Director and CEO of Videocon Telecom Mr. Aravind Bali at IIM Raipur

Mr. Aravind Bali, Director and CEO of Videocon Telecom interacted with the students of IIM Raipur today. During the hour long interaction, he answered various queries from the students concerning the telecom industry in India and Videocon’s plans for expansion in India. The guest lecture is part of Videocon’s effort for a better association with the premier management institutes around the country and to collaborate on various strategic and management activities.

The session revolved around Videocon’s plans to launch 4G in India and the challenges that it would have to overcome. Mr. Bali started the session with a short presentation to give the students a background about the industry and the rise of 4G technology. He described how the telecom industry had rapidly evolved over the years starting from the humble telephone to wireless and 4G technologies. “Around 1.5 crore mobile handsets are sold every month in India alone”, he said highlighting the pace at which the industry has grown in the country.

Speaking about the challenges of 4G he said, “In India barely 15% of the mobile users have 3G capable devices. Introducing a new technology while its predecessor has failed to achieve a significant penetration in the Indian market would indeed be a challenge.” He also spoke about Videocon’s plans to reintroduce an upgraded version of 2G - the 2.75G- in those markets where 3G failed to make an impact.

As the students probed him about Videocon’s strategies for launching the first 4G mobile plan in India he responded that Videocon telecom has always tried to provide the best technology at the lowest prices and that the company would be following the same strategy for the upcoming 4G launch as well. “At Videocon we aim to provide the best value for money to customers and retailers”, he said. The idea was to make the 4G offering even cheaper than 3G. “Our 4G offering will be 90% cheaper than all the 3G packages available today. Customers will be charged on the basis of the bandwidth they consume”. He also said that it was important for the company to communicate all the benefits of its products especially to customers who weren’t so tech savvy. “This would mean defining the offering innovatively, say in terms of number of movies you could watch or number of songs you could listen to.”

Before leaving, he stressed on the importance of a strong academic industry relationship in order to create a better collaboration on management related activities.

India Brazil Economic Cooperation - Mr Deepak Bhojwani

 

 

 

Mr Deepak Bhojwani , a career diplomat who has been the Ambassador to several countries in the Latin America in the last 12 years prominent being Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba among others and Consul General at Sao Polo, Brazil addressed the students about the opportunities in Latin America. The theme of his lecture was “India Brazil Economic Cooperation”. He urged the students to shun the myths around Latin America, which appears remote to most Indians. Mr Bhojwani described it as a land of 600 million people with per capita income as high as $15,000 which has great opportunities for business.

Mr Bhojwani began with an introduction about the region explaining about the rich history the continent has. He began with how the continent was discovered, explaining along the way why Brazil was Portuguese and the rest of the continent predominantly Spanish. He explained the difference in colonization of Asia , Africa and South America. He also pointed out the difference between the inhabitants of Caribbean and parts of  This in turn has had a great influence in the way Latin America behaves and thinks. The influence United States has had on the region and the rise and fall of left leaning dictators.

Mr Bhojwani elucidated the numerous reasons why Latin America needs to be looked in a new light and highlighted the absence of credible sources on the region. Some of the key opportunities according to him were:

A)     The continent is endowed with Mineral wealth for eg: Petroleum ( Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela), Natural Gas ( In Bolivia, Uruguay) etc , Iron Ore, Copper, Lithium, Gold etc.

B)      The presence of unified markets being created in form of Mercusor, Pacific Alliance and an Alliance of Latin American Countries (CELAC )creates new business opportunities.

C)      The relatively peaceful neighbors ( last time a major war that was fought between neighbors was over 150 years back).

D)     The prosperity of the people, the population being 6/10 of India and spread over an area that is over 5 times the size of India with high per capita income ( over 10 times the Indian per capita income) cannot be ignored for long

E)      The favorable image India has in the minds of Latin Americans

He discussed in detail about how the engagement with Latin Countries and particularly Brazil have grown in the past one decade ( during which he held prominent positions in Indian Embassies across the region) but he pointed that a lot is required to be done to promote bilateral trade. The trade has been limited to seeking resources from the region in the form of crude, which formed the bulk of trade, along with other natural reserves.  The overall investment by Indians in the region according to one estimate was over $15 billion but India on the other hand has not seen the same. Mr Bhojwani expressed his hope that in the coming years the visa policies for the region will be made more conducive to allow businessmen to explore the region before investing and at the same time stressed on the need to sign preferential trade agreements with the countries to make the most out of the opportunities that exist.

The students asked about the safety of business in the region and the instability of the business regimes and also tried to understand the cultural nuances in terms of doing business in Latin America. The students tried to understand the various policies India has to promote Indian Business in the region and also were intrigued how the region especially Brazil, despite the similarities with India, has larger companies on Fortune 500 than India and is now also facing a slowdown.

The session gave students a comprehensive overview on doing business in Latin America and Mr Bhojwani complimented the students on their keenness to learn about the region. He expressed his desire to come back to the campus and talk more about the same.

Marketing – straight from the horse’s mouth!

On 6^th September, 2012, the students of IIM Raipur had a rare opportunity to interact with a veteran in the marketing domain, Mr. Kartik Raina. He is currently a Senior Advisor with YFactor, a firm which provides Management Advisory Services to FMCG Companies. Mr Raina completed his MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, Mumbai and has extensive experience in sales and marketing with various MNCs such as P&G, Dabur and Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Healthcare.

Mr Raina enthralled the students with anecdotes from his days with Dabur, P&G, and Glaxo Smith Kline. He emphasized the importance of understanding consumer behavior, as it has a direct influence on the marketing strategy of the company. He recalled how, in his early days as a sales manager, he was required to observe customers buying Vicks cough drops at chemist shops. His observations made him realize that people bought Vicks drops not only to treat a sore throat but also to consume it as a lemon juice due to oral fixation. This realization led to the positioning of Vicks as a general lozenge, and not as a niche product with medicinal value alone, thereby closing the gap between the stated and secret needs of the consumers.

Mr. Raina then explained how the marketing concepts that we read about in Kotler can be implemented in real life scenario. He showed the flip side too-how some products fail despite having great expectations and stated that 70% of the marketing campaigns end in failure.

The students learnt a lot from this interaction, they clarified their doubts regarding developing brands, using controversies to sensitize masses, and various other concepts in marketing such as Self-referencing conceptual context etc., They were inspired to apply their theoretical knowledge in practical situations once they don the role of marketing managers.

Contributed By : Neha Khapre, PGP 2012-14, she can be reached at pgp12084.neha@iimraipur.ac.in

Guest Lecture by Prof. Nirmal Roberts on Information Systems Security

Prof. Nirmal Roberts who had been a Principal Computer Engineer at IIT Kanpur and presently
a faculty member at IIITM Gwalior conducted a session on Information Systems Security in the
Institute.

Prof. Nirmal has great knowledge in the area of Computer and Storage Networks, Network
Management, Information Systems Security, Operating Systems and IT Infrastructure.

The session begun with a simple understanding of what user authentication means and then
the session proceeded with the intricacies of the whole system of client server architecture and
how important is the need of User authorization and Authentication in organizations dealing
with Information Systems. Today every organization has a IT infrastructure and the need of the
hour is proper administration of its resources. Chief Information officers’ role was also exploited
in the session which involves driving the analysis and re-engineering of existing business
processes, identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, reshaping the enterprise's
physical infrastructure and network access, and identifying and exploiting the enterprise's
knowledge resources. The whole process is backed with a secure information system and this
can be well explained with a small example like the need of keeping or using a strong password
and how to protect critical data in an organization.

The students got an insight into the whole process of user authentication and its various types
like setting up user id and passwords, tokens, static biometric and dynamic authentication.

We often come across articles about choosing strong passwords to forego the risk of data leak
and misuse, the session proceeded with a detail mathematical explanation of how the whole
process of authentication works. The use of Hashing functions to create hash codes which
make it difficult to guess what a password of a person is.

Other ways of data compression or the ways large number of user id and passwords which
can be stored in databases were discussed which included the N-gram model which is a type
of probabilistic language model for predicting the next item in such a sequence in the form of
a (n − 1)–order Markov model. The N-gram model as Prof. Nirmal explained today is widely

used in communication theory and statistical natural language processing and other fields of
computational biology and data compression. The main advantage of the n-gram model is the
fact that it has the ability of scaling up to a large extent by storing more data in a limited space.

Prof. Nirmal also discussed various attacks like the Dictionary attacks and Brute Force attacks
and techniques to deal with these kinds of attacks.

The concept of cryptography was introduced to the students and techniques like password
salting were explained. The session concluded with the ways one could create strong
passwords in a simple manner and protect his data. The role of the network administrator in an
organization was emphasized and the students were able to understand the importance of data
integrity and confidentiality.

KPMG Associate Director & Head, Analytics talks about Analytics and Data Modeling.

Dr. Nitin Singh ,Associate Director & Head, Analytics, KPMG on his visit to the IIM Raipur campus on 24^th September,2011as a part of Corporate Interaction Program, briefed the students about analytics and consulting as a career.

He explained the job roles which a candidate would have to undertake in the field of Analytics. The candidates have to work effectively with personnel from a variety of disciplines to provide data analytics driven advisory solutions to a variety of business challenges.

The need to understand complex issues, business processes and risks and determining how internal and external data can be used with other analytical procedures to perform investigations.

There is lot of interaction with clients and other external sources to obtain relevant data and documents in required forms which would be needed in their projects. There is also a need of data cleansing and preparation techniques to achieve necessary results.

The job role of analytics also involves performing sophisticated analyses on large and complex data and then determine  and execute follow-up with various personnel to discover transaction patterns,to examine financial data and resolve issues.

He also talked about KPMG’s forensic data analysis and the recent assignment to KPMG of probing into the issues related to the organizing and conduct of Commonwealth Games,2010.

Former HAL MD Briefs Students of IIM Raipur on Social Values.

As part of IIM Raipur Corporate Interaction program, Mr. T K Dhar, former Managing Director and Board of Director, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, visited the campus on 22^nd September 2011. During the discussion, he opened up the new dimensions by stating that it is people who matter most for any organization, group or nation.

He said while deciding the “vision and mission” for life, three things should be kept in mind – Innovation, entrepreneurship and social cause. He said that motivation of social cause has infused a lot of funds in India in last decade. One of the important events enabling all this transformation was PAN IIT 2006 conference held in Mumbai where visionary president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam addressed NRI’s from all over the world.

He further added that high growth rate of our nation needs to be supplemented with growth of most underprivileged sections of the society. While looking for the growth of the nation, three aspects need to be emphasized – inclusiveness, sustainability and micro financing. He cited the example Nobel Prize winning Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus to emphasize the importance of micro financing. Education, healthcare and access to clean water remain the most important areas to work upon irrespective of any stage of growth. He cited the example of Sathya Sai Baba whose organization did a lot of work on healthcare, education and water management.

He quoted Vivekananda’s saying “Those only live who live for others” to emphasize the service to others. He reminded that leaders like J R D Tata always aspired for a “happy” nation rather than for a “superpower.” TATA’s developed excellent basic amenities around their plants in Jamshedpur. PSU’s in India have also been doing justice to Corporate Social Responsibilities since decades. He took up the example of Toyota to adopt values like continuous improvement, respect for people, long term perspective and servant leadership. He ended the lecture citing Lincoln’s perseverance and quoting Gandhiji’s philosophy “The earth has enough to satisfy everybody's need but not anybody’s greed.”

Daikin Vice President (Sales) talks about Marketing Strategies

About the Speaker :: Mr. Rajesh Jain, Vice President Sales at Daikin Air Conditioning India Pvt. Ltd.

Worked as General Manager, Marketing at Voltas Limited

Worked as Customer Business Unit Head, Consumer Electronics at BPL Ltd

Worked as General Manager at Carrier Aircon Limited 

As part of IIM Raipur Corporate Interaction program, Mr. Rajesh Jain, Vice President (Sales), Daikin, visited the campus on 13^th September 2011. He briefed students about their marketing strategy in India. Daikin, a Japanese brand headquartered in Osaka is the global leader in air conditioner market. He initially informed about how acquisition of Italian brand McQuay have helped Daikin strengthen their presence in Chillers market.

Limiting his marketing discussion to Asia Oceana market, he cited the example of Singapore where in spite of stiff competition; Daikin has been able to capture a high market share of 40% due to its high quality promise. He informed that to increase their lead at the top they are concentrating on three major markets – China, Brazil and India where air conditioning industry as well as economy is in growth phase.

Coming onto Indian discussion, he talked about the 40 acre state of art plant at Neemrana Rajasthan, the only Daikin plant in India. He informed that Daikin is one of the very few brands which develop all kinds of air conditioning systems including Chiller systems for grand buildings. He cited the example of prominent Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai where it has been implemented. In India, he cited examples of EON free zone in Pune, Mumbai high court and Infosys building where Daikin VRV systems have been implemented. He also informed that EON free zone in Pune is the first water cooled building with LEED Platinum certification. He told that although the share of Daikin in Indian residential air conditioning segment is only 11% but in VRV segment it has strong presence with 60% market share.

Daikin as a brand has been present in India since last 10 years but the marketing operations have gained momentum in last one and half year. Earlier Daikin had a niche segment in high class customers and corporate offices but now they are targeting the growing middle class who demand high value for their money. He informed that in a developing country like India it is very difficult to sustain on high end customers only. They have changed their advertisement campaigns to specifically target middle class families comprising of husband, wife and two children. Along with it they are highlighting the minimum noise levels of their air conditioning systems. The number of dealers has increased from 300 to 800 in last 18 months most of whom now provide 0% finance. As part of promotional campaigns they have the largest billboard of India in Gurgaon on Delhi-Jaipur highway. Apart from this they are using radio cabs and residential colony gates for advertisement boards. They were one of the sponsors of cricket world cup 2011 and they also organized a promotional event in Mumbai in partnership with Economic Times. They also held VRV awareness seminars in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. Some other means of marketing for them have been their newsletter and media clips. Mr. Rajesh while answering the questions of students insisted that they are not going to lose focus on the premium segment and they will regularly be coming out with cutting edge technology products.

Session on Forensic Accounting and Fraud Management

Mr. Nikhil Parulkar, Head of Risk Containment Unit at Kotak Mahindra Bank, Mumbai provided us with the basic insights into the world of risk management with respect to monetary transactions on 30^th August, 2011. He is a certified forensic expert, a proven hand in examining fraud cases, and adept at recognizing the loopholes which can give room to fraud, in the banking industry. He has dealt with many fraud investigations . He has worked with Indian banking big wigs, such as ICICI and HDFC , prior to joining Kotak Mahindra apart from devoting his invaluable expertise with consulting big wig Ernst & Young. 

Mr. Nikhil took a daylong session packed with students of first and final years. Mr. Nikhil started off by explaining “what is fraud and what kind of frauds occur in the banking sector”. He pointed out the existence of frauds in history specifying the case of Al Capone who has been credited with being the reason for the coin of the term “Forensic Accounting”. He then went on to explain the different measures needed to be taken to avert fraud and the various ways to improve process transparency for the minimization or elimination frauds to the largest extent possible. It was an interactive session with a volley of questions from the students about the measures needed to be taken to make an organization foolproof to frauds. Students also enquired about the role of auditors in scrutinizing the reports and successfully giving early warning signals.

Mr. Nikhil started by explaining the definition of fraud. He notified the lack of proper meaning attached to the hazard known as “FRAUD” as no such peculiar definition of “FRAUD” has been underlined as per the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India better known as the ICAI. The only law that recognizes it as a wrongdoing is the IPC-420 which is for cheating. He then went on to define “FRAUD” as per the Common Wealth which involves ethics and intent as the parameters along with other factors. He explained the terminology focusing on “the guilty mind” and citing the example of Satyam.

  Mr. Nikhil then pointed out the various characteristics of “FRAUDS” apart from explaining every aspect of it. He brought to light the several consequences of the problem and the reasons affecting the susceptibility of major organizations to “FRAUD”. Here he came up with the significance of forensic accounting. Nikhil questioned whether a company falters or does not falter due to the DNA of the company or the DNA of the people who make it. He then went on to discuss the fraud triangle, fraud diamond (which is an addition of a new dimension to fraud triangle), the capability dimension, which has been the most notorious dimension, having debilitating effects as seen in the recent past. He enumerated the dimensions of fraud triangle, perceived pressure facing the individual, opportunity to commit fraud, person’s rationalization and integrity.

Towards the end, the students were asked to work on a case study and scrutinize the decisions which were taken by the board of a company and the feelers the decisions send as a precursor to the imminent debacle. The powers being always vested with the management is a driver towards the unethical task, if not over seen by the highest authority in an organization. It is the responsibility of the higher management to set high corporate governance standards and they should lead by example, which instills a sense of ethical behavior in all the fellow colleagues to practice utmost highest standard.

“Inside Job” an informative movie was screened post completion of the session, which is based on the chronicle of events and decisions which led to 2008 financial meltdown/crisis, the root cause of the financial crisis and the role of persons vested with power, how they can influence the systems was insightful and a discussion followed over the good and bad of the decisions sensitized the students towards the importance of ethics and role of corporate governance. And a pledge was taken by all the students that they will follow highest corporate governance standards where ever they work and see that their subordinates and superiors follow the ethics by being an example.