What I Got From my Employers-1

 This is likely to be a series. I may highlight some of my workplaces.

IMT Nagpur

Apart from Oranges in the city, I think I had the coolest bunch of students on campus. And some cool-headed faculty as well. I only taught one Seminar on Thought Leadership during my 3 and a half years there, but I interacted with a lot of students through their extra-curricular activities, and even faced a strike from some lovely guys/girls in my first year- they had a point!

No idea how that bond developed with so many students, but maybe alumni parties were one reason. We had 4-5 each year, and that was a great way to meet and keep in touch. Last week, I met an alumna in Mumbai- Sheetal Garg, and exchanged messages with another, Meenu Mynam who lives in the Gulf. I also keep meeting others- Kanika Mhendiratta, Surbhi Mehta Chadha, Abha Kulkarni, Ananya Nandi De, Shweta Sinha, Anupriya Pandit, Gowri, Sreeram, Anshita Chetty, Ishita Modi, Anurag Sikaria, Pallavi Bajpai, Shafique Gajdhar, Meghna Sinha, Swati Jain, Divya Singh, Vrinda Khanna, Keyur Bhalavat, Ishan Joshi, Ankita, Manjari Mundanad, Nikita Kumar/Ray, Shruti Sharma, Aditya Naag are some I have met at least once. Abhinav Kamal's company, Ten Motion Arts, I wrote a case on. He is into film-making now.

Faculty like Smita Dabholkar went out of their way to do book launches of my autobiography. Ravi Gadgil helped design a green for Golf at the campus. Vijayakumar and others helped bring up the research profile. TK Chatterjee and Harsh Halve did a great job with Placements. 

Support staff like Archana and Vinod and Snehal, and Madhuri Helchel all did their bit. Also, RAs helped us run a Case Conference at Goa for 3 years. Tripti Srivastava and Abhinav Chandel were among those. Rachana Mittal helped create a PPT on Leadership that I used in many MDPs.

One of my greatest workplaces- I learnt a lot, and continue to learn from alumni and some friends there.

Tee Shots at Prestige University

 We will expand the team, and grow some grass, but we started off with a tee shot or two. Faculty and staff were the participants.. Prof. Juhee Singh features prominently in these pics.. and looking on is Mr. Dilip Shidhore who made it possible. He looks after the Projects.

I am surveying the Golf course which needs some greening.. will happen.

Indori Nostalgia

 There was a famous poet, Rahat Indori, who I used to sometimes listen to on Youtube. Just one of many greats associated with Indore. Salim of the famous Salim-Javed duo who scripted Sholay, Deewar, Don and Zanjeer, was from Indore. So was Johnny Walker, the much-loved comedian from Hindi films of the 50s/60s- he starred in many Guru Dutt movies. He had a memorable role in Anand too.

Anyway, my nostalgia is not about these celebs (nor about Chappan Dukaan), rather it's about what I experienced here. First and foremost, a serene campus, and a lot of helpful people staffing various functions like the program offices for PGP, IPM, PGP MX, EPGP, GMPE, and a few more academic programs. I was directly in charge of MDP for a couple of years, and Dean (Faculty) again for a couple, so the people who reported to me then, including Pradeep, Hemendra, Bhupendra, Manas, Neha, Abhilasha, Arunendra, Abishek Kachhap, and the director's office -Santhi, Radhakrishnan, and Sahad. Personnel office people since I joined- Janardanan, Ranti and Mohammed. Admission office staff who facilitated our visits to the interview centres every year. Ananya Mishra, who did and does our publicity. Deepali and other friendly staff at the Belapur campus of IIM Indore.

I also had Academic associates that I remember. Veenus, Deepti who is finishing her stint soon after 3 years of being here, and before her, Saumyaa Sharma. Sarada Mahanti too. 

Behind the scenes, multiple drivers who drove us back and forth from the airport, cleaning staff at office and home (garbage pick up), security who did their best at keeping us safe, project/engineering office who carried out repairs or installation, and utilities who ran backup generators. Gardening staff who helped me play Golf by trimming grass on the field. I.T. staff who gave us the bandwidth to operate in COVID times and before. Stores who supplied necessary equipment ad material. Medical centre and shops-including student run stores. Former colleagues, like Dr. Akhtar who hosted an iftaar at his house during Ramzan, and was also involved in a case I wrote about IIM Indore's Digital Marketing.

Students, naturally, but you will hear more about them elsewhere. And faculty colleagues and three bosses.

Harihar- Unique Days

My years (six and a half, 1995-2001) spent in Harihar, a small two-road town near Hubli, were unique in many ways. One of the unique things was the close relationship between everyone, the students, teachers and non-teaching staff. I still have fond memories, and occasionally meet the non-teaching staff from Harihar.

Raghavendra, Rajesh, Rajasekhar, Mr. Joshi (who passed away, was the librarian), Capt. Murukesan, Dr. Gopi, Karibasappa (aka Amitabh Bachhan), Parmeshwarappa, Pavan, Yuvaraj, Mehboob, KT Nagaraj, Umesh, were all like family, and we frequently went out for parties in the "best" restaurants in town- Narthaki was one- as equals. We also had a couple of picnics in rural Rajanahalli (river Tungabhadra) and Kondajji ( a hill-lake) nearby.

Many students from batch 1 to batch 4 that I was fortunate to interact with closely, are still in touch, from Dubai to Singapore, and in between. That feels great. Just in the last year, I have met Savitha, Sharmistha, Sunil Kataria, Shweta Agarwal, Nishka and Vikram, and before that, Achint, Padmapriya, Jogeswari, Dheeraj Mohan, Smita, Vidya TC and Swapna a couple of times at least..also Anushka Mishra and Zargar Basharat, though they are from recent batches that weren't around in my time (we met online first)!

Playing Golf (and learning from Sadanand who came from Belgaum) regularly was another unique feature. The caddies were among the best and taught us a few tricks! Made a few fast friends there, like Yashad Gaur, and my own colleagues Dhanapal and Vijayakumar, with whom I have played in various places.

Kannadigas in my Life

I have had a lot of them, starting from Kempaiah, the security guard at IIMB in my student days. Not sure if the creators of bonda and chai there (Uncle and Aunty) were locals, but I guess they were. Shailaja was a friend from childhood, whom I also met in Bangalore and Mumbai later.

At Kirloskar Institute, Haihar, almost the entire non-teaching staff was local, and most are connected  to me even today- Pavan and his wife Jamuna, Yuvaraj, Rajesh, Raghavendra, Karibasappa, Parameshwarappa, Mahboob, Rajsekhar, Veena are some of them. We had regular parties when these guys were bachelors, and attended some of their weddings. I also met Jayasimha, my current colleague, there first. Sudir, a student from VJIM, also worked there briefly.

At PESIT, of course, it was mainly the faculty colleagues- Manasa, S.P. Kumar, Shahida, and lots of students, some of whom I have bumped into now and then, like Soumyashree Gonibeedu, Mrunal, and Umesh. Many more are connected on social media-Manasa Bharadwaj, Roopashree, Chaitra,... At IFIM Business school again, it was a combo of staff, students and faculty, and I have met a few recently when I went back to visit Bangalore-Bharath Shenoy, for instance, who was a student there.

At IIM Indore, it has been colleagues Ganesh, Jayasimha, and the Chiefs of Admin. present and past, mainly. Students are in smaller numbers, Neha Adiga and Arshia being two that I remember, apart from Manjunath and Saumya.

They all have a few sterling qualities, from what I have seen. They make good friends, and are quiet, non-aggressive people who excel at whatever they put their mind to. I have been fortunate also to have lived among them a long 14 years in all- Harihar for 7 and Bangalore for an equal number if I count my student days and working years.

Non-teaching Staff- A Tribute

Academic life has its pluses. Lots of reading time, opportunity to feel young in the company of youngsters who are full of life, etc... But it also has another angle. A lot of staff (non-teaching) who you get to work with. This is a tribute to some of them, from IIM Indore, IMT and Kirloskar Institute, Harihar that I feel fortunate to have worked with. The immediate trigger is the wedding yesterday of Neha, who works at the MDP office at IIM Indore.

Some really good officers have helped run the MDP/Training office here, like Pradeep, Manas and Bhupendra earlier. They worked untiringly to keep the training programs going efficiently, leading to a lot of repeat customers, and significant new business. I also had the good fortune of having a wonderful academic assistant (Saumya Sharma) and two secretaries (Limaye before, Naresh at present) who are a great help.

IMT Nagpur was a place where I headed the institute, and therefore, the role of the staff was extremely important for me. From Archana, my secretary, to Group Capt. Nath, a smiling ex-serviceman who headed admin, to Kamal Nayak and Vinod in accounts, to the ladies in the PGP office, to the guys who served tea and the drivers, Anand the mess manager, and Pankaj in transport, all of them performed their duties in a pleasant and efficient fashion. IMT N remains on my list of Best Places to Work, in no small measure due to all the staff. Similarly, Gaurav at IMT Ghaziabad and Aparna Dey. Raju Pujari at IFIM also I can never forget for his resourcefulness. And Somanna in accounts/admin. The Research Associates at IMTN were all hardworking, and I remember Tripti Shrivastava (who handled a conference all by herself) and Abhinav in particular.

KIAMS was an idyllic world, inhabited by some of the friendliest staff I have ever seen. Rajesh and Raghavendra stand out, along with Gururaj, Veena, Mehboob, Dr. Gopi, Srinath, Nagaraj, Umesh, Yuvaraj, Pavan, many of whom remain good friends to this day, and I look forward to meeting them, several years after I left Harihar.

These are unsung heroes who keep the institutes going, sometimes after faculty have left.

Japan Experiences- Service

A recent trip to Japan resulted in several experiences, some unique, and most very good. I will share two service experiences because Indians will find both different, if not strange.

As we waited for the ANA flight (Delhi-Tokyo Narita) to take off around midnight at Terminal 3, we saw a strange sight. All the stewardesses assembled in the seating area near the gate, and got into an animated discussion with each other about various things, related to the guests on board that flight. They were speaking in Japanese, but one could see the sincerity of purpose and dedication that they brought to the job. I have never seen anything like it before, so I was stupefied. We tend to take work -any work- a lot more casually out here.

The second was an experience at a local bank in Beppu, Japan. We went in around 9.30 in the morning into an empty bank, and asked to change a few dollars into Yen, the local currency. The procedure took almost twenty minutes, after what looked like several layers of checks, or signatures, or verification of the currency's genuineness. This was puzzling, as it rarely takes more than a minute in many international destinations- I have tried this at least in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. We never found out the reason, but I assume that they are thorough in their doing things, which is not a bad thing. Couldn't help wondering that in India, given our crowds in banks, we'd never get any work done at this pace.

More experiences later.

Joining IIM Indore

I will soon move back into a teaching role at IIM Indore. It has exciting possibilities, to shape young minds in the classroom, rather than young faculty members outside it, that I was (mostly) doing in my administrative roles at IMT.

It has been an eventful four years at IMT. First at Nagpur, where I was at a lovely integrated campus with some great students, and wonderful colleagues- both faculty and staff (non-teaching and support). The years I spent there saw the Nagpur campus mature into a more confident one, and the chip on the shoulders of students about comparisons with Ghaziabad (the older mother campus) slowly disappeared. Rankings improved, and an overwhelming number of faculty applied for jobs, and we had to say no to many. Faculty screening was almost as stringent as the students' admission screening. The placement process improved, and we put in place a team for corporate relations across India, supported by students.

Students responded well to freedom that they got to organise themselves. Marketing and Finance clubs took off with annual seminars, and others like Literati and Ovia did their own thing to enliven literary and cultural activity. Abhinav Kamal made a feature film called "On the Other Side," and went on to set up a company that produces films in Bangalore after graduation. Pradyumna Mohanty took some fantastic pictures, a tradition continued by Bhagyashree aka Bugzy, who has also turned entrepreneur with that skill. We managed to set up a golf green where some faculty and all students were inducted into the basics- some visitors too. Student entrepreneurs ran the Coop Stores brilliantly, and also set up F n' F and a couple of other small ventures on campus.

Thanks to Smita, a colleague at Nagpur, I launched my autobiography in Crossword at Nagpur and Pune in 2012. This was published earlier by Pothi.com, a company started by Jaya Jha, an alum of IIM Lucknow. I was able to write two cases (one called Golftripz, another called Forms, with colleagues), and update my Services marketing book during this time. I also taught a course, Seminar on Thought Leadership to one batch of students (2011?) where we discussed innovation in different spheres of life, art, science, architecture, philosophy and business. We conducted alumni meets over 5 cities each summer, and they were a roaring success, bonding alums with the alma mater, and we continued to do this at Ghaziabad too, with its larger base of alumni, when I moved there.

A fantastic achievement of ours at IMT Nagpur was to bring in close to 300 guest faculty from industry over 3 years, thanks to the faculty who invited them into their regular classes. This, coupled with using simulation and now, Bloomberg and Analytics software in the classroom, among other things, has helped Nagpur 'bloom' academically. Some of my old students from Kirloskar Institute also took guest sessions. So did IMT alums, and some of my IIMB batchmates. We conducted four editions of an innovative case writing conference, where faculty presented cases they had written, and received feedback. A new case journal was also launched, to enable publication of Indian cases. Research associates played a major role in organising conferences, running the journal, and organising faculty development programs.

At Ghaziabad, the thrust has been on improvement in academic content and process, accreditation from global bodies like AACSB, and faculty recruitment and development. Many of these functions are critical in how a Business school retains its quality. Ghaziabad also has a great international exchange program both for students (about 100 of them go out and equal number come in for a term), and for faculty. We did an international FDP exclusively for IMT faculty, and a few other development programs. We  recruited a large number of young faculty in all areas, to meet the growing number of students. A new classroom block has been added, and a new hostel block too. IMT Centre for Distance Learning recently adopted my Brand Management book (2013) co-authored with Bhagyalakshmi Venkatesh. All in all, an exciting four years at IMT.

Oh, and lest I forget, I acquired about 1500 new friends on Facebook. Makes life very, very interesting.