Krishnakumar Natarajan (XLRI’ 81, CoFoundr & CEO-Mindtree Consulting) featured in list of 12 Global Leaders of Tomorrow

Age: 53

Country: Indian

Company & Location:MindTree, Mumbai

Position: CEO and Managing Director

Career Maker: The industry veteran launched MindTree as an omnibus global IT-services provider in 1999, but it had posted only $16 million in annual sales by 2003. "Then we wanted to achieve ten-times growth in a five-year period, and we did," he reports. Now a nearly $300 million player, offering not only IT services but also product-development consulting, Natarajan believes that MindTree is poised to reach $1 billion in revenues by 2014 through organic growth, with some acquisitions.
Professional Trajectory: Instead of enrolling at the University of Illinois on a solar-engineering scholarship, Natarajan went to school in India and then became part of the burgeoning IT culture there by joining Wipro in 1982. He quadrupled the number of employees in its software-services business and, later, launched Wipro's e-commerce division. The first task he took on for MindTree was starting its U.S. operation.

Dual Personality: Having been a successful corporate executive as well as an entrepreneur, Natarajan believes he's better at the latter. "Sometimes I think I should have gone into entrepreneurial mode earlier," he says, "but the opportunities and experiences I got with Wipro prepared me substantively to become a better entrepreneur."


Five-Year Plan: Outside of work, Natarajan said he likes to "try to pick up something new" and "reinvent myself" about every five years. He was a competitive table-tennis player; he started golf several years ago; and, lately, he's taken up photography.


Source: http://bit.ly/doRx2E

XLRI Marketing Association plans Research Laboratory

Jamshedpur, July 28 (The Telegraph): Why does Ms Sharma always choose Surf over Ariel? And why has college boy Aniket, die-hard Nokia fan, suddenly dumped his mobile for a Samsung?

Given that consumer behaviour is both funny and unpredictable, XLRI is setting up a unique market research laboratory that aims to put a fix on the age-old question haunting marketing gurus the world over — why does a consumer choose one brand over another?

Planned by marketing students who make up MAXI, or Marketing Association of XLRI, the laboratory will be working on behavioural patterns of consumers, aiming to delve into the unconscious that is said to influence choices.

“It has been found that the unconscious mind of ours influences our decision making and we are not even aware of it,” explained Sanjeev Varshney, a faculty member in the consumer behaviour section at XLRI.

“It is not a simple question and answer survey but a technique by which we will try to know the exact factors which influences a customer’s decision,” he said.

For the project, that is being pursued in collaboration with the faculty, XLRI is working on a tie-up with a behavioural architect company, the Mumbai-based Final Mile, which is already engaged in doing similar research.

As Varshney puts it, 60 to 70 per cent products launched in markets are complete failures in spite of the fact that companies conduct intense marketing research before launching them.

The laboratory, when it starts functioning, would thus be of help to corporates to get a better idea of the market.

Varshney added that they had plans to collaborate with psychiatrists and hospitals to help them in research, though nothing had been finalised as yet.

Initially, XLRI would start the laboratory keeping social issues in mind, like for instance, how to influence people to stop spitting in public or how to stop people from rash driving or how to motivate people to give up the use of polythene etc.

MAXI already conducts an annual fair to study consumer demands in certain sectors. The fair uses gaming and fun activities to conduct research.

“Ours is not an awareness campaign as there is a technical process which would work on human minds. Marketing students and faculty members are ready to start the project as soon as possible,” said Vinayak Mehta, the secretary of MAXI.

(Customer names in the report are imaginary. Brand names used are to illustrate the point about choices and in no way indicate consumer preferences)

Ethics in Journalism - Anyone?

Remembering Kevin Carter

XLRI Campus Store

Prof Suma Damodaran's "Managerial Economics" goes into 2nd Edition

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Managerial Economics
By Suma Damodaran
Oxford University Press
ISBN13: 978-0-19-806111-3
ISBN10: 0-19-806111-0
608 pages

The second edition of Managerial Economics is a comprehensive textbook specially designed to meet the requirements of management students.

Introducing students to the related economics in business decision-making, this text now provides more simplified explanations of the fundamental concepts and principles of managerial economics. In an attempt to better bridge the gap between economic theory and application, the revised edition is now enhanced and supported with several new exhibits, cases, and illustrations.

Dr Suma Damodaran is Professor of Economics at XLRI, Jamshedpur. Formerly a faculty at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, she had over two decades of experience in teaching. Dr. Damodarans research and consultancy interests are in the subjects of Managerial Economics and Industrial Economics.

GMP Marketing club event: Talk by an accomplished industry expert

The evening of Thursday, July 8th, 2010, XLRI-GMP Marketing enthusiasts had the proud privilege and honour of hosting Mr.Sujith Sudhakaran, Strategic Planning Director of Draftfcb, on-campus. Mr. Sujith is an industry stalwart with 15+ yrs of experience.

He gave a very educative and informative insight in Indian Marketing trends. Punctuated with various industry experiences, the 1.5 hour session was a true testament to the anecdote on the Theory of Relativity! The XLRI-GMP student community turned up in good numbers.

While addressing an enthusiastic audience, he spoke about Marketing verticals and respective trends prevalent in the country. He briefly went through prospective Career opportunities in Indian Market and suggested areas where a B-School graduate with 6+ yrs of exp should target. He was surprised with the numbers and the zeal shown by individuals coming from non-Marketing/IT Background and aiming to pursue a career in Marketing. But he was quick to point that everyone should be ready for a reality check, as leveraging non-marketing exp won’t be a good idea.

Focus then shifted to relevance of Core subjects/Electives in the real field. He started with the thought that reading books and covering syllabus per se has never helped anybody. But he quickly added that the pedagogy of XLRI is something students can heavily bank upon. He also laid strong emphasis on keeping the basics simple and clear rather than losing the essence in jargons, models and frameworks.

The session ended with Sujith answering some of the inquisitive questions put forth by students regarding Services Marketing, IT Marketing, Marketing via Social Networking. He was able to help students analyze how raw or cooked each of these fields were.

GMP Students thanked Mr. Sujith Sudhakaran, ending a memorable evening and a day to remember at XLRI. They gained substantially by this interaction with an industry leaders. As students got answers to some of the lingering questions, it was quite evident that they were left with new thoughts to ponder upon.

Thanks to all the attendees.

Creative Accounting - A Preview...

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Imagine there's a Farmer. He's very poor, and only has a Cow as his asset. He's also got a terminally ill son. Now, he's shown his son to the best doctors in town, and all of them are unanimous in their prediction: The son does not have many more days to live.

Never one to give up, the Farmer prays to GOD

"Dear God. Please save my Son. If my son's saved, then I'll sell my only Cow to a third party and donate the entire sales from the cow to you (organization)."

GOD is mighty pleased, and indeed, saves the Farmers Son. The Farmer, as expected, is delighted. He's elated at this son's recovery. But now, he's in a dilemma. He's really poor, and depends on his only cow for survival, and now, as per his promise to GOD, he has to sell the cow, and donate the money.

What would you do if you were the farmer?
.
.
.
This is what the Farmer did...

The Farmer takes the cow to the market and announces that he's willing to sell the cow for Rs 2. Now, hearing this, a huge crowd gathers around him. (The current market price of a cow is Rs5000.)

But now, the Farmer says that he'll only sell the cow if the buyer also buys a Parrot along with the cow for Rs 5050. The parrot was probably caught on the way to the Market. (The current market price of the parrot is Rs100).

Hearing this, the crowd trickles out, but one buyer remains. All said and done, if he were willing to buy the combo, he'd get the Cow and Parrot for Rs5052 instead of Rs5100. So the deal is struck.

The farmer gets the money Rs5052, and pays Rs2 (sale price of the Cow as agreed) to GOD, and keeps the rest.

And he's kept his promise.
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""''''


Welcome to Creative Accounting, one of the courses taught at XLRI.
The story above was told to us by our Finance Professor - S . Sengupta.

XLRI - Adventure Trip

Every College worth its salt, has an event that they can be proud of.

I guess XLRI's is the Adventure Trip - 2.5 days of sheer fun, exhaustion, and emotion. A day to remember definitely, for all.

The Trip
---------
The journey was not too far away from XLRI, in fact it was just around 25-30 kms away. The location was definitely desolate though, around 5 kms to the nearest main road.

The trip was all about stretching yourself in tight situations, and not letting your colleagues down. There's this story where an old man asks his sons to break a stick, and when they do that, he asks them to tie all the sticks together, and break them again. This time, they are unable to break the bundle.

This trip was all about that. It was all about teamwork. It was all about "We live as a team, but we die as individuals". And boy, was the trip worth its weight in Gold or what..

It was not all business talk about teamwork, and coordination and all that. It was fun as well. We got to do stuff that most of us have never done before. We got to pitch Tents (and some of us got to see them fall as well. :) ), we got to run obstacle courses, we got to climb mountains, and go through caves. And we got to Abseil down mountains too.




And like all good things should be, the best was saved for the last.

We got to raft on a beautiful Sunny morning, at Lake Dimna. The sky was clear, and the water calm, and the mountains in the background was majestic as ever. And we also got to build our own raft and paddle up and down the lake. Here we were playing with the lives of others, but in a team, as all good teams should be, we let our trust in each other overcome our fear. (Though a word of caution here: Please do test the raft before getting in; One of the rafts sank midway. Thank heavens for the safety equipment and the professionalism of the staff).



It was an awesomely memorable trip, something we can be nostalgic of, for a long time to come. Many new friendships were made, a few of them lasting, and all of them wonderful. We just wish we had this more often.

To end with, here's this amazing performance by Al Pacino on Team Work.

Al Pacino - Any Given Sunday

Ciao,
Rohit - Life Goes A Circle

GMP batch of 2010 placements: A roaring success!

The economy might still not be out of the woods yet, but that didn’t spoil the placement results of the latest batch of the 1 year full time General Management Program at XLRI Jamshedpur. On the contrary, the placements of the GMP batch of 2010 bore a remarkable similarity to the heady days of placements of the pre-recession era of 2006-2007.

The rolling placements at campus started in February 2010, followed by placement drives at Mumbai and Bangalore. A total of 82 students participated in the placements, with 15 on-sabbatical students joining back their previous organizations. The response of the corporate world was overwhelming this year and many renowned names in the industry took part in the placement process. Prominent among these were names such as Google, Mind Tree, SAP, Accenture, IBM, HCL, HP, Mahindra Satyam, Tech Mahindra, Wirpo, TCS, Future Group, Apollo Hospitals, Infosys, Applabs, Daimler, Exide, Genpact, Tata Motors, etc.

The salaries offered also saw a huge jump as compared to last year. The highest salary offered was Rs.30 lakhs whereas the average was Rs.15 lakhs. There was an increasing trend towards hiring for senior management positions by the corporates. Some of the roles offered were General Manager, Business Unit Head, State Head, Global Leadership Cadre, Assistant Vice Presidents etc.

A number of students were able to make shifts in sector/industry and roles. While 17% students could successfully make a shift in sector/industry, around 38% students were able to change roles. Notable shifts were made by doctors in the batch who were able to switch from medical practice to leading managerial roles in the health sector. Also many students from the IT sector were able to shift from conventional programming and project management roles to business manager/consultant roles.  Other remarkable shifts made in industry were in case of two students from IT sector who were offered roles in operations in a large retail group and in corporate sales/marketing in a leading music label. Further, many students from core sectors made a shift to IT as domain/subject matter experts/consultants.

This placement report has also been covered by following publications:

Business Standard 26 July

Financial Express 21st July,2010

Business World 26th July

www.pagalguy.com 22nd July

Yahoo! India news 21st July

Sify 26th July

www.coolavenues.com 20th July,2010

General Management Program(GMP) is a 1 year, full time flagship MBA program at XLRI, Jamshedpur. Started in 1997, it is the oldest 1 year MBA program in India and is only open to students having minimum of 5 years quality managerial work experience. The program, with about 1000 contact hours, is also one of the most rigorous in India and includes mandatory value added curriculum modules such as a three week mandatory international immersion program, a three day village trip and a three day team building adventure workshop.

A trip through the rural India: Hats off to human ability to survive!

You might be aware that XLRI prides itself as one of the most socially focused bschools in India. Many of the faculty we have here are socially inclined and are actively working in the area of social and rural development.  See this recent news item second social entrepreneurship conference

Anyway, coming back to the topic. Half of our batch is just back from the two day village tour, cris-crossing the tough terrain of Jharkhand’s rural region. The experience we had was almost “soul changing”.  We went through a range of feelings. Here is my attempt to describe them in words:

How lucky we were, but still we complained endlessly: Think of yourself in this setting- Poles and wires but no electricity. No roads. Nearest market 30 kms away. Water drying up in wells and handpumps. No rains in sight. And if these development related mess was not enough, you have naxalite issues. So no venturing out after the sun sets - you may be caught between the armed forces and the naxalite faceoff.

And compare this to the constant gripe we had in our urban life style. A pothole, an hour power cut, noise pollution and what not.

This world is not short of heroes: Most of us mortals try to contribute in bits and pieces, once in a while. A donation to Greenpeace/CRY and donating old clothes, etc is where our efforts stop. And at the other end, there are the heroes. We observed the efforts of NGO activists whose efforts were not subdued by mountains of problems. No roads, inaccessible hilly areas, doubting villagers and tribal. They face it all and more. Routinely they have a brush with naxalites but they hit the roads the next day in the same undying spirit. As another example of a hero, we met a teacher who completed higher studies from a top college but went back to his village to teach people. And he did teach well- inspiring the kids to learn and become “big” people like us. But are we really “big” is the question pestering my mind right now.

So after all this description you must be beginning to grow emotional and even pitiful., Don’t be as now its the turn to become envious.

Circumstances lead to great solutions: You would think that words like Microfinance, balance sheet, PLR, risk appetite, 24/7 credit, penalty for absence, etc. would be Greek to people living in the remotest corners of rural landscape. I am sorry but I have a picture to change your egoistic thought:

This is a simple account of a group of 19 villagers. They pool their savings to form a fund and they can borrow from this pool when they need money. They meet every week and every person needs to contribute a savings of Rs 5 at minimum. This makes them save for the bad times. They issue passbooks and do basic security of money by keeping the key and the money box with their different people. This responsibility changes each week. They maintain detailed MoMs for each meeting(Satyam board needs to learn a thing or two) and every week discuss a problem and generally form a consensus about the solution(we MBA students need to learn lessons as in our meeting ”minutes are created but hours are lost”).

We will fight and trump the odds:  Its their in the spirits- Life is tough but we are tougher. Little kids marched on with perfect discipline, punctuality and great sincerity, flip flopping to their hostel rooms, classes and the play grounds. The behavior was exemplary- they played sports with competitiveness but still respected the rules and cared for their school chums. In our 2 day stay at the school(it was a boarding school) we never heard a loud noise, saw even a minor brawl or witnessed someone crying. And this when they were far away from their parents and mostly just got a plate of rice and a bowl of waterish dal. These pictures kind of sum the hopes and contentment these kids displayed:

 

I could have written a lot more but I think words are never going to be enough. Thank you XLRI, as the trip was an eye opener for all of us.  It has brought us closer to our other country brethrens and also at peace with our inner selves. We now much appreciate the human spirit to fight and survive, against all human created and natural odds. We are humbled and as surely our future decisions as the managers and corporate leaders will be much more inclusive and sensitive in light of this trip.

With this, I would leave you with some other pictures from our trip, which give you the flavor of how it was. All pictures are courtesy our ace photographer Naren and a junior photographer Junaid. Thanks you guys!

 

XLRI GMP and Sports

GMPians are making a mark in every aspect. It is the time for sports!

There was a sports competition in the XLRI (Ratanjee Tournament). We GMPians have rocked in the games and grabbed top spots in Badminton, Foot-ball.

In Badminton, it was a one-sided affair – our star players remained unbeatable.

We won the following matches:

• Men Singles – Yatendra
• Mixed Doubles – Lisa & Yatendra
• Men Doubles – Ankush & Nikhil Goel

Here are some of the snaps:

We are the heroes in football too. Our team won the thriller by 3-1.

Following are the people who scored the goals and took the team to a glorious victory:

• Lijo
• Ankush
• Brijesh

XLRI's Rank and AACSB Accredition

We are very happy and proud to announce the following:

1. XLRI has been Ranked No. 3 (after IIM-A and IIM-C) in the Businessworld Magazine June 2010. http://www.mbauniverse.com/article/id/3343/

2. XLRI`s AACSB accreditation eligibility application has been accepted.

Kudos to all XLRI folks!!!!

Dinner, XLRI GMP

We went to a dinner hosted by Fr. Jesurajan as a part of Managerial Communications Lab.

It was an awesome experience – we had learned various etiquettes and at the same time enjoyed our 7-course meal!

Here are some snaps:

Amnesia, XLRI GMP

For the past few days we have been getting adjusted to the rigorous study rhythm. Classes were being taken by the best faculty in India and learning has been tremendous.

It sounds exciting to see whatever we have learnt in the real life experience and which are perceived to be best are being contradicted by the various theories and practices!!

The study pace has picked up and everyone is at his/her toes all the time – assignments, case studies, clubs and what not.

But life @ XLRI is much more than this.

We do party hard!!

This is precisely what we were doing what has been mentioned by our friend in our previous post…

We have celebrated our first party –AMNESIA!!!

Some glimpses of Amnesia can be found below:

This not all - there is more to it!!! DJ Night!!

Some more snaps:

Amnesia - Our first official get-together

[Typed exactly 24 hours back, but could post only now... :)]

As I type this blog, I hear my fellow GMP-ians dancing to the beat of heart throbbing music in the dining hall. What a night it is? Welcome to Amnesia - an event entirely conceived, and organized by the current GMP batch, thrown open to all the 120 GMP students, and to the XLRI faculty members. No words could do justice to describe how I feel about this party of the lifetime. Every bit of this event was carefully planned, and executed with meticulous precision by the event committee members - Abhishek Seth, Junaid, Pradeep Khan, Hozefa, and by the volunteers.

The entire 120 GMP-ians (the team) came together and worked as one unit. Every one of us, without any exception, without any reservation whatsoever, came together and made this event a truly successful one. Even the evening rain, which at one time desperately threatened to pour down, decided not to do so. Overall, things went more than perfectly fine, and we could hear our faculty members and their families speaking highly of the occasion. These are good hearted souls, and to receive their blessings, we should have done something really good, and as a batch, we feel truly honored, blessed, and pleased with their kind words.

More about this event will be shared in this space by my team very soon....