Some After thoughts after MBA from IIM, Lucknow (Noida)

We all may agree that the Working Manager Program - MBA - classroom based course was an immense learning. Though it cannot be captured in words but it definitely would stay imbibed in all of us for the life to come. Some may utilize the learning now, some later, but it is certainly going to be a great asset for us. 

Some thoughts on the learning:

• Networking is the key
•   - Make friends
•   - Meet often
•   - Share Problems
•   - Play/Eat/Celebrate together
• Doing Project work is the real learning, it gives immense confidence. It teaches us the practical aspect of learning and builds those concepts for ready later use.
• Attend as many classes as possible, it builds our concepts - Conceptual Learning is the key. (For me the choice of subjects preferably was decided based on Professor feedback.)
• Become an entrepreneur while doing the course - that would utilize your MBA skills the most!

When we finally master a tough job, we make it look easy!! But this time I would have to mince words and say that completing WMP wasn't easy at all. The toil for two and half years 'continuously' has made us strong and 'stretchable'. We have become better time managers and know our priorities better. The whole experience has made us more confident.!

Lastly, if I were the CEO of a company and were to hire - I would certainly consider the WMP-ites from IIM Lucknow, Noida for sure!

IX Semester

I couldn't wait to post the last semester (i.e. IX Sem) experience :-)

What to say, It is a mixed feeling this time: one is that we are free again from the current 9-day work week and the other being our regular meeting with friends and classroom learning would become infrequent. But whatever the concoction is: its net result is still +ve.

The mix of subjects this time provided high powered immense learning that would go a long way in shaping us as great(!) managers:
Strategic Management in Technological Innovation (SMTI)
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)
Internet Marketing (Internet Marketing)
Service Marketing (Serv.Mktg.)

SMTI was a must-take. Prof. Jain was extremely fascinating - the concepts he taught had a great impact on us. This time we had the honor of doing 7 assignments in a single subject but they roused the interest in the subject. The fact that he started the class with Saraswati Vandana was astonishing! (He had an impeccable style with which he carried himself with and the hat was very distinguishable too). Thanks to his inquisitiveness in our innovations Adobe LeanPrint too was discussed in our SMTI class w.r.t the utility framework.

M&A again was interested enough with the mix of national and international cases and discussions. Prof Ashutosh did give his best try with managing 2 sections The guest lectures were extremely good too. Nishant Saxena of Elements Akademia on P&G Gillette acquisition and Avimukt Dar on the “Legal Aspects of M&A”

Internet Marketing gave us the insights of the various aspects of marketing on the Internet and the rising importance of analytics and social media. All learnings were implemented in a project that we did on promoting bdaromatics.com

Service Marketing went into the nitty-gritties of designing and marketing a service. The importance of each and every step detailing in a service was the greatest takeaway from the subject. Dhobilite.com laundry service was taken up as a project.

I was searching for words to describe the feeling that I 'have' while (writing this blog) passing out from IIML and suddenly I got an email from one of my colleague Manu Chauhan that helped me in saving some time, the snippet of it goes like this- (feeling is similar:)

"..I am still trying to convince me by saying that the things are over now AT LAST, and now I have much more time for my family and job. But in back on my mind, I know that a gap has been created that will take some time to fill in. And on a more serious note, we are exposed to the world that we are an MBA now, and we are expected to perform like an IIM post-grad :)
But I am sure we will take this course on a new high by showing our actions in our own course of time. I congratulate all my batch mates for this achievement and wish you all the best things to come your way.
Let's all realize our dreams!!!.."

Last session - Internet Marketing (Dr. Maity in center)

Events:
Freshers welcome WMP8 batch
Great Guest lectures
Diesel hike
FDI Approval in retail, aviation

Links for Photos:
Link1: ClassRoom
Link2: The Presentations day

Second Summer Break

It was an intense summer this time (2012), I personally have never seen it so hot! Office demanded a lot of time, and the entire holidays we devoted for the same :)

The only adventures I could manage were:

• A foodie trip to old Delhi

1.  Lotan kulche
2.  Tarachand kachodi
3.  Poori Sabzi / Nagori Halwa / Lassi at Shyam Sweets

• Few movies (MIB, Prometheus)
• Essex farms

And ya, I could manage to upload the paid version of the android application (Block Spam SMS +) that I had made in the last summer break (Block Spam SMS) and earned a few $ from it. :)

Looking forward to coming back from the break for the final semester, yippie!

VIII Semester

The I week I could manage Shirdi and Nashik trip just at the start of the semester without any loss of classes because of the week off given by WMP Chair (thanks very much!). It was indeed a great break but we in turn had to compensate with many-many sundays. The frustration grew till the end when we had no weekends for almost half the semester. As a friend said: "WMPians are having a 9 day week  :)" (thu/fri evening included)

Sem 8 was a seemingly pleasant as the 1-month holidays were nearby and our completion of the course was just not-too-far. I had chosen 3 credits for this sem:

• IM (Investment Management)
• PBM (product and brand management)
• QMSS (Quality Management and Six Sigma)

IM was a wonderful subject that taught us the basics of the investment and portfolio management. Prof. Alok Dixit was a wonderful, down-to-earth teacher who had put in amazing effort to teach us stuff  maximum possible. This was a subject that required real hard work right from the start and one felt like putting in effort in it.

Prof. Anita Goyal took the PBM with great dedication - she even took the pains of bringing various packaging to the class to teach us various levels of packaging. For some the course was a repeat of various concepts of marketing but it was a light and interesting one for me.

Qmss looked to be a fiasco at the start when Prof Tapan Bagchi (reputed name in Quality management) couldn't come to deliver the course as promised. Instead the course was delivered half an half by Prof. Sushil Kumar and Prof. Omi Prakash Vaidya and guest lecture by Prof K Maduletty. The course was done justice by them especially the six sigma processes.

Main Building - IIML Noida Campus

View from the Main Building

Friends "waving"

Highlights:
The main canteen started offering multiple new products in competition to the Cup-Shup cafe
Parking disrupted badly due to the construction work in campus
WMP brochure finalized after multiple rounds of work by the committee/volunteers.

VII Semester

Seventh semester certainly had very interesting mix of electives. It was a difficult choice for many. And I too managed 4 credits with one being a investment banking! My electives:
SDM (Sales & Distribution Mgmt.),
IBFS (Investment Banking & Financial Services),
BSCM (Business Sustainability & Carbon Markets)
& ATSC (Applied Theory in Strategy & Competition)
All 4 credits were satisfying (atleast for me:), as I attended almost all classes of these class-based learning courses & there was a good learning in each class!

IBFS was an insightful subject but was as tough as it could be. It taught us the concepts of rights, IPOs, LBOs, debt financing etc that we found very intriguing in our lives. Prof. Mishra had a great control over his delivery topics & was upto speed from the first class itself. His two classes together were real exhausting, I ate an extra samosa in the break every time!

BSCM as a subject really moved us, shook us & got us thinking in the direction of sustainability. I could never have taken the topic so seriously had it not been a credit course! Prof. Sushil was amazing (infact the best Prof I had studied from), he taught us from the heart! Some great concepts of sustainable development that would go a long way in shaping us.

The various closes & spins were mastered in SDM, now we know what techniques the salespersons use on us. Prof. Kumra was at his best with his real life experiences of teaching us the sales techniques.

WMP Class 13

"WMP" Class 13

We devoted a Saturday for our profile & class photos. Our whole WMP13 batch was in formals, in our dashing blacks. The class photo was fun as it was the first one to be clicked and people kept joining in till the last click! And this photo "WMP" took an hour to be clicked, we, managers, had little sense of creating artistic patterns but hats off to the photographer who held on!

Our exam timings finally got reinstated to the evening timing that was the unanimous choice of our batch, thanks to the WMP Chair for the same!!


Some other highlights of the semester:

• IIML Manfest 11 - a mega annual event held @ lucknow
• IIML International marketing conference - biggest marketing conference of IIML - till date all thanks to Prof S B Dash
• The placement of electronic IIML hoarding (thanks to the conference)
• Farewell to the senior batch 
• Prof. Anadi Pande's wonderful guest lecture for ATSC

VI Semester

Sixth semester was our first encounter with electives. We had struggled very hard to choose them in the last semester and it was turn to reap the fruits. But our expectations were shattered with the Sunday and Wednesday classes too. We didn't know that this would be the price of choosing the electives :-( Infact, I felt the pain even though I had taken just 3 credits, and I think of my friends who had taken 4!! Earlier we were spoilt by choice and now our choices were spoiled. But it was a great test of our perseverance and hats off to our families too who stood by us during this busy phase of our lives!

The compulsory credit SM-II (strategy management) needs a special mention (:-). It was real fun to attend the SM-II class especially the cases (Microsoft, Apple, Sun etc) that were discussed were of great relevance to us (the IT guys). The semester was not exciting for those who had not taken DAMD subject :-). The thrill of attending the class (for some of us who had taken DAMD) added zing to the otherwise-dull-semester - it got a little similar to the I sem-MANAC.

And ya, from this semester on, all the SEM results were displayed on the notice boards (with our current & previous CGPA too) :-( Till now, it was just circulated amongst the batch but now it was an open-book in front of everyone. But it had a positive effect too - with no electronic copy one couldn't perform the mean/median/mode/& various statistical tests.!

This sem was special because, first time in WMP history, the WMP charter(!) was changed for first and last time - our semester exams were scheduled in the afternoon 2 pm - 5pm. Everyone, in fact had to take a leave from the office to take the exams. This enraged many of us, triggered many discussions, many vote counts were done, many draft (unsent) mails were written - but the Chair calmed us down that the timings would reverted back from the next semester. Lets hope to get our regular timings back!

We saw the launch of Cupshup cafe (founded inhouse by IPMX students themselves) - Now one could enjoy delicious snacks other than just the usual samosas/patties available at college canteen. Kudos to the students who identified the demand-supply gap & started an entrepreneurial venture that would serve as a great learning too. IIML noida store in campus too got inaugurated which would house the various memorabilia of IIML in the noida campus itself. However much we crib, but there is one thing in common amongst all the students in the campus - we wish to make a difference in the society we live and we want to be heard. The fact that we have joined such a rigorous course clearly exhibits the common 'fighter' attitude amongst us!

For our senior batch this semester was the last semester (their IX) and the excitement of completing the rigorous course got visible. It will be a similar day for us too soon!.


Highlights:
Rupee depreciates 20%
Sehwag's double century!
Why this Kolavari Di - over 20m views!

Fifth Semester

This semester was the last-semester-without-electives i.e. after this semester our class would be broken into sub-classes and merged with the other section after their choice of elective subjects. Birds of same feather would flock together!

Thankfully this semester, we were free from the calculators (aka our bulky financial calculators) as we had theoretical subjects like - International business environment (IBE), Strategic Management-I (SM), Management of Information Systems (MIS) and Marketing Management-II (MM). And almost all were interesting (:) with MM & IBE leading the pack. SM got interesting only after we requested for a faculty change (in fact this was a memorable sem also because the students were listened, we requested for a faculty change and it happened promptly). In the snap below, we can be seen participating in the Starbucks case with our teams participating in understanding components of value chain:

Prof Amita conducting groups for Value-Chain discussion

There was an interesting thing to note this semester. Students attended the class with more sincerity of the faculty who were relaxed on attendance. When teachers are great, students automatically attend classes.

We spent an enormous amount of time on the email-chain for selection of electives for the next term. To the extent, that people got fed-up and stopped checking those threads. It was the immense patience of the CRs and to name a few - Nilabha & Shivashish who co-ordinated well to finalize a list on electives.

Some more highlights:
- Strategy course done justice by Prof Amita
- Guest lecture (Use of MIS in Social Cause) - http://cgnetswara.org
- Prof Wadhwa & the 2.5 mark daily quiz!
- Bikramjeet (our capable CR and a great friend) left the course for a handsome overseas opportunity
- And the ANNA campaign!!

First summer break

After having slogged for almost an year juggling with office and a demanding MBA program finally holidays were here. Yuppie! We had made so many programs but finalized only one - the relaxation event:)

Luckily, I had a not-so busy office too so I felt really relaxed.

The importance of Saturday's was realized in this summer break. The weekend looked real big. It was as if prisoners were let loose for a month and they had gone berserk with their freedom! In fact, the average heartbeat rate decreased - yes (no kidding) I could feel it!

But IIML had ingrained the habit of reading and working hard that after 2 weeks of holidays I took up a project to (long aspired) development of an Android application. The idea in mind was to develop an application that would keep you away from the disturbing SPAM messages. After few weeks of effort "BLOCK SPAM SMS" was developed and is running successfully on thousands of Android phones. The best part is - it is being used more abroad than in India.


As the summer break was closing towards an end - I felt the dreaded feeling of no holidays for an year occupied the mind..

IV Semester

IV Semester turned out to be one of the toughest semesters because of 2 very practice based (with long term benefits) full units - FM (finance) and MEE (Macro Economics). The 2 other subjects: HR (Human Resources) and QAM-III (Quantitative Analysis) were more class based learning.



 Photograph of the pizza toast (below) of Ankush Ved's farewell who decided to quit our WMP course - IIML for a Singapore job offer. We lost a 'productive' team member for our projects (so selfish!). He will be deeply missed.

The newsletter for IIML - IIML News Letter April 2011.

I dared to take an off during the closure week (a week before the exams) to travel to US for a week!! Result - I missed 3 quizzes - lost 25 marks straight away :( If I pass this sem, I know am not going to repent, else I certainly would :( - Anyway enjoy the US snaps here. Had to really rush up on exam preparation after coming back. Some of IIML seniors said "if one attends the classes well - one can easily pass" but it doesn't apply well for me because I cannot pass the exams if I do not study well :-)

The IV Sem exams are finally over now. Yippie, here comes the holidays after 1 full year of slogging and learning.!! I would definitely not touch any books -- would mainly concentrate on movies / gaming / touch base with people :)

Some HighLights:

• Student Council formation 
• New WMP Chairman for IIML-Noida 
• India winning the Cricket World Cup
• IPL-4 

III Semester

The greatest excitement about the III Semester was that it had 2 half unit courses! Hence less classes and less pressure. There were times when we had just 2 classes on saturdays - and lot of holidays too - hence it was lighter semester compared to the first semester.!!

Prof. Neerja Pandey made a great impression on most of us even with the small number of classes she took. The individual video recordings were highly critical - that made us learn where we make mistakes during speaking in public.

Prof. Rastogi from IIFT tried his level best to make us learn QAM-2. This course showed us some real good examples of how surveys and their analysis is performed in the real world.

On saturdays, we used to have presentations during the half an hour break - Tanay Anand was instrumental in this great initiative - Kudos to him! I attended a few presentations and they were real good - since they were from people having immense domain knowledge. The farewell to their batch too happened in this sem - (i.e. passing out Batch# 4). Parties till now have happened at the campus (IPMX cafetaria) only, be it our freshers party or the farewell. We had started having fun in our super-tight schedules (i.e. learning to manage!)

II Semester

The II semester was little less taxing than the first one. (May be we were getting in tune to the tough demands of the Working Managers Program or could be due to the subjects mix - 2 half credit courses). But had it been the I semester I am sure the students (who left the course after the I sem) would not have left WMP..

The subjects:
MANAC - Managerial Accounting - II
QAM - Quantitative Analysis for Managers - I
LAM - Legal Aspects of Management
DWO - Design in Work Organizations

These subjects were very informative considering the learning involved:
- Costing concepts and the wonderful cases,
- DWO - excellent learning via cases: Onida case / South-west Airlines,
- LAM - was interesting (when slides were not ON:)
- QAM had statistical concepts that could help in future.

Delivery wise I would say - DWO and MANAC were the best.

The class started opening up with each other in this semester. They started sharing their marriage dates, new-born news and other big events that otherwise were not shared in the I semester. Groups for assignments and projects were formed (Remember the norming, storming, forming (not performing) :) for the submissions and tasks were divided amongst the responsible people. The 'others' stayed merry (lot of work you know:).


(Some links floated by Tanay Anand - WMP11 batch - {super senior!} )

Freshers party 08
Farewell ( WMP 09)
Visit to IIM Lucknow ( Main Campus)
Freshers party 09

Videos:
A song sung by Rajeev WMP10 ( Pics from last year fresher's)
A group song ( Just for fun) WMP 11

First Semester!

I took so much time deciding to-go-or-not for the WMP (Working Managers Program) at Noida campus of IIM Lucknow - had I met the class earlier - I would have taken a decision really early. It is a phenomenal class of people - great enthusiasts, great talent and certainly with lot of courage & energy.!

The program is being attended with a mix of managers who make "ends" (NCR ends) meet for the course. (Some of them travel almost 150 kms a day!). And I almost fainted when I heard one of the seniors flies from Hyderabad to do this prestigious course!

The first semester at IIM Lucknow - Noida campus started with a bang. All firsts! - Be it induction / first visit to library / computer database search to do Bansal Sir's assignment / reading Company Reports / getting scolded when the case-study was not read before attending the class & lastly preparing for the exams while working fulltime. It was all an experience.!

In the first semester (Jul-Sep '10) we studied interesting subjects such as Operations Management, Organizational Behavior, Management Accounting and Managerial Economics. It was also tough because most of us were engineers one had not studied any of these. We:
- Read so many books (for the first time in the last decade)
- Behaved like a student (first time in the last decade)
- Experienced squirms in the stomach when we didn't do the homework (officework for some:)

Preparation for the exams was a real nightmare - so many sleepless nights with lots of office work to do. But the good part was - The semester ended in a jiffy - highly compact - with full of new learning.!

Fresher's Party 10

Noida Campus