Primer on “Brand Management”

One of my batchmates at FMS, Vipul Oberoi has written a ‘book’, which is actually a basic refresher on branding. Spanning 35 pages, it gives you a basic understanding of the branding and related concepts. So, for all MBAs and other people who might be interested in it, here is the downloadable e-version: http://www.savefile.com/files/8132579.

Ilayaraja’s How to Name It

I'm right now listening to Maestro Ilayaraja's "How to Name It", an instrumental fusion album. Though I've listened to it a couple of times some years back, all the tracks are immensely soothing and are a real treat to listen to. My personal favourite is the track 'Do Anything' which was also used as a background score in the movie 'Veedu'.

This reminds me of another album that I need to catch up with. Sometime back, Ilayaraja had released his "Thiruvasagam in Symphony" album, a musical rendering of the epic Tamil verses. I hear that it has won numerous rave reviews. After “How to Name It”, I just cannot wait to lay my hands on this album. No, I'm not planning to download it. I'd rather buy a copy of the CD. Such classic works are hard to come by, so let’s do our little bit by making sure that all concerned get their due credit.

Bschool Blitz Boomerangs

Finally, the issue which was waiting in the wings has boomeranged, with the top salary grossers of the placement season from IIMB, Gaurav Agarwal and Venkatesh Shankararaman registering their displeasure with the institute director regarding the disclosure of their compensation package details. They have expressed anguish saying that above-normal salary package details catch the attention of unscrupulous elements and this might put their kith and kin in danger.

Just as with all other high-profile issues in India, even details of this confidential mail have been leaked to the media! So much for confidential information and secrecy! This leakage apart, the concerns raised are very valid and the duo deserve praise for taking up this issue with the top level of the institute. Throughout this drama of anything-and-everything about bschool placements going live in the Indian media, I have always considered it to be a short-sighted exercise that just goes beyond limits and in addition puts all concerned in a spot. This is because:

* Companies expect the compensation details to be treated sacrosanct. It is for the simple reason that they offer differential compensation to candidates even in a single campus based on their background, relevant work-ex, job profile and so on. Thus, differences are bound to exist across campuses and, at a bigger level across countries. Disclosing these details in the media puts them in a soup.

* From the student’s point of view, in spite of the few minutes or days of fame they enjoy, they are treated very much like uniquely engineered laboratory specimen. Additionally, disclosing their net-worth-to-be obviously puts them in danger. It is said that the details of the first Crorepati from KBC serial was kept under wraps to protect his identity till the issue was telecasted. So, much for a one-time crorepati!!

* BSchool campuses gather advertising mileage out of the process, no doubts about that. But it remains that they can drive home their point regarding the attractive returns-from-MBA by just providing general statistics like Top 10% pay, Average batch pay and a whole lot of other illustrative and insightful statistics.

It has to be seen how this issue would be handled next year. Will campuses adopt a mature approach and factor in the valid concerns raised. One must wait and watch.

Air Safety - Interesting Statistic

There is a general misconception on the safety of Air Travel. Any air-crash is a breaking news and the media promptly splashes it on the front page with vivid pictures. This has probably added to the public's concerns. I recently came across this interesting statistic on air-travel safety.

The Wright Brothers flew their first airplane in the early 1900s, and the civil aviation industry took roots after 1915. During the 1920s, the first laws were passed in the USA to regulate civil aviation. Between 1926 and 1929 there were a slew of air disasters with an undue proportion of human casualties. The year 1929 remains the worst year ever on record at an accident rate of about 1 for every 1,000,000 (1 per million) miles flown.

To get the gravity of this statistic, based on the current numbers flying, this would equate to an unimaginable 7,000 fatal incidents per year!! The media space would then be insufficient to cover all of them. Fortunately, the fatal incident rate has declined steadily ever since, and presently the number of fatal air accidents has been no more than 1 for every 2,000,000,000 (1 per 2 billion) miles flown, making it one of the safest modes of transport.

Last lecture @ FMS

On Friday, the 17th of March 2006 we had our last lecture of our two years MBA journey at FMS in the South Campus. These two years in MBA MS have for sure been eventful, exciting and enriching. Here, we have experienced all possible ranges and shades of emotion from bitterly dejected to utterly triumphant! I must say, ‘everything’ that we’ve grasped here has been a learning for life, that all of us will put to use and cherish in the years to come.

We had begun our course on 16th July 2004 and our first academic lecture was by Prof. Ragav Gaiha on ‘International Economics’. The lectures culminated in our final sem with a session on ‘Business Ethics and CSR’ by Dr. Mala Sinha. Incidentally, the final class presentation was on ‘An Ethical policy for FMS’. A much needed one in today’s world!

After the session, nostalgia was in the air with people scrambling for snaps in all possible poses. A couple of controversial and scandalous ones were also packed in!! I’ll soon post some memorable ones here.

Cognizant hits $1b and doles out iPods!!

My ex-employer, Cognizant Technology Solutions has reported an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2005. It is the fifth Indian IT company to achieve this landmark. It has celebrated the occasion in style, like it usually does, by doling out a fifth generation 30 GB Apple iPod to each of its over 25000 employees! Reading this news reminds of my Cognizant days when people looked forward to the company’s Annual Gift announcement! It usually came up with a list of good gifts to choose from. I guess Cognizant still continues this tradition of handing out a yearly gift even today.

Infosys was the first company to achieve this $1 b landmark more than a year back, and to commemorate that, it had gifted about $1000 to each of its employees. Additionally, it rewarded shareholders with a 3:1 bonus issue. Obviously there is excitement in the air. And these achievements signal the maturing of the Indian IT players and their getting into the big league. Bright and exciting days ahead for the sector!!

A Crazy Rollercoaster Ride!!

In the past week, I watched the first two parts of the movie Final Destination (I and II) back to back. For sure, both the parts of the movie were equally scary and gory. To add to the impact, we created a theatre effect in the room with blaster speakers. We pulled on the curtains, hugged each other and managed the ordeal! I’m sure Mr. Satan would like to hear more from the director about the art of torturing people in the most innovative manner to the bloodiest possible death. There were a whole lot of ‘spiteful slaughters’ what with people being impaled to death or being blown to bits and in the process, the body parts being chopped and thrown away in the air, making it difficult for even the scavengers to clear up the bloody mess. Remove that ‘Yuck’ expression from your face and read on, coz I’m not going to ‘describe’ the death blueprint of any of the victims.

Briefly about the movie, a person saves a handful of people from a bloody mass massacre (A Flight disaster in Part 1, and a Highway Pile up in Part 2). In the process they foil the ‘design of death’ and upset Satan. Satan then goes about hunting down each one of the person in the goriest possible manner, in a specific order of the victims. The plot is more about the details of each death rather than the overall connecting thread. The protagonist goes about foreseeing things and keeps making attempts to yet again foil the ‘death design’. In a line, the story can be summed as: “If you save a person by foiling the plans of death, it will not give up, but will come back and take whatever it is due, and that too in a more cruel way, coz u screwed its plan in the first place!!”

After the movie I was lying down helplessly in my bed, frantically trying to get into sleeping mode! The various murder scenes kept auto-playing in a repeat-loop mode in my mind. Probably it was the first time I repented at having agreed to take up an individual room in the hostel! How much ever hard I might try not to think about the movie, the ‘web of death’ just refused to log off! Just then, a light breeze through my half-open window ruffled the daily-sheet calendar hanging over my desk and it sent a chill down my spine!! I frantically began doing a Google search in my mind to identify instances from my life where I might have been saved!! I wanted to prepare for ANY eventuality. Then, out of nowhere, my mind zoomed back to an incident of the mid 90s.

It must have been 1994/5 when I must have been in my Tenth standard at School. The annual ‘Exhibition’ or ‘Fair’ was on, at Madurai in the Tamukkam grounds. People who have spent their childhood in similar kind of cities or towns in those times would recall that this was one annual ritual which was religiously attended by the otherwise entertainment-starved people. This was just another year when our family (My parents, sis’ and me) checked out the fair towards its closing days. After checking out the shops and eating all kinds of snacks that were being sold, we moved towards the last leg of the fair, which was the entertainment rides section. The highlight of the year was a no-frills version of the Rollercoaster which was launched for the first time! It was a no-frills one in all respects – smaller layout, shorter ride and lesser cars. However they had brought in more convenience as they had done away with the conventional seatbelt and a host of other safety precautions as well!!

My sister and I were adamant to get in, for a ride. So, we finally bought tickets and got into a two-seater car. There was a lone operator of the machine who went about checking whether all cars were filled and whether people had downed the single flimsy iron rod onto the seat which was the sole case for self-protection during the ride!! In the car before us, a man and his small kid (must have been 6 yrs old) were settling in. After all cars were filled, the operator gave the signal and ran back to the cabin to switch the thing on. People shrieked with joy as they were about to experience a rollercoaster ride for the first time in their life, though an Indianized one!! The cars started rolling and I could feel pressure building up in my tummy. The cars went round and round and then climbed a small steep slope. I firmly held on to the iron rod and turned to smile at my sister, who was fidgeting nervously in her seat! Down came the cars and I had this rushing feeling climbing up from my stomach, up my ribs and face till the top of my head!! Now we were crossing the entry point, onto our second round. I could faintly see my parents cheering us up, when all of us were shouting at the top of our voice.

Then IT happened.. The cars took a sharp winding turn in a bid to produce the series of ‘twists’, when I heard a sharp snapping sound. In the excitement I couldn’t help but ignore it, but then the middle-aged man in the seat before us started shaking his head wildly. We were still not convinced, but then he convinced us by totally letting his body move freely in the direction of his cars!! My sister and I immediately realized that the guy had been hit in the head by one of the supporting iron pillars of the roller-coaster structure, just as we were taking the earlier sharp right-ward turn. The guy had been knocked unconscious!! Meanwhile, the rollercoaster was going steadily with its ‘twists’ and the kid sitting next to the man was crying hysterically. It might have been because of the ride, but then he was not in a position to handle this sudden development too.

We were just in the second ‘lap’, and one more was left. Just as the cars were taking the second sharp left-ward turn, the guy’s torso started swaying wildly towards the left. Chances were very high that he could be thrown out of the car, or worse he might be hit very hard by another structure during the journey. Instinctively, I lunged forward and grabbed one of his hands, as he was seated just before me, in the other car (So close were the cars!!). Now, I was convinced that the remaining portion of the journey was going to be ‘one hell of a rollercoaster ride’!!

I held fast onto him throughout the turns, but then the nasty part of the journey was left, that is the downward climb! Now, I loosely held the guy and held fast onto my seat bar, lest I be thrown into the air! Now the second ‘lap’ was coming to a close and we were moving towards the gallery! We thought that this was the time to appeal for aid and we frantically waved to the crowd for help. Everyone in the crowd waved back happily!! We realized that we had to put up with this for one more last lap! Now, I was losing grip of the guy and my car, so I briefly pulled back and adjusted myself. This was it, and the guy started being pushed around awkwardly! Just then, my sister realized that I was not in a position to hold him anymore immediately, so she moved close to her seat bar and grabbed the guy who was in a diagonally opposite position from her. This continued and she held him till we climbed the slope and came down.

As we approached the entrance, the cars screeched to a halt, to our great relief!! All the people were so excited that even now, no one noticed that something was seriously amiss. The operator went about helping people unclasp the bar of iron from the seat. As he moved towards us, I shouted at him and pointed towards the guy at the front. Just then, fortunately, the guy slowly started coming back to his senses. The operator helped him out of the car. He put his hand to the side of his head where he had been hit and had a small wound. Not realizing the seriousness of whatever had happened, he slowly staggered away and his son followed him. The kid was still crying. Before we could get out of our cars, he slowly vanished into the crowd. We went straight to the manager, protested and called for some policemen. Then we explained the situation to them. All the people waiting to get in for a ride kept watching the dialogue. We were surprised when the manager didn’t believe us and just brushed it away. However we stressed it to the police constables who had come to the scene. They had a discussion with the manager and finally, probably to convince us and the crowd, they briefly halted the next ride. Two or three policemen got into the cars and they did a ‘trial run’ to check whether any iron structure was ‘acting as an obstruction’ to the cars!! After a single round, they were convinced that it was ‘totally safe’ for the public and let the manager go scot-free!! To our surprise, the incident and the company was forgiven and forgotten and the rides continued!!

After running the whole episode in my mind, I started evaluating it vis-à-vis the movie. Thankfully, it was the other way round and it was an instance where I had saved someone! I was too tired to think of the possible fall-outs and very soon fell asleep blissfully!