Aspire Beyond Your Means: Sunil Bharti Mittal

Sunil Mittal, Founder, Bharti Enterprises, recently inaugurated the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) Club at the Mohali campus and spoke about “Leadership: Translating Vision to Reality." Recounting his company, Bharti Enterprises’ success story, he spoke on the values and spirit of entrepreneurship and how he turned his dreams into a reality, Mittal urged the budding entrepreneurs to have aspirations greater than available resources and said that holding onto this belief is the essence of entrepreneurship. He also cited examples on how some decisions made by Bharti during difficult times helped shape the company’s success. He gave an insight into the company’s evolution and transition from entrepreneurially-led and professionally supported to professionally-led and entrepreneurially supported.

Entrepreneurship 101: Professor Arun Pereira Provides Insight on Starting Ventures

“Entrepreneurs launching products that require consumers to modify behavior should be cautious of the resistance to change,” advised Professor Arun Pereira in his talk on “Ten tips for the Entrepreneur in you.” Professor Pereira, Clinical Associate Professor of Management Education and Head, Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Case Development (CTLC) at the Indian School of Business, was addressing an enthusiastic audience of mostly students at the Mohali campus.

In his talk, Professor Pereira highlighted the risks and challenges involved in an entrepreneurial venture. Based on his entrepreneurial experience, he shared interesting insights on the most-frequent mistakes and the best practices that entrepreneurs make when starting a venture. “When the original business idea is not really feasible, try and adapt to use the technology to address some other customer need in a related industry. Most entrepreneurs who are ‘sold’ on their own original plan do not correct course and change quickly when needed,” he said.

Good Journalism is good for Business: Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-chief, Indian Express

Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-chief of The Indian Express engaged the ISB community at Mohali campus in a lively discussion on whether good journalism is bad business. Good journalism is an end in itself and it does not matter whether it is good or bad for business, began Gupta. "However, the state of the media business in India today is interesting – in contrast to the slowdown of other industries, there have been a slew of acquisitions in media, most notably Aditya Birla’s acquisition of Living Media and Reliance’s investment in TV18. Both companies were floundering and the stock prices of broadcast companies have plummeted. However, media consumption, even print media, is growing faster in India than anywhere is in the world,” he said.

Gupta ended by noting that the markets respect trust and that what is trusted also sells in the marketplace. "Journalism that is not correct is after all only advertising and when you cannot tell the difference between advertising and journalism you are not likely to pay for either – ultimately, good journalism is good for business," he concluded.

Learn from those who have no choice: Meher Pudumjee

The ISB Women in Business Club at Mohali began its journey with an engaging interactive session with Meher Pudumjee, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd, who also inaugurated the club.

The ISB student community quizzed Pudumjee on the challenges she faced in her career especially on how she balanced her work with her personal life and on the disadvantages or advantages associated with being a woman in business.

Pudumjee shared her opinion on how there are very few role models in the corporate world for women to learn from, when it comes to managing both career and personal life successfully. “To make-up for that void, we can learn more from the less privileged women in the society who do not have a choice like we do and who still manage their family and work,” Pudumjee said.

She also spoke against the prejudices that some people harbor against women – that they are too emotional to take tough decisions. She countered that it is the decisions that are simple or tough and not the people.

Business Analytics Vital for Company Strategy

“Introduction to Business Analytics,” a workshop held recently at the Indian School of Business (ISB) helped demystify some common beliefs and preconceived notions regarding business analytics. Organised by Professor Galit Shmueli, Associate Professor of Statistics and SRITNE Chaired Professor of Data Analytics, there were several prominent speakers at the workshop such as Kuldeep Parikh, Strategy Lead, HP Global Analytics, Ajay Kelkar, Chief Operating Officer, HANSA Cequity, and Kishore Rajgopal and Divyabh Mishra, Founders of CrowdANALYTIX.

Speaking to a packed audience of students, CEOs, directors and entrepreneurs, Professor Galit Shmueli provided a brief overview of business analytics, explaining the evolution of analytics over the years. She explained the difference between business analytics and traditional statistical analytics and optimisation. Her talk specifically focused on the power of Predictive Analytics. The other speakers reiterated the importance of business analytics in shaping the strategy of a company.

Simple Truths on how "Values Bring Value" by Ajay Piramal

Ajay Piramal, billionaire businessman and founder of Piramal Group narrated the simple guiding principles of his success, linking fundamental moral lessons to real business practices. In a session that went on for just over an hour, he narrated the history of the Piramal Group, from being a family-run textile company to its entry into the pharmaceutical space and growth into a global multinational. Highlighting principles such as integrity, courage, passion, humility and compassion, he said how adhering to these values can help businesses grow. He reiterated this by saying that the values a company stands for are nothing but the summation of the values of each employee in the organisation. It is therefore vital for companies to keep reinforcing these traits in employees and also for the employees to consciously live by the values they and their companies stand for.

Nokia VP Speaks on Evolution of Marketing

Continuing his long relationship with ISB, D.Shivakumar, Senior Vice President (Sales) for Nokia (India, Middle East and Africa), spoke about the evolution of marketing in India while sharing insights into its future. He was at the Mohali campus recently to inaugurate the Marketing Club and to kick start the club’s speaker series of the club with his talk on the “Changing Rules of Marketing”

Describing the different phases of growth in the economy, he explained that “as the economy has evolved, so have the country’s infrastructure and consumers. Industries like telecom, food, cinema, automobile and media have opened doors leading to a sea change in the attitudes of the Indian consumers towards brands. Currently, India is physically poor but digitally rich, and this is influencing markets in a significant way.” If the last decade was all about “Buyer Beware” then Shivakumar’s strong belief is that in the next decade it will be about “Seller Be Prepared.” As consumers get more sophisticated, brands will need to focus on increasing consumption by meeting customers’ desires, providing them with superior experience, design, convenience and retail impact.

Q & A with author of Q&A

Vikas Swarup, a diplomat and author of the best-selling book “Q &A,” (on which the movie, Slumdog Millionaire was based) spoke to students about creative thinking during his recent visit to ISB. He also shared his personal experience and journey from being an avid reader to a published author.

Speaking about his journey while penning his book, he recollected that the difficulty in writing the book arose in framing the plot. keeping the questions central to the story was one of the biggest challenges he faced, while keeping in mind the reality show’s etiquette – where the questions got harder and covered a wide array of subjects. He concluded on an encouraging and witty note, “I’m living proof that if I can write a book, anyone can!”