>Business School students all set to enter Bollywood

>After management guru Arindam Chaudhari, who created a mark in film production with “The Last Lear” and “Do Dunni Chaar,” a group of business management students at one of the premier B-Schools in the country are ready to follow suit. Friday Night Productions, a venture of students at Indian School of Business, is all set to debut in the hindi film industry with “Buddha in Traffic Jam,” a mainstream political thriller, based on the life of a business school student Vikram Pandit.

“It is always believed that business students have nothing to do with film making. But right from marketing and raising money for the film to its promotion and publicity classifies as a job of a business management student. Also, we are no less in creativity,” Ravi Agnihotri, one of the student members of Friday Night Productions told PTI.

With a star cast that includes veterans like Anupam Kher and Pallavi Joshi, along with actors Arunoday Singh and Mahi Gill, “Buddha in traffic jam” went on the floors in February this year. “We have not just raised the money for the film but have also ideated upon the script. We were working over the project since June last year,” informs Agnihotri, who further says that his journey has been great so far.

“We look at film making as a business, which is profitable and sustainable as it has a great entertainment value,” adds Agnihotri. In the trend set by blockbusters like “Rang De Basanti” and “3 Idiots” to highlight a social issue in the set up of college, brimming with youth, “Buddha in Traffic Jam” brings to celluloid the problems of intellectual terrorism, contemporary naxalism and political nexus in the backdrop of a college set-up.

The story of Vikram Pandit, a student of the Indian Institute of Business, reflects different problems faced everyday by the deprived in India. Vikram offers a modern day solution to all of these nuances. Directed by “Chocolate” fame Vivek Agnihotri, “Buddha in Traffic Jam” film, says the students presents a radical business model that can effectively replace stagnant policies to deal with the social, economic and political problems in the country.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 7, 2011

>Academia, scholars laud setting up of education tribunals

>The proposed Educational Tribunals Bill, 2010 is likely to have a smooth passage in the Parliament with the major stakeholders — academia and scholars — supporting it since it would fast track the settlement of disputes in the higher education sector. As per the Bill, which aims to set up educational tribunals to adjudicate disputes in the higher education space, these tribunals will have all the powers and jurisdiction of civil courts which would help them to expeditiously resolve disputes involving teachers, students and institutions.

“It is a welcome move because any litigation related to academic institutions can now be put up in the tribunals. However, the tribunals should have people with both academic and judicial knowledge. With the size of the education sector increasing, we will need judgments based on both academics and the judiciary,” said S G Dhande, Director, IIT, Kanpur. The premier business schools of the country the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) second the thought. “Students often get distraught because there is no proper grievance redressal mechanism. Same is the case with faculty because they can’t work with an employer if they are not treated well despite a good monetory compensation. The tribunals will address these issues,” said Devi Singh, Director, IIM, Lucknow.

The tribunals will be established at both national and state levels. “Moreover, the academic calender gets disrupted sometimes because of legal cases which will not happen once the tribunals are in place,” Dhande added. University of Delhi’s Vice-Chancellor Prof. Dinesh Singh concurs: “It is a good idea to have educational tribunals as they will be more focussed and lead to efficient disposal of education related matters.” In fact, the move is also seen as a step towards the formation of an overarching regulatory body in higher education called the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER). “All these efforts are worth implementing in view of the larger goal of setting up the NCHER. The tribunals will give an opportunity to all stakeholders to speak about their grievances,” said AICTE’s acting Chairman S S Mantha.

“We need a forum for quick settlement of disputes related to exams and admissions especially when the government is letting all private and foreign education providers function in the country. These players might attract students by putting out deceiving advertisements. Hence, the tribunals must have people who are knowledgeable of academics so that complaints related to students, faculty and management,” said eminent educationist and Chairman of the Centre for Development Studies Prof. N R Madhava Menon.

However, there are certain doubts in the minds of teachers. “Though the tribunal will take care of the lag in time that courts usually are associated with, any recourse to legality outside the campus would be cut off,” said Brinda Bose, Department of English, University of Delhi. “The tribunals will be a good platform for an aggrieved student, employee or public at large to seek redressal of their grievances. It would also allow institutions to seek relief from the regulators,” said Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Source: Financial Express, April 7, 2011

>Management schools in India drive GMAT growth

>In a bid to take their schools international and make them comparable to world class business schools, more and more Indian management institutions have begun accepting the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT) as an admission criterion. Consider this: In 2007 around 20 B-schools in India were accepting GMAT scores. In 2010, 45 B-schools are accepting GMAT scores.

According to Ashok Sarathy, Vice President, GMAT programme, “Part of the value proposition of GMAT is that it is an internationally recognised test. And as B-schools in India desire to be comparable to the best in the world, GMAT provides them with that opportunity.” Mumbai-based Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies’ Vice Chancellor, Rajan Saxena, agrees with Sarathy.

“GMAT will help us improve our admission process and learn from the global best practices in the world. It will also help us us accept international students in future,” says Saxena. NMIMS is already using GMAT scores to admit students for its executive management programme delivered in Bangalore. The B-schools in future, plans to use the same for its two-year management programme. At the S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, accepting GMAT scores will help the school be counted among the world’s best, according to its Dean M L Srikant.

This means that B-schools in India plan to accept GMAT along with other examination scores like the — Common Admission Test (CAT), NMIMS Admission Test (NMAT) and Xavier Admission test (XAT) —among others used. GMAC has also invited various Indian B-schools to be its member. These include — Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad and Bangalore; S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR); Great Lakes Institute of Management and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

“One of the primary reasons for Indian students opting for Indian B-schools is that more number of institutes are starting one-year management programmes. The numbers could go up further, with institutes increasing the sizes of their batches in the future,” said Samir Barua, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). IIM-A runs a one-year post graduate programme in management for executives, with a batch size of around 100 students. “The institute may look at increasing the batch size in the future, as the programme establishes itself,” Barua said.

GMAC, which opened its India office this February, has its headquarters in Virginia (USA) and an office in London and Hong Kong, is looking at growing its GMAT volumes in India and also get more Indian B-schools to begin using GMAT for admissions. The council says it would look at creating India specific research and data so that it can provide some value to Indian B-schools.

“In India we are looking at doing things that we have done successfully across the globe. We do volumes of research on management education and related trends. We also do professional development programmes. So being a part of GMAC allows B-schools an opportunity to network, educate themselves and bring up to speed with other B-schools,” adds Sarathy.

The council plans to grow GMAT volumes by marketing at different levels including web based and digital communication to candidates. According to the Asian Geographic Trend survey report released by GMAC last month, GMAT exam takers from India declined by 12 per cent between testing year 2009 and 2010. The same increased by 29 per cent for Chinese students.

The council says it is also looking at expanding access to the test in India and make it much easier and available to Indian candidates. “We are looking at at the fact that candidates who travel long distance could they be better served if we were to put up centres in those locations. We would be looking at secondary market where significant volumes come from,” adds Sarathy. GMAT administers test at 18 centres in India.

Source: Business Standard, April 7, 2011

>Only 25 % IT graduates readily employable: NASSCOM

>At 25, and with a computer science degree from one of the top regional engineering colleges, Sandesh Kumar considered himself to be the luckiest among all his batch mates when he was picked by Infosys Technologies last year. But within three months, Kumar realised the initial training at Infosys’ sprawling Mysore campus was getting nowhere. “I actually sucked at everything – communications, language and understanding about some of the latest development tools,” Kumar says. “The company was kind enough to flag early that I might face hurdles ahead and I decided to quit,” he adds.

While Kumar’s unemployability is an extreme case, of the 550,000 engineering graduates passing out every year, anywhere between 10% and 25% cannot be readily employed by any technology firm in the country. Software lobby NASSCOM says only 25% of graduates working in IT are readily employable, while it is roughly 15% for back-office jobs. Growing gaps in skills needed for computer science graduates to start coding at the earliest is nothing new, but India Inc.’s modest progress in dealing with the problem is what marks the seriousness of the issue. India’s US$ 60 billion outsourcing industry is already spending almost $1 billion a year on readying these graduates, picked up from different campuses. But only marginal headway has been made with the percentage of employable engineering graduates moving up by just a per cent over the past six years to 25%.

“I did go to a private institute in Hyderabad for a three months refresher course, but they taught us more of the same. It didn’t seem to help at all,” agrees Kumar who joined a multinational tech support centre in Bangalore last month. While NASSCOM believes a quarter of the engineering graduates are unemployable, consulting firm Aspiring Minds paints a gloomier picture. In an employability study conducted last August, the firm found that merely 4.22% of engineering graduates are employable in product companies and only 17% in IT services.

On its part, NASSCOM says India’s large pool of engineers makes the employability percentage look even more daunting. “Comparison of India’s employability percentage with other nations is not fair. The talent pool in those countries is much smaller, and the quality of education has been much higher. The right to education bill has just been passed in India, and it will take time for it to show results,” says NASSCOM Vice President Sangeeta Gupta. NASSCOM has started two common assessment tests, which set a common benchmark for employability especially for students from tier 2-3 engineering colleges. “The 45-minute evaluation tests you on analytical, comprehension, writing and verbal skills. If a person is not good in voice, good analytical skills will get him a job in the BPO function in an IT firm. We have also started the train-the-trainer programme for universities,” she says.

“The percentage of non-engineering graduates in the pool of IT and BPO firms is also rising steadily. Companies are not complaining of any dearth of talent, as there is a large pool of three million graduates available to them a year, of which the industry’s demand is about 240,000 only per year. We don’t see a dearth for talent in future as well, though there will be competition from other sectors,” she adds.

Tech employers such as Adobe, the world’s biggest maker of graphic design software, says a stronger coordination between campuses and companies is needed. “The issue is real but not too much of a glaring problem for us as we go to the Tier I institutes where the curriculum is up-to-date and our experience has been good. But in other technology schools it is a problem. The curriculum is stuck in a time warp and there is very limited exposure to the industry,” says Jaleel Abdul, Senior Director, HR, Adobe Asia-Pacific.

“The best practice would be to let students learn from the industry and have strong university programs. Several of our senior technical team go to colleges as guest faculty and students come for internships, that helps a lot. As a result of most colleges not being in touch with the actual requirements, companies have to make a lot of additional investments in training which can be avoided,” he adds. Sanyukta, an engineering student set to graduate next year, says she had tough time finding a course that taught software testing – a growing, multi-billion dollar business for Indian tech firms.

“We need premier institutes to offer such courses, most of my batchmates are doing crash courses in testing from smaller private institutes,” she says. Some tech executives, however, play down the employability issue. “When you have such a big pool, these challenges will exist and I would say that going forward training will become core to companies. This will help us realign skills to business needs as and when needed and not wait for an institute to offer graduates in a particular discipline,” says the CEO of one of the top 10 software exporters. He requested anonymity because his company is under a silent period.

Apart from investing more in in-house training, IT companies have also started looking at non-engineering graduates for carrying out simpler tasks. As technology firms automate their commoditised service offerings, they do not necessarily need engineers to perform all tasks. Instead, they are increasingly hiring non-engineering graduates for testing software applications and managing computer infrastructure of their clients in order to do more with fewer staff and at lower wages than computer engineers.

From nearly 10% of their current workforce, non-engineering graduates could now account for nearly 20-25 % of the staff at companies such as TCS, Wipro and HCL, over the next one to two years. Multinational rival Cognizant already has almost 20% of its global workforce who are non-engineering graduates. Meanwhile, efforts made by NASSCOM and other educational institutions are expected to improve employability for IT engineers to 30% over next few years. “I wish our institutes were situated inside these IT companies or vice versa. It can help bridge the skill gap,” Kumar says.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 7, 2011

>ISB placements reach new peak

> In an indication that hiring of management professionals is back to prerecession levels, the graduating batch of the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad got 661 offers, exceeding the previous high of 657 recorded in 2008. Besides, there is a 10-20 per cent increase in the average pay offered across the sectors. The B-school, which turned 10 this year, had 569 students in its Class of 2011, of whom 552 appeared for placements.

Announcing the placement results, ISB Dean Ajit Rangnekar today said the two major trends this year were the “phenomenal success” of women students in placements and its own alumni coming back to recruit from their alma mater. He said the ISB this year tried to undo the perceived significance of Day 1 by introducing a rolling placement process, which ran over successive weekends for two months, instead of four or five days at a stretch. He said the B-school also made it a policy not to disclose the highest salaries since it distorted the overall picture and led to speculative expectations. Instead, it has announced the average for the middle 80 per cent, removing the top and bottom 10 per cent.

This year, the media & entertainment (M&E) sector offered the highest average pay (cost to company) of Rs. 19.25 lakh, followed by consultancy (Rs. 18.9 lakh), information technology/enabled services (Rs. 18.07 lakh), infrastructure (Rs. 18.02 lakh), retail ( Rs. 17.63 lakh), oil, energy and minerals (Rs. 17.58 lakh) and pharma and biotech ( Rs. 17.47 lakh). At Rs. 15.81 lakh, banking and financial services was the least paying sector at this years placements. But the sector accounted for 12 per cent of all, with only consultancy (32 per cent) and IT/ITeS (21 per cent) ahead. M&E accounted for just three per cent of all offers. The largest increase in pay was seen in the manufacturing sector, which rose 42 per cent from Rs. 12.16 lakh last year to Rs. 17.32 lakh.

In terms of functions, consultancy was the most preferred, with 36 per cent of students bagging roles in it, followed by sales and marketing (20 per cent), general management (12 per cent) and finance (12 per cent). Companies founded by ISB alumni made seven offers, of which four were accepted.

Though the number of recruiting companies dropped to 310 (from last years 346), there was an increase in offers from international companies to 83 (73 in 2010). V K Menon, who heads the career advisory services wing of ISB, said this was arecognition of India as a talent hub. He said the increase came mainly from emerging economies in West Asia and Asia-Pacific, while offers from US companies remained constant. There were seven offers from African companies, of which four were accepted.

Five students joined the schools entrepreneurship incubation programme to start their own ventures in tourism, retail and mobile applications, among others. Around 25 ventures are at different stages of incubation at the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development.

Menon said the outgoing CTC was an average of 2.3 times the incoming CTC (i.e, the compensation the students were receiving at the time of joining ISB), while for its 160 female students, it was an average of 2.4 times.

Source: Business Standard, April 7, 2011

ISB gets highest job offers in 10 years
The controversy surrounding its tainted past chairman Rajat Gupta, who was last week replaced by Adi Godrej, does not seem to have made a dent on placements at the Indian School of Business (ISB), with 2011 notching up the highest number of job offers in the school’s 10 year history. On Wednesday, ISB announced that its grads bagged 661 offers from 310 companies this year, bettering the previous record of 657 offers made by 230 companies in 2008. Offers this year were 22% higher than the 541 offers made by 346 companies in 2010.

The 552 ISB grads who signed up for placements this year also grabbed fatter pay packages. Average salaries, according to ISB sources, shot up by 10-15% this year to hit an average package of over Rs. 18 lakh per annum as against Rs. 16 lakh per annum in 2010.

According to ISB officials, more number of offers being made per company is a clear reflection of the revival in the economy and the fact that companies are now in the expansion mode. However, they refused to divulge details of highest packages saying they had taken a conscious decision to stay away from the numbers game to avoid distortion of perception.

ISB, which follows the rolling placements process that stretches over a couple of months, said international offers shot up 35% to 84 this year, with students being placed in 19 cities across Middle-East, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and North America by 75 participating international players.

According to ISB’s senior director (career advancement services) V K Menon, students joining the advertising, media, communications, public relations and entertainment sector bagged the fattest pay cheques averaging Rs. 19.25 lakh, followed by consulting at Rs. 18.90 lakh, IT/ITeS at Rs. 18.06 lakh and infrastructure, construction and real estate at Rs. 18.02 lakh.

Consulting accounted for the largest chunk of offers at 32%, followed by IT/ITeS at 21% and banks and financial institutions at 12%, Menon said, adding that consulting also topped the function-wise offer distribution too at 36% followed by sales and marketing at 20% and finance and general management/strategic planning at 12% each.

Participating companies included top rung consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, AT Kearney, Booz & Company, IT/ITeS players like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Amazon, Cognizant and banks like Citibank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs among others. Indian players like Infosys, Hero group, TVS, L&T, Shapoorji & Pallonji, DRL and Apollo Hospitals.

Interestingly, lifestyle players like Louis Vuitton, Luxottica group, which manage top rung brands like Gucci, Ray Ban and Gabbana, as well as Conde Nast made a good number of offers this year. Women grads made their mark on placements this year by outdoing their male counterparts as far as average CTC is concerned. The graduating 160 women grads, who account for 28% strength of the batch, bagged 2.4 times higher average outgoing CTC than the average incoming CTC (in their jobs prior to joining ISB) as compared to the overall batch average of 2.3 times.

Commenting on the placement results, ISB Dean Ajit Rangnekar said: “This has been a very heartening placement season for us and resonates with our belief of providing high quality talents on a large scale to addressing the growing demand for business leaders for fueling our growth.” Incidentally, five grads opted out of the placement process to enroll in ISB’s inhouse entrepreneurship development initiative (EDI). With the Class of 2011, the ISB, which was set up in 2001, now has a network of over 3500 alumni spread across the world.

Source: The Times of India, April 7, 2011

>South Korean tutorial to coach students in IIT-JEE

>South Korea based coaching institute Etoos Academy will set shop in India with its first IIT-JEE coaching institute in Kota (Rajasthan) to be operational from next month. Known as South Korea’s biggest coaching conglomerate, Etoos plans to train at least 5,000 students in the first year of their operations.

Etoos which provides coaching for Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test (KSAT) – the common entrance exam for professional colleges; much like Indian entrance exams like IIT-JEE, has set up its hundred per cent subsidiary in India with its headquarter in Gurgaon, Haryana. “We are planning to train 5,000 students annually from our Kota centre. Next year we are planning to open centres in Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai,” Etoos Academy CEO Park Seong Bok said.

Backed by SK Group, one of the biggest industrial conglomerates in Korea, Etoos focuses on two major businesses in South Korea – e-learning website etoos.com and offline coaching centres. It is also exploring opportunity to offer training courses via mobile phones. “We will partner with telecom companies to offer the course content to students in the rural India,” he said.

Source: Business Standard, April 7, 2011