ISB Student wins Global Student Leadership Award

Ashvini Jakhar, President of the Graduate Student Board (GSB) Mohali campus, won the Global Student Leadership Award at the recently-held Global Business Conference 2013.  Each year, the Graduate Business Forum (GBF) invites nominations for the Global Student Leadership Awards and Responsible Leadership Awards. The Student Leadership Award was inaugurated by the GBF in 1991 to recognise leadership and innovation at the graduate business level. This award recognises MBA/PGP students who have had a significant impact on their school, programme, or the larger community or society, while still pursuing their studies. Nominations can be made by either the Graduate Student Body and/ or members of faculty. Speaking about his leadership style that won him many accolades, Jakhar stressed, “Delegating the GSB President’s office duties with absolute honesty and integrity (leading by example), adopting transparent processes within the student community (to gain trust & support of colleagues) and propagating a sense of both individual and collective accountability” worked for him.

The School had another reason to celebrate as Harita Vinnakota from the PGP Class of 2013 and her OSC team were awarded a grant of USD 1000 for their innovative and impactful ‘Sahayak Workshops’ initiative.

Women dream smaller dreams: Rashmi Bansal

Celebrated author Rashmi Bansal was recently at ISB where she spoke on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. Much of her talk was based on her experiences while writing Follow Every Rainbow, her book on women entrepreneurs.

Most women are content with their status quo and are not ambitious, she began, before elaborating on the patterns that she found in women’s paths to entrepreneurship.  While some women turned their interests into money making enterprises, this was only possible if their families also supported their ventures. She found that in most cases the family provided support only after the ventures became profitable. Meena Bhindra, the founder of BIBA was one such entrepreneur who capitalised on her flair for designing clothes and founded her company, and after seeing her success, her two sons and her husband also joined the venture, making it a 300 crore business. But not all women enter into entrepreneurship willingly, some find it thrust upon them due to adverse circumstances. But Bansal points out that “it is not necessary that all of us have to go through some personal tragedy to find that Shakti within us. It is all there. So whenever we find that life is getting difficult and not working out. It is there to tap into.” Finally, there are the educated and professionally qualified women for whom entrepreneurship is a natural progression as they seek out self-fulfilment and try to find meaning in their work. These unconventional women will follow their answers and lead unconventional lives.

But a lack of ambition or desire lies at the core of most women entrepreneurs who probably think that “the bigger it (the business) gets it will become more of a hassle.” Perhaps women just require more time to achieve success, Bansal felt. Her parting advice: “If you want to be taken seriously you have to be strong in your knowledge domain. And there is no dearth of people who can give you that knowledge or even self-study courses so that knowledge building has to be your whole life and not just this one programme.”

ISB Alumnus Nominated as Young Global Leader 2013

Shoukei Matsumoto, a Buddhist monk and an alumnus from the PGP Class of 2011, was recently nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Matsumoto is among 199 under-40 leaders from 70 countries who have been felicitated this year for “their professional accomplishments and commitment to society,” according to the WEF website. 

Matsumoto’s single-minded pursuit of making Buddhist temples more relevant to the Japanese society won him this apt recognition. He agrees that though all his actions are centred on increasing Buddhism’s appeal among a wider audience his “principle is based on the principle of Buddhism, which is an art of enlightenment. My mission is to get people enlightened.”

Dance Wars heat up ISB

The ISB Dance Club recently organised “Dance Wars,” a dance competition for the ISB community. According to Harneet Chawla of the Dance Club, “The event was supposed to be a community building activity, where the entire community came together and had a lot of fun.” She was proved right as more than 80 dancers gave 20 performances with some of them going on stage many times. From Indian classical Amritadhare to the Bollywood style Ishqiya and the energetic Smooth Criminal, this was an eclectic event and the variety extended to the group category as well, where students performed the traditional mudras to the Punjabi Aho and even some lesser known styles such as lindy hop. Speaking on the interest shown by the ISB community in the event, Madhur Chadha said that “dancing teaches you team spirit and how to manage expectations within a team. When a diverse set of people come together from different backgrounds, it creates a unique blend, which is reflected in the dance performance.” This diversity was apparent as the participants came on stage – children (of professors and students), spouses of students, ISB staff members and the students danced all evening.

Workshop on Robotics conducted at Mohali campus

The Munjal Global Manufacturing Institute (MGMI) at the Indian School of Business in collaboration with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC)-Centre of Relevance and Excellence in Environmental Engineering (CORE) organised a one-day workshop on “Automation and Robotics” recently. The workshop was attended by around 85 entrepreneurs and students of local engineering colleges. The participants learned about the importance of automating the assembly line. Professor Ashiv Shah and his team from TIFAC-CORE conducted a comprehensive session outlining the basics of automation and robotics through presentations and videos. The session also included practical demonstrations on the following:
•  Programmable logic controllers
•  Sensorics
•  PC based automation
•  Low cost automation
•  Remote machine access
•  Robot simulation and operation.