Applying some Marketing concepts

I tried to apply some of the marketing ideas I learned and designed a brochure for Kairali resorts, Kannur :) Please check it out and give me some feedback-

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3hvyHkD8je7R2dtdmhBVnZVMGc

When tourists are packed off!

I recently took a package tour to Singapore by Akbar travels. I will strongly recommend against the tour package by this particular company because of the following reasons –

• ·         The tour package is advertised as Singapore tour but has 3 days in Malaysia, 2 days in Sri Lanka (during transit) and 3 days in Singapore.
• ·         To cut cost, the company booked our flight on Sri Lankan air. So we were forced to spend 1 day each at Colombo to and fro during the journey. The worst part was the pathetic treatment and delays at Colombo immigration. They kept us waiting for hours and ate up all the time which could have used for Colombo city tour otherwise. When a passenger complained to the immigration officer who was loitering around giving system error as the reason for delay, he got angry and told the passenger to go back to her home country if she had problems. Finally we got 2 hours to see the Colombo city
• ·         The food was arranged at cheap restaurants with no proper facilities to cater to the large groups of tourists. Only exception was an Indian restaurant in Malaysia called “Gateway of India”
• ·         The accommodation was arranged at hotels outside the city adding to the commutation time. In Malaysia, the hotel was in not so good locality which turned dangerous at night. The exception was the accommodation provided in Sri Lanka by Sri Lankan airways. Both ways, the resorts were exemplary sea side resorts – Jetwing blue and Club Dolphin. The staffs at club Dolphin were rude to us when we were trying to leave in hurry but Jetwing blue Negombo was a exemplary in every respect – property, service, food and staff. I will definitely like to go back there for a vacation.
• ·         The tour is very badly managed. In Malaysia, you are given just 2.5 hours at Genting highlands. By the time, you figure out which rides to try out, it was time to leave.
• ·         The remaining two days in Malaysia was spent on visiting chosen shopping outlets of the tour provider. Obviously the travel company should have got a good cut out of the chocolates and watches the tourists brought from these retail outlets.
• ·         In spite of having 3 days in Malaysia, we were not taken to the best destinations in KL like the aviary (Bird Park), National Museum, Islamic Museum etc. Basically every destination with an entry fee was kept away from. The tour package boasts of an experience where all the charges are taken care of. So to increase their margins, the tour operator takes care that only destinations with no entry fee are covered.
• ·         The worst was the way the ticketing was done. The return ticket for the group was not booked on the same flight and the representative of Akbar travels who was with us left with the first group leaving 15 passengers in Sri Lanka to take care of their own travel.

Akbar travels charges a premium for the ‘superior’ services they provide to the tourists. But the truth is that their tour is as bad as any other small time tour package provider. There were a lot of cases where the tour could be improved with good management and the operator Akbar travels didn’t even seem to realize this. So if you are planning to go on a package tour to South East Asia, Akbar travels is not a good choice.

Welcome to Genting Highlands……Now let me pick your pocket!

Malaysia looks like a developed country from every angle. Kuala Lampur airport is one of the biggest and best in the world; six lane highways take you from the airport to KL city. The route is covered on either sides with lush greenery of evergreen forests which is dotted intermittently only by skyscrapers and beautiful residential layouts. After the bad experience in Colombo of being stuck without money and phone, the first thing I did in KL was to get some Malaysian Ringgits and buy a local SIM with that money. The famous Maxis SIM cards were missing in the vicinity of the airport, so I bought a digi card offered by telenor.

We moved to our first destination in Malaysia – Genting Highlands, a theme resort and casino at a height of 6118 feet above sea level. The now famous Resorts World took birth on these highlands of Genting when a visionary Chinaman Lim Goh Tong concocted the project. Uncle Lim (as the Malaysian saying goes about his casino - "It's very tough to win money from uncle Lim"), one of the richest men in Malaysia (when he died) is said to have come to Malaysia from China with 1 ringgit in his pocket. He then worked hard and built an empire by converting a forested highland into a world class tourist destination. To attract people from every spending category, he built a theme park, a casino and large expanse of malls and shops. Anyone who comes to Genting will end up spending a lot. Every ride, shop and attraction in Genting is designed to encash your emotion. For instance, you will be snapped at various points during your amusement park ride and the pictures will be offered to you at 30 ringgits. Because the tourists feel the ride was once in a lifetime experience, they readily pay for the ride. The best part is that even after spending big, you feel happy about it. You feel that you just had a great time and you deserved this break and a spending spree after all the tough days of work.
Lim Goh Tong made money in construction and mining and investing everything he had in Genting. None of his wealthy friends were ready to invest in his 'crazy' venture because they thought his idea of building a resort at 6118 m was never going to be possible. So Lim did it alone. It took him 3 years to cut a road through the forest. He set up his own power plant and created a drainage system to make the highlands suitable for construction. His efforts bore fruit when the then Malaysian PM visited Genting and granted him the permission to operate the first casino of Malaysia as a reward to his single handed effort to attract tourists to Malaysia. Lim and Genting never looked back; the resort grew in strength and Lim added new attractions in a rope way, theme parks and new resorts. After Genting, Lim also created another integrated resort in the neighbouring Singapore. More about the Sentosa, Singapore resort in the post on Singapore.

Genting also has the world’s largest hotel in terms of the number of rooms. The first world hotel has 6118 rooms (same as the height of the hill in feets) and is a sight worth seeing in the evening with the large plumes of mist engulfing it. The skyway cable car taking tourists from the foot of the hill to the resort is the best attraction in Genting. The engineering marvel will take you on a ride over the lush evergreen forests giving you an experience that’s breath taking. Although the establishment with its mega hotels, fascinating rides (some of them only exist here in SE Asia) and the fastest ropeway in the world is an experience in itself, the service quality is terrible. Almost none of the theme park staff knows English and they are rude to the visitors. One could see the resort staff working without any interest in their jobs all throughout the day and showing maximum energy levels at 5:30 pm when the theme park closed for the day. Visitors were sent back although the scheduled closing time of the park was 7 pm. Lack of maintenance was also visible in most of the rides.

Resorts World is a huge establishment now and they have theme parks in Sentosa islands, Singapore, Manila, Philippines and New York, USA. With expansion into newer economies, seems that the Lim family’s focus has moved away from their first resort. Genting now is money making machine grossing around 3 million ringgits for the family every day. So everything at Genting is about fleecing people. Prices of articles are nearly 4 times the rate outside and the 28 storied One World hotel cram rooms at every possible nook to set the world record. The room will deny you of even basic facilities like room service, wi-fi and even drinking water. With all its positives and negatives, I feel that Resorts World, Genting Highlands Malaysia is an avoidable place. Most of the rides can be experience at Universal Kingdom Singapore under better service quality.

The Demon King’s Golden Kingdom

If you had slept through your trip from Kerala to Sri Lanka, you will not realize that you are in a different land. Sri Lanka resembles the God’s own country in many ways. Be it be the long rows of coconut trees that line up the tarred highways, houses with tiled roof tops or sound of the rumbling sea at a distance.

“Sri Lanka got independence from British in 1948” our guide quipped. “British did a lot of good work over the 140 years they were in Sri Lanka. They build our railways, 5 star hotels and a good road network. They would have continued their good work but unfortunately we got independence in 1948”. I was a little taken aback by the eulogy for colonists by the oppressed.  As we moved on seeing the city of Colombo and hearing more from our Sri Lankan guide, the similarity I had weaved in my mind started dissolving. The first difference I could see was the blatant disparity between rich and the poor. Our guide took care that our tour bus went through the rich localities of Lanka and we were all given a perception of a developed country. But the intermittent slums which littered the lands gave us the actual picture of the golden kingdom build for Ravanna by the mason of gods. The vehicles running on the roads were mostly imported from India. There were Altos, Swifts and Nanos. Tata Nano infact is a big hit in Sri Lanka and is extensively used as Nano taxis there. But I was surprised to hear that the prices of vehicles are very high. It seems Nano costs almost 10 lacs after the large import duty imposed by government. The price of nano is around 3 - 4 time more than it is in India and almost equal to the price of Alto, the market leader of Sri Lanka. Initially, I thought the high price of cars are a strategy used by the Lankan government is keeping its roads less congested. They cannot expand their city roads, so only way to keep the roads commutable is by reducing the vehicles- If you cannot solve the problem, delay the problem.Later I found out that the Lankan government had actually sliced the duty on cars but immediately rolled back the same after the large number of car imports drained all its foreign reserves.

Most of our tour concentrated in an area called Colombo 7 aka Cinnamon gardens. The tour showed us the freedom square first and moved on the famous buildings of the New Lanka – Bandaranayike convention centre, Cultural auditorium etc. Interestingly all these structures were build with Chinese money donated to the Lankans. The President of Lanka Mahindra Rajapaksa is getting abundant helping hand from the Chinese which is using to rebuild his country, he liberated from LTTE. Chinese money is also building the second international airport and port down south. Interestingly, Chinese is trying hard to impress the large Budhist community in Sri Lanka and trying to build a network around India. I have a feeling that this is a bit of paranoiac work from Chinese as we all very well know that India is no match for China with all its internal troubles. Whatever investments Chinese do for Sri Lanka, Budhists  world over are never going to support them against Dalai Lama, so the big brother of Asia may not reach anywhere with this strategy.

After the city tour, we returned back to our resort called Club Dolphin. The resort is well build and is one of the favorite destinations of European and American tourists. Because of the this same reason, the staff will treat you like shit. The welcome drink and initial ritual will work fine but when it comes to peak hours, they will quietly ignore you and will tell you to wait if you press your case.

We then moved to Colombo international airport for our flight. Everything in that airport is substandard. First you will face an uncontrollable mob at the entry terminal. People will all be rushing in and the security staff will just toss your baggage in and out the scanning machinery. Once you are through with the entrance, you reach a large line of shops selling "authentic" Lankan stuff in dollars. Next you will be faced with security check-in staff with outdated metal detectors. The system is so poor that they will ask you to remove every piece of metal from your body before getting yourself scanned. You will have to remove your shoes, belt and I was wondering what they will do about people with metal implants within their body. Finally, we boarded our Sri Lankan air flight at 11:35 pm in the night. Tired from the day long trip, I slept off immediately only to woken up by the air hostess at 1:30 am for dinner. Imagine, 1:30 am and dinner made up of noodles pushed towards you. After the “dinner”, I went back to sleep again; again to be woken up a smiling air hostess at 4 am. “You will have to go through security check at Singapore airport now” she said. “What? But I am going to KL, why will I get a security check here” I asked. “You will have to sir, as our flight is goes via Singapore” she replied. Now imagine the heights – You are woken up at 4 am in the morning to take a walk through an airport which you are not even getting down at. As we had no choice, we went through the turmoil of taking a walk through the legendary Singapore airport and getting ourselves scanned and checked. I never really understood why Singapore was doing this. Singapore airport is one the most crowded and successful airports in the world. Surely, they don’t need to take people though such jokes to show off their possession. May be Singapore knows the quality of security in Sri Lankan airports and so was being doubly sure.

All in all, I feel that Sri Lanka is a beautiful country, very similar to Kerala in its geography and topography. Its sun, beaches and food are lovely and worth a tour. The best thing about Sri Lankan tour is that after a tour, you realize that India is a great place after all.

Menacing trip on Kerala roads

At 3:15 pm, we realized that our train left at 2:30 pm and we will have to find a different mode of transportation to take us to Cochin. As an obvious choice, taking a long car trip from Kannur to Cochin came downing on us all. 7 hours of travel on Kerala roads, phew! The thought was not a very welcoming one.
The mishap occurred because our ticket booking expert (my sister) confused 1430 hours of railway train with 4:30 pm :( She finally claimed that the confusion came in because the train number was 16306 which she confused with the departure time. :p Anyway finally, we were on our way to Cochin by road at 3:30 pm and then the adventure began.
Traveling on Kerala roads is like playing NFS. You are first exposed to narrow alleys fulls of speeding vehicles, most of them faster than you and all of them angry at you because you have just tried to trespass into their territory. Then roads wind, twist, bank and turn at random points giving the driver a formula one driver experience. Everyone seems to be speeding to catch a leaving plane, they are all honking and screeching, asking you to move faster or give way. All this can be endured but no sane driver will ever want to fight the real monster on Kerala roads - the transport buses. These omnipresent mode of public transportation are typically driven these days by school dropouts with absolutely no sense inside their brains. The drivers are kids aged between 20 - 25 years, ones who have acquired their driving license a few weeks ago. If I was getting a feeling of NFS, I think the bus  drivers were trying to create a road rash effect, making the roads hell for everyone around.
The fundamental problem of Kerala roads are much more deeper than the kids and their high seats(bus driver's seats) from which they look down upon the roads. Kerala has very little space for roads but our economy is heavily service driven. We import almost everything and our people travel a lot as part of their jobs. Owning a vehicle is a status symbol here and having a car is a must before you get married. All these adds up to our burgeoning number of vehicles while our roads are still at the widths they were at during British times. Add to it, the obsession housed by most against giving away their land for road and other infrastructure projects and you end up having highly winding roads which nauseates you after a few kilometers.
The problem can be solved only if infrastructure development is tackled in a cleverer manner. The idea of land bonds which was proposed by IIMK to Kerala cabinet was a move in this direction. But like all other great ideas given to government, this also is stuck somewhere beneath those red taped files.    

Hypocrite's oath

Recently on a trip to Mumbai, I met a guy working with the largest consulting firm in the world (in terms of projected revenues as the consulting LLP firms never really publish their revenues). He was a pass out from a top B-school in the country and has been at his work for last 2 years. We spoke about various things and somehow the discussion came to the high fees charged by B-schools and how a high salary is imperative to pay off the loan. What I heard next was unbelievable, the consultant from the firm started boasting that he never ever paid even a penny of his educational loan back. He should be earning a minimum of 25 lacs every year and still is finding it impossible to pay off a loan worth 8 lacs. The hypocrisy from an highly educated Indian surprised and disappointed me at the same time.

I was more surprised to find out that consultant from the firm was not alone in his 'heroic' act. There are a lot of students, graduating out of top institutes of this country, creating more NPAs for the poor public sector banks which gave them loans at the time of need. To find out more, I spoke to the manager of a bank near a top educational institute. The bank was into giving educational loans to students earlier but stopped the practice as NPAs went through the roof. He told me that nearly 50% of the loans given to the students were NPAs and the only data they had of the students were mobile numbers which were disconnected and 'permanent addresses' which didn't exist. It sounded to me that the systems in PSB were so full of loop faults that students found it easy to cheat. The incentive to cheating grew when they found that people who cheated are getting along without any issues and the domino tumbled.

When one look closer into this phenomenon, one can see that the deluge of NPAs started in ayear when the top Indian B-schools increased their intake and economy ran into a bad patch. Students who came into these institutes with hopes of high salaries suddenly found themselves with an average job and a high EMI. They found it easier to default the EMI. The defaults may have started with an intention of delaying the payment. But when they saw there were no repercussions, they got bolder and got used to the defaults. Soon the people who landed up with good jobs found that their own batch mates were enjoying a privilege unavailable to them and wanted to join the bandwagon. So the domino effect started.

My reasoning may give you a hint that that I'm putting the blame on the banks and the system rather than the meritorious professionals who decide not to pay their dues. If the education they received at India's top schools have not given them even so much values, I think we are a failures as a nation. We have failed at creating individuals who cannot separate the right and wrong and lacking long term vision and we have failed at establishing institutions which could create such individuals.

10 OCT, 2011, 06.43PM IST, PTI India Inc's fresher hiring up 21 pc in Jul-Sept quarter: Report

(This is an adopted report from Economic Times)

NEW DELHI: India Inc has witnessed 21 per cent growth in fresher recruitment in the July-September quarter, say experts.

"We have seen overwhelming response from clients over campus hiring. Industries like energy, infrastructure, consulting, media, IT and retail has grown up by over 20 per cent in Q2, FY 11-12.

"Whatever the slowdown in the US and European countries is, Indian market are showing more growth," Ripples Consultancy Services CEO Rishi Raman said.

Echoing view, Prachi Kumari Director of Sat-n-Merc Manpower Consultant said, "We had seen increment in campus recruitment activity and companies are focusing more on campus hiring because of cost effective module".

According to a survey by MyHiringClub.com which was conducted among 879 employers and 1,274, institutes across the country said that the second quarter of current fiscal year has seen 21 per cent upward hiring activity in campus vis-a-vis first quarter of 2010-11.

"The campus recruitment market had seen growth in terms of number of hiring and salary as well," MyHiringClub.com CEO Rajesh Kumar said.

Arjun Mohan, Placement Committee Member at IIM Kozhikode said, "Hiring season at IIMs started amid fears of global slowdown but we are now getting good response from companies on summer internship and final placements".

Experts believe that energy and enthusiasm of campus graduates as well as the right training make them the best possible combination of adaptability, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

"Now globally companies are paying more attention to hire from campus, because they find skilled professionals at very low cost. Besides, these graduates can easily adapt the company's culture," Kumari said.

Among the sector, the IT and ITes, infrastructure and FMCG sectors have done maximum freshers recruitment. In terms of pay package, IT space stole the show.

City-wise analysis shows that Bangalore has witnessed highest campus recruitment with 24 per cent, followed by Delhi NCR (21 per cent), Chennai (18 per cent), Mumbai (15 per cent), Hyderabad (13 per cent) and Kolkata (10 per cent).

Although, campus hiring in Tier II and Tier III cities is still very low.

"There is a major concern is hiring from Tier II and Tier III Cities. These cities need more attention in terms of campus recruitment," Kumar said.

Chips wars- Lays Vs Everyone else

PepsiCo, through its Lays brand, created a market for potato chips in India in the nineties. The brand which is now a household name is extremely popular among the young Indians. But lately, lays is facing a lot of heat in the market it created.

It all started with ITC banging the market with Bingo followed by copy cat solutions by Parle, Haldiram and Balaji. These players used the supply chain and retail network Lays painstakingly build over years. They bought potato from the same contract farmers and sold in the same shops side-by-side Lays products. Last 2 years have seen the competition intensify with local players such as Prakash snacks (Yellow Diamond) entering market and Parle relaunching its product (under Parle's brand) with a 20% free offer. With so many players, the competition on price points intensified and customer loyalty enjoyed by the segment eroded. In the 3 year war period, market share of Lays eroded from 66% to 58%, with the major share erosion in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat where Balaji snacks, Prakash snacks and Parle Agro had a strong product portfolio and distribution network.

2011 began with the AC Nielsen report above which pointed at PepsiCo's losing grip on the chips market. But the legendary marketing of Pepsi is not the one which will accept defeat that soon. The strategy adopted by PepsiCo India to counter the insurgence of its competitors was nothing less than legendary and in all probability will go in as a Harvard case study.

The company realized that in India there exists a market for both cheap chips and premium varieties. So PepsiCo started exactly the way Kotler suggested, by segmenting the chips market. They positioned their flagship product Lays in the premium segment and made numerous changes to the product. The quantity was increased to 32 g from 28 g and price increased to Rs. 15 from Rs. 10. The package was also redesigned by making it thinner and taller than the standard packaging adopted by the industry. This allowed Pepsi to differentiate their product from the Parle, Diamond and Balaji. To add on to the perception of the customer, they erected the retail stores with special shelves exclusively for Lays chips and paid the retail stores to give exclusive racks for lays. The new retail planogram just had one motive - "Never keep Lays side by side with cheap competitors". No wonder the second largest marketing expenditure incurred by Pepsico after mass media advertisement is retail promotions.

For the cost conscious segment, Pepsi launched a new product - Lehar potato chips. Lehar copied it competitors in packaging and pricing and was positioned side by side with Balaji, Diamond and Haldirams. While the premium product Lays was always backed heavily by advertisements and promotions, Lehar received absolutely zero marketing allowing PepsiCo to compete heavily on price. With this master stroke of copying the copy cats, PepsiCo is turning the tables around and eating into the market share its competitors chipped away from it.

Lehar, the JV partner Pepsi used to enter India is a brand Pepsi uses for most of its products for the 'aam aadmi' such as its soda and now its chips. Pepsi also entered the namkeen segment with Lehar creating a strong competitor for Haldirams and Balaji. One cannot really understand if Pepsi is interested in capturing this segment which is concentrated in a few central Indian states or its strategy is just to prevent Balaji and Haldirams from growing strong(Both Balaji snacks and Haldirams made their money selling namkeen).

When I saw both Lehar and Lays in a shop in Mumbai, the first thing that came to my mind was the possibility of cannibalization. But if you look more closely, PepsiCo has launched Lehar potato chips only in the markets where it's facing competition from cheap copycats. In all other markets, they have launched lehar namkeen alone. Recent market studies shows that this strategy is immensely successful with both Lays and Lehar showing increase in market share and sales. Will this strategy be successful in long term before competition catches up is something we will have to wait and see.

Fuel Woes

GOI jacked up the prices of diesel and cooking gas today. The reason was the usual one, oil marketing companies are losing money due to the subsidies. This is interesting as the price of crude has been dipping. Oh! but we can't complain, diesel, cooking gas and kerosene is heavily subsidized int his country. In fact, we are the only nation in the world where kerosene is cheaper than drinking water. Let us understand this subsidy more -

Crude oil price (25/6/'11)

WTI crude - $92

Brent crude - $105

India calculates the price as a weighted average of WTI and brent in the ratio 5:4

Price of imported crude - $97.77

Price paid to ONGC for a barrel - $55

We get the crude at a discount ranging from 10% to 80%. I am adjusting the discount with the transportation expenses incurred during import. As India imports 75% - 80% of its oil

Average price paid per barrel - $89.26

Quantity of oil in a barrel - 158.9 liters

So the price we pay for one liter of crude oil is $ 0.56 or Rs. 25.27

According to refining companies, the operational costs of refining a liter of crude is 52 paisa. So the total cost of refined oil should be approximately Rs. 26.

As of today, petrol costs Rs. 71 and diesel Rs. 43 (Bangalore rates). In other words, there is a 200% and 100% additions of price due to government taxes and high costs incurred by petroleum companies.

Taxes on oil in India include -

1. Import/Customs duty on crude oil

2. Excise duty

3. VAT imposed by states

But this is not all, oil marketing companies are another big group of money guzzlers. These organisations which run on one of the most inefficient and bureaucratic organisational structure are a big reason for the hikes. We keep hearing about the oil companies losing $5, $10 or $2 per liter of petrol sold in India and the petroleum minister goes out of the way helping them out by issuing oil bonds or hiking the prices. What I don't understand is that why is it that these companies are never asked to cut costs internally. Why does not the corporate cost cutting mechanisms and concept of leaner organisations apply to them? These companies run some of the most inefficient supply chains in the world, give exorbitant commissions to their dealers who don't need to do any marketing to sell and carry outrageously overstaffed and inefficient organisational structures.

Every time when a hike happens, there is a lot of hue and cry about bringing down the taxes on oil. But this never happens because oil is the biggest revenue source for GOI and GOI needs all that money to feed its staff who sits at 5 levels of bureaucratic maze and passes files at a rate of 2 per day. The entire system which requires 5 people is run by 500 people now and we are forced to pay more for our daily needs. The significant cost and time overruns is not the only bad aspect of this structure; the system also results in high levels of risk aversion and indecision. Because one has to justify one's position, everyone wants to be part of the decisions and significant amount of ego clashes ensure that good ideas are nipped off at inception itself.

If you think about it, government is jacking up the cost first and then giving a discount on the increased cost and calling it subsidy. What an irony?

Comparison with katta koothara

After the posting of ads, some of my batch mates came to know about the existence of this blog and more importantly my "About Me". The effect was the ad you can see here (Courtesy - Tony Sebastian, Shashi)

IIMK has got talent :)

Ads by AD RATS

Ad - 4 (Wills)

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Ad 1 (Couple) Ad 2 (Oral Cancer)

The ads were created by AD RATS (Ansa, Devarajan, Razy, Arjun, Tony, Shashi) for our MM 2 project. To take the associated survey, please visit -

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5 point idiots

The best way to market your blog is by writing about the breaking news :) As high court rulings on religious hatred and Srinagar bombings are not of interest to my already depleted reader base, I thought I will give my views about the raging controversy between 3 idiots and 5 point someone.
I read 5 point someone when I was in college and just loved the book because I could identify with the life at a national college depicted in the book. The book will remain as one of my all time favorites. After seeing the movie 3 idiots, I cannot think about a better treatment that book could have met. Rajkumar Hirani has successfully created a motivating story perfect for a movie of mass appeal(read it as complete bollywood movie with all key ingredients- heroism, masala and romance)out of a book which was a simple, honest portrayal of Chetan Bhagat's exposure at IIT Delhi. The way the director has stitched together an entertainer while keeping the backbone intact is admirable. If you have noticed, the director has filmed the movie in such a way that all the sub-plots of the book - Hari's love story with the director's daughter, Ryan's perpetual machine, prof. Veera etc have either got removed or tweaked or merged together to make it look like a single rhetoric. The key aspect of the book which was loved by people like me- the iconoclastic Ryan(Rancho), the deep rooted friendship in the jungle of competition, an egomaniac professor and the life at IIT forms the basis of the movie.
Some key changes introduced by the script team has been a superman Rancho(he topped instead of finishing at the bottom of the class like Ryan), the humor touch given to the Chathur's character, the wrapper plot in which Rancho turns out to be an impostor and most importantly how the 3 idiots successfully change the system and become successful subsequently. Over and above, the script has incorporated some contents from e-mail forwards very cleverly at key areas. For eg:- pencil and pen on space. All in all, I reiterate the movie is brilliant and has been able to fix every single problem the book had.
Coming to the controversy, I really don't understand what is Chetan Bhagat claiming now. According to the contract uploaded on Vidhu Vinod Chopra's website which CB signed he has sold his novel for 11 lakhs allowing VVC and Hirani to adapt it any format they want. Now when the movie made 240 crores, he realized that his price tag was too less. I used to respect CB after I read 5 point someone. But his next 2 novels "one night at call center" and "3 mistakes of my life" were abysmally poor works of literature and were no better than a third rate bollywood movie. After wasting time on those 2 books, I decided that he was just a one book wonder and "Five point someone" had more to do with his life at IIT and his observations there rather than his skill as a writer. Anyway I heard the "2 states" is good, may be he followed the same old formula again, only difference is this time it is life at IIM. :) I agree that the books I mentioned were "best sellers", so may be he is keeping his reader base happy. So please see the above details as my personal opinion. The worst thing, CB could have done is the unwanted press interviews after the controversy. In an interview he gave to TOI, he was literally wailing like a child. The immaturity with which he was complaining to the reporter about how his mother missed his name in credits and how he plans to leave writing and join ISKON is not accepted from the IIT-IIM educated India's best selling English author.

Ajab CAT ki Gajab Kahani

I have not included any details of the CAT paper in this blog which will give you an idea of how the question paper actually was due to the non-disclosure agreement. But I felt that I should speak out on how the test is getting mis-managed at certain places. My advice to you people is that to go there with an attitude that "whatever happens I don't care. Anyway I will get complete 2.25 hours to complete the paper in a good environment, so whatever happens before that or after that, I don't care."




I reached CMR institute at 7 am as the scheduled appointment required me to report by 8 am. By 7:30 am, we were promptly allowed into the venue. The security and infrastructure arrangements were elaborate. My ID and Admit card were checked at every entrance. "Good start, Prometric is making them worthy of the $40 million they took from IIMs" I thought. At 8, we were allowed to enter our block and asked to wait inside a waiting room. Then started the series of mismanagement. Every now and then, a guy would come and make an announcement in broken English. I didn't quite catch the announcement initially, but then realized that he was calling people for photo and finger print scanning. Anyway I sat and watched the drama where a bunch of people will run towards the entrance whenever an announcement was made and only 5 out of them were allowed in for the photo shoot. There was a poor guy who tried 6 times (yes, I was counting) and was returned back every time. Anyway when my turn came at 9, I realized that there was only a single personal for an entire group of students. (No wonder, you are asked to come at 8).Basically, the whole process of security check and photo-shoot takes only 10 minutes, the 2 hours bracket is only because Prometric don't have enough employees and volunteers to complete the process smoothly.
By 9:15 am, we were done with all the proceedings and all set to take our tests. By 9:45 am, all the students other than people belonging to my room were allowed to check in into their respective rooms and an announcement came that the test in our room will be delayed by 10 - 15 minutes. "Tests are getting canceled right-left-center and he is talking about a 10 minutes delay, no problems" I thought. But I was too optimistic. 10:15 came and went, so did 10:30 and 11:00 am, still no news about our CAT exam.As the prometric people were tightly hunched up inside the testing room, romour mills started churning out various scenarios - Servers are down; we won't be able to take test today. I was lucky to have bumped against 2 of my friends from NITC, didn't get bored at all during that long wait. But I could see people exhibiting a wide array of emotions. Most of them were extremely tense; that is understandable - such a big day in their life is getting marred with unpredictability. Finally the information came from the officials at 11:55 am. The servers are indeed down; none of the people in our block are taking test. All the ones allowed in are just sitting in front of the computer :). We were lucky we could at least sit and chat in the waiting room. The announcement continued "If the servers doesn't come up by 12:30 pm, the tests will be rescheduled". By 12:25 pm, I have almost made plans for the afternoon when the announcement came "The servers are up, take your seats". Within 3 minutes, I was frisked and seated in front of the computer screen. After that, things were smooth (except for the couple of usual windows read only register errors and date mismatch issues) and we completed the exam by 2:45 pm. Please make it a point to take the tutorial on using the computer apparatus; I was unable to do it because an invigilator while trying to fix an issue with the software directly clicked the "start test" icon.

Basically after this, I feel that Prometric has not effectively handled the gigantic volume of nearly 25,000 people a day, may be they were never ready for it. Their other exams such as GRE generally have around 50 - 100 students in a center per session. The metamorphosis of CAT into an online format was an indispensable affair considering the humongous volumes involved and to a very large extent it has been done well. The test interface is pretty good and the guts the IIMs have shown in doing this is commendable. I will aver that everything else are good, except for the way Prometric has managed the full affair - untested processes and under rated servers are marring the success of this fascinating exercise and as far as the IIMs and Prometric are concerned, the issues may be a few technical problems at a minority of their centers, but for every student who went through that time of unpredictability before his crucial test, each and every second seemed like hours of trauma.

CAT and Mouse game

The hottest topic of discussion in any CAT website nowadays is about CAT going online. Let me give you the facts first.
1. CAT is going to be online and will be conducted by Prometric International Testing Authority. (They conduct the popular GRE and TOEFEL exams)
2. It is going to be a Computer based test and not a Computer Adaptive Test.
3. The test will be conducted over a period of few days and a student can get a slot in any 1 of these days. The students taking test on different days will get different question papers of equal difficulty.
4. The scores or marks may be displayed soon after the test is submitted.

The CAT has exploded in last few years and was taken by 2.25 lakh people in 2008. Due to the exponential increase in number of takers, the IIMs are finding it increasingly difficult to conduct the test. So they decided to take the test online. The online test will make the correction of the paper and result publishing very easy. This means that the intention was only to simplify some of the processes, so the paper should ideally be the same. In effect, computer based CAT will be just like taking a soft copy of the CAT question paper.
IIMs have clarified the point that CAT is only going to be a Computer based test or a CBT and not a Computer Adaptive Test or a CAT (so CAT is no longer a CAT!!). In spite of this, many coaching institutes are trying to speculate that it could be an adaptive test. The arguments does not seem to make any sense to me as this will result in test takers getting papers with different levels of difficulty and hence result in flattening of marks. This is totally undesirable for a test like CAT where the basic idea itself is to eliminate people.
Another associated question that is discussed all over the net is that if the interface will provide a navigation tab to move around the question paper. As I suggested earlier, if the intention is only to take CAT into a computer, the interface should behave exactly like the question paper and hence should have a navigation panel. Time management is one of the most important aspects CAT tests and freedom of navigation is an important constituent in time management.
Computer Based testing enables the scores to be calculated within seconds after the test gets over but as the test is distributed over a few days, the actual percentile can be available only after all the test takers are done with the test. So if the IIMs want they can give the scores of the test takers soon after the test but not their percentiles. Percentiles and shortlists will have to wait, may for a week.
Your approach for preparation need not change because you are going to click the radio buttons instead of shading the bubbles. The funda remains the same, be prepared with the topics and you will be able to clear any test. Only section which will have some change will be DI; you won’t have the liberty to do your calculations on the tables and diagrams in question. So I have a feeling that this year, IIMs may reduce the number of caselets in DI which will have a lot of data presented in the form of tables and chart. They may decide to stick with a lot of puzzles and data sufficiency instead.

Kitten to CAT

I took CAT for the 1st time in 2005. At that time, the director of the institute where I was doing my coaching started the class by saying that CAT is all about speed and typically you need to be a JOAMON (Jack of All Master of None) to crack it. You can’t say that this was an entirely wrong statement because till 2003, CAT had 150 questions and one needed to be really fast to maximize his score. But what he missed out was the metamorphosis of CAT. CAT underwent massive changes in the next 5 years – the number of questions changed with every paper – from 150 to 123 to 90 to 75 and finally to 90. IIMs introduced the concept of questions with different markings in 2004 and scrapped it after 2 years. They started making English sections more and more abstruse to an extent that in 2006, only philosophers could answer the questions. In year 2006, the answers to the English section were an unsolved mystery – the big 3 in CAT coaching came out with totally different solutions to the same CAT paper. The funny thing was that the IIMs came out with a solution which differed a lot from all 3 big CAT masters. 
Anyways the CAT has grown, it is no longer a kitten and it is no longer a test where JOAMONs can do well. When I met the same director after CAT 2006, he told me that a year back; he thought the CAT is no longer a test for JOAMONs but a test for JOAMOO (Jack Of All and Master Of One) i.e people who can do ok in 2 sections and who are really good at 1 of the 3 sections, but after 2006 which had only 75 questions; he thinks that CAT is for MOA (Master of All) sections.
With changes in the difficulty levels and question pattern, IIMs have tried to keep CAT elusive. There is even a saying which a top CAT coaching institute imparts to its students as gospel – “The only thing predictable about CAT is its unpredictability”. To an extent it is true, but not entirely. The sections of quant and DI and certain part of verbal are predictable hence one can effectively prepare for them. What is unpredictable then? The number of questions, the marks distribution, the nature of questions in 1 or 2 sub-sections of verbal and toughness of the reading comprehensions. If you are well prepared with the syllabi, these are non-entities and will in no way effect your percentile. Just think about this, your school never used to tell you the number of questions, the mark distribution etc in your school exam papers, still you used to do well in them if you were prepared with the portions. So CAT preparations is not about speculating the various combinations of time distributions for each available question, instead it is about learning the portions and getting some practice which will get you ready for the deed day and this is exactly what we will help you achieve at Noesis.
Given below are charts which give the distribution of marks for Quant and verbal sections in CAT for last 8 years. I didn’t make it myself but copied from a website which has been advertising our techniques and questions as their own; just a tit for a tat.  This will give you an idea of the portions you need to concentrate while preparing.



Ignore the percentages and focus on the trend of questions. You can see that topics such as Algebra and Number are gaining more and more importance and topics like Commercial Maths are receding into background. A similar trend is seen in verbal with topics such as Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary gaining importance. Another point you should note is that the break-up done here categorizes the topics into a headings based on the direct questions from that topic but our pedagogy is totally out of the box and we specialize in solving the questions in easiest possible way, this may be by converting them into a totally different topic. (You may even see questions in geometry solved with number patterns).

How to get into a ‘good’ B-school?

Due to the huge media attention they have been enjoying, the B-school admissions have become the hotspot of competition. The limited number of seats and ever increasing number of students taking the exams makes it really tough for a student to get into a prestigious B-school. The number of people taking CAT have clocked up by 25000 every year reaching 2.25 lakhs in 2008.
The admission process generally has 3 stages –
Written competitive exams with 3 sections on basic maths, data analysis and English. Certain exams have an additional section on current affairs.
Group Discussion
Personal Interview

The most popular competitive exams for B-school admissions in India are:-
1. CAT - Entrance test for admission into 7 IIMs. Accepted by over 100 management schools
2. XAT - The entrance test for XLRI and more than 50 management schools
3. JMET - The entrance test for the Schools of Management at the IITs and IISc
4. SNAP - The entrance test for SIBM, SCMHRD and other Symbiosis group institutes
5. MAT - Accepted by more than 100 management schools
6. ATMA - Accepted by more than 100 management schools

As I suggested earlier, the only way to crack these exams is to get trained on the aspects which they quiz you which is nothing but math, English and communication.

Best B-schools in India

Nowadays school ranking is something every other magazine and media house do. Most of these rankings are flawed and are nothing but an advertising platform for the B-schools. Certain B-schools have even gone ahead and commissioned their rankings (in a surreptitious manner) in which of course they top (You know which school I am talking about). There is only 1 aspect that is common with every one of these rankings – IIMA, IIMB and IIMC occupying the first 3 places. There is nothing surprising about this; the trio imparts a sense of credibility to the rankings.
I am listing down a few B-schools in India which imparts the kind of education which I have been talking about in earlier paragraphs. Bracket gives the specializations in which they are the best:
1. Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
2. Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata
3. Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
4. Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow
5. Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode
6. Indian Institute of Management, Indore
7. Indian Institute of Management, Shillong
8. Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
9. FMS, Delhi
10. S P Jain, Mumbai
11. XLRI, Jamshedpur
12. MDI, Gurgaon
13. Jamnalal Bajaj, Mumbai
14. IIFT, Delhi (International Business)
15. IRMA, Anand (Rural Management)
16. NITIE, Mumbai (Industrial Management)
17. TISS, Mumbai (Social Sciences)
18. MICA, Ahmedabad (Communication/Arts)

What does business schools teach?

Business education is an American innovation. Americans felt that they needed people who understand business well to run large corporations which took birth after Second World War. The trend was and to a large extent still is (in US and Europe) to work for a couple of years after your graduation and then go to B-school when you reach a managerial level.
MBA in real terms stands more much more than a degree in business. It is a supposedly a course designed to prepare professionals to deal with all the aspects of the modern day complex and competitive world. MBA is a generic course unlike any other masters and thus violates the basic definition of mastering a particular subject. It is so because the professionals who come out with a MBA degree should be able to adapt to and perform in any industry. The core topics covered in a MBA degree are:-
• Finance
• Marketing
• Operations
• Human Resource
• Strategy
• Law
• Economics
• Accounting
• Company Structure and Organizational Management
• Information Management and Technology
• Ethics
Most MBA courses are structured in such a way that the students will have to take core topics in the first year and electives on particular specialization in the second year. As a part of the electives, the students are offered a wide range of courses in the second year spanning various specializations and he/she is supposed to choose a specified number of electives focusing on a particular subject. IIMA is a exception to such a system; the curriculum at IIMA doesn’t constraint the students to focus on electives belonging to a certain subject and allows them to take electives from all subjects. In past few years, finance has been the hot favorite of students due to the mammoth pay packets offered for trading jobs by Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the late Lehman Brothers.

Why MBA?

This is the question which plagues majority of students who are getting ready for a B-school interview. The gist of the problem is very simple, most of us decide to go for MBA due to a single reason – the fat pay package. There is no other degree in this world which will help an unskilled 24 year old earn more lakhs per year than his age. But of course, you can’t say that in an interview. So you need to build up a story, a story good enough to elude the smart professors who will be interviewing you. So start thinking about it now itself.

Let us now see who the people who really need an MBA are. Basically an MBA is required for a manager or a business leader who manages a group of individuals. The idea of the course is to inculcate some leadership qualities into a person to effectively manage his team. But the million dollar question is that if management education or any other education in this world can impart leadership qualities to a person in mere 2 years. It is possible if the person possesses some level of these qualities already. The idea of selection processes is to identify such people - who are good at analyzing a problem from various angles; who are good at effectively communicating the same to their peers and who are good at leading a group in the right direction. Thanks to the modern day competitive exams, such inherent talents are no longer a pre-requisite.

Presently the people who make to management institutes are people who are good at number crunching, well versed in reading comprehension and well trained (by their coaching institutes) in group discussion and interviews. The whole process has become conventional and predictable. CAT is the closest aberration to this theory – it is still able to keep its unpredictability under wraps, but only just. A validation to this theory is the fact that IIMs have 90% of engineers. This is not only because engineers are closer to mathematics; it is only because of the fact that these engineers are people who have been always good at their studies. Because they were good at competitive exams, they got into good T-schools and subsequently into great B-schools. Prominently there are 2 reasons why an engineer decides to go for an MBA – Either he finds out later in his life (could be in engineering college or his work place) that he is not good at engineering or he finds out he cannot make enough money as an engineer. Anyway the B-schools don’t care and select them if they feel that he/she can “contribute to the B-school batch”.

Business is very different from other occupations because you don’t need a certificate to practice business unlike a doctor or a lawyer. Why does one need a BBA/MBA to practice business? Simple, it is no longer a simple world; you can’t expect yourself to be a successful businessman without the knowledge of the world. It is this knowledge or exposure that a good business school imparts to its students. They take examples from past to teach you business. In most renowned colleges, the tool used to teach businesses are case studies. Case studies can be considered as short stories which talks about how a company achieved a particular target. For eg., the turn-around of Indian railways is a case study. The best part of the case study is the analysis which follows that, the students are supposed to make groups and analyze the case study from all angles. Most of the business concepts get clarified through this story and post-analysis. For eg., let us say that the case study is about the Satyam scam. While doing an analysis of the same, the students are supposed to go and study the company laws which were violated by Ramalinga Raju as without that knowledge their analysis won’t be complete. This methodology of analysis has students as a vital component. The better brains you discuss the problem with, the better understanding you gain about the problem. Or let me re-phrase it, the more diversity you have, the more angles you cover. This is one of the reasons why, B-schools are constantly in a look out for people from diverse backgrounds.

The stone corriders of power

The day began badly with the news that CH has contracted Chicken pox and will not be attending the IIMB interviews. I felt bad and decided to do my best to present his case in front of the IIMB people. So I decided to scrap my original plan of an A/C volvo and instead took an auto to IIMB. I reached there by 8:20 and found a friend from TIME GD/PI batch all tucked up in her business suit. "This is the first one of the innumerable suit clad aspirants I am going to see today" I thought. Of course I expected this when I dressed up myself in a simple formal wear(no tie, no suit). She helped me find our interview room and I found that CH and I am were in the same panel, now that makes it easier. I met the person in charge and told him the situation. Next I went on to meet my panel and found that 3 of the 4 guys in the panel were Arjuns. That was surprising, I always thought my name was not that common. :( Anyways it was a nice group and in a few minutes, we were all engrossed in chit-chat.

Precisely at 9, we were called in for the GD and given a case to read. The case was about how English is getting more priority when it comes to primary education and how vernacular languages are losing out. The various issues leading to the problem etc etc.

I think the GD went pretty well. I started the GD and gave it a direction with some historical examples. ;) Can't help it, somehow or the other history finds me everywhere. We discussed how and why English is more popular and important in the present globalized world. Then we discussed about how this is becoming an economic problem as government is not realizing this and is still going by its dilapidated policies. How it is tough to learn 2 languages if the script and grammar are completely different and how tough it is for people with vernacular language background to cope up with an English language syllabus once they go for professional education. We discussed on and on for full 20 minutes and I found it really tough to summarize the GD. (I hope the faculty were able to decode my summary) :(

Next came the long wait for my interview turn. Actually it was not that long a wait because I was continuously chatting with the people waiting around. Finally my turn came at 11:30 am. I went in and greeted the 2 professors - a lady prof.(P1) and a man(P2) who looked as if he is in his early 40s.

P2: What do you think makes you unique, Arjun?
me: Sir, I have a dream. Told about my dream to set up a loom based industry in Kannur and told him how you won't find a lot of people like me who will be willing to sacrifice a successful career and take such a chance esp. with the notorious name enjoyed by Kannur due to trade union activities. Added that how the dream is not only money oriented but due to the emotional attachment I have with my hometown.

This was a lucky strike because I wanted them to ask me more about these things. So the interview was moving in the direction I wanted.

P2: Define entrepreneurship
me: Initially screwed it up. But patched up some how by saying that starting something new, a new business with the intention to make some money out of it.

P1: Money out of it? Then what is social entrepreneurship
me: I really screwed up the definition here. Came back by bringing in the point of helping people and adding that it is not always money oriented

P1: Ok, then tell me social entrepreneur who made money
me: Mohammed Younus and gave a small description of the concept of Micro finance and how he helped the people in Bangladesh with his Gramin bank. Added that he also made money out of this business

P1 looked convinced

P2: So Arjun, you are an electronics engineer. Why MBA now?
me: Told him CAT 2008 was my 4th attempt elucidating how MBA was always my plan. Again told about my dream company and how I need excellent managerial abilities to make inroads into the matured industy of loom.

P2: Why Rambus and Noesis then (companies I had worked)? How had they helped you? There seems to be a disconnect.
me: Explained how the basic ideas of business never changes. How the B2B marketing will be typically the same in both the industries.

P2: Now that is too much of generalisation. I can related anything to anything in that case.
me: Explained a little about the textile buyers and told him how it is also typically B2B marketing. Explained how at Rambus the business was similar. Talked a bit about what I did at Noesis, explained how it gave me opportunities to innovate and keep an eye for new opportunities.

P2 looked convinced, asked for the certificates

P1: What do you think changed in you after 4 years at NITC?
me: Told how NITC changed me. How it created a completely new person.

P1: What do you think will change in you after 2 years at IIMB?
me: Told her that I am a highly receptive person and I am sure that being with a highly intellectual peer group and faculty will help me figure out the deficiencies in me and will help in correcting them. Added that if you ask me specifically which all new values will be added, I don't know.

P2: Have you thought about your electives.
me: No sir, I tried going through the institute website but found that I will need a good knowledge of almost all the subjects be it Quantitative methods or fin. account to do well as an entrepreneur. So I am keeping my options open until I get a clear idea of these subjects. I am sure that when I learn them in deep, I will understand that which one will be more useful for me.

P2: You want to go into textile industry. But you don't have any experience in the same. How will you contribute to the batch and IIMB?
me: Although I don't have any experience in the industry, I have been seeing the industry from outside and I accept that my knowledge in the same is perfunctionary. Added that I know that IIMB encourages live projects in various industries. Told him how I plan to do my 1st live project on this industry and because I have genuine interset I will gain knowledge fast and hence start contributing to the batch. Also told that I can contribute with my knowledge of semiconductor and education industries where I have experience.

P2: Ok Arjun, any questions for us
me: I was going through your website and an idea hit me. Can I share it with you?

P1 & P2: Sure
me: ok, so IIMB is an institute which gives a lot of emphasis on congenial management and tries to prevent Ivory Tower management. If that is the case, why don't you try to give a course for the top managers of our government. For instance, RAW has been having this problem since decades. And I think you should not even stop with these bureaucrats, you should go and train even the young generation of our politicians like Rahul Gandhi and Yeshodhavaran Schindia

P2: We are already doing it. We have a public policy managment and as part of it, IAS officers and other government managers visit us and undergo trainings. But yes, we have not got an opportunity to interact with Rahul Gandhi or others. What can we do if Rahul Gandhi don't want to interact with us

me: Oh I didn't know that. Sorry for the question then. Why I took the name of Rahul Gandhi was because he, Omar Abdullah and someother politicians attended a Zen teacher's session in parliament. If he is willing to learn from a foreign Zen master, I don't understand why can't he learn from this temple of managment.

P2: yes. I think that is a direction which we should explore.

me: Thank you sir. Thank you madam. It was a great talking to you

And I left. Took an auto and came to office.
Keeping my fingers crossed now for the results.