More about the Occupy Movement. Comic inspired by this, a must watch.

Concept, illustrations and graphics by Deepak Gopalakrishnan aka chuck_gopal, a Mallu-turned Mumbaiker who blogs here and tweets here.

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Trichy is about to complete its first year of existence. PaGaLGuY catches up with its director Prof Prafulla Agnihotri to know how the year went. The most important takeaway from the short interview was that the job market slowdown may lead IIM Trichy to not expand its intake in the coming academic year.

How has the first year been for IIM Trichy?

Not bad at all. I could rate it 4 out of 5. It was important for me to have a proper academic campus which I have managed in the short time given to set it up. The classrooms and other infrastructure were also set up in days. The hostels were made ready within days too, not to forget the faculty and non-academic staff who also we got aboard in record time.

But there is more to be done?

Yes. To begin with, I never realised that there was no Wi-Fi on the campus. I just took it for granted that since it is such a done thing these days, it would be there. I am getting it done this year. Another thing is the library which will be up and running soon. We are investing more than Rs 75 lakhs on the library alone so that it has all the latest books and journals from across the world. The person manning the library will be someone who had worked with top libraries across the globe. Am going to make sure that digitally too we are abreast with the global scene. I will have bean bags and sofas in the library – who says libraries have to be boring places with desks and chairs? And there is the new campus which will be coming up and I am not going to have the government agencies build it because if they do, it will look like any other government building.

Do you face any limitations because of operating from within the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Trichy campus?

Not really, NIT has been very helpful in every way. But we want to do things differently which I guess we will be able to do in our new campus. The permanent campus for the institute will be built on 200 acres of land between Bharathidasan University and Anna University of Technology on the Trichy-Pudukottai highway. But it will be ready after a few years. This year I will be installing generators in the hostels as there are power problems here and I don’t want studies to be disrupted. I am also going to install televisions in the hostels. Since the female students share the hostel with NIT students and all our hostels are within the NIT campus, NIT students will also be able to enjoy these facilities. Besides, we are taking a lot of interest in landscaping our gardens and beautifying the place, which will add to the atmosphere.

Any faculty expansion plans?

Yes, we should achieve a strength of 20 by this year end. Faculty was a big problem for me and I did not want to start an IIM without having permanent faculty on board. I didn’t want my students to be at the mercy of just a few or no permanent faculty when they are beginning their MBA life. We have already made offer letters to a couple of professors. One professor might even join in 2013 but spotting good faculty and getting them aboard is a continuous process. We will be 14 permanent members soon and 20 is the number we will reach by the time the new academic year is through.

Among the non-teaching staff, too, we have taken great pains to get the right people. We got 87 applications, we shortlisted 25 and finally took 3. This is just to tell you that we did not take it easy on any aspect.

Will you increase the PGP intake during the coming academic year?

I would love to, but seeing the global scenario, I will not. I also have to think of placements. No point increasing the intake if I am not able to give them jobs at the end of the term. Already the global market does not seem too good at the moment. If this momentum remains, jobs could be an issue. Even for the first year, I wanted to initially take 65 students only. But we got so many applications. Finally from 95, we got the strength down to 85. Of this, one left for IIM Bangalore which I was perfectly okay with and refunded his fees entirely.

Any changes in the admission process that you are planning?

Am doing away with the group discussion (GD) and replacing it with a written test. It has been proved time and again that in GDs, only those who are assertive and aggressive take over the floor. This year the interviews will be in-depth. We are strongly looking for the right kind of people to join IIM Trichy and the interviews will help us a great deal in it. The attitude and personality of the applicant will be checked at the interview level. And yes, we are looking at getting more women in class. Women definitely help diversity in class. Their views and approach to events and issues is often different and more interesting.

Does the ongoing IIM autonomy issue bother?

Not really, I can say that we are fully autonomous. The ministry does not really interfere in everything like it is perceived. We can employ our own faculty and we make our own rules.

Is IIM really a global brand or is it that only we in India think of it that way?

When I was at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and clearing immigration, the officer at the airport spotted the word ‘IIM’ on my passport and smiled. When I asked him whether he knew what an IIM was, he said ‘of course’ and that everyone in the world did. So that should answer your question hopefully.

Thursday morning witnessed confusion among students of the Mumbai Education Trust (MET) Institute of Management, Mumbai as news reports about Sunil Karve, a founder-trustee and vice-chairman of MET lodging a complaint with the commissioner of Mumbai police alleging misappropriation of trust funds to the tune of Rs 177 crore by Maharashtra PWD minister Chhagan Bhujbal and his family.

While lectures went on as usual during the day, student were seen talking in whispers, hoping to be told what the real issue was. With no clarification or briefing coming from the administration, the students were longing for interaction on the issue with the college authorities when PaGaLGuY visited the campus this morning.

Since yesterday, Mumbai’s local media has been rife with the news of Sunil Karve (who has been associated with MET since its beginning, 1989) alleging in a police complaint that some parts of the MET complex were being used for personal purposes of the Bhujbal family.

The MET complex was set up at Mumbai’s Bandra Reclamation suburb on land leased from civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on the condition that it would be used for educational purposes. The complaint however states that the eighth floor of the institute has been used by Bhujbal’s daughters-in-law Vishakha and Shefali for running their furniture business called ‘IDEEN furniture’. On the IDEEN website too, the office address was written as ’8th level, MET building’ at the time of writing this article. The complaint also mentions that the 10th floor was being used as a residence of the Bhujbal family.

While many students were apprehensive about their placements getting affected due to this controversy, there were also students who were expecting to be briefed by the administration with immediate effect.

“I did check the newspaper stories in the morning. It is very disappointing that as students who are part of the institute have not received any formal briefing or update on the matter from the administration of MET yet,” said a final year management student who did not wished to be named.

She further said, “We have paid fees of about Rs 6 lakh for a two-year course. If our institute is in the news for internal controversies, we as students should definitely be roped in with a briefing.”

Another final year management student said, “As a part of the curriculum we have been taught conflict management. However, when there is a real-life crisis why does the institute refuse to update its students?”

“I don’t think that our placements will be affected because of the controversy is related to the board members and trustees. I even smell some political gimmick as municipal elections are round the corner. However, as a student I would appreciate some dialogue by the institute,” said a first year student of management.

Vijay Page, director-general of the Institute of Management, MET told PaGaLGuY, “Our faculty, students and academic proceedings are not at all affected because of the controversy out in the media. Classes were held as usual and it is an internal matter between the board of trustees so I will not like to give any knee-jerk reaction.”

He further said, “I have not received any queries from students or faculty yet, so it is too early to provide them any stand. However, if there are a series of news reports in the media and if students demand any such briefing we shall take a call only after a joint discussion with the administration.”

When contacted, Samir Bhujbal, Chhagan Bhujbal’s nephew who is also a trustee of the college said, “We have not received any notification or call from the police commissioner’s office yet. I stand by the statements made by Mr Chhagan Bhujbal to the media yesterday. Currently, I am busy with the election preparation and will not be able to furnish any details.”

Sayaji Nangre, legal advocate of Karve said, “We have filed another complaint today at the police commissioner’s office as the furniture on the 8th floor office has been shifted overnight, thereby amount to tampering of evidence.”

While attending the convocation function at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University at New Delhi, PaGaLGuY bumped into Naina Lal Kidwai, the Country Head of HSBC India and the first Indian woman to have graduated from the Harvard Business School, long ago in 1982. In a quick and exclusive interview, this icon of success among women in corporate India speaks about the importance of hard work, women in IIM classrooms and more.

What are the five qualities that you have come to admire in people at the workplace throughout your career?

I think first and foremost, it’s persistence or the never-say-die spirit. That means persistence in getting the job done, persistence in excelling and persistence in not getting down-and-out when things go wrong. Second would be team-play. You need to recognise that you cannot do everything yourself, you need to have people with you and around you so that when you identify something you do not know you can turn to them. The third would be the ability to continue getting trained academically and to do it right. There should be the ability to not just learn and know, but to continuously learn. The fourth would be humility so that you are humble enough to recognise what you do not know so that you keep learning. If you are humble, you also make for a team player. Last, but as important as the rest would be integrity. You need to do everything with spirit so that you live by principles.

What are the qualities that you do not appreciate in managers, something you would advise young people against?

All the people do not work hard, who do not believe in team-play and who do not believe in continuously working should be careful. The biggest danger is when you have just got a degree and you think you know it all. Actually, everything you learn is outdated by almost six months to a year in this time of change. To continuously learn is very important and your degree is a passport to learn everything that is important. Your mind should have the agility to learn. You never stop. Back when I did my degree from Harvard in 1982, so little of the actual learning (I did then) is relevant today but the tools, the way it continuously equips you to learn has stayed.

What such tools have proved to be the most effective in your life?

The ability to have a lot of data thrown at you but the ability to distil it into some sense, the ability to analyse, the ability to articulate that analysis, the confidence in your own ability to do all those things are the tools that you learn and which stay with you forever.

What according to you is the one most valued quality in young managers today?

With different kids, it is different. Each brings a phenomenal amount of intellect and passion. What I find most attractive is the wonderful energy that kids have on joining. I would give very high points to attitude while assuming a base level of intellect.

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top b-schools have been relaxing their admission criteria to accommodate more women. Your views?

The downside of having a quota is that it makes it appear as if it is not your merit. I think it’s not so much a problem with a quota, as it is with the fact that the IIMs have to address why they don’t have more women joining the management field. I think the answer lies in the fact that because the criteria are very IIT and CAT oriented, the IIMs attracts a certain kind of candidate. So the criteria, which I don’t think are right, is what begins the discrimination. I don’t think you should look at quotas, you should look at what is not working and why it is not working. You should analyse why it is that women, who constitute a good number of students these days, are not coming to the field of management. By resetting that, you begin to understand what is wrong and what needs to be changed. While I was on the dean’s advisory board at the Harvard Business School, it had turned out that the average age of people joining management institutes had become 28-29 years in place of 25-26 earlier. Women at the age of 28-29 found it quite hard to come to study. They may have married, they may have children, there may be umpteen reasons that stop them from joining. So the institute had to drop the age requirements in order to get more women. You need to understand that the minute you put a specification, like having a 4-5 years work experience it becomes a discrimination of sorts because it ensures that people who could be eligible otherwise would not come through. We have to rethink who we admit. I would not call it a quota, but a criteria for admissions. It needs to be broad-based so that you don’t get one uniform type of person coming through and every kid who graduates is just from the engineering background.

More number of Indians today seem open to the idea of studying an MBA abroad. Your comments?

The issue here is of the quality of what we offer. Few b-schools here have got it all. It was wonderful to see these last Financial Times rankings where we have two Indian b-schools in the top 20, which is excellent. But we need more on that list. Also, every one of those kids who goes offshore, goes because he does not get an admission here in the top schools. They do not go only because they want to go. It is tougher to get admission in an IIM than it is to get admission offshore. Otherwise why would you not spend lesser and do and MBA here?

I just think we need more schools of a high calibre and be able to ensure that all our kids get good quality education. I chaired the Indian Advisory Board for Harvard Business School where the research centre is writing case studies on India. Why would you want to go all the way to the US to write cases on India when you could do it here? So we really need more schools here who can teach at the level we would like them to.

Under your leadership, HSBC has taken to microfinance in a big way. What is the scope of work that youngsters can look forward to by joining this sector?

Microfinance fills a very important gap for the country because it is all about rural and financial inclusion. Not just rural, but banks have not been able to successfully cover urban areas too. So only 50% of Indians have bank accounts, which includes the microfinancial accounts as well. There have been problems along the way, for instance the rates of interest were much too high or there was too much aggressive lending which would mean that one person had taken four loans when really they could only repay one. Those are the things which need to be corrected. But these things do not make microfinance bad. Microfinance has been such a critical provider of finance. That finance can sometimes go into business for women who can borrow to do embroidery, buy a cow, buy chickens, which then brings them the ability to repay the loans and help save money. This is the ideal situation and microfinance provides that today because banks have seriously failed in that sector (through mainstream banking products). So we need a viable microfinance sector and we need it to be regulated. Young managers can help out by understanding this core concept and bringing in fresh ideas to make this sector work in the best possible manner.

There is apprehension among youngsters today about entering a b-school because of the uncertain job market…

It is not just on an Indian level but globally the situation has seen a setback. The best we can do is sit back and wait it out. I do not think that management students should be worried. This should pass soon.

Diversity of class has been the driving force behind declaring the list of shortlisted candidates from the Xavier’s Admission Test (XAT) 2012 results for the interview stage of the XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur admissions.

XLRI’s admissions chairperson Soumendra Bagchi told PaGaLGuY that the school was looking at increasing the number of female candidates and non-engineers and the shortlisting criteria had been aimed towards reaching that goal.

However, Prof Bagchi made it very clear that at no point will merit take a beating during the admissions process. “We will not discriminate with a section of candidates just to keep diversity in class. Which is why there are no extra marks added to any particular category of candidates. After the initial search, it will be a level playing field.”

Ironically, 93% of XAT 2012 test takers are engineers which means that the school couldn’t force diversity even if it tried very hard.

But is it really possible to keep diversity in class and yet not interfere with merit? Prof Bagchi replied in the affirmative and said that at the interview level, everything else being the same, the panelists will be asked to be sensitive to women candidates  and those who show interesting achievements. “For instance, with women, maybe we will ask the interview panelists to look at personality traits which we may not consider in the male candidates,” he said.

Interviews are scheduled to begin on February 20, 2012 and will be conducted at Jamshedpur, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

The XAT 2012 cutoffs for XLRI admissions this year have been higher compared to the last year and this is primarily because the applicant pool has been larger. For the Human Resource Management (HRM) Programme, a total 1,372 applicants have been shortlisted for interview at XAT cutoffs of 80 percentile in the English Language (EL) section, 80 percentile in Decision Making (DM), 70 percentile in Quantitative Aptitude (AQ) and 88 percentile overall. While for the Business Management (BM) course, a total of 955 applicants have been shortlisted for the next stage. The XAT cut-offs for BM are 70 percentile in EL, 80 percentile in DM, 92 percentile in QA and overall 90 percentile. Last year, the pool for HRM had been 1,100 and it was 880 for BM.

Prof Bagchi added that since the XAT test format had been different this year, the overlap between candidates wanting HRM and BM will be very less.

Moving forward, Prof Bagchi advises shortlisted candidates to brush up their basic academic knowledge. “They have to be aware of what is happening in society and the world at large. They need to be sensitive to societal changes and understand them properly.”

More than anything, Prof Bagchi pleads that candidates should not cook up hobbies at the last minute. “We get candidates with zero knowledge of certain activities but they would be listed as one of their attributes. Please refrain from it totally,” he cautioned.

As for the topper, the only information available with us right now is that like last year, this year too it is a female candidate. In fact, there are two women in the XAT 2012 top 10.

Abhishek Asthana a.k.a @GabbbarSingh on Twitter

If you are one of those people who are hooked on to social networking sites, you may know the Twitter handle @GabbbarSingh fairly well. Its owner is the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Pune MBA student Abhishek Asthana who already has 16,000 plus followers for his humorous Twitter avatar.

Abhishek thought of the idea in January 2010, when he thought of writing a blog post about the movie Sholay. “I thought of this funny situation where the Sholay cast joins Twitter and they start tweeting to each other in their style. I needed screenshots of the tweets, but as photoshopping looked like a lot of work, I thought of creating a Twitter account, tweeting some stuff and taking screen shots of it and then posting on my blog. But after tweeting, within five minutes I had got some 50 new followers and by the end of the day that number was 400.”

“That’s how @GabbbarSingh was born, or should I say, reincarnated,” says Abhishek.

Why MBA?

Abhishek was earning a good salary, while working as a software engineer in 2009 at Samsung R&D in the mobiles division at Bangalore. But he left it when he felt that he was not getting enough credit for work that he thought was due to him.

“That is when I decided to do an MBA, so that I have greater control over things and ultimately become a marketing manager,” he says.

From being a techie to a blogger to Gabbar Singh

“I took the Common Admission Test (CAT) in 2009 and it was a disaster. That is the time I wanted to be away from Facebook, because everyone around me was talking about the test. I started blogging and wrote a few satirical pieces,” narrates Abhishek. His writing got noticed and he started freelancing for the JAM magazine, a youth newspaper in Mumbai. “It was then, that I came up with the concept of blogging about the Sholay characters tweeting to each other. When I tried making a fake Gabbar Singh account, I saw that it was already taken. So I had to write Gabbar with three b’s (@GabbbarSingh). Fake accounts of celebrities were not so much in vogue in India that time. I began tweeting in English and people found Gabbar, a desi robber tweeting in English, extremely funny and amusing,” he recalls.

Abhishek enjoys the anonymity (not anonymous anymore, though). In Bangalore, a colleague actually asked him to follow @GabbbarSingh on Twitter, “Because apparently he tweets really funny stuff.” Abhishek came back to the room and laughed it out. In due course however, people found out that he was ‘the one’.

During his summer placements at SIBM Pune, he faced a similar situation. “This FMCG company and one of the panelists asked me if I used Twitter, and if I did, what was my Twitter handle. When I said it was @GabbbarSingh, he said, ‘Hey I follow you!’ That was an amazing moment,” laughs Abhishek.

Fun during the Commonwealth Games 2010

“Before the Commonwealth Games (CWG) mismanagement fiasco broke out, we (Faking News, @Gkhamba and @GabbbarSingh) came together to start a new Twitter handle called @CWG2010PR, a parody account which claimed to be the unofficial PR channel of the CWG 2010,” says Abhishek. It started tweeting funny, sarcastic one-liners and earned some 3,000 followers in a matter of just three days.

“A lot of foreign correspondents started following the handle and it got mentioned in the print media. In the end, we ended up getting an offer from a national news channel to get featured. We decided against it, and we ended after the CWG opening ceremony,” he adds. Many people tried to guess who the people behind @CWG2010PR were but no one managed to. “Some people almost caught us when we used to retweet the @CWG2010PR tweets from our respective Twitter accounts so often,” smiles Abhishek.

The Gabbar Singh in real life

Funnily, Abhishek is a far cry from Gabbar Singh. He is tall and lanky, with hair falling on his forehead and is clean shaven too. He does not want to make writing his career, though. “Your dessert, however tasty it might be, cannot be your main course. If I took up my hobby as my career, then what will I do in my free time?”

Abhishek has written few episodes of the Internet late night show ‘JayHind’ (from the makers of the Shekhar Suman-starrer popular show ‘Movers & Shakers’). During the IPL 2011, he was one of the 12 people in the country who were involved in promoting Star Movies’ programme ‘Star league’ on Twitter. Abhishek regularly gets mentioned for his tweets in all the leading newspapers, and these days he also consults startups on their digital marketing strategies.

So after such ‘unusual’ success, where does Gabbar Singh go next? “Well, I am a marketing guy and with the help of my popular @GabbbarSingh account, I can get a huge sample size of 15,000 plus people, who I can use for market research. Whenever I have done that, I have got at least a hundred responses in five minutes,” he says.

There are celebrities like Konkona Sen Sharma and Gul Panag following his account. Gul Panag told PaGaLGuY that she followed him because “He is witty and he comments on current affairs and technology. What else does one need?”

“My long term plan is to sleep an extra hour, peacefully, after the alarm snooze button is pressed for the first time,” he smiles and signs off.

Some popular one-liners from the @GabbbarSingh Twitter account

• Tweeting about changing the nation is like a Constructor worker ‘working from home’.
• Sarcasm is like electricity, half of the villagers are yet to get it.
• No matter how much you achieve in life, someday a guy will wrap samosas with your obituary.
• Facebook will be much more interesting if only they let you decide, which part of the body, you wanna Poke.
• Sonam Kapoor plays Farmville on her Daddy’s chest.
• Orkut sending you weekly updates is like that Gaaon ke chacha writing you postcards to come visit.
• When your doctor asks you “Do you drink?”. Optimism is assuming that he wants to offer you his scotch
• Continuously updating your FB status while watching a sports match is like making notes while smooching.
• Absence from Facebook is like absence from a prison. If you don’t see the person, assume he’s doing good with his life.
• Comparing Coke Studio Pakistan with Coke Studio India is like comparing Kapil Dev with Kapil Sibal.
• Love is two ‘invisible’ people chatting on Gtalk.
• When in doubt, append a ‘:P’.
• No of hours you spend wearing shorts in a day/No. of hours wearing trousers = work life balance index.

Italy’s SDA Bocconi School of Management, University of Bocconi at Milan is the latest foreign business school featuring in the Financial Times Top 100 to work around the absence of a foreign direct investment policy in higher education in India and start a collaboration programme with a local partner, just as Canada’s Schulich did with SP Jain, UK’s Stratyclyde is doing with SKIL Infrastructure and Lancaster with GD Goenka.

The school has joined forces with the Mumbai International School of Business (MISB) to offer a Post Graduate Programme in Business starting June 2012.

Calling India a ‘cultural and traditional duplicate’ of Italy, Prof Stefano Caselli, director, Executive Exchange Customs Program at SDA Bocconi School of Management and head of the India venture, in an interview with PaGaLGuY said that developing roots in Mumbai was one of the main reasons for SDA Bocconi to start up in India.

Why is SDA Bocconi opening an MBA programme in India?

There are two different aspects. On one side, Bocconi has great international exposure, which is the result of a large number of exchange programmes and double degree programmes. We have also been recruiting faculty from the international job market. Bocconi spends lot of its energy into becoming international. On the other hand, it is another matter to create a completely new venture outside Italy. In this sense, MISB Bocconi is something that is new, which is based on the institute’s past experiences.

MISB Bocconi is a new venture based on solid backgrounds and experience. We know the international market and India very well. Our intention to start this venture outside our comfort zone is the result of long-drawn, strategic thinking. India is a large country that offers a variety of experiences to all who come here. India and Italy have somewhat similar cultures, which is one of the major reasons we thought that MISB Bocconi might make sense.

Why did SDA Bocconi choose MISB over other more established b-schools in the country as its local partner?

There are two reasons. Bocconi has high international standards, has a high standing in international ratings, and has international faculty. Firstly, we want to create an atmosphere in the country that is compliant with Bocconi’s high international standards. MISB matches with Bocconi’s standards. Secondly, without any compromise, we want to create in Mumbai the same roots, traditions and guidance of the Boconni tradition and culture as we have back in Italy. We are not focussing so much on the brand name of the school.

Have you measured your school up with other Mumbai b-schools such as SP Jain or the one at the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay which are better ranked?

Competition is an important factor of growth. Competition for Bocconi would be the same as competition for MISB Bocconi. Competition essentially means improving oneself and getting to the highest level of rankings. Bocconi has a certain level of ranking. I feel MISB also has the same spirit.

Why did you choose Mumbai as the city for a campus in India?

Milan and Mumbai are very similar. Milan is the centre of business in Italy as Mumbai is in India. In addition, Milan is the international financial centre of Europe and Mumbai holds the same position in Asia. Thus, we feel comfortable to stay in Mumbai because even though the countries are of different sizes, we find many similarities between the two places. In order to provide the same values as those imparted in Bocconi, we need to be in the same kind of atmosphere that we find absolutely comfortable.

Not all international schools which are offering programmes with local partners in India have been successful at filling up their intakes. Your comments?

Our faculty is one of the core values that we are banking on along with our corporate connections that will also help in the student placements. Our strategy is to create a faculty, which is based on three different groups of people. The first is ‘commuting faculty’, or faculty coming from Bocconi. We have had many discussions with our faculty to identify a group who are willing to spend a part of their lives living in India. Their stay would be as long as one semester. The second group will be faculty recruited from the international markets. We believe that there are some senior faculty members in the United States, who are former Indian citizens, who would like a chance to come back to their country. The third group is comprised of the professors we would be recruiting directly from the Indian markets. Our wide base of excellent faculty should help ensure that we have a full batch when we begin our first session from this year onwards.

How different would the programmes offered at MISB Bocconi and SDA Bocconi be?

The programme is the same as well as different. It is same in the sense that some topics like finance are given an international treatment by nature. On the other hand, when we are teaching people who have specific expectations, we have to change our examples and case studies to appeal to the students’ mindsets. It is the case with Mumbai as well. There is a huge work of creating business cases.

How diverse if the SDA Bocconi student community? What kind of a batch are you aiming to gather at MISB Bocconi?

In Bocconi we have a very wide and diversified student base. In fact, 80% of our students are non-Italian. We have students from 36 countries, out of which almost 40% are Indians. For MISB Bocconi, I would like to say that every programme has a lifecycle. In the long run, even if India has a huge student audience, we would like to have a diversified student base at MISB Bocconi. In fact, I would not be surprised if someday soon we have Italian students who come to experience the Indian culture. But this is not our target for today or tomorrow.

What will be the programme structure at MISB Bocconi?

It will be a two-year long programme. Typically, in the first year, we will work on the basic pillars of management and entrepreneurship. The first eleven months will be in India. In the second year, there would be three parts. In the month of July, students will go for the ‘campus abroad’ programme. Students will go to different universities located in Asia, Europe and other parts of the world and learn management at a different level. In the second part, students will go for a ‘semester abroad’ to Bocconi. A change in culture and atmosphere will help open their minds up to create a different perspective. In the last month of the two-year programme, students will be sent for Career Commencement School (CCS). In this, we will use an executive-style approach. We will also invite people from the corporate world to run joint sessions with the professors. We believe that this blend will be very beneficial to the students.

Will SDA Bocconi students from Milan also be spending a semester at MISB Bocconi in Mumbai?

Yes, they most definitely will. However, we first need to build a solid foundation for MISB Bocconi. Only then will we think of expanding the course in Mumbai enough to invite Bocconi students here.

What will the fee structure at MISB Bocconi be?

At Bocconi, there is a strong sense of merit. We want to have a strong set of students at our institute. MISB Bocconi currently has a relatively high fee structure of Rs 19 lakh. However, we will be offering scholarships to meritorious students. In Bocconi, we give out loan facilities to students at a subsidised rate. The idea is to give students the chance to finance themselves. This way, students will be able to pay back the loan once they start working in the industry.

Why should students choose MISB Bocconi over the chance of attending the fulltime programme at SDA Bocconi?

It is important that students to have both opportunities. To decide whether to stay in Milan or India is a life project and not a Bocconi project. For those, whose life project is to stay in Europe and take up a job there would choose to take up the course in Italy. Similarly those who want to stay in India and want the benefits that Bocconi offers in a completely Indian background will choose the Mumbai campus.

At the end of the program, what degree would be awarded to the students?

Students will be awarded a certificate from MISB Bocconi. In addition, those students who will be spending one semester at SDA Bocconi will receive a certificate from Bocconi, Italy. In Milan, it is not important whether the student is getting a degree or a certificate but the reputation of the school that is handing it out.

How is the school planning job placements for MISB Bocconi graduates?

The net base of Bocconi placements is huge. We have a lot of job offers not only from Asian markets but also from Europe. Recruiters are looking for Asian managers. We have already started talking to corporations for our CCS program and have received positive feedback. I would not say that gaining corporate connections in India is easy but our huge base has been helping us a lot. We have touched base with international investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and they have all shown interest in MISB Bocconi.

When is the MISB Bocconi course starting?

The course will start on June 2, 2012. In addition, we are also planning to launch executive programmes in MISB Bocconi from June. To launch something new requires fresh research. In order to come to a foreign land and start a new programme, we need a solid structure that outlines the Indian mindset.

The list of b-schools that would accept the Common Management Aptitute Test (CMAT) in 2012 has been released by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on the CMAT website.

Notable schools from the  PaGaLGuY B-school Rankings 2011 accepting CMAT scores according to the list are Asia Pacific Institute of Management (New Delhi), Goa Institute of Management (Goa), Gitam Institute of Management (Vizag), KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research (Mumbai), IFIM Business School (Bangalore), SIES College of Management Studies (Navi Mumbai), Department of Management Studies – NIT Dugapur and BITS Pilani.

However, despite having declared their intention of accepting CMAT scores, Institute of Management Technology (IMT) Nagpur and Hyderabad campuses have not been mentioned in the list.

SS Manta, chairman of AICTE had earlier said that 2,000 colleges had officially registered to accept CMAT scores this year. “All AICTE approved colleges are ideally expected to accept the CMAT scores. However, state universities have shown real support (for the test) with Chhattisgarh being the latest to join in,” Mantha said.

In addition, admit cards for the Common Management Aptitude Test (CMAT) 2012 will be available for downloading from the test’s official website www.aicte-cmat.in from February 5, 2012 starting 11 AM. However, the list of the test’s centres across 61 cities will be declared sometime later, an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) official told PaGaLGuY. “The list of centres allotted to candidates is being finalised. As soon as it is finalised it will be put up on the website,” the official stated.

You do not need the MBA degree to reach the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) position in a top Indian company — is the implication of a study carried out by French b-school INSEAD, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) and Business Today magazine. According to the study, only 40% of India’s top CEOs have an MBA degree. Or in other words, 60% do not.

The first such global ranking of India’s best performing CEOs — a study carried out by INSEAD France professors Balagopal Vissa, Morten T Hansen, Herminia Ibarra and Urs Peyer rates Naveen Jindal, CEO of Jindal Steel & Power Limited (JSPL) as the country’s best CEO. Although he does hold an MBA degree from the University of Texas at Dallas (the business school there is now named after Naveen Jindal), AM Naik of Larsen & Toubro who stood second in the ranking does not. Nor does YC Deveshwar, CEO of ITC who is at the third position.

In fact, the only other CEO in the top 10 with an MBA degree is Bhaskar Bhat at fourth position who is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. Some others however, have completed short-term courses at various b-schools. Mukesh Ambani of Reliance had dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business after the first year.

The CEOs taken into consideration for the study had served their companies between 1995 and 2011, according to INSEAD. The study began by considering CEOs from companies that had been in the Standard & Poor CNX 500 for at least four consecutive years. It then measured the financial performance of the companies until the last day of the CEOs’ tenure or until June 30, 2011 (for the ones who were still in office then). The ranking combined three measures: country-adjusted shareholder return, industry-adjusted shareholder return, and change in market capitalisation during tenure. In total, 374 CEOs from 202 publicly traded companies were ranked, of which the top 25 CEOs’ names were revealed.

Prof Bala Vissa, the main researcher and INSEAD’s associate professor of entrepreneurship said that the perspective taken was the most objective one. “We looked at shareholder returns that the CEO delivered over his or her whole term on the top,” Vissa said.

Commenting on why Jindal made it to the top, Vissa said that it was his turnaround of a sponge iron mill using deals that managed cheap access to valuable raw materials such as coal and iron ore at a time when the industry as such was giving these issues little attention.

According to Vissa, this strategy protected JSPL from price volatility in commodity markets, thus bringing down production costs and boosting profitability. Between 1998 and 2011, Jindal’s total shareholder return of 13,784% had increased JSPL’s market capitalisation by about US$ 12.1 billion.

The professor added that for fast-growing Indian companies, the key decision was to take functional managers who had an expertise in specific areas such as sales and marketing and transform them into business leaders. The prevalence of professional managers armed with MBA degrees suggested that the ‘visible hand’ of managerial capitalism may be playing an increasingly important role in the Indian economy.

Prof Bala Vissa

When asked whether the MBA degree had made any difference at all, the INSEAD professor said that he was not too sure. “There is no direct answer to that question but our study showed us that high quality people do MBAs and that an MBA does provide values. Also, one can say that an MBA degree provides people with networks.”

Adding to that Vissa said that since the average age of the CEOs was 54 years, it meant that those at the top who did their MBAs from India had done so in the 80s, “Which was 30 years ago and in those days people only went to the IIMs and XLRI Jamshedpur.”

Among the other highlights of the study was that there seemed no ‘significant difference in the performance of CEOs of domestic private enterprises or Indian subsidiaries of foreign multi-national companies.’ According to Vissa, it was a positive sign. “Family-run business houses have created an environment where competent people are able to remain at the top. Which also means that an Indian leader’s talent is not so much connected to the company he is working in but more with his basic knowledge of how to run a business.”

About Mumbai, India’s financial capital, the research revealed that state-owned enterprises represented about a fifth of the Mumbai market’s capitalisation. “Outright privatisation hasn’t been done in a while but many state-owned enterprises are getting listed on the stock market, which is hopeful for the future,” observed Vissa.

About the CEOs’ performance, the survey said that the only 5% of the CEOs evaluated were founders of their companies. Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Nimmagadda Prasad of Matrix Laboratories are the only founder-CEOs among the top 25. “Over the last 15 years, India has seen an explosion of entrepreneurial ventures but entrepreneurs don’t always make it to the top,” added Vissa. He reasoned out that it could be because of sizeable trade sale activity of small startups becoming big and getting acquired by other incumbents thereby not even making the initial public offering (IPO) stage.

The study made an interesting note of the companies’ health when a new CEO took over. Vissa said that it was easier to score better when following in the footsteps of a poorly-performing CEO. “There is a ‘runway effect’ at play, where taking over from a low base provided greater opportunity for success,” he explained. The data showed the median age when the executives became CEOs was 54 years, and those still in office had had an average tenure of 6.7 years. Only 1.3% were women among the top CEOs in India.

About women CEOs, Vissa said that the phenomenon why women do not or have not as yet made to the top as vibrantly as the male CEOs was because many women slowed down post-marriage and got back into the scene after a break. “This definitely slows down chances but yes, in the years to come one does expect to see more women up there. Already the banking sector in India does have quite a few women at the top,” Vissa said.

The lead researcher of the study also pointed out that the list of top 25 CEOs did not figure those from telecommunications and IT sectors except for Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel. When asked why favourite CEOs such as Wipro’s Azim Premji and Infosys’ NR Narayans Murthy were not in the list, Vissa answered that the ranking covered people who began their CEO stints during January 1995 and June 2009 but Murthy and Premji had taken charge before 1995.

In conclusion, Vissa said that the scenario looked hopeful. “A group of young CEOs, some from the top Indian business schools, are delivering shareholder value in an economy where it is a challenge to sustain competitive advantage. Executives have had to step up to innovate, grow and stay ahead of the competition and a number of these high-quality CEOs are able to perform extraordinarily well in any type of private enterprise – firms linked to Indian business houses or to foreign multinationals.”

The survey was built on an earlier research in HBR’s January 2010 issue which had ranked 1,999 corporate leaders from 1,205 global companies on the shareholder performance they had delivered over the course of their tenure. Steve Jobs had topped this list.

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Concept, illustrations and graphics by Deepak Gopalakrishnan aka chuck_gopal, a Mallu-turned Mumbaiker who blogs here and tweets here.