This time it was with a newly-minted friend from Argentina, Veronica, who is a visiting faculty at Prestige University. Our ground is still not fully developed, but that did not stop us (never has) from playing. We tried both long shots and putting.
Pics from the outing-
Managed to meet some old colleagues at Chennai, and Coimbatore during the course of work travel.
Dr. Vijayakumar, Dr. Dhanapal and Gururaj Khasnis were all colleagues at KIAMS, Harihar in the late nineties. Vijayakumar, also at IMT Nagpur later. Now he is retired but active in Chennai.
Dhanapal runs a school and a construction outfit, as entrepreneurial as ever.
Gururaj has moved to SDMIMD at Mysore, a management school like KIAMS.
We were at Coimbatore trying to attract students from the region to Prestige University. Met some and tried persuading them.
We (Prestige University, Indore) have a partner college, Tetso, in Dimapur, Nagaland. A lot of collaborations are being discussed with them, both for faculty and students. As a first step, we had a workshop on How to Publish for their faculty. It was a great experience, with around 50 enthusiastic faculty participating, and working towards developing a research paper in baby steps. Prof. Debabrata Sutradhar coordinated. Our Dean and I were the resource-persons.
Some pics from the exercise-
My third visit to Nagaland in the last few months. This time, we are meeting faculty of Tetso college for a workshop, and students for a session on Personal Branding.
Staying at a place called Heirloom Naga Centre that has a guest house. They also make stuff from Cane at a workshop, and are mostly into export of crafted cane products. They have a showroom on the premises too.
The first month of 2024 is about half done. So what have I accomplished in these two weeks?
Well, met a few new people, at an event in Amravati, as well as personally, made some new acquaintances. Had a karaoke night too, apart from a few that were technically last year, but less than a month ago. Went around Mumbai like a tourist too, after quite some time.
Also, interviewed a few good faculty candidates for our University, Prestige. We are building our strength, by reaching out to people we can collaborate with too.
Visiting faculty from industry who were at Indore included friends from IIM days, and some who were new. M.S. Rajan, for one, who came to talk about HR Value chain and Process. That's him, below -
We also had an impromptu New Year party with students, and a Golf session to round it off- lunch at Charpai, a dhaba on Ujjain road. Pics from both- Aditi Jain and Vedika Palod are the smilers in the first.
Very regularly now, I see success stories of many students who choose to share them over the media. Some don't share them here, but one gets to hear them through a common friend, or somebody else.
Some that are on Social Media include Aditi Atre, Swati Sinha, Abhinav Kamal, Priyadarshi Matruprasad, Shrishail Deshnur, Padmapriya Janakiraman, Tanya Jakhar, Nikita Ray, Divya Singh, Shatakshi Tripathi, Savitha NK, Sunil Kataria, Ananya Nandi De, Ishita Modi, Sheetal Saxena, Shreya Sengupta, Shreyashi Chakraborty, Sandeep Das, Nishka Rathi, Bharath Shenoy, Sudeshna, Roopsha, ...
Some who I found out about indirectly or directly include Anupama Vadnagra, who I understand is with a fragrances company, based on her uncanny ability to spot fragrances of different kinds..like a wine taster or tea taster, in a way.
Makes me very happy, that they are doing well in their chosen fields.
A rich source of guest faculty is my class from IIM Bangalore. Therefore, we at Prestige University have started tapping into this. We have had B.B. Dash, Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in addition to the MBA, recently. The latest was Shankara Rajan, also nicknamed Rajan of India, as a guest faculty in H.R. He was head of H.R. Transformation at Reliance Industries in his last corporate foray.
Pics from his visit-
Even more recently, in March/April 2024, we had Dr. Sunil Gupta, an IIT Delhi Ph.D. once again (after IIMB). We co-taught a course called Business Research Methods.
While on a trip to Amravati and Nagpur to speak at Bharatcon 24, their (Amravati Mgt. Association's) annual event, I also ran into some businesspeople, entrepreneurs and learnt about a maker of drones from IIT Bombay, and the man from the Malpani family who runs Imagica, and lots more.
Made new friends, one of whom was a karaoke enthusiast. Had a blast singing on his system.
A casual conversation was about Healthy Binge, a company that makes millet based snacks, an alternative to potato chips. Hope to learn more about it, as it's based in Pune or nearby.
Also learnt that Amravati, a fast-growing city, is in a textile and cotton belt, and that the association has a lot of CAs who have done various things in life. Some worked with Deloitte and PWC and came back to do things in Amravati for personal reasons, and some are carrying on a family business in oil cakes from cottonseed oil.
Interestingly, its railway station is Badnera, and not Amravati.
All in all, a few discoveries along the journey, as always..
Spent a fruitful day at Amravati near Nagpur being part of a panel discussion and a Masterclass for academicians of various colleges. Also met a few faculty of an engineering college (Dr. Ram Meghe) . Some pics.
At the venue of Bharatcon, with their poster, above, and below, at Ram Meghe engineering college with Dr. Nitin Dhande and Mr. Deshmukh, their trustees. Dr. Dhande is also a schoolmate of my wife's.
This is a quintessential Indian term for sycophancy in all its magnificient manifestations. You are a chamcha, or spoon, if you do all that the term demands.
Sycophancy has a lot going in its favour. Who doesn't like flattery/praise? Particularly undeserved praise? That's what you have to be good at giving. Preferably directed towards bosses, but it doesn't hurt to spread it around in all directions. Politics thrives on it, and usually chamchas rise fast in the hierarchy of a party. If the party wins, they can be in important positions in the ministry.
But it's not about political hierarchies. Even in other spheres, this can get you where you want to be. Bosses are vulnerable, so in corporate hierarchies too, this can work well.
Academicians are not immune, either! Only, you have to sacrifice self-respect. You have a lot to gain!
More of them-
Akshat Surana, Sampark Sachdeva, Ishan and Ankita Joshi, Khyati Jha, Siri Adi, Nagendra Rao, Omprakash and Geeta Chaudhary, Indira Kanagasabai, Rajan Mani, Venkatesh Gopalan, Lalita, Usha and Shiva, Ravindra Marghade, Rajni and Rimjhim Verma, Subbu, Mohan Gopalratnam, Lakshmi Rajgopal, Namratha Muralidhar, Poonam Bhatia, Muralimohan K., Bharath Shenoy, Shreya Sengupta, Tanaya Kar, Sharmishtha Singh, Shweta Agarwal, Supriya Shenoy, Roopsha Chatterjee, Sugandha Kumari, Bidipta, Harnam Kaur, Murtaza Kuwarawala, Navroze Sethna, Meha Kapoor, Abhinav Kamal, Girija Vemaraju, J. Radhika, ...
to be continued ..
Some more- Gopal Mahapatra, Manoharan, Vijayakumar, Dhanapal, Himanshu Manglik, Rajan of India, Harish Chaudhry, Alisha Thomas, Nisha Verma, Vrinda Khanna, Pallavi Bajpai, Anushka Mishra, Divya Sisodiya, Chaithu Gunapali, Pooja Varun, Roshni Chhabra, Bhavana Daga Sonthalia, Bhawana Moondra, Anusha Ramakrishnan, Saumyaa Sharma, Nikita Kumar Ray, Shruti Sharma, Aditya Naag, TK Chatterjee, Prerona Baruah, Ekalavya Barua, Aditya Deshbandhu, Venugopal Reddy, Nagarjuna, KS Murthy, G Sreenivas, Sreenivas Garudachar, Sanjana Rao Yarram, Sohni Roy, Anshita Abhishek Chetty, Gowri, Sreeram, Anusha Mamidanna, Meenu Mynam, Arvind Joshi, Usha Narayanan, Padmapriya, Jogeswari, Ranjana Rudra, Jaya Jha, Devapriya Roy, ...
The list will continue..
Starting with December 2023, on 30th I attended a wedding - and met Natasha Kothari, who runs Studio Ungap. Dhruv, her fiance, was the groo...
