Updates from the biz world...

pepsico india cheif indira nooyi has unleashed her plans of big
investments for the subcontinent to give a fillip to the beverages
and snacks segment..

aptech leads the IT training instis in china for the third
successive year.. NIIT is trailing behind at number 3 slot.

cognizant sets up their 30 acre development center in coimbatore..

airlines operating in the indian skies fight it out for luring the
skilled manpower.. the industry faces an acute shortage for piolts
and technicians.. key contenders in the race Air Deccan, Jet,
Sahara India, Kingfisher and the state owned IA..

surprising info from ET.. skilled oil rig operators earn thrice the
salary in comparison with tier 1 bschool grads!!! the former's
typical salary comes to about 3lakhs p.m... am stumped!!! are you
not?

piece of info... the catchy 'ZEN' from the maruti stable means
Zero Engine Noise.. i own a Maruti Zen VX, but never knew this
three letter secret!! ignorance unlimited!!

so long
roy

Am all for euthanasia..

the topic, per se, is controversial, sensitive and much debated these days.. and past week's terri schiavo case is good enough to put everything in perspective.. all of us would appreciate the need for euthanasia well if we try to be a little more empathetic with the victims.. their pains, sufferings and the bland life ahead.. it is without a purpose that people live out a vegetative state! the last thing they want in life is a chance to see yet another daylight.. euthanasia is the only answer, however hard an antagonist tries to oppose the advocates..

again, it's always easy for us to ignore some one else's sufferings, we want them to survive, we pray for longer tenures for them... but the moment you are responsible for taking care of the victim, your perspective changes..you are fed up with those mundane, boring, nauseating, tiresome patient care! and you become an ardent advocate of euthanasia, albeit not being able to stress the need for it openly, which will invite the wrath of those self proclaimed human rights activists... LoL...

come what may, euthanasia is the only answer to those endless sufferings... are you with me on this?

so long

roy

Good evening.. me Nik Gowning...

the name that all hardcore BBC afficionados will recall even after a coma.. the anchor man who takes presenting news to newer dimensions.. the person noted for his remarkable intelligence, quick wits, and unmatched presentation skills.. watching the world news when Nik is in command is a pleasure in itself.. you are sure to be engrossed in that charismatic voice, mannerisms and superb, flawless langauge!!

i remember watching Nik during 9/11.. he was on air shortly after the tragedy, reaching out to people around the globe, which called for utmost care in choosing each and every word..and few would pass that test with laurels..the coverage won him the 2002 Hotbird Award.. am so passionate about watching Nik in action every night that i finish my shower and dinner well before 9:00 PM.. all set to see the handsome genteel face on screen...

tend to look at a brief profile of Nik?? chek this out...

so long
roy

UB Rules..

else where in the biz world, UB group, the vijay mallya owned liqour giant is all set to rule the kingdom with the recent acquision of SWC, known for its flagship bottle, Royal Challenge.

within six months, we would witness one of the biggest mergers in the liqour markets the world over. UB group is gonna consolidate and merge its acquisitions, SWC, Herbertsons (known for Bag Piper), McDowell's and Wilbey's, paving way for some key international acquisitions in the near future.. watch out!!

Oracle's Larry Ellison has finally subdued SAP in taking over Retek.. the battle was on for about a week..

and InteactiveCorp takes over Ask Jives, a key search engine on the net.

and to conclude with a ray of hope.. india is destined to be a key manufacturing base for MNC players in the IT related segments.. the strong economic growth put up by india is cited as the shot in the arm...me wondering when india qould be able to overtake china, the forerunner in the race, in the manufacturing segment? will it ever happen?

on an after thought, i am a wee bit concerned about the US criticism on india's bad recrod on curbing women and child trafficking.. if the situation gets worse and we slip ourselves into tier 3 (worst situation) category among countries that fail to curb human rights violations... unless we see through it and take a strong stand with legal bindings, the situation is sure to get worse.. and will adversely affect the prospects of doing business with the MNC giants, especially the ones from papa's own country.. another pain in the **s duh!!

so long
roy

Tough times..

life is a drama indeed.. and you tend to believe this strongly when coming to terms with harsh realities, when you are caught unawares by the sudden turn of events.. traumatic and painful.

i was passing through the same phase when my vehicle collided with another driven by a fledgling, old gentleman.. it took a while for me to accept the gruesome incident.. the bonnet of my car was almost crushed to pulp.. sans me, and my colleague in the passenger side.. looking at the brighter side of life, we got out safe and unhurt..

this would be the right time to reminisce the support and empathy shown by my dear colleagues, when i needed them most.. all of them stood by me, showing great deal of composure and equanimity... with an occasional pat at the back, holding my hands, or just murmuring, it's okay..we gotta get on with this..

THANKS a MILLION pals..

so long
roy

The Steel Magnate..

Lakshmi Nivas Mittal is the third richest man in the world, as per Forbes' latest survey..closely behind the IT supremos Bill Gates and Warren Buffet..

i was quite surprised by a few related facts..

LNM's steel empire spreads across four continents and fourteen countries..mittal steel's production capacity is well over 70mt..and not even a minute fraction of this is being produced in India.. the indian touch being limited to only the men at the helms, including his son aditya, a Wharton alumnus, who is heading the M&A division.. with the acquisition of america's international steel group,, mittal would be the no. 1 player in the world.. a rare feat indeed for some one from the hardcore manufacturing sector..

in terms of turn over, mittal surppasses the Ambanis' reliance by huge margins... and IT stalwarts Infy, Wipro, TCS and the like would look like mere shadows.. why did india miss out the chance of grooming up such a terrific entrepreneur? red tapism? beaurocracy's arrogant and obsolete technicalities? lacking infrastructure?

on the flip side, where does india's no. 1 tata steel, being in business for almost a century now, stand in comparison with Mittal who is crossing just the 30 year mark in business? talks volumes about doing a hardcore manufacturing biz in india?

tail ender..operating from UK, Mittal Steel's majority of employees the world over are indians... something to cheer about..?

so long
roy

Here you go, Hi Tec.....

Itinerant National Resdients (INRs), LoL... never heard of this before? me neither..INRs are those hapless high flyers in the corporate world who are on the wheels for about 250 days in an year.. the tremendous growth rate in the IT and ITeS sectors, the never befroe boom in the manufacturing sector and the newfound outsourcing mantra called BPO have all made travelling an occupational hazard for most of the top level execs..

we have the indian MNCs who created a niche for themselves, the oldies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS and the newbies such as CTS, iFlex etc., who deploy their execs all across the world.. a large chink are on work permits and a significant percentage keep doing the rounds.. a decade ago, a foreign visit was a dream for any employee in the private sector.. and it usually remained a dream! only the president or CEo used to travel and that too a couple times a year! and the same was totally unheard of in govt., except the trips undertaken by beaurocrats to attend conferences or to study specific schemes, draining the coffers..

today, if you look around in your neighbourhood, you see a software engineer working in US or UK or atleast in the middle east in every house who cared for their children's education.. a US VISA is no longer a dream.. working in your home town and moving around the world is all the more fun and exciting... we see a new found enthusiasm in the business secotr all over the world, which brings down geographical barriers, and hardcore nationalism.. it's all about expansions, mergers and acquisitions, all translating into massive ROIs..at the same time creating a new breed of millionaires.. you see lots of them these days..

being a part of the clique, am excited...but ever cared to look at the flip side?

essentially this transaltes into a much wider gap in income and living conditions between the haves and the have nots..and the gap continues to grow in leaps and bounds..the only solution to improve the living conditions of the ordinary mortals would be to strengthen our own manufacturing secotrs, which would bring forth a thousands of employments, not limited to those with the two letter degrees (read BE..).. and give more stress on our agriculture sector, it is heartening to see the allocations to priority sectors topping the bar in the recent budget... this would definitely bring forth employment and food security, the two pillars of progress!!

everytime you get excited about an infy or TCS setting up an office in your town or in any of the high-tec cities in india, think about this too..how would they transform the lives of ordinary people? no way..the respective local governments are snobbish enough to miss out the much more larger picture..

now, each time you hear about a factory being setup in your town or in any of the industrial estates, think about the employment potential it can generate for the less educated mortals..imagine those house wives with their robes wrapped tightly around their waists getting a full time employement, so that they can proudly send their children to school...marry off their over aged, under educated, daughters.. taking care of their ageing spuses.. is this all about shaping up a society at large??

yet, am clueless why our govts are running behind corporate biggies to setup shops in the states rather than encouraging local entrepreneurs and thus losing out the deal?? less investment, more returns, and a tremendous impact on the lives around.. will we ever care? this beats me to the ground!

PS: musings from a meeting we have had with the Directot of a Software Tech Park..

so long..
roy

BEQ '05

i was watching the fifth regional finals of Brand Equity Quiz on television, the biggest such event in India Inc., held at Hotel Hyatt Regency Calcutta.... conducted by ING Vyshya and managed by '360 degrees', BE every year has been a show in itself. this would be their fifth edition of BEQ, if my memory doesn't deceive me:-)

thirty nine teams vied for the top slot from calcutta this time.. and the fierce battle was won by 'the team invincible' Eveready, comprising Mrs. Jayashree Mohanka and Mr. Sreedhar... gosh! i was amazed by the wonderful show put up by the duo.. the lady is a real stud, a phenomenon to watch out for in the national finals.. quiz master Derek O’Brien had a whale of a time in his home ground... i shoud not miss the question which pushed the Eveready team ahead by a whisker and into the mega finals... they answered 'Tommy Hilfiger' when asked who holds the designation of Principal Designer with 'Tommy Hilfiger', the up-market apparel brand!! that saw them to the national finals to be held in April.. i am really looking forward to the show to see Mrs. Mohanka back in action..

for those who are uninitiated into the wonderful world of quizzing:

DEREK O’BRIEN began his career as a journalist but soon shifted to advertising. A decade ago, he quit his job as creative director at Ogilvy & Mather to launch his own company Big Ideas. He is the host of the country’s longest-running corporate quiz show, the Brand Equity Quiz, and the longest-running knowledge game show on Indian television, The Bournvita quiz Contest. Recently, he launched his dream project, KQ School Advantage. The CEO of Derek O’Brien & Associates, Derek O’Brien lives in Kolkata with his family.

Biz Jobs stuff your bags full!!

final placements in the BSchools across the country witnessed a phenomenal increase in the no. of job offers and also in terms of salaries.. no. of foreign offers were quite high in almost all the tier 1 Bschools, compared to last year's statistics..

for the sake of records, an IIM A lad bags up a $1,50,000 PA.. the offer was reportedly made by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultant biggie.. though the figure itself is mindboggling, me wondering why the companies never disclose the Net THS.. that would be something revealing i guess. the CTCs can amaze you but can't give you a real picture.. well, am i trying to say, those grapes are sour??... anyways, kudos to the young future managers.. they deserve this indeed..

apart from that, why do I have a penchant to watch out for corporate ousters these days? the past evening, i was reading a peice on AIG (American International Group).. apparently, the CEO Maurice Green has been ousted citing over age and the need to transfer the reigns to the younger generation... AIG stands justified in their decision, but that doesnt deter us from saying HATS Off To Maurice for building the corporate powerhouse that AIG is today...

so long
roy

Random notes

Call it Quits…

the past week saw couple of sports’ ever admired personalities bidding adieu to the game. Garry Kasparov, who has been reigning on the top spot for almost two and a half decades, called it quits in Linares after a memorable meet with our Vishy, who was always trailing just behind.. end of an era and beginning of another!

Corporate ousters galore?

America inc. witnessed couple of embarrassing ousters in the recent past.. Ex HP CEO Carly Fiorina got sacked citing the failure of HP-Compaq merger.. the lady with an iron will failed to deliver the ‘much inflated’ expectations..

but what if she gets appointed president of the world bank? well, if things really work out in her favor, she would land up there soon.. stay on the race lady and hit the bull’s eye…

the case of Harry Stonecipher of Boeing is something ‘sexy’… he has had an affair with a lady executive and it was getting messy and the news reached every nook and corner of the aircraft biggie.. is that anything to be embarrassed about? quite an individual perspective.. I would say no.. but the morals of the CEO should be in place to lead from the front. this is my 2$ on the issue…

so long
roy

An inspiring diction from the Mindtree COO..

hey, here is an inspiring speech by the Mindtree Chief Operating Officer Subrato Bagchy.. i was captivated; am sure you would..

on a side real note, the speech transcends me to my own childhood, when my mother struggled to educate her lads, in the midst of financial crisis and the mental trauma brought about by my father’s demise.. she was deep in trouble, and I would imagine it was her nerves and never say die attitude saw us through…we received the best education available, bolstered by a very powerful and principled personal grooming…three cheers to my mother, who is my greatest idol ever in this world!!

Here it is for you...

"I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of Five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa.
It was and remains as back of Beyond as you canimagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled.

My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.
My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep -we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate Managers learn the hard way, some never do. The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' â€" very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.
Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading.
But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly.
Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it".

That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamoured with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house Of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed.
At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited".
That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in Homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script.

So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe.
In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.
Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date.

Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.
To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the, world.
In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flewback to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroac infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst.

One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the tending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.
There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create.

My father died the next day.
He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.
Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world."
Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting

Whats hot in the Biz world?

elsewhere in the corporate sector, the ERP giant SAP locks horns with the DB biggie Oracle to acquire the medium sized minnesota based Retek, an ERP solution provider to SMEs across the USA, mostly into the Retail business.. this would be termed as the lack of the biggies' capabilities to cater to the needs of those small and medium segments.. inorganic growths are here to stay for a strong foothold in the market.

Hindustan Lever is going to be rechristened to Unilever as part of the latter's strategy to position and project Unilever as one and the same corporate identity everywhere..

and back in the BSchool world, IIM B rocks the final placements this season with record number of foreign offers:-).. enough vicarious feelings!!

so long
roy

The HBS shows the way...

arguably, the world's best BSchool, the hallowed portals of HARVARD has drawn a new line of ethics for those would be managers!! one hundred and thirty nine of its applicants for the forthcoming academic year have been ousted from the list of applicants for hacking into a security flaw on the HBS website.. the students 'hacked' the site to look at the list of candidates shorlisted for the next round of admission process well before the list was officially out.. HBS spokesperson was very firm on making their new line of thought on corporate ethics pretty clear.. the news is all the more relevant when we have numerous corporate scams rocking america..

i was not surprised to hear the same act repeating at Stanford, Warton, Dartmouth, Duke and MIT Sloan... me wondering why all these BSchool sites got hacked during the admission times? and if a candidate 'happened to' bump on to the confidential info accidentally, why blame it on his ethics? if there was ever a deliberate 'hacking' in any of the said Websites, i am with the adcom for sure.. after all, for any individual, success in any career is marked by remarkable personal integrity and a clean sense of responsibility for his/her actions..

anyways, the BSchools are enjoying the last laugh, i guess... something to watch out for the Biz aspirants.... it would be interesting to see how the whole bunch of issues turn out to be in the days ahead...

so long
roy

BSchool Dreams Again..

well, else where in my blog, i wrote about the satellite based MBA programs from XLRI and IIMC.. the key attraction of these programs would be the fact that you don't need to quit the job to pursue your dream degree.. the classes are delivered at your nearest Direcway Center, and are held thrice a week.. the timings are quite convenient too.. starts at 6:00PM and would continue till 9:00PM.. and believe me, the course doesn't come cheap, you gotta shell out around 1.75lacs for XLRI and 1.65 for IIMC... anyways, i dont care about the fee at the moment, all i need is an XLRI brand name for an HRM management degree..the classes are handled by none other than the XLRI faculty.. and the campus component, a week at XLRI jamshedpur, would expose you to the rigors of the program right there.. you get the chance to interact with the professors and fellow students..

well, am looking forward to their Nov 2005 intake.. the admisson process would be stringent, based on your work experience and performance in the interview.. and 14 more months from then on, i would be an XLRI alumni... sounds goods, eh?

so long...
roy

I love ET..

well.. when I say, ET, it means The venerable Economic Times from the Times Group.. the pink paper that I love to immerse in... to read right from the title to the mundane news at the back page.. it has been a while since I fell in love with the pink daily.. two years, to be precise... the in-depth coverage and analysis of business issues is something that makes it very special.. pink dailies are noted for their abstruce handling of subject matter, which might appear greek and latin to the uninitiated... ET never intimidated me, rather it is a wholesome reading experience.. u get to understand the corporate biggies, from pharma to IT, from steel to hosiary, from cement to petrolium... if you have an interest in stocks, ET is something i would strongly recommend... if you are a BSchool Aspirant, like me :-), ET is a must read... most of the issues come with reports on news and events from tier 1 BSchools in india...going by that, i can speak volumes on typical ET contents... ET is here to stay... right on top of the biz dailies and magz in india... go, be an ET subscriber yourself...:-)

so long
roy

Sania Mirza, the Glamour, the Hype and the Glitz...

sania mirza is the new avatar on stage, the teenage icon, the symbol of youth, full of energy and passion! well, the girl next door is suddenly in the news, after falling in the top 100 bracket in women's tennis.

the media is full of sania saga, with her glamarouns, sexy blow-ups.... and the girl herself is living a far surreal life I guess.. well, what does this ranking, supposedly belonging to the elites in women's tennis, bring forth? am sure it is top class for any indian lady, taking the pros in the tournament till date.. and winning a WTA torunament in the home town adds to the already spinning euphoria....

dont you think, we- the media, the tennis fans, and the readers/viewers at large, miss the larger picture? the ranking that sania enjoys at the moment is mediocre when comapred to world standards.. you have the venus sisters with their powerful shots ruling the game, you have the talented, beautiful, russian teenage chics bringing a new wave of glamarous tennis to the living rooms.. you have other bunch of talented ladies, europian, american, emerging with a new found enthusiasm.. is the indian lady game enough for them? well, she would be.... she would make it, sans the media glits and glamour... sans the hype and fanfare that throws her into seventh heaven... that throws her inside a ring of tight lipped security forces... that puts her own right to privacy in peril...

let's be realistic and give a big hand to this lady with the nerves to bag a grand slam in the near future... let's not spoil her chances by being over enthusiastic and unreasonably liberal in adding to the euphoria that surrounds her...

cheers to you sania... miles to go before you sleep...

roy