Case Contributors From IIM Indore

 Many IIM Indore students were contributors to the cases in my Marketing Research 4th edition- a partial list-

Anirudh Matam, Anam Nuhi, Anshika Verma, Giridhar Ravikumar Ambati, Minalee Goyal, Nitin Dammu, Maitri Nabiyal, Nikhil Gharat, Sania Bertila Lokho, Suvinava Basak, Sounak Kasyapi, Sri Pujita Rongala, Parama Banerjee, Parul Rawat, Akanksha Potdar, Rohan Bansode, Amogh Jawa, Shriya Bansal, Tanya Jakhar, Yamohiadeen, Abhinav Mareppa, Apoorva M, Kritika Gupta, Mekala Saketh, Abhilasha Jas, Adesh Saikia, Aishani Verma, Ruminder Kaur, Saylee Ghag, Rewa Malhotra, Rahul Kumar Singh, Mohit Malviya, Shweta Eliza, Sindhuja Gantayet, Sonakshi Garg, Atirek Rajpal, 2 Aparnas (Sandhu, Sekhar), 2 Apoorvas (VK, and Shree), Krishna Bandaru, Sumit Vats, Shivam Puri, Har Amrit Pal Singh, Nittu Thomas, Tejaswini Tilak, Devmitra Biswas, Parameswaran Guha, Shaleen Prakash, Shailendra Sahay, Ravi Jhakodia, Poonam Pawar, Ipsita Saurabhi, Kada Nikhilesh, Disha Singh, Debadatta Pati, Avinash Kerketta, Devi Prasad, Chirag Mehta, Aditya Battu, P. Hrishikesh Nambudiripad

Cases Students Wrote for My Books

 My text books on Marketing Research and Services Marketing (Published by McGraw-Hill India) derive their uniqueness from cases contributed by students, and contextual examples. Some of these contributors and contributions. These are mostly from KIAMS and IIMK. Later edition of M.R. had IIM Indore students' case studies too. Many were fictional, but realistic.

Ambition and Round Up of 2019

I don’t remember what my ambition was earlier.

Now, my ambition is scaled down, to meeting nice people, looking at Nice DPs (and awarding the good ones), and some good food and drink (like Vietnamese coffee and Irani tea), books, blogging, occasional travel, films, singing and listening to music (retro, Hindi), watching my students do well in life..

Slightly off-track - I was trying to recollect what happened in the last 12 months. 

A wedding in Hyderabad, one in Mumbai, and another in Bangalore, and yet another in Delhi recently- made me a preferred wedding guest (!) of friends and family-one who can’t balle balle though 😊- just a friendly warning! Can be a wedding photographer, though..try me out!

A visit to the Kishore Kumar memorial and house in Khandwa. A conference trip to Bali, and another to Chennai, from where we visited Kancheepuram and its magnificient temples. In July, we hosted an international conference for the second time, and were overwhelmed by the number of attendees.

I also re-visited Calicut, and IIMK where I had worked from 2003 to 2005. And of course, met numerous students- in Ahmedabad (Manjari, Punyashlok, Ankita and Ishan, Keyur,..), Mumbai (Tosha Dubey, Urvashi, Abha Kulkarni, Siri Adi, Khyati, Anuj, Shraddha, Nishka and Vikram Rathi, Garima and Dwipa Shah, Akshat Surana, Sampark.. ), Delhi (Padmapriya, Shweta Agarwal, Shruti Sharma, Aditya Naag, Nikita Kumar, Sharmistha Singh, Sunil Kataria, and my new personal photographer Kanika Mhendiratta), Pune (Neha Adiga, Divya Singh), Bangalore (Shatakshi and Varun, Anushka Mishra, Savitha, Bharath Shenoy, Anshita (with hubby and their twins), Anusha and Aashish, Sreeram), some for the first time, some for the second or third. This part- meeting students and colleagues, I would like to repeat next year, and the year after...have a few more pending invites.

IMTians, above and below. In Mumbai

IMTian Anshita above, organiser of a party at Bangalore, and below, Gurugrammies and Pranksters.

Anam, IIMI alum, above, and Kanika, IMTian below. Indore and Delhi.

Friends and colleagues- in Bangalore, above, and Tollygunge, Kolkata below.

KIAMS alum Shweta above in Delhi, and Divya Singh (ex-IMT, author of a case in the book) in Pune.

Below, KIAMS alums Sharmistha and Sunil, Delhi.

Met a few of my old colleagues from IIM Lucknow at Ranchi where I had gone on invitation. Trips to Belgaum (near where my Dad grew up) through the monsoon rain and one to Kolkata to meet a friend (Dash) were also highlights. So was one to IIT Guwahati, a lovely campus. Also went to BITS Goa, and stayed at a small beach, Bogmalo. 

Of course, I gave away a lot of DP and Photography Awards-this gets more difficult, but motivating. To close the year, I got a new car after exactly 14 and a half years- replacing my loyal warhorse (Esteem) with the new Wagon R-getting a loyalty bonus too. My book, Marketing Research -4^th edition- got published this year, and contains a lot of cases from my Indore students. Met a few of our alums in Indore too, like Harshad (and his wife), Tamros (his wife too), Ruminder Kaur, Ritu, Pratima and Arshia Mulla. Of course, I connected or chatted with many more online.

Story of My Books

I have written a few books- pic below. So how did that come about?

Well, the first urge to write happened around 2000, when I was in Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies, Harihar. I taught Marketing Research there, and felt unhappy with the choice of books then. My librarian Manjunath (who went to TAPMI later) put me in touch with Tapas Maji at Tata McGraw-Hill, and I gave them a proposal. It went through after some changes suggested by them, and the book was completed with help from some staff and students who contributed cases to it out of their course projects. By the time it was published in 2002, I was at IIM Lucknow.  It is now in its 4th edition (just released in 2019), having become popular over the years. The latest edition has a lot of cases contributed by IIM Indore students. The Indian cases are a big draw (thanks to student contributors), along with the down-to-earth explanation of statistical techniques, according to feedback I have received from readers-many in person.

I have also written Services Marketing (3 editions), International Marketing, and a book on Brand Management (limited edition, with Bhagyalakshmi Venkatesh). Then, the bug to write an autobiography came over me, and I penned My Experiments With Half-truths, which I self-published with pothi, which had just started the trend of Print-on-demand (POD) in India-coincidentally, Jaya Jha, its founder, was an alum of IIM Lucknow. (Jaya appears with Sharu Rangnekar in the pic at Crossword below- the first pic is a launch of Digital Marketing Cases from India at IIM Indore with Subin Sudhir, Rishikesha Krishnan and my co-editor Romi)

Last year, along with Romi Sainy, I co-edited a book on Digital Marketing Cases with contributions from former students of IMT Nagpur, Jaipuria and IIM Indore, among others. Ambition? Maybe to compile one on Tourism or Services Marketing Cases. Any takers who wish to contribute?

I Wonder...

Sometimes, I wonder if..


1. I had not cleared that interview for IIM Bangalore admission into the MBA program,..

2. I had not got a scholarship to go do a Ph.D. at Clemson, USA...

3. I had not returned to India after a couple of years' teaching,..

4. I had not worked in Marketing Research and Advertising,...

5. I had not written that book..or those books..

6. If I had not started blogging,..

7. If I had not got a single friend request on fb,..

My life would have been poorer, for sure. I am happy it turned out the way it did.

Marketing Research

This is a subject/course I have been teaching for around 27 years, starting in 1991. I got interested in it because of my stint in a company called MBA founded by 3 MBAs from IIM Ahmedabad. Later, after a Ph.D. I returned to India and started teaching M.R., and soon after, wrote a book. Its 4th edition is on its way. A lot of students have contributed to the chapter-end cases in the book, starting with Kirloskar Institute and ending with IIM Indore for the latest edition.

A pic from a recent M.R. class where an interesting in-class exercise is on. I rely on a lot of these to enhance learning about the subject.

There are a lot of hands-on exercises as well as a course project that trains students in doing different things- from formulating research problems, designing a study and executing one. Analysis is just one part of this process.

My stint in MBA

This was a marketing research firm founded by three IIM Ahmedabad alumni. The MBA stood for Marketing and Business Associates. I joined them in Bangalore, and we had an office in Benson Town, which I usually reached by crossing the railway tracks from Coles Park.

It was a very comfortable workplace. Being mostly MBA-populated, it was easy to understand the jargon. It was also a very open workplace, with ideas exchanged freely, and the language used was informal-everyone was on first name basis. My three bosses were Matthew Paul, CK (Sharma), and Shyam (Sundar) later in Mumbai. I also met Karopadi (Karo) who was an alum of IIM Calcutta, and Muthu, who was from XLRI.

Our work comprised executing marketing research projects. One of the first assignments had me going to Coonoor to survey tea estates and Potato farmers for a client who manufactured plant nutrient sprays. I had to estimate demand for it. An excellent chance to see some of the finest parts of the Nilagiri mountains. I took buses, mostly (I was on a budget), so I could experience life like a local, and also took a train ride for fun. The tea estate guys were mostly welcoming, and had a chat regarding what I wanted without much fuss.

Another assignment for a client sent me off on a meeting with Power plant managers, and those from fertilizer and chemical industries. I went as far as Tuticorin (SPIC had a factory there), and tried to assess interest in some pollution control equipment. The old IPCL plant in Baroda was also one that I visited.

In other sectors, we did projects for ready-made chapatis, and fabric softeners, and for soaps with additives like Tulsi and coconut oil (for WIPRO). HDFC was also a client for one of their husing finance schemes (this was later, when I moved to Bombay with their Worli office, behind Glaxo). We also did a project for Trikaya, where my client's name was Armaity Cabinetmaker-no less than Almighty for us!

Very interesting work, and great learning, till the call for a Ph.D. came and put a stop to it- I still use the war stories!!

Writing a Book Versus Reading One

Above-my autobiography (the second edition). Pothi.com is the publisher, and it's sold through the Flipkarts of the world.

Reading a book is far easier than writing one. But I have somehow written more than one. But when someone casually says, "Any new book?" to me today, I wonder how I wrote any of those.

My first was a text book. I had just begun teaching Marketing Research in Indian B Schools, and was struck by the need for one which used computerised data analysis rather than just theory. So I wrote one, with help from students of Kirloskar Institute, and staff there. Now, there will be a 4th edition this year, with cases written by IIM Indore students-coming soon.

Then, a Services Marketing text was born while I worked at IIM Kozhikode. The third was a book on International Marketing, and the fourth, my autobiography, which was published in the Print-on-demand mode by pothi, an innovation in India at the time.

Then came a book with Bhagyalakshmi Venkatesh, on Brand Management, a limited edition for IMT Distance Learning program.

Now there are plans for an edited book on Digital Marketing Cases from India. Some of my alumni friends from IMT Nagpur and elsewhere have contributed.