Term 8 done - 100% MBA

My system clock said 3:36 AM on 29th March 2008. I realized it was a marquee moment in my life. I just completed my last take home exam for PWPT and got technically done with all academic work. Quickly emailed the assignment to Stefan Thau, my prof, took a print out and went to the academic center to drop it. Didn't stop there, took J one of my good friends at ISB to take a picture of me making the last submission (I'm a senti moron. See pic below). We came back and to celebrate the occasion opened up the bottle of red wine, which my future employer had sent with their welcome kit. After two glasses of wine and the onset of a mild confusion we both set out on a walk of revelation, nostalgia and soul-searching. Finally came back to the room at 6:30 AM and crashed :). lol...

Term 8 was a breeze. I took four subjects once again (How boring). Business to Business Marketing(BBMK), Microfinance (MFIN), Behavioral Finance (BEFN) and Power & Politics (PWPT) were my subjects this term. Gary Lilien, supposedly the next Kotler took the first half of BBMK. Really enjoyed listening to old-school style lectures from this Penn State prof. And well in some ways marketing engineering or scientific marketing is what I'm gonna take as my first job post-MBA. MFIN was interesting and my behavior had changed so much Term 8 to assimilate anything from BEFN !!! PWPT was an interesting subject but I was not in any mood to drag myself to do great work. Nevertheless the insights from PWPT are going to help me for a long long time in life. In total... Term 8, total timepass :).

Have a week more on campus with a one day trip to see the new employer mid-way. Lotsa people are headed to Goa/Dandeli etc. Come friday ISB will be a different place with parents and relatives of all students flocking in. Ah...well, it is a dream come true for many of us and who better to have in your midst.

Khatam Khatam

Life moves on. This is the last week of classes and I have just one quiz and one take home exam remaining. Next week is disorientation week. Our laptops will be removed of all MBA course software and we all will get out of the network. The exit formalities have been outlined and soon we all we be on our way out :(
Well we don't stop at that. Already extensive planning is on for the orientation program for the Class of 2009. I'll get to stay for 8 more days at ISB starting the 11th of next month. It will be interesting to see a new batch come in with all new spirits (pun intended).
Had friends from Chennai come over last weekend and we all enjoyed Holi together. This was my first real full-fledged holi celebrations and the word "ultimate" is a let down. In fact Holi would easily rank as my best day here. And in the middle of all this I did some more restaurant hopping (Mediterranean and Terrace bay - both turning out to be quite good).
Tomorrow is the last day of classes. We all are gonna be in ISB T-shirts. It is so sad that the year is getting over. Today in BEFN class the entire 8 terms ran through my mind. I have to admit that this feels really strange. Anyways as I said in the beginning of this post, life moves on.

Some fun atlast

So finally we get to enjoy Hyderabad. I haven't chilled so much in quite sometime. While I still maintain the same schedules, this time around I laze around in friend's quads, watch flood light cricket, eat out and just chat a lot on gtalk. Today we are having a sleepover at the atrium. It is incredibly strange and funny to have this in the academic centre but it is fun in some ways. So many beds have been put and a movie is being screened. The SLC (Student Life Council) is determined to make every single day remaining at ISB a really enjoyable one.
This week is mid-term week and we have some work but the last 3 weeks have been quite some fun. After having visited quite a few restaurants around hyd it is now time to pass some comments

Chutneys - A vegetarian's delight. Good Dosas (Try the MLA dosa), vadas and buffet.
Malgudi - Really poor service, so poor that it can make you feel that the food is bad even though it is average.
Bhavarchi - Really reputed for its Biriyanis but sadly we were not impressed. The biriyani was bland and they ran out of stuff at 9 PM (All for a highly reputed 24-hour biriyani place)
Sampradaya - Excellent veggie. buffet. You get the best of South India and the ambience is truly amazing.
Southern Spice - Once more bad service. But the food was really good. The fish curry could have been slightly better but overall very enjoyable.
Laguna - Very impressive mediterranean plus Italian fare. Good falafels, tasty pizzas, salads and pastas. Very satisfying overall and not to forget the great ambience
Fusion 9 - Trendy, upmarket and infested with Firangs and page 3 crowd. Bad service but pretty decent food with good cheeses and steak.
Angethi - Nice punjabi food. Dont miss the biriyani and the mutton soup. They are really good.

I know that I still have a few more good ones left. Please do suggest...I hardly have a month left.
The last weekend a small group of friends here went on a one day trip to Nagarjuna sagar dam (150 km from here). It was a pleasant road trip with a nice little island museum and a beautiful waterfall (Ettipottala falls - pic below). I realize that this period of fun is really shortlived. Can't imagine going out and living the tough corporate life again :( :(. Where is the pause button?

The calm

The placement week is almost over. There are like 1-2 companies coming today and tomorrow each. Placing 400+ students in a week is not an easy thing and ISB always wants to up the challenge by increasing the number of students. While there were students who cracked the placements by getting the meatiest of roles or by increasing their salaries 3 or 5 times, law of averages also ensured that a few got pretty raw deals. Some did not get the kind of offers they wanted and have declined to take up anything. I made 2 more offers but for the moment decided to accept the Consulting offer. But all in all, although it was a really draining week for everyone involved in the placements it was good work all round!

Day 2

So I got my first offer. The consulting firm I was interviewing with today apparently liked me and after three rounds the question was popped. I should say the selection process was very interesting. In the first round I met the Principal of the firm and he administered a case and then I had to field a bunch of PIs. I actually messed up the numbers in the case and then announced myself that I want to do it again. The Principal smiled and I redid it. I thought I'm out of the process and came back for a nap.

To my surprise they called me for the second round. So then started the most interesting part of the process. I was given around 30+ pages of a case with lots of data. I was asked to make a presentation of case findings and my . It was a very interesting case and I thought I did that fairly well. Within 5 minutes I was called in for the final round. I was realizing that things were happening very fast. The final round was pure PI about all my professional experience and lot of scenario based questions. It went quite decently and finally the offer was made.

The firm is into sales & marketing consulting, an area of interest. I told them that I was not expecting the offer and I need some time to decide whether I want to sign it or not. They were nice enough to let me go back and huddle with my friends for an hour. They have given me a week to decide on accepting, so took my first offer. I have a few interviews for some challenging direct sales/marketing roles. So will try my hand and see if I can get something else more exciting.

Day 1

So the placement process has officially started. Day 0 was in full swing yesterday and Interviews were on till 4 AM last night. News trickled in about some of the majors trying to poach a few students. It feels a little strange that I don't have any interviews today but that is partly 'coz of the kind of applications I made. ADAG has announced a rather long list of interviews and my mates are going to be interviewed over the next two days. I think they are going to make some never seen before number of offers to ISB students. Tomorrow I have just 1 interview with a consultancy and day after I already have 5 companies lined up (with potentially 1-2 more looking clear possibilities). I hope I can make some sensible choices.

Day '-1'

"Zindha rahe tho agla haftha milenge" said one of the smart guys on campus. He was obviously kidding but taking a real nice dig at placements. Today is day '-1' and with day 0 tomorrow there are going to be quite a few on campus who will interview with big names starting tomorrow. My guess is that atleast 80-100 students will be out on day 1 and a similar number on day 2. There are already 543 different job postings this year and frankly there are a number of really meaty offers for experienced students. As the placement week nears shortlists have started pouring in. My applications are a mix of small-medium to really tiny companies. As of now, I'm sitting with a few shortlists but will start with just one on day 2 and many more starting day 3. The dream company with whom I'm interviewing for the last 2 months has still not announced anything and with 2 days to go, the ding looks more or less certain from them. Anyhow I should manage something next week if not during the month ahead, but it is truly one of the biggest experiences we came to b-school for.
ISB...Time to break a few more records :)

Meanwhile R2 results for Class of 2009 are out. Welcome folks. Time to party and chill.

Term 7 done - 87.5% MBA

So term 7 is also officially over. A surprisingly light one in terms of course work. I don't know of anyone who did four courses this term. There were people who did PAEV earlier and did just two courses this term. Anyhow I did three very good courses. Negotiation Analysis (NEGA), Advertising(ADVT) and Capital Raising Strategies in Corporations (CRSC).

If there is one course that is of greatest value for practical life it is NEGA. Recruiters beware, almost 300+ students have done this course over the last two terms :). Two amazing profs., ISB's own Dishan Kamdar and Catherine Tinsley from Georgetown Univ conduced NEGA this term. In every single class we had live negotiations and there were valuable lessons from each and every one of them. I just can't wait to apply these in real business negotiations. Advertising was another good course. Very light on work, good professors, lotsa videos in class and a final agency project. It was fun all throughout. Of the lot I really enjoyed the Mountain Dew assignment...To cap of a brilliant term we had two great professors for CRSC. The concepts of IPO, Project Financing, Film financing and rainfall insurance were presented so lucidly by Prof. Prabhala and Prof. Kapadia. I'm just amazed that in spite of placement pressures I could enjoy term 7 so much. Thank goodness.

Now all roads lead to placements, which start this Sunday. Shortlists and dings have started pouring in. More expected this week. Preps, mock iHopefully will have something interesting to post in about 2 weeks time. Adios amigos!

Hard to digest

It is fair to expect a certain level of disbelief and criticism to see a young school like ISB to make it to the top 20 but I think some people in public and even the press are taking it a little too far. Had to encounter this in two of my regular media channels. One was in http://www.pagalguy.com/ (PG) and the other was in the popular business daily Economic Times. So in PG one particular guy goes on a rampant criticism saying ISB can never be in the top-20 etc. etc. Anyhow there seems to be a personal angle as to why it pains that one person so much and finally the administrator came in and locked the thread.

And today Economic Times has published a write up on ISB's 4th rank in the PG survey right next to the news item on ISB's 20th rank in FT rankings. Pagalguy had published its b-school rankings based on student/aspirant surveys on 20th Jan 2008 (10 days ago).It does not take rocket science to figure out what the newspaper is getting at.

We at ISB are very clear. There have been detractors in the past and have been critical of the ISB model but they have all been proven wrong. ISB is young and has lot more to achieve and as our Dy. Dean Ajit Rangnekar said "We have to accept this honor with dignity, humility and sensitivity". We at ISB have always and will continue to admire the IIMs. Our Dean's and top administration went to IIMs and even several of our professors went to IIMs. At the same time we appreciate it if we are not compared with IIMs 'coz they have a unique model, which is an incredibly good one too. ISB is fundamentally different from IIMs and I'll not go to explain why.

Info: I have nothing against Pagalguy.com. I have benefited a lot from PG during GMAT prep and b-school admissions and to that end I have posted over 325 responses answering queries of prospective applicants. FT is a leading brand from UK and are reputed as the second best b-school rankings by none other than GMAC which conducts the GMAT test.

Request: Anyone commenting on this post please don't bring in the ISB vs. IIM angle. Such comments will be deleted by me.

Financial Times Rankings

Yesterday a group of us were discussing what kinda rank our college would get in the Financial Times world rankings. A top 25 would be the best possible outcome, we concluded. And the sweetest email came this morning from our dean Rammohan Rao.

*******************************************************
Dear All,

Today, the 28th of January 2008, is a red letter day in the history of the ISB.

The latest list of the 100 top Global MBAs in the world released by The Financial Times today ranks ISB at Twenty (20), making it perhaps the youngest institution ever to be ranked among the top business schools in the world. The fact that we have been ranked 20th in the first time we have participated in rankings, makes this announcement so much more gratifying. (The details will be shortly published on http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba)

We set out in 2001 with a vision to be an internationally top-ranked, research driven and independent management institution that grooms future leaders for India and the world. It is therefore a great moment for us, as it marks the accomplishment of an important part of the vision that guides and inspires every action that we take.

Each one of you has played a critical part in scripting this success - our faculty for their research work and publishing in top tier journals and teaching, our students, who are all successful professionals today, our staff, who are passionately committed to excellence, and our families for making the ISB such a vibrant community that it is. I thank you all for your invaluable contributions, and look forward to your continued support and commitment towards strengthening this great institution.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I welcome you all for a get-together at the Atrium at 12:15 pm today.

With best regards,
MR
*******************************************************

Cheers ISB. Thank you Rajat Gupta and team!

Heat

So the ding from O came very quickly last weekend, but not before a good dinner at Taj Ahala, what a solace. So back to square one. One strange trend is appearing on campus. Companies come in and talk about picking the 2-4 years experienced IT guys and wanting to groom them into Engagement/BD managers in about 3-5 years post MBA. That is definitely a good prospect, I would say. And the 8+ yrs categories are gonna rake in the moolah this time with roles in Corporate strategy, Delivery and the like up for grabs.

So what about the wonderful 5-8 yr experienced bracket? What are we to these organizations? It is quite scary to hear so many companies clearly avoiding this category. 25 days to placements and the stock markets are plunging. Can't forget 2001 when I passed out of engineering and entered a market battered by a major US slowdown. Till some shortlists come, a slightly negative sentiment will linger.

What timing?

Seriously. After more than 1.5 years I have got this sore back as a result of the silliest of things I can do on campus. Well I flew kites on saturday. And what great fun it was. Donno what kind of crazy monkey jumps I did. I shouldn't have played so much with D's son.

But what to do now. Interview is gonna happen in 3 days. Will be my third interview so far. G was the first to shortlist me. Did a phone interview first. I thought I messed it but and then she called me for second round. It has been a month now and we are still faced with scheduling problems. Donno when this round will ever happen!!! Then B shortlisted me and I thought had a cracker interview. But somehow she didn't like me :(, cha too bad !

And now O wants to meet me. So J & S have been doing cases with me for a while now and today all of a sudden A administered a couple of cases in a totally new style and flummoxed me. So I came up with beautiful MECE strategies that will ensure that the problem is structured well and is presented convincingly. But what crap if I don't understand the question properly and just focus on structuring the problem. Oh God where are you!

The week that was

It was a totally sinusoidal week. Some lows compensated with some big highs. Lows first

• Tel Aviv University canceled this years exchange program leaving me shattered. All my Israeli, Egyptian and Turkish tour plans lay derailed now :'(
• Languishing in Chennai I forgot that I had to revise core terms. Now wondering how I'll catch up

Now for the highs

• Received the keys for my new apartment in Chennai. News is that DLF is entering Chennai with a complex right opposite my apartment. My mom is a visionary :)
• Got my first consulting shortlist. It was a company I was hoping will shortlist me for my domain knowledge and they didn't let me down.
• Won the ISB Torchbearer award. My friends say it was expected but nevertheless it is very sweet.

It is placement prep season from now on. Just three subjects next term should help me prepare better, provided I keep away from timepass activities. God bless the week that went by.

Term 6 Done - 75% MBA

Somehow managed to cross one more :). Did four subjects again this term. Consumer Behaviour (COBE), Customer and Market Performance Management (CMPM), Investing in Private equity (INPE) and Financial Statement Analysis (FSAN) were my subjects this term. It was a good fare with special mention to the faculty for CMPM and INPE. So many things happened this term and as usual it is over even before I realized it started.


Our ELP is almost complete with just some minor documentation left. All ELPs will soon get closed and focus will shift to placement preps next term. Mom left Hyd and is happily enjoying in Atlanta now. Sad news is that my exchange program looks lil doubful with the tension in TAU now. The strike has been going on for 2 months now. If it doesn't happen then I should find something else to do in April and May.


Me taking a 4 day break now. Got to finish some chores in Chennai and may be do some reading too. And to all readers of this post, wish you a very happy, successful and enriching 2008.

Anniversaries

It has been three years since then. For the first time me and S decided that enough was enough and decided to drive to Houston all by ourselves. It was a little more than a 12 hour drive and the interesting aspect was that both of us had never driven on a highway. So I said "One day we have to do it. Why not today". After roughly 7 hours reached Dallas and decided to call up M, my college mate and colleague, to see if we two can spend the night at his place. He was a gracious host. Just after dinner I logged on to read the worst news I have ever read in life. The entire coastlines of Bay of Bengal and nearby seas had experienced the worst TSUNAMI ever a few hours ago. All phone lines to India were jammed and after several hours finally managed reached my uncle to find that everybody we knew were safe. But sadly the damage was done and the situation was really bad. My roomie's brother had escaped by the skin of his teeth and when the videos came it was indeed shocking to see mother nature's fury. Today is the third anniversary of that day but the shock still remains. Well, it is a day for all of us to remember that we are all just tiny little things in this world order.

Today also marks 1 year since I was interviewed for ISB. ISB is quite a life changing experience and one year later, today, I'm looking at 3 more days to become a 75% MBA. At the same time I'm also quite tense about the fact that I have just 3 more months left and the job hunt phase is starting. So many pre-placement talks have happened. And so far nothing has excited me much. It is just the beginning say some but this time around I should not take up any offer just because I need a job. I hope I can hold up and not buckle under any kind of pressure. Thinking of the TSUNAMI is just the right thing now. These are small things after all. I should rather worry about my life goals instead. Ahem!

Solstice 2007

It has been 2 full days of fun at ISB. Probably the first clearly chilled weekend here. As such the mood in the campus keeps changing almost as much as the hyderabad weather. 'Solstice' is ISB's reunion event. Started in 2003 it brings alums from all previous batches back to ISB and everyone celebrates their home coming. This year's Solstice apparently had many firsts. With the placement season coming up in about two months, alum interaction to a good degree is centered around that. This time around our placement committee organized a day full of mock interviews conducted by the alums. Around 140 of got a chance to go for a mock and I was among the lucky ones. Good a fairly good idea about my preparation levels !!!

The highlights of Solstice this year were the new 'Events Lounge' created by our batch and the live performance last night by the 'Indian Ocean' band. Our batch was one studious batch. The average CGPA of students is up by 0.2 and everyone studies like hell. So whenever parties and music was played in any of the student villages there was a big hue and cry. So much so that there were heated discussions and meetings with the Deans etc. etc. After all these problems the Student Life Council (SLC) decided to construct a new 'Events Lounge' away from SV-3 near the nursery. It is a beautiful hangout and probably the best getaway that can be built on campus. Everyone is damn impressed. In fact on friday night I even saw some of the die-hard book afficianados at the lounge (Well, McKinsey shortlists are out and so books can probably rest for a few hours). I'm sure all future batches will be thankful to our batch for coming up with the 'Events Lounge'.

Indian Ocean's performance on saturday night was again too good. I have never listened to them live. Boss...The experience was just awesome. To add the the fun there was free booze too. All in all it was a wonderful night. Back to reality today with assignments and pre-reads. Anyhow, three cheers for an amazing Solstice 2007. As our SLC President rightly put it, Solstice 2007 was one of the most successful events in the history of ISB and by far the biggest Solstice ever. 'Class of 2008' rocks.

Why MBA?

This question is rather too late in the day for someone who is a week away from becoming 75% MBA. But before imaginations run wild, lemme clarify that this post is not really one more figment of my self-introspection and neither is it intended to mock at anybody else's perspective. Notwithstanding why I'm doing my MBA, it sometimes is intriguing when I hear the rather wide ranging (some puzzling) answers I get to hear from some of my batch mates and the several b-school aspirants I interact with. I never thought that the MBA meant so many different things to people. Some of the puzzling ones include

i) I wanted to stretch myself
ii) My Dad challenged me to do an MBA
iii) The chicks are too good man
iv) I think I must become an entrepreneur but I don't have a business idea
v) I really missed college life
vi) I knew I needed a change but couldn't figure out what

While these may sound funny at first shot, the individuals actually managed to put them across convincingly. People indeed have different takeaways from this thing called MBA.

'Solstice 2007' will happen this weekend. We are expecting around 150-200 alums on campus. It is gonna be lot of fun and placement gyaan at the same time. Meanwhile, R1 results of the 'Class of 2009' are out. Welcome juniors. Two aspirants I helped in some ways are thru (Several others in Pagalguy did too) and one more is waitlisted, while the one I thought would sail in very easily missed out.

Finally the third part of last story is getting ready and will be out soon enough :) :).

Term 5 Done - 62.5% MBA

Yet another term whizzed past or I should rather say bull dozed past us. Contrary to popular alum gyaan term 5 was one of the most hectic terms. May be the choice of courses hurt me but almost the whole batch kept saying this. Did four courses; Marketing Execution, Marketing services, International Finance and Global Strategic management. The less said about academics the better. I would have loved to derive more out of the subjects and what the profs. wanted to convey but somehow the workload was overwhelming enough that I was either under prepared for the classes or was distracted with one thing or the other.

The resume fever really caught up this term. I have been fine tuning my resume all through the term but both my selective applications so far have been dinged (Anyhow I'm too tall to be part of a "short-list"). Did not come as a big surprise considering the spiky strong profiles that got short-listed. More international companies are coming this term and the system of not knowing the final results till February ensures that some of the best in the batch end up getting literally every international offer. I do not know of a way around the complicated issue of accommodating rolling international recruiters without affecting domestic recruiters who come only in Feb. Can't really complain 'coz almost 150 recruiters come around that period.

After exams till this friday, me and team of three others achieved a first of sorts. We won the first place in an RFP contest at IIM Ahmedabad's Confluence 2007. The team sacrificed Diwali celebrations on campus and submitted the prelims proposal 2 weeks ago and lo we entered the finals. After a full nighter on friday we flew in to Ahmedabad on Saturday morning. The IIMA campus was a no-nonsense place and the architecture reminded of my days in CEG. IIMA students were great hosts and everything was organized to perfection. The victory was really sweet and could not have come at a better time. Term 6 starts tomorrow and I'm now staring at two case submissions due by morning. God, please give me the strength to get through two more :) !

Look who's come

Two weeks ago, we had our first class of GSMT(Global Strategic Management) and we watched with awe, Thomas Friedman talk about how, when we he was covering the post 9-11 drama in the US, a silent revolution happened in the Infosys' and Satyam's of the world. How in his meeting with Nandan Nilekani, he was told that the global playing field was getting levelled and that the Americans were not ready for it. This was the incident that shaped his thoughts to write 'The world is flat', his New York Times bestseller. I came back that day and watched a few of his interviews in YouTube and was really awe-struck with the way he talked about global issues. I think he is one hell of a speaker packing emotion and conviction.

Little did I realize then that I was going to listen to this great man speak live so soon and that too walking just a couple of hundred metres to Khemka Auditorium. We all got to know of Tom's arrival only in the afternoon. But guess what the 400 seater auditorium brimmed over with people. There were students, alums, faculty, press, AIKYA families etc. and Tom did not disappoint anyone. He spoke about his books 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' onwards to his upcoming work, about the various phases of globalisation with his own wit and charm. This one hour, listening to Tom, was a real silver lining on an otherwise abysmally bad bad day.

Thomas L Friedman
Video Link

In the Rankings

If I remember right, this is the very first time that ISB has participated in b-school rankings. The Business India 2007 rankings rate ISB at #4 in India behind the top three IIMs A,B & C. Pretty good show by ISB, I would say, as we wait for the FT rankings which will be out in a few months. Cheers ISB.

See the article here