Development Dialogues

Upcoming dialogues

Reports pending...

Ravi Vikram, HLL

22 Nov: Dr. PL Beena, "Mergers and Acquisitions"

Photos of earlier sessions

Dr. Liginlal, Wisconsin, 22 Aug 07

Development Dialogues

Mr.Swarup, Stark, 26 Oct 07

Mr.VSM Nair introduces Mr. Swarup

Dr. PL Beena, CDS, 22 Nov 07

"Mergers and Acquisitions"

CDS Working paper 355 (2004)

CDS working paper 301 (2000)

 Sub-Prime Loans Crisis in US and its Impact on Global and Indian Economy

Dr. SankaraNarayanan, College of Business, NMIT, Bangalore

14 & 15^th Nov’07,

session: Dr. Sankaranarayanan spoke on "Sub-Prime   Loans Crisis in US and its impact on the Indian economy."  The session started with an explanation on mortgages and servicing of loans to less credit worthy customers.  The discussion highlighted the processes involved in granting a loan, calculating down payment, fixing rate of interest, and refinancing of loans.

    The workshop brought to light the factors that led to the creation of Sub-Prime loans, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO), and Securitization. Some important articles from New York Times dating from 1999 to 2006, citing possible crisis emanating from sub prime lending were discussed. It was observed that Securitization has proliferated into the markets to an extent where it had become difficult to identify the original lender of the loan. This led to loans being written-off, thereby causing losses worth billions of dollars.  The focus has shifted from collection of loans from original defaulters to writing-off of the investments in form of CDOs and other collateralized debts.  The speaker highlighted the possible repercussions of sub-prime lending in the Indian economy.

    Several numerical examples were discussed to understand the creation and issuance of loans. The calculation of Equated Monthly Installments (EMI), effective rate of interest, loan refinancing and evaluation of different choices was also dealt through the examples.
    It was followed by a panel discussion on the sub-prime lending, in the light of 7 parameters for identifying crisis – growth, complexity, absence of safety buffers, cognitive bias, incompetent leadership, trigger mechanism, and the role of leadership.

Prepared by Swaminathan,PGP'06.Edited by Rakesh Nair

Applied System Thinking

R.Narayanan,TCS,Trivandrum

03 Dec-'07,15.30-17.00hrs.

R. Narayanan is currently the Vice-President (Learning & Development) at TCS. He is responsible for planning, delivering and measuring Induction and Continuous Learning initiatives of all TCS associates in Technology, Domain, Management and Soft skills. A Master’s in Mathematics with additional diplomas in Statistics and French, he has more than 35 years' experience with IT and specially Software and before joining TCS, he had a glorious stint of 26 years with the Indian Space Research Organization.

Session:The two hour long session, focused on “Applied System Thinking” started with the question – ‘Who is a consultant?’ Mr. Narayanan then helped the class explore the job of the consultant from the perspective of the client as well as the consultant. For all the successful assignments, there are well defined deliverables, the assignment is completed on time, within budget, solution fits the need, there are no post implementation problems and benefits exceed business case and can be sustained over time. But the industry is not immune to failures and bad clients always blame the consultant and bad consultants always love bad clients

 Discussing the causes of failures, Mr. Narayanan elaborated on the ‘Gaps in Consultancy’ – Cognitive, Perception, Communication and Implementation. Added to this, the environment itself is changing. In such a complex and dynamic environment, Systems Thinking provides tools to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us to see how to change them effectively. Systems Thinking was defined as “a multidisciplinary approach to the study of innate complexity which by synthesizing systemic findings from the natural, social, technological, behavioral, life sciences and other specialized fields brings holistic perspectives to the solution of problems within a general context.” To make it more real, using a multi-level reasoning framework, Systems Thinking approach was applied to problems like Traffic dynamics, Primary education and Market intelligence. The session concluded with, Mr. Narayanan answering students’queries.

Prepared by Neeraj Kumar, PGP06 Edited by Mercy Mathew

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 Case Analysis

Why & How..?

Prof. K Balakrishnan, SDM-IMD, Mysore,

24 Nov ’07, 14:15-18.30hrs.

Speaker: Prof.Balakrishnan has twenty-two years industrial experience across various sectors, functions and organizations such as Blue Star Ltd, Sanmar Group and Escorts Ltd. Was the COO/CEO of Century Wood Ltd. & Raman Boards Ltd.  Set up India’s first automated solid wood furniture facility as agreen field 100% EOU. Currently he is working as a faculty at Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development, (SDM-IMD) Mysore. After joining SDM-IMD, he has published over 50 papers and articles. He is a resource person with the UGC Academic Staff College and teaches as visiting faculty with KIAMS & IIMB.

Session: Explaining the origin and need for case based teaching in management education, Mr. Balakrishnan, made reference to the relevance and importance of case-based teaching process in grooming future managers. Case studies help in simulating real issues/problems in class room setup and facilitate decision making. Though there need not necessarily be a right answer to the case problem, there is the right way to case analysis. He talked about the cognitive biases that affect decision making and how students can avoid such biases. He also discussed a framework for case analysis. Towards the end of the session, two case studies were analyzed using the same framework. 

Prepared by Viju ThomasPGP07

Edited by Mercy Mathew

 "Knowledge Management: Emperor's Missing Cloths"

VSM Nair, VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd, Trivandrum: Oct19th, 2007 

Speaker: Mr. VSM Nair has about 35 years of experience in industry and consulting, specialising in industrial projects. He has worked with Tata Economic Consultancy Services, KITCO and KSIDC before promoting VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd in 1997 along with Mr. G Vijaya Raghavan.

He has since consulted on several national and international projects, with focus on technology parks and sectors like IT, tourism, media and entertainment. 

At the outset, Mr. Nair explained the importance of updating our knowledge to survive in this rapidly changing world. According to him, Knowledge is an asset as well as

the key to survival. He pointed out that knowledge is different from data and information.  Further, the difference between the explicit and the tacit knowledge and why it is difficult to codify tacit knowledge were dealt with. He briefed upon the commonly found knowledge management practices in organizations like creation of knowledge databases, knowledge mapping, appointing Chief Knowledge Officer(CKO), Communities of Practice .The challenges associated with installing and managing such practices were also touched upon. He further talked about the benefits of knowledge management that is how to minimize loss and risk, improve organizational efficiency, or embrace innovation. Knowledge Management efforts and initiatives add great value to an organization. Finally, the session concluded with a discussion on "whether knowledge is divisible".

Prepared by Vinit ,PGP06-08 and

Edited by Rakhee Sudhir

Luck favours the daring and the hardworking

Raj Rajkumar, Partner, Symphony Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd.

Sep 17th, 2007

Speaker: Mr. Raj Rajkumar has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kerala, India, an MS in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the University of North Carolina. He is a partner with Symphony Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd., Singapore. Raj is involved in evaluating and executing new transactions on behalf of Symphony and sits on the boards of portfolio companies in India, Singapore and China. Prior to joining the Symphony team in 1999, Raj was a member of GE's Corporate Initiatives Group based in Hong Kong where he was responsible for Six Sigma initiatives across Asia. Raj has also worked with Symmetrix, a Boston-based management consulting firm and in line-management at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in Japan and the United States.

Session: The one-hour session began with Raj taking the audience through his inspiring career trajectory shaped by what he described as random events. He narrated the sequence of events that led to his choice of Japan for the first job after MS and later building a career in finance. Reflecting on how his own career prejudices, as a student and young professional, melted down in later years, as he himself turned out to be thriving in the very same jobs, Raj advised the students against letting pre-conceived notions stunt their careers. He said, "Random events are more capable of taking your careers to greater heights than planned ones. Benefit from the unknown unknown."

Karthik thanked the speaker and the audience.

Prepared by KG Satheesh Kumar

The Indian IT Industry

VSM Nair, VMA Consultants Pvt Ltd, Trivandrum: Sep 7th, 2007

Speaker: Mr. VSM Nair has about 35 years of experience in industry and consulting, specialising in industrial projects. He has worked with Tata Economic Consultancy Services, KITCO and KSIDC before promoting VMA consultants Pvt Ltd in 1997 along with Mr. G Vijaya Raghavan. He has since consulted on several national and international projects, with focus on technology parks and sectors like information technology, tourism, media and entertainment.

Session: The session started with the speaker introducing about the characteristics of software industry, evolution of software industry. The session also talked about the strength of Indian it industries which tells that India has got the most CMM level companies this is because of India is a country which has got lot of talents in all sectors. He also mentioned about which are all areas India is concentrating and from which are all countries the revenue is coming most. It also mentioned about the various eras how the it industry developed. In this he mentioned about the quality of the software, India’s strength in this sector compared to other countries. At last he talked about the threats, challenges faced by Indian software companies in the future.

Prepared by Vinod.S, PGP06-08

Interacting with Industrial Experience

Ram Srinivasan, Catisa, Geneva, 03-Aug-07, 14:30-15:40hrs:

Speaker:  Mr. Ram, having started his career as an Investment Banker with Morgan Stanley has a Management degree from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania.  He has been a banker for 22 years.  He is currently associated with CATISA, a family based conglomerate.

Session: The hour long session started with the speaker introducing himself and opening the floor for discussion.  Our students started with questions ranging from the business of CATISA, his experience & learning in Investment Banking, from there on towards banking sector in India.  There was also a discussion on the retail segment.  It was about the big players wiping out the corner grocery stores.  Some students supported it as an opportunity for better customer service & wider choice, more open economy.  Some of them also felt that the grocery stores shall co-exist given the dynamics of Indian consumer market.  There was also a discussion on the Asset Reconstruction companies in India, as a potential and upcoming line of business with the parallel drawn towards the Private Equity Investments.  It also dwelt on the strengths of Indian banks and not favoring the possibility of Indian banks looking up for foreign tie-up’s to consolidate their positions.  The students also got a chance to speak about their aspirations.  At the end, vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Swaminathan, student of Asian School of Business.

Prepared by Swaminathan, PGP06-08

 Some Critical Reflections on the Development of Industrial Enterprise in India.

Prof.Raman Mahadevan,Institute of Development Alternatives,Chennai.

09-Jan-'08,11.30-13.00hrs.

Profile:Prof Raman Mahadevan is a senior economic and business historian based in Chennai. His principle areas of interest are industrial history; evolution, growth and structure of Indian Capital and labor history. Much of his work pertains to Southern India. He is deeply interested in the present and especially in understanding how the past influences the present. Some of these concerns were reflected in his fortnightly column 'Past is Present' that used to appear in the 'Financial Express'. He has worked in several institutions of repute across India including a brief stint at IIM Bangalore and a fairly long innings at CDS Trivandrum.

 He is presently a Professor at the Institute of Development Alternatives Chennai. He has several publications to his credit.

Session:Prof Raman Mahadevan spoke on development of industrial entrepreneurship in India. The session started with a detailed explanation on British association with India and the kind of changes they brought on the trade front. He highlighted the aspect of industrial revolution, the major industries that evolved over time which in turn broughtimprovement to a few communities belonging to few states.

 The session brought to light the main features of development of industrial entrepreneurship and its link with modernization of India. It was the rising interest in textiles which brought Britishers to India around 17^th century. Then with the help of foreign investments, the first railway line was laid - the first step towards modernization. The cotton trade and the developing railway line expanded the opportunities for trade and business. This was followed by broadening of industrial structure, and the investment in various industries like paper, sugar, chemicals etc and the lack of focus on agro-based industries. But the fact remained that all Indians did not have equal opportunities even at that period in history

The session then laid focus on the major industries, the regions where they were mainly prospering, followed by reasons for shift from exports to manufacturing. The speaker then talked about the state of poor capital mobilization and the rise of the merchant community, who fueled internal trade and industrialization. This was followed by examples of Indian companies that have existed for over half-a-century and are successful. He also elaborated on the enormous contribution made by those entrepreneurs.

The focus then shifted to the period of 1980s - lifting of controls, electronic revolution, the relevance of knowledge capital, computerization and growth of IT sector in a small way. Finally the session ended with brief talk on agricultural sector, the use of new technologies for production of high yielding crops and use of a part of the surplus generated from agriculture to build and promote industries.

Prepared by Vinita George,PGP'06.Edited by Ms.Mercy Mathew

 International Branding

Prof. K. Balakrishnan, SDM-IMD, Mysore,

24-Nov-’07, 9:15-12:15hrs

Speaker: Prof. Balakrishnan has twenty-two years industrial experience across various sectors, functions and organizations such as Blue Star Ltd, Sanmar Group and Escorts Ltd. Was the COO/CEO of Century Wood Ltd. & Raman Boards Ltd.  Set up India’s first automated solid wood furniture facility as agreen field 100% EOU. Currently he is working as a faculty at Shri. Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development, (SDM-IMD) Mysore. After joining SDM-IMD, he has published over 50 papers and articles. He is a resource person with the UGC Academic Staff College and teaches as visiting faculty with KIAMS & IIMB.

Session: As Indian companies go global, they face the challenge of branding – should their international branding be extension of their existing branding strategies or should they adopt an altogether different approach. This was the focus of the session on international branding by Mr. Balakrishnan. He started by explaining the basics of branding - the difference in creating a brand in the commodity space and a branded space - and the issues in developing an international brand architecture, the different levels of branding, number of brands in each level, etc. Through examples and videos, the Indian perspective and approach to international branding was made easy for the students to understand. Towards the end, Mr. Balakrishnan answered to students’ queries.

 Prepared by Radha.R,PGP07.

Edited by Mercy Mathew.

Branding Destinations

"World out there is waiting for you... Go! Get it!!"

S. Ramadorai – CEO, TCS

22nd October, 2007 at ASB

Dr. S Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has been associated with TCS for the past 30 years, joining TCS as a trainee engineer. He took over as CEO in 1996 and has been instrumental in building TCS to a $3.02-billion global software and services company with a talent base of over 68,000 associates and a geographical reach of 35 countries. He has now set his sights on ensuring that TCS is among the top ten software companies in the World.  

Dr.Ramadorai reflected that the conditions prevailing in India was very promising and that the country’s intellectual capital would enable it to become a super power in the years to come. According to him the global leadership position which India holds today is the result of innovation and hence managers should be moulded to cater to the rapid changes taking place in the field of technology and business. He also insisted that the courses taught in the educational institutions should reflect such changes and a multi disciplinary approach should be followed. He opined that IT was at the heart of every domain and to become successful managers, one needed to develop multidisciplinary skills, domain expertise, an understanding of business processes, an innovative mindset, global outlook and the art of communication. The speaker urged the students to carve out paths for themselves and to be venturesome.

Prepared by Shalini and Asha Sukumaran PGPM07-09.

Edited by Rakhee Sudhir.

Power Sector in India

Dr. Jayashankar .B .Nair, Sr. Economic Analyst,

Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission

Sep 21, 2007

About the speaker: Dr. Jayashankar B. Nair is  currently on deputation to Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission as Senior Economic Analyst, from the  Directorate of Collegiate Education, Govt. of Kerala. He was involved in the power sector reforms in India for about 8 years and actively participated in the reform process of three states such as Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. In his various capacities with the organization, he was involved in the formulation of power sector reforms, system planning, financial analysis, tariff development (for generation, transmission and distribution) and economic regulations.

Dr.Jayashankar talked about the status of the Indian Power Sector, its regulations and reforms, the various Regulatory Commissions and finally exposed the status of the Kerala Power Sector.

The session kicked off with the evolution of the Indian Power Sector and the speaker elaborated upon the growth it had attained in the last 50years, due to huge amounts of investments.

Dr..Jayashankar also highlighted the fact that out of the total of 180 million households in India only about 80million accessed electricity. He also brought to light that the per capita consumption of electricity is very low in our country. Answering to why there is a supply demand issue in the sector, he pointed out that peak shortage and energy shortage were the factors contributing to it. The new policy of providing electricity to all by 2012, he said is a highly ambitious objective and with investment costs and political barriers as hurdles, the objective seems rather too far from achievement.

Later, Dr.Jayashankar talked about how the   Indian Power Sector under went drastic development due to the various reforms that took place over the years-the Electricity Supply Act 1948 (based on the UK model), the formation of the State Electricity Boards, the NTPC, The Electricity Regulatory Commission Act 1998(a replica of the US model) proposed by Dr. Manmohan Singh, to name a few. It was then followed by the second generation reforms that came into picture promoting competition in the sector, which is largely a monopoly.

 The issues faced by the power sector in our country, like lack of information symmetry and incentives to efficiency, complexity in control and lack of incentives to optimal investment were then discussed.

Finally, the speaker revealed the status of the power sector in Kerala, the only state that had recorded a 100% metering in India with a collection efficiency of 90%. Though the loss level in the sector was comparatively low, the operating expenses were high in the State. 
He concluded with a note that even now, uninterrupted power supply remains a dream yet to be fulfilled.

Prepared by Janu, PGP06-08

The Importance of safeguarding your personal information

Prof.Divakaran Liginlal, Assistant Professor (Operations and Information Management), Madison School of Business, University of Wisconsin.

22-Aug-’07,15:30-17:30hrs.

Speaker: Prof. Lal holds a Doctoral Degree in Information Systems from the University of Arizona. He has many published research works to his credit. He was conferred with the Mabel Chip man Award for excellence in teaching from the Madison School of Business, 2007 and also the University of Arizona Foundation Award for Meritorious Teaching in 1998.

Session: The session started off with the need to protect personal information. The speaker forewarned the audience about the consequences of different types of identity thefts. Prof. Lal introduced the concept of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and how it invades one’s life. The hidden dangers associated with information disclosure on Social Networks were elaborated upon. Later, Prof. Lal dealt with the relevance of Identity Management Systems (IMS) and its core functionalities. The strengths and weaknesses of the Standard Authentication Systems - Possession based and Knowledge based, were then discussed. Subsequently, the modern technologies of authentication (Bio-metrics and DNA based check) were also covered. Towards the end of the session, the speaker stressed upon the Two Factor Authentication System, as a means to assure higher levels of validation/authentication.