Dil Bole AIKYA !!

What is AIKYA? ISBians are 'adopted' by some prominent business families of Hyderabad.

My AIKYA family was Mr. Vinod Poddar - Chairman of the Poddar group of industries. We were about a dozen of us who had been 'adopted' by Mr. Poddar and invited over for dinner last night. The plan was that after my classes which end at about 7pm myself, Hardik "Rangeen" Jhaveri and Samridh "Ghungraloo" Sharma would head together to Poddar Uncle's place. But the bav we booked ditched us for some strange reason. So we found ourselves stranded. So we decided to take one of our batchmates car and head to Mr. Poddar's house.

Both Rangeen and Ghungraloo are hard core entreprenuerial by nature. They were discussing about business and value. Then the conversation between Rangeen and Ghungraloo enroute were something like this:

Rangeen: I hope he doesnt offer alcohol. I have decided to stay off alcohol for a month. Last term I drank like a fish. Need to detox.

Ghungraloo: Ya dude. Me too !!!! This time when I was home I was playing cards all night and in the morning when my Dadi woke up I was still drinking. This was when I realized that I had been drinking too much.

Rangeen: But he's a big-shot for sure. So I guess he'll have a big bar at his place.

Ghungraloo: ... and he'll have the best of whiskies and stuff

Rangeen: What if he offers ?

Ghungraloo: I'll head straight for Single Malt whisky ...

Rangeen: I'll attack Black Dog whisky ...

All this while I was wondering about what each one's first words in this conversation were ... ISBians I tell you ...

Soon after we reached Uncle's place where we were welcomed very warmly by him. All of us sat around in a big circle. Uncle told us about himself, his family, the businesses his handled but what came across as most interesting about him was his passion about Kailash Mansarovar. He talked about how he no longer into his businesses so that he could do something for the society.

Between munching on the delicious Corn pakoda and awesome Dhokla that Uncle had been serving us we had Dr. Somnath entertaining all of us by probing with endless tales about Mr. Poddar's connection to Kolkata. The Doc was missing Durga Puja at home and compounding that was the Diwali atmosphere.

Then Dinner was ready and weren't we hungry !! The food was so delicious that all of us descended on it like a pack of wolves. However Soham, Puneet, Sukesh, Vikram, Tokas, Nandan and Sarfi were on a balanced diet.

While Aanchal, Janani and Suparna were on a See food diet. They only saw the food; ate very little of it. They had some very good insights about how to fool our body when it comes to Calories.

Then we played a funny game - Who wants to be Jalebionnaire ? In this game Uncle chased us and fed us more Jalebis than we have ever eaten. By the end of it Arun "Frenchy" Sagar and Ghungraloo had beaten others by a margin of about half-a-dozen. Rangeen and I used our own hypothesis to dodge most Jalebis. Aanchal and Suparna lost whatever competitive advantage they had won over other girls in terms of Calories input in a single meal that night.

But as the famous quote goes ... If nobody cant, VibhorKant ! At about 11pm just when everybody had been battered and bruised after eating about a dozen Jalebis, Vibhor wanted tea ! In shock Tokas fainted ! Finally Dr. Somnath could retrieve him from the shock without using his medical skills.

All in all it was a fun-filled night and hats off to whoever conceptualized AIKYA. Its a awesome platform for some real social networking and each one of us went home that night richer by experience. ISBians are priveleged in matters like this. Truly looking forward to the next one.

The Chronicles of Section B

The journey from April 11 when we were 0% MBA to September 29th when we are 50% MBA narrated in memories !

Finance: The Biggest Scam in History

Finance = "Faffin INtuition using chANCE"

The world of Finance is one big scam. They have made money out of making other people look like a constipated monkey tied to the kitchen sink. From the outside they make us believe them to be superior lifeforms who seem to know where the money is.

They help in reducing the rich-poor gap by constantly making the rich people poorer thus doing their bit for the society. So what if that costs us employment ! What's better than seeing somebody's life savings' going down the drain and all they get is "Economy is bad" ! By the way who the jackass in the universe controls the economy ? Let me know if you find out.

Coming back to Finance, take a look at Finance courses in a B-School and you'll understand the dirtiest practical joke played on humanity. Nothing is certain. Everything is assumed and then theories are built on that assumption and then they'll relax those assumptions, subtly prove the assumptions were no good and conclude by saying that the base assumption was an act of god.

You can manipulate every assumption as per your own convenience. Tweak the cash flows and you have a new NPV. Make big equations with lot of terms such that people cannot come to terms with that equation. Clout your lack of capability using Probability. Call everything expected and then expect the unexpected. Blame it all on idiosyncrasy. Tell people that the need to make these assumptions is to build intuition. Hurray !! Now I am a genius with a foundation of false knowledge based on unrealistic assumption. Gotta take one for Intuition. The survival of the human race depends on my sacrifice.

Lets look at something called the one factor model:

Expected Return = alpha + (beta*Factor of shock) + idiosyncratic error

Now take any historical data including your grades since kindergarten and tell me if you cannot fit it into this equation. First you make a prediction. And then based on it make a estimate. And them make up for your lack of understanding with the error term. So in totality you need to be a astrologer and not a MBA grad.

Pivot quite a few of your numbers on Historical data and then use the same historical data to prove how wrong the historical data is i.e. do not use the past to judge the future. No wonder Mutual Funds say "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance" which in English is "Dude somehow the guy who broke the coconut, broke it at an auspicious time and hence it all worked out well but don't you think that you are going to get this lucky".

In the end I guess everyone needs to earn a living by hook or by crook. So be it by pulling a fast one on the countless number of people who believe Finance is something to do with money. Everybody who can count himself to be a decent Astrologer can be good Finance professional. So all you Finance hopefuls, start listening to Bejan Daruwala more intently .... you just might pick up Intuition !

Highlights from Day 4 - Term 4

Cults

1. Arbit CP Cult

• Thou shalt excercise freedom of speech and abuse it with utter disregard to everybody else's freedom
• Thou shalt have a opinion on anything and would be disqualified if they go through 15 minutes of no CP

2. No Arbit CP Cult

• Thou shalt restrain from any kind of speech and communicate only in signals or at max a YES or NO
• Thou shalt compensate for the over-abuse of Freedom of Speech of Arbit CP cult so Class average remains acceptable

3. Kela Cult

• Shall further Kela in the Snack segments and shall start by not sharing their kela with anyone. Self-help is the best help.
• Flag-ship event to be conducted every year to reinforce the belief in the cult

4. Spanky Cult

• One of the oldest cults to exist and not restricted to any class of citizens
• Recognized from non-cult members by Chappal in one hand and spank mark on the butt

5. Sleep in Class cult

• Believe in sensory deprivation for better output

6. Devil's Advocate

• Disagree with anything regardless of sanity or relevance

Underground Cults

1. Honor Code Ranbir Cult

• Member should be able to exhibit 3 dance steps from HCR's Dance competition performance

2. Pappu Cult

• Pappu can't CP saala

3. Wild Life Cult

• The lesser said the better. The pic is self-explanatory

4. Gayme Cult

• Life is a Gayme. Play it when hard.

Other Highlights

1. In sports action Vishakha Infrastructure went head-to-head with Mudit Housing. Even the use of "Arre Baba" and Soumitra's late cameo didnt help Vishakha overcome Mudit and match ended in a exciting draw. Kishore covered the full match in totality.

2. Honor code Ranbir exposed: Ranbir was the first one to raise hands in the GSB Class when asked as to who all will be willing to pay bribes. So much for the Honor Code !

Term 4 Day 1 - Top 15 Highlights from Section B

1. Class to Mini: Jab wohi safedi, wohi chamak humare Section mein mile, toh koi dusre section mein kyun padhe ?

2. Return of the Basuri ringtone: New Term, old Tune, same habits !

3. Society may have evolved from Monkeys but this is how Garoda 'evolved':

4. Bearded Sai for marital advantage:

5. Safedi pe Safedi: Sangoman and his name card that only he can read

6. Vikash's fight with ASA goes in vain

7. Step-Daddy gets subliminal

8. Arjun Ghoda becomes the meritocrat and he noted that both Jennifer Aniston and the other dude were Tardy. But Sangoman played spoilsport.

9. Sujay begins his 'one-child' movement which was where he was getting to .. again and again !

10. KK's revolutionary idea to have two Governments for the same country so that they compete on taxes and we end up paying lower taxes

11. GC's infinite counter-CP on how MGTO was a important course while his answer was supposed to be the opposite

12. Birth of the henchman "Bafufankar":

13. Tojo was the Rainbow Musketeer battling Brownie Mamta in an umbrella fight. Contact me for the exclusive video (NO ! ISB Times is not the freaking media partner).

14. Inspired by Step Daddy even Spama Viggy and Superstar Dharmikant got themselves a good shave !

15. Honor Code Ranbir and Aish were playing connect the dots games during the classes. When Aish tried to trick our Ranbir he invoked the Honor Code provisions against her.

This Week in Section B !

1. MADM Homework: Precision Worldwide Inc.

This Case threw up some interesting solutions. The best one was :

2. KK and his love frog

This week was marked by the discovery of KK's love frog. That solves the mystery behind the croaking noises in KK's quad at night. By the way he had a change of heart by the end of the week.

3. Return of the Mafia

If only Paul Olsen knew my family's core competencies

4. The new B-plan

To start a Restaurant with a "Differentiation" factor

5. Kiss of Love

"Is not a kiss the very autograph of love?" ~ Rohit Kumar

6. Masterclass Viggy

Practice makes man perfect. Net practice makes a Viggy perfect.

7. The Tardy Meter

The meter kept running well into overtime .....

8. Sujay the commentator

With his vishalkai Bhuja and his chamak challo Jhange Sujay was the commentry star of the Cricket tournament

Smack D's tip of the week: The new spike to Resumes

Start anything fancy just to provide a spike to your resume whether it matches your personality or not. Chor ke daadi mein tinka !

Bottlenecks, I say !

Enlightenment beckons all who attend Operations Management Class. Section B too had this moment. Each one reflected on the bottlenecks he / she faced in ISB:

1. Sombox: CP can be done only once. Repeat CP # Fail

2. Priyom: One can only go as far as 90 minutes to build on somebody's point

3. KK: The power of Operations and Media is far greater than Shaolins and Samurais

4. Aarti G : There are only 1,412,352 ways in which one can get stressed

5. Dushi / Sangoman : One has only 4 hours of Classroom time to sleep

6. The Rohits' : Each Entrepreneurship survey has only one question to which one can answer "NO"

7. Arjun : The survey form asks for only one line answer plus appendix

8. Viggy / Mahendran / Saurabh / Dharmi : We can send a spam mail only from 3 other mailboxes

9. Aastha: Thursday nights are too short to spend quality time with Jack

10. Gaurav Bhatnagar: Marital Constraints are in; Presssures are out

11. Garora: One can score a max of ony 4 out of 4

12. Rajesh: There are not many Mafia dudes who can be my business partner

13. Shweta D: E&Y is constrained by Randomness

14. Smriti: One can only love customized Jewellery or hate Walmart service

15. Sarfaraz / Sonali: He / She are constrained to say only "He"

16. Sujay: Constrained to CP breathlessly (for all the 10 classes at once)

17. Spai: Constrained to Sleep-noting

18. Pachanna: Cant be with more than Pachanni at any given moment

19. Manjari: There are only 23 unique ways of pronouncing a name

20. Hardik: There are not many who can play with Hardik and not be apologetic

21. Soham: There is only one dance that is universally applicable to all songs

22. Ninja: Constrained by Crazy people

23. Mamta: Can spill only one cup of coffee on Tanya per lecture

24. Tanya: Can let only one cup of coffee spill on her per lecture

25. Kaushal: There can be only one Kaushal on the Honor code

Others are still in the process of identifying their bottlenecks ..... so hang on !

Exchange This !

Exchange programmes bid results are out. Most people are going to the usual boring places like Kellogg, Wharton, NYU Stern, Tuck, Duke, London Business School etc but a few of us are going to some awesome places. Here is a mini-list:

1. KK: Going to Sahara Desert to appreciate some more wild life and in return getting exchanged with a Wild Boar.

2. Vivin: Going to Wimbledon so that he can now use his Tennis racket to play tennis rather than chase stray dogs at midnight.

3. Manjari: Going to Germany as Oktoberfest allows to continue her secret life as Beero.

4. Arjun: Going to Argentina as our Ghoda likes the Grass there. Though that means SV4 will be manure-less and ISB would tardiness-free !

5. Priyom / Jay / Prashant / Suyog : Going to Thailand as thats the Mecca of the Pink Daddies !

6. Hardik: Going to Hawaii as only that place exchanges Rangeen aka colourful students.

7. Viggy: Going to Broadway to be a bigger Dramebaaz than he is currently

8. Sai: Going to Switzerland with the woman of his dreams in exchange for some Cows.

9. Kaushal: Got tricked into going to HEC, Paris as he thought H & C in HEC stood for Honor code

10. Somnath: Going to China / Myanmar to propagate democracy through SOMBOX

11. Saurabh Jhawar: Going to Columbus, Georgia to explore the possibility of the next big thing - the Coke shampoo.

12. Tanya: Going to a research tour to Italy on how to make Middle Managers Deliver while zooming around in a Ferrari

13. Soham / Dushyant: Going to on a world tour so that MJ's Moonwalk can be replaced by Soham's Earthjump and Dushant's Sleepwalk !

14. Prabhat / Deepak / Mohit / Rajesh / Kishore : Going to Vatican to be the Chorus for next Christmas !

15. Aarti Kapur: Going to California for an internship under the original "Commando" !

16. Aarti Ganesh: Going to Tibet in exchange for a monk !

17. Mamta: Going to UK in exchange for a coffee-spilling MI5 spy.

18. Gaurav Bhatnagar: Sorry his marital pressures dont let him go anywhere !

19. Vikas Poddar: Wherever being "Game" is legal !

20. Ashwin Uppal: Is going to the American Museum of Natural History in exchange for a similar aged Dinosaur there !

As for me, I am going to Swat Valley in exchange for some PoWs.

Genetic Evolution

In a time not long long ago the "invisible" hand decided to get creative. It sent a unique and special specimen to the Planet. Of all the eligible and eager countries it decided to bless the Mother of Democrazies - India. It is the only place on the planet where God's own country is a state. Among the numerous possible states in the country the good fortune was bestowed upon Cochin in Kerala. Years later, fate and destiny brought him to ISB, Hyderabad.

"Is that like an acronym or a real name?" said Vivin Mathew when he was first introduced to this prodigy. His name was KK.

He chose to announce himself to the world through innovative thinking and kind-heartedness during the big bad world of Managerial Economics. "Sir, why is it a fly?" quipped KK when shown the pic above. "I dont like to aim at flies because they fly. They can get wet and sit on us. Would you like that?" continued KK. "I would prefer ants. After they got wet and came close all you have to do is run faster than the ants. After all its all about intuition."

All this while his engineering skills was lying dormant. Atleast thats what he wanted others to believe. So he engineered a perfect 'leak'-mail of their assignments along with the naturally talented Shweta Divecha. And with all this his "Boutom-line" grew.

KK is potent everywhere - in air, on land and even under water. Under water his Blackberry is like a Bofors gun - shoots and sinks people at will. And just like how Phantom signed off with the "skull" mark on his targets .... KK signed off by saying "Sent from my underwater Blackberry"! His special Blackberry was custom-designed as shown in the pic below:

Over time his violent nature grew until it had reached unmanageable proportions. KK was now looking for signals from above. One fine day down came the legend--wait for it -- dary "Wild Boar" which changed KKs life forever. His war against humanity for these Wild Boars was exemplary. Though he faced undue criticism for calling "pigs" as "wild boars" but KK fought on valiantly. This feat earned him the presudo-Presidentship of the fictitious Wildlife club. Till date he continues to wage his war.

The "Wild Boar" had now taught KK to channelize his raw energy towards discipline. He decided to become what History would remember as the "Shaolin of Cochin".

Legend has it that he still loves his Coffee. Last heard he was trading Rs. 100/- with a bread loaf between his left and right hand so that velocity of Money became infinite and hence GDP became infinite. Wish him luck !

My Election Speech

Food

This cartoon was to emphasize on the fact that the hygiene audits would be stringent.

This cartoon was to signify how I plan to have that 'zing' in the menu

Infrastructure

This was to signify that the response time to infrastructure based issues would be closely monitored.

This was to signify the "Go green" initiatives which also included water conservation through optimal usage of washing machines.

IT support

This was to signify that regardless of the type of problem, support would always be prompt.

This was to signify the need to beef up IT infrastructure in a few places where it was falling short. For e.g signal boosters where wireless signals were weak.

Library

This was to signify the increased range of books that were to be made available at our Library.

This was to signify the need for a mechanism for notification of the arrival of new books in the library.

HealthCare

This was to signify that stocks of all critical medicines needed for students would be stocked at the Wellness centre.

This was to signify that I wanted to look into the heavy usage of Local Ferrari and reasons so see where OIC could step in.

Other Vendors

This was to signify that I would try and get the vegetable vendor twice a week to campus.

This was to signify that I would look into stocking policies at MORE w.r.t availability etc

Accountability

This was to signify that as member of the GSB Core I would be acting responsibly and ensuring that the core was accountable to GSA.

This was to signify that for matter related to OIC the buck would stop at me i.e. I would be accountable to GSA for all OIC matters.

Something that would be impossible ....

This was to signify that action would be taken on all complaints and nothing would be dusted under the carpet and left to God.

Expectations in check !

This was to signify that though I'll try and get in positive changes but I cant get the impossible done in one shot i.e. it will take time !

And finally incentives for those who vote for me ...