Dilli ab duur nahin!

Sudhir Kumar Jena & Parijat Kumar have secured FIRST place in POWER UP event (B-plan contest) at FMS FIESTA!! The other teams that were in the fray during the final round were ISB, IIFT and FMS. Hearty congrats folks!

- Special correspondents P&G (Partho n Ganga), Bistrobanter - New Delhi

SPJIMR shines on GE Day - Part 1

This is first of the two parts of the article written by Kartikeya Rathore about his team Panacea's experience before, during and after GE Day. The guys who made us proud were Rahul Jain aka RJ, Rachit Agarwal, Abhishek Ranjan, Aditya Baliga aka Addy and Kartikeya Rathore of PGDSM MIT 03. Good goin guys!
- Ganga

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13^th Oct – 3rd Nov: Just before we left for our Diwali holidays we had registered for the GE Day. The opportunity was exciting, GE was a dream company and the prizes were just the icing on the cake. There was no way we would let this go!! Within 30 minutes of receiving the email the team was formed, the topic was decided as “Early Health Solution – Is India Ready For It” and not as “Potable Water”, the registration was done, and the tasks divided for holidays. So, Rachit and Ranjan had to research Cancer as a disease area; Rahul had to look at how hospitals actually go about understanding the market for Healthcare equipment; Addy was looking at the statistics ad trends; and me – I decided to work on the business model.

We had our short-listing round of presentations on the 3^rd of November 2006. There were 77 teams across India, that had registered and only about 1 in 3 were going to get an opportunity to participate on GE DAY on the 13 November 2006.

We were back from holidays and there was little time, the brainstorming sessions started and we put together the ideas we had during our holidays. The business model was decided and we had our first cut presentation. It was sent to the GE team and we were now waiting for the presentations to happen. Soon we realized there were many errors in our presentation – the spellings weren’t right, there was a issue with the version of Office being used and so all the images were turned upside down. And we couldn’t do much about it. We decided to go through with what we had.

On the 3^rd, the VC didn’t work, and we had to go along with a tele conference. Anyways, we did what we had to and when we got out, honestly, there we thought our chances of making it to the semi finals were meek.

6^th Nov – 10^th Nov: Rachit and Addy would agree with me…when I say the emotions were running high…they wouldn’t forget the moment I ran into their rooms and screamed “We are going to Delhi”. Frantic phone calls were made to let Ranjan and RJ know as well. Actually everybody was tensed and none believed me when I told them that we were going to Delhi. Anyways a copy of the mail convinced them all, Soon we realized we were the only team from SP Jain and also the only team from the Mumbai segment to make it through to the Semi’s. It was a proud moment for all of us and also a huge moment as we realized this maybe was our chance to let the GE world know PGDSM MIT exists and is good enough, if not the best.

The preparation began for the final presentation and the business models were tweaked over the next few nights. The brainstorming sessions happened through out the nights and everybody was researching and working hard in those few days. It was a common sight to see RJ and Rachit scratching their heads working over the financials, Ranjan listening to webcasts to understand the latest technological research in Cancer. Addy was looking at the Trends and the Multi Level Marketing aspect. And thanks to the help from Lalwani Sir and Renuka Ma’am, we arrived at a model that we thought would work. Me – I was just freaking out.

Anyways, the presentation was made…a few trial runs were done in front of some our batchmates and we were geared up for the challenge...

Cheers,
Kartik

What’s your story?

Folks! This is the debut article of Ruby Singh...Read on!

This article which is based on HBS case study will guide you how to justify a drastic career change with grace, confidence & conviction. . Most of us confuse this transition as a time of loss, insecurity, diffidence & uncertainty. This article will emphasize on the importance of a compelling yet genuine story to back up your move.

“All of us construct narrative stories about ourselves-where we’ve come from, where we’re going wrong. The kind of stories we tell make an enormous difference in how well we cope up with change”
-Harvard Business Review

Stories are integral parts of our life because they define us. To know someone, it’s imperative to know her story -the environment that has shaped her, the turning points, challenges & odds that have tested her.

Case study says “Seldom a good story so needed, though, as when a significant change of professional direction is underway-when we are leaving one profession without yet having left it and moving towards another without yet having gotten there. In a time of such unsettling transition, telling a compelling story to interviewers-inspires belief in our motives, charcter & capacity to reach the goal we have set for ourselves.”

Creating & telling a story that matches with our condition & convictions also helps us believe in ourselves. Most of us confuse this transition as a time of loss, insecurity, diffidence & uncertainty. We vacillate between holding on to the past & embracing the future.why? It’s because we have lost the narrative thread of our professional life. Without a compelling story that lends meaning, unity & purpose to our lives, we feel lost & rudderless. We need a good story to reassure that our plans make sense.

The question is why these transition stories are so important? This is because the person who will be facing the transition consequences will be you & what’s at stake is your career. Only love, life & death could be more important. Transition is always about a world that’s changed. You’ve somehow decided that your life doesn’t work anymore the way it was working in past. Perhaps you have reached a point of no return-one that marks the end of a period of frustration & struggle. This much of effort requires a systematic approach to get maximum return.

Hence, a good yet genuine story is essential for making a successful transition.Yet most of us fail to use power of storytelling to match our conviction & goals. Or when we craft a story we do it badly, this may be because many of us have forgotten how to tell a story.

Let’s discuss key elements which will make your story successful

· The story must be about a person or group whose struggle listener can relate to.

· The story should include the catalyst that compelled the person to take major decision.

· The obstacles, frustrations, conflicts confronted by the person should be integral to the story because it reflects the strength of the character to fight against odd.

· Turning point, a point of no return should be the crux of the story. The person can no longer see or do things as he did in past.

· A resolution, in which the person either succeeds magnificently or fails tragically.

Coherence, it’s an essential narrative element because it earns the listener’s trust.


- Ruby Singh

All the best folks!

The following participants of PGDSM MIT 03 will be representing SPJIMR in various events at FMS Fiesta 2006. Wish you a happy journey guys! All the best!

Power Up

1) Sudhir Jena

2) Parijat Kumar

Bankex

3) Rakesh Josyula

4) Sohamnath Mannem

Nascence

5) Parijat Kumar

6) Sohamnath Mannem

Big Companies Big Mistakes

7) Navneet Nayyar

8) Rachit Agarwal

9) Vinit Parekh

Genesis

10) Vishal Dedhia

11) Amit Kumar

Cheers,

Ganga

IMZine paper results

IMZine paper contest is a wonderful initiative from SBUIM06 (pgp). The top three papers this time are -

1st Prize - Amlan Mukherjee

2nd Prize - Swati Mukherjee & Souvik Das

3rd Prize - Navneet Kaur Nayyar & Delzin P Irani (PGDSM MIT03)

Congrats everybody!

Cheers,
Ganga

AMC learns to check drop-outs in school

It is heartening to note that Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is planning to implement some of the ideas that the teams from SPJIMR (teams Advitiya and Aarohi) and IIM-A have proposed. The topic of our paper was “State of elementary education in Ahmedabad”. The Indian Express and Gujarat Samachar have written about this (27.nov.06).

Meryll Lynch ko supercomp kyu mangta?

May be 'coz lot of their money is riding on the commodities market...and supercomps do a good job of climatic predictions and cluster analysis. You get the drift..

On 2nd December, Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan shared with us his experiences in building the world's third fastest supercomputer, System X. Dr. Srinidhi is the Director, Centre for High-End Computing Systems (CHECS), Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, USA
and CTO and Co-Founder of Evergrid Inc.

In this talk, Dr. Varadarajan gave us an insight about the entry barriers, production and marketing challenges faced while bringing to market a product (supercomp) whose life cycle is just 4-5 years and of which 5 units will be made. He also presented the motivation for System X, its architecture and upgrades, user experiences, the challenges faced in building, deploying and maintaining a large-scale supercomputer, and his thoughts about trends in supercomputers and high performance computing.

Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, at the age of 31, was credited with building the world's third fastest supercomputer, from the ground up. His path breaking approach has given a new direction to the world of supercomputers and high performance computing.

System X was conceived in March 2003 and had achieved a sustained performance of 10.28 Teraflops, making it the third fastest supercomputer in the world at that time. Unlike other supercomputers, System X was built out of 1100 ordinary Apple Macintosh desktop computers wired together. This revolutionary approach made it possible to build supercomputers at a fraction of the prevailing cost.

Biography:

Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 2000. He presently serves as the Director of the Centre for High-End Computing Systems at Virginia Tech and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Varadarajan is the recipient of the ComputerWorld Honors Award in the Science Category 2004, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the Egg Factory Technology Innovation award and a Faculty Fellow award from the College of Engineering, Virginia Tech. He was also honored by the MIT Technology Review in 2004 as one of the top 100 young innovators transforming technology. He is listed by HPCWire as one of the top 15 researchers worldwide in the area of supercomputing.

Dr. Varadarajan hails from Ahmedabad, where he did his schooling at St. Xaviers' Mirzapur. He then went on to receive his B.Tech in Computer Science at REC Warangal. He worked as a research assistant at IIM Ahmedabad with Prof. B. H. Jajoo during his school and college days.

Cheers,
Ganga