Guest Lecture by Mr Subinder Khurana: Company President marketRx

Mr. Subinder Khurana, Company President, marketRx, paid a visit to our campus to speak about the evolving face of the pharmaceutical industry. marketRx is a leading provider of specialized Sales and Marketing Effectiveness solutions to global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. marketRx today, is a "Best of the Breed" global organization headquartered in Bridgewater, New Jersey, with a strong presence in Europe and other countries across the globe.

Mr. Khurana started the India operations for marketRx, and has helped it evolve into one of the largest third-party analytics solutions provider in India. Before joining the VC industry, he was the founder and CTO of EZPower Systems Inc., a Philadelphia-based software-products company. EZPower developed an award-winning suite of products for managing content of large web sites. He grew the business for 4 years and exit successfully when EZPower was acquired by DocuCorp International (NASDAQ: DOCC), a Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. company. Mr. Subinder Khurana has a B.Tech Degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA (Finance) from Tulane University.

Mr. Khurana started by talking about the distinct features of the pharmaceutical industry. There was an absorbing discussion on whether the doctor or the patient is the customer of the industry. He elaborated on the exciting changes the industry is going through in the wake of the patent regime and globalization. He also mentioned the shift of marketing perspective from creativity to ROI. He stated that “Changes create opportunities” and that they should be grabbed.

Mr Khurana stressed on the need data driven marketing through high end analytics, data warehousing, modelling and analysis. He ended the session by pointing out that marketing analytics offers promising career opportunities and challenges for B-School graduates.

Mein kahiin kavi na ban jaoon...

What do you do when you have end term exams boxing you in the face..
And you have had such less sleep that you dont know the difference between yesterday and tomorrow..
Submissions galore...!
And loads of management funda books waiting for you to dig your head in them..
GULP.. GASP..
Well.. maybe the most creative things are born out of despair.. :D

Here is what spun out of ADY aka Aditya on one of the usual multi cast chats of the evening before the deadly Managerial Economics exam! :D

Ashima ki Aparna apaar hai,
jiski pratibha itni Ruchira maye hai ki Ras iska...
Ki Ras iska Ram ya maan ka ish hai,
is ish ki ipsita ke kinjal maan ki awaaz suni ti hai
Radhika aur usko aah shoo ke nikal jaati hai,
pir bi harsh in ki anko me aanso ban jata hai.....!!!

The girls of the class are beaming, trust me! :)
Kudos to ADY!
Lage raho!

Cheers!!!
Aparna

Management and Business Law!

That’s what the two sessions, back to back were centered around.. :)

The class of PGDSM-MIT 04 which had requested for these additional sessions from Prof. Pallavi Mody on ‘Legal aspects of a business’ was only too glad to have Prof. Damle enrich their knowledge in the same. Prof.D.M. Damle, a visiting faculty at SPJIMR, has been a practicing chartered accountant for over 3 decades now. That his knowledge of the various corporate laws that govern the country is vast was but established in the first 5 minutes of the session.

The session revolved around the various business laws, be it Financial, Marketing, HRD, Systems, Contracts and the like.

Law of limitation, S. 138 negotiable instruments/IPC, arbitration, collaborations, L/C, cyber laws, labour welfare laws and what not! Those and many more such complex terms were dealt with such precision and ease, that the class was thoroughly involved.

Filled with examples and sample cases from real life, the session was truly enjoyable. The case where the doctor had made a wrong judgement of not performing an operation or the one where entire families were wiped off by a criminal gang or the anticipatory breach of contract with a singer were relatable to. The LIFO logic being used in determining which among the twins is older will remain to be the most memorable of the lot. :)

The sessions concluded with a warm thank you to Prof. Damle for having taken the time out of his schedule and sharing his views with the class.

Cheers, Aparna

SAM-I-AM!! :)

As a part of the "Friday Leadership Series”, the Leadership committee invited Ms. Laura Parkin to share her experiences about ‘Leadership in Entrepreneurial Ventures’.

Beginning her lecture with verses which spoke of a certain stubborn and negative minded Sam, Ms. Parkin had the audience with her in the very first minute. Ms Parkin is the Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation, where she leads the foundation’s investments in non-profit programs. The overarching mission of the foundation is to create more economic opportunities for individuals in India. The foundation works in two areas: developing business entrepreneurs and helping the disabled build livelihoods or achieve gainful employment.

She is also the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the foundation’s key program. NEN is a leading catalyst which launches next generation entrepreneurs in India. Since its inception in 2002, Laura and the NEN team have built NEN to include over 200 top tier institutes, including SPJIMR, across 26 cities. NEN is helping develop a pool of over 300 entrepreneurship faculty members, and reaches over 200,000 students.

In her address Laura spoke about the characteristics of a good entrepreneur – excellent people skills, risk taking ability, optimism, creativity, negotiation, strong conviction and a clear vision. A keen ability to ‘think out of the box’ is also important. She said that a budding entrepreneur must know his customer segment well – their tastes, traits and abilities.

She then talked about NEN and described their various activities. NEN currently has plans of expanding into the international domain and is working on key catalyst programs that will help achieve this goal.

She concluded by quoting Prof. Howard Stevenson of the Harvard Business School - “Entrepreneurs pursue opportunities regardless of the resources they currently control”.
Reciting the ‘Sam-I-am’ lines along with the students, Ms. Parkin left the audi resounding with positive notes.

Cheers,
Manisha

Thanks to Debasis Sir, Preeta Ma’m and Lalwani Sir

As the classes of microeconomics, macroeconomics and finance were coming to a close the students of the Public Relations committee of PGDSM MIT junior batch came up with the initiative of expressing their gratitude in a special way. Much to the surprise of Debasis Sir and Preeta Ma’m they were presented with a card and memento after their classes were completed. Adding value, was the fact that Vikas ensured that the ‘Thank You’ card was signed by all the 60 participants of the batch :)

The class enjoyed the teaching methodology and the enthusiasm that the faculty had towards making economics fun to learn. Avdhut aptly remarked that these economic sessions made them comprehend ‘Economic Times’ better!!

Aparna aptly addressed the card for Debasis Sir as– “To someone whose marginal utility will never diminish”. And the one given to Preeta Ma’m’s was addressed – “To someone whose macro image will always stay with us”.

Prof. Debasis wished the class for all their future endeavours and also said that this was a very memorable day of his life. Preeta Ma’m also expressed her appreciation by saying that such moments make a teachers life more special. The class cheered them on.

A similar card was presented to Prof Lalwani when the financial accounting classes came to a close. Financial Accounting, an unfamiliar subject for many was made interesting and fun to learn. In his address to the class Lalwani Sir remarked that he enjoyed teaching such a lively batch of participants!!

And of course, the card to Lalwani Sir said – “To someone who brought out the ‘Mavji Bhai’ in each of us” :)

Cheers,
Manisha

Guest Lecture on Capital Markets: Mr. Jigar Shah

“Never before have so many unskilled twenty-four year olds made so much money in so little time as we did this decade (the 1980s) in New York and London.”Thus began Mr Jigar Shah, Director and head of research at ‘K.R. Choksey Shares & Securities’ in his address to the participants of the PGDSM MIT junior batch.

Mr Shah is a prominent personality and he has appeared on various television shows for CNBC, NDTV, Doordarshan on behalf of his organization to share his opinions on the capital market mainly in the equity segment. He is a pioneer in equity research and conducted various chat shows from time to time on Investment Strategy on various financial portals like www.myiris.com and http://www.moneycontrol.com/.

He started by speaking on the history of capital market. He spoke about works by prominent analysts like the ‘Theory of Speculation’ by Louis Bachelier, ‘Portfolio Selection and Diversification’ by Harry Markowitz and the ‘Brownian motion in the Stock market’ by MFM Osborne and how these theories apply to current capital market scenarios.

He shared his ideas on how one’s approach towards analysis of fundamental valuation should be. He explained his ideas on the argument of whether the study of capital markets is an art or science. He also spoke about the significance of the markets and its influence on the society as a whole. He concluded by suggesting some interesting reads like ‘Mega Trends’ by John Naisbit, ‘The alchemy of finance’ by George Soros and ‘Irrational Exuberance’ by Robert Shiller

Birthday Bash at the Bistro

With the end of the day’s classes, and the cakes ready, it was time to celebrate the birthdays of the month of the PGDSM-MIT batch. Everyone had waited for the occasion for a long time now. Ruchira, Ganesh, Ashwin, Ankur, Maneesha and Laxmi did the honours while the bistro echoed the birthday song.


There were some who ate the first piece of the black forest and others who used it on the faces of the birthday boys and girls. There was a lot of cheerful banter in the bistro while the cakes were being consumed. The cake fiesta was then of course followed by the birthday bumps for the birthday boys. That was the end of the celebrations and left everyone waiting for the next birthday bash.