Ramblings of a free mind

Rest in Peace Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:19:00.000+05:30

Woke up today to the sad news of Steve Jobs demise. There aren't possibly enough words to measure the impact he had on modern technology and world. Leaving his astronomical accomplishments aside, what stands out to me is his humility. He spent the last 7 yrs of life fighting a rare form of cancer and even during those days he continued working and changing the world!! To me, his life is best summed up by his address at Stanford graduation ceremony in 2005: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish:

Rest in Peace Steve! You were one of the all time greats and will be truly missed.

Future of Groupon and daily-deals sites (in India)

2011-09-11T09:46:00.001+05:30

The past fortnight has seen some not-so-encouraging activity in the daily-deals sites space. Facebook announced that it is ending its deals "test": Groupon has also postponed its proposed IPO There was also this great post on HBR on Groupon and future of online daily-deals business.

These items add credence to a growing concern on the future of group deals sites. Many industry veterans have questioned the sustainability of this business model citing high customer acquisition (sales & marketing costs) and lack of customer loyalty. I think these are valid concerns but it is early to say that daily-deals as a business is doomed to failure.

My concern with their current business model is their marketing/targeting style - I am subscribed to 3 group deals sites in India (Snapdeal, Sosasta (bought by Groupon), Fashinandyou) and receive their emails daily. However, these emails advertise all their offerings/deals and not the ones I would be interested in. This is a classic case of push v/s pull strategy. They are pushing deals on me without bothering to cater to my interests. Also, when I look for a deal on something specific - say "pizza", it is difficult to find information on their websites (there are no "Search" boxes on any of these sites). Considering that there are dozens of these sites in India (without any significant differences between them) an average shopping enthusiast will get a dozen emails each day and I am not sure if people even open these emails daily. I personally prefer searching for a deal rather than browsing through all emails.

The mushrooming of these deal sites has now led to the growth of deal aggregators (metasearch) industry i.e. sites which search for deals across these sites and put them at one location, similar to what Kayak does for OTA sites. Interestingly, there are over 20 such sites in India !! Now, how does one choose among one of these sites?

Clearly - there are just too many of these sites. With e-Commerce market in India expected to grow exponentially over the next decade, a lot of VC money has flown in India. Companies like Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Helion Venture, SAIF Partners, Norwest have been pretty active in the past two years and have invested in over a dozen startups.

While I am confident of the future of eCommerce in India, I think that daily-deals sites will soon have to change their business model to survive. Anyone interested in exploring this space further should read this great article: The Dirt On Daily-Deals Sites

The web is what you make of it

2011-07-17T07:56:00.000+05:30

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed this Google Chrome ad on several channels:

I love this ad because of its simplicity and message: "the web is what you make of it". This is so true - internet and sharing/networking sites have made it so easy to pursue your passions and even make money of it. I know some people who started blogging on topics of their interest. Slowly, their blogs became popular and they were eventually approached by publishers to write book(s). So, if you have a passion, the web gives you enough opportunities to pursue it. But there is a flip side to the viral nature of internet - if you publish something that people find ridiculous, the results could be catastrophic. A case in point, Rebecca Black, the US teenager whose video became one of the most watched videos on Youtube but not for the right reasons.

So, the next time you publish something on internet, be careful.

Google+ - Impressive debut

2011-07-11T07:35:00.000+05:30

I got a Google+ invite last week and immediately started exploring it. The first thing I noticed (and loved) is the concept of Circles - a way to organize your contacts list. It is so intuitive - you drag and drop a contact to any of the predefined circles (Family, Friends, Acquaintance or Following) or create new circles.
When you want to share anything, you just have to choose the circles that you want to share it with. Google+ also saves your default share settings thus avoiding the hassle of choosing circles every time you want to share something.

So far I have found Google+ to be quite interesting and easy to use. Haven't spent a lot of time on it since there are very few friends on this network right now. But with more people joining Google+ each day, the usage will only increase.

The key question is how Google+ will fare in the long run. With 750 Million users, Facebook has the world's biggest social network and it is not easy for a user to migrate to another social network with existing contacts and data that has already been shared. Also, I am not sure if a user will share hist posts/pictures on both networks as it will be too time consuming. The big advantage Google+ has is its potential integration with other Google products - gmail, google search, google maps, picasa etc. This should allow users to share from within a google product and without having to log onto Google+.

The one Google+ feature that I haven't explored is Hangout - its group video chat feature. Immediately after the launch of Google+, Facebook announced an integration with Skype (Microsoft owns Skype and also has 1.6 percent stake in Facebook with its USD 240 Mn investment in 2007) to launch a video chat feature. This goes to show how competitive this space is going to be with Microsoft + Skype competing with Google.
I wonder if Apple will make a move into this space ;)

Here are 2 related interesting articles:

E-commerce in India: Pleasant surprise with online book order

2011-07-10T08:55:00.001+05:30

I was pleasantly surprised last week when I ordered Behind the Cloud : the untold story of how salesforce.com went from idea to billion-dollar company - and revolutionized an industry from Flipkart. I placed the order at 6:45 pm on Thursday evening. At 11pm, I received a confirmation email that book had been shipped, and at 4 pm the next day, I received the book. This took me by surprise - a book ordered online (no delivery charges, no special instructions) was delivered to me within 24 hours. The fact that this happened in India which is not exactly known for speedy delivery of goods makes it all the more impressive.
However, a closer look at the wrapping on the delivery package told me something - the book was delivered to me from a warehouse/store which was located just 4 kms from the delivery address. That explained the incredibly low delivery time.. I guess I got lucky. I'll keep an eye on the delivery time the next time I place an order on Flipkart.

This story apart, credit does go to Flipkart and other similar sites for improving the online shopping experience in India. e-tailing is a current rage in India and there are dozens of sites competing in this space. This intense competition means companies are trying hard to differentiate and offering sweet deals to customers. As a customer, I am not complaining :)

The world cup just became interesting

2011-03-20T00:23:00.000+05:30

After two weeks of not-so-interesting action, the world cup became interesting again with Pakistan defeating Australia and ending their unbeaten streak of 34 matches in the world cup. It is remarkable that Pakistan was the last team to have defeated them in the 1999 world cup. This will make tomorrow's match between India and West Indies very interesting. If India wins, they will play Australia in the QF, if they lose they'll play either Sri Lanka or Pakistan, depending on their net run rate after the match. This makes for an interesting situation - India has never lost to Pakistan in a world cup and has had a pretty good record against Sri Lanka. However, they have defeated Australia only twice in the world cup and the last victory against them was in 1987. The last time India played Australia in a world cup match was in the finals of 2003 world cup where they lost badly. Given this history, will India be better off losing tomorrow's match?

Hats off to the Pakistan cricket team. They have had a horrible past few years in Cricket - international teams have stopped visiting Pakistan after the attack on Sri Lankan team's bus in 2009; they have been mired in one controversy after the other - death of Bob Woolmer, ball tempering charges, doping charges, spot fixing charges and the subsequent suspension of their three top players just before the world cup. No one had given them a chance when the world cup begun but they have finished at the top of Group A. This team continues to surprise me.

Like I said, the world cup just became interesting and the real action begins tomorrow. I am confident that India will win tomorrow. If that happens, I fear for them in the QF against Australia ;)

Is Orkut dying

2010-09-11T23:27:00.000+05:30

I read an article some days ago that Facebook had taken over Orkut (in India) in terms of total number of users. At that time, I did not pay much attention to this article. However, I did notice the difference yesterday. I celebrated my b'day yesterday and, as expected, some friends wrote scraps for me on Orkut and others wrote on my wall on Facebook. Now, when Orkut was at its peak in India (I guess in 2006), I remember getting 100 odd b'day scraps on Orkut and hardly anything on Facebook ( I don't even remember if Facebook had the feature of wall posts!). The stats for yesterday - 50+ posts on Facebook and around 15 scraps on Orkut. I have many friends who are both on Orkut and Facebook and even among them, most posted on my Facebook wall and not on Orkut. For me, it is a strong indicator of the future - Facebook will keep up its growth and Orkut will have a really hard time adding new users.

Back from Hiatus

2010-07-22T12:06:00.000+05:30

I've been out of blogging action for a long time now - the key reason for my absence was work (loads of it) and lethargy (I didn't feel like blogging when I got off work). Now that work is back to normal, I am back to blogging.

The past 3 months were quite intense for me. My company was participating in a trade show in USA and I was put in charge of the entire event. This doesn't sound big was it was quite a challenge. I had to ensure that everything was in order, which meant:
1. Renting the exhibition space
2. Designing the booth (working with our booth designers)
3. Making the booth functional (furniture, electrical, network connections etc.)
4. Graphics (working with our designers to get booth panels, display graphics, brochures etc.)
5. Giveaways (choosing and sourcing giveaways for visitors)
6. Communication (sending out emails to prospects, before and after the event)
7. Logistics (taking care of travel and accommodation)
8. Product demos - This was the most important part. There was no point in doing anything if we couldn't demo our products successfully. This involved working with different teams to ensure that our products were ready for demo, everyone was trained on the latest features, laptops/mobiles/hardware were configured properly and most importantly, failure points were identified and backups were ready for contingencies.

Because the buck stopped at me, I had to ensure that EVERYTHING was in place. e.g. I had to proof read each and every word on our marketing collateral (brochures) before it went to print. This was quite demanding and at times I was literally talking in my sleep.

In the end, the show went really well. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of visitors in our booth and now have some very promising leads to pursue. Personally, it was a great learning experience. It helped me develop an eye for detail and I can see the difference in my work style now. Hope this habit stays for life..

Kotak Securities - Worst Customer Service

2010-01-31T10:17:00.001+05:30

If I were to rate companies on the poor customer service operations, I'd rate Kotak Securities as the worst. This award winning company has really shocked me with their lack of accountability and careless approach. Here's what happened.

I had invested in 2 mutual funds and on Dec-29, I sold these funds because I wanted to invest in new funds (to claim tax benefits). I called them few days later to check when and how I'd receive the money. They told me that they could not credit money electronically to my account because of a name mismatch between my Kotak Account and my Bank Account (This name mismatch occurred because someone in Kotak mis-spelt my name while creating my account!). So they would send cheques to my registered address. I requested them to send cheques at my current address because I don't live at my registered address any more (the registered address is my parents' address). They said they would try to do it but no assurances were given. After calling them several times, they told me that one of cheques had been dispatched to my registered address on Jan-18th (20 days after I sold my funds!!). I still haven't received that cheque and have called them several times. Every time I call them, they tell me that they are coordinating with their back-end team and will give me an update soon. The last update they gave me was 3 days ago when they will still coordinating with their team.

The story of my other cheque is worse. Ironically, the 2nd cheque was supposed to come from Kotak Mutual Fund (a part of the Kotak group of companies). Till date, no one has been able to tell me if that cheque has even been dispatched. Imagine this, I sold my mutual funds over a month ago and till now they can't tell me where my money is.

I must have called Kotak Customer Care at least 15 times in the past month and have even escalated my issue but there is no resolution in sight. Here's what I intend to do next:
1. Write to the head of Kotak Securites, explaining this situation.
2. Write to the head of Kotak group
3. Find out the regulatory body who deals with these issues and write to them
4. Close my account with Kotak once I have collected all my dues
5. Discourage people from opening account with them.

Any suggestions to deal with this issue and get my money back??

Customer Service Woes

2010-01-31T09:51:00.000+05:30

For the past 2 weeks, I've spent almost 30-40 minutes each day over phone, complaining to companies and trying to deal with multiple issues.
Issues: credit card problem, mutual fund redemption, extra billing on internet account, bank account problem etc.
Companies: Some of the leading names like Reliance, ICICI, Kotak Securities, Standard Chartered etc.

Till date, none of these issues has been resolved and I am still fighting. This has made me realize the pathetic state of customer care, careless attitude of companies and lack of regulatory/reporting mechanism to deal with customer complaints. My next few posts will be dedicated to the problems that I've faced

The Year Gone By

2010-01-03T10:58:00.004+05:30

I had started blogging 3 yrs ago and I've not been as regular at blogging as I would have liked. However, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to be regular at blogging.. Let's see how it goes...

To start with, 2009 is over and I was thinking about my life over the year gone by; Here are the highlights for the last year:

1. Graduation: I had always wanted to do an MBA and after postponing my MBA plans for 4 yrs, I finally finished MBA in 2009. Even though this was probably the worst year to get out of a b-school, I still feel it was completely worth it.

2. Travels: I love travelling and 2009 (esp. the first half) was great in terms of travelling. Some of the places I travelled to are London, Loire Valley, Barcelona, Brussels, French Riviera (Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo), Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. Among these, trips to Barcelona and Budapest were really great.

3. Books: I got back to reading after a long time and read many books in 2009. Most of the books I read were about history and wars. All the books I read were great but these stood out:

The Haj and Exodus by Leon Uris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Emperor Series by Conn Iggulden , The African Dream written using excerpts from the diaries of Che Guevera and AK-47 by Michael Hodges.

4. Getting back to work: Getting work after graduating with MBA in 2009 was not easy; It took me some time to get the kind of job I wanted and in the end the wait was worth it. I am currently working with a young technology company and am really enjoying the experience.

So this is it for 2009. I hope 2010 will be much better.

Swine flu scare in India

2009-08-01T10:10:00.005+05:30

Yesterday I returned to Pune after 10 days and was shocked to see almost half the population wearing face-masks to protect against swine-flu (H1N1 virus in India). Considering that there have been 6 H1N1 related deaths in Pune in the last week, the fear among the people is understandable. But is the mass hysteria justifiable?

Y'day, I watched a TV interview by the Indian health minister talking about the preventive measures taken by his goverment. He proudly claimed that India has screened 4.7 million people which is the biggest exercise of its kind in the world. He also blamed travellers coming to India for bringing this virus into the country.

While I agree that this virus has come to India through passengers coming from overseas, I would say that the biggest blame lies with the Indian government for its negligent attitude which has led to this situation in India.

The first reports of Swine flu came from Mexico in April and in May, the WHO talked about Swine Flu being a potential pendemic. What was Indian government doing then to prevent the spread of this virus in India? I returned to India from Paris on 29th June. I took the flight from Paris to Abu Dhabi and then changed a flight from Abu Dhabhi for India. After the flight landed at Abu Dhabi, every passenger had to undergo a test where thermal scanners manned by doctors screened passengers for potnetial flu symptoms. The system was very simple to implement and very efficient as well. Compare this to how this threat was dealt in India.

Before landing in Mumbai, each passenger was given a declaration form in which the person had to fill in some basic information like whether they had been to a flu affected country or had been in contact with a flu infected person. I filled this form in the flight and then landed at the airport. There was utter chaos at the terminal. There were some officials who wore face masks and asked each passenger to go to a particular room to get the form attested. I duly went to that room and got the form attested. After that I cleared immigration and entered into Mumbai with that form still with me; no official had looked at that form after I got it attested. So here I was, back in India, with a useless form in which I had mentioned that I had been to a swine flu infected country. No one had bothered to read that form and test me for any possible symptoms. And now the government blames travellers!!!!!

My latest reads

2009-06-11T12:00:00.007+05:30

In the last couple of months, I've read many books and thought it worthwhile to write brief reviews of some of the books I liked and would recommend reading:

Wolf Totem - A story, set in the late 1960s, about some Chinese students who spent some months in the Mongolian grasslands as part of their academic project. It is an interesting book that sheds light into the relationship between man and wolf, Chinese and Mongols, nature and civilisation, nomads and settled farmers...

AK47 - A very interesting book, which examines the genesis and impact of the most widespread assault rifle the world has seen. Of particular interest are the stories of how this weapon came to be used in all the major conflicts in last 60 yrs and how it has now become a cultural icon - both as a symbol of resistence and of terror.

The African Dream - This book has been written by using excerpts from the recovered diaries of Che Guevara. It describes the events surrounding his attempt to support the struggle in Africa (mainly Congo) against the "Imperialistic powers". It makes an interesting read if you want to understand the history and political aspects of the conflicts in the African continent.

Emperor: The Field of swords - A part of a series of books on Julius Caeser, this book details the period when Caeser returned from Spain to Rome, won the election as a Counsel and then left Rome to conquer the world; It vividly describes the battles he fought in conquering the Gaulish region. The book ends with Caeser's return to Rome setting into motion a bloody power struggle which eventually led to a civil war and downfall of Roman Republic.

The God Delusion - One of the most thought-provoking books I've read, it talks about the conflict between science and faith (or superstition). Dawkins raises questions about the existence of God and then uses scientific arguments to challenge the theories commonly used to support God's existence. He also raises important questions about religion and its impact on our lives.

A Year in the Merde - One of the most hilarious books I've read, it is about a Briton who moves to Paris to work and about the merde (shit) he finds himself in. Having lived in Paris for almost 2 yrs now, I could relate with most of the book :). A must read book for anyone who has spent some time in Paris.

HEC and Exchange programs

2009-04-17T02:29:00.004+05:30

Here's a question I received in response to my last post:

"In every interview or article regarding HEC i see that it partners with 50 schools around the world for Exchange programmes. I get that you did not do the exchange program. Any reasons? How is the procedure of selection? or does every one get to do the exchange prgm."

I am glad that someone asked this question because this is a topic which I had missed covering in my posts and this is quite an important question.

So this is how exchange program works:

Procedure of selection

HEC has exchange program partnerships with close to 50 schools across the world. The way it works is pretty simple. HEC announces the opening of applications for exchange programs with its partner schools - the announcement basically informs students about three things -

1. Names of the partner schools

2. No. of seats with each school

3. Deadline of application

Once the announcement is made, every MBA participant is free to submit his/her application for target schools. The application contains some short questions asking applicants about their motivation for that school etc.

After the deadline, all applications are collected and reviewed by a committee at HEC. In case of multiple applications for a school, the participants are invited for interview and then a final decision is made. The decision is made solely by the committee at HEC and the partner school is not involved in this decision.

Why did I not go for an exchange program

As with your b-school application, there are several factors that you should consider while applying for an exchange program. Why do you want to go for an exchange program? The main reasons are:

1. A different experience - HEC gives you a European experience. You could go to a US b-school to get a different experience and enhance your professional network

2. Brand Name - Getting a better recognized b-school name on your resume

3. Career - You have specific career objectives that you could achieve by going to a particular b-school

For me, there were two main reasons why I did not go for an exchange program:

1. Career - I figured that going for an exchange program will not improve my career prospects. Most of the schools I was interested in were based in US. Going to a US school as an exchange student did not appeal to me because of the economic uncertainties and work-visa related problems faced by international students. Also, by staying at HEC, I had better chances of leveraging its brand in France and continental Europe to get a job

2. Funds - Going to any school for an exchange program will have required me to spend around 5K $ which I was not keen on spending

Does every student get to go for an exchage program?

The answer is No (generally). I think there are around 50 seats for exchange and there are 130 odd students in Sep intake. So it's not possible for everyone to go on exchange. However, there are only 50-60 students in Jan intake. So most of the students in Jan intake can go for exchange program.

HEC MBA - differences between Sep and Jan intakes

2009-04-03T15:09:00.007+05:30

In some of previous posts, I have addressed the common queries about HEC that people have asked me over the past couple of years. In this post, I am addressing another such important query - the difference between Sep and Jan intakes

The biggest difference is the program structure. Click here to look at the program structure for the two intakes

The 16 month HEC MBA program is divided into two halves - Core Phase and Personalized Phase; Core Phase is the backbone of the MBA and has common, mandatory courses for everyone. Personalized Phase allows one to customize the program and provides options for electives, internship and exchange program.

As can be seen from the table, the program structure for Sep and Jan intakes is very different. Personalized phase for Sep intake allows for a lot of options - one can attend classes at HEC for the entire 16 months, for 8 months (do the core phase at HEC, take up a long term internship and then go on exchange program) or 12 months (core phase, internship and electives/exchange).

For Jan Intake, things are completely different. They must take classes at HEC for 1 year (Core Phase and PP1) and in the last 4 months, they must either do an internship or go for exchange. Thus, even if they want, they cannot attend classes at HEC during the last 4 months.

Apart from the program structure, the main differences are:
1. Class Size - Sep intake has around 130 people and Jan intake has 60-70 people. So Sep intake allows you to interact with more people
2. Choice of electives - This comes directly from the difference in program structures. During summers, HEC attracts some great visiting professors from other universities; Sep intake is at an advantage here and I've had some of my best courses with visiting proffs.

3. Internships - In Jan intake, you can finish classes in 12 months and then start working (even full time without technically finishing your MBA). It also becomes easier to find a long internship if you are in Jan intake. So if you want to spend less time studying, Jan intake is better.

HEC - top b-school outside US for marketing

2009-03-27T13:23:00.002+05:30

In a survey of over 19,000 students conducted by The Princeton Review, HEC has been voted as the top b-school outside USA for teaching of marketing. You can read a press article here

HEC v/s other European schools

2009-03-23T16:09:00.002+05:30

Here's a post to address another frequently raised question - How does HEC compare with other European b-schools.
Disclaimer: The views given below (in Italics) are NOT mine, but of an INSEAD 2003 alum who shared his views on this forum in response to a question on HEC v/s IE

Now here's the scene. I am going to give u a non-biased opinion on both the schools. Having said this, please understand both are superior business schools and I have not done my MBA at either school, so I can only tell you from what I have heard and understood.

Let me dissect your question.

1. Lets keep RSM aside when you have already made it to IE.

2. IESE - It's a two year program and very expensive. So when you have IE, lets even keep IESE aside.

3. ESADE - What is your career goal? is it in marketing? Then Esade is a very good school. But for other specializations like finance and strategy, ESADE is just about mediocre. But, I would definitely put ESADE on the league of IE Spain though there is a huge difference in their rankings.

Now we come to HEC v/s IE Spain. I need to know your career interests to give u a more detailed answer on this. If i were you, I would have taken HEC - Paris and I'll let you know the reasons.

(i) Curriculum - The way HEC has planned its 16 months curriculum is fantastic with projects, internships and its a shortened 2 year program. So you enjoy the process of management.

(ii) Diversity - After INSEAD, HEC is second when it comes to class diversity. With IE you will have 75% Spanish speaking people. If you know Spanish well, its great (you will anyway have to learn either French or Spanish) but you might just feel left out because the Asian influence on this school is very low.

Whereas HEC is 30%+ Asian, along with applicants from other parts of the world. The school is completely in English. I have also visited HEC long time back and the campus is beautiful. You will definitely need to learn French but during the 16 months, French is not a mandate, you pick it up along the way. and that's beautiful because by the time u r out, you know an extra language which takes u so many notches higher.

(iii) INSEAD does not give HEC a competition, for one that HEC has a class size of 150 and its easier to place these students. INSEAD is in a different league altogether. INSEADians wont find it tough to get a job.

(iv) Placements wise IE and HEC will have the same placements, though HEC being in France, closer to LUX, BEL, SWI and UK will give u better opportunities.

(v) It scores over IE in marketing, strategy and finance. IE scores over in entrepreneurship.

100 blogs for MBA students/aspirants

2009-03-12T21:42:00.002+05:30

I received an email today with a link to 100 blogs for MBA students. I believe that most people reading my blog are interested in MBA and could benefit from this list. You can access the list here

H1-B issue - BofA withdraws job offers from MBA students

2009-03-10T20:36:00.005+05:30

In my last post I had talked about the possibility that MBA students could face problems because of the restrictions imposed on companies receiving TARP funds. Well, the problems have begun. BofA becomes the first company to withdraw job offers from MBA students because of these restrictions.

Is this a stand-alone incidence or just the tip of the iceberg? I hope it is an isolated instance otherwise it will have a huge negative impact on USA's reputation as an attractor of world's brightest minds for higher studies!

Problems for prospective H1-B workers in US

2009-03-02T18:51:00.003+05:30

In my previous post, I had touched upon the new clause in US Stimulus Bill to prevent companies from hiring foreign nationals on H1-B visas.

I found some more details about the same:
Companies currently seeking Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds

Specifications on how companies receiving TARP funds will impact H1B hiring

I think this is an issue which MBA applicants should consider before applying to US schools.

Getting UK Tier 1 visa to get tougher from April

2009-02-23T12:51:00.002+05:30

Came across this article yesterday. This comes only a week after the clause in US Stimulus Bill to prevent companies receiving bail-out funds from hiring foreign workers on H1-B visas.

One's opinion about this story will depend on which side of the fence one is on - you'll applaud if you are a US/UK resident who is worried about his job and you'll despise it if you are looking to enter US/UK on H1B/Tier 1 visa.

With no clear signs of improvement in the world economy and looming fears of more bank failures, I believe that such protectionist measures will only increase. Makes me wonder if this is a reversal of globalization??

Understanding the Credit Crisis

2009-02-22T18:59:00.003+05:30

Came across these videos which explain the credit crisis:

Lipdub video by HEC Students

2009-02-21T20:02:00.004+05:30

Check this out

P.S. - This video is by Grand Ecole students from HEC and not MBA students ;)

Career Prospects at HEC

2009-02-14T01:20:00.009+05:30

Over the past year, I have received several queries about the career prospects at HEC. I have mostly responded to those queries over emails and now I think it will be better to dedicate a post to this important topic.

I would start with the way recruitment works here.
At HEC, recruitment is always an ongoing process and the school does not have a specific recruitment season. Throughout the year, companies visit HEC, meet students and deliver presentations. During presentations, they advertise the positions they are recruiting for and then invite students to apply. Applications are made mostly through website/email and consist of CV and cover letter. The applications are screened and then shortlisted candidates are invited for interviews. Thus, there is no recruitment season where companies would come to campus to shortlist people and interview them.

Let's talk about Career Change now. Most of the people I know mentioned Career Change as one of the key reasons behind MBA. Career change usually involves changing one of the following variables:
1. Function (e.g. Marketing, Finance, HR)
2. Industry/Sector
3. Geography

In my experience, changing Sector or Geography is relatively easier than changing Function. Also, the task becomes much difficult if your desired career move involves more than one variable. It is extremely difficult to change all three variables at the same time.

Role of Language:- This, according to me, is one of the most important yet underrated factors while choosing a European b-school. Business in continental Europe is still conducted mostly in local language(s) and one must speak the local language (fluently) to work in client-facing positions (e.g. Consulting, Sales).

Coming to the theme of this post - Career prospects at HEC, I would say it is very subjective; depends on a lot of variables. HEC is probably the best known b-school within France and has a pretty good reputation in western Europe. So if you are looking to work in this region, HEC is a good choice provided you take into account the above mentioned points about Language and Career Change. If you are looking to work outside western Europe, then HEC might not be a good choice unless you are confident that you can achieve your post-MBA career goals without seeking school's help.

If I were to summarize my post, I would say that at HEC, you are in charge of your career. The career services will help you in updating your CV and getting in touch with companies; you will have to then network with recruiters and get yourself an interview call. Despite its enviable reputation, HEC MBA tag will not, by default, guarantee a great post-MBA career unless you are practical and put in the required efforts.

You could also read this related post about MBA from Europe

Life after MBA

2009-02-06T01:57:00.004+05:30

It has been almost 2 months since I finished my classes at HEC. After finishing my course,I went to India and spent a month there. It was a good break - helped me relax at home, spend time with friends/family and most importantly gave me time to think.

It was a much needed break for the last few months at HEC were pretty tiring - because of work pressure and job-hunt. Right now, things are pretty bad for MBAs - most of the companies have frozen fresh hiring completely. This has created a bigger problem for people who were pursuing MBA to change careers; in these times, it is extremely difficult to get a break into a new career-path.

I had received an offer for a position based in New York but then visa turned out to be an issue. I could not find anything else that interested me. So I decided to pursue another option which is a long term internship. Long-term internships (3-4 months to 1 year) is something unique that I found in France. Most companies here offer internships throughout the year and the interns do the same work as full-time recruits. It works well for the companies because they don't have to commit for a long term and they can employ people on project basis. In this downturn, the opportunities for internships have increased as companies don't want to commit to recruiting full-time employees.

Things are similar at other b-schools. I spoke with friends at other top schools and most people of the class of 2009 are in a difficult spot; It will be extremely difficult for people graduating this year to get their first choice; we might have to settle with our second/third choices right now.

In my future posts, I am going to write more about MBA, my takeaways from this experience and pros-and-cons of international MBA. Drop me an email if you have any specific questions that you want to be addressed; I will try to answer them too

HEC Paris - ranked top European b-school, again

2008-12-01T19:12:00.001+05:30

HEC Paris has retained its position as Europe's premier business school. Read further details here

Something to cheer about :)

Ramblings

2008-10-24T13:13:00.001+05:30

Haven't written for quite a while because:
1. I have been very busy with classes and assignments
2. There hasn't been much to write about (except for financial mess which I am sure everyone is aware about).

So, what's new!
Well, a good news for all who are planning to join HEC Paris in future (maybe in 2010). HEC is launching an expensive drive to raise its profile. Read here

Apart from this, the new batch is here. They are a bigger intake, around 150 in number; I haven't got a chance to interact with many of them, might get to know them better in future. Like last year, they have already started campaigning for MBAT elections. Watch some creative videos

From MBAT-Men
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

From Squad
Video

Last term at HEC

2008-09-23T12:39:00.000+05:30

I began my last term here this month; Started the term with a 3 day seminar-cum-course on "Ethiques and Performances" which was held in Domaine de Chednac (near Puy en Velay in South France). It was an interesting course where we discussed and debated on how to deal with ethical issues that we could face in our professional life.

This was followed by the fifth edition of Annual Sustainability Conference, a 2 day event organized by HEC MBA students each year. It was a good event where we had round table conferences with industry leaders in the field and some presentations by firms working in development consulting. I was impressed with the presentations by MBA Without Borders and Dalberg about their development consulting activities.

Our regular classes resumed last week with my first class at Monday 8 AM! It wasn't easy going back to school after the summer break and I did have some long days in the first week itself. We already had plenty of work in the first week and I had to work on two assignments. My courses in this term are not evenly spread out - I have a lot of courses till Oct end and then just the core course in Nov and Dec. That means I'll have plenty of time to dedicate on job-search.

Gotta work now - have to finish some readings for today's class...

$100bn note!!

2008-07-24T06:00:00.000+05:30

Okay, it is actually Z$100 bn note (Zimbabwe dollars) and not USD. Zimbabwe recently launched this note against its 2.2 Million annual inflation rate (Yes, you heard that right) This is hyperinflation at its worst.

Even this note is barely sufficient to buy a loaf of bread. At present rates, it takes atleast Z$500 bn a day to survive!!!

Read the complete article here

So, if you wanna be a billionaire, go to Zimbabwe and find a job ;)

In India

2008-07-17T07:36:00.000+05:30

This post comes after probably my longest break after I begun blogging last year. Needless to say I was occupied but for different reasons this time.
In June, I was occupied with elective courses which ended on 30th June (with 2 takeaway exams left). On 1st July I left Paris for India and have been in India for 2 weeks now.

Before leaving for India, I was having a really hard time with the trains in Paris - In one week, I encountered delayed trains, cancelled trains and a metro strike. For my last class of Corporate Strategy, it took me almost 2 hours to reach school on a Saturday morning because of an undeclared train strike on RER-B. When I left for India, I thought that I had left my travel woes behind. But that was not meant to be for my misfortune continued. To cut the long story short, after reaching India, I encountered a cancelled domestic flight, an unconfirmed train ticket and it finally took me a 21 hour bus journey (in a non-sleeper coach) to travel from Pune to Bhopal.

After I reached home, I was in for a surprise with the internet connection. In my hometown (Narsinghgarh), I have to use dial-up internet connection which provides data transfer rate of 3-4 kbps (yes, there is no typo). With this speed, I was barely able to check my mails and faced a really hard time accessing the net. There is no broadband facility here. After speaking with multiple vendors (ISPs) and exploring multiple connection modes, I settled with a GPRS enabled internet connection using my phone. Even this does not provide a great speed but it is definitely much better than the dial-up connection and I can do the basic surfing and communicate with people.

I have been in India for 2 weeks now and might stay here till Aug end. During this time, I will be travelling a lot. If any of the prospective HEC participants want to meet me, drop me a line and we can plan something out.

Some interesting articles

2008-06-15T01:01:00.000+05:30

Found the following articles interesting:

An article in Independent on MBAT

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/mbas-guide/on-your-marks-get-setits-the-mba-tournament-845769.html

Article by David Maister in Consulting Magazine. Some of the points mentioned in this article are really worthwhile

http://www.consultingmag.com/articles/781/1/Advice-to-a-Young-Professional/Advice-to-a-Young-Professional.html

Elective Courses

2008-06-10T11:00:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I had exams for two of my electives- "Financial Dimensions of Strategic Decisions" and "Economics and Finance of International Business".
Don't get intimidated by the names - the first course was mainly about Corporate Finance and understanding the non-financial dynamics behind financial decisions. This course, taught by Proff Pascal Quiry, has been among the best courses I have had. In each session, we discussed cases which were mostly based on the proff's experience in advising companies in his illustrious career. What made the class more fun was proff's sense of humor and the concept of "Mr/Ms Summary"; the last person in class had to write the summary of the discussions in class and email it to all participants. This meant there was a sudden last minute rush and people trying to outrun each other to enter the class ;)

The second course, by proff Laurent Jacque was about International Finance and taught us about the dillema faced by MNCs while making international financing decisions. It was a very interesting course, by a very senior and knowledgable proff (he has also written a book on foreign exchange risk management). This course was very demanding - I must have spent atleast 50 hours for this course which is quite high considering that an avg elective course is about 18 hours. But, at the end of it, I would say it was completely worth it.

This is the advantage of being in Sep intake. We have much more choice of electives and some great proffs to learn from. Jan intake, does not get this luxury but they have some other advantages.

Things have been steady on the strategy consulting elective. We have been practising case-cracking regularly and will have mock-interviews with real consultants soon. Am really looking forward to it because that would give me an indication about my current level.

Another development here is that some of my classmates will leave HEC for good this week. They will finish their classes for this term here and will go on exchange programs with other schools in next term. I am really sad at the prospect of not seeing them in future classes. Having spent so much time together, it will be really difficult to watch them leave... But I guess C'est la vie....

Snapshots from Hell

2008-05-30T16:09:00.002+05:30

It just keeps getting tougher. At the end of 2nd term I had thought that life at HEC would become easier because I will choose the subjects I'd be interested in and have less work. But that was not the case to be - in my quest for business-knowledge I ended up taking too many work-intensive courses. As a result the workload at the moment is very high and I can safely say that the past couple of weeks have been my most hectic ones here.

This week has been specially tough - I have been sleeping past midnight and getting up at 6. What makes it more difficult for me is the 2 hours of daily commute. I would have saved some precious time (and energy) if I had stayed on expansiel. But living in Paris is a different experience altogether!!!!

So, what is the reason behind this workload? I'd say it is mainly because of the Strategy Consulting elective. In 2 weeks, each of us was supposed to solve 25 cases. Now case-solving is done in pairs. So each person solves total 50 cases with his/her partner. On an average, a case takes 30-40 minutes. So the total workload is appx 25 hours spread over 2 weeks. This does not include the time you have to spend preparing for case, your pitch and so on. Tomorrow, we will finish the first milestone and then we will have more cases to solve till 14th Jun when final session of this elective will be held.

Even though the workload is high, I must admit that I am enjoying it, esp. the case-cracking exercise. I love brain simulating activity and case-cracking helps me work on different types of problems and look at them from different points of view. I am glad that I took this elective.

I guess the next week is going to be even tougher. A brief overview of my schedule for the first two days next week:
Monday - Make a presentation at 8 AM in finance course. After class, I will go to Roland Garros to watch French Open. Will come back to school for a class from 6 PM to 9PM
Tuesday - Make a presentation in Microfinance course at 1PM. Work on the case for International Finance which is due on Wednesday. In evening, I will go to Stade de France to watch the football match between France and Columbia.

So on and so forth. There are so many things to do and you have to work according to your priorities otherwise it is very easy to get lost in a b-school life.

In case the subject of this post sounds unfamiliar, you must read
Snapshots from Hell

Consulting at HEC

2008-05-19T02:46:00.002+05:30

This week, we started classes again after MBAT. One of the key events this week was our trip to BCG. BCG had organized an informational tour for HEC students at their office. With this event, they began the recruiting exercise for full time positions from HEC. We now have to submit our applications online by May 26 and the first round of interviews will be held on Jun 24.

As in other b-schools, consulting is one of the most sought after career here. It is generating more interest from people this year because of the slowdown in financial sector. For students interested in Strategy Consulting, we have a special elective - Strategy Consulting - tools and frameworks to prepare students for consulting interviews. This elective is conducted by a HEC alumni who has worked in BCG. The number of seats in this elective are very less (16 only); workload is high as every one is expected to solve a lot of cases as part of the course.

Apart from this, the consulting club at HEC is become pretty active and conducts regular sessions to provide insights about consulting industry and help students prepare for consulting interviews.

Last week, I restarted my case-cracking preparations after a break of 2 months. After doing a couple of cases I realized that I still need a lot of practice to structure my thoughts. Hopefully, things will fall in place with more practice.

MBAT ends

2008-05-12T22:56:00.000+05:30

Last week, we held MBAT at HEC Paris. As I have mentioned before, MBAT is the biggest MBA sports tournament in Europe. This 18th edition had over 1300 students
from 14 European b-schools participating in over 20 different events.

During this 3 day event, MBA participants competed fiercely with each other during days and then winded down by partying till wee hours every night. I guess there was hardly anyone who slept for over 4-5 hours a day. It was great to see the future business leaders fighting and enjoying on (and off) the sports field. But it was not all fun - people broke ribs, wrists, even collar bones and not to mention the numerous minor injuries.

Like last year, LBS won it this year too by a big margin. Well, they had to - they brought the biggest contingent (about 230 people), played all the sports and had more than one team competing in some sports. To be honest, they also deserved it considering the spirit they demonstrated. They were very competitive and had many people who came with them just to cheer their team. IESE came second and HEC third. I am glad with our performance because it was extremely difficult for us to be both organizers and participants at the same time.

Some of my favorite memories of this event are people dressed up as Super Girl, Bat Girl, Roman Soldier etc; LBS double-decker buses with one dedicated to beer and Cafe Rotterdam by RSM.

It is sad that this event had to end so soon. It will be difficult to get back to classroom tomorrow after having gone through the amazing week and meeting so many new people. Alas! life must go on - C'est la vie

Trip to Switzerland

2008-04-28T00:36:00.002+05:30

I returned from a trip to Switzerland yesterday night. I had gone there with 7 other friends for a 5 day trip. We left from Paris for Basel on Tue morning, then went to Lucerne and finally Interlaken before returning last night.

Now I realize why Switzerland is such a popular tourist destination. It is so beautiful and awe-inspiring. I ran out of adjectives to describe the beauty of the places we visited. Every other place evoked a "wow" from us. The clear skies, snow-laden Alps and crystal clear lakes were a treat to the eyes. The weather played spoil-sport on both the occasions we went up into the Alps - first at Mount Pilatus and then at Jungfrau. It was cold and cloudy and prevented us from getting a clear view from the mountains but still it was worth a visit. At Jungfrau, the temperature was -11 degree C and wind was blowing at 40 kmph. Needless to say, it was freezing and I don't remember the last time I had weathered such cold.

We were also lucky in some respects. At both Lucerne and Interlaken, our hostels were at amazing locations; in Lucerne it was in front of the river Reuss, in Interlaken it was in front of lake Brienz. In Interlaken, I used to get up with the sun beating down on my face from the Alps! It is difficult to describe the feeling.

As I said before, words will not do justice to the beauty of the places above. One thing is for sure, I will definitely go back to Interlaken at least once more.

Visions of Leadership

2008-04-21T23:46:00.001+05:30

Last week, we had Visions of Leadership week at HEC. It was a week full of conferences and workshop dedicated to Leadership. Speakers were prominent leaders from industry and government. Some of the people were:

Gerogia Garinois ( President Beauty Care Strategy and New Growth, J&J)
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox ( CEO, 20-first)
Jean Rene Fourtou ( Chairman of the Supervisiory Board, Vivendi)
Henri de Castries (Chairman of AXA group)
Jean Paul Agon (CEO, L'oreal)
Theodore Zeldin (Philosopher)
General Jean-Louis Georgelin (Chief of the Defence Staff, French Army)
and
Valery Giscard d'Estaing (Former President of France)

Each day had a different theme - leadership perspectives, change/crisis management, decision making etc. The speakers talked about their experiences w.r.t to the particular theme.

The opening session was a talk by Mr. Theodore Zeldin. He exposed us to some very basic and probing questions about life and existence and about priorities in life. Time and again, I ask these questions to myself and I think I need to answer these questions again at this point in my life. The last session was by our Dean - Mr. Ramanantsoa. He talked about the power games in an organization and about the different perspectives of managers and leaders. My favorite session was the one by Mr. Jean Rene Fourtou, where he talked about how he turned Vivendi around from the brink of bankruptcy in 2002. The session was full of anecdotes and made us laugh by the way Mr. Fourtou described the series of events during his tenure.

One common thing that almost all leaders talked about was the importance and role of intuition in their decisions. This is an important takeaway for me who always tries to get a detailed analysis of every situation and wants to have an extensive look at data before taking a decision. But as they said, intuition comes with age and I guess as I grow older, I will trust my instincts more often.

Tomorrow, I am leaving for Switzerland on a 5 day trip. Can't wait to get to the Swiss Alps now :)

End of second term

2008-04-12T12:38:00.000+05:30

My second term at HEC ended this week; We had 3 consecutive exams - Economics, Corporate Finance and Strategic Management and each exam tested us thoroughly.

In Economics exam, we had 2 cases apart from the usual MCQs. One of the cases was on LM/IS schedules in which we had to present a complete analysis of the economy which was depicted by those schedules. This made it quite challenging.

Corporate Finance was by far the most difficult exam at HEC. Each of the three sections of our class had a different proffesor and the paper was also different for each section. But after the exam everyone was unianimous in the view that the paper was long and difficult. There were angry protests from some people that the proff did not cover all the topics in depth and the questions required a much thorough understanding of the topic. I partially agree with this opinion but then you shouldn't expect spoon-feeding in a top school.

Strategic Management was a different story altogether. The exam duration was 5 hours!!! Before the exam, most of the people were of the view that 5 hours is too long and one should finish the exam in 3 hours. After the exam, people were complaining that even 5 hours are insufficient to solve a strategy case and submit a report in the form of paper based slides. I guess most of the people (including me) mismanaged their time and 5 hours were definitely enough for the case.

Now that the exams are over, I have some time to relax. Next week is going to be interesting; It is the Visions of Leadership (VoL) week at HEC. VoL is an integral part of the HEC MBA program in which leaders from leading companies are invited to talk about their leadership experiences and challenges. In the next week, we will have sessions by CEOs, a workshop by Mckinsey and a group case where we have to analyze a situation and submit our findings to a leader.

After the VoL week, we have a 10 day break; I am going to Switzerland for 5 days with some classmates. Looking forward to that trip.

The month gone by

2008-04-03T22:00:00.001+05:30

The past month has bene very hectic. It has been full of fun activities, academic pressure and internship search.

We truly celebrated HEC Paris' diversity in March by celebrating India Week, Africa Week and China Week. For three consecutive weeks, we had some or other events to showcase the culture and diversity of our participants. These events were not just fun; Every week had a roundtable event in which there were discussions about doing business in that particular region. Finally, one common event that marked the culmination of every event was a fashion show where our classmates walked the ramp showcasing their colorful cultural diversity. These events were fun and informational.

On the academic front, we are close to the end of 2nd term here. We have already had final exams for two subjects and with three final exams next week, we will finish the 2nd term on 10th April. After that, we will have one week for Vision of Leadership events. More on that later.

The past month was also stressful because of summer internship/elective related work. I interivewed with DHL for a Corporate Strategy profile but did not get the position. So as of now, I don't have any internship offer and as things stand now, I will take electives till June end and will spend Jul-Aug in India. But it was good to see some of my classmates get internship offers although not everyone got what he/she wanted. Overall, this has been a tough time, especially in the financial sector. Not more than 5/6 people have landed with core finance profiles for internships.

I am leaving for London tomorrow for a career fair exclusively organized for HEC MBA students by JP Morgan. There will be close to 20 companies present and I am interesed in 3-4 of those. Lets see how this event goes.

Bear down! who's next

2008-03-19T12:12:00.000+05:30

The fire-sale of Bear Stearns at $236 M was the most talked about topic at HEC yesterday. Everyone was wondering who the next casuality is going to be and if we could pool in some capital to buy a bank ;)

In our Economics class y'day, the professor showed the following video which is a spoof on Bernake's monetary policies. Awesome video I'd say...

Trip to Prague

2008-03-17T12:16:00.000+05:30

I went to Prague last weekend and it turned out to be a great trip as expected. I was part of a group of 50 people, all residents of fondation "Deutsche de la Meurthe" who had gone together by a bus! It was a 14 hour overnight trip and even though we had sore back/neck after reaching there, we thoroughly enjoyed the journey and the stay in Prague.

Prague (or Praha as it is locally called) is a lovely, small, developing city. Most of the tourist places in the city are situated in a 3-4 km walking radius and so we spent most of our time walking rather than travelling in trains. The city with its cobbled streets makes for an awesome walking expereince; the streets are beautiful, old and I really liked the colors of the apartments and buildings there.

On the first day, we spent most of our day in Prague Castle, walking around the place and visiting churches, museums inside it. The evening was fabulous - we were treated to a traditional Czech dinner with folk dance. Because I am a vegetarian, I did not enjoy the traditional delicacies but definitely enjoyed the folk dance and songs.

We spent the next day travelling around Old City and visited places like Astronomical Clock, Charles Bridge, Petrin Tower among other places. We spent the evening in Karlovy Lazne - among the biggest discotheques in Central Europe. The disc has 5 floors and each plays different genre of music. I really enjoyed music there and we left the place around 2 AM and walked for over an hour to reach our place by 3:15 AM!!!

Since Prague is a small place, we had covered almost all the important places in the first couple of days; on the last day, we just walked around the old Jewish Quarters, sipped coffee in Franz Kafka Cafe and then left Prague around 5 PM.

Overall, it was an awesome trip; Now I want to visit more places in Eastern Europe which I think is relatively unexplored. Looking forward to many more trips around Europe...

Ethanol as biofuel - a viable alternative to traditional fuels ?

2008-03-04T21:37:00.000+05:30

In recent times, we have witnessed a lot of talk about biofuels in general and ethanol in particular. Biofuels are being promoted as alternatives to traditional fuels primarily because they produce fewer poisonous and greenhouse gases that harm the environment and cause global climate change (global warming). Governments everywhere are subsidizing startups in biofuel industry and leading energy companies are also investing huge sums of money to develop biofuels.

Some recent studies have pointed out the ill-effects of using ethanol as a bio-fuel. I recently came across a very good article on Economist debating the use of ethanol as a biofuel. The entire article can be found here:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10766882

Another article from CNN talks, among other things, about how ethanol could add to the food woes of emerging countries. This article can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/24/eco.biofuels/index.html

It will be interesting to see how the biofuel industry responds to these challenges. I will try to get some industry responses on this and post them here.

Mid-terms finished; Vacation about to begin

2008-02-29T01:55:00.000+05:30

I wanted to write earlier but could not because I was busy with certain things - preparations for India week and then exams. In last couple of weeks, we had final exam for Management Accounting and mid-terms for Economics and Corporate Finance. Management Accounting was simple but the other exams really tested our concepts. For Economics, we had 50 multiple-choice-questins on MicroEconomics; the catch was that there was negative marking which meant we had to be very careful while marking our answers. In today's Corporate Finance paper we had to answer approximately 15 short questions and only a couple of questions were straight-forward. After taking the exam, I realized that the more I learn, the more I realize there is left to learn.

Apart from this, we also submitted our exchange program applications and track-selection applications last week. HEC Paris has outgoing exchange program with most of the world's top MBA programs and I think close to 20 people from my class will go on exchange. I did not apply for exchange and applied for Strategy as my chosen track. This year, getting Strategy track will not be easy because there have been over 40 applicants for 40 seats. I think we will know the outcome of our applications next week.

We have winter-break vacation from March 1-9 and I am eagerly looking forward to this break. I will leave for Prague on 6th and spend 3 days there. It is going to be another exciting trip I am sure.

Business Quiz at HEC

2008-02-14T04:25:00.001+05:30

We had a business cum general knowledge quiz for MBA participants at HEC. There were 5 teams of 5 members each. There were 5 rounds with 10 questions in each round. It was a tough quiz I must say. A couple of teams were virtually out after the second round itself because of their abysmal performance. At the end of second round, we were trailing by 1 point but the third round changed it all. We scored 10 whereas the previously leading team scored 5. After that it was just a matter of maintaining the lead and we did it albeit by a narrow margin of 2 points.
So it was a closely contested victory and each of us received a bottle of champagne for the win:). I would say we were extremely lucky because Marvin - the person who did bulk of the scoring was not in our team originally; he joined us at the last moment and helped us win the contest. ;)
Here's a picture of the winning team:

The people in the pic from right to left:
1. Goran - one of the organizers
2. Bipul
3. Deepak
4. Marvin - the star
5. Rahul - that's me
6. Ashish

Looking forward to many such bottles of champagne ;)

Latin week at HEC Paris

2008-02-10T02:17:00.000+05:30

It is getting increasing difficult to find time to write these days. There are just too many things to do here(and I am not talking about studies...) and sometimes it becomes difficult to choose. I have to juggle my time between sports, preparing for India week and different club activities.

This week was particularly hectic as we celebrated Latin week here. We have people from Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Brazil (I might be forgetting some other countries) in our batch and the Latin week was an event to showcase the Latin culture and celebrate the diversity. We saw some famous movies - City of God, Motorcycle Diaries which provided us insights into the life and culture of Brazil and other latin american countries.
Apart from this, we had presentations on various countries, a discussion on doing business in latin america, a music fest and finally a sumptous latin dinner. I tried to attend as many events as possible by balancing my time between other activities.

Things are moving well on the academic front also. We started our strategy classes this week and the first couple of classes were great. We discussed cases on the success of Southwest Airlines and the classic Cola-Pepsi wars. Our strategy proff makes the classes really interesting. He randomly calls upon a person and asks him/her to initiate the case discussion. This makes it imperative that each of us prepares the case thorougly before the class. I am looking forward to more strategy cases in coming months.

On the personal level, I am looking forward to the one week winter break in March first week. I have just booked my tickets for Prague where I am going with close to 50 Cite Universitaire folks. Hopefully, this trip will be as exciting as my previous trips to Rome, Barcelona and UK.

HEC on NDTV

2008-02-04T17:47:00.000+05:30

Last month, French president Sarkozy made his first visit to India. During this visit, a lot of initiatives were taken to increase the cooperation between India and France on various fronts. As part of this visit, NDTV prepared a special show on the Opportunities for Indians in France. The show, titled "France:Opportunities Beckon" included a section on HEC Paris, as being one of France's premier educational instititues and attracting many Indian students. The show can be viewed here.

India makes history again

2008-01-19T14:28:00.000+05:30

India have done it again. They have won the cricket test match against Australia in Perth and have stopped Australia's victory march of 16 tests again. They did it first in 2001 in Kolkatta and again today but this time it is sweeter because this victory has come in Perth - Australia's stronghold for years. Perth is among the world's fastest cricket pitches and Australia hasn't lost a test here in a decade. Last time they lost here was to the pace attack of West Indies which boasted of stars like Ambrose, Walsh and Bishop. The fact that this Indian bowling lineup is probably the most inexperienced in years makes the victory even more remarkable.

After the debacle in Sydney, where India lost the match in the last over, this is a great victory. This will match the next test more interesting.

Go India, Go..

Ghosts of Term One

2008-01-17T15:37:00.000+05:30

Even though we are into our second week of the second term here at HEC, we are still doing first term's work. We have two first term assignments spilling over in the second term - an individual paper on sustainability and a marketing case to be done with first term study group. Both these assignments are due tomorrow and I have had a really hard time with the marketing case. We chose a case of marketing a Japanese style high-tech toilets in France and this case has proven to be difficult but very interesting. We have not been able to conduct a detailed market research because of lack of time and resources. We have to submit our recommendations tomorrow and as of now, we have not been able to decide the target market segment and the right promotion strategy. Hopefully, we will be able to sort things out after a final brainstorming session today.

Apart from this, our academic classes started today. We have Corporate Finance, Management Accounting, Business Economics and Strategy as our main subjects in this term. Because of my interests in Finance and Strategy, I am keenly looking forward to these subjects. Our professors in this term are also veterans - Corp Fin is being taught by a proff who is an investment banker, Economics will be taught by an ex-head of an investment bank and Strategy proff is also very renowned.

Things are heating up on other fronts also - MBAT team is meeting regularly to coordinate MBAT events, Indian contingent is meeting to hold India week in March, I am working with a group of participants to start a new initiative to hold sessions on understanding the economies of different countries and doing a SWOT analysis. Apart from this, people have started getting interview calls for internships. From the look of things so far, this term is going to be harder than the first one..

Trip to Rome

2008-01-12T05:35:00.000+05:30

I spent my recent vacation in Rome and Barcelona. Because of the winter, we wanted to go somewhere south in Europe and it being Christmas time, Rome was our first choice. We also chose Barcelona so that we could spend some time at the Beach.Our first stop was Rome.
Without getting into the details of logistics, I will write about the main places we visited.

Vatican City - A trip to Rome cannot be complete without going to Vatican city. The smallest soverign state in the world, this is the seat of the Pope. There are 2 main places to visit inside Vatican city:
1. St. Peters Basilica - This is perhaps the holiest place for Christians. This is built on the burial site of St Peters, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus and who according to legend was entrusted with the task of expanding Christianity. This is where the Pope performs the Christmas midnight mass and we were lucky to witness that. This was once in a lifetime moment for us. Inside this basilica, you can see many of the famous Christianity related historical sculptures and frescoes by Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphel and others. The most famous work inside this basilica is "Pieta" by Michelangelo, a sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after he was crucified.
2. Vatican Museum - This contains many famous works of art and sculpture which belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Sistine Chapel, which contains the world famous fresco, "Creation" by Michelangelo is enroute to the Vatican Museum. We were unlucky not to get inside the museum because of a 2km long waiting line :(
Fontana di Trevi(Trevi Fountain) - This is the most famous and largest of the fountains in Rome and legend has it that if you throw a coin in this fountain, you will return to Rome. It is huge and really beautiful.
Piazza di Spagna( Spanish square) - This is a really beautiful place to be in summers. Close to the main square is a set of steps called the Spanish steps which connect Piazza di Spagna with Piazza Trinita dei Monti. This is a must see spot in summers when you can see flowers lining these steps. We could not see the real beauty of the place is it was December
Colosseum - If you have seen the movie Gladiator, you must know about Colosseum. This is where the gladiators fought - with other gladiators and with animals. This place is now mostly damaged but can still hold your imagination if you stand inside it and imagine the battles that took place centuries ago
Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument of victor Emmanuel II) - It is situated close to Piazza Venezia and is a monument to honour Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. It is built of pure white marble and features majestic stairways, tall columns, fountains, a huge equestrian sculpture of Victor Emmanuel and two statues of the goddess Victoria riding on quadrigas. This monument also has a museum which contains many artifacts related to World War 1 and Italy's military history
In general, Rome is a small city with friendly people and delicious pizzas. The city contains many fountains and squares and over 900 churches.If you are a lover of art and/or history, want to witness works of Reniassance period and Baroque style, Rome is a must visit place.

Second term begins

2008-01-12T05:19:00.000+05:30

Our second term begun this week and the week went by so fast that I can't believe its weekend again. The biggest difference between term 1 and term 2 for me is that I have moved to the campus for term 2. So, no more 2 hour commute daily. It is such a big difference living here, in campus. I can do so many things now; I played squash this week after a gap of 6 odd months and thoroughly enjoyed it. Today, I played basketball in evening and then went for a movie with friends.

We did not have any academic classes this week - we had sessions dedicated to Communication in Action in which we had communication professionals working with us to improve our communication skills. Apart from that we had sessions on Project Management and couple of sessions with Alumni where they gave us feedback on our career plans. It was a good way to start term 2 I'd say.

I think this term is gonna be tougher than first term, not in terms of academics but because in this term people would be busy working to get internship offers. I can already see people working hard putting in applications for banks and other industries. It is not easy for people wanting to get into finanace because the industry is mainly based in London and the competition is very tough especially in the wake of the recent financial crisis. I have also applied to some investment banks, have had first round interview with BNP Paribas and am anxiously waiting to listen from other banks.

Our academic classes begin next week and we also have two big submissions due from the last term - Individual Sustainability Project and Marketing Case submission. It's gonna be a tough week I am sure.

End of first term at HEC

2008-01-03T02:09:00.000+05:30

My first term at HEC ended in December. In terms of number of days spent, the term lasted for a little over 3 months (100 days to be precise) but in terms of the knowledge gained, I was introduced to a lot of new concepts and it might take me years to grasp them completely.

It was a great experience being part of the diverse batch that my class at HEC is. The classmates were cooperative, the proffs supportive and the course structure was top-notch. We were exposed to most of the main disciplines that business requires - finance, marketing, supply chain and accounting. Additionally, we had a new subject -Sustainable Business Development which helped us understand the issues of sustainability and we spent a lot of time in class brainstorming on how businesses should be sustainable - not just making profit for its shareholders but benefitting all the stakeholders concerned, including planet.

I was lucky to have already had an overview and understanding of all the subjects, thanks to my reading habits and my previous work experience. Some of my classmates were completely new to the world of finance and it was good to see them keep up with the rest of the class after an initial struggle.

We also had a lot of fun along with the academics. We fought hard with each other during MBAT elections, had a great time celebrating Diwali and were thorougly entertained by the various events organized during the Japan week. Another highlight was the parties we had in Piano bar - which included normal drinking/dancing parties and the informal salsa training session. One such memorable ocassion was the Latin fiesta where the party continued till 3 AM and only a handful of people turned up to attend the 8AM Statistics class :)

If I were to summarize my firt term experience at HEC, I would say that it was a humbling experience. When I joined HEC, I used to think that I know a lot about business but in the last 3 months I have realized that there are more things that I don't know than what I know.

Am signing off now wishing you all a great year ahead and hoping that my coming year is as exciting and fruitful as the last few months here were.

Wanna be a banker

2007-12-18T13:50:00.001+05:30

Found this video today. It is really funny and very apt...

Exam fever

2007-12-18T02:39:00.000+05:30

4 down, 2 more to go! I am talking about exams. My first term at HEC will end on Friday with the Marketing exam. Before that, there is the Supply Chain Management exam on Wednesday. Both these exams are closed book and after taking all other exams with open book, it is difficult to take a closed book exam. Now I'll have to actually read the books and remember the concepts. The SCM proff has declared that he will give us a sheet containing important formulae during the exam. This is good because it would have been difficult otherwise to remember so many formulae.

I am in a fix right now as I dont have the SCM book! I went to the library today to get the book but all books were already issued. They have 2 copies which students can use in the library. So I will sit in the library tomorrow to study. This is going to be an entirely new experience! I have never studied in a library. Let's see how this turns out.

Barbarians At The Gate

2007-12-13T02:03:00.000+05:30

I picked up this book Friday morning and finished reading it yesterday night at 1 AM. I read all of its 600+ pages in 4 days, during my exams (I had an accounting final exam today morning).

This was my first book after a gap of 4 months. I had never thought that I would take time out of my MBA schedule to read books but I started reading because I wanted a book to kill time when I felt bored of other routine activities. But once I started reading it, there was no stopping me.

The book is about the bid for RJR Nabisco - one of the larget takeover bids in corporate history. It details the history of companies involved, the people involved and makes a compelling reading for anyone interested in a career in Investment Banking and particularly Mergers and Acquisitions.

The significance of this book can be gauged by the fact that it has been named 4th in the list of 20 most influential business books by Forbes.

HEC Paris - Top Ranked European B-school

2007-12-03T21:25:00.000+05:30

We have done it again. For the second year in a row, HEC Paris has been ranked the top b-school in Europe by Financial Times. Read the complete report here

Exams approaching

2007-12-03T02:55:00.000+05:30

Core 1 will end in 3 weeks. Our first exam is on Wed and I haven't even started studying; there are so many other things to do. Today, I applied to 2 banks for summer internships, thus taking my total applications to 3. I did hear back from one of the banks only 2 days after I submitted my application; the HR lady wanted to interview me for a role/function that I wasn't too keen on, so I politely declined and she said they will keep my application for my desired function and will get back to me later. Hopefully, they should call me before the end of Dec.

Last week was another hectic one; I had 3 presentations - French was ok, Sustainable Development was good but Marketing was not good. We went unprepared for the presentation and it showed. There are some important learnings from this presentation which I hope will help me do better in future.

Last week, we celebrated Japan week in our campus. Our Japanese classmates organized a host of events on this occasion - the notable being Japanese films, Wii games, Japanese fashion show and Sushi eating competition. The events were organized very professionally and we had a great time. Looking forward to more such events at HEC..

Submissions, Business Games

2007-11-28T14:27:00.000+05:30

I wanted to write last weekend but could not as I had many other things to do - mainly related with presentations. This week I was supposed to be part of 4 presentations - 3 in group and 1 as an individual. One group presentation has been postponed to next week, I am done with the individual presentation, now there are two presentations lined up for the next two days..

Last week was the most hectic I have had here; the main reason being that we are heading towards the end of this core which means more individual submissions, group assignments etc. We (my group) made a mistake of choosing topics that were to be presented towards the end of core - in this core, each group had to make 4 presentations; so far we haven't made any... This means we have to spend a lot of time on presentations when we also have other things to take care of (exam studies, internship applications, usual b-school fun activities etc). Things would have been much better if we were finished with presentations by now..

One thing I like about HEC MBA program is that we get to play many business games - so far we have played 4 games - Negosim(Negotiation Simulation), Accounting, Organisational Behavior, Supply Chain and we are playing a game again this week. Games help a lot in clearing the theoretical concepts and I wish our MBA program had more games.

Right now, I am attending a seminar by Daniel Porot on "Career Design and Job Hunting". It has been an interesting seminar so far (2 hours already) and it will last for 6 more hours.. Gotta pay more attention to the seminar now...

Cover letters

2007-11-18T13:25:00.000+05:30

In the last week or so, all I have done is to write cover letters and I am not finished yet. Writing cover letters is such a pain - you want to express so many things but in very few lines. I wrote draft version couple of weeks ago and must have edited it 6-7 times till now.... Must finalize it now and start applying...

This weekend is perhaps the most boring I have had since I arrived in Paris over 2 months ago. Cold weather coupled with the crippling transport strike has forced me to stay inside. I have UK visa appointment tomorrow and might have to take a cab if the strike continues.

Things in school are still hectic. We have 3 submissions lined up for the coming week and another 3-4 the next week. After that, we will have our final exams starting Dec first week..

Time to get back to work...

midterms, sumissions, applications

2007-11-08T02:16:00.000+05:30

Received my stats test result yesterday. On an absolute scale, I did not perform as badly as I had feared but on a relative scale the performance was bad. Even after scoring above 75%, my score was below the class average!!! This was shocking - I don't remember the last time I had received lesser marks than the average. I lost marks not for making mistakes but for not writing clear conclusions. This is something I need to learn.

Things have become very hectic now. It looks like this is gonna be the most hectic month of my course. We have to submit around 2 case studies per week; then there are presentations, another mid-term and finally applications for summer internships. I am keen on a career in Investment Banking and am working on my applications these days.

Last weekend, I booked my tickets for Rome and Barcelona for X-mas vacations. We a 15-day X-mas vacation here and I am looking forward to explore Europe during those days.

wake up call

2007-11-01T02:01:00.001+05:30

After a gap of over 4 years, I took my first academic exam today - Statistics. The test was not difficult but I think I have botched up. I cannot claim that I was well prepared for the exam but I have to admit that I was decently prepared. I had solved all the types of problems that had been discussed in class; The proff had told us the exam pattern, the types of problems expected in exam and had also helped us solve questions from previous papers. Moreover, it was an open book exam. Then, why did I screw it??

One reason is that I did not take it too seriously. I started preparing for exam only couple of days ago and got into serious preparation only yesterday evening. The other reason is that I did not pay much attention to the subject in class. This was a grave mistake. I could perform calculations for all the problems in exam but had a hard time interpreting the results!!! In such an exam, one can refer to the book during exam to look for formulae but applying the right formula and most importantly drawing the conclusion requires understanding of the basic concepts involved. This is where I lagged.

Anyways, it is good that I got the wake up call so early. It gives me ample time prepare for the next mid-term (Accounting) which is 4 days away. I hope I'll do better

MBAT videos

2007-10-24T10:41:00.000+05:30

I had mentioned in my last post about the highly creative videos that my classmates had prepared for MBAT election campaign. I have finally managed to get them on web. Have a look:

This one is by the winning team

and this is by the runner ups (my team)

The best part about MBAT is that it is a part of our MBA curriculum; we get credits for organizing/coordinating MBAT activities and every week we have a time slot dedicated for MBAT just like for any other subject. Isn't it great!! MBAT is over 7 months away but the preps have already begun. We want to make this year's MBAT the best ever and its going to be a herculean task. May the force be with us...

Election Updates from HEC

2007-10-16T12:28:00.000+05:30

I haven't written for a while now because so many things have happened here in the last couple of weeks. We had two elections recently - one for the MBAT team(the team that organizes MBAT ) and the other for MBA Council. It was funny - we had 3 teams contesting for MBAT but only one team for MBA Council. Thus we had a very close contest for MBAT and no contest for MBA Council.. Sadly, my team lost the MBAT election by 3 votes :(. My classmates created really interesting videos for the elections and I will publish the links to the videos soon.

Apart from this, the course has become hectic now -we have some or other group submission every week. Working in a group comprising of individuals with different cultures, different education and different work-experience is challenging but a very enriching experience in I must say.

Things have gathered steam on the recruitment front also. People have started applying for summer internship positions. We have an International Finance Forum happening in HEC on 18-Oct which will feature over 30 companies making career presentations. Mind you, this is a presentation event and not an recruiting event. So we are supposed to attend company seminars, get to know the presenters and then apply to the companies later if we decide to.

This is going to be a specially hectic week as we have all day classes on Saturday also which happens rarely and I will have to use all my latent energy to survive....

Two weeks into the MBA

2007-09-27T01:52:00.000+05:30

It has been over 2 weeks since I started the MBA program and time has flown by. I have had a great time till now - partying, meeting new classmates and mostly getting to know each other.

The first week at school was spent in various soft skills related activities. We had several sessions of organizational behavior meant to integrate the people, learn to appreciate the cultural differences, understand the basics of teamwork etc. It was mostly fun.

The second week was really interesting. For 4 days, we played Negosim - a business simulation game. The entire class was divided in small teams of 4-5 people with each team having to manage the same type of company but in different geographies. In this game, each company was competing with other companies to sell their products in global markets. Each team had to make 6 decisions that would decide the future of the company. The decisions related to increasing production by buying more plants, outsourcing production to take advantage of low cost labor in developing countries, entering into joint ventures with other companies, investing into R&D etc.
We had to make these decisions based on company's cash flow, borrowing capacity, market conditions and several other factors. It was great fun and a good learning experience as we had to pour deep into the company's financial statements to make decisions.

Last weekend we went to Deauville - a quaint town near Normandy, for integration weekend. It was great fun. We spent 2 days partying, boozing, dancing and doing some other activities (tree climbing was one of them ;))

Our main classes have started this week. Till now, we have had sessions on Financial Markets and Financial Accounting. Since I like both these subjects, it has been good going so far. Let's see how long the romance continues.

So it begins

2007-09-12T01:07:00.000+05:30

After a long wait, I finally started the MBA program at HEC Paris. Our batch has 136 participants out of which people of Indian origin constitute the biggest group(around 30) followed by people from US, Canada and France. There are an overwhelming number of nationalities present; the group is as diverse as I had hoped for.

Today, I attended sessions on "Cost Concepts" and "Cultural Integration and National Stereotypes". The session on "Cost Concepts was a basic introduction about the notion of Cost and its various types. The second session was very interesting. It was about cultural differences and the increasing need for cultural integration in today's global economy. The professor - Michael Segalla organized and presented the session beautifully, interspersing it with ad videos, anecdotes, jokes about cultural differences etc. Nowhere during the 2.5 hours of the session did I feel bored.

This is the orientation week which will be pretty easy going. Next week, we will have Negosim, which is a business simulation game. I am really looking forward to it.

Reached Paris

2007-09-07T10:33:00.000+05:30

Finally, after multiple rounds of shopping and packing, I reached Paris yesterday. The flight (Air India) was dull and pathetic. the crew members were not much help. The service was just horrible. I would never want to travel by AI again. I wonder how does it manage to attract so much traffic despite the quality.

I will go to the campus today for registration and some other formalities. So I am gonna meet many classmates today. This has got me really excited. Lets see how things turn out now.

HEC Paris- Positives and Negatives

2007-08-18T16:52:00.000+05:30

Off late I have received many queries from people interested in HEC Paris. It seems that when people search for blogs on HEC Paris, they come across my blog and then they shoot off their queries. It is interesting (and awkward) to answer those queries because I haven't even started my MBA. Well, I have decided to write my views on the generally asked questions about HEC.

Disclaimer: All the views expressed below are personal. Information provided about HEC is the outcome of the interactions I have had with current students, alumni and other sources. I would suggest readers to cross check the veracity of information provided below from other sources before arriving at any conclusion.

For me, the first question to be answered before selecting a b-school is Why MBA. If you do not know what you want from an MBA program, then how do you expect to choose one considering that there are hundreds of programs on offer around the world. I am not writing my reasons for going for an MBA but would suggest that you find your answers to "Why MBA" before reading further

Positives of HEC
Almost everyone asks me why I chose HEC when I could have got into better programs with 740 in GMAT. Well, score does not have much to do with selection of school as long as you have a decent score (around 700). I would have applied to HEC even if I had a 680 or a 770. My reasons for applying to HEC were:

Economical - HEC is probably the most economical school among world top-25. If one puts in a strong application, he should get a scholarship of anywhere between 10K - 15K euros. Apart from this, there are various other scholarship options available for Indian students.
Diversity - A batch of 120 usually comprises of people from over 30 countries (many Indians though). This makes for a good learning experience as you interact with people from diverse backgrounds.
Flexibility of curriculam - Spread over 16 months, MBA program is divided into two parts of 8 months each - Core and Personalized. The personalized phase here offers many options - 4-6 months of internship, exchange program, individual project etc.
Strong faculty in Finance and Strategy
Location - Its location in Europe is ideal for people who want to spend some time in Europe

Some drawbacks of HEC

No assured loans: HEC does not act as a guarantor for student loans. Thus, you have to find your own means to fund your studies.
It is not a part of the 50 colleges listed for HSMP for UK
Placements & Language - Although HEC is among the best European schools, it does not have a stellar placement record. Please go through my previous post on this

Adios Pune, Adios Infosys

2007-08-13T01:54:00.000+05:30

I have spent my last week in Infosys and in Pune. Friday was my last day in Infosys afer over 3 years. I met most of my old teammates. had a final lunch with my last team and walked away with two farewell gifts. I started packing on Saturday morning and left Pune by the evening train.

My journey of over 3 years at Infosys has been a roller-coaster ride - full of lows and highs (more lows than highs though). However, at the end of it I consider myself lucky for having worked for 3 different clients/domains - DHL(logistics), Finacle(Corporate e-Banking) and UBS(Investment Banking), i.e. virtually a new assignment every year.

Now I am looking forward to spending some free time at home where I can relax, eat home made food, read, spend time with cousins and meet relatives. I guess this is the last ocassion when I'll spend almost 3 weeks at home because I don't think I am going to get so much free time after MBA.

Last week in Pune

2007-08-07T19:21:00.000+05:30

I am leaving Pune this Saturday and heading for home. I came here in June 2003 and have spent close to 3.5 years here. I have a lot of friends here and I am spending these last few days meeting them.

I was officially released from my last Infosys project on 31st July and since then I have been having a great time. I have been going to office just to meet old project friends and ofcourse playing squash :). Friday will be my last working day in Infosys and as of now, I am not feeling bad about leaving. Maybe I am too excited about the life ahead but I am sure I will miss Infosys and Pune once I reach home.

Apart from meeting friends, I have been shopping a lot; I have been to shopping malls every single day for the last 4 days and have spent close to 25K already (and my shopping is not over). I had to buy a lot of t-shirts as I did not have many because of formal wear in office. I bought 7-8 t-shirts, 2 jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, a watch, a cellphone and some other misc items. I am yet to buy a formal suit and I will get it stitched now in Indore. Having never been a shopping lover, this was not easy for me, going through shopping mall every day and then selecting stuff. The fact that I am a terrible shopper (I find it very hard to decide what looks good) did not help. But I am glad that I have finished most of it.

Now the more difficult part is packing stuff and taking luggage to home. If I were to carry all my belongings with me, I would require atleast 2 suitcases and 3-4 travel bags. I looked at my clothes and started dividing them into 2 groups - one which I will take to Paris and the other which I will not. I will first pack the stuff that I will take to Paris and then depending upon the space available( I have decided to travel with 1 suitcase and 2-3 travel bags) I will fit in the other stuff. I am sure that I will have to discard most of my stuff here. As for my books, I am just giving them away to anyone who likes to read. I will keep only a couple of books with me and give away the rest.

Have to finish this blog as I have to meet some friends for dinner shortly...

Visa stamped :)

2007-07-24T19:45:00.000+05:30

After a couple of crazy weeks, I can afford to relax now. I have crossed two important hurdles - paying 2nd installment of tution fee and getting the visa stamped. Here's a quick recap.

I left for Indore on 12th July as I had to meet bank officials on 13th to sign my loan documents and complete the formalities. I had to take a bus as it was the only direct mode of travel between Pune and Indore that day(train runs only twice a week). The bus broke down in between and I reached Indore at 3 PM, six hours later than the scheduled time. I did not go to bank as it was already late. I met bank officials on Sat and signed some documents but we could not complete all formalities (transferring the registery of house to bank etc). My uncle, who is a manager at the bank assured me that he would take care of remaining things and I can return to Pune without worries. I trusted him but there was one thing troubling me - I had to a pay 2nd installment of tuition fee (Euros 11600) by 20th and I did not want to delay this. Because of the horrid bus journey, I took a flight from Indore to Mumbai on Sun night, spent the night there and returned to Pune on Mon morning.

I had my visa interview at Alliance Francaise de Pune on Tue morning. One of required documents for visa is a 3 months insurance cover. I had to collect the policy from ICICI Lombard's office at 9:30 and reach Alliance Francaise at 10. I reached ICICI Lombard at 9:20 and read my policy; it had 6 errors... I called the agent whom I had dealt with and he asked me to wait till 9:30 for someone to come and correct the policy. I waited, got the policy corrected and reached AF office at 10:05 for the interview. The interview was easy, no hassles there and the director granted an NOC.

During these days, I had also been thinking about Ile de France scholarship. I realized that I will find it extremely difficult to fund my studies if I did not accept it. I had spoken with some current students and they had said that normally expenses are more than the budget mentioned on college site. They had also mentioned that you can network more if you spend more (visiting schools outside france, partying etc). These are some of things I do not want to miss out in my MBA. After considering all these factors, I decided to accept the scholarship. I shot an email informing the authorities concerned that I will accept the scholarship and will not occupy the room allocated to me at HEC.

On Sat, I left for Mumbai as I had my visa stamping on 23rd. I had to reach Nariman Point at 3:30 to meet some of my future classmates. I struggled to reach there (travelling in Mumbai locals is always a problem for me) and reached there at around 4. We had a good get-together and after it was over, I went to Sion where I had to stay over at a friend's place. During Sat and Sun, I met friends in various places - pizza outlet at Nariman Point, coffee shop at Sion, domestic airport, restaurant at Parel and even while shopping at Andheri (I bought couple of bags and a Canon Powershot 710 IS digicam). People who are familiar with Mumbai would understand how much I would have travelled to be at all these places!!! I tried to meet maximum friends because I was not sure if I would go to Mumbai again before leaving for Paris.

Yesterday, I went to the French Consulate for stamping. People who had gone before me had told me that stamping is usually done instantly and that it does not take more than an hour to complete the entire process. With this image in mind, I reached the consulate at 10 and the interview counter at 10:15. I was very nervous as my L1-B visa application for US had been rejected during interview in Jan. Nothing worrying happened here, the lady asked some simple questions, checked my documents and took my passport. But to my surprise, she asked me to return at 3:30 to collect the passport. I became apprehensive as I had not expected this. When I came out, I found out that other people too had been asked to come later to collect the passport. Now I had 5 more hours to kill. I went to a book store, met another friend for lunch and reached the consulate at 3. Around 3:40, I received my passport and when I saw the visa stamped there, I was mighty relieved :)

Today, I crossed the last hurdle - The second installment of my tution fees was wired today. Another burder off my shoulder and now I am sure that I am all set to leave for Paris in September...

Airtel billing woes

2007-07-06T18:32:00.000+05:30

I have an airtel broadband connection at my flat. I have been using their services for close to 3 months now and I am really surprised at their lack of system integration. For those who do not know, Airtel is the biggest private telecom player in India and provides a host of services - landline, mobile, corporate , broadband and they are also launching IPTV in India by the end of 2007. Their telecom services have been growing rapidly which is also reflected by the growth in their stock price (close to 650% in the last 3 years).

Coming back to the main subject of this post - billing woes. I am a tech-savvy person and prefer using internet for paying bills wherever possible. I receive and pay my electricity, credit card, dmat account and mobile bills online. I just don't like receiving bills in hardcopy and writing cheques for payment. I consider it a waste of time and precious paper. Now the problem with airtel - my billing address is my office address and so if I want to collect my bill, I have to go to another building and wade through a pile of mails to locate my bill which is something I hate. So I want my bill online. Last month, I called airtel customer care and asked them to email a copy of the bill. I received a postive response and was told that it would be done in a couple of hours. It never happened. I called atleast 5 times asking them to send the email and they just could not do it. In the end, they sent a person to my home to collect the cheque.

Today, I called them for the last month's bill. The customer service executive told me that I would receive my bill (by courier) by 10th. I asked him to email it and predictably he said that he was sorry about it and that I can wait till 10th and if I don't receive my bill by then, they will initiate the email process. Going by my last experience, I am sure its not going to happen. So now I am mentally prepared for a visit by a friendly airtel cheque collector!!!

Have you experienced something like this???

Ramblings

2007-06-23T17:06:00.000+05:30

HA very funny incidence occured today. There was an unexpected power failure in the city (maybe because of the incessant rains splashing the city since last evening). I was getting down the stairs when I heard a voice from inside the elevator. I understood that because of power failure, someone was stuck in the elevator. The person asked for help and I told him that I would go and get the security guard to which the person replied "Sir, this is the security guard himself".
I couldn't control my laugther. Don't know why but I found this extremely funny and just burst out laughing. Anyways, after the realization sunk in that the guard needed my help, I asked him how I could help and he gave me directions to open the stuck elevator door. It turned out to be an easy two minute affair and I was glad to be of help :)

I haven't written anything for a long time now mainly because there is nothing particular to write. There's the usual stuff happening - work, learning french, meeting people, some visa/bank loan related things etc.

The next week is important - I have my French language exams (written and oral) and I also have to go to Indore to sign the loan documents. I still don't know the exact loan amount I'll get but am hoping that it'll be 20 lakhs.

I am also in a fix these days. On Thursday, I received a mail informing me that I have been selected for the Ile-de-France scholarship for international students. I was completely surprised because I hadn't applied for this and had no idea of what this scholarship was. When I read the details, I found out that this scholarship is provided to international students pursuing their masters from Ile-de-France region (in or close to Paris). This scholarship is available to students of some 15 odd countries. The procedure is that the French Embassy based in the particular country nominates some candidates for this scholarship. I had applied for French Embassy Incentive Scholarship Program and the French Embassy had forwarded my details for this scholarship.

This is how I received the scholarship. Now the catch - If I am to accept this scholarship, I will have to live in international students hostel in central Paris throughout the duration of my course. This hostel is appx 50 min away from the college campus.

Now I have a difficult choice - If I accept this schol (appx 10K euros for an year), it almost covers my living expenses, gives me opportunity to interact with more international students from diverse fields and provides easy access to Paris night life ;) The disadvantages of staying far from campus are travelling appx 2 hours daily, less interaction with my classmates, difficulty in completing group assignments etc etc.

I will have to speak with current students and find out more about a typical college day in HEC. Would need to know normal lecture timings, time spent on group activities etc before I take a decision.

Inputs/suggestions w.r.t this problem are welcome :)

I've quit!!!

2007-05-31T21:29:00.000+05:30

Finally, I put in my papers today; I initiated the e-separation procedure after discussions with my manager and the senior manager.

I had informed them about my plans almost 2 months ago; So it was a mere formality today. Originally I was supposed to resign around mid-June but looking at some recent developments I decided to advance the date. I would still be working for almost 2 more months. My final date in Infy should be 3rd August.

The main reason behind advancing the date is to speed up the process of finding my replacement. Even though my manager had told the resource manager about my exit plan a month ago and had asked for a replacement, nothing has happened till date. So we decided that I formally put in my papers early to put pressure on the resource manager!! Let's see how soon he finds my replacement.

I have also informed my onsite manager but he hasn't conveyed this news to the client yet. The client expects me to give them a period of 4-6 weeks for smooth transition. I am giving them 8 weeks which should be more than enough.

Hopefully, the workload will decrease now and I'll have some free time to concentrate on learning French and reading some other stuff.

Ramblings

2007-05-24T00:51:00.000+05:30

Have been thinking of writing for a long time but could not do it for some or other reason. I am writing now while watching the Champions League final.

A lot of not so good things have happened since the last time I wrote. The worst thing is that I sustained a mallet finger injury while playing basketball 2 weeks ago. This means that now the little finger of my left hand is plastered :(. It would take atleast 4 more weeks for the finger to heal and there is a chance that it will never be completely straight again :( :(

Another bad thing is that the workload in office has increased. The worst part is that this has happened at a time when I have hardly any interest left in the techical J2EE stuff I had been doing all this while. I want to spend my office time in undergoing domain trainings and getting to know more of my domain (Investment Banking) but its just not happening. These days, I am mostly banging my head on "struts-spring framework" and how to write reusable code which can handle future requests in the application.

As if this was not enough, today I realized that my French sucks!!! Today, in my French class, I tried to narrate an incident (in French) which happened while I was leaving from Shanghai for Beijing. I was terrible and could not speak even one sentence correctly. My grammar is just horrible. With just one month to go for the French level 1 exam, this is a good wake up call for me. I need to pull my act together before it is too late.

Nothing new happening on the MBA front. I am yet to block my flight tickets. Will do it either this week or the next. The only activity that I have been actively pursuing these days is networking. I created my Linkedin profile around a fortnight ago and my network already exceeds 32000 people :). If you haven't yet registered on linkedin, do it. You won't regret it.

Second Life

2007-05-10T18:53:00.000+05:30

Came to know about SecondLife today while reading a blog on Freaknomics
This is the first site of its kind and I was really amazed at this concept after browsing through the site.

It is a 3-D virtual world owned and managed by its residents. It started in 2003 and has over 6 million members currently. Aptly named SecondLife, this site allows you to live an alternate life and do whatever you want to do.

It allows you to create your avatar, meet people, buy land, create your house, create/buy a business, engage in all sorts of fun activities etc. i.e. do whatever you want and can dream of (Of course you will need to shell out some money for most of the activities.)

If this was not enough, then you can also make real money by exchanging their virtual currency (Linden dollars) with real currency (USD) over the site's Linden Dollar Exchange!!!!

So, if you want to live another life where you think you can make more money, you know where to go ;)

Global Warming - Time to wake up

2007-05-05T14:13:00.000+05:30

Came across this article about global warming today. Some excerpts:

if the world continues to burn fossil fuels along current lines, then the dangerous emissions would rise by 90 per cent by 2030.

Countering the argument of the developing countries, like India and China, that reducing emissions would hit their economies, the report says that at worst, the global GDP would be blunted by about 3 per cent by 2030 if it undertakes these emission cuts.

What this article tells us is nothing new. We all know about global warming and how dangerous it is. The point is are we really serious about it. Should it only be a topic of discussion among environmentalists, a topic of contention during world economic forum meets or should this topic become a part of our daily lives?

We are aware of the pitfalls of using fossil fuels (coal and oil), but what do we do to reduce their consumption? The answer is - Nothing. It is high time we start doing our bit towards this. There are small things which if each one of us do, can collectively make a big difference. Some of the things that we can do are:

Reduce the usage of automobiles. Make use of public transport as much as possible.
Do not waste paper.
Do not waste water.
Do not waste electricity.

These are very basic things that each of us can do. Collectively these could have a big impact on our environment.

Lets make this world a better place for ourselves and for our future generations.

OBC Quotas - Know history first

2007-04-24T22:17:00.000+05:30

The first news item that caught my attention today was about the Indian Supreme Court striking down government's petition to vacate stay on implementation of 27% OBC quota in higher education institutes. The notable statement made by the bench was that if OBC quotas have waited for 57 years, there is no reason why they cannot wait another year giving the court ample time to examine the whole issue and deliver a final verdict on this.

I am immensely satisfied with this judgement as this vindicates the stand taken by most of the anti-quota people that this whole issue deserves a thorough analysis before passing any law on reservation. There should be a detailed statistical survey to find out the exact percentage of OBCs in India. It is also necessary to find out the impact (positive/negative) of existing quota policies on SC/STs and society in general.

Came across a very interesting and informative article on the history of OBCs and OBCs who were the dominant section couple of hundred years ago have become a marginal section now, thanks to the British Raj and Indian politicians. This is a must read for all the people who have been following the quota battle.

New Consulting Section

2007-04-22T07:23:00.000+05:30

I recently got a broadband connection installed at my flat. This was necessary as I had limited access to internet in office which was preventing me from researching some topics that I had always wanted to.

Now that I have unlimited access to net, I have begun my research and the results are there for all to see!! Haven't noticed yet? Well, I have added a brand new section in my blogs for people interesed in Consulting. It contains links to various sites that provide MC news, latest trends, blogs etc etc.

Have a look.

The Warren Buffet Way

2007-04-17T14:58:00.000+05:30

I finished reading The Warren Buffet Way last week. The book is about Warren Buffet and his investment philosophies. It made for a very interesting reading. The author has very nicely demonstrated Buffet's principles using examples of his investments in Coca Cola, American Express, Gillette, Clayton Homes, Pampered Chef, Wells Fargo etc.

An important point discussed in the book is the difference between investors and speculators which Buffet learnt from Benjamin Graham, Buffet's guru at Columbia and also the author of Intelligent Investor - a masterpiece written around 60 years ago.

The essence of the book is the way Buffet looks at stocks; According to him, investing in stocks should be like buying a business - one should have a long term time horizon while investing.

The author also talks about the guiding principles behind Buffet's investment and groups those principles in the following tenets:

Business Tenets
Is the business simple and understandable?
Does the business have a consistent operating history?
Does the business have favourable long term prospects?

Financial Tenets
Focus on return on equity, not earnings per share.
Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value.
Look for companies with high profit margins.
For every dollar retained, make sure the company has created at least one dollar of market value.

Management Tenets
Is management rational?
Is management candid with the shareholders?
Does management resist the institutional imperative?

Market Tenets
What is the value of the business?
Can the business be purchased at a significant discount to its value?

In short Buffet's investment strategy is:
1) Buy a business at a price which is below its intrinsic value
2) Turn off the stock market
3) Don't worry about the economy
4) Manage a portfolio of businesses

The book ends with a chapter on the "Psychology of Money" which presents a very interesting perspective on the role played by our psyche in our investment decisions.

All in all, this is a must read book for anyone who is even remotely interested in the world of investment.

MBA from Europe - Some imp points

2007-04-09T21:01:00.000+05:30

I recently had a conversation with a friend who joined HEC this Jan. He presented a very grim scene of the job prospects in Europe post MBA. According to him (and many others whom I have spoken with), it is not easy to find job in Europe post MBA (if one is not from INSEAD/LBS). The school can help you only to an extent as most of the recruitment in Europe is through networking. Thus, it becomes a problem for Indian students who, having seen(or heard/read)about the placements from b-schools in India think that the scene would be similar there. It is not the case. Getting an admit from a good b-school in Europe will not guarantee a good job post MBA.
Based on the discussions I have had with many people, these are my tips for people who are considering MBA from Europe:
1. Learn the language of the land – If you are not going to UK, it becomes an absolute necessity to know the local language. It increases your employability manifold. Even if you are going to UK, learning another language (preferably French) will help.
2. Figure out what you want to do post MBA – This is an exercise you are supposed to complete before you apply to a b-school. Well, many people do it just for the sake of getting in a school. They actually are not sure what they want post MBA. If you are one of this kind, then sort this out before joining the school. Most of the European MBA programs are 12-16 months which means you don’t get sufficient time to do this during MBA.
3. Once you have figured out what you want to do, start learning about the industry and its main players. E.g. if you want to be an Investment Banker, then learn about the industry and the main IB firms in Europe. Start visiting their websites and reading about the deals they make. Read their mission and vision statements. It will help you when you get interviewed -one of the main traits companies look for during recruitment is the interest of an individual. If you are able to demonstrate your interest in the company, then the job will be much easier.
4. Start networking – This is another must do for Europe in particular and MBA in general. Once you have figured out the career you want to pursue and researched on the main players in the sector, it is time to find contacts in those companies. Start interacting with people and ask them about the job profiles their companies offer. You can also seek advice about tips to boost your CV.

Death, Destiny, Fate

2007-04-09T20:57:00.000+05:30

I watched Final Destination 3 this weekend. Having watched FD1 and FD2 earlier, there was nothing new that I had expected from this movie. Yet after watching it, I started thinking again about death, fate, destiny etc.

Many a times, when things go wrong, we talk about destiny. “It was destined to happen”; “May be this is not the correct time” are the phrases you hear most often. How do you explain things happening around you? Things that are not in one’s control are easily attributed to destiny. But who knows what destiny is? Who knows what is in store for you and me? When you try hard for something but don’t achieve it, people console you by saying may be it is not the right time. When you do succeed later, people say – “see, you have achieved it now. It was not meant to happen then”. You nod in agreement and continue with your life. But who knows when the right time is? Is there a book somewhere that contains the destiny of every living soul on this earth; which contains the right time for every event in one’s life?

Is this fatalistic attitude correct? May be it is; It is so easy to attribute things to destiny and fate because no one can question these forces. You can never be wrong when you talk about destiny - if one succeeds later, you can say “You were not destined to succeed then”; if one doesn’t succeed, you can still say “May be it is not meant to be; It is not in you destiny”. Either ways, you are right. Also, this way you don’t have to bang your head trying to figure out things; you can continue with your life, working hard for something waiting for the “right time”.

I hope to figure out answers to the questions of death, life, destiny, fate etc. some day. May be it is not the right time now for me to have these answers. May be the right time will never come. Who cares! Life goes on!!!

Hu Haa India, Haar Gaya India

2007-03-24T10:15:00.000+05:30

I hope Pepsi does not sue me for distorting their ad-punchline "Hu Haa India, Aaaaya India". Well, even if they do, I don't care. It doesn't matter now. India is out of the world cup (unless a miracle happens and Bermuda defeats Bangladesh).

The writing was on the wall yesterday when Ganguly was dismissed. He really surprised me. Ever since he has made that splendid comeback in international cricket I have found him the most dependable among Indian batsmen. While batting, he seemed to be playing in a totally different cricket field; batting only for scoring runs without pacing his innings according to the team's requirements. After he was dismissed the only hope I had was Sehwag; he is one man who has never displayed any nerves on the big stage, for the big game. For him, every match is same, he would never change his batting style come what may. He started well and was playing very fluently before Murli got him. I went to bed after that believing that it was all over. When I woke up today, I found that Team India had lived upto my expectations and did not surprise by pulling off a highly unlikely victory.

So, what does this mean for India? Well, not much for me personally. I am not that big a cricket fan now. But for the millions of die-hard fans, this will be difficult to digest - the team which boasts of the strongest batting line-up in world cricket has not even made it to the second round. It would be a big financial loss for corporate giants like SONY, PEPSI, NIKE etc who had invested heavily in this tournament. According to estimates, SONY stands to lose out appx Rs 1500 million in ad revenues which it would have gained had India advanced. Many restaurants who had invested in big screens to attract crowds stand to lose out. The story can be extended to multiplexes, fast food manufacturers, sports good manufacturers, TV manufacturers, garment manufacturers etc. It seems like a national economic setback!!

Lets look at some positive sides of this setback. For one, again there will be cries from all corners to make cricket more professional - linking players' salaries and perks with their performances. More important than that would be to link sponsorship of team/players with performance. Today, players make much more from brand endorsements than they do from match fees, BCCI contracts etc. This needs to stop.

Second, others (like me) start losing interst in the game. It is high time that we treat cricket like a sport and nothing else. We should stop glorifying and deifying cricketers after every victory and crucifying the same people after a defeat. We should grow up.

Now that India is out, it would be interesting to see which ads will dominate the TV channels in world cup. Will the ads glorifying Indian team and urging them to win still be shown? I hope not!
Also, now I hope SriLanka wins this cup because then we will be able to say that we lost to the best team ;)
Go Lanka Go!!!! Huu Haaa Lankaaa, Aaaaya Lankaaaa...

Papillon

2007-03-14T11:46:00.000+05:30

I read Papillon last week. I had first heard about it around 3 years ago but never thought of reading it. In past 4 months, I found two of my friends reading this book and both of them talked about how interesting the book was and how they couldn't keep the book down once they started it. This piqued my curiosity and I picked the book last week and finished it in 3 days!! Needless to say, I was in a hurry to finish it once I had started reading it.

So, what is Papillon all about and more over what does Papillon mean?? Well, Papillon (butterfly in French) is the real story of a man (nicknamed Papillon because he had a big butterfly tatoo on his chest) who was wrongfully convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to serve a life sentence.

The book details 13 years of his life from the day he was sentenced in France to the day he was freed in Venezuela. It goes through every little detail of all his escapes and adventures until finally he escapes after 8 unsuccessful attempts and then remains free.

It is a heart-rending tale of an unjustifiably cruel penal system, human courage, endurance, helpfulness, trust, as well as misery, and incredible instances of sadism, curruption and forced insanity.

This book is all about the character of a man; how Papillon refused to be bogged down by his repeated failures to escape, how he refused to give up, how he stood up against the penal system and its perpetrators.

It is also about mankind; it covers wide range of men that exist in society - the wicked lawyer who used his skills to get Papillon the sentence which he did not deserve, the prisoners who helped each other in times of adversity; the lepers, the poorest of the poor and others who helped Papillon when they had nothing to expect in return. Thus, it teaches us not to judge a person by the color of his skin, his nationality, his economic status or his past.

All in all, it is a must read book.

BonJour!!!

2007-03-12T12:12:00.000+05:30

Bonjour!

These were the first words uttered by our "professeur" in class today. You must have guessed that I am referring to the French class. Today marked the beginning of my second stint at learning French - an official language of around 41 countries.

We were a group of 15 people (8 girls and 7 guys) gathered to learn French. Our proff told us that she would only communicate in French and would not translate anything in English which means we have to condition our brains to understand French without relating it with any other language. It is difficult to do it because after speaking English/Hindi for so many years, the mind inadvertently tries to convert every single word/phrase to find its equivalent in one of the known languages. I guess the earlier you learn languages, the easier it is.

Nevertheless, learning language is fun - you get to laugh a lot at the linguistic blunders committed. e.g. when proff asked a student "vous comprenez" (do you understand), he replied "merci" (thank you). Then there were the common gender mistakes (étudiant/étudiante, indien/indienne etc). These incidences make learning really fun. Hopefully I will not only have fun but also successfully learn "Français" pretty soon.

Au Revoir

Colours of Holi

2007-03-05T09:33:00.000+05:30

Happy Holi!!!
This was the jist of all the messages that I started receiving on my cellphone since Sat evening. Its interesting - sms is a good way to keep in touch with people with whom you do not regularly interact. I received messages from some friends with whom I haven't spoken in a couple of months. But come Holi (or any other festival), and I am sure that I will receive messages from these friends. This is an advantage of being in India. You have festivals all around the year which offer you a good opportunity to send sms to your friends so that they know you remember them...

Back to the colors of Holi. Normally, I am not a Holi person, I mean I don't love playing the colorful Holi that is usually played in North India. In my childhood, I used to dread the H-day; On that day, we normally kept the front door of our home closed to prevent any unruly elements entering. But when some acquaitance or even a family member entered the home after having colors smeared all over the face and body, I used to literally shut myself in a room (sometimes under the bed) waiting for the signal from my Mom that all is well.

The first time I played Holi was during my engineering days. Even then, I was fooled into playing it; I was tricked by some trusted friends. It was decided that they would come to my place, we would use "gulal" to mark the ocasson of Holi and then spend the entire day eating and watching movies. Little did I know of their "other" plans. To cut the long story short - they came, they smeared pucca colors (pink and green) all over my face and body, we then ate and watched movies and they left after that leaving me all colored like a peacock. It took me the longest bath of my life(appx an hour) to get back into my "presentable" self again. On that day, I took an oath that I would never ever trust anyone on the H-day.

Yesterday, I played Holi again after a gap of almost 4 yrs. Even yesterday it was unplanned but then no one tricked me yesterday; I walked into the trap. I woke up yestreday morning to the loud noises of kids running all around the building parking area and common area throwing water and colors at each other. Some were even accompanied by their parents. It was a lovely sight, watching those kids having fun. It reminded me of my childhood days which were so different.

I was alone at my flat and was getting bored. So I decided to pay a visit to a good-old college friend's home. When I entered his building, he was barely recognizable - his face coated with different colors and he was busy "painting" others. Once he saw me, he shouted with joy - "Ek aur aa gaya"!!! Such was the delight on his face that I could not turn back and return to my place. So then, history repeated itself after a gap of almost 4 years. I was thoroughly painted - green and pink colors being smeared all over my face, hands, legs etc etc. Such was his expertise in using colors that even I was unable to recogonize myself in the mirror after he was done.

I would not say that I really enjoyed the ocassion - scrubbing myself for almost an hour to get back to my normal self was irritating and painful, but then it was a memorable ocassion.

Back to the class

2007-02-27T17:05:00.000+05:30

Last weekend saw me getting back to the classroom after a gap of more than 3 years. No, I wasn't studying; I was back to the class conducting math sessions for GMAT aspirants...

The first class on Saturday brought back memories of July 2003 when I had taken my first class in Mumbai. I still remember that day vividly; how nervous I was before entering the classroom; how desperate I was to make a good first impression; how frustrated I was when a guy could not understand basic math concepts; how hungry I was when I saw 2 girls nibbling at GoodDay biscuits... . It was fun but it was tense as well. Anyways, all that is past now.

These lectures were quite uneventful if I compare these with some of the lectures I took during my initial stint with Career Forum. The main difference was because of the type of stuents - during those days I was mainly dealing with final year college kids and here I was intereacting with people who had been working for almost 3 years.

It was fun getting back to class. Lets see how the future classes go.

Bored

2007-02-20T15:45:00.000+05:30

I am bored. Ever since I have received my admit (in Nov 06) I started losing interest in work. I was really looking forward to the US trip so that I would get to visit a new place, meet old friends and make new ones but that was not meant to be. So here I am, stuck with the same job at the same place where I know I am not gonna continue after July.
There is no driving force at work now - Gone are the days when I used to worry abt appraisals, abt feedbacks etc etc. It doesn't matter now.

I am eagerly waiting for September when I will start the second phase of my MBA journey - living the MBA life. I am sure things will be far more exciting there :)

MBA update

2007-02-09T11:06:00.000+05:30

Latest update - Not applying to Cambridge
Reason - Not required. As i said earlier, I decided to apply to Cambridge because I was finding it difficult to fund HEC MBA. Now that the funding problem is solved, I do not see any reason to apply to Cambridge.

I have also been doing a lot of research on scholarship options available in India for study abroad. Thanks to Google, I found many such options at a scholarships site. I have already missed the deadline of Tata scholarship but will definitely apply to some other scholarships available.

MBA pre-preparations

2007-02-08T14:02:00.000+05:30

Things are moving too fast these days. Till a couple of days ago, I was wondering how to finance my MBA. I was finding it a bit difficult to get education loan but that problem has been sorted out. So now that I am almost out of my funding worries, time for some other things.

Once I realized that I am not going to US in near future and became certain that I will to HEC in Sep, I started thinking how to make best use of the time I have left. I started thinking seriously abt my post MBA profile. I saw the MBA profile book of HEC's current batch and it is pretty impressive. There are only 7-8 Indian IT males like me but the remaining 110 odd are as diverse as you could imagine. I then thought that I should add more weight to my profile by doing some certifications etc. Since I have been working in the financial domain (banking) for almost 1.5 yrs now, I have decided to go for some relevant certification. Hence, I shall be taking the NCFM exam next month.

Apart from this, I also intend to join classes on a regular basis to learn French. It is imperative that I become fluent in French otherwise I am gonna be in a soup during MBA recruitment.

Read the first chapter of Fortune @ BOP yesterday and found it very interesting. I could actually identify with the points mentioned there because I have seen some of those initiatives changing the lives of people back in my town. If you haven't read this book, do read it. Its a must read for Indian MBA aspirants...

Back on Track

2007-02-05T10:53:00.000+05:30

Back to office after a very eventful weekend. This weekend was all about brainstorming, introspection, discussing my plans with friends and meeting many new people.

So, what is the outcome of all this? I am in a better state of mind than I was a couple of days ago; I have started my application to Cambridge Judge B-school and will finish it by this weekend; I will also explore more funding options to fund my HEC mba.

Now that the plan is in place, time for some action now. Getting back to work.....

Life has taken a U-turn

2007-02-03T11:57:00.000+05:30

My life has changed completely in the last 3-4 days. Till last week, I was very settled - my short term plans and long term plans were very clear. I was supposed to go to New York in Feb. After working there for 5-6 months, I was supposed to return to India in July end/Aug start. Then in Sep start, I was supposed to go to Paris for my MBA. Post MBA, I wud have joined a consulting firm and so on and so forth....

Everything has changed now. My visa interview which would have permitted me to work in US did not go well. To my surprise (and shock), the counselor refused to grant me the visa. This was a big blow because it changed my financial equations. I was counting upon this US trip to help me fund my MBA. Now I am in a fix. Because of cancellation of this trip, I will have to find other ways to fund my studies.

I am back to square one now -will have to start all over again to search for MBA colleges and apply. The trouble is that I am running against time now. R1 for all colleges and R2 for most colleges is over. Will have to submit my apps asap.

gotta rush now.....

Another week gone by

2007-01-15T09:54:00.000+05:30

It's Monday morning again. Another week has gone by. The last weekend was probably the most boring weekend I have ever had. I was a complete couch potato this weekend. (I watched TV for almost 10 hrs on Sat, and 7-8 hrs on Sunday). Reason - None in particular. It's just that I could not do the usual stuff that I normally do on weekends - catch up with friends, watch a movie, play badminton/basketball/cricket (or anything else). The main problem was that most of my friends whom I usually hang around with are out of Pune. Then, I don't want to commit myself to a new hobby because of the uncertainity about my near future in Pune. I tried looking for some new book to read but couldn't pick one. I picked up "In Search of Excellence" but couldn't go beyond the first 2-3 pages. I even went to crossword looking for a specific book "Monkey Business - Swinging through the Wall Street Journal" but couldn't find that one too.

I hope to find some better things to do next weekend...

Cricket won't be the same anymore

2007-01-05T15:46:00.000+05:30

When i woke up today morning, the first thought that came to my mind was if I had overslept. I immediately picked up my cellphone and looked the time. It was 07:04. Shit! (I said to myself). I had overslept by 2 hours. I wanted to get up at 5 to watch today's proceedings at SCG. I turned on the TV praying that the match be still on. But it was not to be. All I could see was the presentation ceremony. I cursed myself. If only I had got up at 5, I would have seen the Australians winding up the England innings, I would have seen McGrath pick up his last wicket (also the last wicket of this ashes) and I would also have seen Langer play his last innings.

I desperately wanted to see the last acts of McGrath and Warne. I have been a diehard cricket fan since last 14 years and I have grown up seeing these two guys perform. I have been a non-partisan fan of Warne (He hasn't done well against India) but a very partisan McGrath fan. Whenever McGrath used to ball against Sachin, I would pray to God for he has this knack of picking of the best opposition batsman. I have always admired his discipline, the way he relentlessly probed batsmen outside off-stump is unbelievable. I have never seen a more disciplined and patient bowler than him. Watching him was boring at times but then he made up for his boring bowling with his continuous chatting. Warne, on the other hand never gave any dull moments. He always had too much variety. I haven't seen him bowling Gatting out live but I did see him bowling Strauss out in the last Ashes. The ball pitched well outside offstump, Strauss thrust his left pad forward to leave the ball but what happened next was unbelievable. The ball pitched in rough, turned viciously and hit his leg stump. This disbelief in his eyes was to be seen. How could the bowl turn so much! Well, if Warne is bowling at you, you better believe that he could turn the ball at will.

Today, both of them have retired from test cricket. I dare say that it would be impossible for anyone to fill in their shoes. Between them, they accounted for over 1250 test wickets. They have left a big void in world cricket. Without them, cricket won't be the same anymore.

my first blog

2007-01-04T17:19:00.000+05:30

I have done it. Finally I have started blogging. I came to know abt blogging more than an year ago and have always wanted to start my own blog but somehow I never could do it, the main reason being laziness.
Today, I was going through a person's blogs when I decided that enough is enough. Its high time I start blogging. So I decided to spend some precious office hours (yes I am writing this blog when actually I should be doing some requirement analysis for my client ;) ) to make my first entry.
Let me tell u it hasn't been easy. The most difficult part has been to select the url for my blog. Thats the problem when u start late; all the names that come to your mind have already been taken. But then this name ain't too bad. What do u think??