Sustainable Humour

 It's all about sustainability, if it's not AI talk. So, here are some tips to sustain you through the next chapter of your life-

Bread is not as sustainable as cake. Marie Antoinette was right, you should eat cake if you don't have bread.

Chocolate is for winters, as it does not melt. Try ice apple in summers. 

Jokes about bosses make your stay in the organisation less sustainable- they have informers. Wait until you have left the organisation to crack them. 

War with Pakistan is sustainable - for us. Not for them. We just have more people.

A Ph.D. makes you immune to delayed gratification in all spheres of life. Try it!

Acting is temporary. Reality is permanent. Be real. (sorry, lifted from something equally inane said by cricket commentators- Form is temporary, class is permanent?- whatever that means)

Transit Post

 It is not often that I post from an airport while in transit.. but I have the time, and the laptop, so why not? Life is transitory, so why not the posting while transiting?

Had an interesting couple of days at IIMB, what with a symposium on Digital Innovations, Financial Inclusion and sustainability.

A session with HDFC and Mahindra Housing Finance.

Got to listen to a lot of experts on the subject. I liked the HDFC rural/agri initiatives the best. Mahindra also had some interesting new businesses aimed at the rural population in terms of housing loans..

As an aside, met a couple of former colleagues - one of whom is transiting, out of academia into industry- Google, to be more precise.

IIM Bangalore has a few new classrooms, of which I saw one from the inside. A U-shaped seminar hall (pic above).

Interesting to meet a childhood friend after a few decades too. I have written about that elsewhere.

Meeting Janak Palta McGilligan

 Met this amazing lady yesterday at a function at Prestige campus. She spoke in Hindi for about 45 minutes. Forthright, no-nonsense stuff about how she came to Indore for a project in 1985, and just stayed on. From Chandigarh, which she used to think was a great city.

Solar cookers were what she and her Irish husband Jimmy propagated, and built a training centre for Adivasi (tribal) women where they learnt how to operate these and much more! They went into their own villages and started new enterprises -including making sev (an Indori fetish) and selling it, to increase incomes.

Lots of stories, and wisdom. Including on time management. She says the smartphone is for me, I use it when I want to. She does not shop, period. She grows almost everything she needs around her house. She has been our ambassador to the U.N. several times, and does not pull her punches when it comes to the government, or anything else!

It was great to see a woman of substance! Her energy-she is 75- would put all teenagers to shame, not to speak of us oldies!

Setting Up a New University

 I am now in the position a brand manager for a new brand finds himself in. It's an exciting process, with a lot of things to be done. With a usual product-based brand, it's about the Go-to-market plan/strategy. But with an educational brand like ours, it's a lot more than that. It's a vision, that has to translate into action on multiple fronts. I am involved as the VC, in setting up Prestige University, a new venture at Indore.

The most difficult part in any educational endeavour is getting the right people. In a university like ours, it's three kinds of people- the students, who would become our Brand Ambassadors, the faculty, who will be the torch-bearers, and the non-teaching staff who will support these without questions.The physical infrastructure is the easy part, and is a hygiene factor.

So we are now on a quest to recruit the best faculty we can find. We have a range of niche MBA programs, so it's not an easy ask. Sustainability, Supply Chain, Analytics, E-business, and Agri-business/Food are the areas we will cover. We also plan to offer a 5-year integrated MBA program, made popular by IIM Indore and others.

Students would come through CAT and similar competitive exams conducted on a national scale. We also have plans to offer programs for experienced people in an online mode, because that enables executives to enroll without leaving their jobs. A lot more is on offer, and will be rolled out at an appropriate time.