IFMR DIGEST

Cover StoryIT’S BEEN 10 YEARS BUT

SOME THINGS ARE YET TO CHANGE

Skilling india

T o w a r d s a r o b u s t q u a l i f i c a t i o n f r a m e w o r k f o r T r a i n i n g P r o g r a m s

Women’s Reservation Bill Evidence for Leadership &aspirations

Issue 3 , Feb 2018

Cover Story

Expert Insight - Women’s Reservation Bill Evidence for leadership and aspirations

Expert Insight - Skilling India - Towards a robust qualificaiton framework for training programs

Student Article - The Internet of Things

Food for Thought

Fun Spot

Accolades

Happenings @ IFMR

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Editor’s DeskHello Everyone,

There lies a moment of reflection ascribed to the end of every cycle. It sieves out the grains of sensation and portrays a de-tailed testimony of progression. While our compass still tilts toward aspiration, our coffers of knowledge, experience and exposure accumulate. Encompassing all these we are glad to present the IFMR DIGEST February issue.

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”- Benjamin Franklin. The happenings and insightful articles aided us to efface the choices given by the founding father of United States. This depicts the boundless enthusiasm and intellectual competency that shaped the core of our culture.

We the “Editorial & Communication team” believe that with every turn of page you will get a fresh stream of thoughts that will indeed nourish, polish and garnish all your human qualities.

Happy Reading!

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Cover Story

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IT’S BEEN 10 YEARS BUT SOME THINGS ARE YET TO CHANGE

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Ten years have passed since the 2007-2009 global financial crisis (GFC) that originated as a shock in the subprime markets in US and slowly transformed into the greatest recession that the west-ern world had ever witnessed since the great depression. The initial months of the onset of GFC are notable for the blame game that ensued when it comes to the institutions and the individuals that were directly or indirectly responsible for nurturing an eco-system that paved way for GFC. It was also a slap in the face for those who professed light-touch regulation for they believed on market’s ability to collectively take care of itself owing to the in-herent self-interest of the day-to-day market participants.

If any, the GFC and the ensu-ing global recession, showed the world that financial markets when left unregulated or unmon-itored, do spin out of control and when they do so, the consequenc-es are unpalatable and scary.

Unprecedented fiscal and regu-latory measures were undertak-en by governments and central banks across the world to deal with the GFC. So much so that fiscal and monetary policies since the onset of the GFC were largely based on the governments’ and regulators’ evolving judgment on how best to tackle the GFC. Western governments and their respective central banks under-took all actions within and be-yond their capacity to resuscitate and revive their economies from the debilitating effect of the GFC.

Governments pertaining to the emerging economies and their re-spective central banks were con-stantly keeping tab on the events unfolding in the western world and were basing their actions on their assessment of the extent of integration of their financial sys-tem with the western financial system and the attendant possi-bility of untoward spillover ef-fects of unprecedented monetary and fiscal measures of western economies on the emerging fi-nancial markets. Today, as the governments, regu-lators and industry practitioners look back on the events that un-folded during the GFC and the consequent actions undertak-en to deal with GFC at different points of time, it is also necessary

in particular assess the effect of GFC on the curriculum centered on Financial Markets. While the GFC has pushed fiscal and mone-tary policies towards unchartered territories and has brought-about a semblance of global regulatory coordination that was unfathom-able in the years before the GFC, the effect of GFC on shaping the pedagogy centered on Financial Markets has been rather ordi-nary. This is not to say that the GFC did not push academicians and practitioners to revisit their perspectives on markets in gen-eral and financial stability in particular.

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Innumerable conferences are be-ing held across the globe where academicians, practitioners and policymakers alike regularly showcase research that throws light on the above aspects at dif-ferent levels of granularity. GFC and the consequent global reces-sion forced key decision mak-ers in financial services industry across the world to appreciate the need for robust risk manage-ment practices and an appropri-ate incentive mechanism that re-inforces robust risk management. However the cumulative effect of all these broader happenings on the trajectory of curriculum cen-tered on Financial Markets has been rather mediocre.

One of the catalysts behind the global crisis was the widespread use of well-established conven-tional models whose underlying assumptions failed to truly cap-ture the real-world characteris-tics of asset prices. In addition, the industry per se was consis-tently way ahead of the regulators when it comes to the complexity of the models being employed to price higher order opaque syn-thetic derivatives that misrepre-sented the economic value of the underlying reference assets. In retrospect, the single most im-portant contribution of the GFC is the much-needed (albeit late) realization amongst one and all about the limitations of such conventional models when it comes to capturing tail risk.

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While the world is flush with more research on new impro-visations of these conventional models so as to accommodate for hitherto-neglected aspects that paved way for the GFC, what is evident is inertia by the broader intelligentsia to move away from these conventional models that fail to reflect the true dynamics of asset prices to other non-con-ventional models that are more reflective of empirical distribu-tion of asset prices.

Scholarly contributions that re-visit the inefficiency and fragility of financial markets over time us-ing non-conventional methodol-ogies that are grounded in natu-ral sciences hardly make it to the mainstream finance journals. As we all know, research published today in mainstream finance journals make their way into the finance textbooks of tomorrow which in-turn has a profound impact on B-School pedagogy centered on financial markets.

If only the mainstream finance journals would be more recep-tive to scholarly contributions that possess theoretical anteced-ents that run contrary to conven-tional econometric models, the literature on financial markets in general and market efficiency in particular would be less-mono-chromatic in nature, and the students of tomorrow would be wiser.

This lack of heterogeneity in re-search on financial markets is synonymous to someone so fixat-ed on guarding the boundaries of the island that she resides in that she turns oblivious to the beauty and the breadth of the ocean that engulfs the island.

*Note: The views expressed here by the author are personal in nature.

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Authored by

Dr. Vinodh Madhavan,Associate Professor – Finance & Accounting IFMR Sri City

Dr.Vinodh Madhavan currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Finance and Accounting (F&A) Area at Institute for Finan-cial Management and Research (IFMR) Sri City. He completed his Doctor of Business Administration program at Golden Gate University, San Francisco.

He has taught courses such as Financial Reporting & Analysis, Introduction to Financial Management, Corporate Finance, Security Analysis and Portfolio Management, Financial Markets and Institutions, Derivatives and Risk Management, and Time Series Modelling in Financial Markets.

According to the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), globally India ranks at the bottom, 148th out of 193 UN member nations when it comes to the proportion of elected women representatives in par-liament. Even our neighbours, Pakistan (20.7 per cent),Bangla-desh (19.3 per cent) and Nepal (29.9 per cent) have higher rep-resentation of women in parlia-ment.

The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India in 1992 mandated 33 per cent reserva-tion for women in the three-ti-er Panchayati Raj institutions. In the next two decades, a few state governments extended the reservation to 50 percent of seats in Panchayats for

India fares poorly globally and regionally in representation of women in the legislative assem-blies and houses of Parliament. Only 11.8 per cent (64 of 543 members) of our elected rep-resentatives in the current Lok Sabha are women and the Rajya Sabha has only 11 per cent elect-ed women representatives (27 of 245 members).

The Women’s Reservation Bill in discussion over the last two decades proposes to amend the constitution to reserve 33 per-cent of all seats for women in Lok Sabha and all state legis-lative assemblies. The bill, first introduced in 1996 in the Parlia-ment, was passed in Rajya Sabha in March 2010. But it faced stiff opposition in Lok Sabha and fi-nally lapsed in 2014.

Expert Insight

Women’s Reservation Bill

Evidence for Leadership & aspirations

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Article by:

Arindam Banerjee,Policy Manager,J-PAL South Asia

women. However, debates have often arisen on the efficacy and impact of this reservation to em-power women and improve gov-ernance. A common criticism raised is that women do not have real power at the local level and often act on behalf of a male deci-sion maker.

Evidence from a study by J-PAL affiliated researchers in West Ben-gal in 2008 showed that female leaders raised the aspirations parents have for their girls and the aspirations teenage girls have for themselves. A similar study by J-PAL affiliated researchers in Rajasthan found that despite the handicaps women represen-

tatives may face in terms of ed-ucation and prior experience, and the preconception of weak leadership, women have a real impact on policy decisions. Ev-idence from both these studies also point that elected women Panchayat pradhans were more inclined towards giving higher priority than their male counter-parts to issues concerning wom-en such as public health, drink-ing water, sanitation, education and roads.

A 2007 UNICEF background paper co-authored by J-PAL af-filiates elaborates on how the presence of a woman panchayat pradhan is likely to ensure more

Expert Insight

Photo by Loren Joseph on Unsplash

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Expert Insight 10

women participating in dis-cussions during the gram sabhas in the reserved Gram Panchayats. Results from both Rajasthan and West Ben-gal showed that the presence of a female elected leader also reduced the gender gap in adolescent educational at-tainment and resulted in girls spending less time on house-hold chores.

Inspite of wide speculations and demands from women groups and the main opposi-tion party Congress, the rul-

ing NDA led government did not table Women’s reservation bill in the recently conclud-ed winter session. A strong political commitment by all major national and region-al parties along with robust scientific evidence should in-form the deliberations and debates for ensuring the pas-sage of women’s reservation bill in any of the forthcoming sessions of the Parliament. If passed, it will act as a nudge to pave way for nearly 180 elected women members in Lok Sabha to shape India’s fu-ture legislations and policies.

Expert Insight

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About the AuthorArindam Banerjee is a policy manager at J-PAL South Asia where he supports Programme Management and policy outreach (Government, Public Sector and trusts/ foundations/NGOs), Policy research, conflict analysis, Livelihoods and Sports for Development and pro-gramming for poverty alleviation. J-PAL South Asia is based at the In-stitute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in Chennai and was established in 2007.

Inspite of wide speculations and demands from women groups and the main oppo-sition party Congress, the ruling NDA led government did not table the Women’s reservation bill in the recently concluded win-ter session. A strong political com-mitment by all major na-tional and regional parties along with robust scientific

evidence should inform the deliberations and debates for ensuring the passage of women’s reservation bill in any of the forthcoming sessions of the Parliament. If passed, it will act as a nudge to pave way for n e a r l y 180 elected women mem-bers in Lok Sabha to shape India’s future legislations and policies.

Article by Pratibha Joshi Research Fellow IFMR LEAD

Expert Insight

Skilling india : T o w a r d s a r o b u s t q u a l i f i c a t i o n f r a m e w o r k f o r T r a i n i n g P r o g r a m s

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The Government of India has sharpened its focus on ensuring today’s youth acquire necessary skills to participate in the labour force. As of June 2017, skills train-ing programs under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entre-preneurship (MSDE) have trained 1.17 crore candidates under the Skill India initiative (MSDE).

However, beyond skilling, can-didates also face a challenge in finding jobs where they can put their newly acquired skills to use. Since 2016, Pradhan Man-tri Kaushal Vikas Yojana ( P M -KVY2) had placed a little over 12% (95,772 candidates) of the 7.84 lakh trained candidates as of October 2017 (PMKVY). The gov-ernment has undertaken big push efforts to build technical capabilities and work capacities in the burgeoning workforce.

Expert Insight

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Expert Insight

But are we able to gauge and differentiate between the skills our workforce is acquiring?

Are we able to map skills acquired to the skill requirement of occupations?

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Expert Insight

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This article examines existing options for understanding skill components of training cours-es and their shortcomings, and proposes some alternatives. There is a need to ensure that we create a method for catego-rizing the skill components of jobs and training courses.

What are some ways to quantify the skills our people are acquiring?

The MSDE’s National Skills Qual-ification Framework (NSQF) of-fers a practical framework that lists various levels of skills quali-fications. The competency-based framework organises all qualifica-tions according to a series of levels of knowledge, skills and aptitude. This is akin to the standards of the education system where students can acquire greater capabilities through every additional year of schooling (e.g. completing class 8, class 9, etc).

NSQF levels allow for ranking of skilling courses from levels 1 to 10. As 80% of the skills training cours-es are for NSQF levels 3 - 5 (see Table 1), it is expected that a large number of candidates would end up being trained at these same lev-els. Furthermore there is no granu-lar classification of the NSQF that can be analysed to know if there are any differences in the skills and knowledge that trainees par-ticipating in different courses can acquire.

Expert Insight 16

A second metric for measuring skills acquired by trainees, could be the number of National Occupational Standards (NOS), which tells us the number of tasks a person should have learnt within a certain training course. Every training course comprises of a Qualification Pack (QP) which con-tains the number of NOS that the can-didate should be taught and acquire abilities on.

Chart 1 and Chart 2 demonstrate that most courses end up with an average of 10-15 NOS per QP. It is likely that some of these tasks are different in terms of the capacities they focus on; some could require greater soft skills, or more technical skill - but right now, we can-not know the skill component that candidates acquire, beyond number of NOS, as the different skill components have not been classified and linked to the different NOS.

Data source: NSDC excel file as of 8th June 2017

Finally, the number of hours spent in training can also be used as a proxy to benchmark skills obtained by trainees. Keeping aside concerns with using hours as a proxy for skills learnt, and exploring the possibility of using this as a measure - we find that the number of hours that have been assigned to the various courses do not show a clear upward trend (see Chart 3). This means that for increasing numbers of NOS, additional hours that intuitively maybe required for acquiring such capabilities do not seem to be the case. Hence correlation be-tween hours spent on a QP (to acquire the mandated NOS) is broken.

To sum up, metrics presently available are not adequate to provide quantitative informa-tion on the skill component of jobs and training courses in India. This leaves us with-out a clear understanding of

the level of skills acquired by candidates, and has implica-tions for planning and imple-menting programs that boost human capital in India. A pre-liminary review of literature on the subject presents some interesting alternatives. For instance, Balasubramanian (2016) esti-mates skill component of oc-cupations by mapping jobs in India to the Occupational In-formation Network (O*NET) framework created and used by USA for classifying knowl-edge, skills and abilities re-quired for a job. Apart figuring ways to develop a framework similar to O*NET for India, we can also consider creating a task-framework a la Autor, Levy, Murnane (2003) to clas-sify core task requirements such as: cognitive, non-cogni-tive, repetitive, non-repetitive components of various skilling courses. These task require-ments can be derived from curriculum available for every

Expert Insight 18

QP. This exercise can provide estimates of the relative use of different cognitive and phys-ical skills in different tasks. It will also facilitate identifying jobs and sectors that face fast-er technological changes that affect labour markets. Autor and Acemoglu (2011) build on the task-framework for classifying jobs and mapping

them to skills to estimate the effects of automation and by understanding the skill component of jobs and

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As considerable public re-sources are being spent on skilling programs in India, it is important to build a deeper understanding of their link-ages with labour markets, and the expected interplay with technological changes in different sectors. Having a well-classified framework of the different skill components of courses and their equivalent jobs, can significantly augment our present understanding of the potential of skills training courses, human capital devel-opment, and explore the pos-sibilities of automation across sectors and functions.

assuming that repetitive or non-cognitive aspects could be automated first, thereby providing information on what jobs and sectors might require government interven-tion for easing some labour market frictions caused by technological changes.

Better data and classifications for analysis can help unearth important gaps in our efforts to upskill the Indian labour force. For instance, Chart 1showed that on average our training courses cover 10-15 tasks, which pales in compar-ison to global averages of 30 tasks per course, thus raising questions on how Skill India can train workforce that can meet global labour require-ments.

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About the Author:Pratibha wants to play a meaningful role in the development of the SME sector, presently she has set her focus on India. She is interested in understanding small businesses and entrepreneurs – what leads to their success, their life-cycle and contribution to the economy. She has completed her Masters in Public Admin-istration and International Development from Harvard Kennedy School, and undergrad studies in Singapore.

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“If you think that Internet has changed your life, think again. The IoT is about to change it all over again!” – Brendan O’Brien

Technology and Innovation is transcending all the barriers. Internet as we all know is a global network where people across the globe can share in-formation among themselves in just one click. But what is ‘INTERNET OF THINGS’, I know most of you haven’t heard of this term and will use their knowledge of etymology to decrypt it to be something related to the internet. But you need to stroke your brain hard-er, because it isn’t only about the internet, rather, it is a net-work where various physical devices, appliances and much

more are connected to each other and share information among themselves.

HOW DOES THIS IMPACT YOU?

Now the next thing popping in your minds would be ques-tions like why on earth would you want so many connected devices talking to each oth-er what help will it do to us? Imagine yourself driving your car to the garage and the shed opens automatically. And what if your alarm clock wakes you up at 6 in the morning and then notifies your coffee mak-er to start brewing your coffee

Student Article

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for you? Do you know how it is done, Yes! You are in correct line of thought that is the In-ternet of Things (IoT). Other applications are smartphone controlled refrigerator, air pu-rifiers, in-house lighting sys-tem and countless others that are a part of our daily life.

HISTORY

“Internet of Things”, coined by Mr. Kevin Ashton was first applied in 1982 on a modified Coke machine at Pittsburgh which was able to report its inventory and whether newly loaded drinks were cold. The fuel to this idea came in 1999, through the Auto-ID Center at MIT. Radio-frequency identi-fication (RFID) was identified by Mt. Ashton as indispens-able for IoT to happen. Apart from using RFID the marking of things may be achieved via similar technologies such as QR codes and barcodes as well as digital watermarking.

APPLICATIONSIoT has become so common that we don’t even realize that which appliance may be using this principle, that is why it is said, its beautify can never be quantified. Few of the applica-tions are explained as follows

SMART HOMEGone are the days when we used to control the lighting and other electronic devices manually. Now everything is a touch away, you can control each of them leaning on your couch remotely through your smartphone and the answer to that is Smart Home.

Gone are the days when we used to control the lighting and other electronic devices manually. Now everything is a touch away, you can control each of them leaning on your couch remotely through your smartphone and the answer to that is Smart Home.

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Most of the products are avail-able in one of the four proto-cols (medium of communica-tion between them) and all of them are compatible with the internet and the smartphones. These are X10, Z-Wave, UPB and EnOcean. Products and hardware having same pro-tocol can be added by home-owners at their own will and pocket’s strength.

SMART MANUFACTURING

With the dawn of the fourth in-dustrial revolution (Industry 4.0) and digital transformation of technology, the manufac-turing industry becomes

the sector where the most industrial IoT (IIoT) projects are realized and investments are made. But what exactly is this ‘Smart Manufacturing’? In B-school language, it is the use of smart devices to improve the operating efficiency of a manufacturing layout.

In a smart factory every equip-ment is connected. Since man-ufacturers are aware of asset health and remaining useful life of the assets, they can op-timize different stages of the production process. Condi-tional monitoring powered with analytics can help relate current and historical data to anticipate equipment fail-ure. Maintenance work can be

Student Article

Student Articlescheduled in advance which can reduce unexpected down time as well as the costs associ-ated with urgent orders of re-placement parts and workers at short notice.

TRANSPORTATION

Do you remember the scene in the movie – Die Hard 4, where the protagonist talks to 911 and gets the operator to start the vehicle stating an emergency situation. Isn’t it amazing how technology has evolved by now? Actually it has all been possible due to IoT.

Networked transportation in-dicates fitting vehicles with sensors and Internet connec-tivity during the transit. He most recent example is from Paris where an electric card sharing program

called AutoLib can be tracked through GPS and also enables the driver to reserve parking space any anywhere in the city. There are some smartphones applications like GasBuddy in Australia which helps the driv-er locate the cheapest gasoline station.

HEALTHCARE

Health Monitors These devices help the users to extract information like blood pressure, heart rate etc. while on the go. These are generally used by daily users who keeps a check on their health once a while. Some of them are – Fit-bit, Muse headband, Viatom Checkme etc.

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Medical Wearables Medical wearables help doc-tors and nurses monitor pa-tient’s data and inject timely drug into their body. Some of the most common wearables are – Portable Insulin Pumps, Smart glasses and many more.

Internally embedded medical devices These devices are embedded inside the patient’s body and it helps in transmitting infor-mation wirelessly. They do it either using their protocols (discussed earlier) or by Blue-tooth. The most common de-vices which we come across is Pacemakers and Digital Pill.

Stationary medical devices

These devices provide a cost and time effective way to mon-itor chronically ill patients. They are also the most targeted group by thieves to steal mass amount of patient’s data. Few examples are – Chemotherapy Dispensing Stations, beds that could detect when occupied.

Article written by

Kumar SaharshBatch 2017-2019

Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots be-gan to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter.The daughter, moaned and impatiently wait-ed, wondering what he was doing.

After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup. Turn-ing to her he asked. “Daugh-ter, what do you see?” “Po-tatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pull-ing off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip the cof-fee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.

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food for thought

Potatoes, Eggs, and Coffee Beans

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.However, each one reacted dif-ferently.The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling

water, they changed the wa-ter and created something new.

“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adver-sity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? “Moral: In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what hap-pens within us.Which one are you?

Source: https://www.livin3.com

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A young businessman had just started his own firm. He rent-ed a beautiful office and had it furnished with antiques. Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Hoping to look like a hot shot, the businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he was working on a big, important business deal.

The owner of a company tells his employees:“You worked very hard this year, therefore the company’s

Employee Motivation

Hot Shot

The man said, “Yeah, I’ve come to activate your phone lines.”

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An employee goes to see his su-pervisor in the front office.“Boss,” he says, “we’re doing some heavy house-cleaning at home tomorrow,and my wife needs me to help with the attic and the garage,

Day Off

Source: https://albertaventure.com/

profits increaseddramatically. As a reward, I ‘m giving everyone a check for $5,000.”Thrilled, the employees gath-er round and high five one an-other.“And if you work with the same zeal next year, I’ll sign those checks!”

moving and haulingstuff.” “We’re short-hand-ed,” the boss replies. “I can’t give you the day off.”“Thanks, boss,” says the em-ployee “I knew I could count on you!”

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SOUTH ASIAN QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM (SAQS)

Institute for Financial Management & Research (IFMR), Sri city, India has been accredited by SAQS (South Asian Quality Assurance System) for a period of five years from 14th December 2017. SAQS is an international system of strategic audit and accreditation de-signed for the assessment of Institution in widely different national contexts. It is a globally benchmarked system for Mento-ring, Quality Improvement, Quality Assurance and Accreditation. SAQS accreditation is awarded by The Association of Management Development Institutions in South Asia (AMDISA), an international not-for-profit association, and is a “SAARC Recognized Body

Accolades

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Success Mantra with Alcatraz Dey, Nov 11, 2017

Motivation is a hoax, it’s the inner desire that matters. You need to accept, adjust and act on your desire. The words of Alcatraz Dey, charged the students of IFMR with boundless energy and opti-mism. The life of the thriller writer is in itself a potboiler. During the interactive ses-sions he shared his visions and insights about life. The event was a spinoff from routine lifestyle of an IFMR student, but it supplied the necessary recoil force to push harder.

Event organized by Synergy -The HR committee32

Happenings

@ IFMR

Brand Master by Amandeep Singh

“Next time you watch an advertisement, ask yourself what was the business problem.” This was the message from Brand Mas-ter Amandeep Singh, Alumnus of IFMR in his guest lecture at his alma mater. He explained in detail about one of his successful proj-ect, the viral “BIBA” ad campaign, the campaign is internationally acclaimed. During his interaction he mentioned about change in conventional marketing, Digital marketing and its pros and cons. MNCs’ are erasing the demarcation between online and offline market place while it redefines market it also points to some key areas where future marketers should focus. While talking about his journey this far he said “You have to break the barriers between various departments”. A holistic idea about management is necessary for managers.

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Event organized by Alcom & Markaholic

-Alumni & Marketing committees

Alumni, Batch 2008-2010

Nov 12, 2017

Republic Day - Make in India Marathon

The Republic day celebrations of 2018 started off with the Flag Hoisting event. Flag was hoisted by P.K. Biswas, the director of IFMR. It was followed by a Marathon event comprising of a 5 Km and 10 Km run. The marathon was organized by Sri City in collaboration with IFMR and IIIT. The run started at 6:30 am in the morning from the IFMR campus where participants in-cluded students from both IFMR and IIIT as well as the employ-ees of the surrounding industrial companies. Great enthusiasm was displayed by everyone and students told that they had a unique experience. Certificates were immediately distributed to the candidates who successfully completed the run.

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HR - Connect : Campus to CorporateOn 28th of December 2017, the external relations committee of IFMR has organised a guest lecture inviting Mr. Ravikumar KY, an alum-nus of NIT Trichy currently working at Nagarjuna Oil Corp as HR Head. The theme of the event was HR connect – Campus to Cor-porate. The idea behind the theme was to give a brief vision to the students about the contemporary role of HRM across various in-dustries. It was an interactive session were the speaker answered to specific questions asked by the students. The speaker stated that the role of HR Head is no longer confined to just employee man-agement. The role has become more dynamic over the years and it has started incorporating other functions of business as well. With the rise of technologies like SAP a new domain within the field has been evolved popularly termed as HR Analytics. He stressed on the fact that automation is going to shift the gears of operations within every industry thereby increasing their profitability. The demand of manpower will witness a steep decline in the upcoming years and one might think that the role of HR is on track to become obsolete. But he insisted that the role of HR or any other MBA specialization is not going to become outdated. Instead the job designation and nature of the work will evolve to match with the ongoing changes taking place in the broader world.

Event organized by the External Relations Committee of IFMR 34

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Trade ManiaBeing a finance committee in one of the best and consistently ranked finance institute in the country naturally puts pressure on you to brainstorm and come up with innovative events. “Trade Mania” was one of such events conducted on 21st November, 2017 organised by Arthasabha – The Finance Committee of IFMR. Trade Mania was organized to simulate trading so that the participants can learn how trading works. Though the primary focus of the event was to demonstrate the art of trading in real world it also emphasized on the fun-damental knowledge of capital markets amongst the partici-pants. The 17 teams were given the task to analyse the news related to different stocks displayed through power-point slides. Based on the news displayed they had to predict the stock movements and accordingly take a decision whether to buy, sell or hold. Furthermore, they were also required to abide by various rules and regulations. The news and stock price movements depicted in the event were the replica of ac-tual market movements. Students who experienced trading environment for the first time were enthusiastic and over-whelmed. The participants wholeheartedly appreciated the event and further insisted that similar events should be or-ganized with much more frequency. The committee was suc-cessful in making the event both educational as well as entertaining.

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Event organized by Arthasabha- The Finance Committee of IFMR

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Guest Lecture on Business Analytics

data scientist to gain useful in-formation from data”-he men-tioned while elaborating on the penetration of this technology.

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Mr. Raghavendra, Head of DXC Technology’s Analytics Data Labs, delivered an in-sightful presentation as a guest lecturer on 2nd November in Institute for Financial Man-agement and Research. The interactive session on Busi-ness Analytics consisted of both practical business usage of analytics as well as the con-cepts in the algorithm. Exam-ples hovered from banking to healthcare.

He urged the students not to look at the subject as a sepa-rate field but as a tool that can improve the efficiency of any operation. “Analytics tools are available in the cloud nowa-days, you don’t have to be a

Event organized by IFMR

Panel Discussion on CryptocurrencyWe all live in a highly digitized world where everything from physical meetings to bank transactions have been digitised. Af-ter the cash transactions were digitised, it is no wonder that our currency notes are getting replaced by digital currency. With the pace at which technology is growing and the reach it has in this digital world, crypto-currency came up as one of the inventions that amazed people. It is imperative that we understand the lat-est buzzword and stay relevant.It is in this regard that Alcom, the Alumni Committee of IFMR conducted a Panel Discussion on 21st January 2018 on “The future of Crypto-Currency and its impact on the Central Bank”.

The panellists were Mr. Ravi Jain (Consultant - PKC Advisory), Mr. Sandeep Garg (Assistant VP of Regional CMS sales - IndusInd Bank), Mr. Meher Shiva Tadepalli (Solution Advisor - Deloitte) and Mr. Jinesh Gulecha (Area Sales Manager - Crisil Ltd) and was moderated by Mr. Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, (Assistant Pro-fessor, Economics Area), Chairperson, Alumni Committee, IFMRThe discussion was a highly rewarding experience for the student community of IFMR with the panellists starting with the basic underlying principle of how a crypto-currency works and how it gets its value from. The discussion was then on multiple fronts,

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with the panellists enlisting insightful info on how the world has changed over the invention, much to the amazement of the audience.

The panellists then addressed the queries of the student au-dience with the highest level of details possible, making them get cleared on their doubts and queries.

Event organized by Alcom The Alumni Committee of IFMR

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The 10th edition of Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav (LBM) was celebrated at IFMR on the 7th of January 2018. The Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav was started at IFMR in the year 2009 in the memory of late Laksh-mi Iyer who was a meritorious student at IFMR, who passed away in an unfortunate road accident. The IFMR fraternity decided to dedicate a day in remembrance of Lakshmi Iyer, and carry out the service she was fond of doing - attending underprivileged children.This year Samarthan, the Scial Service club of IFMR, also a regis-tered NGO, carried out its function of arranging the whole event. This year LBM was based on the theme of Circus, wherein 200 kids came from two children homes from TADA and Sullurpeta. The children, were invited and were seen colourfully dressed and excited. In their eyes, it was a day of outing and entertainment. They were welcomed and assigned a student volunteer who took care of them the entire day. They were served breakfast and then taken a tour of the campus grounds. Screening trees were plant-ed by the children, along with the director Mr. P.K Biswas. The little ones had fun playing games such as jumping castle, musical chair, lemon spoon race, football and volley ball.

The 10th edition of Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav (LBM) was celebrated at IFMR on the 7th of January 2018. The Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav was started at IFMR in the year 2009 in the memory of late Laksh-mi Iyer who was a meritorious student at IFMR, who passed away in an unfortunate road accident. The IFMR fraternity decided to dedicate a day in remembrance of Lakshmi Iyer, and carry out the service she was fond of doing - attending underprivileged children.

This year Samarthan, the Social Service club of IFMR, also a regis-tered NGO, carried out its function of arranging the whole event. This year LBM was based on the theme of Circus, wherein 200 kids came from two children homes from Tada and Sullurpeta. The children, were invited and were seen colourfully dressed and excited. In their eyes, it was a day of outing and entertainment. They were welcomed and assigned a student volunteer who took care of them the entire day. They were served breakfast and then taken a tour of the campus grounds. Screening trees were plant-ed by the children, along with the director Mr. P.K Biswas. The little ones had fun playing games such as jumping castle, musical chair, lemon spoon race, football and volley ball.

Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav

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The 10th edition of Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav (LBM) was celebrated at IFMR on the 7th of January 2018. The Lakshmi Bal Mahotsav was started at IFMR in the year 2009 in the memory of late Laksh-mi Iyer who was a meritorious student at IFMR, who passed away in an unfortunate road accident. The IFMR fraternity decided to dedicate a day in remembrance of Lakshmi Iyer, and carry out the service she was fond of doing - attending underprivileged children.This year Samarthan, the Scial Service club of IFMR, also a regis-tered NGO, carried out its function of arranging the whole event. This year LBM was based on the theme of Circus, wherein 200 kids came from two children homes from TADA and Sullurpeta. The children, were invited and were seen colourfully dressed and excited. In their eyes, it was a day of outing and entertainment. They were welcomed and assigned a student volunteer who took care of them the entire day. They were served breakfast and then taken a tour of the campus grounds. Screening trees were plant-ed by the children, along with the director Mr. P.K Biswas. The little ones had fun playing games such as jumping castle, musical chair, lemon spoon race, football and volley ball.

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Fun games such as hoop in the loop, stacked cans were ar-ranged, along with key chains give away. A drawing competi-tion was held wherein the kids showcased their talents. After eating a sumptuous lunch, they were entertained with mime, dance and music. Apart from the performances planned for them by the college’ Dance and Music clubs, the perform-ers among the kids grooved to the music and matched steps. They danced for peppy songs which they had come pre-pared with. They were given gifts for participation. Further the posters of animals and cartoon characters were given to the children.

Samarthan came up with the initiative of awarding scholar-ship to the most meritorious student in the school which they teach in the memory of Sourav Rakshit, an excellent student who passed away in an accident. It was offered to Ms. Arch-ana - studying at the local govt. school. The kids were gifted with stationery, plates and water bottles for their everyday usage.The fingerprints of the children were taken as a memoir. Ev-eryone wished them luck and happiness for them to spread their wings like a bird and take the best flight of life. Thus, the 10th edition of remembrance of our beloved alumni ended with fulfilment of societal contribution.

Event organized by Samarthan The social service committee of IFMR 42 43

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Interactive Session on Corporate Practices

IFMR had the honour of host-ing Mr. Kalyanaraman Srini-vasan, Senior Manager HR at Renault Nissan, for an inter-action with the students on Corporate Practices on 25th November 2017. It was quite an interesting interaction with an array of questions be-ing asked and Mr. Kalyan (he likes to be called so)

answering them with the right amount of relevance and purpose. He was ap-preciative of the kind of questions that were asked and shared his thoughts on the prevailing HR practic-es in the industry. He also touched upon the impera-tiveness of possessing people skills in addition to the technical acumen.

Event organized by Synergy The HR Committee of IFMR

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LohriIFMR has always taken proud in diversity of its students and the different colors of joy they bring together. In the month of January whole of North India gears up to celebrate Lohri and we at IFMR believe the same. Lohri is associated with bonfires and family bonding along with consumption of sugarcane products such as jaggery. Coming at the end of the winter season, it marks the last day of the month Paush. It is during this time that the farm fields gleam with wheat, the primary North Indian crop.

Lohri is essentially a festival dedicated to fire and the sun god.The fire symbolizes the sun and is seen as a source of energy and spiritual strength. It is worshipped as a deity with food-offerings consisting of peanuts, popcorn, and sweets made of til-chirva, gajak and revri.The Event kicked off with ‘Lassi-wassi’ competition which was basically a food race. Participants enjoyed the flavor of Punjab in lassi and stuffed paranthas. Adding to the fun, later in the evening a game of Tug-of-War was also arranged. On the eve of Lohri, bonfire was lit up and students danced around it glitzing and shimmering in traditional attires. Spe-cial dinner was organized by Food & Hostel committee and the whole event ended on a vibrant note with bhangra performance by Lohri committee in which students later joined in.

Event organized by Lohri Committee44 45

Innovinc

Edge- The Consulting Club of IFMR always strive to brush up innovative thinking and decision-making skills in our students. They organized a challenging event of two-liner case study with the purpose of making student accustomed to situation they might face at time of corporate interviews, which are mostly based on real time case. First round of the event was designed in a way where participants were supposed to present their stance on the situation in form of a verbal presentation/discussion; Sec-ond round was based on guesttimate questions where partici-pants were given two guestimmate questions and 15 minutes to solve that. The main purpose of the guestimmate questions was to check the thinkingprocess of the participants and how logical-ly they can proceed to solve a problem within a short period of 15 minutes.The event was won by Kumar Saharsh and Nikhil Jain and the runner up team was of Abhimanyu Mahajan and Sneha Ghelani. A total of 12 teams were shortlisted, consisting of two members each. The event was judged by Professor Arindam das and Professor Amar Saxena.

Edge- The Consulting Club of IFMR always strive to brush up innovative thinking and decision-making skills in our students. They organized a challenging event of two-liner case study with the purpose of making student accustomed to situation they might face at time of corporate interviews, which are mostly based on real time case. First round of the event was designed in a way where participants were supposed to present their stance on the situation in form of a verbal presentation/discussion; Sec-ond round was based on guesttimate questions where partici-pants were given two guestimmate questions and 15 minutes to solve that. The main purpose of the guestimmate questions was to check the thinkingprocess of the participants and how logical-ly they can proceed to solve a problem within a short period of 15 minutes.The event was won by Kumar Saharsh and Nikhil Jain and the runner up team was of Abhimanyu Mahajan and Sneha Ghelani. A total of 12 teams were shortlisted, consisting of two members each. The event was judged by Professor Arindam das and Professor Amar Saxena.

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Edge- The Consulting Club of IFMR always strive to brush up innovative thinking and decision-making skills in our students. They organized a challenging event of two-liner case study with the purpose of making student accustomed to situation they might face at time of corporate interviews, which are mostly based on real time case. First round of the event was designed in a way where participants were supposed to present their stance on the situation in form of a verbal presentation/discussion; Second round was based on guesttimate questions where participants were given two guestimmate questions and 15 minutes to solve that. The main purpose of the guestimmate questions was to check the thinking process of the participants and how logically they can proceed to solve a problem within a short period of 15 minutes.The event was won by Kumar Sa-harsh and Nikhil Jain and the runner up team was of Abhimanyu Mahajan and Sneha Ghelani. A total of 12 teams were shortlist-ed, consisting of two members each. The event was judged by Professor Arindam das and Professor Amar Saxena.

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Innovinc

Event organized by Edge The consulting committee of IFMR

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Republic DayMake in India marathon

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The Republic day celebrations at IFMR started off with the traditional flag hoisting hoisted by Dr. P.K. Biswas, the Director of IFMR. Sri City, along with IIIT and IFMR, orga-nized the ‘Make in India’ marathon. The 5km and 10km run started at 6:30 am in the morning, from the IFMR campus. The participants included students from both IFMR and IIIT, as well as the employees of the surrounding industrial com-panies. Great enthusiasm was displayed by everyone and students told that they had a unique experience. Certificates were awarded to the participants for successfully completing the run.

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Director Prof. P.K Biswas hoisting the National Flag

About IFMR:

The Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) is a leading business school with the objective of moulding ambitious young men and women into competent and socially responsible organisational leaders in a global setting. IFMR’s curriculum offers a mix of theory with simulated real life exposure and endeavours to shape global business practices through in-ventive, sharp thinking and cutting-edge research. IFMR currently offers full-time and part-time PGDM/MBA programmes, a Ph.D programme as well as both open and customised management development programmes.

For More Information on thisedition, Please Contact:

* Priyanka Patil - priyanka.patil@ifmr.ac.in* Nitin Bellani - nitin.bellani@ifmr.ac.in* Swarnendu Biswas- swarnendu.biswas@ifmr.ac.in

Advisory Team:

*Prof. R. Sathyanarayanan- rs@ifmr.ac.in*Prof. Ramkumar Dhurkari ram.dhurkari@ifmr.ac.in*Mr.Sivakumar C- sivakumar.c@ifmr.ac.in

Editorial and Communication Team

Abhinav | Aishwarya Ranjan | Arjun Aathish | Girish Kumar | Mahesh Sharma | Nitya B | Sambhav Jain | Shanya Rastogi | Swarnendu Biswas

Disclaimer: *This news digest is for information sharing without any commercial purpose and for private circulation only.

Address:

Sri City CampusNo. 5655 Central Express Way, Sector 24,Sri City, Chittoor- 517 646 (A.P)

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Institute for Financial Management and Research