The End of our journey, the Beginning of yours??

Hello there, and welcome to this hallowed blog, ye common mortals! You step foot (or click mouse) on a page that has for the last three years been followed by, more than anyone else, my own classmates. Once in a while we do get the Doubting Engineers, who ask 'Can it really be true? Can an engineer really understand the world of business?' with the unspoken thought bubble 'Will I get a raise, a promotion? Will I make it large?'.

Unfortunately, the latter doesn't work out unless you put in your good deal of effort, but the first part.. YES! It is possible! There IS space in the mind of a techie for some business fundas/jargon/thingamajigs! Each batch is living proof that one can go in at one end, spouting stuff like Assets and Liabilities without knowing squat of what it really means, and come out 2.5f years later with all sorts of buzzwords aimed at those people who scoff at the concept of a bizengineer! (Or what we now call Product Managers, for lack of other jobs at the starting level that really mix the two).

So let's start at the end, shall we? This is us, branded and about to receive the ceremonial seal.

For the record, don't go on our bhola-bhaala looks. Each and every one of us is nuts. Take my word for it. Nothing like spending three years with a room full of crazies, to turn you mad yourself!

Our last official evening at IIMB had us wearing robes (which, for the record, felt hotter than a silk saree in Chennai on a May afternoon, as eagerly attested to by a sample of the women in our batch) and preparing to receive the PGSEM diploma from Mukesh Ambani. I'll take both your questions here:

1. The IIMs do not grant degrees, they grant diplomas... it's the way it is, and has been since inception.

2. Yes, Mukesh Ambani really DOES hand out each and every diploma, congratulating each person BY name when you get up close, and he does so without even the slightest grimace considering he gave out more than 500+ diplomas this year to students of the EPGP, FPM, PGP, PGPPM and PGSEM programmes.

I like to think that the point of making someone of Mr. Ambani's stature hand us our certificates at the end of the programme is to make us realize... that he too is just another man. You get a solid sense of that when you're seeing someone in person, and not just in the news. The feeling that, hey, I can BE one of these guys. It's the final piece placed in the foundation of confidence in each and every one of us. I've come to believe that this is what we come to IIMB for, to really build confidence in the fact that we CAN make a difference. Confidence, so easy to say, and so difficult to really build on.

Anyway, I can catch myself rambling.. you must forgive me, I'm an MBA after all (rather, a Post Graduate Diploma in Software Enterprise Management). Three years of listening to professors go on and on in an intense monologue can do that to you... all that bottled up pockets of wisdom, just waiting to be unleashed on the nearby unsuspecting stranger (or surfers in this case).

So, let me get down to what I have to say. Here's what you REALLY need to know about this blog. This is a week by week account of what really happens at the IIM Bangalore, in our PGSEM classes. Some of it is soporific, some of it is serious, some of it is downright funny, but I think a lot of it will tend to make you think that this is a journey that CAN be finished. I hope to show you that a techie will find what we learn here interesting, providing he is as curious about the world of business as he is about the world of 1s and 0s.

Here are some savepoints, for easy jumping:

The start of my journey into the PGSEM programme

Quarter 1 (Micro Economics, Financial Accounting, Strategic Management)

Quarter 2 (Macro Economics, Managing Organizations, Quantitative Methods 1)

Quarter 3 (Principles of Marketing, Indian and International Law, Quantitative Methods 2, Managerial Accounting)

Quarter 4 (Operations Management, Corporate Finance, Managing People and Performance in Organizations)

That's the core courses. Now, for some of the electives, the ones that I attended:

Quarter 5 (Managing Software Projects, Leadership and Organizational Change, Product Management)

Quarter 6 (Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation, Social Entrepreneurship, Business 2 Business Marketing Management, International Business Negotiation Skills)

Quarter 7 (E-business Models and Strategies, Research for Marketing Decisions, Marketing Communications)

Quarter 8 (Ethics in Business Management, Managing Offshored Software and IT Services)

Quarter 9 (Consumer Behaviour, Strategic Leadership, Personal Interpersonal Effectiveness Workshop)

Quarter 10 (Business Data Mining and Decision Models, Strategic Thinking and Decision Making)

Quarter 11 (New Enterprise Financing, Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning)

I hope you have fun, and learn something in the process. I know I did.

Quarter 11 - Week of Exams

Well, what do you know... looks like I had atleast one more post left to write. Wonder why I was so worried about making the last one so emo anyway. I wish I could wax eloquently about my exams and make you go all senti, but I'm just happy enjoying my freedom that all of this doesn't seem to matter anymore. Let the past pain and pressures be forgotten, I say...

New Enterprise Financing

It's so nostalgic and fundamentally scary when you screw up your last paper the exact same way you screwed up a paper right in quarter 1. For future reference, people, the NEF prof is crafty and irrespective of however nice a case he puts in front of you, remember, this is a finance paper and not a strategy paper. Do NOT spend a lot of time on overthinking the assumptions and setting the context in place, crunch some numbers. If you don't crunch numbers, you'll come away pleased from that section only to horrifically realize that you just have five minutes left in which to do all the finance related crunching. Not worth it guys, really not. Focus on the numbers. If there's any parting advice I want to leave for those that follow in my step into NEF, it's this... watch out for the exam paper.. do the crunching first, you can give the bhaashan to the prof at the end if you have time.

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

Right, so we didn't have an exam really... we just had the project submission. But that didn't stop us from breaking our heads, no sir. Coming in to college over the weekend, arguing the hell out of points you've already argued the hell out of... solemnly promising that your last project in college is going to be the best ever... it was all part of this. We finally managed to complete the project and print stuff out by 8:30 PM, a little more than three hours before the deadline.

I'd always pictured that moment... the last 'thunk' in the project dropbox that lies forlorn outside the office. I always imagined that it would be liberating, and the sun(or moon) would reveal itself from behind the clouds and I would be encircled by a focussed beam of light. A little trumpet sounds in the distance would be awesome too. Instead, after the aforementioned 'thunk' I didn't even hear a cricket... 'crick'. Hmm.

Whaddya know? Life goes on. I've completed the PGSEM programme, and the universe just yawned and went back to sleep.

Quarter 11 - Week 10

The final week. I feel this need to write something compelling, nostalgic, something that will bring a tear to someone's eye. Yes, I know... boredom is easy to do, but I'm looking for something poignant. And then I realize, this blog has never been about 'moving someone', it's about helping people understand that hey, this thing's hard.. but it can be done. And you'll be the better for it. If my batch.. and the batches before them... could withstand the pressure, so can you.

In a way, it's like marriage. Why should some people live a more carefree life than others anyway?

New Enterprise Financing

The prof enters in class, and you can hear the imaginary drumrolls and inspirational war music behind, when he says 'I promised to do these many cases with you, and I shall complete them!'. And the class settles in for a wordy battle, even though they're weary from completing the day's assignment from the night before. The first case was about how a newly started VC was approaching the concept of due diligence, and how they wanted to do lesser deals, so that they could concentrate on helping with the growth of those ventures. While studying this, the prof mentions that it's important to watch out for subtleties... he says that if we read this case carefully, we'd see that the company was trying to bring a new approach because of all the recent failures of VCs post the dotcom boom. Seeing how people were madly rushing in and throwing money, sometimes just after a week of not-as-due diligence, investment funds were getting very wary of VCs. Therefore, approaching the problem from a different angle, this VC was looking to take things slow so as not to make the same mistakes. Plus, they were coming up with this idea of using a framework, which could be refined over time. Such a concept, was for some reason, not already a reality with VCs, and so the prof describes how approaching issues from the concept of market need, ability to execute and capture, was an important aspect of new ventures and we looked a little deeper into the issues plaguing the venture that had approached this VC for funding.

We had a few other cases as well, but I couldn't begin to describe the subtleties, such was the nature of these cases. The prof did rush through them, we didn't get enough time to enjoy proper discussions as we'd done in some of the previous classes, but as long as the point gets through and the perspective of various players in different settings comes through, that's what we were there for, and I like to think that we had a fair bit of learning there. The prof managed to complete every single case, after all. Whether we should have finished them off so fast, is a matter for another day.

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

Same ol' story as last week. Quite a few presentations, and some of the ideas stayed back... how people like Ken Kutaragi at Sony helped start off a whole new line of businesses there, even when it looked like he had no support, or when how a single leader in Surat transformed the city after a horrible plague, by just asking for accountability and setting rules in place to enforce it. Quite a few such inspirational stories, it's too bad that we didn't have the prof discuss this with us in his own way... I'm sure we'd have gotten a fair bit out of it.

It's a bittersweet way to end the last official day of learning at IIMB... on the one hand, we just saw how peering enough at the numbers and having some judgement and luck can go a long way, and how looking for the subtleties in the case will tell you more than what's explicitly written. And on the other hand, a bunch of awesome cases, just there for the reading, can be delivered in a not-so-optimal way, because a bunch of students didn't take the trouble to read cases and play their part in an active teacher-student interaction. Every action has its consequence, and nothing hits harder than that when your very last class is not as powerful as you know it could have been.

All that stands between me and a vast expanse of time, is one exam and one project. We've done this many times before, 10 times to be precise. It doesn't seem that hard at all...

Quarter 11 - Week 9

An overload of cases totally shot any plans of a relaxed week. But then again, if you didn't feel out of your depth in the last two weeks of the course... then you aren't really feeling the 'stress' of a college education, are you? Then again, if only someone could come up with a way to make education a little less painful and still provide better learning.. that'd be awesome. OR... we students could buck up and actually read stuff diligently during the ten weeks.

Naah, that's not gonna happen.

New Enterprise Financing

We had this hugely detailed case this week, about a venture(RBS) that's looking for a second round of financing. The actual case was done in 6-7 pages, the exhibits were the gigantic part spanning almost 20-odd pages. The class begins with the prof asking us about how we would go about making the decision to invest in this company, and what are the questions that we'd like to ask about the details in this case. He reminds us that 'Asking questions is a costly process. Choose your questions well'. After a pindrop silence of a couple of minutes, the questions slowly start appearing and the prof puts them down on the board. He then moves on to describe to us the way he typically would structure questions, and breaks them down into four overarching sections. He goes on to do some number crunching, and projects some numbers for the next few years. He suggests that it's always good to start with constructing the P&L, then the cash flows, and finally come down to the balance sheet. He ends by saying that considering the type of sales projections, the financing would need to be well-defined and that probably whatever the company's trying to raise in this round might not be enough. And that given the experience of the CEO, while he's done an admirable job thus far, one would need to consider if this company requires a change in management. A very strong flashback appears in my mind, from all the way back in Managing Organizations from Q2 - 'What got you here, might not get you there'. Nice to be reminded about that again.

The second session was taken by a guest speaker from a venture capital firm, one of our prof's battle-hardened colleagues. He spoke to us about the investments made by him and others in the Indian VC space, and how the returns are reasonably through the roof (though one of our classmates pointed out that only the successes were mentioned here, and not the failures). He also took some time to describe the type of companies here, and how many of them were solving problems specific to India, and how that made these ventures special. He also described how certain sectors in India actually helped boost the local venture ecosystem (For e.g. the telecom sector helped build the image of some of their Indian suppliers, which then let them play at a global scale). Had this been our first encounter with a VC, it would have been an eye-opening experience. But maybe there's just nothing different that VCs do from one another. They're all playing to a standard set of rules, but where the individual scenarios unfold slightly differently from one another. The fun must be coming from each individual experience of financing a company, because it sure as hell doesn't seem that fun from the description of the process.

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

The less said, the better. Students came by, one team after another, to present their topic for the week. A couple of them had the audacity to not even bother to prepare for their material, or to check if their slides appeared properly on the machine it was supposed to be presented on. The prof's typical fire was missing from the stage, as he sat as part of the class, interjecting with a few key points now and then. Urging us to read specific sections again, he mentioned how thrilling those cases feel when you read them for the first time, and that it can be quite inspirational to us. I'll just take his word for it, because our presenters definitely don't seem to feel that way.

I can't believe that we have to submit ourselves to one more week of cold, dissected case presentations next week. It's a horrible way to end such an amazing course, and an amazing three years at college. But I guess, as a class, we did fail the prof. One lesson for life -> You don't need to be the one who actually screwed up, you just have to be in the same place at the same time... you'll get screwed anyway.

One week left. Life beckons... where am I... who am I?

Quarter 11 - Week 8

Camels are very interesting creatures. They are called the ships of the desert, but they come with their own humps... that's like a conflict of interest (you know, the vehicle and the road?). But irrespective of hare-brained meanderings at 1 AM, the funny thing is this particular creature came up quite often in this week's sessions. Oddly enough, it was repeatedly spoken about by our guest speakers, both entrepreneurs from different courses. It was the standard line of 'the camel and the man in the tent' (about how you slowly inch your way into the tent and force out of the 'incumbent'). The other camel incident is related to the 'one straw that broke the camel's back'. More on this below...

New Enterprise Financing

This week started off with a guest lecture by Kiran Nadkarni. He's well acquainted with our prof, and is also currently an entrepreneur... you probably know his current venture, if not him.. it's a not-so-small enterprise called Kaati Zone. So our man takes us through his journey and how he came to be in this business. Apparently he's a hardcore numbers driven guy, but he likes to fly off the seat of his pants once in a while. He used to work in the financing domain, and one of his last activities as an employee was to start and lead the ICICI Ventures endeavour. After a while, he had done his time, and so decided to quit and shift to the US. Somewhere in the next few years, he began to get THE itch. And so, he decides to face the world from the opposite side of the table - as an entrepreneur.

He walks us through the business that he's built up, and how he came to today's state. He also describes how he made a few nutty mistakes, which as a prior investor he should have known better. He went on to elaborate on the importance of team work, and how its good to have people with diverse experience along with you to make the journey a little less disconcerting. Not too much finance-related takeaway, but quite a bit of realistic advice for potential venture creators.

The next session was on a case about an investment firm which has just found that one of its investees is choosing to hide critical elements in his updates, which they should be concerned about. And we come to the understanding that providing for means of control is always an important aspect of financing. To keep entrepreneurs/investors in line. and not to run towards their own selfish end goals, certain checks and balances should be enforced.

We had a couple more theory papers to discuss in an extra set of classes that were scheduled on Sunday, where the prof takes us through understanding what goes into deciding the right moment to approach the markets for an IPO, and about whether or not an entrepreneur should go along with investors who he doesn't trust. We ended by discussing the fundas of one of our assignments, that was supposed to help us get a hold on the concept of DCF for valuation.

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

The prof walks in with total enthusiasm to discuss the day's cases, and asks out in a cheerful voice 'How many of you have read cases x, y and z'.Slowly, hands start popping into the air, and the prof looks confused as he asked why approximately half the class hadn't. The smile becomes a little less sure now, and then he asks 'I really don't know how to proceed... you guys have to help me out here. How do I discuss this case?!'. Then the serene, yet impish smile we all know comes out and he says... well, I told you I'll not keep unnecessary expectations from you. So here goes, for the next two weeks, you guys will prepare presentations on the day's case, and describe it to the class. I'll sit where you're sitting now, and mark this as part of your class participation.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this looks like that one straw that finally broke the camel's back. I'll reserve my comments on the matter, all I will say is that I was quite disappointed with my class' attitude. This is my last quarter, and a course as important as REIL did not deserve this end.

The prof takes on the day's cases anyway... they're about Dainik Bhaskar, Titan Edge and CavinKare. The underlying concept of all of them appeared to be the same, in the face of adversity, how does one find innovative means to come out at the front... and how! All these cases were about bearing down on the unsurmountable, and just making things work. How Dainik Bhaskar got into every new geography as No.1 or No.2 on day 1 due to their innovative market research methods, or about CavinKare's sly guerilla attacks on the traditional and large FMCG brands, again through interaction with the customer, gives you the feeling that anything can be done, if you really believe in it. Titan Edge was more on how to break technological barriers and challenge incumbent wisdom, thereby giving you a place in history. Just because leading experts in watches couldn't find a way to make watches very slim, Titan found a way. One that pleasantly surprised many of the large watch players into having renewed respect for India's innovation capabilities.

The second session was a guest lecture, where we were taken through the entrepreneur's journey from idea to execution. There's a lot of customer interaction that seems to happen, not to mention strong changes to a business model depending on its viability. Here too we are made to understand the important of teamwork in a venture, and that of hard work.

The assignments are now piling on faster, and harder. This week had our teams staying up late nights to crunch the forecast numbers of the venture. Next week we have two assignments, and the week after... there are some very critical submissions. Finally, we have exams... but meh... who really cares about exams when you have periodic supervision and grading.

P.S. 2 weeks left.

Quarter 11 - Week 7

There's a lot of buzz in the air, it's the last fest of the year... this is the time when the students kick their boots off, give their books some rest and take part in Unmaad, IIMB's very own cul-fest. There's a buzz all around, and even though some classes have both PGP and PGSEM students in it, they go half-empty as people are busy bunking for that one last time. In a few weeks, our time here will be done, now's the time for a final futile attempt to hold on to the feel of our college days. I can see a white light at the end of this road, and there's this huge empty white canvas there... the future looks bright, or is it blank? I don't know... I'm just taking the colours I've accumulated here, let's see what I might do... in just a few weeks time.

New Enterprise Financing

Aah, I've missed this feeling for a while now. It's also going to be the last time I feel this way. It's the sudden realization that the speed is picking up. If there's one thing that I've harped on about each quarter, it's the fact that what starts off at a snail's pace in most courses suddenly builds to a blistering pace, and you've just got to keep running and running and never stop. And so the same happens with NEF! Till last week, I could afford to think of doing the case work 'during the next week'. This week's pace and the schedule from next week has put a rest to any of those hopes. I now have to catch up with a whole bunch of practicals, I can already sense myself getting into an Excel-filled nightmare.

This week was about the concept of how different the viewpoints are - of the entrepreneur and the investor. Since the future is quite uncertain, both of them have conflicting views on the value of the firm. The entrepreneur paints the most optimistic picture and expects an exceedingly high value. The investor paints a pessimistic/cynical picture and suggests a much lower value, since he expects a larger share of the pie to come to him. We had quite a bit of elaboration on term sheets. You remember the control vs. economics argument I made the last time? Apparently the term sheet is an informal agreement that sets the rules of engagement for the investor and entrepreneur. Once this is agreed upon, the investors pours in his money, gets on the board and they all try to live happily till the period of investment matures. So the case on Avvai Electricals shows the different views that the investor and promoter have. The second session is about the aspect of 'Exit'. What the prof's trying to bring out here is the various aspects of how and when to exit, and what sort of controls the investors can set in place to ensure that the promoters don't go all maverick and try funny business.Towards the end the prof just went into a blitzkrieg mode, and was pelting funda after funda which I don't seem to remember now. Yet, looking at the slides will refresh my memory. All I remember thinking was 'This is heavy stuff! Revise again!!'

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

It looks like we've fallen back to our wastrel days again... very few read the case, or the associated readings for anything this week. The prof has anyway set some low expectations, and he knows enough not to expect anything from students during fest-days, so he actually took some time to explain the theory and essence of the articles of reading, and tackled the cases. The first set of cases were about Arvind Eye Hospital in relevance to one of Peter Drucker's last articles - The Theory of Business. This essentially discusses the need for organizations and leaders to question what their purpose is, what their understanding of the environment is to ensure if they're still on the right track or if what they considered static has changed over a period of time. As an example, Kodak that was majorly into film photography didn't adapt fast enough, and is now on a fast decline. Many such cases of 'yesterday's behemoths and today's starving creatures' come to mind, and the usual thread that joins them all is 'Why were these guys blind to the changing scene? What caused the stagnation, when the world was passing them by?'.

The second session was about business models, business plans and knowing when to reinvent the business model. Almost an hour was spent by the prof going over some of the fundamental aspects of strategy and business models, and then he moves on to the actual discussion of the case. The cases were supposed to be on Tanishq's growth and NSK Software Technologies (damned if I know who they are, I should read the case!), and we tried mapping Tanishq's situation to the points we had jotted down about business models. Anyway, the prof wants us to go over the software case as he says it'll have a really good description of how to maintain a business model and all that.

Things are coming to an end, I can feel it. Pssst... only three weeks left.

Quarter 11 - Week 6

Coming back after a break seems to have caused a memory lapse when it came to classes. For some reason, there was very few actual readings for this week, so it was more like a two week vacation. Profs come in to class, see our vacant stares and go 'Good Lord, don't tell me we need to do a flashback to the events from a couple of weeks ago!'. It's a good thing they're able to do a 10-minute recap after which our vacant stares are more related to the high-frequency transmissions being broadcast rather than the connection/flow that we're supposed to be going through. In any case, it's time to buck up... the assignments and projects have begun to exert some pressure.

New Enterprise Financing

The prof quickly wraps up the Kakofonix case, and moves on to Marconi. Marconi's a lot simpler than all the other cases thus far. It talks of how founders expect to raise capital through multiple rounds from investors, and what percentage of share they're willing to part with. Once all of this is calculated, and when we see how dilution works out in advanced rounds, we begin to add some realism. It's like one of the investors asks a question after pondering for a while... 'But, what if we don't get our promised return. What if the valuation actually drops?'. Uh oh, go the other investors, we should think of that. A little huddle and argument later, they proudly come around and say that 'All right, if the price of the share goes down, then we get to have an anti-dilution clause, thereby protecting the final value that accrues to us'. So all of a sudden, the entrepreneur who's expecting to hold 55% of the company (as an example), ends up with just 6% (again, an example)... because to ensure that investors can exit at their target value, SOMEBODY has to give up share and it can't be other investors. Anyway, in this case, the terms also suggest that the valuation can go anywhere between 60% and 140% of the expected value, and that the founders dont want to go under 26% share, and investors don't want to get under 50%. So we look at all the extremes, to see how it pans out and what could be the ultimate value that all shareholders receive. We also looked at a view of approaching funding, and how entrepreneurs have a fundamental issue to figure out - do they want to create value or do they want to control the firm. Economics vs. control, the prof calls it, so we look at that aspect and see how anti-dilution, preference shares, call/put options, drag along/tag along options play a part in this whole shenanigan. Awesome stuff!

Reinvention through Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Learning

The prof now moves away from the ownership and intrapreneurship module, and tries to help us get more onto the plane of self-knowledge and mastery. First off, he asks us to describe what we proudly hold dear as Indian, stuff we don't find elsewhere. So people give out stuff like charity, friendliness, tolerance etc. etc. lots of nice thingies that we think we're proud of. We're then made to sit through an hour long video that describes the predicament of farmers in rural India, we have a lot more people out there than in urban India, and we get a glimpse of how bad their situation is. We see example after example of what prompts people to commit suicide, and at the end of the session, we really wonder if we are of any use. Sitting in our own comfortable cocoons, we shut our eyes from everything bad. It's sad when we think that India's more known for its generosity, when we are shown evidence after evidence to the contrary. Shows just how little we know about what's happening here.

If that wasn't hard enough, the next session was a guest lecturer who speaks of how old age is a slowly approaching iceberg. The speaker talks of the increase in the number of separation cases of old folks from the family, the emergence of old age homes, and the intolerance shown by today's busy youth to their parents. We hear of examples where the elderly are 'forced' into grandparent-hood, just because the parents dont have time. And when the kids grow up, these very folk who helped settle them, the grandparents, are treated as useless pieces of furniture around the house... just obstacles that come in the way.

This week definitely shook me, with so many problems all around us, I count myself very fortunate that my issues are not as dire. I have the choice and freedom to attend classes at one of India's most prestigious institutions, to spend my time anyway I want, to talk to whoever I want to... how many others can claim the same? And yet, what am I doing with all these privileges...