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A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF THE BIRLA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY, GREATER NOIDA, INDIA
For Private Circulation Only
Volume XIV, Issue 5, April - June 2013
www.bimtech.ac.in
GRAND EVENT
7
Bridging Business and Society
Social
Marketing
BRIDGING BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
C
ontinuing with its celebrations of 25 years of existence in the field of
management education and nurturing leaders for global
competition, BIMTECH in association with the Academy of Indian
Marketing founded by the the globally renowned Marketing Guru,
Dr Jagdish Sheth, organised the Seventh Annual Indian Marketing Summit
on March 15-16, 2013 at India International Centre, New Delhi.
The event commenced with the lighting of the lamp by a very distinguished personality in the field of
marketing, Dr. Jagdish Sheth. Also participating in the ceremony were Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH; Dr.
Anupam Verma, Deputy Director BIMTECH; and Prof. Dhruva Chak, the Summit Convenor and Area Head
Marketing -BIMTECH. The soul and spirit behind IMS, Prof. Chak introduced the audience to the concept of
Social Marketing and also covered the gist and the theme of the 2-day event. Prof. Chak described Social
Marketing as the way of doing business with a mission; Social Marketing caters to the issue of changing
behaviour of customers. Its greatest challenge is to address the issue of resistance to change by the people.
Subsequently, Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH, took up the pleasant task of delivering the welcome
address to the audience. The welcome address was followed by a very thought – provoking key note address by
the Chief Mentor of the Summit, Dr. Jagdish Sheth. Dr. Sheth, the brilliant Marketing Guru that he is, gave a
holistic view of the concept of Social Marketing and entertained the audience with his quick wit and humour.
The session concluded with Dr Sheth addressing queries raised by the knowledgeable audience. The first
technical session was taken up by Mr. Himanshu Manglik, Director Business Community Foundation & VP
Corporate Communication Nestle; Mr. Mehmood Khan, Rasuli Kanwar Kahn Trust and Dr. Alok Bharadwaj,
Executive Vice President, Canon . The session was moderated by Prof. V. N. Bhattacharya, Strategic Consultant
and Visiting Professor at IIM, Banglore. The Speakers spoke their mind about the various business challenges
faced by organizations in embracing the concept of Social Marketing. The speakers threw light on the concept
of creating shared value and their views on the challenges that companies have identified and negotiated on
their journeys to implement of Social Marketing.
The post lunch session was on Integrating Media, Communication and Technology for Effective Social
Marketing. The moderator for the session was Mr. Amit Agnihotri, Chairman, MBA Universe. The session was
taken up by Mr Brahmanand Singh, CEO, Mobius Films; Mr Ashutosh Chaddha, Director - Corporate Affairs
South Asia, Intel and Mr Arup
Datta, Managing Partner, Raad
Consulting Partners. This session
focused on how companies can
integrate media, communication
and technology harmoniously to
produce meaningful messages to
reach their target audiences and
thus influence their behaviours
for good. The session also
discussedpossible services and
solutions provided by ICT.
Subsequently, there was another
session on Building Social
Marketing into the Corporate
DNA. The session was moderated
by Prof. Madhukar Shukla,
Chairperson, Fr Arrupe Centre for
Ecology & Sustainability, XLRI.
The speakers for the session were
Mr Sameer Chaturvedi, CEO,
Jaipur Rugs; Mr Suhash Apte,
Partner - Blue Earth Network;
Retired Chief Sustainability
Officer - Kimberley Clark and Mr
Rajeev Saxena, Head of Social
Performance and Human Rights
Reporting, Mazars India. This
session talked about how Social
Marketing can be embedded into
the company’s day to day
operations.. They also discussed
how we can change the present
status of Social Marketing as a
peripheral activity into a core
activity undertaken by the
organization.
16 March, 2013, the second day
of the Indian Marketing Summit
started with the session on
Corporate Social Initiatives for
Community well – being. The
session was moderated by Mr.
Umesh Anand, Editor, Civil
Society. The session saw the
participation of Winners of FICCI
/ S E D F B u s i n e s s Wo r l d
competition: Deepak Nitrite Ltd.,
represented by Ms. Archana
J o s h i ; D i r e c t o r, I A B Ta t a
Teleservices, represented by
Mr Abdul Raheem; IAB Ventures,
SRF Ltd. represented by Mr
Suresh Reddy, Director. This
session was aimed at making
Corporate Social Initiatives more
relevant and adding more value
to the organisation. Ms. Joshi
talked about governance and PPP
(Public Private Partnership) and
how CSR can be done with
partners rather than alone. She
also raised the issue of the Child
Mortality Ratio and doctors going
abroad,due to non -availability of
medical infrastructure in India.
The Second Speaker, Mr Abdul
,spoke about physically
challenged people and how to
make them self sustainable. He is
associated with the Indian Blind
Association. IAB with Tata
April 2013
Teleservices has started a BPO for the blind. It is situated in Madurai, Tamil
Nadu. IAB has till date touched the lives of 11205 people. The productivity
of the BPO is attending to 180 calls/day person. The call centre now
employs around fifty blind persons, providing them a way to lead life with
self – respect. The model can be easily replicated and offers high hope for
the future. The final Speaker, of the session, Mr Reddy, talked on the
Mewal Rural Education Program (MREP). This was an initiative to educate
the children of nearby areas.
and Mr Ashok Chakravorty, Additional GM, CSR, NTPC Ltd. The speakers
outlined the stages of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Extracting
resources from society; Responding to society: Giving back what we took
from society. They also said that CSR is the need of the hour. CSR is often
considered a western concept, but it is all about creating value and helping
society, which many Indian companies have historically done. Many say
CSR is the job of the government but the development of the nation cannot
be done by government alone.
In the next session ,the discussion moved to “Success Stories of Social
Entrepreneurs.” The speakers for the session were Mr Vijay Pratap Singh,
Founder & CEO Ekgaon Technologies; Mr Kumar Ankit, Co-founder &
Executive Director Green Leaf Energy Pvt Ltd; Dr. Sushil Sharma, Founder
and Chairman, Aarohi ; and Mr Avinish Jain, Grameen Danone Food Ltd.
The session was moderated by Prof. Madhukar Shukla. The speakers
shared with us their varied practical experience in the field of social
entrepreneurship.
The day was brought to an end with the valedictory session by Mr. Pradeep
Kashyap, Founder & CEO, MART. This session attempted to draw up a road
map for the future that could be useful for all stakeholders involved in the
process of Social Marketing. He said that corporate marketing is for
economic gain whereas Social Marketing is for societal good ,but in
essence both use the same 4Psor 4As framework of Marketing. He further
added that Prof. Kotler gave us the 4Ps of corporate Marketing and Prof.
Sheth gave us the more customer centric 4As of marketing. These have
served us well. For Social marketing he proposed an additional set of 4PsPurpose , People Partners and Passion. He concluded with the hope that
some evangelists would emerge in the coming years and to create
awareness about the importance of Social Marketing in transforming
society.
The final session of IMS was on “The New Imperative: Making your CSR
spend Work”. The session was moderated by Prof Kuldeep Sharma,
BIMTECH The speakers for the event were Ms Divya Rajput, Head - Centre
for Business Innovation & IT Services, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs
01
GRAND EVENT
Dr Jagdish Sheth,
Founder, AIM and Charles H Kelldstat
Professor of Marketing, Emory University
Shri Pradeep Kashyap,
Founder, MART
Excerpts from Keynote Address:
Excerpts from Valedictory Address:
Dr Jagdish Sheth delivering his keynote address in the inaugural session of
the Seventh Indian Marketing Summit 2013 shared his insights on " How
World Class Companies profit From Purpose Driven Marketing’. "Purpose
is the real differentiator in Social Marketing, and Social Marketing
consciously strives to achieve the welfare of customers and the community
as a part of doing business”, he further added. He shared the model of
evolutionary process behind shifting of traditional marketing into Social
Marketing.
Four Ps of Social Marketing
The triple bottom line approach by making People, Planet and Profit all
inclusive for sustainability of an organization is the Mantra which canonly
be achieved by making instilling these values into the DNA of an
organization. He stated that there are four forces driving Social Marketing
mainly - Sustainability, Corporate citizenship, Digitalization and
Emerging consumerism. Digital media and consumerism emerged as the
key factors shaping the Social Marketing concept in our country. He spent a
good deal of time sharing the key findings of Firms of Endearment, his path
breaking book with Raj Sisodia on Conscious Capitalism. He added one
more ‘S’ in the form of Suppliers in his SPICE model of : Society, Partners,
Investors, Customers and Employees as detailed in the book. This book
talks about around two dozen companies which due to their values,
philosophies and customer centric-approaches , have become favourite of
a whole range of customers and stakeholders.
The best companies to deal with from the customer's perspective were
also found to have out-performed all kinds of market indices, as well as
best performances, as per the Good to Great concept of Jim Collins.
Interestingly, he saidthat these companies are not even the best
paymasters .
While concluding his address Dr. Sheth mentioned 7 traits of social
marketers as follows :
1. They freely challenge industry dogmas, like Southwest airlines.
2. They balance and align interests of all stakeholders, like UPS
3. They are able to create shared values like Toyota
4. They have long term perspectives, like Amazon
5. They favor organic growth, like Harley Davidson
6. They blend work and play, like Google and
7. They follow mission driven marketing.
Lastly he gave a mantra for success in Social Marketing stating that "The
business of business is more than business . The global race for resources
and markets, as well as the demand for transparency and governance, will
require a new approach to business leadership."
02
Shri Pradeep Kashyap, Founder, MART, delivering the valedictory address
during the 7th India Marketing Summit highlighted the 4 Ps of Social
Marketing. He said Corporate Marketing is for economic gain whereas
Social Marketing is for societal good.However, in essence the fundamental
principles of marketing are the same; the difference is really in the detail
and the approach.
Prof. Kotler gave us the 4Ps of corporate marketing and Prof. Sheth gave us
the more customer centric 4As of marketing.For social marketing I propose
an additional set of 4Ps.
The first P stands for Purpose. All marketers know what product or
concept they sell,they also know its price, packaging type etc. But hardly
any marketer knows why she is promoting the product, concept or cause. If
the Purpose or belief is not known how can a marketer be effective?
The next P stands for Passion. To establish a strong connect with
customers social marketers need to have passion and feel compassion. To
understand the customers need and develop appropriate solutions we
should follow a bottom up, co-creation process involving the beneficiaries
and the community.
The third P is about People, about beneficiaries and society. What
governments need to understand is that what is good for society should be
good for the government and not the other way round.
The last P stands for Partnerships. Social Marketing is all about building
strong partnerships between government, NGOs and private sector
because the task of rural transformation is colossal and requires effort
from all stakeholders. But these must be win-win partnerships where value
is shared equitably by all.
Social Marketing is far more complex than Corporate Marketing because
more often than not it involves behavior change. In many cases the
beneficiary does not feel the need to change behavior. In other cases the
new behavior is seen to be beneficial but the person does not have the will
or motivation to bring about that change.
In India as in many developing countries social marketing is a big business
opportunity and therefore deserves special focus. As it requires a different
mindset from corporate marketing it needs a standalone status. I sincerely
hope some evangelists will emerge in the coming years and they will create
awareness about the importance of social marketing in transforming
society.
Government is the biggest customer of social marketing. We need to
ensure larger participation from rural development, health, social welfare
and other departments of the government in such seminars to be able to
convince them on the benefits of social marketing for social change.
April 2013
&
Science
of Developing Leaders
ALONGWITH
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
HR ROUND TABLE AT KOLKATA
T
SUCCESSION
he final HR Round Table for the year 2012-2013 was held on 07 February 2013, at The Park in
Kolkata. While the main theme remained “The Art and Science of Developing Leaders”, the
sub-theme was on Succession Planning. The event was supported by NHRDN with Aon Hewitt
as Knowledge Partner.
PLANNING
PREPARING THE
ORGANIZATION FOR
GROWTH
The panelists comprised eminent Corporate Professionals like Mr. V.C. Agarwal, President – Corporate
HR, RP Sanjeev Goenka Group; Ms. Poonam Burman, UHRM, Kolkata Detergents Factory, Hindustan
Lever; Mr. Nadeem Kazim, Director (HR & Personnel), Exide Industries Ltd.; Mr. Anil Kumar Sinha,
President (HR) of Aditya Birla Group; and Mr. T. K. Srirang, Sr. General Manager, Head HR, ICICI Bank.
The discussion was moderated by Mr. Ajay Soni, Asia Pacific Practice Leader-Leadership Consulting of
Aon Hewitt. There was an overwhelming response from about 120 delegates who attended the panel
discussion. There was good partcipation of alumni working at Kolkata.
The evening commenced with a welcome address by Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director BIMTECH. This was
followed by the Key Note Session: Step One to Succession Planning – Career Planning, during which
Mr. Ajay Soni shared the research findings of Aon Hewitt.
Some of the findings were that firstly CEOs shared that enhancing leadership pipeline is the top talent
strategy that would contribute to their endeavour to meeting strategic goals; secondly, Key
Engagement Drivers according to employees were Career Opportunities (59%),
Recognition (37%), Career Aspirations (34%) and Communication (32%) and lastly, three groups of
people influence career development of employees: Leaders, Managers and HR.
The panel discussion moderated by Mr. Ajay Soni, went on to be a lively sharing of existing practices
and new deviations by the various Corporate Professionals which threw light on emerging issues in
finding the right person to head the organisation. Many questions were posed by the participating
delegates, who also shared their own practices in their organisations.
It was concluded that the exercise of succession planning should, being very early in the career of a
young employee, who if nurtured right from the beginning and given the right atmosphere for
growth, was capable of taking on a lot of responsibilities pretty early in life. The identified
individual(s) could then be prepared to take over the organisation after remaining in training for some
years. It is equally important to continue encouraging the other identified individual(s) who could not
become the successor. In years to come, there would be more and younger people leading the
companies across the world and it would augur well for the Indian Industry to recognize and accept
this, so it would enable them to prepare in advance for the necessary changes needed to be brought
into the system.
The discussions continued over dinner and many delegates expressed their appreciation over the
manner in which the whole event was organized. They were eagerly looking forward for more such
forums to be organized in Kolkata in future.
03
GRAND EVENT
ICMC 2012
International Conference on Management Cases
I
nternational Conference on Management Cases, an annual feature, jointly
organized by Birla Institute of Management Technology, Greater Noida, India,
and School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, USA has
established its name to be unique conference in many ways. Not aiming at
numbers, it has rather restricted to select not more than 70-75 papers and provide
authors sufficient time for presentation and discussion . The cases are from live
situations, unpublished, original and deal conflicts or issues confronted by
practitioners in contemporary business and management. The conference does
not permit participation 'in absentia'.
The conference carries a formal approval of organizing the same, from the
Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India. ICMC 2012 was
held on Nov 29-30, 2012 at BIMTECH Campus. Sixty nine papers were selected
against over 120 received. Of these 45 papers were outside India. The contributing
author-delegates came from the USA, Canada, Finland, Poland, France, Malaysia,
Thailand , Japan and India. Over 100 delegates registered and attended the
conference. The delegates represented academics, researchers and
practitioners.
The Inaugural Session
The inaugural ceremony got to an auspicious start by lighting of the ceremonial
lamp, as a symbol of spreading the light of knowledge in the world of darkness.
Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director-BIMTECH welcomed the guests. Stressing the
importance of case as a pedagogy of teaching management education,
Dr. Chaturvedi referred to effectiveness of India's Panchtantra which provided
education through tales to convey messages on ethics, social living and practical
wisdom. He hoped that the two days of the conference would prove to be
rewarding in any aspect.
The highlight of the session included address by the chief Guest and Key Note
Speaker, Prof. Roger Stough, Vice President, Research and Economic
Development, George Mason University. Prof. Stough touched upon links of
dependence between the seats of management education, Society and the
globalization of business in the emerging competitive environment. The
universities he pointed out, were now called upon to respond to creating new and
appropriate knowledge to create social benefits and pioneer rapid innovation
besides the traditional role of imparting text book knowledge.
Earlier, Dr. Sardana briefed the audience on the activities of the Centre for Case
Development and apprised all about the jam packed conference programme over
the two days.
The award presentations followed the address. To promote case writing and
encourage the pedagogy of teaching through cases BIMTECH has introduced
awards for the young scholars.The award scheme, innovatory in conception has
been instituted in the title of BIMTECH- Stough Young Scholars Awards to honour
Prof. Roger Stough, an eminent teacher, researcher and an educationist for his
laudatory contribution to the cause of management education in the last four
decades.
These awards introduced from this conference honour ten authors for their best
papers contributed to this conference. Each award carries a Medal, certificate of
merit and a cash prize of Rs. 10,000. The scholars honoured at this conference
included, Ifedapo Aseleye (Nigeria), Divya Srinivasan, Uma Kelekar, Nathan Walla
(all from USA), Anna Heikkinen (Finland), and Avik Kedia, Mohd. Arshad Khan,
Pallavi Seth, Bhawna Anjaly, Geeta Rana ( all from India).
04
April 2013
Awards for Best Case Writing, which were sponsored by Emerald Publishing, were
received by Dr. Anuj Sharma, Dr. Anshul Verma, (both BIMTECH) each getting 200
USD and Namita Kumar (A K Garg Institute of Management) getting 100 USD.
Yet another category of scholars honoured belonged to BIMTECH PG students.
Team of Ankita Asthana and Aneja Mohanty bagged the First prize, Teams of
Rushil Jain, Tushar Behl, and Satya Prakash Gupta, Ashutosh Kandelwal, both
getting two second Prizes, and three teams of Parveen Yeuri, Rajeev Kumar
Sharma; Kompal Preet Kaur, Kirti Goel; and Nisarg Trivedi, Mansi Pancholi, getting
the third prize in Case Analysis Competition organized by BIMTECH Centre For
Management Case Development .
School of Public Policy
Virginia (USA)
The release of the conference publication was the highlight of the inaugural meet.
The compendium of papers in the form of two books, titled,
1. Reframing Human Capital for Organizational Excellence
2. Capability building for organizational transformation: Management Cases from
Multiple disciplines published by Bloomsbury Publishing was formally released
by the dignitaries.
Plenary Session
The delegates re-assembled to a plenary session after a networking break. Two of
the highly accomplished academics spoke on society and globalization. The
opening remark from Prof Anupam Varma, Dy. Director, BIMTECH who chaired the
session set the ball rolling . The first speaker, Prof Yvon, CNAM, Paris, referred
that in multinational corporations and society, the term of “glocalization” was
bandied about - think globally and act locally. However, he stressed that it was
'rather time to question the irreducible antagonism between the values of the
geographic space of markets and those of the geographic space of nations'. Prof
Yvon in his scholarly presentation went on to say that globalization backs up the
assertion that the geographic space of markets must overlap with that of nations'.
Prof. Ed. Rhodes, Dean, George Mason University talked of transformation of the
society. He referred to the underlying dynamics driving institutional
transformation. Technological revolution had transformed how we dealt with
information. The second change, Prof Ed. remarked was in human capacity;
individuals today were more educated and socially and culturally were different.
Prof Ed. highlighted dimensions of globalization, flattening- and networking, and
unbundling.
Concurrent Technical Sessions
Sixty Nine cases were presented and discussed in 15 concurrent technical sessions
spread over two days. The sessions were organised on themes of Knowledge
Management, Talent Management, Human Capital Development, Leadership,
Organisation Development, Global Culture and Organisational Change, Financial
Management, Innovations and Technology, Operational Competencies,
Marketing Strategies, Creating Excellence through Performance Evaluation, and
Crafting Strategy for Sustainability . Each of the case was allocated a minimum of
15 minutes for presentation by the authors and another 15-20 minutes for
discussion and response to queries.
The 'Open House' formed the closing session, wherein the delegates came out
with suggestions to carry the conference further. Chaired by Prof. H Chaturvedi,
Director, BIMTECH, it ended with distribution of certificates to the delegates, and
an invitation to meet again at ICMC2013 on December 5-6, 2013.
05
SILVER JUBILEE LECTURE
POLITICS IS THE SOUL OF DEMOCRACY
- ARVIND KEJRIWAL
S
peaking on the occasion of the 25th year silver jubilee celebration of
Birla Institute Of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Mr Kejriwal
put forth his views on youth and politics. The theme of his address
at BIMTECH was “Indian Youth as the Beacon of Hope”.
Shri Kejriwal’s special lecture was a part of Silver Jubilee Year Lecture
Series being organized to mark the 25th year celebrations at BIMTECH. Dr
H. Chaturvedi, Director of BIMTECH welcomed Arvind Kejriwal to the
silver jubilee celebrations of BIMTECH.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday March 6,said
that politics wasn't a dirty game but the soul of a democracy.
INDIAN
YOUTH
AS THE BEACON OF
HOPE
(Silver Jubilee Year Special Lecture Series)
Democracy is not about being ruled by political parties but about the
empowerment of people, Mr.Kejriwal said while speaking to students and
faculty of Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) . Pointing
towards the number of tainted leaders in parliament, he asked students
whether they feel independent in a democracy where public
representatives are found indulged in corrupt practices.
The activist-turned-politician asked his audience of several hundred
students and faculty of engineering and management Institutes located in
Greater Noida,, “If our politicians are tradeable, how independent are
we?”
Mr. Kejriwal, who formed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recently, said, “There
are flaws in our system and corruption can be eliminated once the policies
are re-constructed.”
Mr. Kejriwal rued that despite the Prevention of Corruption Act, India has
not been root out corruption. He said that the government-proposed Jan
Lokpal Bill contained several flaws that needed to be plugged. “The root of
corruption lies within the law itself and not just the implementation of
law. For example, the punishment for corruption includes seven years in
jail but does not include returning the money earned by illegal means.
Also, the government appoints a free lawyer for those accused of
corruption charges. These laws favour corrupt officials,” he said.
He also described the key changes required in the Lokpal Bill. He said,
“Firstly, the court cases should not stay pending for too long, and secondly,
an officer who is found to be corrupt should be made to pay a fine from his
salary which can be used to compensate the sufferers.”
He exhorted youth to take on the responsibility of cleansing politics of
what they saw as its ills. Mr. Kejriwal stressed that every person is needed
to be part of system in order to change the system. “Politics is being
looked down by people as dirty game but politics is in fact the soul of
democracy and it is our duty to clean this dirt of politics,” he said, adding,
“democracy is just not about being ruled by political parties but it is about
people empowerment.”
Urging young students to opt for a participative democracy, Kejriwal said
that people should decide how and where their money should be utilized.
He also asked students to create public awareness towards
decentralisation of power. “The decentralisation of power means that
society takes key decisions at the grassroots level itself without depending
on the elected officials.”
Stressing that every citizen needs to participate in order to change the
system, Kejriwal said that his party is committed to inducting corruptionfree citizens as members post an extensive background screening. Shri
06
Arvind Kejriwal said that Aam Adami Party stood for truth and
transparency and strongly believed that truth was their only weapon to
fight corruption.
Responding to a question on reservations Magsaysay Award winner Shri
Kejriwal favoured reservations to root out 'social atrocities' but wanted
'creamy layer' to be kept out of its purview. Reservations should be only
for backward castes who truly deserve it. Urging youth of today to
participate in nation building and freeing our society from menace of
corruption, he said that now is their time to exercise their ‘dharma’ by
committing to nation building.
He said that Aam Aadmi Party would bring governance that is in keeping
with the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, and is for the people and by
the people. On his political initiatives of the Aam Aadmi Party, Mr. Kejriwal
stated that he wants to implement the “primaries” election system in the
Delhi elections in small measures. It is a method where the public chooses
their own representatives rather that the party deciding on it.
April 2013
SAARC
Librarians’
CONFERENCE
Inaugurated by
Justice (Mrs.) Gyan Sudha Mishra
T
he innovative and emerging technologies
are revolutionizing the world, including
L i b ra r y a n d i n fo r m at i o n c e nte r,
information and knowledge management,
business and governance. As a result,
Information Technology (IT) has permeated
virtually every aspect of human endeavour to the
extent that its effective use can easily make the
difference between success and failure. In this
context, the theme of the SAARC Countries
Conference was “Trends and Developments in
Library and Information Science”.
Bridging Business and Society
Honourable Justice (Mrs.) Gyan Sudha
Mishra, Supreme Court of India and former
Chief Justice of Jharkhand delivered the
inaugural address. Justice (Mrs.) Mishra
stated in her inaugural address that libraries
are the store house of knowledge which
improve the social and political culture;
inspire and stimulate intellectual knowledge.
The present users of library are techno-savvy,
techno-friendly and living in a networked
environment. In this regard libraries and
librarians need to re-think and re-orient the
libraries and information centers structurally,
visibly and intellectually. Finally, Justice (Mrs.)
M i s h ra s u g ge ste d t h at t h e l i b ra r y
professionals have to think over the
implementation of visual medium of access to
information and knowledge using multimedia
for greater understanding of thought
concepts available in the libraries and the
future libraries should work like a place for
recreation coupled with knowledge. She also
lauded the role of the libraries and the
librarians towards the society. She said that
we would not have advanced so much if the
concept of libraries had not existed. She also
said that unmistakably great ideas are born in
the libraries.
The conference attracted a large number of
participants from different parts of India, SAARC
member countries and one from USA. There
were in all 270 registered participants from
different countries such as Bangladesh,Sri Lanka,
Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal. Besides the
registered participants, the Organizing Secretary,
Dr. Rishi Tiwari, had invited distinguished
librarians and library science experts to
participate in this mega event. The inauguration
of the SAARC Countries Conference was held on
December 1,2012.
Dr. H. Chaturvedi, congratulated the efforts of
SDC and its contribution to the SAARC LIS
community and stated that SAARC Conference
for LIS professionals is a striking event in the
history of BIMTECH campus. He announced two
awards - Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the best
innovate LIS professional Award for males and
Smt. Sarojini Naidu, the best innovate LIS
Professional Award for females under
Ranganthan Society to promote professional
excellence among the LIS community. Dr. Rishi
Tiwari, Organizing Secretary and Librarian, stated
that the deliberations of this conference will give
right direction to professionals to serve the
changing needs of the information user
community.
The entire SAARC conference was designed into
four parts i.e., inauguration of the first SAARC
Conference, 6 Technical Sessions for scholarly
discussion and deliberation, Panel Discussion on
“Trends, Issues & Challenges of Future
Librarianship” and valedictory function.
Total 81 papers were listed in the SAARC
Conference Proceedings and out of which more
than 40 papers were Case Study based under 6
themes.
After a full day of hectic technical sessions, the
college organized a Cultural Program in the
evening where the play 'Man and Machine' was
performed by first year students of BIMTECH
followed by dance and music which regaled the
audience for over an hour.
The second day began with the Technical
Sessions. There were three technical sessions
lined up for the day with a large number of
technical papers. Some of the emerging
technologies presented for discussion were
cloud computing, automated web harvesting,
Google Fusion Table, ICT and digital libraries.
This was followed by a lively discussion and the
question -answer session. The panelists strongly
advocated for setting up of a National Research
Institute of Library & Information Science. They
were quite optimistic about the NKC
recommendations and its implementations.
Dr. Muttayya Koganurumath, University
Librarian, TISS – Mumbai acted as the Director
and Dr. B. Ramesha, Associate Professor, Dept. of
Library & Information Science, Bangalore
University acted as the Rapportuear General
during the SAARC Conference.
07
INITIATIVES
CONVOCATION
DIPLOMA IN FOREIGN TRADE
INNOVATION AS A KEY TO
SUCCESS IN INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS
- Dr Anup K Pujari, DGFT
B
IMTECH and Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO) jointly conducted Six month Diploma
course in Foreign Trade. The Convocation of the first batch of Diploma holders in Foreign Trade was
organized on February 23, 2013, at Niryat Bhawan, New Delhi. The convocation address was
delivered by Dr. Anup K. Pujari, IAS, DGFT, Government of India.
The program began with the lamp lighting ceremony by Dr. Anup K. Pujari, DGFT; Dr. Anupam Varma, Deputyy
Director BIMTECH; Mr. J.K. Jain, Vice President FIEO; Mr. Ajay Sahai, DG, FIEO; Dr. Anuj Sharma, Program
Director & Associate Professor BIMTECH and Mr. Sunil Agnihotri, Joint Dy DG, FIEO. The Diploma in Foreign
Trade commenced on 4 August, 2012 with a batch size of 46 participants which comprised Industry people as
well as starter. The objective of launching this program was to develop trained manpower in the area of foreign
trade.
Mr. Ajay Sahai, Director General and CEO, FIEO explained that the idea for the course came from the
Government’s objective of doubling of India’s foreign trade and thus there would be an increase in manpower
requirement. Dr. Anupam Verma, Director BIMTECH also supported the manpower issue and explained that
when a course is offered with the industry practitioners it provides a more comprehensive and practical
knowledge of the course. Mr. J. K. Jain, Vice-President, FIEO explained that to cater to the growing demand of
professionals from the industry in the field of International Business, FIEO and BIMTECH played a vital role to
educate on the subject.
Dr. Anuj Sharma, Program Director, DFT, explained about the 6 month duration course and apart from the
various pedagogical and academic laurels, he explained about the differentiating factors of this course on the
international trade which included case study analysis, visit to customs, industry / research project and role
play. Dr Anup K Pujari, gave a vivid idea of entrepreneurship where the persons deliver best quality products or
services managing various constraints. He added the need of innovation as a key to success and survival in
exports and any other field.
The Chief Guest, Dr. Anup K Pujari distributed the diploma certificates to successful participants. The Gold
Medal was won by Mr. Pinaki Nanda, PEC whereas silver and bronze medals were won Ms. Tina Malhotra and
Mr. K.M. Khemka respectively. Noorani Biswas, one of the participants ,mentioned that course curriculum was
great and it was handled beautifully and it had coped very nicely to the varied requirement of versatile DFT
group members. “I am thankful BIMTECH faculty members for treating us so well. BIMTECH has showed the
goodness of true professionalism”. Another participant Mr. Nitin Bhatia said ,“Thank You sir for giving us a
chance to learn from this one of a kind course. I deeply appreciate the time and effort you've spent on this
beautifully designed course. This is a great initiative by BIMTECH in this direction”. This six month Diploma
course has caught the attention of many in the industry and has helped the Centre for International Business,
BIMTECH to establish its credibility among the industry players.
08
April 2013
BIMTECH AND MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY
COMING TOGETHER
MoUs
BIMTECH and Missouri State University (MSU) USA have signed a memorandum of
association to conduct educational and cultural exchanges between the two universities,
bring the advantages and strong points of the two parties into play, jointly develop modern
courses and, in the spirit of international cooperation and jointly promote the
development of higher education. MoU was signed by MSU Associate Vice President and
BIMTECH Director. Both desire to offer programs including, but not limited to, joint
educational programs, joint research. Establishment of this partnership will allow students
to study at the partner institution at a reduced tuition rate. BIMTECH students who enroll in
any of the joint educational programmes will receive the International Partners
Scholarship. MSU is one of the premier schools of its type in the Midwestern part of the
United States.
MoU WITH SMU, SINGAPORE SIGNED
Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) has taken lead in establishing
partnership with Singapore Management University, Singapore, to launch a certificate
programme to develop a team of professors for individuals who want to contribute to
academia after their industry experience, trainers in the organisations particularly with
captive training institutions and teachers of business schools. MoU was signed by SMU
Deputy President, Dr. Raj Srivastava and BIMTECH Director, Dr. H Chaturvedi.
MOUs
“Business education has immensely benefited from the industry expertise as this education
demands real world experience. Teaching is both art and science and it demands good
understanding of domain knowledge, pedagogy, and class management. The programme is
designed to deliver a comprehensive understanding of teaching and class management,”
said Prof. Srivastava, Deputy President and a renowned Marketing Professor. Dr Chaturvedi
highlighted the need of practice professors in the Indian business education since the
interaction of academia and industry is still not as symbiotic as it should be The programme
will be launched in north India and would explore to partner with other business schools of
the country for offering it in different regions. Prof. A Sahay, Dean of Research Centre at
BIMTECH indicated that the first programme would be in place by July 2013 and the plan is
to have 25 participants in the first batch. The programme will also be launched in other
locations of the country.
MoU WITH NTPC RENEWED
In a meeting at SCOPE Complex, New Delhi held on January 7, 2013, NTPC renewed its
MOU with BIMTECH, Greater Noida for another year to continue delivery of
Management Development Programs to its Executives at PMI and various
Regions/locations, research and development of case studies primarily.
Present at the meeting were Mr. Arup Roy Choudhury CMD, Mr. S P Singh, Director HR
of NTPC, Mr. A C Chaturvedi, Executive Director, PMI, and Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director ,
Prof. KK Sinha, Head HR and Chairperson MDP, Prof. Akhil Pandey and Prof. Shylaja
Iyengar, Assoc. Prof. from BIMTECH.
Mr. Arup Roy Choudhury expressed his satisfaction at the feedback received on the
MDPs conducted last year and the progress in the relationship with BIMTECH.
Mr. Roy Choudhury also emphasized that educational institutions have a large role to
play in encouraging students to think of the concept of entrepreneurship. Dr.
Harivansh Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH also appreciated the concept of social
entrepreneurship. He said that encouraging entrepreneurship was part of BIMTECH’s
manifesto and many students from the institute have become entrepreneurs.
Recently, a special center has been started for this purpose at BIMTECH.
MOUs
09
REUNION
I
n the Executive Committee Meeting of BIMTECH Alumni Association, it was
decided to hold the Alumni Reunion of 2013, The Silver Jubilee year of BIMTECH,
at the same place from where the journey started and the venue was fixed as
Birla Vidya Niketan, Pushpa Vihar, New Delhi. The event was held on February 16,
2013 at the Birla Vidya Niketan, Pushpa Vihar, New Delhi, where BIMTECH Started its
journey from a small basement. In spite of the inclement weather for preceding two
days, the event saw a good gathering of more than 275 alumni cutting across all
batches passing out from the institute since 1989 onwards. The event worked as a
platform for the interaction of alumni with their professors as well as the future
managers being produced by BIMTECH.
The formal programme started with welcome speech of Mr. Alok Gupta, President
of Association. After the welcome speech, Director BIMTECH, Dr. H. Chaturvedi
addressed the gathering of 400+ which include alumni members, their family
members, faculty and select students of BIMTECH. On behalf of the Institute,
Dr. Chaturvedi, Director, reassured the unstinted support to implement the action
plan to be forwarded by the BIMTECH Alumni Association. He also reassured that
the institute will not spare any effort to nurture the alumni community which is our
flag-bearer in the industry as well as the society at large.
After the speech of Dr. Chaturvedi, Alumni Members spread over various batches
that have passed out from BIMTECH during its 25 year journey re-lived the old time
by sharing their experiences at BIMTECH at basement, Second floor of BVN and at
Greater Noida campus also.
The event also saw photographs clicked at a photo-booth specially set up for the
event where framed, instant photographs were given to all the alumni members as a
taken of remembrance. A magnificent buffet was whipped up to pamper the taste
buds of all. The rocking music of the DJ was the grand finale to a perfect evening.
The occasion saw a big turnout of alumni members with full zeal and feeling of
nostalgia and of course a promise to come back for the next reunion.
10
After this experience sharing, BIMTECH Alumni Association
deliberated on the achievements of past one year and also on
charting out the future roadmap for making a strong alumni network
spread across the globe. Some very constructive suggestions were
put forth during the discussion which the BIMTECH Alumni
Association has decided to carry forward for implementation. It was
also decided that during the Silver Jubilee Year (culminating on
October 2, 2014), the endeavour would be to energize chapters in
Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Gurgaon,
Dubai, etc.
Overall, Nostalgia-2013 was marked by bonhomie, emotional
exuberance, fun and overall a sense of deja-vu.
April 2013
PRESIDENT OF INDIA RELEASES A
COMMEMORATIVE STAMP ON SHRI ADITYA VIKRAM BIRLA
FIRST INDIAN GLOBAL INDUSTRIALIST
The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee released a Commemorative
Stamp on Shri Aditya Vikram Birla on January 14, 2013, at a function in
Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The theme of the stamp released was 'First Indian Global Industrialist'. The
stamp is designed with the picture of Shri Birla against the backdrop of the
plant of one of his companies which rose to become the world's largest
integrated Aluminum plant.
This commemorative stamp is a unique recognition of Mr. Aditya Birla's
endeavours to pioneer the globalisation of India. Born into one of the
largest business families of India and grandson of Late Shri G.D. Birla who
was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Late Shri Aditya Birla was an
industrialist who put Indian business on the world map and truly
exemplified the bold spirit of “Taking India to the World”. Besides being an
entrepreneur, Shri Aditya was also a social benefactor.
A grateful nation commemorates
the achievements of a Great Visionary
and Conscientious Industrialist !
Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH also attended the stamp release
function.
SEWA TEAM ELECTRIFIES BIMTECH
A 16 member team of office bearers and various committee members of
Self Employed Women's Associations (SEWA) from Gujarat visited the
BIMTECH campus on December 6,2012 to exchange ideas on deepening
SEWA – BIMTECH joint activities. SEWA, founded in 1972 as a trade union
for self employed women by Ms. Ela Ben Bhatt, Magsaysay Award winner,
is among the most respected NGOs of India with global presence such as
in Afghanistan.
The SEWA team was led by Ms. Jyotiben Macwan, General Secretary, Ms.
Kapilaben, President, and Ms. Chhayaben, District Co-coordinator of
SEWA.
The above office bearers addressed BIMTECH students to explain aims,
objectives and activities which gave a bird's eye view of its operators in
different states of India and abroad, especially in Afghanistan.
The session turned out to be very interactive with students exhibiting
great inquisitiveness about SEWA. The highlight of the session was Ms.
Kapila Ben's confident speech in Hindi when she confided that her
mentoring in SEWA made her, a domestic beedi worker ,bold enough to
make a presentation before Ms. Hillary Clinton the US Secretary of State.
11
INTERVIEW
CORPORATE TRAINING AND MDP GETTING MOMENTUM
AND CREATING STRONG LINKAGES WITH THE INDUSTRY
Vritant Team: Tell us something about current
MDP activity with NTPC?
KKS: These are induction level executive
development programmes (EDPs). When officers
move from non-executive supervisory or
foreman level, they become executive cadre. So
after some 20 odd years in the company, when
they go to the executive level, there are some
planned interventions like training given to the
corporates. These are critical change levels
where certain development programmes are
provided. They have given us 5 batches.
5 batches would mean 125 people. We have
delivered 2 programmes and this is the third one
that is currently taking place (in January). Fourth
one is in Feb-March 2013. We shall be able to
finish this in the current financial year.
Prof. Kishore K. Sinha
Professor & Head, HR Area
Chairperson, Centre for Management Development
BIMTECH
I N T E R V I E W
EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW:
Vritant Team: What are the different
programmes offered by BIMTECH under MDP?
KKS: There is an exhaustive list of programmes
which include Change Management, Effective
Presentation Skills, Strategic HR and Leadership
for Transformation, Stress Management, Team
Building and Group Dynamics, Finance for Non
Finance Executives, Economics for Executives
and so on.
Vritant Team: Which topics have the highest
demand among the corporates?
KKS: The greatest demand in the current date lies
in the field of OB. It is apparently the talk of the
town. Functional and technical skills, cognitive or
analytical or envisioning skill development are
not as much in demand as are behavioural and
leadership development modules/programmes.
People have very general sort of expectations. In
General Management, we deliver a week-long
programme but our programmes are mostly
customised to organisations i.e. they are tailor
made as per the requirements of the
organisations. But there are a couple of open
programmes also that we have implemented but
they are in partnership with other companiespublic sector, private sector and also with some
of the professional institutions like NIPM. We
have an MoU with NIPM and we are also planning
to jointly announce programmes in the open
market.
12
Vritant Team: Apart from NTPC, what is the
current scenario of MDP activities and what
other companies has BIMTECH catered to in the
past?
KKS: In clientele, we have Tehri Hydro, Neivelli
Lignite, Jindals, UCO Bank, NALCO and so on. We
have an MoU with NIPM, NTPC, NBCC, Power
Grid, Jindal etc. Our major customers are PSUs
only with little mix of private companies.
Vritant Team: How have the MDP activities
evolved and developed after your joining?
KKS: Before I joined, there were some good
programmes happening in the neighbourhood
like one of Amar Ujala that too at low ticket
prices. Then we pitched in for higher priced
tickets and also for the higher segments in the
market. Tickets usually ranged from Rs. 25000/per day in NCR (when the duration is a little less)
to Rs. 30,000/- to Rs. 40,000/- per day outside
NCR. This way, we have been able to put a higher
price tag to our programmes and secondly, we
have now come up with a very clear list of
products and brochures and have also
distributed a substantial number of soft and hard
copies of the same. A lot of liason and marketing
contacts are required to publicise the
programmes being offered. We need to have a
dedicated MDP cell for all the above mentioned
activities. We have definitely grown and evolved
over the years. Our basic aim has always been to
show our presence in the corporate world.
Vritant Team: What is the core strength of MDP
Cell?
KKS: One of the major strengths that I’ve found is
that the quality of faculty here is excellent with
fantastic delivery and they are appreciated by the
corporates also. Their experience in case studies
has been good. They are able to bring live cases
as well as they are also doing cases from other
institutes and standard magazines. They use
interactive role playing and case study method
which is very much liked by the corporates. Our
faculty is very rich and passionate about these
activities. Around 25 out of 70 are directly
involved in these MDP activities. Some of them
like Prof. R.J. Masilamani, Prof. Dhruva Chak, Prof.
A Sahay have rich corporate experience.
Vritant Team: What have been the major
success stories after your joining?
KKS: Last year, we were able to develop and sell
45 programmes. This year, it has almost doubled
to 90-95 programmes. Some of them last for one
or two days and some are 15 days long. Our
products have been valued by the companies
and that is why, the demand is growing.
Vritant Team: How do you think, conducting
such MDP activities is beneficial for BIMTECH?
KKS: Apart from the faculty delivering the
programmes, they also get to learn a lot. They get
an opportunity to develop. One is that they are
preparing and teaching not just students but also
practising managers and leaders. This way their
knowledge keeps enhancing with continuous
learning. Their interface is very rich because they
are meeting people at corporate level, handling
them, convincing them and then teaching them.
Also BIMTECH as a brand is getting known to the
people around. There is a lot of word of mouth
publicity for our programmes. It is a
comprehensive value adding programme and
also builds long term corporate relations.
Vritant Team: What locations are chosen to
conduct these programmes?
KKS: Looking at the locational distribution of
delivery, one is that we go to the company site or
to their plant. Sometimes, we choose open
locations like Pondicherry, Rishikesh, Goa etc.
where executives can have an outing at their
chosen places. These are some of the neutral
grounds where they get excitement in the
participation. So, it is learning with pleasure.
Some of the programmes are conducted in our
college also or sometimes the arrangements are
made in Stellar Gymkhana in NCR.
Vritant Team: What are the plans for the future?
KKS: This year, we are planning to launch one or
two more programmes with global exposure. It
will be a kind of leadership programme and we
might do it about 2 weeks here and about 1 week
with international faculty to get global exposure.
Compiled by Komalpreet Kaur and Deepa Paul
April 2013
BUSINESSWORLD
FICCI CSR AWARDS
2011 –2012
F
ederation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)
organized the prestigious 12th BUSINESSWORLD FICCI CSR AWARDS
2011–2012 on 7 December, 2012 at New Delhi.
The eminent personalities who graced the occasion with their presence were
Mr. Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs; Mr. RV Kanoria, President,
FICCI; Mr. P K Pincha, Commissioner CCPD and Mrs. Rajsahree Birla, Chairperson
FICCI CSR Centre for Excellence. Also present with them on the dais were
Dr. K. Upadhyay, Director, FICCI CSR Centre for Excellence, Mr. Arun Roy, Head and
Partner Grant Thornton India and Dr. Vineeta Dutta Roy, Associate Prof. CSR from
BIMTECH.
This year, three companies out of over hundred corporate entries namely ITC Ltd.
Deepak Nitrate Ltd. and SRF Ltd. were awarded for their outstanding Corporate
Social Responsibility initiatives at the ceremony. Mr. Pilot congratulated the
winners and said that the Indian corporate have always kept up the practice of
giving back to the society but now more than ever Corporate India needs to
address the development divide in the country with innovative CSR solutions .He
also gave an outline of the provisions made in the Companies Bill, 2012 on
Corporate Social Responsibility.
Business World FICCI CSR awards have been organised for more than a decade
now and have a three-tier assessment process lead by three different groups of
independent assessors. The first phase of the assessment was carried out by Grant
Thornton India, a reputed International Accounting and Auditing firm, the second
by BIMTECH; the third phase of assessment was done by a panel of independent
jury which evaluated each shortlisted entry presented to them for consideration
of the award.
The event was marked in its attendance of Company Presidents, CEOs, CSR
experts, members of media, civil society and other Government and non
Government organisations from different parts of the country.
13
CONFERENCE
SEMINARS ON GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS
AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
Jointly Organised by PHDCCI & BIMTECH at Jaipur
P
overcome the global crisis and achieve growth targets. Mr. Alok Bhardwaj,
Professor, BIMTECH gave the theme presentation highlighting the various
problems being faced by exporters.
This event was part of a series of conferences that are being organized at
important commercial cities with a view to brainstorm on measures to
stimulate exports and address the important subject of women
empowerment. The initiatives are aimed at reaching out to the exporters
and provide a suitable platform to interact with the State and Central
Government machinery responsible for export promotion and regulatory
measures.
The interactive session on Women Empowerment saw a representation of
eminent women leaders from various sectors of the industry. Chavi
Rajawat is the Sarpanch / elected head of Village Council of Soda, District
Tonk, Rajasthan. Ms Jayshree Periwal is a go-getter, an energetic
powerhouse, a visionary and a leading figure in the field of education. MS.
Leela Bordia an establish entrepreneur is well known for manufacturing
Blue Pottery. Dr. Firozo Bano, was Ex-Chairman, Film Censor Board and
currently Chairperson, Raj Lakshmi Bank which actively focuses on
providing assistance to women.
HD Chamber and BIMTECH organized two seminars on “Global
Economic Crisis Issues and Challenges for Indian Exporters and the
Economy” and “Women Empowerment – Reaching New Horizon”
on October 27, 2012 at Jaipur.
Dr. Purshottam Agarwal, IAS, Principal Secretary, Government of Rajasthan
was the Chief Guest and he explained at length the various measures that
the State Government was undertaking to boost exports. The Central
Government representatives, Mr. Virendra Singh, Joint Director General of
Foreign Trade and Mr. R. Subramanian, Branch Manager, Export Credit
Guarantee Corporation of India Ltd spoke about the various initiatives of
the Ministry of Commerce which will benefit the exporters. Presidents of
various industry associations and industry chambers presented the
industry’s viewpoint. The local industry was represented by the Gem &
Jewellery Export Promotion Council, the Federation of Rajasthan Trade &
Industry, Bhiwadi Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Federation of
Rajasthan Exporters. They explained the various difficulties being faced by
the industry and the assistance required from the Rajasthan and Central
Government.
Dr. Anupam Varma, Dy. Director BIMTECH in his introductory remarks
encouraged the industry and government to work in tandem so as to
14
The speakers spoke about their journey and emphasized that the status of
women could be improved by women themselves. Education is important
and they should grab every opportunity to become stronger and more
powerful in order to take their rightful place in society. Dr. Anupam Varma,
Dy. Director BIMTECH in his introductory remarks said that women are an
integral part of the society and no society could develop without women
being given equal rights and opportunities to excel. Mr. Alok Bhardwaj,
Assoc. Professor, BIMTECH shared his experiences in the international
scenario and gave examples of various successful women who faced
difficulties and fought battles to rise to great heights.
Excellent support to the organization of the event was provided by a team
led by Prof. Rajeev Sharma.
April 2013
BIMTECH’S PUBLICATION ON U.P.
Released by Mr. B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, Planning Commission
emerging policy concerns. This hiatus needs
corrective measures. Problem of inclusive
growth cuts across regions, sector and sections
of society.
Mr M. Ramachandran emphasized the role of
physical infrastructure, especially power and
roads in the development. He highlighted the
inadequacy of electricity connections and
inadequacy of supply of power to those who
have the connection in U.P.. He opined that
opening up of the rural areas by road network
will make a big dent on the level of rural
development in U.P.
T
he book titled, ‘Dynamics of Under
Development of U.P.’ edited by Dr Shri
Prakash and Dr H. Chaturvedi and
published by Bloomsbury was released by Mr
B.K. Chaturvedi at a lively Book Release Function,
held at Indian International Center, New Delhi on
February 18, 2013. Dr H. Chaturvedi, Director,
BIMTECH delivered the welcome address which
was followed by a brief introduction of the theme
of the book by Dr Shri Prakash, Prof. of Eminence,
BIMTECH.
After the release of the book a Panel Discussion
was organised on ‘Economic Growth of India in
Regional Framework of Development’. The panel
comprised the following eminent economists,
policy makers and administrators:
• Prof. G.D. Sharma, Advisor Goenka Group of
Institutions and former Secretary, U.G.C.;
• Prof. Alakh Narain Sharma, Director, Institute
of Human Development, New Delhi;
• Prof. P.K. Chaubey, IIPA, New Delhi;
• Prof. Prem Vashista, Galgotia University,
Greater Noida, and former Director, AgroEconomic Center, Delhi University, and
• Mr Ramachandran, I.A.S. (Rtd.), former Chief
Secretary, of the state Govt., a Secretary,
Government of India.
Mr B.K. Chaturvedi, Chief Guest, initiating the
panel discussion observed that one hardly finds
any literature relating to development/underdevelopments of the economy of Uttar Pradesh,
and hence, this book fills up an important gap in
knowledge about the economy of U.P.
Prof. P. K. Chaubey, who moderated the
discussion, observed that there are several issues
of development in general and development of
U.P. in particular which pertain to research as
well as policy. But more often than not the
research questions are overlooked in current and
Prof. G D Sharma opined that the book has been
aptly titled to attract the attention towards the
relative under-development of U.P. It does not
stand to reason how have West Bengal and U.P.,
the most industrialized, educationally and
economically developed states on the eve of
independence, have slid down the ladder? The
title seems to have been chosen to wake up the
policy makers and academicians out of slumber.
U.P. has suffered due to the dynamics of
underdevelopment rather than the dynamics of
development.
Prof. Alakh Narayan Sharma highlighted the
inadequacy of literature on the underdevelopment of U.P. He highlighted high
population density and low level of human
development, both of which may be considered
as the prime factors of underdevelopment of U.P.
Prof. Prem Vashist raised a number of research
questions with regard to tardy development of
Uttar Pradesh. He pointed out that it is appalling
to observe that such states as U.P. Bihar and
partly West Bengal are located in Gangetic plains
which are one of the most fertile areas of the
country. Nature has endowed these states richly
with resources. How is it then that a state like
Gujarat has gone ahead of these states even in
the field of agriculture despite the inadequacy of
water resources. The same holds true for
Maharastra.
Why has the state of U.P. failed to translate the
highest land productivity into a comparative
advantage in development? Outcomes of
policies are extremely poor. It reflects poorly on
implementation mechanisms which abound in
corruption. Then, outcomes of learning are low
in quantity and poor in quality. The issue of
governance is the major issue.
The panel discussion was followed by question
answers. The program ended with vote of thanks
by Prof. K.K. Krishnan.
15
SUPPORT
LEADERSHIP SUMMIT OF EPSI
SUPPORTED BY BIMTECH
INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED BY DR SHASHI THAROOR
LEADERSHIP
SUMMIT
www.epsfi.org
"DEVELOPING TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERS FOR INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION"
FEBRUARY 14-15, 2013 VENUE: INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE (IIC), NEW DELHI
E
ducation Promotion Society for India (EPSI), a national body representing higher education institutions and universities, has organized a Leadership
Summit for Chancellors, Vice-chancellors, Deans, Directors and Principals on February 14-15, 2013 at New Delhi. The theme of the Summit was
“Developing Transformational Leaders for Indian Higher Education”.
BIMTECH, being one of the founder members of the EPSI supported the Leadership Summit by mobilizing all kinds of intellectual, marketing and logistics
arrangements through its faculty and staff. The whole idea of organizing the two days’ Summit was conceived and approved by the Managing Committee
of the EPSI in September, 2012. The Leadership Summit was inaugurated by Dr Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for HRD, Government of India.
In his inaugural address, Dr Tharoor said that the leadership is not only needed in government and political parties but everywhere. Leadership is the
capacity to release and engage human potential in the pursuit of common course. Leadership operates within the framework of purpose, vision, shared
values and common cause.
Dr Tharoor referred about The Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-2017) which recognizes the challenges being faced by the India's higher education system and
proposes several initiatives to resolve these, e.g., through increased funding for disadvantaged groups, deployment of cutting-edge technologies, faculty
development programmes, improved governance structures and provision of incentives for research. The Government intends to achieve enrollment of
16
April 2013
35.9 million students in higher education institutions, with a GER of 25.2%,
through these initiatives by the end of the Plan period.
It also intends to significantly improve the quality of the system, while
enabling the co-existence of multiple types of institutions including
research-centric, teaching and vocation-focused ones. The private sector
can be expected to play an instrumental role in achieving these outcomes
through the creation of knowledge networks, research and innovation
centres, corporate-backed institutions, and providing support for faculty
development.
THE LEADERSHIP IS NOT ONLY NEEDED IN GOVERNMENT AND
POLITICAL PARTIES BUT EVERYWHERE. LEADERSHIP IS THE
CAPACITY TO RELEASE AND ENGAGE HUMAN POTENTIAL
IN THE PURSUIT OF COMMON COURSE. LEADERSHIP OPERATES
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF PURPOSE, VISION, SHARED
VALUES AND COMMON CAUSE.
Dr Shashi Tharoor
Minister of State for HRD, Government of India
Dr Tharoor said that our future trajectory for qualitative growth of higher
education will not be smooth, if we do not prepare vice chancellors, deans,
rectors, provosts, registrars, HoDs with exceptional high leadership
capabilities. Leadership in higher education will require that incumbents
to high positions in our universities should to be good exceptional both in
administration and academic integrity. At the same time, they will be
expected to command good knowledge about regulatory issues, legal
framework, social dynamics and aspirations of their students, which I call
primary customers, economic scenario and people management issues.
When there are so many stakeholders pulling a vice chancellor in different
directions, the leader has to demonstrate the maturity and sagacity to
balance pulls and pressures.
The inaugural session was presided by Dr G Vishwanathan, President, EPSI.
The Summit Convenor, Dr Chaturvedi welcomed the guests and explained
the theme and sub themes of the Summit. Mrs Sushma Berlia, Chancellor,
Apeejay Stya University delivered Special Address and Mr P K Gupta,
Chancellor, Sharda University presented a Vote of Thanks. The Summit
was attended by more than 250 chancellors, vice chancellors, deans,
directors and principals. Proceedings of the two days’ Summit were
anchored by Prof Sangeeta Shukla and Prof Pooja Misra, both faculty of our
institute.The Keynote Address in the Summit was delivered by Dr Pawan
Agrawal, Advisor (Higher Education), Planning Commission.
In his address, Dr Agrawal said that the public confidence in the value of
educational degree is diminishing which the 12th Five Year Plan hopes to
restore by improving the quality of education and professional
development of teachers. He also talked about setting up for the
community colleges which will deliver short cycle, low cost skills to 2.5
million learners at their doorsteps.
The Two days’ proceedings of the Leadership Summit were very hectic and
were divided into seven sessions and panel discussions. These sessions
were addressed by several luminaries of Indian Higher Education viz.,
Dr Arun Nigavekar, Former Chairman, UGC, Dr A Gnanam, Former
Chairman, NAAC, Prof C Raj Kumar, VC, OP Jindal Global University,
Sonepat, Dr B N Jain, VC, BITS, Pilani, Dr Indira Parikh, President, FLAME,
Pune, Prof K B Power, Chancellor, Dr D Y Patil University, Pune, Prof M J
Xavier, Director, IIM, Ranchi, Dr R C Natarajan, Director, TAPMI, Manipal, Dr
Prafulla Agnihotri, Director, IIM, Thiruchirapalli, Dr A M Sherry, Director,
IMT (CDL), Ghaziabad, Mr Ajay Soni, Practice Leader, Asia pacific Aon
Hewitt, Mumbai, Dr G D Sharma, Group Advisor, G D Goenka Group, Prof S
P Thyagarajan, Dr D K Bandhopadyaya, VC, Guru Gobind Singh IP University,
New Delhi and Mr D A V Kumar Guru, Director (External Relations), ISB
Hyderabad.
17
COLLABORATION
10th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF ERA
SUPPORTED BY BIMTECH
T
he 10th Annual Conference of ERA was held on 18 January, 2013 at Hyderabad. It was supported by
the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) as its Principal Sponsor. ERA, is a Trade
Body representing Indian Executive Recruitment Consulting firms and is committed to uphold
quality recruitment standards and bring in professional practices among its Members. In this endeavour,
they have identified their goal as 'Promoting Excellence in Recruitment'. This is done through several
interventions, one of which is ERA's 10th Annual National Conference.
In this 10th Annual Conference, Assessment - Key to Excellence was the main theme which was
deliberated in three panel discussions: Leadership Assessment, Critical Manager Assessment and Gen Y
Assessment.
The conference was inaugurated by Shri N Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) MLA and Founder of Loksatta, a
political party working for value based politics and electoral reforms. In his inaugural address, he talked
about the role of business, politics and civil society in dealing with some of the endemic problems of India
viz., corruption, poor governance, unemployment, lack of accountability among politicians and civil
servants. He has also spoken about the lurking environmental crises in India.
Dr. H Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH and Prof K R Chari, Chairperson, Centre for Innovation &
Entrepreneurship Development attended this Conference of ERA. Dr. Chaturvedi was one of the
panelists in the session with a theme of “Gen Y Assessment”.
Some of the other eminent speakers who addressed the conference were: Harshvendra Soin, Vice
President – Leadership Acquisition & Development, Mahindra Satyam; K Pandiarajan, Founder, Ma Foi &
MLA, Tamil Nadu; R Venkatanarayanan President- HR, IT & Education, Rane Group; Ms. Uma Rao Director
HR, Mars International India; Mr. Sriganesh Chatarajupalli, E & R Manager, Infosys Hyderabad; Mr. T.
Muralidharan, Chairman TMI Group; Mr. Vineet Agarwal, Vice President, Axis Bank and Prof. Dr.
Sabyasachi Rath, Director, Vishwa Vishwani School of Business.
The programme concluded with a valedictory address by Mr. Nrupendra Rao, Executive Chairman, Pennar
Industries Ltd.
UNEP WORKSHOPS ON
CONVERTING WASTE AGRICULTURAL BIOMASS FOR ENERGY
T
he United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), DTI-IETC, has assigned a
project to Birla Institue of Management Technology, (BIMTECH) titled
“Converting Waste Agricultural Biomass for Energy: Resource conservation and
GHG Emission Reduction”
As a part of the project, two training workshops of 2 days each were organized‘Technologies for Converting Agricultural Biomass to Energy’ (February 25-26 , 2013)
and ‘Sustainability Assessment of Technologies’ (February 27 , 2013). The training
workshops were designed by UNEP and conducted at BIMTECH .
Dr. J. Shettigar inaugurating the workshop
The complete deliberations of workshop were mainly conducted by Mr. Surya Prakash
Chandak from UNEP, Osaka, supported by Prof. K. R. Chari, and Dr. A. G. T. Sugathapala,
Director General, SriLanka ,Sustainable Energy Authority. The workshops were organized
for the professionals working in the area of sustainable development and core team of
project. A total of 34 participants attended the first workshop whereas 21 participants
attended the second workshop. System manufacturers and technology suppliers from
seven Indian companies and Japanese manufacturers participated.
The workshop was focused on selection of most suitable technology for converting waste
biomass into energy based on Sustainability Assessment of Technology.
Section of the participants with Dr. Surya Prakash Chandak
18
April 2013
SOCIAL BUSINESS PROJECT
WITH GRAMEEN CREATIVE LAB
T
his deep underlying belief of Grameen Creative Lab, made them coin the idea of Social Business. Prof.
Md. Yunus defines social business as a necessary framework for tackling social issues by combining
business know-how with the desire to improve quality of life. To promote the idea of social business in a
big way in India, Grameen Creative Lab has forged an alliance with the Centre for Social Innovation at BIMTECH
for a two phased project. The basic objective of the project is to evaluate and recommend the road map for
philanthropy based ‘not for profit’ enterprises to transit to a more sustainable ‘not for loss, not for dividend’
(after taking out all the investment made by the promoters) social business enterprise model.
This transition model shall, in the first phase, be pilot tested on the hugely successful and acclaimed social
enterprise – Goonj. The entity shall be studied in detail and the ways and means, including identification of
enablers, for transiting Goonj to a social business platform shall be recommended. This first part of the project
is being attempted to be completed by the end of June 2013 and the findings presented at the World Social
Business Day in Dhaka on 28 June 2013.
Thereafter, and if the pilot study on Goonj yields positive result, the scope of the project shall be expanded to
cover enterprises over at least 4 to 5 other sub verticals especially affordable healthcare, livelihood, education,
urban poverty. This second part of the project will attempt to create a more generic road map for transition of
not for profits charitable ventures to a social business model. The second part as well as the entire detailed
report shall be showcased in the Global Social Business Summit in Kuala Lumpur at the end of November
2013. Hans Reitz - the global Head of Grameen Creative Lab through Mr. S. Shelgikar their India Advisor and
Head of the Yunus Social Business Fund has committed funds for the publication of the report and its wide
circulation through the Yunus network. The report shall have the authorship of all involved in the project.
Concurrent with the project, GCL has commenced the project of launching the platform of a social impact
exchange in India and our joint project has been embedded to become a part of this larger model. BIMTECH
thus automatically becomes a pioneering partner in this possible game changer project being launched by
GCL. Mr. Nishith Desai - Managing Partner Nishith Desai Associates and one of the foremost tax and legal
advisory firms shall be involved with all 3 projects and shall be advising on legal, structural, and taxation issues.
Mr. Shelgikar - the earlier CFO of Videocon shall be especially advising on strategic and financial issues. The 3
projects have potential to bring out some seminal changes in the manner and growth of social business
enterprises in India. In addition, it will achieve a major milestone in achieving some of the goals in the vision
statement of BIMTECH as reformulated in its 25th year.
CASE ANALYSIS
COMPETITION BY
BIMTECH CENTRE
FOR CASE DEVELOPMENT
“I BELIEVE THAT WE CAN CREATE A
POVERTY-FREE WORLD BECAUSE POVERTY
IS NOT CREATED BY POOR PEOPLE.
IT HAS BEEN CREATED AND SUSTAINED
BY THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS
THAT WE HAVE DESIGNED FOR OURSELVES;
THE INSTITUTIONS AND CONCEPTS THAT
MAKE UP THAT SYSTEM; THE POLICIES
THAT WE PURSUE.”
– NOBEL LAUREATE PROF. MOHD.YUNUS
B
IMTECH Centre for Case Development (BCMC) organized a Case Analysis
Competition in which more than 200 students in 100 teams of BIMTECH
students registered for the event . The case was drawn from General
Management area.
The competition was conducted in two stages :
In Stage 1 the teams were expected to analyze a case and suggest solutions to
questions raised in the case in an allotted time of 90 minutes. The solutions were to
be proposed in 15 slides (maximum) as power point presentation .The first stage
was conducted on 21 November 2012. The Case analysis was evaluated by a jury of
experts. Out of the 58 teams which contested in the first stage, an initial selection of
15 teams was made.
In Stage 2, the teams selected in Stage 1 presented the analysis of the case before
jury, faculty, research scholars, and students .Each team was allowed 15 minutes
maximum for presentation. The Second and the Final Round of Case Analysis
Competition was held on 26 November 2012. The jury comprised Prof. A Sahay and
Dr. A K Dey.
The first prize was won by the team of Ankita Asthana-Anuja Mohanty .The teams of
Rushil Jain- Tushar Behl and Satya Prakash Gupta- Ashutosh Khandelwal won the
second prize. There was a tie for the third prize and was won by three teams of
Praveen- Rajeev Kumar Sharma, Komalpreet Kaur-Kriti Goel and Nisarg TrivediMansi Pancholi. Certificates and attractive cash prizes were awarded to the winning
teams.
Prizes were distributed to all the winners in the inaugural session of ICMC ‘12 on 29
Nov 2012.
19
INDUSTRIAL VISITS
2
3 students of PGDM (International Business) with Ms. Rupali
Singh, Programme Manager, made their first overseas
industrial visit on 21 February, 2013.
Singapore, a city of dreams, with its high rise buildings, high tech
infrastructure, lush green beauty mesmerized us. Our first stop was
Jurong port which is one of the biggest ports in the world. The
Jurong port has deep berth size and has modern state-of-the-art
facilities; it was recognized as the top efficient ports in the world.
TRIP TO MALAYSIA,
SINGAPORE AND SRI LANKA
- A TRIP TO CHERISH
PGDM (IB) 2012 – 14 Batch
Our evening was a visit to “Night Safari”, which was an entirely
different experience. We also saw the cultural animal show that
day and got awed by the animals’ feats. The next day we visited
Sentosa Island and saw the most happening and known “Songs of
the Sea” which took our souls away. The Dolphin show was also
beautiful and had seals doing some extraordinary stunts and
entertaining us completely.
On 24 Feb. 2013 we visited Recron Malaysia - the world’s largest
integrated Polyster and Textile company, with world class
manufacturing facilities at Nilai and Melaku in Malaysia. We visited
the plant at Nilai. Recron Malaysia is a part of the USD 34.7 billion
Reliance Group, a fortune Global 500 corporation and the largest
polyester producer in the world. We were welcomed into the
facility and then were given a presentation explaining the mode of
operations at the plant by Mr. Nishith Patel, Head – PET business,
Recron. There were a total number of 21 different plants out of
which 3 were shown to us. The company produces 3000 yarns per
month with an asset capacity of 250000 spindles.
We also visited Westports (Port Klang) on 25 Feb. which is a multi
cargo port and handles all types of cargo in containers, bulk, dry
bulk, liquid bulk. The bird’s eye view from the top floor of the
building of the Westport was amazing and showed us the entire
infrastructure, cranes, operations, work in progress, monitoring,
functionality and management. We visited the monitoring and
control department in the main hall building and saw the entire
process of how the loading and the unloading of the ships takes
place at a real time scenario.
After all the fun at Genting Highlands on 26 Feb, we packed our
bags to visit the last destination of our itinerary which was
Colombo. The Goldi Sands Resort, located at the outskirts of
Colombo had a private beach, swimming pool, and freshly cooked
delicious food. In all, the trip was amazing and left us with lots of
memories of the good times that we as a group shared at some of
the most beautiful places of the world.
VIBRANT GUJARAT
PGDM (IB) 2012-14 Batch
T
wenty-six students of International Business along with Prof. Rajeev Sharma and
Programme- in-charge Mr.Ranju Nair left for the much awaited educational tour to Gujarat on
23 Feb. 2013.
With a coastline of 1600 km and one of the fastest growing Indian State, Gujarat shares a fair portion
of India’s import and export trade especially that of western India. This tour allowed us to
experience and comprehend the development story of Gujarat first hand and also to see what really
lies behind the growth story.
After enjoying the day at Ahmadabad, seeing how a simple water reservoir has been transformed
into a flourishing tourist destination, we witnessed the world acclaimed Ahmadabad BRT corridor.
As the tour unfolded we moved on with our journey to an important destination -Kandla port.
Kandla port situated in Kutch district of Gujarat is one of the busiest seaports of western India. It is
India's hub for exporting grains and importing oil and also one of the highest-earning ports in the
country. Asia’s oldest SEZ covering about 310 hectares is also located in the region at a distance of 9
km from the port, which acts as a catalyst for trade through port and helps in aiding the economic
activities in the region.
20
INDUSTRY
VISITS
April 2013
After Kandla port and a night of fun at a resort in Bhuj we moved to Mundra Port which
is strategically located on the northern coast of the Gulf of Kutch on the west coast of
India. Mundra Port provides a convenient international trade gateway to Europe, Africa,
America and the Middle East. Mundra has a deep draft (12.5 Meters – 17 Meters) which
enables large vessels like panamax and super post panamax carriers to dock alongside
its berth. It also has a large land area available for development, part of which is now
the Mundra SEZ which proposes to attract port-led industrial development.
Our visit to gaur gum powder manufacturing factory helped us to gain basic insight into
operations and layout processes. The factory is 100% export oriented unit and students
were very clearly briefed about the process involved, standards maintained and how
those quality standards were maintained.
The area in and around Mudra port is known as Timber zone. It was really an eye opener
as clearly for the first time many students came to know that things like Timber could
also be internationally traded on such a large scale involving 100 million rupees of
turnovers. It was a classic example of entrepreneurship where student were briefed
about international Timber trade involving dozens of countries by BIMTECH’s own
alumni, Mr. Akash Goel of 2009-11 batch.
Though it was an educational tour the fun part was never missed by the students. From
forts and beaches of Diu to palaces of Mandvi, Lion Safari at Gir forest or world famous
Somnath temple of Gujarat, each place is full of memories which will go down as some
of the best moments of our life.
However the best part is though we went as a group but we returned as a TeamSPECIAL 26.
P
GDM (Insurance Management) 2012-14
batch students embarked for an industrial
visit to Gujarat on February 23, 2013 along
with Prof. M S Rawat, Prof. Shylaja Iyengar and Astt.
Manager Mr. Anil Jaiswal.
The group reached Ahmadabad on February,
24,2013 and visited Sabarmati Ashram to pay
homage to Father of the Nation Gandhiji. Other
places of scenic beauty and historical importance
that we visited were Kankeria Lake and Diu Fort,
Nagoa Beach and the Somnath Temple of Lord Shiva.
INDUSTRY
VISITS
VISIT OF PGDM (IBM)
2012-14
In the afternoon we visited Indian Rayon Industries
Ltd, Veraval, a flagship Company of Aditya Birla
Group. We were also shown the related units of the
Plant, like Electrolysis , Chlorine Compressing,
Chlorine storage, Chlorine Filling, Caustic Flacking,
etc. Risk Management including safety and security
of assets and personnel was perfect and appreciable.
The next destination was Dwarka. On the early
morning of 27 Feb, we visited famous temple of Lord
Krishna, Dwarka Dhish , at Gomati creek.
In the afternoon we reached to Okha port, under
State Govt. of Gujarat, to see the port operations.
Limited types of commodity are handled like Import
cargo – Coal, Lime stone and Export cargo – Bauxite,
Cement clinker ,Soda ash. The Supervisor of the Port
was nice enough to give us an opportunity to
navigate across the ocean to see the Dwaraka Temple
of Lord Krishna by a boat.
On 28 Feb. we arrived at Sasangir Forest where one
could see diverse wildlife easily. After an overnight
stay in tents at Gir, we moved for Delhi via
Ahmadabad in the next day morning and thus our
very memorable trip came to an end.
21
INDUSTRIAL VISITS
MUMBAI–PUNE
INDUSTRIAL VISIT
PGDM (IB) 2012-14 Batch
T
he students of PGDM 2012-14 were taken to Mumbai-Pune for an industrial
visit for a period of a week starting from February 23 to March 1 this year. Dr.
Gagan Katiyar and Ms. Meenakshi Bhat accompanied students to industrial
visit. The industries chosen were Volkswagen, Bajaj and Force Motors, all big
names in the automobile industries, not only in India but the world over.
Volkswagen and Bajaj manufacturing plant are located in the Chakan region in
Pune while Force motors have its plant in Akurdi. The students were divided into
batches and each batch visited one company at a time, with all the batches visiting
at least 2 industries.
The plant at Chakan is manufacturing the Volkswagen Vento, Volkswagen Polo,
Skoda Rapid and the Skoda Fabia cars. The students got a chance to witness
German technology first hand and were amazed to see the level of automation and
high end German technology for the first time. The most interesting part of the
plant visit was the working of what the Volkwagen people have named as “Kuka”
robots. Highly skilled and sophisticated robotic arms that perform activities like
engine assembly, laser welding, measurements and specifications , etc. It enables
Volkswagen to have a high degree of precision and produce products with almost
zero defects.
The manufacturing plant of Bajaj is also located in Chakan and has an employee
strength of about 3700. The plant is house to production of Bajaj Pulsar 150, 180,
Bajaj Avenger and also production of partner KTM’s Duke 390. Like in Volkswagen,
students were privileged to see how bikes are assembled in an assembly line
scenario. Here also the use of technology was to be seen as robots played parts in
testing engines, internal logistics of assembled parts etc. The whole process of bike
manufacturing, starting from the outer frame to the engine, tyres and all other
components of bike manufacturing were thoroughly explained to students by the
Bajaj representatives who were presiding over the tour.
Force motors was founded in 1958 by N.K. Firodia. Abhay N. Firodia is the
Chairman and Prasan Firodia is Managing Director. The plant that we visited is in
Akurdi, Pune. Hansea was the first 3 wheel vehicle which was manufactured by
them. Initially they were into commercial vehicle segment but now they entered
into Personal Vehicle segment in the year 2011 and launched its first SUV named
Force-One.
INDUSTRY
VISITS
22
After the presentations, the visit to the plant was intended to show us how the
gears of vehicles are made. The whole process of making it was shown. The plant is
very huge by typical standards and most of the work is automated. The visit to the
three industries gave an insight to the students about the automobile
manufacturing world. It was a lifetime experience as we had the privilege to
witness different methods, state of the art technology, the German and the Indian
manufacturing processes and the students got to learn a lot from the visit.
NETWORKING
April 2013
DR. CHATURVEDI FELICITATED
BY SRI SRI RAVISHANKAR
IN THE NATIONAL YOUTH SUMMIT, 2013
The Art of Living, founded by spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has organized a
National Youth Summit on February 2, 2013 at the Delhi Technological
University, Delhi. The theme of the Summit was “United We March”. It was
attended by more than one thousand youth mostly drawn from universities and
colleges of Delhi.
The purpose of organizing the Summit was to sensitize young leaders under the
overarch spirit of human values to deal with issues related to corruption, drugs
and alcohol addiction, safety of girls, declining child sex ratio, reproductive
health and rights and HIV & AIDs prevention.
On the occasion of the Summit, Dr. H Chaturvedi was felicitated by Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar for his services in India's higher education. Along with Dr. Chaturvedi,
Dr Vandana Shiva, Eminent Environmentalist and Dr P B Sharma, Vice
Chancellor, Delhi Technological University were also felicitated by Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar.
UNITED WE MARCH ~
A felicitation function in honor of Shri Raj Babbar, M.P. and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for the Ministry of Defence was
held on December 26, 2012 at SCOPE Auditorium. The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the Chief Guest. It was
attended largely by industrialists, civil service officials, lawyers, doctors, journalists of NCR who have studied in the Agra University. Dr. H. Chaturvedi,
President, Alumni Association of Agra University (AAAU) presided over the function.
23
FACULTY UPDATES
PROF. N.N. SHARMA INVITED AS RESOURCE PERSON
Prof. N.N. Sharma was invited as Resource Person for a Synthesis Workshop on Cluster Development and
formation of Export Consortia by Mekong Institute (MI), Thailand held from 28-30 November,2012.
MI is an intergovernmental institute set up by Mekong Countries which include China, Thailand, Laos,
Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam. Participants were from these countries.
BIMTECH CITED AMONG TOP TIER B’SCHOOLS BY THE ECONOMIC TIMES
(JANUARY 25 2013) FOR GOOD PLACEMENT TRACK RECORD
The Economic Times’ news report on page 1 emerging trends in B-schools’ campus placement gave
a high marks to BIMTECH. According to this report, the leading Indian Companies and MNCs are no
longer lured by IIMs started by the Union Government at Kashipur, Rohtak, Udaipur, Raipur, Ranchi
and Tiruchirapalli. The report was titled “Non-IIMs rake in the moolah too, cos prefer to recruit
from top tier B-schools than lower-ranked IIMs” appeared on January 25, 2013. The ET report
speaks about better than expected placement season at the IIMs (old ones like IIM - Ahmedabad,
Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow etc.) and its positive rub-off on other top tier B-schools viz. TAPMI,
JBIMS, KJ Somaiya, BIMTECH, IIFT, Great Lakes and NMIMS. It has quoted Mr Ganesh Shermon,
KPMG India Partner and Country Head (Human Capital) “All IIMs are not in the same ranking when it
comes to quality, and for companies, hiring the top 10 percentile of management colleges lower in
the order makes more sense than picking up from the bottom percentile of an IIM”.
The last paragraph of the ET report talks about upbeat placements happening at BIMTECH and
quoted Mr Amit Saxena, Placement Manager. From the ET report it is clear that our institute’s
placement performance is in sync with the trends at other top tier B-schools.
Prof. Snehanand (Ravi) Sinha attended the 5th
National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship held at
XLRI 25 -27th Jan. The conference was organised by Fr.
Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability - XLRI with
active assistance by SIGMA ( student led Social Initiative
Group for Managerial Assistance of XLRI). The theme
was Innovation in Livelihood Promotion & Skill
Development. This practioners' conference had a galaxy
of speakers from the social enterprise and govt agencies
in this space. Prof. Sinha was leading the session on
Skilling India: Achieving scale and impact.
Subsequently, at XLRI, Prof. Sinha was an invitee of the Global Social Business Incubator
network - a Santa Clara University USA led initiative to create a global network of institutions
that are spearheading the cause of social enterprise. BIMTECH has been invited to join as a
Partner of GSBI and the modalities of signing a MOU is being initiated.
PROF. CHARI’S PAPER
ADJUDGED AS THE BEST PAPER
IN A NATIONAL CONFERENCE
On 9 March 2013, Prof. K. R. Chari presented a paper in a
national conference on “ENTREPRENEURSHIP, CREATIVITY
AND INNOVATION”, organised by the Christ University
Institute of Management (CIUM), Bangalore.
A total of 14 research papers were presented during the
conference. The paper titled “Root Cause Analysis for
Process Problem Solving” by Prof. K. R. Chari was adjudged as
the Best paper in the conference and the Winner's certificate
was awarded to Prof. Chari.
The conference was attended by about 80 delegates
representing 15 B-Schools across the country.
24
UCO Bank celebrated its Foundation Day on 6 January
2013. This day in 1943 the Bank was founded by Late
Sri G.D. Birla as the first Chairman of the Bank. The
Bank invited Prof. B.K. Das as Chief Guest for its State
Level function at Bhubaneswar.
Prof. K C Arora presented an
independently authored
research paper titled
“Determinants of Investor’s
choice of a Mutual Fund
company – An Empirical
Study in Delhi and NCR” on
20 December, 2012 in the
India Finance Conference
jointly organized by IIM
Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and IIM Kolkata at IIM
Kolkata. The conference was attended by about 110
delegates of which estimated 20% were from foreign
countries like USA, UK and Singapore.
CLUB ACTIVITIES
April 2013
BIZMARK-
THE MARKETING CLUB
OF BIMTECH
DECIPHER- An Online Marketing crossword puzzle
competition
The event was conducted on 7 Sept, 2012 online via email with
the teams participating to solve a crossword puzzle related to
Marketing buzz words, famous personalities and brands. Teams
played “Fastest finger first “and the first five teams with the
correct entries were selected as winners.
Winners
Shikhar Gupta - Akash Agarwal (PGDM-1)
Ankur Rohilla -Ashwani Bhardwaj (PGDM-1)
Atul Makharia -Mayank Devlal (PGDM-1)
Astha Jain -Sakshi Kukreja (PGDM-1)
Rohin Ahuja -Sameer Deewan (PGDM-1)
“BE THE CHANGE”- Branding BIMTECH B-Plan
Competition - 11 Oct. 2012
The event was conceptualized during the recently concluded
meeting of the Governing Council wherein a need to proliferate
and consolidate the branding efforts for the Institute was felt by
the Management. It was then mutually decided that the students
would be called upon to suggest new and innovative branding
strategies for the benefit of the Institute. BIZMARK provided the
platform for the students to present their ideas with the top six
teams competing for the title. Several recommendations like
increasing media presence, focusing on industry interface along
with leveraging the legacy of 25 years of the Institute was
elaborated upon by the students. The judges, Prof R.J.
Masilamani and Dr A.V Shukla, reinforced the importance of
branding as a holistic exercise and commended the efforts of the
participants.
Winners
1St – Anuja Mohanty, Alok Jain, Ajay Sharma, Aparna Thampi
(PGDM-II)
1st - Viraj Mulki, Yuvraj Sharda, Vikram Sharda, Suvansh
(PGDM-II)
2nd- Varun Garg, Shubham Arora, Akash- (PGDM-II)
Punarjanm – Life , Death and Rebirth - 23 Jan, 2013
The winners of the 3 previously held online events , Decipher,
Papertalk and Juxtapose were selected to compete in Punarjanm
, where ,the teams had come up with the revival strategy for dead
brands and products like Fiat Uno, Binaca Toothpaste , Topramen
Noodles and Gold spot. The Winners of this event were selected
to compete in the Mega Event, which was a marketing quiz. The
event was judged by Prof Dhruva Chak and Dr. A.V. Shukla.
Marketing Czars - 8 Feb, 2013
Marketing Czars was the Mega Event conducted by the Club , in
which the winners of punarjanm had to compete against each
other for the ultimate glory, the event was conducted in the
activity plaza , the participants marketing knowledge was put to
test in this even .The Event was also the last event organized by
Bizmark in this academic year .Prof Dhruva Chak was the Chief
Guest for the concluding event
Winners –
1st - Shikhar Mohan and Askif Ali
2nd - Shreya Srivastava and Shrishti Gandhi
3rd – Pratik and Ramshankar
MUSHAIRA –AN EVENING OF POETRY
I
n keeping with its endeavour to nurture the cultural traditions of the
country and as a part of the Silver Jubilee Celebration of the Institute a
grand Mushaira was organized at BIMTECH in the evening of 16
December, 2012.
The best expression of language is poetry and the most artistic interplay of
this art form is seen in Urdu and Hindi poetry. Some renowned poets who
graced the Mushaira at BIMTECH were:
• Prof. Shehpar Rasool - Delhi
• Prof. Ahmed Mehfuz - Delhi
• Mr. Zubair Razvi - Delhi
• Mr. Rajesh Reddy - Mumbai
• Mr. Azhar Inayti - Rampur (U.P.) • Mr. Surinder Shajar - Delhi
• Mr. Shebaz Nadeem - Delhi
The Chief Guest of the Programme was Dr. Dev Swarup, Joint Secretary,
University Grants Commission, New Delhi. The Chief Guest and the poet
Shri Zuber Rizvi were formally welcomed by Prof. Nagpal who in turn
introduced the other poets and also conducted the Mushaira.
The programme was attended and appreciated by the Faculty, students
and invited guests in good numbers. The audience was also addressed by
the Chief Guest, who impressed the gathering by his thought provoking
speech and love of literature. He also felicitated the guest poets.
Thereafter he gave away prizes to the winners of students' contests of
poetry and poster making.
At the end the Chief Guest was felicitated and appreciated by
Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Director. The programme ended with thanks giving by
Prof. P.S. Nagpal.
25
CLUB ACTIVITIES
BIMTECH MESS:
'Hungry Kya?'
A
mong the many accolades received by Birla Institute of Management
Technology, one and a very-well deserved is for the supreme quality
of food it provides in the mess. The institute prides itself on
maintaining superior quality and quantity of the food being served in the
campus mess. Often, students living in hostels complain about the quality of
food being served in the mess, but this kind of situation has never come up in
BIMTECH because BIMTECH firmly believes that food is the source of all
eternal well-being and health which is why it has to be fresh, nutritious and
appealing to the taste buds.
Ever since 2009, when the campus administration took over the mess, there
has been continuous state of the art changes which have only improved the
quality of the food being served. Firstly, the mechanization is evident by high
capacity machines like ROTI MAKING MACHINE (preparing 2000 chapattis in
an hour!), VEGETABLE CUTTING MACHINE (with a capacity to chop 350 kgs
vegetables in an hour) and other machinery like GRAVY MACHINE (pulpilizer),
POTATO PEELING MACHINE, COMMERCIAL DISHWASHER, DOUGH KNEEDER
and DRY CONDIMENTS GRINDER. All these facilities have led to a speedy
delivery of services.
The college also has an on-campus dietician Ms. Prabha Dhiman, M.Sc-food
and nutrition, with vast experience in her field. Her consultation is taken up
while finalizing the menu, so that the daily menu comprises a proper intake of
nutrients. She also assesses students’ health and advices them with tips for a
balanced diet and healthier body.
For better co-ordination with the students and to make sure that all their
responses and problems are addressed and their demands incorporated in
the menu, a student body with a faculty head, called as the Food Conduit has
also been formulated. The Food Conduit plans a monthly menu which is
circulated amongst the students. Communicating with students on college’s
behalf on matters of food is done by the food conduit.
Super Chef 3.0
A daily discussion forum actively involving the mess staff is held which lays
emphasis on hygiene, quality of the food and day to day operational elements
of the mess. Staff also undergoes a health check-up every 45 days to ensure
their well-being. Imbibing the Indian tradition that a meal made with good
intentions satisfies the consumer better, staff welfare is emphasised and
accommodation is also provided in the campus premises as somebody has
rightly said that a happy employee also serves better.
Coming to the most important element- the food, all the ingredients used are
branded and AGMARK certified. Neither chemicals nor colours are used in the
food prepared, not even in the sweets. As for cleaning the groceries and
vegetables, special products like VEG FRUWASH are used to get rid of all the
pesticides and fertilizers. Also all the cleaning is done in R.O. purified water.
Mr. M.S. Bhati, Hospitality Manager, supervises each and every task closely;
he also lays importance in conducting all special events, be it festivals wherein
regional menus are prepared or official events- EDPs and MDPs, like the ICMC
and ISB women empowerment programmes where special cuisines are
prepared. Innovative methods of reducing the waste and also providing
nutrition with taste have been developed and promoted. For example, on
26th January, a special BARFI was prepared from the juice of leftover spinach.
BIMTECH’S mission of excellence with values is equally important in the
kitchen as it is in the classroom. With such facilities, GHAR KA KHAANA is not
something BIMTECHians yearn for!
26
F
ood Conduit of BIMTECH organized a cooking competition
called “Super Chef 3.0” on 19 Feb 2013, to discover the talented
cooks amongst some of the best managers of the country.
Super Chef 3.0 an event of its own kind, presented an opportunity to
the students to show their culinary skills and innovation at a bigger
stage.
On the eve of 19 February, 2013 participants came together in the
form of teams and created wonders in the live kitchen. Not only Indian
but foreign students and faculty members’’ children took part in this
event. Their involvement was so high that 1st prize went to a team
comprising of Moroccan Students whereas prize of “Most Presentable
Dish” and “Most Sparkling Work Area” was won by faculty members’
children.
CLUB ACTIVITIES
April 2013
The winners of the event were:
The competition involved preparation of two portions of a particular dish in
the presence of judges and conduit members within 30 minutes timeframe.
The event was judged by Mr. Surendra Kumar, Banquet Manager, from
Double Tree Hilton, Mr. Zakir Khan, Chef De Cuisine, from Double Tree Hilton
and Mr Gurjeev Gulati, who is an alumnus of BIMTECH and who started his
own venture “The Chocolate Beetle”, two years back. The event was also
judged by members of the Women’s Club of BIMTECH, Ms Sunita Chaturvedi,
Ms. Shubhra Varma, Mrs Arora and Ms. Pooja Sharma for “Most Tastiest
Dish”, “Most Sparkling Work Area” and “Most Presentable Dish”
The competition overall not only promoted the zeal to go vegetarian but also
tested the skills of the participants for optimum utilization of resources with
them.
All the food conduit members’ hard work was justified by the success of this
grand event. The program could not have been so successful without the
support and presence of Director, Deputy Director, Dr. Anuj Sharma and Ms.
Rupali Singh who continuously guided at every stage of the event.
First Prize - Moroccan Pride
Wafaa Charih, Sanae Bennani Baiti
Second Prize - Fiery Flamers
Sonam Srivastav, Nitika Singhal
Third Prize - Grandes Cocineros
Nishtha Verma, Ravneet Kaur
Most Presentable Dish - Little Champs
Priya Sharma, Apoorv Sharma, Chhanak Verma
Most Tastiest Dish - Cook Cook Hota Hai
Aditya Kar, Yeeshan Pandey
Most Sparkling Work Area - BFF’s
Harsha Singh, Arushie, Paurush Tiwari
SPARKS FLY DURING ECO CHAMBER
DEBATE ON
DIRECT BENEFIT TRANSFER
On 29 January 2013, BIMTECH witnessed a war of words on the subject of 'Cash
Transfer Schemes' organised by Eco Chamber (Economics Club) of BIMTECH. It
was a great learning experience for the students to put their points forth about
what they feel about government's actions. The judges for the event were Dr.
Devendra Bajpai and Dr. Shri Prakash. The motion was “Are Direct Transfers a
Boon or a Bane”?
The winners of the competition were Apoorv Srivastav (1st prize) and Anuja
Mohanty (2nd prize). All in all, this event turned out to be a wonderful learning
as well as fun-filled experience for the students.
MDP
The first Open Leadership Development
Program for 4 days between 15-18 January,
2013, was delivered by BIMTECH in Stellar
Gymkhana. This was a Residential Program.
The participants came from several leading
organizations in the country like Coal India
Ltd (Mahanadi Coalfielda Ltd.), Reliance
Energy, NTPC Hydro, NTPC-SAIL Power
Company Ltd and they were the level of
Chief Managers to Addl. General Managers,
numbering 17.
27
CLUB ACTIVITIES
MAKING THROUGH
CHAKRAVYUH
O
n Tuesday, January 15, 2013, Phoenix, The HR Club of BIMTECH hosted
their much awaited mega event of the year “CHAKRAVYUH”.
‘Chakravyuh’ comprised three rounds. ‘FATEST FINGER FIRST’ was the first
round in which one member of each team was supposed to touch the scattered
placards in reverse order with other team members’ guidance. This round was
designed to allow students the opportunity to learn more about team spirit and
interpersonal skills. The advantage given to the winning team to eliminate one
member each from the opponent’s team was the highlight of the event. This
brought to light the theme of ‘Chakravyuh’ i.e. “Survival of the fittest."
Second was ‘CENSORED’, wherein the teams were required to interpret a mute
video clip that was played for them. It was deemed to be highly creative, with
the teams using their creative thinking to build on the interpretation.
The third round was ‘WHERE YOUR HEART LIES’. The teams were supposed to
enact or talk on the topic they chose without disclosing the topic to the
audience and judges. Yet another round that reflected a unique touch leading
to incredible results.
Teams really enjoyed the exceptional show. The entire team of Phoenix left no
stone unturned in ensuring the event's inevitable success.
T-EXPRESSO-
A T-SHIRT DESIGNING CONTEST!
“Style is not just a fashion, but an art form!” Keeping the essence of these lines in mind, Palette, The Art
Society of Bimtech provided a wonderful opportunity to fellow BIMTECHians to show off their
awesome graphic design talents by creating a one-of-a-kind t-shirt by successfully organizing TEXPRESSO, the T-shirt designing contest on January 30,2013.
20 teams in a team of 2 had participated in the event. The first prize was bagged by Mandeep Kaur Arora
and Anamika Mittal of PGDM-I . They depicted the difference between slavery and freedom. The t-shirt
said “The difference is just of a line. We all are the creation of all mighty god and belong to the same
nation and have equal opportunities in life but some of us bound ourselves with the orthodox thinking
and on the other side we have people who are not bound by the orthodox thinking which compels a
person to treat people on the bases of caste, creed, sex and color. They are free and respect their life.”
Indeed a beautiful thought portrayed through a simple design.
The second prize was bagged by Tushar Neb and Viraj Mulki of PGDM-II who depicted through their
design a compelling message indeed that “women should not rely on others for their safety and instead
protect themselves by aggressively taking steps against such crimes.”
The third prize was awarded to a team of foreign exchange students. Thisbe Delattre and Philippine
Veladji. They portrayed unification of two different cultures, that of India and France on the same
t-shirt. Overall the event was a great success. The judges ,Dr. Arvind Shukla and Prof. Manujata,
expressed a great appreciation for this initiative by team Palette. The Chief Guest of the event was Mrs.
Suneeta Chaturvedi, who gave away the prizes and also addressed the audience. Thanks were
expressed by Prof. P.S. Nagpal, Mentor of Palette.
LAKSHYA 2013
CHESS & SUDOKU
NOESIS - The Gaming club of BIMTECH has once again conducted an enthralling event, LAKSHYA 2013 the Chess and Sudoku competition, for BIMTECHians on 31 Jan. 2013 and 1 Feb. 2013. Lakshya turned
out to be a fun-filled event and BIMTECHians displayed great enthusiasm by participating in both the
games.
In Sudoku, after 2 rounds of elimination (where only 12 candidates were selected for the 1st round and
6 for the second round), Rohit Thakur from PGDM - I year emerged as the winner and Saachi Oswal
from PGDM (IBM) - II as the runner-up.
Chess is a very mind teasing and challenging game and in due course of time, with each game lasting for
an hour, Ajesh Malhotra from PGDM IInd year emerged as the Winner and Mudabir Bhat, PGDM Ist
year as the runner up. The competition became all the more exciting with every passing move as all the
players gave their best shot and made the competition absolutely challenging.
This event helped students to relax and test their mental ability as both games are mind challenging
and sportsmanship was evident throughout the event.
28
CLUB ACTIVITIES
April 2013
COGNICIOUN ‘13
B
IMTECH witnessed a war of grey cells on Sunday afternoon
with corporate houses and Top B-schools sending their best
quizzers for the Cognicioun 13'.
After an amazing mind-boggling interesting fight of quizzers in
Cognicioun 13' Sreekanth G & Jayakanthan R (TCS) emerged as
winners closely followed by Rohan Khanna & Tanmay Prusty (
Genpact & Reckitt Benckiser) with a margin of just 5 points. There
was a Tie for third spot between teams from NTPC and FMS Delhi
which led to K.M Prashant & Sujit Varkey (NTPC) emerging as 2nd
runner ups.
It was a battle of wits, concentration and quick thinking as about 60
teams pitted against each other to prove themselves. Following
the preliminary round, in which teams from IOCL, DDB Mudra,
Ferrero, JCB, E&Y, 3M, HDFC among others participated, it was
finally down to six teams consisting of teams from FMS, IIFT and St.
Xavier's apart from winners. B-School students too marked their
presence and gave the working professionals a run for their money.
Students from other institutes such as IMT, MDI and Delhi School of
Economics participated in the event.
This quiz turned out to be a very high energy quiz till its end due to
presence of some of the most Notable quizzers of Nation including
winners & runner ups themselves having, in their kitty, big Titles like
Tata Crucibles, Idea Brand Equity quiz and Business Line
'Cerebration' quiz.
Apart from four exciting rounds full of speed and energy there were
questions for audience too where Quiz-master Mr. Harneet Singh
engaged audience with simple yet tricky questions.
We would like to thank our Director, QCB Mentor Prof. K.K.
Krishnan, Prof. K.K Sinha, BIMTECH Staff and students for their
support in Successful Organisation of Cognicioun 13'. QCB will
come out with bigger & better Intra/Inter College & Corporate
quizzes in future. Till then Stay Curious!
FUTSAL 2013
T
he stage was set, the participants were gearing up and the audience were
getting ready for a day which added a whole new dimension in the ever-soglorious history of BIMTECH. I am talking about FUTSAL 2013.
On February 3 2013, Foot and Boot (the football club of BIMTECH) in association
with the Sports Conduit, organized an Inter B - School football Tournament for the
first time in the history of BIMTECH. In this one day tournament teams like IMT
Ghaziabad, FOSTIMA, Galgotia, MDI, Amity and LBSIM contested for the prestigious
winner’s trophy and an attractive cash prize.
The opening match was played between the host BIMTECH and the FOSTIMA
Business School. FOSTIMA put up a brave fight but were no match for the
synchronized and well-practiced BIMTECH team. The hosts won the match very
comfortably and qualified for the second round.
Accordingly the rest of the participants played their respective matches throughout
the day and IMT and BIMTECH reached the finals. The home supporters gathered in
huge numbers to support and cheer their team. The electrifying music, the chilling
ice creams for the hot heads, the ever so tempting street food and snacks and
drinks, along with the presence of Dr. H. Chaturvedi, Dr. Rishi Tiwari and Prof. Chari
set the stage for an epic finale. The match finally kicked off at 5 p.m. and we got to
witness one the greatest matches between two football rivals.
Ever since the first whistle, it was a battle of skill, endurance, and determination.
The spectators got to witness a match full of spectacular shots, flying saves by the
goalkeepers, skilful dribbling by the playmakers and persistent defending from both
sids. Normal time was not sufficient to separate these two teams as neither could
score and the match had to be decided through a penalty shootout. IMT G finally
got the better of the home team and won the match 4-2. The prestigious trophy and
the prize money were given to team IMT G by Dr. H Chaturvedi. Harsh Tandon of
BIMTECH was the highest scorer of the tournament and received a trophy for the
best player of the tournament.
SARASWATI POOJA
G
oddess Saraswati is worshipped for the spiritual enlightenment she bestows on humanity. Vasant
Panchami marks the day when men, women and children worship the Goddess clad in white, riding a
swan and holding a Veena in Her hand. This Hindu festival is celebrated every year on the 5th day of the
bright fortnight of the lunar month of Magha. Like every year, this year too, the Cultural Conduit organized the
Saraswati Pooja on February 15 with all customs and traditions. The Panditji arranged for the occasion was one
of the conduit members. He conducted the ceremony with utmost sanctity and fervour. The devotionbrimmed chants and all the ‘pooja’ customs mesmerised all. After the ceremony, the holy prasad was
distributed amongst everyone. In the evening we performed the aarti to mark the end of the day. It is said that
knowledge leads to wisdom and wisdom leads to spirituality. May Goddess Saraswati bless us with wisdom
and help us reach every zenith in our careers that we aspire for.
Om Saraswati Mahabhagey, Vidye Kamala Lochaney |
Viswarupey Vishalakshmi, Vidyam Dehi Namohastutey ||
Jaya Jaya Devi, Charachara Sharey, Kuchayuga Shobhita, Mukta Haarey |
Vina Ranjita, Pustaka Hastey, Bhagavati Bharati Devi Namohastutey ||
29
DEBATE & THEATRE
THE MAJLIS FESTIVAL
- AN EXTRAVAGANZA OF DEBATE & THEATER
I
n continuation with the celebrations for the Silver jubilee Year of BIMTECH,
the Debating and Theatre Society of BIMTECH – MAJLIS, organized “The
Majlis Festival” on February 1, 2013. During this day long fest, the entire
campus was bustling with entertaining activities and events like Colosseum-The
Debating Competition, Parivartan-The Street Play competition and Ras MilaapThe Stage Play competition. The event witnessed immense participation from
renowned B schools like International Management Institute (IMI), Lal Bahadur
Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM), Delhi School of Management ( DTU),
Amity Business School and undergraduate colleges like Hindu, Hansraj, LSR,
Gargi, GGS college of Co mmerce, Ramjas and Lingaya University.
PHOOL KHILE HAIN GULSHAN GULSHAN !
Children of the campus amidst a riot of spring flowers.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor
Prof. Sangeeta Shukla
Editorial Committee
• ANKIT SHARMA - PGDM
• DEEPA PAUL - PGDM
• KOMAL PREET KAUR - PGDM
• RAJAT BATRA - PGDM RM
• RISHAB KUMAR - PGDM IB
• SALONI BHATNAGAR - PGDM RM
• SONAM SRIVASTAV - PGDM
Photographs by
Shri Joginder Kumar
30
The day started with the war of words – the debating competition. The activity
plaza turned into a battlefield where the participants became soldiers and their
words became swords. The topic for debate was “Candlelight vigils do not bring
about a social change”. The participants through factual accuracy, logical
consistency and emotional appeal, tried to connect with the jury and audience,
and were also successful in their art of persuasion .Participants spoke with
passion and conviction hearts for and against the candle light marches happening
in the country.DTU and BIMTECH emerged as the well deserved winners.
After the battle of eloquence, it was time for the heart and soul stirring street and
stage plays, which left the audience completely enthralled. Hansraj was the
undisputed winner with Gargi college coming a close second. The exhilarating
performances continued with the grand ‘Ras Milaap ‘ (stage play). Hansraj
maintained its glory by emerging as the winner yet again with Ramjas coming
second. All the first and second prize winners were awarded with attractive cash
prizes. Thus we saw Hansraj raking enough moolah that day by bagging two prizes
(stage & street play )!
The top class performances during stage and street plays left everyone
mesmerized including the celebrity judges like Mr Himanshu Malhotra, popular
face on Indian Televison with serials like Love Marriage ya Arranged Marriage to
his credit and Mr Amit Gulati,the Associate Creative Head of Sony Entertainment
Pvt Ltd. The anchor, Mr Vinay Batra made the event more entertaining by
engaging the audience. The light hearted conversations between the anchor and
the judges added flavor to the event. Thus we saw how at BIMTECH top notch
colleges and B schools came together to fight for the coveted prizes. Majlis put
up a successful show -“ The Majlis Festival “ and it promises to entertain all the
same way every year.
April 2013
INTERNATIONAL UPDATES
TANZANIAN FACULTY JOIN Ph.D. PROGRAMME AT BIMTECH
Institute of Financial Management, Dar E Salam,
Tanzania has entered into an MoU with BIMTECH
to initiate academic activities including doctoral
programme for a team of professors. The MoU
was signed by the IFM Rector and BIMTECH
Director. Six professors from IFM have already
commenced their doctoral programme at
BIMTECH. The programme demands a full length
course work followed by Thesis work.
The scholars from one of the best schools of
Tanzania are Mr. Yustin I Bangi, Mr. Zawadi Ally,
Mr. Revocatus K.K. Bayona, Mr. Gregory D. Lyimo,
Mr. John Kingu, and Mr. Richard Fue Kiangi. All
the scholars have already joined the programme
and started their academic work. IFM Tanzania is
one of the best business schools of the country
and belongs to Ministry of Finance in Tanzania.
PRESIDENT SMUC ETHIOPIA VISITED FOR DISCUSSION ON
ACADEMIC COLLABORATION
Prof. Wondwosen Tamrat (President), St. Mary University College (SMUC), Ethiopia, visited BIMTECH on 14 January,
2013 to have a discussion on the possibilities of academic collaboration. The college is a founding member of
Ethiopian private higher education Instructions Association and a member of the African Association of University.
SMUC and BIMTECH have exchanged a letter of intent expressing their wish to engage in such activities as training,
research and staff- student exchange. This is expected to grow into MOU as the discussion among the two
institutions has continued for the same intention.
VISIT OF FACULTY AND STUDENTS FROM UNIVERSITY OF
ECONOMICS, PRAGUE
Ms. Radka Calabkova, First Secretary, Embassy of Czech Republic in Delhi and Prof. Felipe Martinez, Prof. Radovan
Kacin with their 15 students from University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic, visited India for understanding
opportunities and challenges of doing business in India.
They visited BIMTECH on 30 January, 2013 and attended the session of Prof. Ravi Sinha (Social Innovation),
Prof. Kartik Dave (Consumer Psychology in India) and Dr. Rahul Singh (Emerging Markets).
PROF. DHRUVA CHAK'S VISIT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF
HERTFORDSHIRE
Prof Dhruva Chak's visit to the University of Hertfordshire took place between Feb 24 to
March 1,2013. This is the second year of the collaboration between BIMTECH and University
of Hertfordshire students on Product Innovation. 14 collaborative teams are working on
different projects for launching New Services in India. There are future plans to strengthen
the collaboration through student visits and faculty exchange.
BIMTECH's Prof. Dhruva Chak discussing collaborative
projects with University of Hertfordshire teams
14
31
INTERNATIONAL UPDATES
INTERVIEW
Dr. John Walsh (JW), Assistant Professor of Marketing and Communication,
Shinawatra International University, Thailand. Dr. Walsh did his Masters in
Management from Oxford University followed by Ph.D. and the subject that he
studied was British Companies in Korea and Japan. After graduating from Korea,
he travelled to Australia, worked for some time in research there and then moved to
Abu Dhabi. After sometime he moved to Thailand where he is currently teaching
market research at Shinawatra International University.
Excerpts from the interview...
Vritant Team: Sir, how do you think we should
analyze a particular case study? How should one
go about it?
JW: Well, a good case study crystallizes a
particular moment of place and time, a range of
management and placement issues, which an
institute would like to explore. For a teaching
case study, what I like to do is that I divide the
class into two or more groups, depending on the
number of students, so that they may discuss the
case study with each other.
If you are dealing with people for whom English is
not the first language, the first thing you must
know is that everybody must be able to connect,
so that there is good team bonding.
In Thailand, students don't pose many questions,
so for them, I try and give a structured set of data
and possible solutions for the same. Once they
discuss, pose questions, I tell them to make a
presentation. From a students' point of view, I
would be happy if you people read the case, think
about it, weigh the pros and cons of each solution
and then take a decision.
Vritant Team: What are the basic differences
that you have come across in the markets, here
in India and Thailand?
JW: (pauses and then continues) In Thailand, the
language proficiency is not that good, so I need to
spend more timemaking sure that everybody
understands. These days, students use the
'talking-dic' (talking dictionary) on their phones.
Earlier I would not entertain them using their
mobile phones in the classroom, but now I realise
that it's necessary for them so as to be able to
understand better. Although some of them may
be texting or sending messages (smiles) at the
same time but then I guess, that is inevitable.
My impression of Indian society, is that it's much
more fragmented; there are some ethnic and
general differences that are obvious but others
are much less obvious; that's the case when
people try to negotiate with each other to get
their points of view across.
Vritant Team: Any other differences that you
may have observed in the working styles of the
Thai and Indian people?
development. A ten day academic tour has been
arranged for our students as per the need of their
course.
Among various emerging Asian markets why
you decided to choose India for your visit? And
why BIMTECH?
Professor Stefani Chen
University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Can you throw some light on your purpose
behind this visit to India?
I have come with a group of eight students who
are undergoing 2 year executive MBA
programme on sustainability. This visit is an
academic tour which is part of their programme
basically to provide strong foundation in
understanding the complex issues involved in
management of natural resources and social
32
India is the best place to provide a first hand
experience for students to understand complex
is su es an d ch allen ges o f s u stain ab le
development. I wanted my students to explore
the real challenges of a nation like India where
huge complexities exist in terms of castes,
religions, cultures, traditions, belief system and
so on. I feel BIMTECH is the only institution which
understands the concept of sustainability very
well and is always engaged in promoting the
need of sustainability. This is the reason we chose
to come BIMTECH.
How has your experience been in India so far?
What are the changes you can observe today
which were not visible on your first visit (few
years back)?
JW: What I told you previously is the first issue;
the second issue is that I am constantly amazed
how and to what extent people here in India try
to bring spiritual and ethical decisions into
business while in other countries, that is not
really the case. We can tell by the number of
social entrepreneurial cases that we come across
and there is genuine difference when we
compare with other countries.
Vritant Team: Thank you so much Sir for your
time, but before we leave, what piece of advice
would you like to give to the emerging managers
especially in the field of marketing?
JW : Always keep this in mind - try and find out
what it is that people are looking for, what is the
benefit or utility that they would like to have. The
continuing problem in today's scenario is that
people keep making what they want to make
rather than trying to find out what people
actually want! Yeah, well, that's a part of the
market research, that says understand your
customers first and what they really want. So, be
flexible as the market is constantly changing and
also study hard!
India is committing the same mistakes which rich
nations or western nations have committed.
After so much of discussion about sustainability
all over the world, India is not ready to change or
we can say India is not ready to help itself. There
has been some infrastructural development in
India but India is wasting huge natural resources
in the same way western countries have wasted
at the time of their development.
Can you tell me how our Indian students are
different from students in other nations in terms
of understanding the concept of sustainability?
The youngsters in India understand the concept
of sustainability better than the students in other
nations but due to lack of appropriate education
system, students lack analytical skills which are
very much present in students of other nations
like Germany, Austria, and France. Although,
students in India are always eager to learn new
things.
April 2013
INTERNATIONAL UPDATES
INDIA STUDY PROGRAM 2013
India, an emerging market ,has become an attractive destination for global business schools. Top
management schools are visiting India to have a first-hand experience of cultural and business
practices in this emerging market.
2013
Recently BIMTECH hosted students from Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, USA; FH
Vorarlberg, Austria and ITESM, Mexico.
Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, USA
Smith School of Business and BIMTECH collaborated to create a practical exposure and learning experience of Emerging Market for graduate MBA students.
Under this program, students and Prof. Sunil Mithas from University of Maryland visited India in January, 2013. The group visited Mumbai, Bangalore and
Delhi to learn the processes and meet the leaders of Indian business community.
The objective of their visit was to gain experience on a broad range of issues that relate to global business and include: cultural aspects of doing business,
global financial services market, marketing aspects, and issues pertaining to social initiatives in India. Some of the companies and interactions with leaders
included- MCX, IBM, TQMS, Convergys, EASi, Infosys, Narayan Hryudaylaya, Goonj.
Students also visited BIMTECH and participated in 150th Birth Anniversary celebration of Swami Vivekanand followed by a session on FDI in retail by
Professor Kartik Dave. Mumbai visit to IBM and MCX was a showcase of the journey of these organizations, the challenges they faced and their position now
in India and globally. During their visit to Narayan Hryudayalaya, students got to interact with Dr. Devi Shetty and were very appreciative of this social
initiative. The interaction with Mr. Anshu Gupta from Goonj was a totally eye opening experience for the students.
FH VORARLBERG, AUSTRIA
BIMTECH and FH Vorarlberg collaborated to create India Study Program for Students and
Prof. Stephanie Chen for their course “Application of Sustainability- A BRIC Country”. The
industry visits and sessions were planned to give different aspects of sustainability practices
in India. Sessions included “ Indian culture and society”, “India - Geo Political and Economic
Scenario” , “Social Innovations in India” by BIMTECH faculty and “CSR Practices in India Industry Perspective" by Mr. Pratyush Panda, Regional Head- CSR, ACC Limited.
To understand sustainability practices in India, the group visited Net Zero Commercial
Building of Bayer in Greater Noida, and DLF Foundation in Gurgaon. Visit to Bayer Plant
showcased the efforts by Bayer Material Science for sustainability including crop science and
training to farmers and their newly constructed Net Zero Commercial Building. Students also
attended classroom sessions with BIMTECH students in the PGDM- Sustainable Development
Practices. The visit concluded with a trip to Development Alternatives in Taragram.
ITESM, MEXICO
BIMTECH designed a 10 day program to give an understanding of Asian Markets to students and Prof. Lilia Ortega from ITESM, Mexico. Before coming to
India, students had spent 2 weeks in Korea. The objective of their visit was to meet and speak with leaders in the global business community, and to learn
first hand about the opportunities and the problems that firms face today. Considering their objective in mind, classroom sessions were designed to broadly
cover Indian Culture and Society, Economic Development, and Local Practices in Marketing.
To augment session with real life experience, the group visited Moser Baer, Future Group Retail and a nearby village where BIMTECH has opened a library.
Professor, Students and the International office appreciated the help provided by Dr. Rishi and the “Ranganathan Society” in making the village visit so
electrifying.
IF I HAD THE CHOICE TO EXTEND MY VISIT, I WOULD NOT
HAVE DELAYED ONE MOMENT, I APPRECIATE ALL YOUR
ATTENTION AND KINDNESS. I AM VERY THANKFUL FOR
GETTING TO KNOW INDIA IN COMPANY OF ALL OF YOU,
GREAT, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.
- PROF. LILIA ORTEGA, ITESM MEXICO
I TRAVEL A LOT WITH THE STUDENTS. BUT HERE IN INDIA
I RESPECT THE LOVE AND AFFECTION PEOPLE HAVE FOR
FOREIGNERS. HERE THE SOCIETY IS VERY TOLERANT
UNLIKE IN OURS. OUR STUDENTS HAVE BEEN TAKEN
CARE OF IN ALL THE ASPECTS. I WISH TO VISIT HERE AGAIN.
- PROF. STEFANIE CHEN, FH VORARLBERG, AUSTRIA
COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE PROJECT WITH
UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE, UK
Students from BIMTECH and University of Hertfordshire,
UK are working on Collective Enterprise Project where
students from both the institutions are working to
deliver the solution as per client requirement. Students
from UK visited India to have an interaction with the
client, and to do market survey for delivering expansion
strategy for the identified client.
WHEN WE LIVE IN OTHER COUNTRY, WE LEARN TO
APPRECIATE OUR OWN CULTURE BETTER, WE GET TO
KNOW OURSELVES BETTER AT THE SAME TIME, WE
LEARN ABOUT THE GREAT ASPECTS OF OTHER PEOPLE’S
CULTURES.
- SUSANN NAUMANN, FH VORARLBERG AUSTRIA
STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM
THE CAMPUS IS DAZZLING, FACILITIES ARE GREAT BUT
THE BEST PART OF BIMTECH IS THE STUDENTS. AS A
GROUP THEY ARE VERY SHARP AND ARE SELF DRIVEN.
BUT MORE IMPORTANT IS THEY ARE WELCOMING AND
ANY VISITOR QUICKLY BECOME PART OF THEIR FRIENDLY
AND SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY. BEST LEARNING PART
WAS INTERACTION WITH THE BIMTECH STUDENTS AND
EXCHANGE STUDENTS.
- MAELLE AUDIAU, FH VORARLBERG, AUSTRIA
BIMTECH’s student exchange program is one of the most
vibrant and exciting facets of student community life,
which adds much intercontinental flavour to the
educational experience. Students from across the world
have enjoyed studying on our campus. Each year we
welcome students from our partner universities for
either one term or more. This trimester we received
students under exchange program from FH Joanneum,
Austria; Rouen Business School, ESSCA, France and ESCA,
Morocco.
Thirty Five students from BIMTECH have gone under
student exchange program to FHJoanneum, Austria;
JAMK, Finland; Bordeaux Ecole de Management,
Euromed Ecole de Management, Rouen Business School,
France; Kozmenski University, Poland; UCIII Madrid,
Spain; University of Stellenbosch Business School, South
Africa.
VILLAGE VISIT WAS REAL TIME EXPERIENCE AND WAS
VERY THRILLING. WE PLAYED VOLLEY BALL WITH THE
STUDENTS TEAM, MET ALL THE STAFF MEMBERS.
THEN WE WERE INVITED BY VILLAGERS AND STUDENTS
TO THEIR HOUSES WHERE WE HAD PAKORAS AND
MANY MORE OTHER ITEMS. FINALLY WE ENJOYED
HORSE RIDING AND REALLY ENJOYED THE RICH
CULTURAL HERITAGE.
- MARIANA GABRIELA, ITESM, MEXICO