The new Micro-economies of Manamai

With the new campus being set up just outside Mahabalipuram, I am fortunate enough to be part of a batch watching evolution right in front of my eyes. Just like the way, reptiles slowly took to the trees and began to fly after sprouting feathers, I find myself at a very interesting spot, watching numerous small businesses spring up around college as days go by. This epiphany happened at the place we fondly refer to as ‘The Blue Mall’. The Blue Mall is a small blue coloured house, set a hundred yards from our college. We occasionally step out to get ourselves some hot Maggie noodles and omelettes. Until a few weeks ago, the exterior of the house was pretty dilapidated. We generally had to sit on a badly made makeshift fence, or stand on mud. But this time around, there was something new. After much staring in the darkness, we realized that the mud had disappeared and in its place were proper tiles. The house bore a new look. Where once remained a scruffy bush, now lay a well set flower bed and pots. And all this was thanks to the simple business of selling Maggie and omelettes to hungry MBA students bored with the canteen menu. When we moved in, the owners only stored cool drinks and a few biscuits, but thanks to some of the girls at college teaching them how to cook what we desired, they found a very profitable business and are showing the first signs of expansion and growth. First tiles, the next thing, we’ll probably get decent chairs to sit on. Soon enough I am sure the menu would improve to include more dishes. Come a few years, a buzzing restaurant, giving competition to the college canteen. All this, thanks to Great Lakes setting up a home far away from the hustle-bustle of the city.

This got me thinking as to the number of such small businesses have cropped up since the arrival of our batch. These businesses will continue for many years to come, along with every passing batch of Great Lakers. Take for example the tiny store set up inside our campus. What began as a simple store for soap, toothpaste and basic necessities is now a flourishing business for the nice lady who runs it. The store now stocks every kind of cool drink, confectionary, snack and stationary. The lady running the store is perhaps the best example of ‘Customer Relationship Management’ in action. She understands everyone’s tastes to the point she almost knows when to get what shampoo for which person, how many chocolates a person eats, what kind of chips do they prefer. If the store does not stock it, a request is made to get the goods in a few days. She also sells on credit to every student. Another example of a flourishing business in the out of nowhere.

The autorickshaw guys in the locality can now send their kids to college thanks to our students. An auto guy who would previously roam around earning not more than 500 on a good day, earns nearly 10 times these days. As explained by one of the auto rickshaw guys to me, they would at best travel between villages charging a flat rate of 5 rupees. The occasional trip to Chennai would come at about 30 per head. With us, we do pay a premium, but the premium is for them. For most of us living in the city, the rates demanded are pretty reasonable. A small nexus has formed between the students, who can call any of the auto guys at any time of day or night. The auto driver is more than glad to come immediately, drop us, and pick us up from Mahabalipuram, irrespective of the time, as he knows he is bound to get at least Rs300 from the round trip. Understanding their customers, they even know which restaurants the students frequently visit. Even trips to the nearby Mayajaal multiplex are at a subsidiary rate, with no waiting charge. The auto has made customers for life. One of the more enterprising chaps speaks hindi, and is well connected to get us any sort of vehicle, right from a Sumo to a Scorpio at an hour’s notice.

Take the city of Mahabalipuram itself; restaurants see greater sales on weekends. Besides the usual crowd, every restaurant on a weekend or a relatively lazy evening is filled with students from our college. Many of the restaurant owners serve us beyond closing hours, and even know the dishes we regularly order. All this, by the simple act of moving the college from the heart of the city to the outskirts. Each one of us is an enabler of sorts; creating business for nearby people. Businesses based on tapping simple needs of desperate city-bound students and placing it on a strong customer relationship foundation. I’d really like to come back 5 years from now and see what other businesses sprout up thanks to the college. Am pretty sure we’ll get a dominoes and Café Coffee Day soon. If one looks at it, not only is the college giving the country future leaders and managers, we’re improving the standard of living around the college too. Win-win situation for the nation.

- Nikhilesh Murthy

Coming together…

There’s a lot of activity at the G1G room…or the GiG room as we call it. A small bunch of people move in and out in a clandestine fashion locking the doors behind them. As they move out, they carry huge boxes, boxes of various shapes and sizes. Students standing by the stairs, in the common area wonder what is happening at this hour. When most people are worried about tomorrow’s ‘surprise’ quiz, a small group of people feverishly move about the floors with their boxes and a grin on their faces. They gather from G1G at the room on the first floor. Lights are dimmed. The few who know what is going on gather inside and are sworn to secrecy. Was this some top-secret presentation the group was working on? No, it can’t be. What would explain the huge boxes?

It’s a little past 1 AM.A student slowly drags himself into bed. It has been a long day of classes, guest lectures and assignments. All the student looks forward to is his few hours of sleep before he has to wake up and begin work on the pre-reads for the next day’s class ( or that day’s class…it is past 1 AM). Just as he settles into his bed, and as the sandman enters the room, the student is rudely awakened by a noise that he can’t quite figure out. Nothing on campus makes this much noise at this hour. The noise seems oddly familiar. He’s heard it before. It wasn’t noise. It was something far more heavenly. As he quickly darts out of his room and hurries towards the noise, it becomes clearer by the minute. It sounds a lot like a haunting tune from the axe of Roger Glover. It’s probably someone testing out their new music system, but something odd about the combination of the tune. He runs across the floor towards the point from where he heard the familiar tune, slowly opens the door…

And there, it all made sense, the clandestine activity, the huge boxes, the cloak and dagger. It all made sense. For that night, he witnessed the birth of the first Rock Band at the new campus of Manamai. Debut song running on the brand new Ibanez guitar is that of Roger Glover’s famous “Smoke on the Water”. And from the small room, huddled together like a can of sardines, was a huge drum kit, 3 guitarists and a vocalist having what is probably the time of their lives. To any normal person, being claustrophobic in a small room with so many equipments playing tunes like ‘Born to be Wild’, ‘Rocking in the Free World’, etc at full volume is nothing but insanity. But then, all musicians are insane. And the boys in the room were no different.

That fortunate evening, one witnessed the birth of a rock band at the new campus of Great Lakes Institute of Management. This could be a legacy left by the few insane who dared to wake up the entire college at an unearthly hour, and would continue to do so in the many months to come. The band prays that numerous bands follow in their footsteps to make music a cult at the college. Hopefully, a legacy that will, like music, live on for eternity.

The band, christened ‘The Straight F’s ’ ( F signifying the F grade that can strike horror into the heart of many an MBA student) are expected to play their first of many gigs at the first edition of Sangamitra for the year 2009-2010.

Numbers=Nightmares

I need to categorically state that numbers are a nightmare only for me and do not represent the opinion of my peers. Now that the formalities are out of the way, let us cut to the chase. At the beginning of the term, Professor Narendra Rao told us that the term would be concluding with all the groups presenting (with power point…phew!) an analysis of 3 publically listed companies and their performance over the last 5 years and to predict the path ahead. This includes the entire jazz of current ratios, inventory turn over, debt, Dupont analysis, bankruptcy models and a lot more corporate financing jargon.

For once, we were given adequate time to complete the presentation, a luxury we never get in a one year MBA course. Needless to say, we did not disappoint. People were pulling out numbers left right and center. Abbreviations, calculations, formula that even the best in the industry would have forgotten. Now, I being more of a marketing person am more comfortable with the good old BCG matrix and other marketing tools than with the ever so important balance sheet. The skeptic in me obviously thought people were making all these numbers up. ( I later did a round of googling…and was proven wrong…these are real numbers) And all I saw was my peers have extensively scrutinized every company to a point that would have made a coroner performing an autopsy proud. Every detail was up there on the board. There was the odd group who unfortunately let the numbers speak and gave into the general optimism that is going about the economy these days, and quite confidently (and mathematically) proved that organizations that have become household names were going bankrupt. The end was near…for all of us. Armageddon cometh!

The last time I saw so many numbers together, at one place, was inside the Clark’s Tables we used back in school. And someone who isn’t too comfortable with anything more than simple addition, seeing slides loaded with numbers, left me feeling dazed and bamboozled. For many of us, the lack of sleep from the previous week and the fatigue led us to become John Nash and see numbers actually pop-out of the screen and make sense. I guess this is the after effect of low sleep and staring at numbers and balance sheets all night long. With full credit to everyone, the only ‘smart’ question I was able to come up with was, ‘Could you please explain how this company goes through the cannibalization cycle?’ That’s marketing for you…. Please forgive me.

-Nikhilesh Murthy

Coming Back to Life

While most rock music enthusiasts would relate this title with Pink Floyd, they just may believe that the following blog is something unrelated. Well, this is related to Pink Floyd and the new ‘Underground Music’ scene in the middle of Mannamai Village. Unknown to the professors, the administration, and many students…well….unknown until now…. A handful of students have been meeting in the dead of night for one purpose – To cleanse our souls with the elixir of life that is music.

One might wonder as to why the whole ‘cloak and dagger’ affair. The response is simple – Exclusivity. The purpose of this underground movement is to bring together true connoisseurs of western rock and heavy metal. The first meeting took place just after midnight on Monday. Students gathered at the great hall on campus for the debut screening of the first of many rock concerts to come. We inaugurated the club with a screening of what is till today, in my mind – the best concert ever – Pink Floyd’s P.U.L.S.E.

Needless to say, we managed to get the support of the few night owls who were pondering over pre-reads for the next day’s management accounting class by Uncle Bala, and managed to turn off the lights. Imagine this – an auditorium with a seating capacity of 280 people, surround sound speakers of the best quality, a huge white screen and in our hands, a copy of what can only be described as the most spaced out psychedelic experience ever. And only 10 of us to witness the awesomeness, that is Pink Floyd. Quite understandably, entry into the club is exclusive – by invitation only. It is open to all who wish to be part of the spiritual experience of Rock and Metal.

And in true Russell Peter’s style – when the first chord of ‘ Shine on you Crazy Diamond’ echoed through the hall, it was totally MIND-BLASTING !!!! This is probably an experience one can’t get even at a movie theater or a superb home theater system. The next 3 hours were spent with everyone rocking along to the tunes of High Hopes, Coming Back to Life, Comfortably Numb and ‘Wish you were here’. The ironic point of the evening which had everyone in splits was when Gilmour began singing ‘We don’t need no education’. Probably a very inappropriate song being played in the hall which is used to impart knowledge to budding managers of the country. We hope that the Karma does not rub off on everyone else. For the newbies, the simply divine combination of lights and sound was unbelievable. We believe we have converted some of them to our way of life, for life.

Concerts to follow would be The Doors, Metallica, Jimi Hendix, Nirvana, Iron Maiden, Children of Bodom, some more Metallica, Megadeth , Dream Theater, Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam and much much more. As sung by Neil Young, we’re “ Rocking in the free world”.

– Nikhilesh ‘ Will Rock till the end of time ‘ Murthy

Excel-ing performance

We begin term 2 in full earnest, just a day after term one and a short mid-term holiday. Term 2 sees us getting involved with the nitty-gritty of corporate finances. For the great majority, anything beyond compound interest is a totally new field and to help us tackle the beast, we were requested to bring in financial calculators. Class begins, and one can make out the uneasiness of punching in numbers into this little thing which is like the mother of a normal PDA. The students complain, “Sir, why can we use MS-Excel instead? It has all the functions and the best part is that we actually know to use it.”

Old school unfortunately triumphs and we are to use calculators. I believe this is a bane of a generation that has been incubated by microchips and digital data. We’ve seemed to make MS-Excel the solution to all the worlds’ problems. We’ve evolved with a belief that there is nothing one cannot do without MS-Excel and there is nothing that one can do without MS-Excel. Give us this archaic bit of machinery called a calculator and see us flinch. We’ve become so accustomed to using excel at work and even otherwise, it is mind-boggling to think of us using anything else to get anywhere.

I called up and asked my father, who is also an MBA graduate, “ Dad ! How did you manage to pass all your courses back in the day without Excel?” And in true MBA fashion, with a hint of contempt for my generation, dad replies, “We used our brains son!”. While it is a bitter truth, it is true. All the foundations for various core subjects were not built on the power of software or even a calculator, but on sheer intelligence and long tedious calculations. While one might argue that we can do things a lot faster now and can get results more quickly allowing us to target more questions, I wonder, how many of us actually got the answer. Was is us or was it the calculator? Did I do anything more than merely remember what formula to use and fill in the blanks? I am certain that at this point in time, we may know the underlying logic for any calculation, but will the same hold good 5 years down the line?

We may all be experts at getting solutions to problems at the blink of an eye, but at a lot of levels, we are sacrificing good old fashion thinking for speed. That may just be that – Old-fashioned. Perhaps the order of the day is not how you got to the solution but how quickly you got to the solution. And being brought up in house-hold where old school was given a lot of preference, yours truly isn’t too happy about using MS-excel for everything. But then, as Bob Dylan sang, “ The times..they are a changing!”.

- Nikhilesh Murthy

Living at the Riot House…

For me, and many others, this was the first time we’re living in a hostel. Now, one is sufficiently educated about the etiquette one is expected to follow while at a hostel. Rules handed down from elder brothers which if not followed, can result in a fairly unpleasant time.

Before I continue, I need to step back in time and give a small history lesson from the great generation of rock and roll. The Andaz West Hollywood is a 257-room Hyatt hotel located at West Hollywood, California. In the late 1960s and 1970s the hotel became the preferred accommodation in Los Angeles for traveling rock bands, due largely to its close proximity to popular clubs such as the Whisky a Go Go. It was during this time that it was given the nickname Riot House on account of the wild antics carried out by band members there, most notably those of English rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, The Who and the Rolling Stones. The hotel was known to be the types that had madness and activity round the clock.

Back to Kannathur village (that’s where the new campus is located). The boy’s hostel is no different from the Riot House. And we do have actual riots. Just last night, after a grueling week of exam after exam, most of the boys were deep in slumber; having dreams of chi-square tests, hypothesis tests, GDP, fiscal deficit and all the data that we had stuffed into our craniums over the week. One would expect the hostel to be as silent as a tomb owing to all the lack of sleep during the week. But then, we’re all rockstars….in the sense, we’re living the rockstar life style. Sleeping was a big mistake.

At 2 in the morning, we have this parade of guys making rounds in all the floors and blocks banging on the doors and waking people up. They were especially merciful to those who had the audacity to shut their lights out and actually sleep. In every hostel, sleep is a blasphemous concept which finds no mercy. Thou shall be woken up at odd hours with regard to mundane things. For me, it is normally a wake up call to ask for my guitar. To top it all, once the parade has passed by your door, a bunch of guys begin playing volleyball. This is at nearly 3 in the morning. Round about the same time, not wanting to feel left out of all the pandemonium and chaos, I turn on ‘Lamb of God’ at full volume, but to no avail. My speakers are not meant for competing with natural noise.

Jam sessions go on late into the night. If that fails, we have Counter strike matches over the LAN which normally begins around midnight. You always have the sincere bunch of future CEO’s and CFO’s with their noses buried in their books and similar paraphernalia. There is always a decent contingent of coffee drinkers. The canteen for quick snacks such as bhel puri and ice cream is almost always occupied by some one or the other. The hostel almost never ever sleeps. And a golden rule, as explained to me was it is futile to resist and oppose change and the natural greater order of hostel etiquette.

Hostel life is nothing but a learning to exist and co-exist in chaos. I remember seeing a description of how the Riot House looked, back in the day on television. We’re almost there. We ought to break-even as far as chaos goes by the end of this term. I guess, we are our own riot house. And the inmates..sorry….students are nothing less than loud, unconcerned rockstars looking to rule the world. Welcome to the Riot house….hope you have a nice day.

- Nikhilesh Murthy

Can I have some fries to go with that order please?

Looks like this is the real deal. A taste of things to come. If we thought things were tough so far, I think we were all fooling ourselves. As of this week, the batch has been quite graciously welcomed by the true spirit of the one year MBA course. And in quite gallant fashion one might add. And to think, we all volunteered for this.

For many of us, we thought that taking our normal sleeping hours from 8-9 and bringing it down to perhaps 5 hours was perhaps the greatest sacrifice we were making, but try not sleeping at all. This seems to be the order on the menu until the end of this week….a week whose end we are all clearly looking forward to. Despite being subjected to the brutalities of the workplace where the extra few hours put in seemed almost barbaric, this week has us redefining the word ‘insane’. Allow me to read out the menu… 3 exams, 1 product launch, 1 case study presentation, 1 presentation to be done on chart (as you would have read earlier) and 1 book review of at least 1500 words…all to be done in a span of 3 days. And the three exams are all biggies…Economics, Statistics and Operations management. For all of us who were drawn into a false sense of security that we had seen the worst, life just upped the ante.

It’s the second night in a row that we’ve gone with a maximum of an hours sleep. People have been showing up to class in a near zombie state. We’ve all reached a stage where our mere sub-conscious seems to have taken over daily activities. And the profs haven’t been given us any mercy what so ever. Attendance and class participation is being monitored even more seriously now. A respectable number of people have fallen victim to sleep in the middle of class, only to be woken up by the professor asking them a question regarding what was being taught. I am quite sure that the cafeteria’s business has nearly tippled thanks to the sale of only tea and coffee. Quite obviously, this would go hand in hand with an increase in the sales of cigarettes in the small shop just outside the campus. The stubble on my face is not because I’m trying to cash in on the whole rugged look, but is an indication that we need way more than a mere 24 hours in a single day. And for each of us, there are our own ways in which we sport the bruises of the last few days. Dark circles and blood shot eyes are the most common scars.

But, all the agony aside, I think this is probably a good thing. At some deep level, this is a sign of the kind of responsibility that industry expects from us and for us to be students with both experience and an MBA degree, we’d all probably look back at days like these and laugh it off thinking it was all a piece of cake. Like Steve Jobs said in his speech at Stanford, “ A lot of things make sense when you connect the dots backwards.” So, the lack of sleep, brain wracking, number crunching, practice and reviews is probably a good thing. At least for me, a great comfort comes from the fact that we don’t have a single reported case of mental insanity or mental breakdown from our seniors, so maybe this is all part and parcel of the order called an MBA degree. Since I’m digesting so much, can I have some fries on the side please? Actually, I had better not ask for any more….lest it leads to indigestion.

– Nikhilesh Murthy

Regressing from B-school to school

It’s a known fact that innovation is the basic requirement in every marketing assignment; where the whole idea is to let open the flood gates of creativity and let the waters flow. And the professor made sure we took creativity in ‘presentation’ to a whole new level by making us return to the way we made presentations in school. And I can quite easily say that a lot of us found the whole experience quite amusing.

Anyone who has worked for at least a couple of years in industry would completely agree that we are solely dependent on good old Microsoft PowerPoint for any sort of presentation. The moment the boss asks us to make a presentation, conventionally, out comes PowerPoint and people furiously adding animations and slide transitions. And for many of us, to think about presenting a subject any other way is blasphemy. There remains a certain comfort in reading from slides and seeing the usual standard graphics and templates offered to us by the software. And all of us have frowned at someone who has dared to be different. When the professor announced that the various study groups had to present their topics on ‘Creative Destruction’, for the majority, our heads must have started working out what animations to include and the usual jazz that comes along with MS-PowerPoint.

However, much to our surprise, our horror and our disbelief ( and other synonyms that indicate we were completely uncomfortable with status quo). The professor asked us to present the topic using chart paper. Chart paper? Yes…chart paper. He said he’s had enough of seeing mundane presentations and it’s high time we got innovative. And by innovation, he took us back to school. He was serious, and this wasn’t one of the double takes I have come to expect. He actually meant it. We were expected to make use of good old chart paper and colour markers to make the presentation. At least for me, this was tantamount to stepping back into the Stone Age. What was he going to ask us to do next? Cave drawings on the new spiffy campus walls?

The college almost resembles a collage-making competition like the ones we had back in school. Mature adults – behaving like school children, drawing on chart paper, sticking pictures, using coloured sketch pens and the works. One can’t but help laugh that life has gone full circle. People are running around taking print outs, and for once cutting and pasting does not involve ctrl+c and ctrl+v. For a lot of us who have grown up having poor old mum or an aunt do these assignments while we indulged in a game of cricket, this was absolutely unfamiliar territory. Come to think of it, I guess that is the whole purpose of this course, to prepare you to expect the unexpected. Looks like we can expect more such innovative methods to be back in vogue quite soon. Who knows, the next time we might have to resort to the use of shadow puppets or mimes to promote a product.

- Nikhilesh Murthy