Tales from SPJCM – Dubai sojourn ends

IIP had ended well and we all quickly rushed to the hostel, but only before our very own photo session in the college. And there we went…we 5…rushing towards all the nooks and corner of the college to get a pose clicked – a remembrance forever!!

And we reached the hostel, braving the Dubai heat and sun – as our enjoyment knew no boundaries!! After our lunch, very quickly, we decided to venture out n go visit places that we were still left. So the list started ;) and we decided to head to the Ibn Battuta Mall. As we spent some time in the mall, we couldn’t spare thoughts and words to cherish and enjoy the exotic architecture of the building. With lovely courts and pavilions designed on the backdrop of a country like the India arena all decked up with India murals, Indian style of architecture and the great India elephant. And similarly the Chinese court all decked up with Red and Dragons and depicted the true Chinese colours.

After having spent some memorable moments there and having clicked some marvellous photographs, we decided to go to the ever famous Jumeirah beach. We spent some good time there and again clicked some nice photographs, this time some smart photography along with the nearside Burj-al-Arab hotel building. As we had heard and read a lot about Palm Jumeirah and the Atlantis Hotel, we thought of going there and requested our Taxi driver to take us there. Oh man, what an excellent chap he was and too good a deal we got, he had agreed to take us around to Jumeirah Beah, Atlantis n Dubai Marina, wait for us at each of these locations and finally drop us off to the hostel – all for 100 AED!!

As we reached Atlantis – we were enamoured and floored by the magnanimous architecture of the building and the whole concept of Palm Jumeirah!! With the reclaimed land and buildings with such a magnificent architecture, surrounded by water all around, it was a feeling beyond explanation!! As we got down at the entrance, we saw Rolls Royce Phantom right up there, and this summed up the lavish and brilliant evening ahead!!

Slowly with much confidence we entered the hotel premises (this was needed as we all were without the 200 AED entry ticket!!:)) and went about going through the whole compound with such an élan that even the engineers of building would have blinked  The posh surroundings and our confident gait made it simpler for us but this was to end for us as right at the other end of the hotel, a waiter requested us for our pass or room keys which obviously we didn’t have. He, upon realizing that both us and him were sailing in troubled waters, he requested us to go out through the other back door!! And out we came and laughed at all this incident till we reached our cab and asked him to take us out and to Dubai Marina. Wow what an evening so far!!

At Dubai Marina, we spent some time clicking photographs at the back drop of those luxurious yachts and those tall sky scrapers. After half an hour there, we realised that we might have ventured into some private zones and hence finally decided to call it a day and headed towards the hostel.

An evening well spent and well remembered after those 3 haggled and troublesome days when most of us started and completed our projects!!

Hold on, Dubai didn’t end like this!! More was to come on the last evening, after we had reached the airport!! With the 11:30 PM flight to Delhi for almost 40 of us, we could see a fleet of cabs waiting for us downstairs. We reached the airport on time and eventually all of us checked in. Then we all spread out to enjoy the last moments in Dubai – in our own different ways. Some shopping, some eating n some like me just window shopping  After having shown our passports almost 2-3 times by now and right there at the final call, suddenly came the news that one of our friends has lost his passport!! Oh God, its time to board and this poor guy has lost the passport!! What to do?? No clue!! Everyone checked their pockets, even their hand baggage, just to console ourselves, even though we knew that it was not with us!! Oh man, how will he travel!! Nothing working out!! Some people even cried (at least people said that standing along them, I don’t know, I didn’t notice, as I was far away), but to no avail!! The flight got delayed as even the flight staff was engrossed in the search operations!! After almost an hour of search operations and multitudes of search teams in operation, the guy finally found his passport and that too at one of those many frisking and document checking counters at the Dubai airport. I must say this incident will remain with him for sure and many of us for other reasons for the whole of our lives!!

Wait – it was still not goodbye to the land of Arabs as we entered the plane!! Having settled down quickly and some of us and others in the flight having used some superfluous words for the delay, we tried to enjoy our standing (that we were a group of 40 together, hence none dare to say anything to us :)) and gave a call as a tribute to someone (chachi, as they call that someone!! :)) and we took off finally from Dubai!!
Those days from Dubai will remain with us forever!! Who and how can we forget the first day in Dubai and the way it transcended till the final take off!!

Tales from SPJCM – IIP final

We were into our last term exams in Dubai and there comes an e-mail saying that we have to give 3 presentations on our IIP. First to the Dean, Dr Sethi (who you must be familiar with by nowJ), Second to a Panel of Professors and an external judge and the Third one to the whole batch. OMG!! Just 3 days to go before we actually play the game in front of 3 eclectic varieties of audiences.

I say, 3 eclectic varieties, because there is a deep thought gone into understanding their behaviour J On one hand, we have the Dean who loves to say a lot many things, but listens only things that sound familiar to him – Research, market research, primary research, SPSS and the likes. Then we have the panel of professors and an external judge who may or may not listen to the topic being discussed depending on their own tastes and flavours. They may ask questions like why are you wearing this particular shirt with this blazer, it doesn’t suit well or may be you spoke well and we liked the way your hands were moving while you presented J It just puts you off when after a heavy technical subject and talk for which you spent sleepless nights you get to hear such comments, instead of worthwhile questions. At the end of it, you feel bad that you spent so many hours preparing for these comments. The third variety is our very own class of folks who are not interested in any presentation or talk that goes on stage. Just the idea of a presentation in the leadership hall gives you a yawn and you tend to get sleepy half way. This motley crowd actually is never interested in any such presentation; more so if it is being given by someone amongst us as we have already had enough of each other in the class and hostel J

Nevertheless, we had to present and there was no running away from this. And somehow, we all knew in our IIP group that we will have to give a presentation to our mentor in Bank of Baroda, so it makes 4 in all for us. By the exams got over, we were ecstatic that we wanted to forget the pains of preparing 4 different presentations but somehow they always came back haunting us, especially after the traumatic semi final we had a few days back and as a result of it, we were asked to do a lot many new things which we had never heard of and never knew of. However, bad it may sound, we knew that we will have to implement at least some parts of the new ideas, if we were to sail through.

3 days break and we planned to do a lot of work then and prepare the presentation. Believe me, it was an ordeal collecting all the 5 of us together at the same time in a single room. Even if we somehow manage to do so, we would never discuss the project, because there were lot many hot things to discuss J Never mind, we knew that we had to finalise on a lot many things and do a lot of work. We divided our work and everyone decided that it will be sent to me for compilation. I and Monty decided to do the presentation as well.

2 days into the work and we hear someone say – “yaar Sharad confidence nahin aa raha hai”…n listening this most of us, especially Sharad got pissed off and there started a small duel with each one of contributing their mite to it. Ranny and Raghu also shouted and Sharad was all ready with Monty to give him the requisite confidence. We were wondering, its just 1 day to go before the mega finale and here we are without confidence on what we have done. There was complete raucous and then I ensued by saying…what the f*** is this and this endangered the whole matter all the more. However, after some nasty discussions and heated arguments, we all sat down knowing well that we all together have to fight it out and emerge winners. And finally we decided something that really brought back some confidence at least into Monty. We finalised to do some of the work that was suggested by Prof Chakraborty on Dr Sethi’s recommendations. And all of us took a sigh of relief as we all had agreed to everything by now and there was no shouting anymore J

I guess this small fight was necessary for the eventual success of the project and our team because this brought us closer to each other and started accepting and believing in each other. Those arguments and those heated discussions brought out a fact that we should do what was asked from us and that saved our lives, at the end of the day.

Presentation was ready and we had decided who would start and knew well what each one of us had to say and present. The next day, we heard that the presentations were going behind schedule and we can take time to reach college. As usual, our very own Brad Pitts, Raghu and Ranny were late and reached the college after the rest of us. Luckily for us, our turn hadn’t come by then and we could still take some time to recollect everything.

Slowly but surely, the presentations before us got over and our time to get honoured came. We entered the room and Dr Sethi was eagerly waiting for us. As we got the setup ready, Ranny was ready to shoot. I was at the computer running the slideshow while the rest of us presented and Ranny actually shot – said “Good afternoon Sethi saab” and we all wondered what was that, did we hear what he actually said. And true to Ranny’s ways he started of in his inimitable style. I still remember those words from him – “Just to give you an idea of the Credit Derivatives Market, the size of the US economy is USD 13 trillion and the credit derivatives running on just AIG are USD 67 trillion”. And we heard all that marketing gyaan from him and we were all smiling from inside J And we all presented, with me closing the presentation by giving him a SWOT analysis of CLNs (just to make sure, it looks like a market research project, you remember)

We ended our presentation and we knew that now the Lion would roar. And roared he, with a smile. He asked us whether we think that this project would have taken us 4 months or not to complete. As we said Yes and complimented it with a comment - Offcourse it took us more than 4 months for the project as we had to analyse a lot of things, alphas, betas, gammas and LEMMAS. Oh man!! What is "lemma" now?? Everyone of us wondered. But as they say...once said is said...nothing can be done then J And he started off with another salvo, what all did we do, where did we got it analysed and then where did you get those contacts that you had shown in the presentation and then he said how did we contact them? As if all this was not enough and he asked us to tell him how our mid term review went and what did he ask us to do. As we told him about what happened then, he asked us whether we implemented what was suggested. We readily said Yes, as we actually did implement all that. He rounded off by saying what our mentor thinks of the project and if he is happy with it. As we returned the honours with the affirmative, he asked us if we were the same group with whom he had a small tussle during the mid term review. Again we said Yes, though this time we were reluctant, but we had to say that. There was no running away from this.

Then he paused for a second or two and our heart pumped heavily, as he hadn’t declared the result as yet. We had already started moving out of the room and we looked back at him in anticipation of some good news, and he asked…what did you think, I am not going to pass your project? You have done a reasonable job and I am satisfied with it. Oh what a moment was that!! We couldn’t believe what our ears heard and tried to see each other to make sure that we heard the same thing and it made sense to us J By now we were out of the room and our happiness knew no boundaries.

Everyone was so overjoyed that I must tell you the real expression on the face of each one of us. We came out and Ranny jumped in the air as if he had won the Olympic Gold Medal for High Jump. Sharad and I were so happy and launched ourselves towards Ranny as we had just won the battle of waterloo. Raghu was so ecstatic and hugged us as we had solved a big puzzle. And our very own Monty cried as if he were a small girl and he had some pent up emotions for so many months and his confidence returned only after we had heard that we had won the battle inside that room. Overall we all hugged each other and had one of more joyous moments of our lives in Dubai. OMG!! What a victory for our group and what a moment! Those moments are etched in our hearts like a mark of stone.

Do you know what actually rounded off this whole eventful IIP Final for us? No its not those emotional and feelings of satisfaction. No, not the feeling of work well done and well appreciated, but a phone call that came after we had all presented and came out winning. Yes, a phone call! That call was from a business contact, whom we had tried to contact for an outside review of our project. This was something that was a necessity to get an individual and independent evaluation of the project and get his insightful views. Though, I spoke to him at length about the whole idea and noted down his views, however, we laughed and smiled a lot as we had never laughed and we would remember this day ever!

Tales from SPJCM – Match: IIP semi final & Umpire: Dr. Sethi

We left our last IIP discussion on a serious note and am sure…most of us would have felt something or the other on the strings that were touched there. On a different note, let me bring to you what happened on course our IIP.

You must remember that in IIP, we were a group of 5 – Monty, Raghu, Ranny, Sharad and me. The kinda of folks we were and the experience we had in dealing with Finance in its hard core existence, anyone would know what could be the status of the project by each passing day. However, we still managed quite a lot by our standards and that kept our mentor at the bank quite happy and satisfied J

One fine day, came news that kind of took ground off our feet. The then Dean, Dr. Sethi was to take a mid term review of our projects and would comment accordingly J OMG!! This news was something that would have shaken other groups alike; however, we were all the more confused what to show him. Not because we hadn’t done our stuff, but because of the fact that our project and the modus operandi followed was anything but to his liking. Though we always knew his obsession with Market Research, Cold calling and Primary Research, but our project had anything but this. Now you know what gave us those goose bumps J

Knowing well what was awaiting us in board room in Dubai, we decided on a few mantras to be followed in front of the Dean (Yes, some mantras were required, considering the kind of terror was established by now). Some highlights were:

- Speak clearly in front of him

- Tell him clearly what was entailed of us in the project

- Not to cross anyone while he is speaking

- Try and convince him that what were doing is what the bank has asked us to do and this is known to the college faculty (actually that was the truth J)

Armed with these self designed sutras, we entered the board room and what awaited us, became a part of the SPJCM folklore. Dr. Sethi welcomed us to the room and quickly asked us to introduce ourselves and then move on to tell him the details of the project – the organization, the project scope, what we were to do and what we had done so far. Somewhere in our hearts we were overwhelmed by Dr Sethi’s well known and acclaimed obsessions and knew that those will be talked about sooner than later. And there came the first salvo - where is market research and primary research? He was to ask this question and pat came, by now very famous dialogue of GMBA – “In the world of finance…”

For sometime, somehow, he listened patiently to us and then started off by saying something that threatened us a lot – Why do you have to sell this project to me…don’t do that…and finally he ended up by asking us do you really think this project should take the time it has taken and you have spent so far. That was the most dreaded of them all, as the spectre of redoing the whole stuff loomed large in front of us.

But somehow, “in the world of finance…” worked wonders for us and he readily accepted our claims to IIP greatness and our claims of “world of finance”. He suggested we send our project details and workings to Prof. Arindam and Prof. Chakraborty (which we actually did) and signed off.

Woaaah!! We never knew how we could sail through the tide called Dr. Sethi that day, when we could see that tidal fury for us. At one moment it looked he will ask us to redo the whole project and come back again with some primary research, even though it never fitted the topic and the work that we were doing. But I guess, it was our faith in ourselves, our capabilities and belief in each other that helped us lot in finally delivering what we wanted to and made him believe in the utility of such non-primary research, non-cold calling projects and that students can learn a lot even without these in the projects.

What a day that was!! 3 cheers for the team!!

Hip Hip Hurray!!

Hip Hip Hurray!!

Hip Hip Hurray!!

Tales from SPJCM – Mystery called IIP

Within a few days into MBA at SPJCM, while we were all still in our honeymoon phase in Dubai (if I am allowed to call it so ;)), probably the biggest bomb of MBA was dropped on our heads – in the form IIP. The so called IIP – Industry Interaction Project, a brainchild of SPJCM to replace the concept of very famous summer internships at other MBA schools was a mystery till then. The lid was let open as we got aware of the various facets of the project and how and what we are to do for it.

The concept looked simple on papers but was really tough when faced in the real world of business. We were to form teams of 4-6 people and do a project for an organisation. The project will be decided and led by the organisation by allocating a project mentor. The college was to approve of the project topic and we can take help from any college faculty whenever we wanted. As the teams were to be decided and formed by ourselves, it led to a lot of anxiety yet again. We had not been in the college for long and hence forming a team without knowing people around you was a difficult task and in a way we all were playing a gamble. Everyone knew the criticality of this project for our grades (with 3 credits attached to it) and for an impression that we could leave on our future recruiters and possible pre placements. Each one of us had our task cut out, searching for a suitable team with whom one could gel and perform well. With a lot of anxiety as had been the case thus far in SPJCM, we all started our discussions to form a team.

I would be lying if I say that I was not anxious to find and form a good project team and start applying for the projects already coming by now. But I always knew that I and Raghavendra aka Raghu were to be in the same team (we knew each other for the past 8 years now and knew how each of us worked). And Raghu told me that he was with me in whatever team I made. One fine day, while discussing this with Biswajeet aka Monty, he told me that he wanted to make a team with me and Sharad was with him as well. I shared this with Raghu and he said he was fine with it. So, here was our team of 4 – ready for the kill J The next day, Sharad told me that we are only 4 of us and Ranny also wanted to be a part of our team and share and enjoy the fun. So here is a team of 5 – The Finzards (the name coined by Monty for us). Each one of us was different than the other –

Biswajeet – The Tension Man – Who would always be there to do everything but would not do anything :P

Raghavendra – The Late Lateef – Who would always be ready to do everything on time but would always be late for everything ;)

Ranny – The Free Wheeler – Who would never come to discuss anything, nor do anything – quite simple :P

Sharad – The Load Taker – Who would try and do everything and allow for others to enjoy, but would not allow so on the day when we were to meet our mentor ;)

Uphar – The Meeting Arranger – Who would and take pains in arranging for our team meetings where no one would come except myself :P

No wonder everyone wondered how we could manage excellent response from our mentors and college alike. I guess, this versatility in the team allowed for a lot of fun (who can forget those trips to Karachi Darbar and walking miles to get to the bus stand in the dusty lanes of Dubai). The fact we could gel easily with each other and were at ease and each one wanted to learn from others made life easier for us. This camaraderie we share to this day.

We started our IIP voyage with Microsoft and Reliance Capital calling for CVs of students applying for their projects. For us the voyage continued till July 7 (during our first term exams) when finally we landed on the shores of our very own Bank of Baroda. Till that time, everyone had gotten worried whether they will get an IIP or not and what in this world will happen to the grades and the grand dreams that we all had as there were so many teams but no projects coming. Even the college was not sure how many more would get the project with an organisation. By now even we had gotten anxious and worried too on not getting an IIP, so getting one with BOB and that too with their Investment Banking division came as a whiff of cool air in the dry and warm weather of Dubai.

The news of we getting an IIP that too in the IB arm of BoB came as a surprise to many as it surprised us as well. We never expected to get it, nor did anyone else that too surpassing other better equipped and eligible teams (I would say so because other teams had CAs, bankers and IB experience holders in their teams). We were a team of raw blood – no one had previous banking or financial institution experience, leave alone IB experience. But as they say, no one knows what impresses the recruiter – I guess this same adage worked for us as we impressed the BoB team. None of us had any finance experience and believe me this scared us at times as well. But we had the passion and the ability to learn finance and make it good in the field, so we were eager and excited, adding up to mixed feelings within us.

I believe a lot many of us struggled to get an IIP – in fact most of us met the same fate, not due to the inexperience of the candidates, but I believe due to the concept of IIP not getting popular with the corporate community. The projects were never sold and made to do so in the right spirit of the concept. They were made to be just like market research projects, where students had to make certain cold calls, do some primary research, use SPSS to do analytical calculations and create charts and graphs and complete the project. In my belief, the IIP is the best way the college can sell the quality of students (for which it takes a lot of pain). It should popularise it by adopting a simple strategy: allow the companies to fulfil their requirements with these projects by giving them a free hand in selecting the right and suitable approach for the project, where each party (student, college and the company) is a beneficiary. I think, the teams can take a lateral view of the project from the college faculty and adopt the right approach after consultations with them. But overall design and charter should be decided by the organisations selecting student teams for these projects. In the end, these organisations should benefit out of these projects and should be ready for such projects each year. This is a simple strategy which could make IIP more popular and add some points against the name of the college in the industry-college interaction list of the recruiters.

I remember the way one of the organisations treated one of our teams by saying this project is just a formality for them, they had already done this project with a professional consultant, and it is just to maintain business relations with the college that they had to give this project to us. They even went to the level of saying that they were in no ways getting benefited by this project. Just imagine the state of the students when they hear this from their mentor(s). Will they be able to do justice to the project and to themselves? Are they not forced to just complete the project to fulfil academic requirements only? Are they gaining something out of such an exercise? My answer to all these questions and many such other questions is “NO”.

We as responsible alumni have to discuss this issue thread bare and openly. We should contribute to this in whatever manner possible and generate discussion. This will not only strengthen our alma mater but prove to be good advice for future students. Start contributing to this!!