I turned 26 this week

Hi,
I don't know how many people are still following this blog... But then again what is there to follow, if there are no updates!! I turned 26 this week, in the most Danish of b'day celebrations. And it is quite strange what age can do to u...

I suddenly realised that the clock is ticking by. Everything that I wanted to do in life - now there is one year less in which to do it. And that includes this blog. I have told only half my story - or is it one - third - I don't know. That I will discover, along with you my reader

It tooks me 10 mins to even understand where I was in my story - it's been a year and a half and my memory is a bit rusty (atleast that is my excuse). But now I have found the thread... It time to reveal my experiences during the 2nd semester of my MBA. All the secrets that were locked up in a place people love to call "down under" ??!!!

Good to be back,

Suraj

Business case competitions - a lost ca(u)se

Hi

Work for me has started in full swing. 6 modules is tough. I started with an Asia Pacific meeting at 11, we had a project presentation from 12 to 1, class upto 3, a fund management meeting from 3 to 4, marketing club meeting from 4 to 5.30, another fund management meeting from 5.30 to 6.30, a Channels meeting from 5.30 to 6.30 and then I headed back home. Amidst all this there are a number of other activities. Amidst the chaos there are mails from biz case competitions which I would like to enter. And have been wanting to since I joined NUS.

We did take a decent shot at a couple of competitions. In my first term, I tried to enter the IIMPact competition. We had a team of four and we tried to come up with a business plans which would save our environment. Our efforts went nowhere. The best we could do was the concept of a eco-friendly cup which could be used for targeted advertising. Eventually an NUS team won the competition.

We did better @ Intaglio, IIM Calcutta's business case competition. We were a team of 3 this time and we created the go-to market strategy for a shoe company. It was the product of a week's hard work. We were selected but the finals but we couldn't make a mark there. The sad part was I was stuck in China and couldn't go with my team. So, my dream of making it to a business case competition remains.

IIM Lucknow's treatise was my parting shot. I came up with the Educational reforms for a modern India. I was waitlisted for the finals but I was stuck in China at that time. So, it didn't go any further.

So, the dream remains and I wonder whether I will fulfill it. Meanwhile I open my mailbox and another mail for a business case competition. I am tempted to start again. But then there is 6 modules and its time for another meeting...

To see the winning team @ IIMPact, click here  

Cheers,

Suraj

Good to be back @ NUS

Hi

Its official!!!! There is something magical about this place. Some part of my heart will always remain @ NUS. Six months since I had last seen here, it was exciting to go back... Almost like a second honeymoon.

This time there was an added sense of anticipation. A new batch had come in and along with that new dreams, new expectations. Its been barely a week. Already there has been a fresher's party, a welcome lunch and an orientation program. And to add icing to the cake, I have six modules to complete. 

The ultimate million dollar question still persists. When will I get a job??? And where will it be???

All in all, there are exciting times ahead. And, of course, I still have a huge chunk of my past to be re-discovered through my blog. Its great to have u as a part of my journey

As a parting comment, I say "Buckle your seat belts"

To exchange or Not to exchange

Hi
This blog's title is a shameless rip-off from Shakespeare's Hamlet (To be... Or not to be). But the trigger for this mail is original and it happened a couple of days ago. I received a mail from the MBA office stating that Micro-Economics will not be offered in the coming semester. When I joined my MBA I didn't know much about Marketing or Finance. I joined out of curiosity about Fiscal deficit, Trade Surplus, Forex reserves, etc. I wanted to know what these were and how they worked. Now, I am doomed. These terms are destined to remain 'latin' forever.

This is one of the drawbacks of the 'Exchange Program'. This blog is dedicated to those people who have/will face a similar dilemma. Deciding between the merits/demerits of the exchange program. My future blogs shall detail the merits of exchange. So, this blog is about what I lost because I went on exchange.

My biggest loss was Cerebration. This is our annual business case event which we position as the 'Biggest Business Case event' in the world. I was in Australia when Cerebration happened. It was funny seeing mails from MBA office pleading with our guys to come and attend the event. While I was desperate to attend the event but could not.

The other loss is internships/job search. Searching for an internship/job is exceedingly difficult when you are on exchange (will share my experiences in another post). There are several reasons for this - visa laws, emigration rules, culture of the place, etc.

Anyone going on exchange cannot participate in the MBA Club elections. So, anyone having these aspirations must make this trade-off. Competing for the other positions is tough as well. Because canvassing for votes is more difficult when on exchange. But we did have one exchange student winning his election.

Finally, there is a loss of friends. This is a hard one. Because for 4 months, you learn to laugh and cry with these folks. Now, you must find a new shoulder on which to vent your emotions. This is not easy in a foreign country where you meet a limited set of people, mostly in a class environment. And these folks already have their set of friends.

So, To exchange or Not to exchange. This is a choice each individual must make. For me, I was willing to accept these trade-offs. And what I got in return far exceeded what I lost.

Cheers,
Suraj

Winter Internships - A Blind Date

Hi
I begin with an apology (the worst way to begin anything). I have been extremely busy in the last one week. Due to which I have not been able to blog. Last week was also a lot of fun. Working with a bunch of consultants, I was exposed to tons of jargons - "technocommercial" "a 20000 feet thought" "sales clawback period" "biz pulse" "YTD" ... Anyway this week looks a little more sane and so I'm back.

After the final exams, we had a month's break. Too long a break if you ask me. Specially for a shortened 18 month program. Most of us opted to/had to go back home. There were quite a lot who tried for a winter internship. Unfortunately, only a few succeeded. I don't know the exact numbers. Because as the term went on, the internship search became a 'Sherlock Holmes' mystery. People didn't want to tell others whether they were applying, where they were applying to and what their status was.

The bottomline is that the winter internship is like a 'Blind Date'. You always have a shot at success. But the chances of things working out are remote. By my estimate, around 10 in the batch got a winter internship. Companies varied from KPMG, RBS, TATA and a few other small boys.

As for me, initially I applied to a few companies. Nothing worked out. And my parents wanted to come down to Singapore during December. So, I gave up the ghost. My parents, sister and uncle came down to Singapore. We went to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Macau. It was a fun trip and a great learning experience. But this trip had nothing to do with NUS. And this blog is positioned as my experience @ NUS MBA. So, I shall not delve much into the trip.

My exchange program at MBS was to start on Feb 4th. But NUS opened a couple of weeks earlier. So, it was an extended holiday for me. Whenever I went to college, people kept asking me, "What are you doing here?" And to be honest, I asked the same question "What am I doing here?". Just the after-effects of an overly long vacation.

Cheers,
Suraj

My final exams - And I'm back

Hi
I am not sure how many of you have noticed/missed that I have not posted a blog for the last few days. The reason is that the good news has finally arrived. My project has been signed off and work has begun in earnest. It has been exciting and enlightening, working with a bunch of consultants and with company insiders highly cynical of consultants. The last few days have been crazily busy and I have not had time to blog. Though I may not be as prolific as before, I shall ensure that the blog remains active. That was my promise when I started the blog and I make that promise again.

So, where are we on my little trip to the past? I think I have pretty much covered every major event during my first term. So, its time for the climax. My final exams!! After my mid-term debacle, I was prepared for this one. I had started studying continuously and taking an active part in my projects. And I got lucky with my exam time-table. I cannot emphasize enough the need to get lucky on the exam time-table. One of the sections, the FM1 guys, got a shocking time-table. They had exams on continuous days. As a result, they were screwed. FM3 got lucky - both during mid-term and during the final exams (wonder whether this is a tip for future batches or the law of averages will even things out). I had 3 days break for the economics exam. This was important for me because I was least confident about economics and I had performed badly in my mid-terms.

Exam week started with OM (Ops mgmt) exam. It was a strange exam. We had to answer online. The questions were opening up in the IVLE (our intranet) on Saturday morning. And we had to submit our answers by Sunday night. The questions were case based but tricky. It took longer to answer than we thought. For all the group work, it took me the entire weekend to answer the questions and submit them. Got a B+ for this one.

The Marketing exam was a complete lottery. Anyone taking a course with Prof. Leong Siew Meng be warned!! There is an entire book on Marketing Management in Asia to study. The book is written jointly with Philip Kotler. It makes for an interesting read. But the problem with the book is that it is superfluous. There is so much reptitive data that it gets tough to read the entire book, specially before the exam. We had the last few chapters for the finals exam (the first few had come for the mid-terms). I was in a group of 3 to 4 people who tried to split the chapters to read through. Then we would teach each other our respective chapters. All this was to no avail because of the nature of the exam. It was objective questions and they came from any sub-topic in any page. And it was virtually impossible to remember all the details. But, as I said, I got lucky. I had prepared really well and got more objective questions right than most. I got an A+ on this one (the only A+ in my entire course).

Financial Accounting was a fun exam for me. I got the cash flows right for the first time in my life. In general, the exam was a little tough. But I did decently enough. And was quite satisfied with my grades - A-

Financial Mgmt was an easy question paper with one tricky question. Again, I was well prepared and did pretty well. After all, I wanted to specialize in finance and my grades in the finance subjects were crucial. Again a decent grade - A-

And finally - Economics. I cannot explain how disappointed I was/am with this one. I studied very hard for this one. I had covered all the chapters, knew the theory inside out. I was fairly well versed with the problems as well. But the question paper had 5 questions for 5 chapters. This in a book with about 20 chapters. And we had the entire book for the exam. All the questions were problems which were pretty simple. I was so shocked with the question paper that I forgot how to solve the problems. But as the exam went on I recollected my composure and managed to answer the problems. MBA exam grades are relative in nature. Such an easy exam meant that most people did well in the exam. Though, in general, this is good - it wasn't good for my grades. I had screwed my mid-terms and needed a decently tough paper to get back. It didn't happen. Got a B+

This is also one of the paradoxes of the MBA grading system. Though you might want everyone to do well, if everyone does well you are screwed. Chances are you will be middle of the pack.

All in all, I got a CAP (cumulative score) of 4.25 out of 5. I don't know where this stands among the batch. I was to learn later that asking about the CAP is a highly sensitive topic. It took a few snubs for me to learn this lesson. As a friend candidly asked me, "Would you ask for the CAP if you had done badly?" And I think that is a fair comment. I would not have ventured about the CAP, if my score was below 4. It was selfish of me to ask others about the CAP when their score could have been lower. It wasn't intentional but it was wrong. And that is my tip for future students. CAP is a sensitive topic better left alone.

I was pleased with my performance in the final exams. It took me to the top tier of the b-school batch. I was a long distance off from the topper (CAP of 4.7) but I was there where I belonged. I was back!!!

Cheers,
Suraj

Project and Deadlines; Deadlines and Projects

Hi
I was caught in the midst of a heated discussion today at the breakfast table. The topic was how to make Tata Indicom the premier mobile operator in the country. The only way the Tatas can achieve this is through churn (acquiring the customers of a competing network operator). Now, this is not easy. Because if a customer churns why should he come to TATA and not go to Vodafone? Besides, why should a customer churn? Bharti, the country's premier mobile operator, owns a powerful brand, Airtel. It is incredibly fast to the market. They came up with their m-commerce ads (currently running on Indian television featuring Madhavan and Vidhya Balan) a couple of days after the RBI gave the green signal to mobile commerce. The recent acquisition of Spice by Idea demoted us from being the 5th largest player to the 6th largest. So, the business case is dire. And the people on my breakfast table were the cream of the company. One of them is part of the core strategy team in the Corporate head office, another is a core member of the marketing team of a "to be launched" new product division and so on. Bottomline, these guys could make a difference in the organization. Yet, for the last one month I had seen this topic being debated and debated. The people on the breakfast table changed but the arguments remained. And everyone had differing views on how the growth could be achieved. But they kept talking and nothing was being done. It reminded me of that IBM ad "Stop Talking, Start Doing." This makes me ask a controversial question? Are we management folks more inclined to talk rather than execute? Certainly, IBM thinks so!

The Business case above represents a sample of the business cases we had to handle for our first term projects. Personally, I love these projects. I believe that is what makes b-school life interesting and differentiates it from an under-graduate experience. B-schools believe that these projects simulate a business environment for students. Agreed, except with one big difference. In projects you have nothing to lose. At a maximum, it will effect your grades. But in business - politics, livelihood, greed, fear - all play a part. There are a whole gamut of emotional attributes at play. A b-school business case or project cannot simulate these emotions.

The one emotion that they can simulate is fear of Deadlines. And I faced plenty of it during my first semester. My first project submission was Statistics. For stats, we were given the option of choosing our projects. We had to take one key decision for the project - did we want to do primary research or did we want to download secondary data. We settled for the latter. Mostly because of the amount of work involved for primary research and the unreliability of the data. There were some teams which opted for primary research but eventually had to manipulate their data to achieve the conclusion they wanted. But we found it incredibly hard to find relevant secondary data. Most of the secondary data suffered from insufficient data points required for a regression analysis (on which our project was based). Finally, we settled on a project about the 'Crime patterns in the United States'. We got the data from the Department of Justice. Our team's magician was Fred. He drove the project and did the core work. If not for him we would have struggled to finish the project. And even today I don't understand the tables that went into the project. But Fred knew what he was talking about and that is what matters.

In a generic sense, team-work is great for projects and helps divide work. But I have seen projects completed with the dazzle of that one "magician" in the team. Subsequently, these magicians are either in great demand or scorned upon. If he is a magician and can still work in a team (not as easy as it sounds), he is much in demand. If he is a magician but thinks everyone else is shit and cannot work as a part of the team he is scorned upon.

The project I enjoyed most was Marketing. We had to create a marketing plan for "Formula 1 -Singapore". The project was exciting and it was the only one where I put my heart into it. Different teams put in different levels of effort for the project. There was one team which commissioned a market survey to understand the F1 customer. They actually paid outsiders to conduct this survey. While there were other teams, which started work with barely a week remaining. We were somewhere in-between having started work with a month to go. And I truely believe that we had the best caption among the teams - "Racing into the night". It reflected our positioning for Singapore having the world's first formula 1 night race.

Our accounting project was due to be submitted on the same day as the Marketing project. We had a fun time that night. Our Marketing and Accounting teams were working till 5 in the morning. I remember shuffling time between Marketing and Accounting during the previous evening and well into the night. At times I wondered what was I working on - Marketing or Accounting. While my Marketing project had taken a decent shape, our Accounting project was a mess. We were supposed to compare the Financial Statement of HP and Dell and evaluate which company was better poised for delivering 'shareholder value' (another buzz word!). The basic criteria for the project was to compare like firms from a list of firms populated by the professor. And we had one team which wanted to prove that HP and Dell were not like firms. So, our project had to first prove that they were like firms. Only, if we did this, would the remainder of the project be evaluated. The problem with our Accounting project was that it was 'nobody's baby'. So, it stayed incomplete till the last minute. We had to submit the project by 12 noon. We had our marketing class from 9 to 12. I remember working on the Accounting project right through the Marketing Class. I exchanged mails with my team members through the class. We even discovered a major blunder half-way through marketing class. With 10 minutes left, we submitted our Accounting project which I will best describe as 'half-baked'.

We had two projects to submit for Financial Management. One at the mid-term stage and one at the final stage. The first project was about finding NPV (net present value) of a particular project. I knew nothing about this project. I had an excellent team which didn't need my contributions. The second project was about calucating the WACC (weighter average cost of capital) for two firms. This was a pretty simple project which we finished in a day. By this time, I had suffered my mid-term exam catastrophe (to read about this, click Mid-term catastrophe) and thus actively contributed to my projects.

The final project was Operations Management. We did a project on the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) of Singapore. This was quite a simple project which was done in a couple of days. Some basic shit about the ICA and how they could improve their operations. That is the great thing about strategy. You can write any 'shit' about it. Trouble is, very little of the 'shit' works!

Economics and the intensive modules did not have projects. The other sections had economics projects. So, I guess we got away with one. Though I would have loved an economics project. It is a wonderful way to round-off all the theory you have learnt.

During the course of these projects, I met some wonderful people. And typically, project members become the best of friends. And after some time the cycle reverses. The best of friends become project members. Projects are where diversity in backgrounds really helps. During our Marketing project, Anh came up with the idea of dividing our marketing plan across phases. And these phases would overlap each other to save time. She showed this diagrammetically which made our plan easy to understand. This was possible because she was from a Marketing background. This was all new to me. All in all, the projects were a lot of fun and a lot of learning.

And once the project were done, thats when the real fun started. The final exams were due in a week's time. And there was no break in-between.

Cheers,
Suraj