Open House for 2012 admissions

The 14th PGSEM Program is scheduled to start from June 2012.
Open House session scheduled at IIMB Campus on Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 10.00AM.
A forum to know more about the program, clarify the doubts, interact with professors, alumni and current students.


Registration links here -
http://www.iimb.ernet.in/node/3083
http://iimbpgsem.blogspot.com/2011/11/pgsem-2012-admissions.html


This is where I started it all exactly an year back. Hoping to see a lot of enthusiasts turn up on a Sunday morning....

Long Hiatus ... Q2 in progress (Week 9)

Its been long that I've written about the proceedings.
Failing badly to stay in touch with the Blogger. There seems to be an unmanageable need for time, and the first thing it is hitting is my resolution to update this blog with pure content.


Anyways, here is a brief update on what has happened in the last couple of months -


Q2 has started with a bang. This quarter we are doing (a) Organizational Theory (b) MacroEconomics & (c) Quantitative Methods I


OT: Good subject, but a lot of theory (as the name suggests). The prof is extremely jovial, and loves his subject. He is always trying to make it more fun, more interactive, with case discussions once in a while.
Till now we have covered, Classical, Behavioral theory of Organization, Managing Uncertainty and Interdependence in an Organization, Structure of an Organization.
Mid-term is already done. A MCQ based questionnaire for 35 marks with 50% negative marking was set. My performance has been miserable. The prof warned us of the "Law of diminishing returns", and that's what has happened to me, with a lot of negatives upsetting the final score. The finals will carry 65 marks, and I definitely need to pull my socks up to stand a chance of a B.


ME: The one subject that I'm loving the most. The subject is teaching us something that we can relate to everyday. Till now we have covered macro economic variables like GDP, GNP, national income, per-capita income, business cycles (troughs and peaks in aggregate demand), ways to measure the GDP of a country, the biblical equation for Demand (Y = C + I + G + NX), Monetary policy, Fiscal policy etc.
All the time, the intent of the course has been to enable us to answer one simple question - "Why do we see the business cycles of demand?"
We have delved deep into each factor of the demand function, how each one affects the output, thereby affecting the economy.
The Prof. has been "inspirational" to say the least. She is putting in a lot of effort to make sure that everyone is in the same page as hers. Her way of teaching is also excellent, with lectures in class, lot of class participation from the students, online sharing of presentations and articles from the leading economic news papers/magazines. It has been an exciting ride till now. Off late we are doing IS-LM curve, the pillar of Macro.
In ME, we will be having 2 mid-term quizzes (25 marks each) and 1 end-term paper (50 marks). The first quiz is done, and happy to say that I've done well in this one.


QM1: One of the most talked about subjects in the MBA course, and one of the most talked about profs at IIMB. He has a very strong preference for open source software. Made us to install a few open source application and add-ins to replace MS-Excel.
The class seems to be quite interactive. The prof. demands a lot out of us, and there have been incidents in the past few weeks where half the class have been sent out because of under preparation. Prof is using a mix of lecture based and case based technique in class. Off late he has even added videos explaining the concepts with painstaking details.


More updates - We already had a couple of mid-term exams for ME and QM, and one for OT.
The end term is coming up shortly, in a weeks time now. We also have a very interesting project going on for our QM course. The project aims to analyze statistically the growth in fortunes of LS candidates between general elections of 2004 and 2009. The data collection phase has been completed by the teams till now.


One good news to share - Q1 results have come out after what seemed like ages. Managed to top one subject and also top the class. Feels great to see the efforts pay off, at least once. :-)

First Halt !!

Yes, the bullet train has come to its first halt.
After 5 tests and 3 projects we are finally done with quarter one.


The mid-terms did go reasonably well. FA (Financial Accounting) and ME (MicroEconomics)midterms accounted for 35% of the overall marks respectively. The end term exams were scheduled on consecutive days - 26th & 27th Aug 2011.
ME paper had a mix of subjective questions and numericals and was scheduled for 2 hours on 26th.
27th morning we had FA for 3 hours. The question paper was cool, had 35 questions of 1 mark each and was in the form of multiple choice and fill in the blanks. The questions were based on accounting concepts and medium length cases on financial transactions. Personally I enjoyed the paper though have serious doubts about a number of answers.
Finally the SM exam lasted for 4 hours in the afternoon session. We were given a case on the tire industry to analyze and answer the supporting questions accompanying the case. The real effort on everyone's part was to concentrate for that whole length of time.


Apart from the exam each subject had a project report to be submitted. The ME and SM prof were lenient enough to give us an extension of one week for the report submission. The FA prof was very strict about the submission date from the beginning. He had set the deadline as the day of the end term exam. Here we gotto see a little bit of a drama being played out regarding the FA report submission - another side of being part of a class environment.
The CR was kind enough to request the prof for an weeks extension for the report submission. The prof actually agreed but with an added clause - there should not be even one person ready to submit it on time, in which case the original deadline remains. "Wow, thanks CR, you have got us one whole week to purely concentrate on studies" - that was the mood of all !! Well, not all, as we were about to find out shortly..One among us felt otherwise (in fact a poll showed 3), took the extreme step of sending a mail to the prof for retaining the old deadline, not even thought it worth discussing with the class, and that was the end of all our euphoria. The CR conducted an anonymous poll to see if there was consensus in the class for the extension of the deadline. 71 out of 74 felt that an extension would definitely be of help, 3 were non-committal and 3 felt otherwise. Strangely the total number came out to be 76, for a class of 74. Never thought about this at that moment, someone told later that one guy could have voted multiple times. Whatever be it, we were doomed with one day being lost in the process - a day neither utilized in studying nor in preparing the report. 
After another day of requests and denials, the deadline remained stuck on 27th Aug. Anyways, there was no point in cribbing, everyone moved ahead with the conviction that next time we should show better unity in the class.


Last week we completed the end term and got a well deserved one week break before commencement of classes for quarter2. Still little efforts were required for completing the ME report which we have finally submitted today. The SM report is scheduled for 5th Sept submission. The vacation or whatever this one week break is supposed to be called is flying by and I've finally managed to make some time to update this post.
Still sticking by my original commitment of updating the blog with the subjects learnt during Q1.


Hope to start writing about the subjects soon. Keep reading!!!!!

Midterms are here !!!

Mid-terms are starting from July 16th with Financial Accounting.
Microeconomics mid-term is scheduled on 23rd July.


FA is closed book exam and is allocated 35% weightage. There will be a second FA exam (end-term) also having 35% weightage. The remaining 30% weightage is for the project work to be submitted after the end-term exam.
I've decided to write my project on "Kensai Nerolac Paints". But that's way far from now, time to study for the mid-terms. :-)


ME prof. has offered us an open book. As per the general notion (formed through interactions with seniors & alums), an open book indicates TERROR. One and half hours of complete harakiri.
Pages after pages of concepts to be put into practice. Keeping my fingers crossed. :-)
ME will also have an end-term and a project weighing 35% and 30% respectively.
The ME project is to be based on IPR. It will be a group project. Haven't even started to think about it though.


Strategy on the other hand does not have any mid-term. One class presentation on a case weighing 10%, a project work worth 20% and the final exam weighing 70% is the outline of the course. 70% on the end-term sounds really terrifying, considering that the prof. might ask us to analyze a single case on that day (being locked in a class room for 4 hours).
Seniors were provided with tea/coffee & biscuits to make themselves comfortable during the test. ;-)
Temporary relief  though!!!

Pehel 2011 - First event by the freshers!!!

After weeks of deliberations the D-Day was finally here.

9th of July 2011 was the day when a new batch of PGSEM students were to organize their first ever event at the IIM Bangalore: PEHEL 2011.
Pehel literally means Initiative and aptly suits the fresher's event, organized by the freshers, for the seniors.


The planning for the event had started almost a month back, immediately after the orientation. Several committees were formed for performing specific tasks and were headed by a core committee who were in charge of the overall direction of the event. The design team consisting of Shalini and Vineeth came up with a creative logo for Pehel 2011. This became the logo for our t-shirts and the theme for the event.


The "Warli" design was contemporary yet very traditional and was readily acclaimed by everyone. It did not miss even the Director's eye and he too praised the batch for the efforts in coming up with such a nice design.
Everything was meticulously planned to the minutest level thanks to the efforts of the omnipresent Chandra. He had taken it onto him to deliver the best and pitched in wherever and whenever he was required, be it the distribution of the invitations to the interaction with the PGSEM office, the last minute plan for anchoring the show to playing the role of the great Gabbar, Chandra was everywhere, Chandra simply rocked!!!
So ... finally, clad in our brand new warli t-shirts and blue jeans (our dress code for the day), we were there to invite the world (read seniors!!!) to a new beginning by PGSEM 2011.


The event started with the "Hi-Tea", arranged behind the auditorium thanks to the PGSEM office. The guests started trickling in by 5 pm and started meeting each other over a cup of tea/coffee.
This part of any IIMB event is supposed to be used for the biggest takeaway of any MBA program - "Networking Time". After interacting with fellow batch-mates and seniors and their families, it was time for officially inaugurating PEHEL 2011. Then there were the last minute delays thanks to the Bangalore traffic. Our chief guests - Prof. Chandra (Director of IIM Bangalore) and Prof. Agrawal (Chairperson PGSEM, CSITM) were held up in traffic and the program was delayed by half an hour.
The seniors, batch-mates and their family members were already seated in the auditorium and it was time to engage them with some kind of entertainment till the official start of the event. The ever so talented Vikram Parthan came to our rescue. He kept the audience engaged with his "First real six-string". We all pitched in with the "Best day of our life"....
Once the chief guests were in the audi, the program started officially with the lighting of the lamp followed by an welcome speech by Prof. Chandra and then by Prof. Agrawal.
Both of them welcomed the audience and eulogized our efforts for coming up with the event in such a short span of time. Thanks to our seniors for showing us the way...
This was followed by the distribution of the "DML" (director's merit list) certificates to the top 10 students of the senior batch, the "Star of the Quarter" award and distribution of participation certificates for CSITM workshop.


After the certificate distribution the stage was all set for the cultural program to start. Anupama & Vikram played the host for the evening. Both Anu and Vikram did a splendid MCing job  while engaging the audience throughout the event. The show started with the Mad Mad Men from St. John's performing a mime for the audience. The Mad-Ads guys were amazing and they set the tone for the evening with a light comedy on a doctor's life starting from the entrance exams to getting admissions in the college, learning the tricks of the trade, their daily hostel life till the day of performing the critical surgery. The audience enjoyed their performance wholeheartedly and cheered them with loud claps and whistles.
The mime was followed by a kid's fashion show. The Shahrukhs & Kareenas of future walked the IIM-B auditorium turned ramp with the "Barbie Girl" playing in the background. It was a treat to see the little ones enjoying their night outs, and were aptly awarded with little chocolate boxes by the end of their performance.


Then it was time for the event of the evening that all of us were waiting for with bated breath - a skit organized in the last two days to the run up to the event, titled "MBA Karenge Hum", featuring the who's who of Bollywood who had come for an interview at IIM Bangalore for PGSEM. The skit featured Amir Khan, Shatrughan Sinha, Sunny paaji, Mithun da, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Nana Patekar as interviewee and Gabbar with his ally Sambha taking the interview.
Kudos to everyone involved in the skit. It was just awesome, hilarious to the brim. Every single soul in the audi enjoyed the on-stage performance and cheered our Bollywood superstars.
Take a bow Anshum Arora for directing this. Without you, this would never have been possible.
Find a link to the video of the skit here :
http://www.viddler.com/explore/rbhuvana/videos/1/


After the madness that ran through the audi for half an hour of the skit it was time for some sanity to come back in the form of soulful music. Vikram, Varkey, Shalini and Anupama stole the show with their performances. Varkey's original struck a cord with the audience.
The group song - "Pal" by KK, was the perfect ending to the evening.
Hand-in-hand we lip synced "Hum rahen ya na rahen kal, kal yaad aayenge ye pal" ;-)
YES that was our "Pal", a "Pal" to remember for the rest of our lives ........

Quarter1 Subjects

The 2.5 years of PGSEM program are divided into 10 quarters.
First quarter we are having 3 subjects Micro Economics, Financial Accounting and Strategic Management.
All 3 are quite interesting and will form the base of our management career.
While there is a little bit of familiarity with accounting, ME & Strategy are completely new ball games.


ME is a field of economics which as the name suggests deals with economics of an organization (smaller scale) compared to macroeconomics which deals with the economics of a nation.
Microeconomics studies the behavior of how the individuals and firms make decisions to allocate limited resources. Microeconomics examines how these consumer decisions and behaviors affect the supply & demand for goods and services, which determines prices, and how prices, in turn, determine the quantity supplied and quantity demanded of goods and services.
The course deals with the basics of economics and I'm just loving it.
I'll be giving the basic ideas of what is covered in class in future blogposts. This might be helpful in understanding the basics of a highly interesting and intellectual subject.


For FA we are again concentrating on the basics. Few things that are getting done at class include Income Statement and Balance Sheet preparation from cash receipts, accounting concepts followed by FASB, GAAP etc.
I'll be writing a few blogposts on FA basics. Can't replicate the cases from my text book here (as they are having copyrights). One can download any FA case from the internet and try to solve the cases based on these basic ideas.


Strategy seems to be another very interesting subject. Though at the present moment majority of my batch-mates including me are flabbergasted by the concepts. The subject looks to be quite abstract and there never seem to be a consensus in the class about any particular strategy that should be recommended based on the case.
The pedagogy followed in the class is case based analysis. One needs to read a case (often 15 to 20 pages, with 10 odd exhibits having loads of data) concentrated on a particular industry or a company (from an industry) and form a strategy for the firm/industry as a whole.
The basic tools used thus far in identifying a strategy include the famous "Porter's 5 forces" analysis, study on financial ratios, identifying business level strategies (costleadership, differentiator, focus player etc.).
The cases that are being discussed in class are from various industries. Till now we have done cases on Indian Airline Industry (cut throat competition), Tyre industry, Japanese Beer industry (oligopoly), Blockbuster entertainment etc.
As one can see not a single case was focused on IT industry. This is supposed to form a broad based learning by assimilating information from various industries.
Since the pedagogy is based on case based learning, won't be able to share much on this as the cases can't be disclosed due to copyright laws.


Stay tuned for details on Microeconomics & Financial Accounting.

Orientation Day 2 & 3 ... Winners of House Cup 2011

Already in the 3rd week of the program.

So want to keep this blog short n simple.

After the late night drama of Orientation Day 1, a new day with loads of excitement and fun filled events awaited us. The early morning sun looked tranquil from the balcony of my lavish hostel room.

It just struck me that I had already spent one night at IIMB, a dream for multitudes, and I was living that dream.

The day had the CSITM participatory workshop in store for us. The workshop was based on the theme of "Moving up the value chain". All the participants were divided into 4 tracks, each headed by a professor. Each track focused on a different aspect of the topic under discussion, looking from the supplier side, the buyer side etc.
The discussions were really enlightening and gave us an overall perspective of where the Indian IT industry is headed.

After an eventful day of the participatory workshop, it was time for some fun.

There were several games events planned for us including TT, Basket Ball, Cricket, Carrom, Badminton. All of these were part of the House Cup tally.

Our team was outstanding in Cricket and we just decimated all our opponents to top the event.

We did equally good in many other events and remained firmly at the top of the leadership board by the end of the sports events.

The seniors had conceived a treasure hunt event post dinner for the 4 groups. They handed over a question paper with a few weird ciphered clues which we were supposed to decipher to find a location. Once the location was identified we were supposed to recover a code from the location and report it back. The groups were supposed to form strategies to retrieve the clues and the codes in the shortest time possible.

A few clues were really outstanding (which we could decipher ;-)) ... "Jogo Bonito" indicated the football ground at IIMB, and we were supposed to retrieve the code from the far post of the pitch dark ground. Then there was "It beeps, Gandhi peeps" ... indicating Gandhi's watermark on the notes dispatched at the SBI ATM inside IIMB. There was a clue on the GPS location of the IIMB main gate. All in all it was a really interesting event. Felt like the symbologist Robert Langdon, trading the sacred alleys of the Vatican (read IIMB) in search of the sacred feminine (next clue !!!).

After 2 hours of endless search and running around every nooks and corners  of the campus, eventually we gave up. We were satisfied with our efforts though. We managed to decrypt a considerable number of clues.

By the time the treasure hunt was over it was nearly 1 am in the night, nevertheless it was not the end of our woes. We were supposed to read an operations case that was to be discussed in the class next morning. I somehow managed to skim through the 13 page document and form an overall idea of the case.

The next morning, 8 am, we had a surprise quiz awaiting us. After the quiz, we had an introductory session on case analysis by one of the most noted professor of IIMB. He was a complete livewire in the class. The session was an open discussion on the case. This was an experience of a lifetime, at a completely different level than what I have had through my entire educational career. The prof managed to get all the answers out of us and guided the discussions in the right direction. He derived certain conclusions from the case which were unimaginable/unthinkable from the multiple readings that one could have had of the case. They say that the data speaks a lot. It was the data in those exhibits that had a story to tell. The prof could conclude that the Marketing head's actions were not aligned to the long term profitability of the firm. He could also conclude that the Engineering head's pricing policy were all screwed up. Hats off to you Sir, you were just outstanding. This one class did the trick to raise the excitement level in the class. All of us started looking for a formal start of the program and to get enlightened by the geniuses of game.

After the class it was time for the finals of the House Cup. There were a few events remaining for the House Cup. First there was quiz and then there was a video skit performed by each group.

The final announcement was to come after tallying the points of each team. There was a neck and neck competition between our team and another team. Going into the final event (video skit) we were leading the 2nd placed team by a meager 5 points margin. Eventually we managed to top the video contest as well, thereby becoming the champions of the "House Cup 2011".

As the captain of the house yours truly was honored with the House Cup trophy by the chairperson Prof. NMA. It was a pleasure to lead the team and eventually receive the trophy from the chairperson.

All the team members lifted the trophy and it was time to cry out "De Ghuma Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"...