bschools « In pursuit of CrAzYnEsS!

XLRI GMP Interviews – A Primer

February 22, 2011 — nikunjverma

The interview calls for this years GMP intake have gone out and interviews have started too. I have been getting emails from shortlisted candidates about what to expect in the interview. So thought of listing down what I know of XLRI GMP interviews.

What they are looking for?

They are looking for maturity and content. Whatever you say has to be based on solid reasoning or facts. They like to see people who know what they have been up to and what exactly they are seeking from the MBA.

What questions they can ask?

Questions can come from anywhere, but generally can be classified into 3 categories:

1. Yourself: Your name, your town, your past, your future, etc etc. Why MBA, why now, etc etc.

2. Work Experience: Your domain(nitty gritties, trends etc.), companies you worked for, etc.

3. Current Affairs: Data, facts are important but in my view more important is your attitude. On the basis of your knowledge you need to put forward a convincing argument. If they give you a much better argument, learn to accept it. But if you are not really convinced, respectfully disagree.

Some resources:

http://indiabudget.nic.in

http://www.totalgadha.com/gmat/2009/01/why-mba/

http://indiancurrentaffairs.blogspot.com/

Some interview experiences:

1. From interviewees in 2009: http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/other-exams-xat-fms-jmet/37862-2009-2010-xlri-gmp-interview.html

2. From interviewees in 2010: Starting from: http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/international-indian-mba-schools-accepting/42967-xlri-gmp-prospective-students-2010-a-56.html

Some which I think are not on PagalGuy:

“We had a free wheeling conversation on my marital status, caste system, long term goals, business idea, network security, ethical hacking, etc. Nothing on work exp, leadership, achievements, etc.”

“Interview was coool..no grilling.. people were giving different feedback after interview. they asked me describe yourself : from my answer they started discussing abt whether sachin tendulkar shuld b given bharat ratna. Current role and whole discussion went on for 15 min.My advise to everyone is Be yourself and dont fake and that way you can justify whatever you are saying..the Q’s can come from anywhere and we dont have a clue abt it .”

This one is an exhaustive one:

One from Chennai: http://followingmydream.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/interview-with-xlri-profs-a-pleasant-experience/

Hope you got some idea about GMP interviews now. The summary IMHO is – You really don’t need to prepare a lot. If you know what you have been doing till now – it would be a smooth ride.

Please comment if you have more experiences or resources to refer to for GMP/MBA interviews. I would like to add them here so that this information is gathered at one place.

All the best for your interview!

Posted in bschool applications, bschools, mba. 3 Comments »

Our tryst with the b-school competitions

January 2, 2011 — nikunjverma

As I wrote earlier, we keep participating in b-school events whenever its humanly possible in our busy schedule. The events have largely been marketing events which generally require one to send 4-5 slide case analysis presentations in the first round. Though we have not yet landed a 2nd round invite, but we think we are getting better and inching closer and closer. From analyzing the case and putting together 5 slides, all in 4-5 hours, we recently spent 2 days in just making the slides! We have learnt two important things in this time frame:

How to analyze and present the case as a marketing consultant in 5 slides
How to make presentations which don’t look dull to readers

Obviously we need to improve on both these counts but we sure have made some progress. As an example, here is one of our recent attempts for IIM-C’s annual fest’s marketing event- Marketrix.

Case Background: Wildstone is one of the recent entrants in Indian deodorant market and has quickly gained 3rd spot by market share. Its success has largely been attributed to its creative/controversial advertising. Here are two ad samples:

The problem was to suggest an online marketing plan for Wildstone, so that it can leverage internet to take on the intense competition in the deodorant market(which has 15 media active brands jostling for consumer attention). Here is the ppt. our team had made:

Un-animated version(slideshare):

Animated version(slideboom):Wildstone

In hindsight, we think we should have been more specific in suggesting our online marketing strategy and should have suggested low cost, practical solutions which teams were supposed to actually implement over the period of 1-2 weeks in the next round of the competition. We also need to put things in perspective – these events attract the best teams from the best bschools in India. Also, it takes the perfect blend of content, aesthetic appeal of the ppt. and some research effort. We still need to strike that sweet spot.

Please give feedback and/or comments. They are important for us to get better!

Posted in bschool, bschools, mba. Leave a Comment »

4 months of bschool grind. Phew!

December 26, 2010 — nikunjverma

Finally some break to recharge ourselves. I also realize(painfully!) that it is more than 4 months since I posted here. Shame! Anyway, here is my attempt to structure the madness which happened here at XL in last 4 months:

1. International immersion: We went to AIM, Manila for a 3 week international immersion. We had classes in the mornings and internship with Filipino companies in the afternoon. Both were fun and full of new learning. Observing a developing country, on a different route than India though, was a meaningful experience. I know you would find this clichéd , but it is true. For instance, how do you explain INR 50L price tag of a plush 3 bedroom condominium in the ultra rich residential area in Makati, the downtown of Manila versus the 50L price tag of a 2 bedroom apartment in outskirts of Pune, which pales in comparison to Manila in most parameters? And please also consider that Manila is the only big city in the Philippines and Makati the only place in Manila where rich and the famous hobnob. Also, GDP per capita in Philippines is $1746 as compared to $1100 in India.

2. Beginning of placement madness: We are not in here for placement. We are not in here for placement. We are not in here for placement. Repeat it as many times as you want, but in the end you just can’t escape the mad rush. Who is coming, with what roles, with what packages is invariably the talk of the town. Any dinner table, late night smoke gang, even tennis courts, this topic just can’t be buried for long. For people to whom it matters, the placements have begun for us here and some people have already “appropriated” the value of the 1 year MBA, albeit in short 6 months.

3. Experiences of the famed B-school competitions: Always in for new experiences, I did wager in a few bschool events organized by IIMB, IIMC and very own XLRI. Apart from 1(the assessment centre event I wrote about earlier, where I won one of the first prizes and Rs 7000 cash!), not many mentionable successes. But again(you would be getting bored with this now!) new learning did emerge and I keep getting better with each passing event. I will upload entries from our group in these events soon.

4. Self discovery and internal conflict: Marketing, IT or somewhere in between? Go mainstream after 5 years of startups or step into unknown territories again? And then for any decision made, what price am I willing to pay? Salary cut, role compromise, or umm both for larger good?

5. Excitement of a few courses: A few courses deserve a special mention. Excel modeling, Game theory and Financial Management courses are in that category. These courses are taken by great profs, stretch students’ imagination and leave a strong impact which I hope will improve performances in their career. How? Sample this- your company has 2 investment proposals. One costs 100 Rs and gets you risk free 20 Rs, which is a return of 20%. Other costs 1,00,000 and gets you risk free 10,000 which is return of 10%. Which one you should take? A general answer would be to accept first if you don’t have Rs 100,000, else accept the latter. Here is the learning – accept latter. Why? You are getting richer by 10,000 (which is also called the Net Present Value or NPV of the project) which is much more than Rs 20. Shortage of capital, most of the times, is an illusion in an efficient financial system. You can always raise loans from the market, if you have a project good enough to still give you a positive NPV. Message from the prof- “Scale is important. Play at a higher scale, that’s how you grow big”. Why is this profound? Think of Sunil Mittal who bid for telecom licenses with borrowed capital.

Fellow XLers and GMPians, if you think there is something I must add here, please comment!

Posted in bschool, bschools. 2 Comments »

A trip through the rural India: Hats off to human ability to survive!

July 18, 2010 — nikunjverma

You might be aware that XLRI prides itself as one of the most socially focused bschools in India. Many of the faculty we have here are socially inclined and are actively working in the area of social and rural development. See this recent news item second social entrepreneurship conference

Anyway, coming back to the topic. Half of our batch is just back from the two day village tour, cris-crossing the tough terrain of Jharkhand’s rural region. The experience we had was almost “soul changing”. We went through a range of feelings. Here is my attempt to describe them in words:

How lucky we were, but still we complained endlessly: Think of yourself in this setting- Poles and wires but no electricity. No roads. Nearest market 30 kms away. Water drying up in wells and handpumps. No rains in sight. And if these development related mess was not enough, you have naxalite issues. So no venturing out after the sun sets – you may be caught between the armed forces and the naxalite faceoff.

And compare this to the constant gripe we had in our urban life style. A pothole, an hour power cut, noise pollution and what not.

This world is not short of heroes: Most of us mortals try to contribute in bits and pieces, once in a while. A donation to Greenpeace/CRY and donating old clothes, etc is where our efforts stop. And at the other end, there are the heroes. We observed the efforts of NGO activists whose efforts were not subdued by mountains of problems. No roads, inaccessible hilly areas, doubting villagers and tribal. They face it all and more. Routinely they have a brush with naxalites but they hit the roads the next day in the same undying spirit. As another example of a hero, we met a teacher who completed higher studies from a top college but went back to his village to teach people. And he did teach well- inspiring the kids to learn and become “big” people like us. But are we really “big” is the question pestering my mind right now.

So after all this description you must be beginning to grow emotional and even pitiful., Don’t be as now its the turn to become envious.

Circumstances lead to great solutions: You would think that words like Microfinance, balance sheet, PLR, risk appetite, 24/7 credit, penalty for absence, etc. would be Greek to people living in the remotest corners of rural landscape. I am sorry but I have a picture to change your egoistic thought:

This is a simple account of a group of 19 villagers. They pool their savings to form a fund and they can borrow from this pool when they need money. They meet every week and every person needs to contribute a savings of Rs 5 at minimum. This makes them save for the bad times. They issue passbooks and do basic security of money by keeping the key and the money box with their different people. This responsibility changes each week. They maintain detailed MoMs for each meeting(Satyam board needs to learn a thing or two) and every week discuss a problem and generally form a consensus about the solution(we MBA students need to learn lessons as in our meeting ”minutes are created but hours are lost”).

We will fight and trump the odds: Its their in the spirits- Life is tough but we are tougher. Little kids marched on with perfect discipline, punctuality and great sincerity, flip flopping to their hostel rooms, classes and the play grounds. The behavior was exemplary- they played sports with competitiveness but still respected the rules and cared for their school chums. In our 2 day stay at the school(it was a boarding school) we never heard a loud noise, saw even a minor brawl or witnessed someone crying. And this when they were far away from their parents and mostly just got a plate of rice and a bowl of waterish dal. These pictures kind of sum the hopes and contentment these kids displayed:

I could have written a lot more but I think words are never going to be enough. Thank you XLRI, as the trip was an eye opener for all of us. It has brought us closer to our other country brethrens and also at peace with our inner selves. We now much appreciate the human spirit to fight and survive, against all human created and natural odds. We are humbled and as surely our future decisions as the managers and corporate leaders will be much more inclusive and sensitive in light of this trip.

With this, I would leave you with some other pictures from our trip, which give you the flavor of how it was. All pictures are courtesy our ace photographer Naren and a junior photographer Junaid. Thanks you guys!

Posted in bschools, mba. 1 Comment »

Before you pack off to the bschool

May 11, 2010 — nikunjverma

If necessity is the mother of all invention, then this article is an invention indeed. This articles arises from the lack of a webpage which could help a person, who is about to join an MBA program soon, to prepare for the ensuing exciting but challenging journey. I intend to list down items as they cross my mind so that I can also keep track of my progress too.

Enough said, lets get cracking. First let’s tick off some basic obvious items in the list:

Finances: Get a comfortable buffer which can provide for your estimated montly expenses during the program + 3-4 months of expenses in case you don’t get a job in time. If you have some funds remaining in addition to your contingency funds, then make sure you invest them judiciously.
Life/Health/Education loan/Other insurance: Get a good term insurance cover for your life. Also cover your education loan and other loans. Don’t forget medical insurance- your corporate plan won’t work anymore!

Now, let’s have a look at some big picture stuff. If you are going to an exec MBA program, then this one is very important. You need to keep yourself focused and still find time to learn everything you want during the program. Here is what one can do:

Introspection/Reality check: First try to understand “the” you and your motivation to do MBA. Think what you want to do with your life and what short term goals would be good ones.
Talk, talk and talk to people: Now, with your dream goals in your mind, talk to current students and also to people who passed 2-3 years ago. You may be given same information again and again but still it helps as the thoughts get crystallized increasingly.
Get back in touch: Before you begin the course and change linked-in status, try to expand your network as much as you can. Remember after you change your status, people might think you are getting back to them only to serve your petty selfish interests.

Now, since we are going to a competitive world out there, lets get equipped with some tools

Blog/Website: If you don’t have any online presence, get one yesterday! A website is better but a blog will just do fine. Think ahead what kind of content you would like to post there and learn the nitty-gritties specific to your blogging/hosting environment.
Resume: There is no “official” time for resume’. Keep it updated and keep it polished. You don’t know what you don’t know!
Setup channels to tap: Information is going to be the key. There are tons of stuff lying around us. Look at this page – 100-useful-reference-tools

I particularly liked these lists on this page:

Open Education Links

Find loads of free, not-for-credit business classes, lecture notes, videos and other educational resources from these tools.

MIT Sloan School of Management: MIT’s collection of business open courseware includes classes, lectures and answers for finance, economics and more.
International Institute of Management: These open courses and projects cover quality management, executive management and more.
Knowledge @ Wharton Podcasts: These podcasts cover topics from marketing to health economics to leadership and change to operations management.
globalEDGE: This is a terrific resource for international business students who want industry profiles, country profiles and more resources.
Chicago Booth Podcast Series: Chicago Booth’s podcast series features interviews, lectures and discussions about major business events and trends.
BBC Learning: BBC’s online courses in business cover Internet business and more.
KU School of Business: This b-school lists lots of business lectures online.
biz/ed: This is another UK site designed for business studies and reference.
Kaplan: Kaplan’s online business courses cover economics, marketing, accounting, technology and more.
MIT World: This is another open education service provided by MIT, full of video lectures in all types of economics and business topics.

Calculators and Finance Tools

Use these calculators and tools for financial homework help.

Business Calculator Center: Find a Break Even calculator, Investment Offering calculator and others.
Dinkytown: Dinkytown has lots of financial calculators for figuring out cash flow, debt and more.
Stock Market Yellow Pages: Find stocks by searching sector, company name, keyword or symbol.
XE Universal Currency Converter: International business, economics and finance students may find this calculator useful.
Business Calculators: Figure out starting costs, pay per click ROI, and more.
NYSE: Here you’ll find a listings directory, symbol lookup and other market tools.
SmartMoney.com: In addition to offering PF tools, SmartMoney has plenty of market watch tools.
Kiplinger: Get tools for taxes, insurance, banking, bonds and more.
Scientific Calculator: This large, clear scientific calculator can be easily used online.
Market Data Center: The WSJ Market Data Center has plenty of tools for analyzing the stock exchange.

Finally, lets work on the spirit. Get to know the school and its culture. For instance following videos gave me the emotional connect with my school XLRI:

If you are hungry for more similar stuff, I am sure you would like the blog which gave me the inspiration to write this post: chunkypitbullmba

Have a suggestion/information source which you want to get added? Please comment!

Posted in bschools, mba, mumblings. 1 Comment »

Challenges of one year executive MBA

May 10, 2010 — nikunjverma

Going for an MBA program itself has many challenges. But a challenge unique to one year MBA programs run by IIMs, XLRI, ISB, SPJain, etc is the alignment of 4 potentially conflicting things- long term goals, short term goals, your intellectual interests and you desired life style. For illustration, assume that:

a. you want to become a VC, entrepreneur or want to go into marketing strategy area in long term.

b. Since it is difficult to land a job in placements which can directly lead you to achieve above long term goals, you need to form differet short term goals. For instance, Product management or pre-sales.

c. You were always interested in understanding equity markets or foreign trade.

d. You want to have a decently active campus life, which means beers, parties, eat outs, sports etc.

Now think yourself. In a 11 month course, with same contact hours as a two year MBA program, how you can do all of the above efficiently? The key, of course, is to set the priorities straight and do good time management. But this is only as useful as saying to a layman- “just keep your body in balance, head straight, look at the ball and there will go your straight drive to boundary just like Sachin’s”. Isn’t it?

I like to read my readers with something more emphatic than the endings of my posts. So here goes today’s multimedia bite(from Steve Blank):

Posted in bizworld, bschools, mba. Leave a Comment »

XLRI is where I belonged…

May 5, 2010 — nikunjverma

Just a quick update- after all these years of bschool applications, interviews, sleepless nights, pestering ex-bosses for recos, etc I feel happy to call it a day. I am joining 1 year executive MBA program(christened General Management Program or GMP) at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

In case you don’t know XLRI, it is the oldest Bschool in India, estd way back in 1949. The reputed Indian Institute of Managements(IIMs) were established in 1960s. You can perhaps skim through this wiki entry for more info on XLRI- XLRI@Wikipedia

On this historic day, I also feel compelled to list down my MBA journey in chronological order for posterity:

Year	Interviewed with	CAT score(percentile)	Final result
2002	IIM-L, FMS, IIT-D, NMIMS	98.91	Not offered
2003	IIM-A and IIM-C	99.15	Not offered
2004	Nada	97ish;got busy working	Nada
2005	Nada	97ish;still busy working	Nada
2006		Skipped
2007	ISB	GMAT-710	Nada
2008	None interested, despite 5 year experience and 92%ile QA, 99.70 in VA, 98.5 in DI	99.70
2009	SPJain PGPM, XLRI(GMP)		Offered by both

Believe me as I was putting together the above table, each year, each interview came in front of my eyes very vividly. It was a very rocky journey indeed and I feel anguished after having come so close to top schools but never making it. But today, I am very happy to move over the hurdles and get into a school of the stature of XLRI.

Over to next hurdle- making the most out of the MBA experience and to achieve my ambitious goals in life. In the meantime, this song is what keeps humming in my mind every now and then:

Posted in bschools, personal. 7 Comments »

Education Loans- when and why?

May 5, 2010 — nikunjverma

Recently after securing admission into an MBA program, I was thinking about :

-whether to go for education loan
-to use it to what extent

For eg. if I have 4L of cash lying idle in my bank account, should I use some of this or should I go for loan of full amount. I searched around on the internet but couldn’t find something readily. So I thought of sharing my thoughts on this.

Before you begin your financial planning, keep in mind that most banks ask you to deposit "margin" money. What this means is that you won’t get the loan for full fees. A certain percentage(generally 5%) of overall expenses have to be borne by you. So in case of XLRI GMP(total fees 11.39), you will have to pay 5%= Rs 60K.

I realized that there were following considerations for evaluating education loans:

1. First go to this URL and try to get a sense of EMI you would pay after you pass out :
Calculator
Keep the ROI as 10.5%, tenure as 7(maximum possible) and play with other values. I realized that it doesn’t come cheap- Rs 10L loan for 7 years requires an EMI of Rs 16860.

2. Also, remember this EMI will be in addition to your EMIs for house and car if you are planning to buy them. These other EMIs can be in the range of Rs 30-40K for many of us.

3. But wait, before you get scared of the education loan, make sure you factor in the tax benefits. Here is the URL which describes them: Tax benefits
So, in short your interest payments(not the principal repayments) are fully exempted from tax calculation. Let’s calculate the tax savings:

Year	Total interest payment	Total tax saving(30% slab)
1	100,000	30000
2	90,000	27000
3	75000	22500
4	60000	18000
5	48000	14000
6	30000	9000
7	9600	3000
Total	4,16,000	1,25,000

So after reducing the tax benefit from the interest payments, the net “cost” of the loan is Rs 4,16,000 – Rs 1,25,000 = Rs 2,81,000. Or in other words, the effective ROI you pay for Rs 10L of principal is 7.5% which is 3% less than the rate of interest you borrowed the money at.

4. So a logical conclusion of our original question of whether to go for education loan becomes-

Can I make my extra money grow at a rate more than 7.5%?

The current FD rates are round about this same figure of 7.5%. But before you jump the gun, don’t forget that the interest earned on FDs(of less than 5 year duration) are taxable. So your effective rate takes a hit of about 1-2% points. So one should try to put the excess money in combination of following instruments:

a. FDs ( totally risk free)
b. Monthly Income Plans: Debt instruments + some equity component to take the ROI to about 12-15%. For further elucidation, I suggest this link: Deepak Shenoy on MIP vs FD
c. Equity diversifies MFs.

Conclusion: Penny-wise it does make sense to go for education loans given you are ready to invest your excess money judiciously. Simply putting the money in savings account or putting it on FDs is not a bright idea. In the end, it is a matter of personal risk appetite.

I suggest one to go for education loans to the maximum extent you can handle psychologically. But don’t forget to send your saved money for some hard work in the market.

Posted in bschools, finance. Leave a Comment »

ISB submitted in R2

December 2, 2009 — nikunjverma

Yesterdays was the R2 deadline for ISB and I turned in my application comfortably(unusual!). I had been working on it for last 10 days and it was a big relief.

My application feels a lot better to me this time. The essays underwent some good reviews by at least 3 people. The recos are also a lot better this time. So overall the spirits are high.

I am trying hard to keep myself away from the insanity at PG. I think it presents a bloated quality of applicant pool and kind of distracts you, if you are not a rock star yourself. So, I just go there to check on news like how many applications, documents required, etc. Today, I went there and found the total number of apps in R2- about 2200. This is quite large as compared to 1700 apps in R1. Though I don’t know what to make of it, as I would expect the app quality in R1 to be better than R2. See, PG distracts you, isn’t it?

I hope to land an invite from ISB for interview. So my work is now cut out- start preparing for that round. Here is what I need to do for interviews:

1. Go through the application and make a list of possible questions. Write down the answers.
2. Recalculate the % impact I mentioned at a few places. Be sure about them.
3. Write down 10-15 other general MBA interview questions and prepare answers.
4. Speaking/Interview: Make it a point to speak on random topics daily. 10 days from now and I should take a mock interview.
5. Starting from today, write down information/facts/figures from BS and others about:
a. Indian IT
b. Indian economy in general
c. companies for strategy roles in ISB
d. opensource/embedded/high tech industry

6. Start looking at more value added work around me now.

Posted in bschool applications, bschools, mba. Leave a Comment »

Skipped SPJain. Mission ISB now!

September 16, 2009 — nikunjverma

A couple of updates first, one good news and one follow up news. First the good news- I had applied at the 1 year PGPM program at SP Jain, Bbay and had interviewed with them. Well, the result came about 16 days ago and this time I did MAKE it. Man, wow good does that feel when you get an “You are welcome” mail from a school of reputation like SPJain.

Now the bad part- I said NO to their offer. This was a rather painful decision as after battling for so long for my MBA(my first attempt was in circa 2002!) everyone around me wanted to hang up the battle shoes and get “settled”. But I stand by the decision and don’t regret it. These were the reasons for my decision:

1. Types of recruiters: Since 85% of my professional experience is in High Tech product industry, I really want to go to a school where product based companies come for recruitment. Sp jain’s list is entirely made up of IT services firm. Though I do think that there are good profiles in IT services firms too, but keeping in my mind my different experience as well as my long term career plan(of starting a venture) I didn’t see a great fit. Also, there were no real chances of trying the consulting industry post SPJ, as there are hardly any names in SP Jain’s recruiter list.

2. PGDM Vs PGPM: Well this is fairly well known. While researching the placements of PGPM, I came to know that the school has a bias in favor of their flagship PGDM program. It seemed that the school is deliberately not pushing PGPM to industry to avoid conflict with PGDM. My take is if the school you are joining is not serious about their own program, then there are limited things you can do to make things any better.

3. The network: Finally, I turned to linked in to compare the real world positions of alumni from a few schools such as ISB and SP Jain(PGPM). A few pages and you know the difference. I agree that PGPM is relatively new(4 year old), but ISB is not very old too(7 years). Also the sheer number of people from ISB would far outnumber the PGPM alumni base as the average batch size of ISB would be about 300, while PGPM’s would be 1/10th of that. But the message which I drew from it was there were simply far more opportunities available for ISB junta as compared to SP Jain’s PGPM alumni.

Anyway, now when I have chucked the offer, I am gearing towards having a serious go at ISB in R2. A few things are already in pipeline and I would share the strategy soon.

Wish me luck!

Posted in bschool applications, bschools, mba. 2 Comments »

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