IIT Kanpur MBA Blog

The Department of Industrial and Management engineering played host to Mr. Sahil Nayar, the Associate Director - HR, KPMG. On 21 st January 2018, we spent an engaging and insightful Sunday morning with Sahil. It is amazing when a seminar leaves trails of thoughts which you keep churning in your mind even after it is over and this was one of those.   The seminar started off with Sahil talking about his obsession when it comes to gathering degrees and how while giving a speech in one of the B- schools in Mumbai, he realized that degrees are of no use unless the lessons from those cannot be brought to life when the hours demanded. With a blast from the past, he took us through an interweaving tale of how the primary function of a telephone, i.e. communication has seen a paradigm shift. Now, it is nearly impossible for us to stay away from our mobile phones for even a couple of hours. We feel restless and are so engrossed in it that it has become synonymous with our lives...

“Brand yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.” Dan Schawbel Gone are the days when the term branding was used with reference to companies and products, but today, even an individual has a brand identity and a brand reputation to maintain. To talk on this intangible, career deciding concept, IME invited Ms Ruchita Sharma, Head of Talent, India, Fidelity International. In today’s world, it is a natural human tendency to fulfill behavioral expectations of the people around us rather than representing our own brand. We try to be what people expect us to be rather than follow our own paths. Ruchita in her discussion touched upon a few points that would help one to build a personal brand. Build you own label Going with the flow is often easy but is not always the right path to choose. To build one’s own label, people need to stand for something, build multiple self- brands while knowing how to personify them throughout one’s career. Have ...

The Department of Industrial and Management Engineering at IIT Kanpur played host to a seminar by Mr. Rajib Roy, CEO of Quantum Spatial Ltd., who put forth an overview of how analysis of geospatial data can bring about a paradigm shift in the world of information and how its subsequent analysis can result in benefits to various organizations. Mr. Roy was quite forthright in bringing out some merry factoids about his career and his perception of the various walks of the world that he had been involved with. He eased us into the new and emerging world of geospatial data analytics, and the current playing fields surrounding this mystery. With the detection of trees having potential to cause forest fires in dry California terrain, to scouting and negating their possible interaction with live transmission lines with actual analysis on the z-axis, geospatial data analytics encompasses a very broad horizon of areas of application. He then provided certain insight from the histor...

MBA IIT Kanpur organised a guest lecture by Mr. Ravi Kaushik, Country Business Director at Medtronic for a session on ‘Design Thinking: Innovating in emerging markets’. Mr. Kaushik gave a brief idea about the difference between invention and innovation. Where invention is about creating a new solution to a problem, innovation is trying to solve the problem in a better way, by bringing together existing technology. He cited the example of Uber which is trying to solve the problem of transportation using the internet through a new business model. He talked about the two sides to marketing – downstream and upstream. Downstream marketing is mostly associated with product promotion, public relations, and advertising. Upstream marketing, on the other hand, focuses more on the strategy and analytics behind fulfilling the customers’ needs. According to Mr. Kaushik, due to their analytical ability, more engineers can and should take up roles in upstream marketing. Elaborati...

There is nothing better than getting important insights about the real world from someone with immense experience. The exposure becomes even more valuable when the knowledge comes directly from the top and from someone who has been in our situation prior to their glorious journey. The students at MBA IIT Kanpur were fortunate to get such a golden opportunity when the 1977 batch Alumnus of the institute, Mr. J N Gupta, M.D. at Stakeholders Empowerment Services, visited the campus during the recent 40 th year reunion. Sir began his address by emphasizing the importance of clear communication. He went beyond emphasizing by demonstrating the same throughout the seminar. He suggested the audience to always be content with their current possessions and to never draw comparisons with what others had. Further, he added that in every situation, one must try his/her best, yet keep realistic expectations. This according to him was the mantra for happiness in life, which he himself ha...

The students at MBA IIT Kanpur were fortunate to get golden, pragmatic insights into the world of media analytics and marketing research when the 1977 batch Alumnus of the institute, Mr. Pravin Tripathi, C.E.O. at Magic 9 Media & Analytics Private Limited, visited the campus during the recent 40 th year reunion. Sir briefed the audience about his company’s work which provided services like: advertising, media planning, brand consultancy etc. Wherein the core functions included analytics, design and quality control. Sharing his knowledge with budding professionals, he spoke about his past projects and the nuances involved in successfully completing those. Remarkable out of the same was a project for U.I.D., which involved design of a continuous learning program to get insights about its potential adopters. Emphasizing upon the importance of the continuous learning program, sir stated that consumers continually provided useful insights and hence marketing researcher o...

Leadership is one of the most desired traits for success in life and MBA students at IIT Kanpur were fortunate to get a fresh perspective on the topic from the top echelon of corporate world, when Mr Amit Kasliwal, India head of corporate sales at Ford India visited the campus to interact with the students. Sir described leadership as the zeal to identify and solve problems. Citing an example, sir said that India has a myriad of problems and out of those; transportation was one of the major issues. Ford is dedicated to solve this problem. Talking specifically about the corporate sales department, he told that by selling cars to taxi operators, they created entrepreneurs, thereby solving the problem of job creation at that level.    Further describing leadership, sir claimed that a leader must have a long term view, and should be enthusiastic about other’s agenda, thereby creating opportunities and ‘win-win’ situations. According to sir, and rightly so, sustainab...

Tips from Top organised a seminar by Mr. Mihir Mohanta, GM, Mother Dairy, Fruits and Vegetables Division. The Topic of the seminar was “Management of Agro Businesses in India – A Key Perspective”. Mr. Mohanta started the seminar giving a brief about challenges faced in supply chain management during planning, costing, implementing, physical movement of goods from one place to another, etc. This was cemented through an example of horticulture train, an endeavour by the Government of India. The train that was considered to be a boon for transportation of food and vegetables was marred by lack of planning, ignorance in demand estimation, and inconvenience in loading on part of farmers. Further talking about the F&V industry, Mr. Mohanta briefed us that although footfall of customers is soaring in this sector, but the risk to return ratio is very low. Reasons being fruits and vegetables are perishable items, have price volatility, and have uncertain demand. Also the supply chai...

Mr Biten Kishore Kathrani, Director, R&D department for Asia, Middle East and Africa (AME A) at Boston Scientific, visited IME department for a talk on “Emerging trends and advancements in the healthcare industry.” The session turned out to be extremely insightful and the audience got a lot of valuable inputs about the field of healthcare as well as the nuances of how business is done in the industry, the opportunities and the challenges that were pertinent in the industry. Mr Kathrani began the seminar with an introduction of Boston Scientific as a company, its core values and the massive range of medical technologies that it offered. He discussed about the Indian office of Boston Scientific, its full-fledged facility with R&D along with an Advanced Science institute for surgeons training on the cutting edge technology. There was also a brief discussion on the changing nature of healthcare industry from being a patient centric model to a transaction centric model, and...

Pragyan- the guest lecture series of the IME Department, IIT Kanpur, organised under the umbrella of Prabandhan’16, witnessed an array of informative seminars delivered by some of the greatest personalities from all over India. One of the guest lectures on ‘Analytics in today’s world’ was delivered by Ms. Sridevi Vadapalli, an M.Sc in Statistics from the University of Hyderabad and having around 15 years of experience in analytics across industries like BFSI, Retail / CPG and manufacturing. Her experience includes indulgence in industries like Text mining, Market basket analysis, Cross sell, Upsell, Churn model, Web analytics etc. She presently heads customer and marketing analytics and operational analytics for FSI clients. Ms. Sridevi commenced the lecture by explaining the importance of historical data via a real life example. Our present-day decisions become biased based on the already existing data with us. All in all, analytics is about analyzing the historical data, find...

Mr. Anshul Garg, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur (MBA batch of 2005-07), currently the Director and V.P. at Centrum Capital Ltd, delivered a seminar on Banking and Finance as a part of ‘Pragyan’ during 'Prabandhan - 2016' . The following are the excerpts from this interactive session. The discussion spanned across banking scenario in India, technology in banking and future scope in finance. As told by him, the motivation behind a career in banking is the fact that presently out of $5600 billion wealth in India; only $250 billion is actually in investment which he told implied a huge scope for wealth management and investment. However, building up mathematical and quantitative skills remains vital to work in this area. He further threw some light on the tasks of wealth managers. One of the key tasks included assessing the product mix of companies and striking an ideal balance. He also explained some of the risks involved in working in the niche banking roles by providing the...

Prabandhan 2016 organized Pragyan, the guest lecture series of IME Department, IIT Kanpur. The series was kick-started by Mr. Sheraz Saeed, Founder of Websters. Websters is a Dubai based social media company started in 2011 and specialized in web designing and digital marketing. It is a part of SoftAge Information Technology Ltd. Mr. Saeed gave a seminar on “Start ups and Digital Marketing”. Giving a brief overview about himself Mr. Saeed mentioned how during his final year at BITS Pilani, Dubai campus he saw a requirement for web services in the Dubai market and from initially beginning as a freelancer he founded Websters, which offers a range of dedicated social media services along with other digital assistance in web development, app development, social media management, analytics, digital marketing etc. Mr Saeed engaged the audience by probing about some start-up ideas. To the passionate budding entrepreneurs who had such ideas and the audience in general, he gave an ...