Tattva, literally means substance. In the words of the person who introduced this concept at TAPMI, Tattva symbolizes ‘who we are’. At Tattva, an institution like TAPMI looks at the achievements made by the students who have entered the corporate world and who think that they have been able to make a mark.
Tattva 2006 was the confluence of 6 old students of college, who came from backgrounds as varied as Marketing to Rewards Programme management. The participants also got an opportunity to share the stage with one of the 76 Harvard doctorates alive in India right now!
Mr. M. P Sunder, Batch of 2001, was recently awarded his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. Appropriately put now, Dr. Sunder received this accolade for his exemplary work in the field of “Brand Valuation”. This has been one of the most successful pieces of work at Harvard in the recent past as it has been picked up by the industry instantaneously. Organisations like Coca Cola use this model, which has also been approved by consultants, closer home, like KPMG and McKinsey. The model helps organisations, of any sort, value their brand in the real sense and judge the growth of the product in quantitative terms.
It is however, important to mention here that Dr. Sunder’s presentation on “Value Systems at WIPRO” did not manage to overshadow the other participants of the competition. It was rather interesting to see how others managed to portray their success in the light of the fast changing business environment.
Out of the 6 alumni who presented their success stories, it was a pleasure to see the work put in by one of the youngest members of the team in the field of Marketing. Ms. Simeron Bhasin works as Marketing Manager at Titan for the product, ‘Fast track’.
Ms. Simeron started her presentation with the historical perspective of the brand and how she was posed with one of the biggest challenges in her life. In 2002, she was asked to turn around the brand whose revenues had reached a plateau. She started with looking at the product itself first and then moved on to the positioning of the market. Also, with the help of her Research and Development team, she managed to bring down the cost of the product drastically. She also realized the need to bring back the customer to the point of purchase – which can interestingly, be seen as the revival of the “World of Titan” showrooms, in its jazzy avatar! One had moved on from a “world of steel” to “how many do you have?” – The shift in the target segment, to the people who have more purchasing power, helped Titan reposition the brand itself.
A very strong insight came from her during the Question Answer session, which probably was one of the reasons why she was chosen as the co-winner with Dr. Sunder. Her comment to the remark as to why does Fast track watches look more western than Indian – was – Youth across the world now look the same!
It is important to mention here the contribution of other participants at the closely held contest. Mr. Tuhin Banerjee presented his contribution to ING Vysya Life Insurance Company. He was instrumental in introducing the “Sales Help Desk” in 2005 at the Corporate Office level in the organization. In his own unique way, Tuhin enumerated in brief, the steps taken by his team to conceptualize the Help-Desks functioning and how they met with the challenges of incorporating technology & advisor support in the same. The success of his model can be seen now at ING Vysya Life, where they have taken the model forward from where he left almost a year back, in the form of decentralized operations and better knowledge management.
Tattva 2006 was a revelation for the students. Key insights from practice played a role in the making the students understand the complexities of business. With a mentor figure like Dr. Sunder amongst the crowd, one could also see the academia around – proving time and again that theory and practice do go hand in hand!
Industry Interface Day
“Getting the MBAs business-ready globally: Road Map for action”
A bright Saturday saw the coming together of some of the practitioners from the industry and a panel of students on a discussion over the above theme.
A global business scenario is one of the fastest challenges that an organisation is being forced to face in today’s world. Things are changing so fast in the Indian context that there might not be enough time to think about what went wrong and where. Hence, TAPMI realizes the need to enhance its curriculum and implement related issues, with respect to the fast changing profile of the global manager.
As rightly put by Peter Drucker, the Knowledge Economy is one of the biggest challenges for both the worker and the firm. With the world of uncertainties increasing with every passing purchase decision made, there is a need for the manager to understand the skill set that he needs to acquire to emerge as a global winner. An aspiring manager in business schools and thus, the onus lies on the school to update it from time to time acquires this skill set.
All of us, time and again would have heard about the constant flux that any business survives in. We would have heard about the innumerable success stories. No one can forget the famous management gurus! However, TAPMI manages to bring one closer to reality by putting them face to face with the people who make such stories.
Industry Interface Day, although only a recent addition to the institutes way of learning from the industry, brings together some of the best minds of the industryon a common platform for discussion. It is always a difficult proposition to understand in this scenario as to that is adding value to whom, but such a level of modesty exists in every one of the participants!
This year, the Industry Interface Day was the interaction between 16 practitioners from the industry. The discussion was not a panel discussion of normal sorts. The main theme was divided into three Sub-Themes –
1. The Business of Global Business as understood by Practitioners
2. Changing profile of Managers in the arena of Global Business
3. Role and Responsibilities of B-School and Industry
Within the purview of three sub-themes, the institute wanted to address all the issues related to Global Business scenario and also, by providing such a concrete structure for discussion, wanted to arrive at a concrete roadmap for action for itself.
The practitioners from the industry were divided into three panels and a faculty anchor was present in the discussion to facilitate the discussion. Before the main panel met in the evening, a student panel also discussed the same topic in the afternoon, noting down key areas of concern under each sub-theme heading. This allowed the students to firstly, voice their perspectives and secondly, understand the nuances of such a scenario. The team lead from each student panel (comprising of both first and second year students) then, participated in the main panel discussion.
Great insights were generated on the topic under discussion. With the realisation that there is constant increase in the gap between the rate at which we know and the rate at which we don’t know a lot of things in the market, one moved on to discuss the challenges that arise from a global business. Terms like ‘Death of Distance’ and ‘3 Is – Industry, Institution & Individual’ floated in the discussion. Global business was identified as organizations, which would be solely driven by Innovation in the decades to come. Managers who would enjoy autonomy in every phase of their life would run such organizations, as a part of the Knowledge economy. Skill sets like social and cultural adaptability, a drive towards constant grilling of Corporate Ethics and a penchant for passionate work emerged as some of the key insights into a profile of an ideal global manager. EQ or Emotional Intelligence also found a mention in the discussion. One of the biggest challenges still remained as to how an institution of education should be able to mould itself to churn managers of this sort!
The practitioners from the industry surprisingly provided a few key solutions. For the individual, the challenge should be not to follow extremism of any sort. There should be zeal to learn from fields other than business! For the institution, the challenge should be to upgrade its course in relevance to the market. The case in point was the weightage for a course in Retail Management in an Indian Economy, where the future of the industry is towards retail. Also, innovation and technology should be given more emphasis on during the course of study i.e. the application and development of these two factors in making business more viable should be an area of focus. Lastly, for the industry, the industry realizes the need to collaborate more with the business schools to gain out of its intellectual capital. This can be done through constant research programs and also through extended summer projects.
These key highlights from the confluence helped the institute learn a lot from the expectations of the industry from the institute. An informal chat session with the practitioners also helped one gain insight into their personal experiences of failures and opinions on a particular topic. A formal presentation was given by the student representatives in front of the industry people and the students, making them aware of the challenges that the institute intends to take on, in the coming year.
Industry Interface Day 2006 will prove to be a remarkable event in the current academic year. TAPMI chooses to make the best use of the outcome of the discussion and apply the same in the education process. What will follow in the institution from now on might be one of the most interesting things to see as far as adaptability is concerned!
Homecoming 2006
What happened to your roommate after he left college? Did he really manage to start a company of his own or not? Did he manage to marry the girl he liked or not?
More importantly, is he married to the same girl right now or not?
If there were a few blank faces to such questions all this while, then it was obvious that a few of the alumni who came for the reunion did not meet their room mates. The rest just were too nostalgic to relive the entire experience.
TAPMI Annual Alumni Reunion named Homecoming 2006 was held on September 30 and October 1, 2006. With the confluence of over 100 alumni on these two days, it was heartening to see some Industry participants feel nostalgic about their alma mater after years of separation from the institution.
These alumni ranged from people who had made it big in the industry (some of whom who participated at Tattva 2006) and those who had just had a taste of the real world and were back! It was a pleasure to see an Entrepreneur from the Batch of 1996, Mr. Vipin Sethi, as one of the oldest members of the alumni team, which had assembled at college. He currently operates his own firm in the field of garment exports from South India.September 30, saw them more in a sober and relaxed mood when they got together for photographs, for small interactions with the fora and committees, for sharing experiences with the teachers and finally, share their experiences as a part of the audience during Industry Interface interactions. The day ended with a bonfire arranged on campus at night – with old memories of college floating all around with songs and dance to complement them!
October 1, got them on the better side of things. Informal games by committees rejuvenated them up. The grand finale was a bash for everyone on campus where the feeling of having been a part of the same family gripped everyone’s hearts.