XL celeb watch - BMD 99 Shoma Narayan

Shoma Narayan (BMD 99) was the 2nd runner up in the recently concluded Mills & Boon India short story
contest.

Shoma Narayanan
Banking Professional, 2nd runner up
Head, Marketing at HSBC, Mumbai, Shoma, a mother of two kids aged eight and three-and-a-half, started reading M&B when she was nine, and found her love when she was in XLRI. Shoma submitted a 2,000 word short story about a college couple who part ways after college gets over only to meet at a friend’s wedding to realise that they are still very much in love.

Happy to have been acknowledged as a prospective M&B writer, Shoma says with a smile, “The story is not a reflection of my own love story, but the emotions are.” Shoma wrote short stories when her kids were fast asleep, but went a step more to register for the competition when she read about the contest at a bookstore last month. Within a few hours, Shoma wrote the story that made her one of the three entries that were selected from a total of 1,000 sent to the competition this year.

Kim's Note: M&B have taken the short listed stories off from their website. If they do bring them back online, I will add the link here.

This season record pay's on offer for non-IIM graduates too

From The Economic Times

KOLKATA: It’s not just the IIMs who are expected to hog the limelight during this year’s student placements. The country’s second-tier B-schools, who started the placement process a few days ahead of the IIMs, have already begun setting pay package records.

Entry-level salaries at leading campuses like XLRI, IMT Ghaziabad, TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneshwar (XIMB), Jamnalal Bajaj, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), International Management Institute (IMI) and Welingkar, have gone up by 12-20 %, including a significant jump in both the lowest and the 10 lakh-plus pay packets.

The institutes are also seeing IIM regulars — I-banks, consultancy firms and top MNCs — visit them for the first time this year. All in all, the campuses claim 2011 has been one of their best placement season ever.

“After a lull in 2009 and 2010, placements this year have seen a complete rebound to the pre-recession days,” says IMT Ghaziabad head (corporate relation) Prakash Pathak. “In fact, they are even better.” IMT was visited, for the first time, by recruiters like Goldman Sachs and P&G.

Average salaries, too, have shot up by 12%, to 9.3 lakh. At Mumbai’s Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), there has been a substantial rise in the number of global consulting firms visiting this year, with McKinsey, Citibank, and Nomura being the major recruiters.

HUL, ITC and P&G also visited the campus. At XLRI Jamshedpur, Swiss pharma biggie Novartis AG topped its last year’s highest package of $1,10,000 to $1,20,000 this year, for the role of HR leadership development at its global headquarters.

Around 15 new recruiters thronged XLRI this year, with average salaries shooting up from 14.2 lakh in 2010 to 15.8 lakh this year. XIMB saw almost 30 new recruiters coming in this year. “The economy is booming, and that translates into more offers and higher salary offers,” says Diwakar Kaushik, secretary, external linkages, at XLRI.

A total of 109 companies made 317 offers to the 240-strong batch at XLRI. Experts say a rebound by IT and ITeS firms, the bullish growth of FMCG companies and the strong performance of banks and financial institutions have rubbed off on placements.

“India Inc is back on its feet. Sectors like IT, ITeS and finance are getting a lot of international business, which is creating opportunities for students,” said Welingkar Institute of Management director Uday Salunke.

Some of the top recruiters confirmed that this year, they took a fresh look at their placement plans to widen their reach beyond the IIMs — but stuck to offering IIM-type salaries. Deloitte India rejigged its campus positioning this year to include other B-schools.

“We are offering a 10-15 % higher salary this year. Everyone is hiring in larger numbers, and recruitment frenzy has touched the pre-slowdown levels,” says Deloitte India’s HR head Dhananjay Bansod. Aditya Birla and RPG Groups have reviewed their campus recruitment plans.

“The idea is to recruit more from all the campuses and not just top ones,” says RPG Group president (corporate HR) VC Agarwal. However, HR heads are confident that changes in campus recruitment strategy by some of the companies will not impact IIM placements.

In fact, the IIMs are expected to make bigger placement records this year, including more number of the 1 crore-plus packages. Madhvi Lall, regional head of HR (India and South Asia) at Standard Chartered said they plan to hire 38 graduates from the premier campuses this year, up from last year’s 26. “We usually target the top 10 B-schools, which includes some of the IIMs as well as institutes like XLRI and FMS. Typically, we look at picking up at least 2-3 students from each campus,” she said.

XLRI social entrepreneurship conference roundup

From Samhita.org

Last week of January each year XLRI, Jamshedpur sets the stage for a series of dialogues propagating social development. National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship is an annual feature at XLRI to provide a common platform for stakeholders from the social sector to share, learn and interact.
"We wanted to play an active role in the growth of the social entrepreneurial sector. Conference was one way to facilitate this growth," said Prof. Madhukar Shukla. 

Professor Shukla has been the primary architect of this initiative and is also a social sector evangelist. 

The objective of such a conference is to serve two purposes - to showcase innovative social models and to provide a common platform for all stakeholders in the social sector to interact.

"We realised that there were some very remarkable models and solutions to India's developmental problems, which were practiced by the social entrepreneurs. It is ironical that many of these solutions are not known in the mainstream," said Prof. Shukla.

Correspondingly, the conference has showcased such innovative examples like Goonj's work in recycling clothes, CRD's "Rickshaw Bank", Mann Deshi's bank which is run by illiterate rural women, or Pratham's Read India campaign etc and has helped reach these ideas to a wider audience.

"When we started in 2009, there weren't any forums which brought the stakeholders in the sector - the social entrepreneurs, development sector professionals, government agencies, academics and interested students - together. Our purpose was also to provide a common platform for them to come together, exchange views and experiences, and to build partnerships," added Prof. Shukla.

The theme for this year's conference was ‘Youth, Development & Social Entrepreneurship.' The three day conference started on the 28^th of January saw an active participation from social entrepreneurs, potential entrepreneurs, stakeholders, experts and practitioners alike.

The uniqueness of the conference was its interactive and informal nature. The idea behind this initiative is not to have an annual event but to facilitate development of a community of like-minded people in the sector. A community can be built up only if the design allows for two-way interactions, discovering common grounds and forming partnerships.

This is why not only the design of the sessions, but also the entire event was geared to facilitate interactions and conversations. For instance, the speakers/ resource persons and participants stayed in the same residential complex, had longer tea and lunch breaks, had evening forums for interactions, etc. - all these were conscious part of the design.

"While we invited some developmental/social sector professionals as the speakers and resource persons, even among the participants, we had professionals with long and rich experience in the sector. By making the conference more interactive, we also tried that their experience also becomes a part of the collective learning of the community," said Prof. Shukla.
 
Speakers at the conference included successful social entrepreneurs and practitioners (list of speakers). Participation from the youth was very high and in sync with the objective to make the youth aware of their social responsibilities.  

"Youth is not mere a drop in the ocean; youth is the ocean in a drop - what we at Pravah do is to help young people discover that ocean in the drop," said Ashraf Patel, Founder, Pravah.

Thought provoking speeches by the likes of Anshu Gupta, Founder, GOONJ, Mujib Khan, Founder, Bhumi and Vishal Talreja, Founder, Dream a Dream inspired many young minds in the audience. 

"When we talk of being the change we want to see in the world, it is not just "the world out there"; we are also talking about the corruption which is in there ourselves. Social change needs to start from personal transformation." - Mujeeb Khan.

The three day conference was also an eye opener to aspiring social entrepreneurs for the challenges of starting up. Solomon Jaya Prakash, Country Director, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Manisha Gupta, Director, Start Up! And Vijay Shukla, Partner, Setu Ventures explained the strategies of starting a social enterprise.
"A Business Plan is not something which you write to get funding from others. It is like the layout of the house you would like to build and live in. Your B-plan should work along with your other operational plans," said Manisha Gupta.

For many young people and the "novice" to the sector, this was their first exposure to this sector. For them, the stories and solutions which the social entrepreneurs shared themselves were the major learning from the conference - in the sense of knowing that not only such solutions existed, but are also possible.  
For many others, meeting other co-professionals the conference provided a meeting ground to learn from each others' experiences. They also explored the areas of collaboration and partnership.

XLRI shoots the full picture

From The Telegraph

Power point presentations make way for the full picture.

Students of XLRI’s social entrepreneurship course are making short five to seven-minute films to share their learning “on the field”.

The latest celluloid offering is Ek Koshish, a short film made on primary education in the state by four final-year students — Rajiv Sengupta, Prashant Singh, Kumar Ankit and Diwakar Kaushik.

This trend started from the batch of 2010. Different groups under the social entrepreneurship course have already made four short films, on topics like women contract workers, street hawkers, platform urchins and state primary schools.

Students felt filming observations was a better way to document what they had observed, rather than just presenting papers and slides.

“Filmmaking is a creative way to capture what we learn during our rural exposure. Though the report and presentation are a must, filmmaking enriches the learning experience. We can be more expressive,” said Diwakar, involved in the making of Ek Koshish.

Social entrepreneurship professor Madhukar Shukla welcomed the initiative.

“Students can capture nuances and emotions through films which is not possible in a detailed study report. Visuals have a different impact altogether. The field visit is a part of the course, where students learn about rural life and their problems. Students can also keep the films for their records,” said Shukla.

XLRI also plans to make filmmaking compulsory as a documenting tool but nothing has been made final.

“Shooting a film can be a unique experience, but there’s more to that. Last time, when a group of students interviewed and filmed women contract workers and screened it for us, we got to know their problems from a personal angle. It triggers the motivation for change,” said Shukla.

The course, an elective one to promote social ventures among students, is a two-term one of six months’ duration in the second year for business management and personnel management and industrial relations. So far, four social ventures after course completion have rolled out —Parichay, Dream4others, Samanvay and Green Leaf Energy.

Status quo for XAT, ATMA; XLRI GDPI in Feb-March: XLRI Director

From MBAUniverse.com

Status quo for XAT, ATMA; XLRI GDPI in Feb-March: XLRI Director

Reacting to the AICTE notification of December 28, 2010 or the question of the existence of XAT in the upcoming years, the Director of XLRI Jamshedpur, Dr. E Abrabaham said that the AICTE notification does not have any impact on XAT.

The recent AICTE notification which was issued on December 28, 2010 gave out eight points for regulating the PGDM courses in India. This gave rise to huge confusion in the minds of the management fraternity pertaining to the fact that XAT, the MBA entrance exam conducted by XLRI Jamshedpur would be scrapped off.

Reacting to the notification or the question of the existence of XAT in the upcoming years, the Director of XLRI Jamshedpur, Dr. E Abrabaham said that the AICTE notification does not have any impact on XAT. “AICTE Notification is ambiguous. But it doesn’t have an impact on XAT. XAT is recognized a national management exam, and will continue to function as it is,” Dr. Abraham said.

The XAT exam for this year has already been conducted and the admission will start soon. “XAT 2011 is already over. Next XAT will also be conducted as per regular schedule,” Dr. Abraham informed. XAT is conducted every year in the first Sunday of January.

XAT 2011 results have been declared on Tuesday, January 25, 2011. XLRI is moving forward with its admission process. “Next round is the GD PI. The process will be held from the third week of February to Match for XLRI,” Dr. Abraham informed.