Surprises

 Surprises come in various forms. Unexpected faces turning up at places is one of them. I recently met Anurag Jain, a former associate from IIM Indore, in this way. At Lexicon Institute of Management, Pune.

I was there to do a few guest sessions, and suddenly discovered that Anurag Jain works there and is teaching B to B marketing. We had worked together when his boss, Prof. Jayasimha, and I offered a Seminar on Tourism Marketing at IIM Indore. this course became popular and is still running at Indore.

Incidentally, meeting students and working with them was good fun. I met a student, Srishti, from Hyderabad, and another from Indore. 

Some students from Lexicon, Pune.

In-class activity makes people think a bit- that's my learning from this exercise.

What I Got From my Employers- 4

 IIM Kozhikode or Calicut was my second IIM as a workplace, and third overall- I was a student at one.

It is the prettiest campus of all campuses I have seen. It has greenery all around, and great views from offices of faculty, hostels and elsewhere- guest houses included.

I made some new friends there, like SSS Kumar, and renewed old ones - Uday and Suma, classmates from IIMB. The students were good, and I managed to write my second book- Services Marketing, while I worked there. We also did a couple of events- a Marketing Conference with NASMEI, and an FDP for faculty.

The beach was a novelty, in town. We also had visits from friends and alumni like Jogeswari (of KIAMS) and a few relatives while we lived there. The rains took some getting used to, but it was generally a nice experience. Also bought a small Maruti 800 while I was there.

Left for a leadership position at PES Bangalore, and also because daughters' (higher) education was an issue.

Information is a Big Bottleneck

 Perhaps the biggest, in getting anything done, or getting a service from any organisation. The biggest reason in the explosion of some services like home delivery of food, for example, is the menus from multiple restaurants becoming available online- that is information. Similarly, e-commerce or taxi services make information available to both parties-payment platforms too come in- and therefore make many things possible. The internet also plays a role, as people search for many things, and find most.

Typically, government office transactions have been slow to become transparent, but it is happening. The Vaccine efforts have been particularly good with online registration, and reports. Would have been tough otherwise. Though there is digital disparity in India and elsewhere, digitally available info helps. And you can always have a hybrid model with help available manually for those who need it. In turn, they can do the digital part of the transaction. My theory is that the hybrid model is good for our country, and can generate employment too, by being intermediaries between two parties.

The point is, nothing else moves until information on how to do anything is available easily. Marketers of services particularly need to be aware of this. 

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.

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?