GMPians Ankush, Lisa's day out with CEO of Reliance retail Mr Bijou Kurien

Reliance Lifestyle's CEO, Bijou Kurien has spent a complete day with 2 students of XLRI GMP and discussed the strategies, his success mantra, and the future of organized retail in India. This is a part of the concept “XLers Date With Excellence” launched by the XLRI GMP students of the 2010-11 batch.
XLRI GMP Students Ankush and Lisa spent a day with Mr Kurien.

It is a great opportunity for the students to learn the business nuances from the CEO of Reliance Lifestyle,  a man with 30 years of experience in the retail sector.

Following were some of the highlights of this event:
Mr Kurien shared his insights on the retail industry in India - the organized and unorganized sector, Reliance Retail's growth strategy and the future of Retail in India.
A perfect platform which showcased the blend of academia and corporate - MBA education and its application in the real world.
The students got an opportunity to closely observe the working style of the CEO and his day-to-day work.
Mr Kurien shared his secret of success and given suggestion to the next generation of future leaders.

Here's the complete article

Organized Retailing – the buzz word today! And with so many players, big and small, everyone seems to have a pie in this huge cake – that’s what the CEO of Reliance Lifestyle, Bijou Kurien, says. Ask him about the future of retailing in India and he very optimistically mentions – India will always have fair share of both, the organized and unorganized retailing and the brick and mortar stores are not going to die for a long time in the future.

While these thoughts were crossing our mind, we were also curious to see what do CEO’s generally do in their day-to-day work? We all get inquisitive and as MBAs fresh from college, the excitement is even more to see how CEOs work.  And this was our day to actually go and see, learn from the CEO himself. As we entered the cabin of Mr. Bijou Kurien, we received a warm welcome from the CEO which was then shortly followed by the rendezvous. 

Being an XL alumnus, he was very enthusiastic while speaking about the old timers of XLRI – the professors, the alums who are holding top positions in other companies and the administration office staff. The nostalgia drove in as he mentioned that that he was a part of the XL-IIMC Sports meet during his time – one of the most happening events at XLRI. 

We were indeed very fortunate to spend an entire day with the CEO of Reliance Lifestyle. The day went very smoothly starting from talking to Bijou on various topics like retail and its future in India, Reliance retail’s growth strategy, its philosophy behind the expansion, the jewelry business, sports specially Badminton, to relishing the delicious lunch at “The Great Kebab Factory”. As we climbed  the steps for lunch at the Mantri mall at Malleshwaram in Bangalore along with Bijou and his other colleagues, they showed us the 7 stores of Reliance Retail – aptly reflecting  the heavy expansion strategy of Reliance in the last couple of years!

MBA education actually made a lot of sense for us when we sat for the meeting with the “Property Approval Group” of Reliance Lifestyle along with the CEO. As we gathered, the meeting was held to decide on renting the best location for opening Reliance stores. Retail location analysis and detailed study was done to find out the best place for the Reliance stores to be located. Theories and concepts of Retail and Category management made a lot more meaning as we saw its use in the Reliance Lifestyle business. Education makes more sense when we see its application in real life and nothing better than the day with the CEO of Reliance Lifestyle business could have given us. We could experience the perfect blend of academia and corporate as time passed.

The second half of the day after lunch was spent mostly accompanying Bijou in his meetings on the jewelry business. We could sense Bijou’s knowledge of the industry and his style of working as the day progressed.  His knowledge about the retail sector and his insights during the meetings were very impressive.

What makes a great leader? As the day was drawn to close we got the answer to our question. It is the simplicity and the honesty towards your work that differentiates successful leaders from others. Here, on this day, we had met a man with 30 years of experience in the industry still very much enthusiastic about work, fresh with a huge pool of knowledge in him and an asset that is priceless and hard to find these days – simplicity!!. Once again, old truth started flashing in our minds as we were about to leave Bijou’s office – the most valued possession lies in the sincerity with which one works and holds on to his/her fundamentals  - rest everything falls in line.

Lisa Mohapatra & Ankush Gupta

Students of GMP 2010-2011

XLRI, Jamshedpur 

GMPian Ankit Arora's article on financial markets published by CoolAvenues

Good news friends !

One of our GMP colleagues- Ankit Arora has been published as an author on CoolAvenues.

Ankit has written an article focussed towards recent developments in Indian financial markets and how one can avail the business opportunities in this space.

Here is the excerpt from the article:

"The Indian financial markets are undergoing major transformation since the last 2 years. We are witnessing lot of new developments in Indian financial markets. This article attempts to cover some of the recent developments in Indian financial markets and the possible business opportunities that one can avail.

To begin with, recently [Apr 2011], NSE, National Stock Exchange of India introduced the Smart order routing [SOR] which would allow the orders to pass from NSE to various other stock exchanges. What SOR does is that it looks for the best possible price across various exchanges. So if Reliance is trading at 995 in NSE and at 1000 in BSE, this SOR system would execute your order on NSE and thus save you Rs 5 per share."

To read the complete article, please visit:

http://www.coolavenues.com/mba-journal/finance/recent-developments-and-business-opportunities-indian-financial-markets

XLRI covered in the Fun@BSchools column by ET

Some parts of the famed XL life have been explored by today’s Economic Times in its Fun@Bschools column:

Check out the full column in today ET here: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/index.asp

Cheers to XL!

Updates on Sports Tournament

Updates !

Day 3 [ 17 Mar 2011]

Table Tennis

As expected, TT competition today also comprised of some fiercely contested and topsy turvy games in this ultimate challenge race for supremacy and honour. The event witnessed large amount of sports enthusiasts who bore the heat and space constraints to support their respective players and teams. All the games were played in true spirit with players from both groups fighting hard to gain valuable points for their teams amidst loud cheering and support from the audience. It was a great treat to watch and the spectators got their money's worth. The day witnessed matches of great skill and bitter competition with Belal-Narendra Santhanam and Mrigank-Ananth matches being the standouts among all. Today was a day for the Blasters as they blew away their Acer opponents in most matches. Himadri,Ashish, Rishi and Ananth held fort for the Acers while Abhinav,Belal, Harish,Anuj Jhawar and Animesh kept the Blasters flag waving high with pride. Kudos to the competitors specially Balaji and Lavish who fought hard making the opponents sweat for their victory.

Cricket

Much awaited cricket match between Acers and Blasters was played on 16th morning. The weather was good and both teams eager to show their skills on the battle field. Match started with Acers won the toss and decided to bat first. The starting was not good, in the first over of match itself Acers lost their first wicket. After this, Acers batted carefully and steer the match towards a decent total of 102 Runs in 19 overs losing all the wickets. Top scorer from Acers was Lavish (31 runs) and from Blasters Ankush took 4 wickets while Animesh took 3.

Blasters started with a blast by putting 13 runs in first over of the match, but in second over they lost their 2 wickets and continue to loose wickets till a good partnership built between Ankush and Kapila but duo couldn’t save the Blasters from defeat of 22 runs. Kapila scored highest from Blasters side (21 runs). From Acers Junaid took 4 wickets and Manoj took 3. Chinmay and Anupam Aloke grabbed 3 catches each.

Tennis

Acers once again had a good day at tennis, winning both their games comfortably. Brijesh won against Prashant Sahay 6-0 and Anupam won against piyush 6-1. The third and the last match of the day between, both Blasters players, Ankush and Deepak is yet again a one sided affair with Ankush winning 6-1. With this the preliminary round almost comes to an end and the quarter final matches are scheduled to begin today at 5:00 PM.

Badminton

Two games we played - one an evenly contested match between Jerry and Narendra which Narendra won after a tiring battle on the court. Second match between Junaid and Yatendra comfortably won by Yatendra in direct sets.

With this Blasters take 10 pts lead over Acers for the first time in the tournament and we come to the quarter final stage today with lots of points and pride at stake.

XLRI GMP Presents Acers [Sec A] vs Blasters [Sec B]

XLRI GMP Presents

Acers [Sec A] vs Blasters [Sec B]

Dr. Mine Cinar's (Director, Center for Global Management & Responsible Leadership, Loyola University, Chicago) testimonial on XLRI-GMP

Dr. Mine Cinar's (Director, Center for Global Management & Responsible Leadership, Loyola University, Chicago) testimonial on XLRI-GMP:

XLRI Dream Run 2011

XLRI Dream Run

Davos 2011 - Vineet Nayar, HCL Technologies (XLRI Batch 1985)

GliMPse - January Edition

GliMPse - Issue 3

XLRI GMP Students’ Experience With The Chinese

In his book “Making Sense of Chindia”, Environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh wondered if it would be possible for the two countries (India and China) to begin respecting each other and rise to commanding heights in the comity of nations.

“Well, if our recent experience is any indicator, then it does seem we are getting there” says Prof. Jittu Singh, head of International Relations department at XLRI Jamshedpur. What Prof. Singh is referring to is the recent interactions of XLRI students with Chinese and Taiwanese schools and institutions.

Nikhil Uppal, an MBA student of XLRI Jamshedpur had a “Chinese experience” just a week ago. Nikhil participated in and won “Olympus”, the flagship pan-India business leadership competition at IIMC`s B-School fest - Intaglio-2011. The participants came not only from top Indian schools such as all the IIMs, ISB and MDI but also from schools across Asia Pacific such as “China Europe International Business School” (CEIBS), Shanghai. “I found the Chinese participants very eager to learn about India, our education system and our core values” – says Nikhil when asked about his experiences. It seems Nikhil won not only the event, easily one of the toughest competitions in the b-school landscape, but along with other participants also managed to impress the students from across the Himalayas.

Carlos Conde, a contestant at Olympus and an MBA student from China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, was all praises for the quality of Indian b-schools and their students:

“Although it was my first visit to India I felt the warm welcome of the organizers and competitors. Over the three days we bonded and formed friendship, but especially we had a lot of fun. I am very impressed with the high level demonstrated by Indian students, proving the high caliber of the business education in India".

Cut to Taiwan- China’s richer cousin. Recently, a few XLRI students from the 1 year MBA program – GMP, visited Taiwan’s Fu Jen Catholic University to understand the macroeconomics of one of the most developed cities in Asia. Not only they received grand welcome, but were much sought after not only by the local students, but also by the dignitaries from the industry as well as other institutions. For instance, they were invited by the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) which was interested in knowing the viewpoints of future business leaders of India. Lawrence Shan, Senior Vice President of TWSE greeted the students warmly and spent an hour discussing about Chinese macroeconomics and stock markets. “They have excellent long term vision. They wish to exchange ideas with our young talent and also attract them as investors in their future growth” says Amit Temurnikar the lead representative of XLRI student contingent in Taiwan.

“XLRI firmly believes in collaboration with top universities around the world and especially looks forward to exchanging management lessons with Chinese universities and their students”, sums up Prof. Singh.

Books Junction: Online Book Rental Library

http://www.booksjunction.co.in/ is a book rental library started by Deepak Agrawal (GMP '09, XLRI Jamshedpur ) in the NCR region

Online Book Rental Library, Fiction Library, Circulating Library - Books Junction run an online book rental library service in Delhi/NCR (Gurgaon, NOIDA, Ghaziabad and Faridabad). You can start reading books from our vast collection by registering with us and becoming a member.