A world of unequals

From today (actually yesterday) the world will not be comprised of equals. Some are more equal than the others. McKinsey shortlists came out yesterday. There were a few happy and lots of sad faces floating in ISB. Lots of back biting as well. War lines are drawn and people take positions. A few swore yesterday that they would never hire McKinsey when they become CEOs. A few said they would shortsell the company's stock (unfortunately it is a partnership firm). Another group resolved that they will make McKinsey realize its mistake of not hiring them by excelling in their careers that would make McKinsey beg them to join their firm (at a future date). Yet another club was formed yesterday - "I hate McK" and memberships to this club sold like hot cakes. And yes, there were a few (a clear minority), who reaffirmed their belief that McK was indeed the best. Curious to know what my stand is? Here you go...

First of all let me clarify that i am on the side of majority - Not by thinking, but by my status. However, my admiration and respect for the organization hasn't come down a bit. McK had explained to us in detail (through a number of interactions) the pains they undertake to evaluate the applications. The things they look for, turn offs, evaluation criteria, the time they spend on the shortlisting process etc... I am sure they would have done a thorough job before coming out with the shortlist. If at the end, your name doesn't figure in the list, it does not mean that the shortlisting process was bad. They knew what they were looking for and they found that in some applications. Yes, they could have made a few mistakes. But that is the trade off between being 100% right and the time pressures. I am sure they are OK with losing a few degree of fairness in the interest of time.

Congratulations for the all the newly crowned kings and queens. And for others, do think hard. Do think why you really wanted consulting? Is it the money or the work? Is it the glamour or your true interest? In marriages you are better off marrying someone who likes you, rather than marrying someone whom you like. Its the same with respect to career. If you do not have forceful answers to some of the questions posted above, may be you will be better off sticking to an area of your strength/ interest. Money will follow. Money has to catch up with skills... at least in most cases.

2022

I was feeling bored in a class and just to keep myself occupied started thinking about what shapes technology might take in the times to come and how it might impact our daily lives.... Read on

1. Information transmission: Attaching RFID tags to the items we use on a daily basis. Eg. toothpaste, deodorant, soaps, provisions.. whatever. Let these tags transmit the information about the remaining weight/ quantity of these items on a daily basis to the place where we shop. The shop can then deliver these goods directly to our homes based on our agreed reorder points.

2. Early morning health scan: Automatic health monitoring systems attached to toilets. These take our health readings on a daily basis and transmit them to our family doc. The doc can then suggest corrective/ preventive measures based on that.

3. Nutrition/ Diet: Sensors which read our brain cells, outside climate and health readings and fix our ideal diet for the day taking into account nutrition and health requirements, taste preferences etc.

4. Organizers: We should have digital secretaries which track

a. News/ happenings in the world
b. Changes in our wealth position - stocks, mutual funds, bank accounts
c. Schedule for the day - Appointments, reminders..
d. New products of interest in the market etc..
e. Other customized information which we would like to see early in the morning

and present a crux of all these stuff in a single A4 sheet to us which can be read while we are brushing in the morning


5. Mood lifters: Sensors which are able to read my mood and change lighting, TV channels, temperature and music accordingly

6. Time optimization - The digital secretaries (described above) should be able to talk with the digital secretaries of the people with whom i need to interact during the day and should be able to optimize my time. For eg, if need to meet Mr. X today and if Mr. X is planning to visit a local store today and i also intend to visit the same store today, may be it is optimal for both of us to meet at the store rather than visit each other in our offices and waste our times.

7. Energy needs: Carrying multiple chargers is a pain - laptop, mobile, Ipod, PDA.. what not? A simple wireless charging device, which can charge all these devices would be great

8. Pocket convergence - This simply means that a single device should be able to combine the utilities of all the items you generally keep in your pockets - Palmtop, MP3 player, PDA, Mobile. This device should also be in a position to substitute my car keys, home keys & office keys. May be if i send in a message/ signal from this device and upon authentication with a password i should automatically get entry into my car, home etc... I should also be able to use this device
for doing my shopping i.e as a substitute for carrying my debit/ credit cards, loyalty cards etc.

9. Physical Google - I should be in a position to search things in the real world using my PDA. Let me explain. If I want to buy a Allen Solly shirt of a particular colour if the price is less than Rs. 1000, then i should program this into my PDA. The sellers can use a spectrum and transmit their advertising messages through radio waves. If for example a particular seller, lets say Shoppers Stop is indeed having a sale and it meets all my purchase criteria, then my PDA should pick up this radio signal and intimate me, If i happen to pass Shoppers Stop. It should be able to send me a message like "Hi, the light Blue Allen Solly shirt (size 40) which you wanted is available in this Shopper's Stop (100 meters from here... address....) in fourth floor. It is not crowded now, and you will approximately take 8 minutes to complete the shopping".

10. End Of Day health scan - When i come back from work late at night and sink into a refreshing hot water bath, the bathroom should automatically do a complete health scan and give me a crisp report suggesting preventive and and corrective measures which i should adopt before going to bed, so that i get up refreshed the next day... It should also give me a quick summary of the health status of all my family members...

One thing is sure in the digital world. Nothing is impossible... May be i would read this post of mine 15 years from now and wonder, how primitive was I in my thinking...

Congratulations

The results for the R1 applicants have been declared. I remember the day the results came in last year. I was driving my car when the SMS reached me. My first reaction was that, I was not going to take the offer. Finally i did decide to take up the offer after a lot of soul searching.

Congratulations to all the R1 admits. Enjoy your days now and get ready for a really hectic year ahead. Amidst all your celebrations, spending some time on the following will do a lot of good:

1. Try and see if you can negotiate a good sabbatical package with your existing employer. You may hate your existing job/ boss. But having a back up plan doesn't hurt.

2. Work you best for the rest of time you spend with the organization. People forget all your earlier contributions, but will remember clearly the way you exited. True colours come out at this time. Dont spoil all the hard work and the good name you have earned till now.

3. Dont burn your bridges. Make sure you end your relationship with a positive note with your colleagues/ bosses/ clients/ competitors. Its a small world.

4. Spend some quality time on what you want to get out of ISB and why? Is it a career shift? Better job in existing field? Networking? Knowledge? Platform for launching own venture? Once you are clear on these objectives, have your back plans ready too. Then start charting your strategies

5. Spend some time on revising/ getting ideas on some subjects. Revising quant skills (for the Non IIT/ Engg) and getting some ideas on subjects like finance, economics, accounting (for the IIT/ Engg) will not hurt. You will atleast get an idea of what is waiting for you.


6. Be mentally prepared for a challenging year ahead.

7. Research on various loan options facilitated by ISB. And yes.. remember that you have other options as well. The 3 Fs - Friends, Family and Fools.


8. Meet up with other admits in you area/ city. In my view it really doesn't help much. But you will feel really special and great. And thats good.

And yes dont forget to party hard, enjoy with your family and friends and live a life of a normal human being. Catch up on sleep, movies and whatever things interest you.

Enjoy well and congratulations once again.

Its a small world

I have take a course titled "Negotiation Analysis" this term. This could easily be one of the best courses i have taken at ISB. In our previous class, the professor was explaining that it is very important to build trust before starting to negotiate. One of the easiest ways to build trust is to strike a common chord with the other person. We could either discuss about a common friend, problem, enemy... whatever

To prove the point that it is not difficult to find common links with any person in the world, he took us through a small experiment conducted by "University of Virginia". This university had built an elaborate database of all actors and actresses. You simply type in the names of any two actors or actresses and program searches the database and tells us how they both are linked. Its fun..

Try it out for yourself using the following link

http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks

Another moral of the story - Never burn your bridges.

Retail investors... The step sons

Does this graph strike a bell? Its is not the blood pressure reading of someone... Its the price chart of Reliance Petroleum for the past one year. It is quite possible that this graph definitely might have a strong correlation with the blood pressure of its retail shareholders. Reliance Industries has sold about 18 crore shares or 4 per cent in Reliance Petroleum (RPL) recently. The sale happened when the price was near its peak. This deal has hogged considerable media light and has opened more questions than answers. Consider the following facts in this deal:

1. With the rise in prices RPL, a refinery which is still under construction and to be ready by only next fiscal, has overtaken the combined shareholder wealth of the three PSU refiners-cum-marketers - IOC, HPCL and BPCL.

2. The modus operandi of the sale is still not known. Whether RPL shares were sold in small lots or in huge block deals to small investors or private equity firms is still a matter of conjecture. These details were neither available in the block or bulk trade details of BSE and NSE, nor was it put on the stock exchange notice board.

3. Reliance Industries communicated about this deal to the stock exchanges late on Saturday night. (Of course both the exchanges are closed on weekends)

4. Earlier this month, the RPL share was on the rise on a market rumour that Chevron could pay $6 billion for 21 per cent in RPL. The US oil major promptly repudiated the news, but Reliance was slack in denying it and RPL shares climbed northwards probably on this rumour, to a 52-week high of Rs 295. Mind you the sale happened sometime after this.

5. While all these were happening on one side, there were players who were building huge short positions (betting that the stock price will fall) in the derivatives segment. There were 16 crore shares position built up in this category (which is around 250-300% the normal levels). These short positions peaked on the same day, the promoters began selling shares. Of course we only know it post mortem. Needless to say that these guys must be laughing their way to banks.

Thats "transparency". RIL's communications post this sale are even more curious.. "The sale of RPL shares was conducted by transactions through the stock exchanges and has helped to further broad-base the shareholding pattern of RPL and is a bid to maximise overall shareholder value".. said the company statement.

"Maximize shareholder value".... thats a nice and neat phrase. At who's cost?

RIL made a profit of Rs 3662 crore in the deal... and as usual retail investors like you and me (thank god i am spared in this case) would have been caught on thier wrong foot.

Gymoconomics

If you enrol into a gym which offers us two payment options - Either a pay-per-visit of Rs.100 or a flat fee of Rs. 1000 per month, which one would you choose?

Most of us end up choosing the flat fee option. We calculate that with this option we would be better off, if we end up using the gym more than 10 times in a month. However, if we were to do a true audit of our own behaviour subsequently, a significant portion of us would have actually visited the gym less than 10 times in a month. Yet we all fall into this trap of not choosing the pay per option. Behavioural Economics throws some light..

We tend to overestimate our needs and fail to change our views on it. Most companies understand this behaviour of ours and rightfully exploit us. Most of us fall into the trap of "zero interest rates for the first three months" in our credit card. Even if we knew upfront that the rate increases to 20% after three months, we end up choosing this option thinking that we would stop using the credit after the offer period. But if we are like a typical customer, we will not have the self control to do it.

Another case in point. For pay-per-use TV, we end up choosing a bouquet as against an a-la-carte option. The problem is, we may never watch all the channels we have subscribed to.

Coming back to initial gym example - Some might argue that they chose the flat fee option because it will then force them to use the gym and in the process keep them fit. Yet if we reflect on our own actual behaviour, we will understand that this never translates into reality.

P.S: This article appeared in Business Line.

Business Plan - II

Looks like the judges seem to share our enthusiasm. Our plan has got shortlisted for three prestigious B Plan competitions. Lets see where this takes us.

The biggest pat on our back came when we were presenting the B-plan to a panel of judges, one of whom is a Venture Capitalist. The VC commented that he is mightily interested in our area of work and has asked us get in touch with him.

Am reading some extremely interesting articles on Behavioural Economics, which explains why we do things, the way we do it. Watch this space for a few interesting pieces...

Interviews

Attended two interviews over the last three days. Could not make it beyond Round 3 in both. Despite doing an in depth review of what could have gone wrong in either of this, i am honestly not able to come out with even a single answer.

In the consulting interview in round 2, i got to solve 4 cases. I solved all of them. The interviewer was visibly impressed and acknowledged it during the interview itself. But i got a reject mail later during the day. The story is no different in the Investment Banking interview. I got 5 puzzles in round 1, solved all of them (and that too very quickly). In Round 2, they tested my banking knowledge and understanding of stock markets (both my passions) and i did a pretty neat job. Proceeded to Round three, where they just spent 5 minutes with me and we had a general chit chat and nothing went wrong there as well. I did not take any controversial stance, no showing off, i did nothing to put of the interviewer, showed genuine interest in the job and the firm.... Reject mail promptly finds its way to my mail box later in the day.

I have never really faced failures in my life. I take these as good learning experiences. I am learning to handle failures. I will never be able to find a reason for these failures today, but i am sure someday i will be able to connect these dots and it will form a brilliant design.

Nothing can separate me and my self confidence.

The Business Plan

I have never written a business plan in my life. I have never forced myself to write one, for i never had any idea that is strong enough to influence me to write one. But now this is a thing of the past...

For the first time, I have written a new business plan (jointly with another friend of mine at ISB). We are excited by this idea and firmly believe that this idea may have strong implications in future. I do not know if the judges would perceive the business plan with the same enthusiasm as ours, but our journey was wonderful.

From a mere idea (a random thought) we have now travelled a long way to conceptualize and give life to this idea. It had forced us to think in a structured manner and challenge assumptions and we have come out victorious.

Or have we? As always time will tell us. But right now, its time to bask in this comforting feeling..

Random thoughts

1. Today was an important day. I got my first shortlist at ISB for a job posting. Was feeling pretty kicked up about that. Some of my friends did not make it. I would have felt much better if they had also made it. Joy multiplies when shared... I have heard from many alums that placements season is when the true colours of people come out...war lines are drawn...best of the chums become worst of the enemies. I will do everything in my control to make sure that this bug encounters a premature death in my hands.

2. When some students ask a really good question in class and when the Prof. is not able to give a convincing reply, the best thing he could do is to say "Thats a really brilliant question". He does not need to answer it, because once he gives this comment, the student who had originally asked the question is immensely satisfied and is no more interested in actually finding out the answer.

3. Came across an interesting statistics in our Business Valuation course.. India has some 22% of the world's total hair. When you are valuing a company which is into hair care products, be sure to keep this in mind along with other estimates like Net rate of hair growth amongst Indians (hair growth - hair fall), per capita consumption of the hair care product per inch of hair.... Thank god we stopped with valuing a company which is into hair care and did not delve further below..

4. The coming fortnight is going to be one of the busiest periods... Amidst our usual assignments, tests, pre reads and case studies we have a whole lot of other stuff... Mid term exams, announcement of shortlists for many other job postings, atleast 3 companies are coming to campus for interviews, Global Social Venture Business Plan competition, finance interview preparation, case interview preparation, diwali celebration, trip to chennai and probably a trip to Mumbai as well.... Mind u all this is to be done in the next fortnight...

5. One of my friend's hobby - To watch the status messages of other people in GTalk. I tried that too... i must admit it is damn interesting...

6. ISB has brought out a new policy for entreprenuers. If they are planning to start their own ventures immediately after graduation, to encourage and protect them from downside risks, the school has proposed to allow these people to sit for placements in the next year or the year after that. Brilliant

7. Keep your shopping lists ready and have a bottom less bank account.... Some of the best IPOs are around the corner.

The extra mile

We had an official Pre Placement Talk by BCG yesterday . The talk was supposed to commence at 9.30 PM but got delayed by an hour due to late arrivals of their flight. The first part of the session went on till 12.30 AM. Since it was already pretty late, the BCG guys asked if wanted to stay on for some more time to do a live case interview. You may not believe it, but people actually said "Yes". And the BCG guys enthusiastically went on do a wonderful case till 2.30 AM. The classroom was almost packed throughout.

That is commitment. Both from the students side and the company's side. This morning i was speaking to another student and he exactly hit upon the same point. The difference between targeting a company and desiring to work in the company is Commitment.

How committed are we towards our goals? What separates wishful thinking and aims? Lots to ponder over...

Defying Gravity

It is very interesting to watch the various theories people come out to justify equity valuations. We are really ingenious in coming out with creative concepts to understand crazy valuations to mentally calm ourselves and make sense of the madness..

We started with Par values and then slowly moved on to the concept of premiums, wherein we were willing to pay something higher today considering the possibility that the stock price might soon catch up. Then some analyst came and taught us the concept of P/E ratios when we graduated from the world of additions (premiums) to the world of multiples (P/Es). When it became difficult for us to justify the stock prices even according to this concept of PE, we then went one more step ahead.

We broke down PE into trailing PEs and Forward PEs and calmed ourselves saying that a forward PE after all makes more sense. However, at today's Sensex levels even the forward PE is not in a position to justify valuations. But I read an article today which seems to have an answer. The article makes a convincing argument for coming out with a new measure - Market Cap to GDP.

The crux of the article is - Market cap of a company represents a public consensus on the value of a company and GDP is the sum of value added at every stage of production of all final goods and services produced in a country by both listed and unlisted entities. Market cap and GDP of a country together form a positive relation to determine the growth potential of the economy. The article thus concludes that India's Market Cap to GDP is as of now just 0.99 as compared to other countries like Singapore (2.65), UK (1.6), US (1.35) and China (1.10). It thus represents that India is significantly undervalued even at present levels.

There is a theory in marketing which states that once consumers have purchased a certain good/ service, they then look for reasons to justify their purchase behaviour. To me these things appear to exactly satisfy this concept. I dont know what measures will these guys come up in future to still justify that we are undervalued. Let me make their life simpler by suggesting a few things...

1. Earning Potential Vs. Market Cap - India's working population and their potential PPP adjusted average wages scaled up to developed economies compared with the market capitalization


2. Population to market cap - Assuming that the per capita market cap in US is XXXX, in India it should be atleast 3.5XXXX because we beat them black and blue as far as population is concerned.

3. Employees to Market cap - A US company produces so much revenues with X amount of employees. In India, we produce the same amount with 3X employees. So our market cap should be atleast 3x times that of US.


Dont laugh at these. The gravity defying Sensex might actually make all these ratios come true pretty soon.

The fever begins

The elective terms have started... ISB is very different these days. During the core terms there was a common thread running through all the students. All of us had the same profs, assignments, tests, exams, groups, sections... All that has changed in a single sweeping moment. Each of us now have different schedules, different profs, multiple sections, different tests... But its good fun. From this term on, we dont need to take subjects which we dont like. We even have freedom to choose the pedagogy (to a limited extent). So most of us dont complain these days.


On the other side the action is even getting better. The placement fever is slowly catching up. International companies have started flowing in. The scene as of now looks bright and sunny. Every ISB student nowadays carries his resume on a A4 sheet. Trespassers would be severely punished and asked to review his/ her resume. Almost four times a week we have one company or the other coming to ISB for an official pre-placement talk. At the end of every talk atleast 75% of the students mentally make a note that this is the company they want to join in. The other 25% would have already made that decision before the talk began.

This apart we also have the flagship events of various clubs lined up. The flagship events of the Real Estate and the Pharma club just got over. The events of the Marketing, Net Impact and the Finance clubs are scheduled for the near future.

Finally, almost every student is busy participating in the countless B-school competitions which come our way. We can do anything. We can write research papers, design mutual funds, make a marketing plan for an MNC for a multi continent launch, answer 100 questions in 30 minutes, advice a multi billion dollar company for an India entry strategy, study emerging trends in technology, advice leading CEOs what should be their next steps, write business plans.... anything.

Anything for just another bullet point in our resume to differentiate ourselves from 425 other most sought after b-school grads...

Farmers of ISB

Our life at ISB closely resembles that of an Indian farmer...

1. If there is a bumper harvest, a typical Indian farmer doesn't rejoice. Instead he is sad (he gets a much lesser price). Same thing here. If an exam is easy, we feel sad, because its all relative grading. An easy exam means the class average is going to be sky high, hence even a small slippage costs us dearly.

2. If there is a draught a farmer doesn't cry if his relative misfortune is lesser. If the exam is really tough, there is a silent smile which crosses our lips.

3. The land bank owned by the farmers put together in India is huge, but we are plagued with productivity problems because of fragmented land holdings. Same stuff here... the relative knowledge we hold amongst ourselves is huge, but we are afraid to share it with others/ dont find the right incentives to share it with others. So, while we are collectively rich, many a times we are individually poor.

4. An Indian farmer knows that he might not be able to service the loan he takes, yet he takes it and enters the classic debt trap. Here too, we know that if we are not regular with our studies we will find it extremely difficult. But still, that never translates into action, despite such commitments and resolutions being made at the beginning of every term. Both of us never learn..


5. A typical Indian farmer's farming strategy can be summarized in one word - "HOPE". He has no control over the rain, wind, climate, soil conditions, expected market prices, expected costs in future in terms of transport, storage, interest rates etc.... Still he goes and farms every year with the hope that he will somehow make a profit. Again its the same story here... We almost have no clue/ control on the number of things that might affect our grade, yet we start each term with a noble intention. Most often we do not know whats hitting us and from which direction? Homeworks, Assignments, cases, class participation, mid term, end term, presentation, group projects... Yet we feed on HOPE..

Contrary to what you might expect at the end of such a pessimistic post, right now it is raining in my farm land. It is this rain, which really forced me to think, do i deserve this rain? But then i neither deserved the draught earlier....

I have decided to get drenched while i can.

Pehla Nasha...

It was somewhere about an year back that i first saw her. She was sitting like an angel amidst countless earthly beings. It was love at first sight for me. There was something inside me which said that we were made for each other.

Overcoming my initial trepidations and with an anxious heart, i slowly proceeded towards her. She was openly flaunting her looks and men of all statures were gaping. Our first interaction was not so pleasant. I thought she acted pricey and arrogant. Anyways I had already lost my heart and decided to go against what my rational mind was screaming from inside and accepted her. My life was never the same again.

I am at times very demanding and if someone doesn't meet my expectations, i lose interest very fast. But not once had she ever let me down. There were times in which she had cooperated with me throughout the day and the night. She has donned various roles to please me. She has given me the best of the news and she had stayed with me right through when things did not seem so pleasant. She had sang for me, showed me the worlds which i never knew existed, had entertained me when i was bored of life and had revealed her secrets to me. Many a times, i had woken her up at all unearthly hours, but not once had she ever complained. I am not sure if my life at ISB would have ever been the same without her.

But she is getting older by the day... her once beautiful body has today lost its sheen and is marred by scratches, her battery life is running down.... My sweet HP Laptop

The bubble?

I found this article in today's Business Line. Brokers cutting a cake and celebrating the BSE Sensex's new life time peak of 17,000.

One thing stuck me though... I am not sure if the balloon in the picture is supposed to be symbolic of the times to come..

Buffett and the Beast

Some of the best quotes of the man who tamed the beast (read markets...)

1. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

2. Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

3. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked

4. Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken

5. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians

6. When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

7. In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield

8. Our future rates of gain will fall far short of those achieved in the past. Berkshire's capital base is now simply too large to allow us to earn truly outsized returns. If you believe otherwise, you should consider a career in sales but avoid one in mathematics (In his letter to the shareholders)

9. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

10. In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world.

The Gladiators

When you enter ISB you will be put into study groups (the composition of which is decided by ISB). You and your study group (of 4 or 5 people) will stick together, like the Gladiators trying to fight off and survive whatever comes off out of the gate, in the first four terms. All your group assignments, presentations, write ups etc have to be submitted group wise. So it goes without saying that a good portion of your fortune at ISB in terms of grades is decided by your study group.

I must say that one of the best parts of my stay at ISB was my study group. Not because we four were the toppers of the batch or we scored highest in every assignment, but because we cried together and laughed together, we enjoyed and suffered and we did learn a lot from each other...

Here goes my blog in the honour of my study group - C11. A brief profile of the rockstars of this group

Kaustubh Verma: He can sing in 9 languages, can play the guitar (all learnt by himself) and he is one of the most "networked". He will be the first to invite others for a game of cricket/ tennis, he is the first to vote for a party, he is the first to take a short break in any assignment, he is active in most clubs - consulting, operations, energy, social life.....but if you really think he is a Poet (which is what he claims in his blog - http://www.kaustubhverma.blogspot.com/), you are badly mistaken. Whenever our group reaches a deadend in any assignment, we all look up to him and he will not disappoint us... This man from L & T is truly Lovable & Talented..

Sudhanshu Dutt: We call him Mr. President, for he leads the Real Estate club at ISB. He is one of the most organized persons i have ever seen. A health and fitness freak. A work machine. He never gets tired and its rumored that he can study non-stop for 100 hours. In ISB sometimes.. sorry most times, the amount of work involved is herculean. And many people just give up, but not Chugi (his nick name). Irrespective of how many assignments, how many pre reads or how many cases have to be read, our man is always prepared for everything. Dont know where he gets the time.. Its going to be easy for the real estate firms this year at ISB, they know where to look for...

Ashutosh Kumar: (http://www.ashutoshatisb.blogspot.com/) A banker. If i were to describe him in just one word, i would say "Determination". He is a truly self-made man. Hails from Bihar, studied physics but then joined a bank. Rose through the ranks, worked hard for GMAT and here he is now at ISB. If he has reached till here, i know nothing can stop him from his dreams. May be he will start his own bank someday...

Rangarajan Krishnan: Come on, you know me... i am not going to bore you..

Yesterday we finished our last group assignment for the core terms and went out together for dinner. My best wishes to these gladiators to come out in flying colours in the days to come...

Connecting the dots

Unplanned chance random events sometimes can have profound implications in our lives. Many a times, if we look back at our own lives, we will find that it is these chance events that leave a indelible mark on our lives. These chance events can guide us, warn us and put us back on our life's path.

History is abound with examples... Narayana Murthy might have never started Infosys, had he not had a chance encounter with a computer scientist on a breakfast table... Apple Computers might have never thought of GUIs, fonts and fancy stuff had Steve Jobs not learnt Calligraphy (totally unplanned though) during his college days. Today our finance prof was telling that he decided to take up finance seriously, only when his marketing prof asked him a question for which he did not know the answer.

To quote Steve Jobs.. "Its not always easy to connect these dots (random events) looking forward, but these dots will certainly form a brilliant design when we look back someday"

A million dollars or knighthood

A million dollars - No more cramming up crazy management theories, no more assignments, no more mind numbing case studies, no more tests, no more getting crushed between bird-brained subordinates and dinosaur-egoed bosses, no more alarm clocks, no more traffic signals, no more deadlines, no more appraisals, no more worries..... Just beaches, babes, bars and BMWs... Sounds too good to be true.

....but wait a minute. What sort of a life is this? Whats the one differentiating factor between you and an animal. Whats your motivation to live? What do you look forward to in your life? Whats the one thing you want to accomplish today? Is there one being in this world which would look upon you as a role model?.... this side of the coin looks terrible...

How about knighthood? This option seems to address all the downsides of the million dollar option. Kids look up to you as their role model. You automatically command respect wherever you go. You are consulted upon on all matters of importance and you have a meaningful life. But whats the use of knighthood if you don't have the means to enjoy your life or live comfortably? How about leading a life of a pauper knight? You command respect alright, but you don't have money to fill your own stomach. A knighthood sans money looks terribly miserable too..

Be it a million dollars or a knighthood, what matters is what would you do with it once you achieve it. Both are meaningless if not put to proper use.

What do I want? I want to be a knight with million dollars. But there is one difference though. I don't want either of these thrusted on me. I don't want to wake up one fine morning and realize that I am either a knight or a millionaire from that day on. I want to earn it. I am convinced that the journey towards achieving these would be as meaningful as the destination itself. I want to experience the immense sense of satisfaction and the feeling of a life well-lived, when I get there. I want to show others that it is not difficult to achieve...