarathnam, HR Business Partner with Cognizant.

Day 2(29^th September 2018)Opening Keynote: The day two commenced with the talk on “GI Barometer: A commentary on the macro-economic situation across global Industries” by Mr. Satish R, an HRBP in Cognizant. His words mainly focused on the Region-wise analysis of the world, the Political risk at present and vertical view of the financial services. His discussion shed light on the economic analysis of various regions of the world and how they impact the economy of the world in general. Speaker also enlightened us about the three types of disruptions that are essential for the overall development of a company: Business Model Disruption, Operating Model Disruption, and Technology Model Disruption.

Events:The seminar was followed by a string of events, namely Karobaar, Sanchalan and Regnant Populi. Karobar, designed to showcase your entrepreneurial acumen, was judged by Mr. Uday Singh, Head, and Strategy, ITH and Dr. Devlina Chatterjee, Faculty at IIT Kanpur.  The winner of this business plan event was a team from ISB Mohali. Sanchalan, an operational efficiency and supply chain event, was judged by Dr. Vipin B, Operations faculty at IIT Kanpur and Mr. Suman Samanta, a research scholar with the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur. The event saw MBA students of IIT Kanpur fare well and emerge victorious as winners among teams from other IITs and IITMs. The HR event, Regnant Populi, was judged by Mrs. Charu Chaturvedi, HR Manager with Threads India Limited, Lohia Group and Vinayak Drave, a Research scholar with the department of Industrial and Management Engineering IIT Kanpur.  NMIMS Bangalore were the winners of this human resource extravaganza which had a case designed by a team from our media partner, Human Capital magazine

Reflexions, the Panel Discussion – 29th September 2018 - Prabandhan’18, presented by the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering and Maruti Suzuki, in association, with hosted the second edition of Reflexions, with focus on ‘Revolutionary Innovation OR Remastered Ideas: Way forward for the global business ecosystem.’ The esteemed panel included Mr. Rohit Gandhi, Editor in Chief Democracy live news who was also the moderator of the panel, Mr. Sameer Dhanrajani, CSO Fractal Analytics, Mr. Bhavesh Lakhani, Chief Technology Officer SBI Mutual Fund, Mr. Sambasivan G., CFO Tata Sky Ltd., Mrs. Annapurna A., Director, Human Resources Inspirage, Mr. Imraan Saeed, Director, Absolutdata Analytics and Professor Amit Shukla, Faculty, OB & HRM, IIT Kanpur. The talk was also attended by Dr. RN Sengupta, Head of the Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, IIT Kanpur and Mr. Ayush Gupta, CHRO (GAIL) and the students of the MBA program at IIT Kanpur.

The talk focused on facets of innovation, whether it is incremental or revolutionary and how both in their way are indispensable for the growth of the nation and the economy. The moderator put forward insightful questions to forward to the panel regarding the type of innovation dominant in the industry and the support it offers, the role of education in shaping revolutionary ideas and importance of research and development in disruptive innovation. Each of the panel members had diverse views with relevant examples from their respective field. The panel talked about the need for business innovation being the root for any incremental progress needed at a later stage. The students of MBA IIT Kanpur witnessed this engaging and knowledgeable session with great gusto.

Day 3 (Keynote): Mr. Ayush Gupta, General Manager(HRD) at GAIL

India Ltd. enlightened the students on “Natural Gas Sector in India: Challenged and Opportunities.” He shared an overview of working in the public sector and how innovative ideas can be incorporated and why PSUs have a particular timeline for execution. He discussed GAIL as an organization, its inception, its reality check on this date, shareholding pattern, market capitalization. He also elaborated the real-life problems in the decision-making process of retaining the newly acquired talent. He emphasized on larger goals of life than money, and how continuing in a PSU all the way to high-level management serves as self-satisfaction in its way. The

Day 3 Events:The events of day three were organized, Markovista, Consulere, ACCS, and Vittraj. Markovista , the marketing event where participants presented their marketing strategy for So Good ALMOND Fresh Milk, marked the winning of students of Christ University, Bangalore with great insights and judgment from Dr. Jayanta Chatterjee, IIT Kanpur Adjunct Faculty and Sanjib Chatterjee, CFO, LHF. Consulere, the consulting event was judged by Mr. Aman Sharma, Manager in JIO and Piya Ghosh, Research Scholar, IIT Kanpur. The winners belonged to IIT Roorkee. The flagship analytics event, ACCS, was judged by Ashwini Kumar, Head of Fixed Income, ICRA Management Consulting Services, and ShivamKushwaha, Research Scholar at IIT Kanpur. The B Tech Students of IIT Kanpur stole the show by winning the event. And lastly, winners of Viitraj, the finance event, were MBA students of IIT Kanpur and judged by Mr. SumanSaurabh, Finance faculty of IIT Kanpur and Mr. Uday Singh, head of Strategy, ITH.

Day 3, Closing:Mr. Gaurav Dubey, CEO ITH Technologies graced Prabandhan with his presence for the closing ceremony with his great thoughts on entrepreneurship and insights on the blockchain. Mr. Dubey talked about use cases of a startup with no sales or technology, or a profit-making proposition. He spoke of the perspective of looking at your problem. According to him, ‘Even the best data if not accompanied by the right perspective, can’t get you to the right place.’

Prabandhan’18 served as a great amalgamation of 6000 participants from different walks of MBA and 50 business schools with likes of IIMS, IITS, IMI, NMIMS and ISB. The set of events and seminars expanded the exposure of the students with diverse perspective and experiences.  Prabandhan was indeed a manifestation of a quote by Henry Mintzberg Management is, above all, a practice where art science and craft meet.”