IIT Kanpur MBA Blog

For MBA graduates negotiation is a constant part of life, it is a skill which is tested in daily events of business. It was a delight for the MBA students of IITK to have Ms. Mukta Mahajani for a seminar. She has authored a new book – ‘Let’s Talk’ which talks about Negotiation and Communication at workplace. She is an accomplished lawyer, a professional consultant, a writer and a recognized speaker. She started the talk by explaining what is Negotiation, and the significance of these skills in today’s business setting. She explicated this through multiple real workplace scenarios including formal meetings, informal gathering etc. She highlighted the most common mistakes people make while handling uncommon issues and gave valuable suggestions to overcome them. She also talked about cases of conflict situations and offered insightful and practical suggestions to deal with those real life situations. Ms. Mahajani suggested various negotia...

MBA students at IITK got an opportunity to meet Mr. Kalairaj who has more than 20 years of experience in Market Research domain in Pharmaceutical Industry. At present he is looking after the Market research function of Ranbaxy India Region. In the past he played a pivotal role in setting up Market research departments in DRL, Cadila & Panacea Biotec. Mr. Kalairaj kicked off the discussion talking about the changing faces in Indian subcontinent touching upon the economic, technological, educational, cultural changes and how these changes are relevant in business context today. He then gave an overview of the Pharmaceutical industry in India and recently emerging trends in this sector. Some of the top therapeutic areas include Anti-infective, Diabetes, Cardiac, and Neurological. He gave lot of interesting insights on brand building in general and that of Pharma sector in particular and described how 30-70 rule doesn’t hold good in Pharma industry. The speaker talked about the vario...

A guest lecture was delivered by Mr. Aditya Kumar, Solution Transformation Leader, Schneider Electric on 11th Jan, 2013. He has specialized in Project Planning, Contract & Risk Management, Turnkey Projects, Business Processes, Energy Management, Building Project organization and thus his talk was focused on these aspects. He discussed that how the strategy and project management go hand in hand. Just as strategies and ideas lead to new projects, similarly, project results drive changes and give rise to new strategies and innovations. He explained that a project is a venture undertaken to produce a product or service. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, procuring and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of project by the application of skills, knowledge, tools and techniques and meet the need and expectations of all the parties who are directly or indirectly interested in the project. The main challenge with project management is to...

A guest lecture was delivered by Mr. Akhilesh Awasthi, Director (Operations), India Energy Exchange. He spoke on the Operations and Functioning of Power Exchanges in India. Mr. Akhilesh Awasthi is an electrical engineer; he worked in the power sector for around 10 years. The guest lecture started with an overview of “India Energy Exchange” which is India’s first-ever Power Exchange. It serves as an optional, electronic, nationwide platform for trading in electricity. Mr. Awasthi covered various topics related to Power Exchange portfolio bids, Block Bid rejection & re-inclusion process, national load dispatch center and power exchange interaction, how companies buy and sell power on exchange, congestion management, market splitting, UI-unscheduled interchange, NS-REC Trade at IEX. Besides he discussed  that entire country is divided into 12 zones for facilitating power exchange which are N1,N2,N3 in north zone W1,W2, W3 for south zone E1,E2 for east zone ,S1,S2 for south zone ...

Inspirational is the word for Ms. Ministhy Nair & her interaction with the students at IME, IIT Kanpur. Ms. Nair is presently the District Magistrate of Barabanki District, UP. An engineering graduate who pursued her management education from XLRI Jamshedpur and finally made her way into the glorious Civil Services!                                       Ms. Nair’s main objective for this meet was to communicate and stress the significance of applying technical and management skills in public administration. Examples can be in administrative and policy making decisions, managing calamities like floods and famines, managing finances , optimizing utilization of resources, waste management etc. Adhaar card, for one, is how technology would help in better administration. Civil services present a platform, a powerful one at that, for the youth to address these issues directly. There are sever...

On 11 th of November 2012, we had the gracious presence of Mr. Sanjiv Puri, CEO, India Tobacco Division, ITC Ltd and it was a great learning experience for all of us to hear him on the latest trends and innovations in the FMCG sector. Mr. Sanjiv Puri joined ITC in 1986. Till 2000, he handled a wide range of responsibilities in eCommerce, Operations and Manufacturing in the Tobacco Division. He also led ITC Infotech Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of ITC, as Managing Director from May 2006 to August 2009. He was also the Managing Director of Surya Nepal Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary company of ITC in Nepal. He was responsible for diversifying the operations of the company into branded apparels, making Surya Nepal one of the largest private sector companies in Nepal. Mr. Puri threw some light on the latest developments in ITC focused on triple bottom-line principle of ITC which aims at economical, ecological and environmental development of the company. ITC has contributed to the agricultural ...

30 th October, Tuesday. We had an interaction with Mr Sreekumar, who is the Vice President for  Field Services, Schneider Electric India. He had worked with Areva from 1986 -1990 and with ABB from 1990 – 2003 in Sales. Since 2003, he has been with Schneider Electric. He started in Strategy markets with responsibility for E&I, moved to heading New Growth Platforms (launched Voice Data Image, Building Management System etc.) and is eventually heading Power Monitoring and Control. The session started off with him giving us an insight into Schneider Electric – the company. Schneider is a French electrical engineering company founded in 1836, and today, they are the global specialists in Energy Management. Few would be aware of the fact that Schneider comprises of around 120 brands globally. Schneider has expanded its operations all over the world by acquiring firms like Merlin Gerin, Telemecanique, Viridity, Telvent, Luminous, Areva T&D, Digilink etc. The stor...