What a hectic week !!

It had never dawned to me how hectic MBA is until last Wednesday. I was talking to my team regarding the various submission we had to make in coming week. This was the list:

group assignments:
Stats project step1 - 10th Oct
FIT presentation - 14th Oct
MPO case analysis - 16th Oct

individual assignments:
FIT - 21st Oct
MPO - 23rd Oct

We had planned our team assignments properly, so there were no problems there. But time required for individual assignments are grossly undervalued & we need to slog over now.

In between all this we needed to make time to prepare for the exams starting from 20th Oct, i.e. from next week.

Time to head back now..
bye..

Indian Railways @ Rotman

We got this article from our Media Relations office this tuesday:


Indian Railways Return to UofT’s Rotman School of Management.

Toronto – For the second year in a row, a program at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management will provide a look at the latest trends in management thinking and transportation for 40 senior managers from The Indian Railways, the second largest railway network in the world. Managers, from the finance and human resources functions of The Indian Railways, will be in Toronto from September 22 to October 4.

The two week program will provide participants with focused classes in finance, human resources, strategy and marketing. In addition to the classroom-based activities, the participants will have site visits to transportation and logistics firms.

“The Indian Railways have underwent a grand transformation in recent years becoming one of the most successful transportation companies in the world,” says Prof. Dilip Soman, Corus Chair in Communications Strategy, at the Rotman School, who is the academic director of the program. “Education and training, such as this program, are important for the company to continue its renaissance.”

The Indian Railways is the second largest railway network in the world and the largest civilian organization under a single management. It carries over 13 million passengers and 1.2 million tons of freight every day, runs 12,000 trains daily with nearly 8,000 Railway stations.

The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.



This explained why we were seeing so many well dressed Indian men & women in the School over the weekend. I has initially thought that Rotman had rented out our CIBC Hall on 3rd floor for some Indian business meeting..


Later, I was able to collect some more info from Prof. Dilip Soman. This program was previously being done at NYU-Stern & Prof. Soman was instrumental in getting this program to Rotman.


Indian Railways has been a life-line of sorts for India, ever before Independence. So much so that there's a separate Railway Budget presented by the Central government.
It has been performing brilliantly well of late, very much inline with the economic boom in India. Contrary to most of the PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) that have crumbled post liberalization, Indian Railways has been one of the few organizations that was able to capitalize on the booming economy.

Imparting top-class business education to top management is one facet of its willingness to innovate & revamp itself. But I think this is one the most important steps towards nurturing a better organization. Its this top management that's going back to implement new strategies to increase profits & at the same time move to around tonnes of freight & millions of Indians at least possible prices.

This program is going to be a good image building for Rotman as well. Now you know Rotman is behind all those innovations Indian Railways is going to roll out in the coming years. Hope delayed trains will be a thing of the past soon.. :)

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RIM's shares down by 25% on a single day

If you are in Canada, you would realize the weight of this blog's title. Of late there's been a strong correlation between RIM's performance & TSX's performance.
RIM is a household pride & is the newest face of Canadian technology prowess.

Today's value is the lowest in more than a year.
There have been two opposing reasons given for this downturn.
Some market analysts say that this negative dip is in line with the current global cues that hasn't spared even the best performers. More specifically, RIM has been over-evaluated for quite sometime & this downward slide was market correction.

On the other hand, RIM sympathizers argue that the reason was that RIM's Q3 results haven't met the market expectations. The market was expecting a return of 98 cents per share whereas the actual earnings have been around 88 cents!!
The markets may seem to be a little too severe on this company. Given the kind of cutthroat competition that's happening in mobile handset business, its imperative for RIM to invest more into R&D and bring out several more products to retain its market share.

RIM officials have clarified that R&D costs that were incurred in the present quarter will show profits in the coming quarters.

yet another new bottom..

Whoever thought that we are coming out of the slump of sub-prime crisis after the Citibank & Bear Stearns turmoils was mistaken. He would have been under a swirl of shocks in the past few weeks. It was Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac first & followed by Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & AIG on a row this week.


There's a heated debate on why should the US Fed government bailout these firms for their follies at the cost of tax payers' money.
It seems to me that the sub-prime crisis has turned out to be a night-marish situation to the entire Capitalist society. The government is bailing out these firms so that they survive to disburse more loans to the people, people who are already neck deep with loan defaults.

But it seems this is the only easy & visible path that the Fed officials can see as of now. US is the richest country, its GDP is $13.8 trillion, Japan, the 2nd richest is a paltry $4.3 trillion. Developing economies such as China, India & Brazil are extremely dependent on the US for selling its goods. So if there's none buying in the US, these countries take a big hit. Although there are burgeoning domestic markets, they are in no comparison to the US market & they need more time to grow to the size of the US. So retaining the US market liquidity is crucial in maintaining global economic stability.



Its believed that the market goes into this scary, bearish mode every 5 years. Last time it happened during the Internet companies fallout & 9/11 crisis. That slump wiped out a good portion of the enthusiastic Internet startups in the Silicon Valley. The picture has never been the same for those who survived. They never again saw the kind of appreciations they saw in the last 1990's.

The situation today is somewhat more difficult. The companies involved are the biggest names in the financial world, the amounts involved are way beyond a common man's imagination. The blood-bath seems to be not over yet. How will the future be for those who survive this?

Have we hit the bottom? Or are we still to see it? Are we getting back to revival?

camp Manitou - an unforgettable experience

"Dude, this orientation camp was so dis-orienting" -- this was what one of my friends said after we came back from the 3 day camp to Camp Manitou (http://www.manitoucamp.com)
It was 3 days of exhausting fun. We had lots of team building competitions during day & we then partied all night. The entire period was so action packed that we didn't have time to gasp a breathe.



On the way to the camp, we had speed networking sessions (a 2nd year's idea, inspired by speed dating) by which we were supposed to meet many of our bus mates. I had a nice conversation with Jen Provan, a sailor who had represented Canada in Beijing'08.

After reaching the camp, we were shown to our cottages where we threw our luggage & headed to the dining hall to have lunch.
After lunch we had the Finance competition. Were given about 30 cards of 4 different colors, each representing land, labor, market & money. The mission of the competition was to form as many possible combinations of land, labor, market & money of the same color. If we needed any cards to complete our combination, we could trade it with any of our cards in a trading session that was held for 10 mins at 3 intervals. My team ended up garnering 880 points, the winning team had about 1200 points.


After the competition, the Desi gang went out to play cricket. Guess where we played? In the baseball ground. Indian improvisation right over there.. :)

Later, our Dean, Roger Martin visited the camp. We had an interactive discussion about his brainchild & the main buzzword at Rotman: Integrative Thinking.

That evening we had a casino event hosted by the faculty, including the Dean & the Vice Dean. We got to play with all these big guns in a very informal environ. There were free drinks to further relax our nerves when talking to them.. :)



Next day morning after the breakfast, we had the Consulting contest. The case was to come out with a recommendation for a leading credit card company that wants to enter the calling card market.
We came out with quite an out-of-the-box idea & we presented it quite well, so we got a clearance for the final round.
But in the finals, we missed out the 1st place by just 2 pts & had to content with the 2nd prize.

After lunch we had one of the best events in the camp: the Olympics. We were again split up into teams of 5 & were to play some of the more popular games such as basket-ball & volley-ball and some customized games such as "Grapefruit passing" (its a very interesting game, you've to play to know it). I got to play ice-hockey for the 1st time & I thoroughly enjoyed it. I even scored the winning goal for my team !!
By the end of the Olympics all of us were completely, all-and-out exhausted.
The soccer fans still had some batteries left, we went & had a good game of soccer.

As the sun came down, the party animals started coming out. Today's theme was movie costumes. We had been previously informed about the theme, so all of us had brought some kind costume along with us. I had brought a flashy "jhink-chak" shirt that I had brought in Pune, a pair of sun glasses. These were enough to make people believe that I was some Bollywood star.
One guy in my cottage had a costume of Ghost Busters while another had dressed himself as some Star Wars characher.
At the venue, it was amazing to see so many colorful people. One girl was a Marlyn Manroe in her famous white dress, there were a bunch of pirates & a whole lot of Jokers, inspired by the cult icon Heath Ledger. Can't forget his line "do you how I got these scars?"
Some of the Desi gang recognized me as Rajinikant, so I decided that's what I am gonna be. I was boasting some of the heroics of Rajini such as lighting a cigarette with a gun, etc to some of the curious "phoren" students..




Next morning was our last day in the camp. All of us were dead tired by now. I saw most ppl limping around. It must be either coz of the Olympics or they had tripped while heading back to cottages after all the drinking & partying. I confess mine was because of the Olympics.. :)

We had a marketing contest right after the breakfast. Most of us were too tired to participate. Winners were decided based on which team receives the max numbers of claps or table banging for their performance. The winning team had put in quite a good show.

We then had lunch & got on to the buses & head back to the school.

All-in-all, it was a great effort & co-ordination by the 2nd years that made this event a great success.

latest in Canadian telecom industry

Canada seems to be quite a happening place for telecommunications. With still 1/3rd of the population not having mobiles, there's a large market out there that needs to be tapped into.


Some of the recent happenings just show how dynamic the industry is:

1)Spectrum auction
New entrants would definitely lead to more options for customers.
New entrants would also invest in telecom infrastructure, and potential new entrants such as the traditional cable operator Shaw Communications suggest its intent to foray into the Broadband and IPTV domain. These provide an opportunity for already over-heated Network Equipment Manufacturer (NEM) space.

2)BCE & Telus going the 3G way
BCE & Telus finally decided to give Rogers a run for its money by announcing their foray into 3G space. They've announced that they'll jointly deploy a 3G HSPA network & have selected Nokia Siemens as their supplier and would spend $1 billion over a span of 3 years.
This network upgrade would allow them to sell the legendary Blackberry Bold & iPhone 3G that have a huge market but were not currently supported by BCE or Telus networks.

3)Acquisition of BCE
Posed to be one of the largest deal of the year, this $51.7 billion acquisition is certain to bring in new life into the largest communications company in Canada.


There are going to happen at a faster pace once the spectrum allocation results are announced.

my updates

Dear friend,
Just few more days left before the D-day when our MBA program starts formally. Almost all the profs we meet scare us by telling it’s going to be a grueling fall/winter session. We are getting mentally prepared for the worst.


The past 3 weeks have been a completely different experience for me. Never ever have I stayed away from home for this long & that too so far away. Every now & then I’m reminded of mom & dad, I think “should I have listened to dad & stayed back in my home-sweet-home?”

Each time I have something at McDonalds or Subway, I’m reminded of those occasions where mom used to prepare some curries that I didn’t like very much & she used to plead “eat this one time son, I’ll prepare your favorite mutton curry tomorrow”
But each time such emotions run through me, I’m reminded of the moral of how even gold needs to be heated & melted in order to make it an aesthetic jewel.


Nagaraj uncle & his family are a great respite for me. Staying with them, I feel as comfortable as I would have staying with my family.
Internet has also been of great help. By visiting some of the Kannada websites, we can ‘almost’ feel at home. I frequently visit kannadaaudio.com, thatskannada.com & prajavani.com. I am constant touch with all my dear friends through mails & chat.


I happened to visit a few must-visit places in & around Toronto such as the Niagara falls, Toronto islands & the CN Tower. We decided we’d rather visit them now, since there may not be much time later to go around.
We had also been to the Toronto Blue Jays baseball game with Boston Red Sox. It seemed more like a networking session where I got introduced some of my Rotman classmates.


In the past 3 weeks, I’ve stayed at different places in Toronto such as Brampton, Dundas West, Elmhurst, Lansdowne & Toronto Downtown. The one thing that completely impresses me is the cultural diversity that’s made this beautiful city. I think you’ll find people from almost all places in the world such as Ethiopia, Ukraine, Burma, China & India (of course).

I think Toronto is a blown up version of Bengaluru. Just as you’ll find people from every corner of India in Bengaluru, you’ll find people from every corner of the Earth here.
SABA (South Asian Business Association), a Rotman club, had organized a very useful session on PR (Permanent Resident, equivalent to US Green Card) application. This has given me some josh to complete the formalities & submit the application. Will have to dedicate some more time this week & weekend for this.


Most of the recommended book list for this quarter is out & most of the students have started preparing seriously. Even I need to start off now, hunting for the books i.e :)
Ok, too much info in this 1 posting. Bye for now..