I was among the three IIM-Bangalore alumni invited to deliver the keynote address to the students of IIM-Visakhapatnam (IIM-V) today,
The institution was inaugurated this week and got its first batch of students, becoming the newest IIM in the country. I had a great time sharing my thoughts with the incoming students.
Appended below -
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Fifteen years ago, I was sitting at the inauguration of our batch at IIM Bangalore, listening to a keynote speaker. When the speaker finished, the forum was opened up for questions.
One of the boys in the row in front of me asked – “For those who are on the fast track, how long will it take to become a CEO” ? The speaker mumbled an answer, his answer no match for the sharpness of the question.
After some time, the dust began to settle and people embarked on their journey. I will spend the next few minutes talking about these journeys- of some of the people who journeyed through IIM Bangalore with me. I would have loved to share many more stories, but owing to the time constraints, I will have to stick to just a few. All of these are stories of my batch mates at IIM Bangalore, and will give you a sense of what I want to be the essence of this talk.
Let me start with the first story.
It is about the tiny Rashmi Toshniwal- who was also one of the youngest in our batch. She went through IIMB, got into a corporate career and somewhere along the way discovered her love for the sketchbook. She took to pencil and charcoal sketching and started posting her sketches on facebook. Her proficiency grew by the post, and so did her expertise and eye for capturing the right kind of expression on the sketch. Recently, she had an exhibition titled ‘Strokes of Black’ at a restaurant called Chez moi in Bombay. Today, there is no looking back, and her talent in this area keeps blossoming by the sketch.
My next story is about Yashodhara Lal, another of my Section A classmates. ‘Author. Mother. Marketer.’ Is how she describes herself. After IIMB, she went to HLL. Got married. Had a child. And then had twins. Went through some very difficult experiences. As she raised her children, she started blogging. Parts of the blog morphed into what became her first book, ''Just Married, Please Excuse”. "After 3 children, she came up with 3 novels in 3 years" is how she sums this up her life over the last few years.
The third story is about Nisheeta Bajaj. Post IIMB, she got into consulting with the BCG group. And then joined another consulting firm, the Hay group. Somewhere along the way, she seemed to have found her calling. In the art of living. Today, when she speaks about the secret of the breath and the way breathing can change your life , she is talking straight from the heart about something she sees as a way of life.
Next, lets hear the story of Rahul verma- While at IIMB , people called him Mr. International. He would be the heart throb of every exchange student on campus. Or so he claimed. Those days, he used to spend hours chatting on yahoo messenger (that was a primitive pre historic messenger ) to all kinds of strangers trying to work his charm through emoticons and the IIM brand. On one such random chat, he met Daniela. One chat lead to another. To cut to the chase, the yahoo messenger chat led to them meeting up in person, and subsequently getting married. A near first for something like that accomplished more than a decade and a half ago.
Ajay Singh’s story is next. Before joining IIM, he was a tourist guide in Delhi. He went through the IIM course, and joined Dr. Reddy’s Labs. Several Impressive achievements during the decade he spent at Dr reddy’s, the last few years being in the USA office . Then one day, I saw his facebook post- it was just after the movie English Vinglish was released. In the movie, Sridevi enrols at a New York English learning school and takes sweets for her classmates. Ajay’s post said- “Sridevi makes ladoos. We make complex medicines. I have become an entrepreneur”. He started Slayback Pharma, which he says, was founded on the principle of “connecting the dots and connecting one idea with another to develop complex drugs. Through this process of drug development, he aims at reducing the cost of therapy by bringing expensive branded medicines within the reach of patients. It is so thrilling to know that he is well on his way, and has started filing products with the United States FDA for examination and approval.
We continue to stay on in the US east coast, for my next story – that of Karan Bajaj. After IIMB, P&G and BCG happened, he kept flowing. Somewhere along the way, backpacking and mountaineering got firmly established as key interests, and he converted his experience of travelling into three published books. Today, he is a bestselling novelist and likes to describe himself as a striving Yogi. He lives and works in New York and some months ago, took a one year sabbatical to become a Hatha Yoga teacher in a South Indian Ashram, meditating in the Himalayas and living as a Buddhist Monk in a Scottish monastery. He has since returned to his corporate job in New York and keeps sharing his learning from living a Yogic life in the heart of the material world
When people speak of the material world, very few places have the kind of materialistic stuff on display as a big fat Indian wedding. That was the subject of one of her photo essays, and is also the subject of my next story, the story of Shilpi Choudhury. She converted her post IIM, post first job situation into a passion and depth for photography. She recently wrote about people gifting themselves with something that could be with them for years - the skill of photography. She runs photography workshops, specializing in food and people photography. A break from the corporate world made her look at photography in a different 'light' and it became a form of expression and a career path.
My next story is about Aditya Mishra- he joined IIM Bangalore from a modest background with modest educational credentials. That did not deter him from keeping the spark of doing something worthwhile burning inside. After going through the drill at TCS, he became the founder CEO of switchme,in , a platform that allows people like you and me to compare and save on their existing home loans by switching them to those banks of financial institutions that best suit a lender’s situation. His customized solution to switch lenders has so far helped home owners save more than 225 crores. Yes, you got that number right. 225 Crore Rupees, almost 35 Million dollars.
From switchme, I switch to the story of Abhishek Sanghvi. He completed his IIM and did the usual stuff- JP Morgan Chase, Capital One. He also relocated to the US. A few years later, he moved back to his hometown Indore to take a shot at running a management institute, which he did quite successfully. He founded a group called iLead, which ran initiatives in education and consulting. He later founded Crinis Power, a turnkey solution provider for setting up Solar power projects. Such impressive accomplishments do not come without focus. Yes, he was the guy who asked the question on fast track at our inauguration, fifteen years ago, which I spoke about at the beginning of this talk. Given his range of accomplishments, he was justified in asking that question.
I will quickly go through a few more stories – that of Ayer Prakash Hamabhai. He came into IIM from a very modest background. Through sheer perseverance, he worked his way up and joined the IT sector. He continues steadily, and his break from the past has spurred his immediate and extended family make a lot of difference. I have personally seen him not bat an eyelid wherever any charity is required or asked for. His accomplishments have also spurred many more from his family and community to feel encouraged to invest in education.
Having taken you through these small little stories of my batchmates, I want to share a little bit about the choices I made while at the IIM. In the second year, all subjects were electives and the general consideration in choosing them was interest / placement / flair. I chose my electives not on any of these criteria; rather, on the TIME TABLE. The reason to choose electives on the basis of the time table was ensure that all my classes got over on two days of the week (Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 Am to 8 PM, flat out) and I could have a 5 day weekend.
In doing so, I could experience many of the other things that IIMB had to offer – most importantly, chatting up with my friends in G-Block. The time table principle also enabled me to have an eclectic mix of subjects- from POPS (patterns of problem solving) to STIA (Self transformation Indian approaches) to MM (Multinational Management) to MBFI (managing banks and financial institutions).
The only downside was that it made me miss out on the flagship course run by Prof Ram-C - Corp strat. The reason was that his classes were not on the days my time table was fitting in. That choice led me tp miss out on his outstanding ways of looking at strategy and keeping the class enthralled.
However, I can look back with a great deal of satisfaction that I did manage to experience in full the Late Prof Thiru’s outstanding take on all things marketing (with some of his immortal punchlines on Tata and Bata, on Customer and Kasht-Mar) and Prof Vijay Kumar’s ability to marry multinational management with economics and an in-your-face, socio-political analysis from India to Pakistan to Washington to China.
The other big gain for me in making the time table choice was that it gave me a wide variety of perspectives, especially with the exchange students. It enabled me to appreciate and understand them and their context from a socio-economic standpoint – a skill that is put to test every day in my current job at Dr Reddy’s Labs, a healthcare firm that tries to democratize health by promoting access and affordability to innovative medicines. The learning through the interactions with these exchange students also encouraged me to become an early adaptor of sharing economy, through things like the hospitality club and couchsurfing.
In sharing all the above stories, the point I want to make is essentially one- MAXIMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE, in whichever way you deem fit. There will be no better place to build the repertoire of your experience than HERE and no better time than NOW. As we keep building on the portfolio of experience, we see new possibilities emerge. So reach out, connect, talk, walk, do all those things that you might not have not done before. This place will give you access to a host of outstanding individuals- I encourage you to share a slice of your life with them, and keep moving on this journey into the world of possibility.
The second point I want to make is about something that is unique to you as a group. You are the ones who are starting the journey for IIM Visakhapatnam. This places you at a point where very few have the privilege of being. Not just in terms of the obvious, but also in terms of BUILDING A CULTURE for the institution.
I will talk to you for a couple of minutes about a place I was very fortunate to have spent four memorable years of my life as part of my undergraduate course.
It was a place called Jamalpur Gymkhana, the hostel for the Indian Railways Institute of mechanical and electrical engineering, where I trained as an engineer, as part of a program called the SCRA. The Special Class Railway Apprentices' (SCRA) scheme was started in 1927 to meet the demand for engineers on the EIR (East Indian Railway) and on the GIP (Great Indian Peninsular) Railway. The SCRAs are selected by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on the basis of an all- India competitive examination, and, on completion of the course, get absorbed into the Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers.
A total of about 1200 SCRAs have been selected from 1927 to now, making an average of about 14 recruits per year. Many left the IITs to join SCRA, not just for the attractive career it offered as part of the Indian Railways service, but also because of the of the feeling of awe. The feeling of awe was driven by the culture. A culture, which, right from the first batch, has been characterized by an extraordinary sense of esprit de corps and camaraderie, a culture which gives me full rights to walk into any alumni’s home or workplace unannounced, with full privileges. Today, I know each and every one of the 748 alumnus who are alive, and they know me. This is not just by name, but in full detail. This is not a result of any app on the smartphone, but an outcome of an extraordinary culture that got built up through the years, starting with the batch that pioneered it all.
Today, as you embark on your journey at IIM V, the culture of the future is there for the shaping. And the role that you will play, as the first batch, will be far more pivotal than any other official activity that can ever be performed. You are entitled to an irrational belief in your abilities to make it happen.
In closing, I will reiterate two simple things-
Maximize the repertoire of your experience. By doing so, you will see a world of infinite possibilities emerge, some of which I narrated from the bio sketches of some of my batch mates who were sitting in a room like this fifteen years ago. One good way to check the worth of the two years you will spend here will be the score on experience (and not on a placement salary)
And the other, which is unique to your situation, is to be the creators of a new culture, a culture that IIM V ‘s future generations will look up to, and which you look back upon with a great deal of pride and fondness.
Enjoy the journey.
Bon voyage.
The institution was inaugurated this week and got its first batch of students, becoming the newest IIM in the country. I had a great time sharing my thoughts with the incoming students.
Appended below -
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Fifteen years ago, I was sitting at the inauguration of our batch at IIM Bangalore, listening to a keynote speaker. When the speaker finished, the forum was opened up for questions.
One of the boys in the row in front of me asked – “For those who are on the fast track, how long will it take to become a CEO” ? The speaker mumbled an answer, his answer no match for the sharpness of the question.
After some time, the dust began to settle and people embarked on their journey. I will spend the next few minutes talking about these journeys- of some of the people who journeyed through IIM Bangalore with me. I would have loved to share many more stories, but owing to the time constraints, I will have to stick to just a few. All of these are stories of my batch mates at IIM Bangalore, and will give you a sense of what I want to be the essence of this talk.
Let me start with the first story.
It is about the tiny Rashmi Toshniwal- who was also one of the youngest in our batch. She went through IIMB, got into a corporate career and somewhere along the way discovered her love for the sketchbook. She took to pencil and charcoal sketching and started posting her sketches on facebook. Her proficiency grew by the post, and so did her expertise and eye for capturing the right kind of expression on the sketch. Recently, she had an exhibition titled ‘Strokes of Black’ at a restaurant called Chez moi in Bombay. Today, there is no looking back, and her talent in this area keeps blossoming by the sketch.
My next story is about Yashodhara Lal, another of my Section A classmates. ‘Author. Mother. Marketer.’ Is how she describes herself. After IIMB, she went to HLL. Got married. Had a child. And then had twins. Went through some very difficult experiences. As she raised her children, she started blogging. Parts of the blog morphed into what became her first book, ''Just Married, Please Excuse”. "After 3 children, she came up with 3 novels in 3 years" is how she sums this up her life over the last few years.
The third story is about Nisheeta Bajaj. Post IIMB, she got into consulting with the BCG group. And then joined another consulting firm, the Hay group. Somewhere along the way, she seemed to have found her calling. In the art of living. Today, when she speaks about the secret of the breath and the way breathing can change your life , she is talking straight from the heart about something she sees as a way of life.
Next, lets hear the story of Rahul verma- While at IIMB , people called him Mr. International. He would be the heart throb of every exchange student on campus. Or so he claimed. Those days, he used to spend hours chatting on yahoo messenger (that was a primitive pre historic messenger ) to all kinds of strangers trying to work his charm through emoticons and the IIM brand. On one such random chat, he met Daniela. One chat lead to another. To cut to the chase, the yahoo messenger chat led to them meeting up in person, and subsequently getting married. A near first for something like that accomplished more than a decade and a half ago.
Ajay Singh’s story is next. Before joining IIM, he was a tourist guide in Delhi. He went through the IIM course, and joined Dr. Reddy’s Labs. Several Impressive achievements during the decade he spent at Dr reddy’s, the last few years being in the USA office . Then one day, I saw his facebook post- it was just after the movie English Vinglish was released. In the movie, Sridevi enrols at a New York English learning school and takes sweets for her classmates. Ajay’s post said- “Sridevi makes ladoos. We make complex medicines. I have become an entrepreneur”. He started Slayback Pharma, which he says, was founded on the principle of “connecting the dots and connecting one idea with another to develop complex drugs. Through this process of drug development, he aims at reducing the cost of therapy by bringing expensive branded medicines within the reach of patients. It is so thrilling to know that he is well on his way, and has started filing products with the United States FDA for examination and approval.
We continue to stay on in the US east coast, for my next story – that of Karan Bajaj. After IIMB, P&G and BCG happened, he kept flowing. Somewhere along the way, backpacking and mountaineering got firmly established as key interests, and he converted his experience of travelling into three published books. Today, he is a bestselling novelist and likes to describe himself as a striving Yogi. He lives and works in New York and some months ago, took a one year sabbatical to become a Hatha Yoga teacher in a South Indian Ashram, meditating in the Himalayas and living as a Buddhist Monk in a Scottish monastery. He has since returned to his corporate job in New York and keeps sharing his learning from living a Yogic life in the heart of the material world
When people speak of the material world, very few places have the kind of materialistic stuff on display as a big fat Indian wedding. That was the subject of one of her photo essays, and is also the subject of my next story, the story of Shilpi Choudhury. She converted her post IIM, post first job situation into a passion and depth for photography. She recently wrote about people gifting themselves with something that could be with them for years - the skill of photography. She runs photography workshops, specializing in food and people photography. A break from the corporate world made her look at photography in a different 'light' and it became a form of expression and a career path.
My next story is about Aditya Mishra- he joined IIM Bangalore from a modest background with modest educational credentials. That did not deter him from keeping the spark of doing something worthwhile burning inside. After going through the drill at TCS, he became the founder CEO of switchme,in , a platform that allows people like you and me to compare and save on their existing home loans by switching them to those banks of financial institutions that best suit a lender’s situation. His customized solution to switch lenders has so far helped home owners save more than 225 crores. Yes, you got that number right. 225 Crore Rupees, almost 35 Million dollars.
From switchme, I switch to the story of Abhishek Sanghvi. He completed his IIM and did the usual stuff- JP Morgan Chase, Capital One. He also relocated to the US. A few years later, he moved back to his hometown Indore to take a shot at running a management institute, which he did quite successfully. He founded a group called iLead, which ran initiatives in education and consulting. He later founded Crinis Power, a turnkey solution provider for setting up Solar power projects. Such impressive accomplishments do not come without focus. Yes, he was the guy who asked the question on fast track at our inauguration, fifteen years ago, which I spoke about at the beginning of this talk. Given his range of accomplishments, he was justified in asking that question.
I will quickly go through a few more stories – that of Ayer Prakash Hamabhai. He came into IIM from a very modest background. Through sheer perseverance, he worked his way up and joined the IT sector. He continues steadily, and his break from the past has spurred his immediate and extended family make a lot of difference. I have personally seen him not bat an eyelid wherever any charity is required or asked for. His accomplishments have also spurred many more from his family and community to feel encouraged to invest in education.
Having taken you through these small little stories of my batchmates, I want to share a little bit about the choices I made while at the IIM. In the second year, all subjects were electives and the general consideration in choosing them was interest / placement / flair. I chose my electives not on any of these criteria; rather, on the TIME TABLE. The reason to choose electives on the basis of the time table was ensure that all my classes got over on two days of the week (Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 Am to 8 PM, flat out) and I could have a 5 day weekend.
In doing so, I could experience many of the other things that IIMB had to offer – most importantly, chatting up with my friends in G-Block. The time table principle also enabled me to have an eclectic mix of subjects- from POPS (patterns of problem solving) to STIA (Self transformation Indian approaches) to MM (Multinational Management) to MBFI (managing banks and financial institutions).
The only downside was that it made me miss out on the flagship course run by Prof Ram-C - Corp strat. The reason was that his classes were not on the days my time table was fitting in. That choice led me tp miss out on his outstanding ways of looking at strategy and keeping the class enthralled.
However, I can look back with a great deal of satisfaction that I did manage to experience in full the Late Prof Thiru’s outstanding take on all things marketing (with some of his immortal punchlines on Tata and Bata, on Customer and Kasht-Mar) and Prof Vijay Kumar’s ability to marry multinational management with economics and an in-your-face, socio-political analysis from India to Pakistan to Washington to China.
The other big gain for me in making the time table choice was that it gave me a wide variety of perspectives, especially with the exchange students. It enabled me to appreciate and understand them and their context from a socio-economic standpoint – a skill that is put to test every day in my current job at Dr Reddy’s Labs, a healthcare firm that tries to democratize health by promoting access and affordability to innovative medicines. The learning through the interactions with these exchange students also encouraged me to become an early adaptor of sharing economy, through things like the hospitality club and couchsurfing.
In sharing all the above stories, the point I want to make is essentially one- MAXIMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE, in whichever way you deem fit. There will be no better place to build the repertoire of your experience than HERE and no better time than NOW. As we keep building on the portfolio of experience, we see new possibilities emerge. So reach out, connect, talk, walk, do all those things that you might not have not done before. This place will give you access to a host of outstanding individuals- I encourage you to share a slice of your life with them, and keep moving on this journey into the world of possibility.
The second point I want to make is about something that is unique to you as a group. You are the ones who are starting the journey for IIM Visakhapatnam. This places you at a point where very few have the privilege of being. Not just in terms of the obvious, but also in terms of BUILDING A CULTURE for the institution.
I will talk to you for a couple of minutes about a place I was very fortunate to have spent four memorable years of my life as part of my undergraduate course.
It was a place called Jamalpur Gymkhana, the hostel for the Indian Railways Institute of mechanical and electrical engineering, where I trained as an engineer, as part of a program called the SCRA. The Special Class Railway Apprentices' (SCRA) scheme was started in 1927 to meet the demand for engineers on the EIR (East Indian Railway) and on the GIP (Great Indian Peninsular) Railway. The SCRAs are selected by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on the basis of an all- India competitive examination, and, on completion of the course, get absorbed into the Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers.
A total of about 1200 SCRAs have been selected from 1927 to now, making an average of about 14 recruits per year. Many left the IITs to join SCRA, not just for the attractive career it offered as part of the Indian Railways service, but also because of the of the feeling of awe. The feeling of awe was driven by the culture. A culture, which, right from the first batch, has been characterized by an extraordinary sense of esprit de corps and camaraderie, a culture which gives me full rights to walk into any alumni’s home or workplace unannounced, with full privileges. Today, I know each and every one of the 748 alumnus who are alive, and they know me. This is not just by name, but in full detail. This is not a result of any app on the smartphone, but an outcome of an extraordinary culture that got built up through the years, starting with the batch that pioneered it all.
Today, as you embark on your journey at IIM V, the culture of the future is there for the shaping. And the role that you will play, as the first batch, will be far more pivotal than any other official activity that can ever be performed. You are entitled to an irrational belief in your abilities to make it happen.
In closing, I will reiterate two simple things-
Maximize the repertoire of your experience. By doing so, you will see a world of infinite possibilities emerge, some of which I narrated from the bio sketches of some of my batch mates who were sitting in a room like this fifteen years ago. One good way to check the worth of the two years you will spend here will be the score on experience (and not on a placement salary)
And the other, which is unique to your situation, is to be the creators of a new culture, a culture that IIM V ‘s future generations will look up to, and which you look back upon with a great deal of pride and fondness.
Enjoy the journey.
Bon voyage.
