#lifeatisb

Snap back to reality

So this was the final term and things started with a bang. I used the term break to go on a trip to Rajasthan.This was my first proper ISB trip. I’m a complete laggard in this matter. A lot people travelled the surrounding hillscapes like there’s no tomorrow, before placements and much more after placements. I loved campus a bit too much and didn’t want the (apparent) hassle of travelling. Rajasthan was warm and fun. It was a new experience visiting forts and palaces, seeing old weapons and finding out that the Rajas smoked a lot of hash! A Desert Safari and tent stays in Jaisalmer were fun too. The warm(er) weather was good break from the chills of Mohali. And soon I was back.

On the academic front things were as cool as they could be. Over-loading on courses earlier meant that I had to study only 3 courses and had plenty of time for socialising, fun and … co-ordinating my marriage!

My courses for Term 8 were ENVC (Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital), MFIN (Micro-Finance) and MKAN (Marketing Analytics).

ENVC was about the world of startups and venture capital. It was taught by Professor Francis Kim who is a former (successful!) entrepreneur and covered both sides of the table; we learned how to value a startup company and also about what kind of ideas succeed and what it takes to be an entrepreneur. The most amazing (and useful) part of the course was the simulation. Many academic courses use a simulation to show you how markets evolve, and how a manager has to respond. These are usually computer-based simulations, so they don’t feel all that real. In ENVC, the professor divided the class into 24 teams, 8 of these were VCs and 16 were ENs (entrepreneurs). All the entrepreneurs competed in the same market (“Edtech in India”). Every class entrepreneurs would present to VCs and half of them would get eliminated. Watching the simulation progress and observing the economic + human dynamics play out was a real treat. Initially, all but a few teams had over-lapping ideas. As rounds progressed and teams observed who died/survived, they started learning from each other and incorporating each others ideas. Every VC had 15 sticks to invest. As expected from economics, one team (mine! 😉)got a disproportionate share of the total funding in accordance with a power law distribution. Politics played a huge role too! Many couples put themselves into complementary EN-VC pairs; so that they could support each other! People called upon friendships and other niceties to get funded; objective judgement RIP. It was a faithul simulation of the ugly truth that is human life.

MFIN was about a still emerging branch of the finance that deals with facilitating the development of the poor/not-so-well-off. Here are the core ideas: To make people well-off we want to give them income sources, the simplest of these is running a small business. To start that business requires some inputs/capital. These inputs are beyond the means of these folks (else they would’ve started these businesses already!). So we can just lend money to these folks, right? Wrong. All of lending works on the idea of collateral, the poor being poor don’t have any collateral in the first place! All is not lost, this challenge has been confronted head-on by social entreprenuers, most notably Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and replicated in many countries world over. Their weapon of choice is group lending, where you start by lending to a group of people who keep each other from defaulting. Initial loans are small and grow with time. Because these banks can’t take the easy (and impersonal) way out when it comes to lending, banks like Grameen Bank have innovated on multiple fronts to make finance accessible to a whole new section of society. For example, repayment happens daily/weekly (as opposed to monthly) as this keeps the borrower engaged and aware of their loan. Loan repayment is a social process done in front of a group, thus adding social pressure to avoid shirking on a loan repayment; some wonderful uses of human psychology these are. Grameen Bank is the posterchild of the microlending/microfinance movement and a huge chunk of the economic and social development of Bangladesh has been attributed to it. An interesting concept I encountered was the double bottom--line (we measure only the financial impact of a business, business should also evaluate their social bottom-line and their impact on society). The course was taught by Shamika Ravi, who is a fantastic teacher (and a member of the Prime Ministers Economic Advisory Council); I really felt like I was understanding the core economic concepts as their immediate applications throughout the class.

Finally there was MKAN. MKAN was using the now available glut of data to apply age-old marketing principles of Segment, Target, Position. We used the now classic tools of clustering, regression, etc to do everything from segment customers to predict sales. The course was a good blend of hands-on tool driving while keeping marketing principles in mind. The classes happened at 8 AM in the morning, and hence I scarcely have much to say about this course. That wraps up the acads front.

Offer letters started pouring in for a few people with proactive companies. The gym was finally a thing for me. Some attempts were made in a bid to get skinny before the wedding. The attempts weren’t very successful. However, I’m glad that I got rid of my unfamiliarity anxiety about the gym. One of my reasons for not going to the gym is that I just don’t know what to do there, fortunately the ISB gym has two full-time trainers available 24x7 to guide you. It was my first honest attempt at gyming after trying in the 11th standard, and I’m now comfortable doing basic weights and using the machines. ISL continued its march in March (shitty line, I know). I remained blissfully ignorant.

Yearbook awkwardness continued. People scoured the land for places to get their yearbook photo clicked. Some people came with highly representative ones. It was also time to write yearbook testimonials for people. You had to nominate 3-4 of your friends to collectively write one testimonial for you. Here is where your true friends were revealed! This became just another group assignment with 1-2 people leading the charge for every testimonial.

CS and AoE sessions: A small segment of brave laptop warriors rekindled the joys of multiplayer games. And given the amount of free time available, a lot of kindling happened until the the wee hours of the night. I earnestly tried to join the fun by watching AoE tutorials, but then AoE on my PC kept crashing. And then I was like, why isn’t this in a browser?

SLC calendar

The Student Life Council went into beast mode, driving a ton of events on campus.

These events covered everything from Food fetes (like a giant potluck) to SV wars (which was basically student housing buildings competing to see who can throw the best party). The Food fete really brought the campus together, with everyone either cooking or helping or eating! The dishes students cooked up turned out to be better than expected – not everyone is an amateur in the cooking domain!

This period being a sort of end-of-days, for us all meant that people were extremely enthusiastic about partying. The winter had started relenting a little and spirits were uplifted.  SV wars and the usual birthday parties that happen on campus meant that there was a party every other day, but you couldn’t say no to the next party because this was the last time this would happen.

Which brings us to the most epic party after all the other parties. Holi! The Holi was lit and was the best party I’ve attended in my life. The SLC provided gulal and pichkaris and a giant inflated swimming pool and a DJ and a raindance area. In addition, there was bhaang-laden thandai and bhaang-laden bhajias. It was a warm(er) day compared to others. People were excited and in good spirts, going about throwing colour on friends, enemies, everyone. Then throwing friends, enemies, everyone into the inflated swimming pool. Then dancing and losing their shit after having bhaang. The post-holi post-bhaang time warp in which I struggled to get back to my room and ended up bathing for what seemed like an eternity is something I will never forget.

This concluded formal student life on campus, … or did it?

D-week

The conclusion of ISB life happens through two events - one formal and one informal. The formal one is of course graduation day – the hat toss, the tassel turning, the address to the graduating students by the guest of honour, etc. The informal one, unique to ISB, is what we call D-week, short for De-orientation week, the evil twin of O-week, that happened at the start of the year. Feeling the need to make the final week of ISB life super-duper-ultra-goddamn fun, I joined the D-week team to plan some events.

The D-week happens after ISBs academic session has wrapped up i.e. after the last exam has been written and before the graduation ceremony. Students officially have nothing to do, which adds to the pressure of planning some nice long events. Obviously, students are also free to leave campus and travel around, so making the events awesome and crowd-pulling becomes a must.

This D-week we had a game night, a “hotbox” party, a stand-up performance along with a roast of the GSB, a sundowner party, paintball, sufi night, an awards night along with a prom (the last party). The last event was the distribution and signing of yearbooks.

The events where I contributed to the most were the standup/roast and the awards night.

I gave the longest standup performance of my life (and emerging comedic career), lasting more than 20 minutes. I cracked jokes on every aspect of ISB life and proceeded to crack a few general ones. The auditorium was FULL, as the entire batch had turned up. It was my honour (and pleasure) to entertain these folks laugh; they laughed, a lot, which was a very inspiring and proud moment for me. Fortunately, this time the performance was recorded (by multiple people!).

Me and a handful more folks planned the awards and content for the awards. The winners were decided by live public voting which made the event really fun; thus the winners were a surprise to us too. Lots of controversial awards were given out. To add to the fun, we played jingles related to every award when the winners came on stage, adding to the cheery vibe of the vibe of the evening.

All D-week events were accompanied by some party or the other. I didn’t partake much in the daily drinking, however I did partake hugely in the daily eating. It was such a tough choice between indulging in end-of-days hedonism & trying to get in shape for my wedding. Both sides had a strong case.

On the last day, students gathered in “The Hub”, a small lawn in front of our main building to collect and sign yearbooks. This was fun few hours, writing messages to each other and recollecting memories. With this informal student life at ended.

Graduation

Graduation was a moderately long drawn out affair. Over the course of two days, we had a rehearsal of the graduation, “The Deans Dinner”, the ISB award ceremony, the official graduation ceremony followed by the Deans lunch.

For starters, it was complicated to wear graduation robes. While it’s fun to look like you’re in Harry Potter, wearing a gown is moderately difficult, especially the ISB gowns which have multiple moving parts. I’ve graduated before and it wasn’t so difficult :P. Also, ISB follows the tradition of turning the tassel - when you receive your degree, you turn your tassel from the right side of your hat (“mortarboard”) to the left indicating your successful graduation.

After the rehearsal we had the batch photo clicked followed quickly by the official ISB awards night. I am happy to state that I won awards for winning competitions, being a torchbearer (i.e contributing to student life + the brand of ISB) and finally also won a giant gold trophy for best club. Winning best club was thrilling to say the least. Just before the awards night could start, my Mom who was travelling all the way from Bombay arrived, coincidence? divine providence?

The awards night was followed by the Deans dinner where only the elite (like Deans listers, Club presidents, etc.) were invited. Yours truly was invited too, and he watched the awkwardness of socialising unfold for the umpteenth time.

That was it for pre-events. As I had dinner that evening, it was with my mother instead of the usual coterie of friends/students, it really started to sink in that things were coming to a close, whether I was transformed or not, a whole year had passed by. A year quite different from those before it.

I dropped my mom off and wished her goodnight. Tomorrow was going to be a momentous day.

Graduation day started early with breakfast opening at 7. Me being an eternal early bird, arrived promptly at 7. Then came the … waiting, students, who were all gown-ed up, waited in the academic block in a neat line so they could walk in a procession into the convocation hall. The convocation hall was a newly setup airplane hangar-like structure on the lawns. After a long wait that involved lots of photo sessions and false starts, some orchestral music was played and we all went into the hall in a glorious procession. An invocation was sung, our GSB president gave a speech followed by a few more addresses. We were told that our placements had been the best ever, and thus we were a great batch (Thanks!). The guest of honour gave a really boring and uninspiring speech, lots of people slept off or got busy on their phones. This was followed by announcements of the best professor, best academic associate. Finally we came to the graduation, students were called on stage one by one, in alphabetical order, except for those who received any sort of ISB honours, they went on stage first. My row got up all together, I waited for my moment, my name was called, I walked towards the center of the stage, shook hands with everyone present, grabbed my degree, looked at the camera, smiled, click, and walked out. As I walked out, I remembered to turn my tassel and officially become a graduate. Ah! Long journey. Then I sat as the degree disbursal wrapped. Finally, we all stood up, did a royal hat toss, smiled, laughed, cheered and walked out of the hall as graduates together. It was a fun ceremony. Then there was my favourite part, lunch

Since I had a plane to catch from Delhi, for which I had to take a 4-5 hour cab ride, I was in a rush! There was sadly no time for pleasantries and ooh-aahing. I wrapped up all my exit formalities, packed my bags a proper and took one last look at ISB, a place and people that I did indeed feel a little fonder towards.

This was the end. Of one sort.

I had come here with few expectations, for me B-school was just a brand and a network, these benefits come to after you graduate, I thought (back then) that this was mostly not relevant, I just had to get through it. But I was in for a lot of surprises, mostly pleasant. Apart from discovering news branches of knowledge, made new friends and newer perspectives, headed a club, won competitions and honours (in a far cry from my undergraduate days), tried standup comedy, gotten a kickass job and more. It felt like an eventful and significant year had gone by.

The transition from student to alumnus is most stark when you turn in your student ID card and receive your new Alumni ID card, it is precisely when the feeling of “shit, it’s really over” sinks into you. I wasn’t too emotional as I left, I had come prepared for this end. Back in Bombay, when I was packing for ISB, I packed quite lightly knowing that this was just a year, a temporary stay; and I could also save myself a lot of effort in moving stuff around. My past self had seen my future self which was now my present self and done it a favour! Cool, right?

The fun wasn’t over. Members of the drama club got together and gave every student leaving the campus a proper tear-filled and emotional vidaai; while I left early and couldn’t get one, it was a very sweet gesture.

But there was no time to be chill, my wedding and honeymoon were oncoming!

After struggling for survival in Term 6; Term 7 was the exact opposite. A complete sleepy lull. Winter was expected to leave us and bring on some sunshine, but that didn’t happen. Far from it. Mohali remained cold, rainy and sleepy. I started understanding why people in cold countries celebrate when they see the sun; humans (generalising from me) have a thing for sunlight and warmth, it brings optimism and energy.

But here we were. It remained cold AF which was very demotivating if you wanted to run around and play stuff or generally be more physically/socially active. Despite people on campus having more time, parties actually slowed down; people slept a lot and watched unwholesome amounts TV. Some pursued trips to nearby places and enjoyed the snowy landscapes in the north of India.

Personally I  read a lot, wrote a little and got earnest about planning my wedding. I tried to bring in a morning schedule of waking up early, meditating and writing; finding only partial success in that endeavour. Oodles of time meant I did long overdue personal chores like fixing my broken backpack which had been pending since 3 terms. I also watched quite a few seasons of the “Peep Show” a british cringe comedy show about two struggling dudes.

Despite having more time and a (likely) desire to know more of their batch-mates; socialising actually goes down during the last few terms. Apart from the comfort of your already-established group, there are also some logistical reasons; you have different electives, people majoring in the same areas take the same courses, different courses have different timings so you end up seeing the same people everywhere.

BUT people are more vella, so you can have nice extended conversations whenever you bump into someone. I made a list of people to network with and was able to cover some part of it just because of overlapping breakfast timings! Unexpectedly nice. I continued to use lunch/dinner to sit with different/less frequently met folks and chat them up; totally enjoying the same.

On the academic front from I had four courses: Public Finance, Brand Management, Rural marketing and Data Analytics in Finance. This choice stems from me majoring in Marketing and Finance. Always wanted to learn the ins and outs of marketing/consumer behaviour. I was weary of doing dry finance courses but the subject caught my eye after I studied Portfolio management.

Public Finance was all about how you would think about things if you were the finance minister of the country. Through the lens of economics, it introduced us to the concepts of market failures, public goods,social welfare, public health systems and public insurance schemes. We learnt the pros and cons of each using primarily economics or mathematical arguments. Our Professor was Shiv Dixit, a fresh new faculty who was teaching for the first time in his life; but nonetheless brought interesting perspectives to the table. One of the fun components of the course was a class debate on public policy issues; something similar to what might be happening in government meetings. I enjoyed this course doubly because my knowledge of government systems and public policy is very minimal. It was fun to add a new branch to my tree of knowledge.

Brand Management was all about the science and art of creating brands. The key takeaway was that brand is like a heuristic to a consumer, you don’t have time to research the best toothpastes and compare their ingredients, so instead you use a cognitive shortcut and just buy Colgate. Why did you buy Colgate? Because through Colgate’s ads, packaging, observances of your friends using Colgate and more; you associate good things with Colgate. An interesting exercise was surveying people who knew me to discover my own brand and create my own brand road-map. It’s an exercise I’ll try to revisit every year or so.

Rural Marketing was about … take a guess. But beyond trying to sell stuff to those who may have not have heavy economic might, the course brought some interesting perspectives. Firstly, who/what do we call rural? And what is the definition of modernity? Is being modern the same as being industrialised? Then the USA is a lot less modern today than it was in the 50s. Can we call Japan, a country with high economic progress but equally grotesque patriarchy, modern? Tough questions without a good answer. What exactly is the goal we’re striving towards when we want to bridge the urban/rural divide. Second realisation, urban consumers are idiots. The data shows that urban consumers pay a huge brand premium; we aren’t nearly as sensitive to price as the rural folks and enable much higher profits for businesses. My resolution of this was that urban folks (time-poor, money-rich) prefer velocity in transactions, while rural folks (money-poor, time-rich) prefer value in transactions.  Economically, rural folks get a better deal but that doesn’t factor in the opportunity cost of time which is higher for urban folks. We also had a rural market visit as part of the course. Punjab is amongst the most prosperous states in India, there are almost no poor/rural places left. Instead you have problems of excess, with the pampered kids getting high which lead to the drug epidemic here.

Data Analytics in Finance was a mixed bag of a course. While I enjoyed getting my hands dirty on the R-terminal again, between learning finance theory, understanding statistics and learning R itself, the course got overwhelming. I was left confused. A tangential takeaway was that the world of finance embraced computers early and it has turned their shit upside down, eliminating some sorts of jobs (equities trader) and creating new ones (trading algorithm designer). The embrace of computers is spreading to areas like marketing now. Hopefully, it’ll get to public policy and organisational behaviour soon too.

While I was chilling, some of my batchmates were sweating it out profusely in the ISB Super League (ISL).

ISL is a full on sports extravaganza, encompassing every sport playable on campus with added fanfare of actual money at stake and player bidding. Students pool up to bid for teams, becoming team owners. This gives them points to bid for players. Players are both students and alumni, who graciously offer to come play at ISB’s cost! The events are accompanied with usual sporting fanfare of cheering, close-calls, rivalry, injuries, food stalls (yeah!), etc. I wasn’t too involved in the ISL, my team was the Punjab Hukums and I played my part as the backup runner during the on campus relay. Thankfully, my services weren’t needed.

While some were sweating it out, others were taking chilling to the next level. The pretence was over; “I got placed, I’m done” went from being under the surface to being a visible acknowledged truth. Now I understood why ISB wants to keep all its major events before placements. This was the term when anyone and everyone studied as little as they can. Except for a few folks chasing academic honours like the Dean’s list and the merit list, academics was not a priority, 

The cohort started putting together it’s yearbook. This meant the pain of getting your yearbook photo clicked, of getting your testimonial written, of writing a testimonial for others. Some folks used elaborate props like guitars, footballs, books, etc. to create yearbook pictures that represented them/their time at ISB. Such care was not taken by me. I stood in front of the one my favourite spots on campus – the ISB Mural, a giant colourful work of art representing learning, struggles and growth – and pretended to be a modern enlightened saint.

Other things that happened:

The Business Technology Club (my club) got rated by students as the best club on campus. Thus becoming the highest rated professional club. Sweet.

Net Impact Forum and Policy Conclave happened.

This post is called triple whammy because it is a dump of three terms. As one can guess from my absence on this blog, it’s been one helluva busy period in my life leaving barely for fun stuff like blogging. Anyway, here’s term by term recollection of what just went in my life.

Term 4: Calm before storm

This term was overload continued. But most of us were used to by now.

The term kicked off with a loss in regional round of “The Hindi Boardroom Challenge”. To show some action in the education section of their resume, ISB students participate in competitions of all sorts. A team I was a part of also qualified for one such competition - “The Hindi Business Line on Campus - Boardroom Challenge” (What a mouthful, referred to as HBL ahead). Most college competitions consist of one campus round where a team is picked from every college followed by a regional/national round to select the final winners. The campus round of HBL was a quiz with 8-10 questions which were scenarios that a CEO (or a company board) might encounter. Eg: XYZ has happened reducing the demand for the things made in your plant, what would you do? A. Layoffs B. Repurpose .. Through what is a mystery to all of us, we qualified for the second round. The second round a typical marketing case, we were a soap company (MBAs, soaps, do you see it?) and were given a bunch of information about consumer trends across regions, soap demand, costs and price points. Our goal was to identify next steps for the company which meant identify the best soap to launch. However, solving such an obvious problem seemed lame for ISB students, we instead decided to pitch an e-commerce business providing soaps as a subscription service hoping we would stun the judges with our innovative idea. The judges were stunned indeed but not in a good way, they just wanted us to solve the case and pick the right region, soap type, price point, etc. I sensed strong personal biases against e-commerce amongst one of judges by way of their comments and realised my team was done. Looks like we were too ahead of our times here.

Term 4 was the first crossover term. Till now, we had courses and people studied with their sections. This term we had two core courses and two electives. This meant people started mingling outside their sections/groups and made new friends!

Out of FOMO to do something extra. I decided to pursue an informal ELP. ELP (short for Experiential Learning Programme) are projects that ISB sources from the industry where MBA students can apply their business gyaan and be useful to a business. Having not participated when the college officially rolled out ELPs, I managed to get an ELP informally with Homefuly, a startup by ISB alumni trying to help people pick the best furniture for their homes.

Amidst all this madness, I tried to port my number out of Vodafone but the process somehow failed. Then Vodafone threw me a bone in terms of a reduced monthly plan and free Amazon Prime and Vodafone Play, so I decided to stick it out with Vodafone.

I DID STANDUP COMEDY

ISB has a standup SIG (SIG = Special Interest Group, small club-like bodies that students can setup to try things out). Though I wanted to be a part of it since the start, acads and club work hadn’t allowed me to get involved and these folks had done some amazing skits earlier. When they finally came around to organising a open mic night, I decided to just go for it. I had been dreaming so much about performing standup that I had already put it in my resume in anticipation of doing it in the future! I had been making notes of funny things I had observed around me since the time college had begun. This provided a decent source of material for the event. I had about 2-2.5 weeks to prepare the material, I scrubbed it down to the best and went forward with it. I practised in front of the mirror multiple times and later also did a little test performance amongst friends. This really helped me tune my material. Needless to say I was still nervous on D-day. The students had organised a talent night and people were having a go at various things: singing, music, etc. I was amongst the last few acts and one of the only two folks doing stand-up. I had jitters as I moved on stage but I was carrying my jokes on a paper with me and referring it amply (I’m a new-bie after all). It was a dimly lit auditorium with about 60-70 people in attendance. Falling on my face was an intensely bright spotlight which made it hard to see the audience and made the experience of being on stage a bit disconcerting. But I decided to be bold and go for it. I got a few quick cheap laughs by cracking puns. Some of my jokes bombed, especially the ones targeted against women and I dropped many other lame ones on the spot. One of my jokes about an annoying academic associate really got the crowd going and it was a real fiery set after that. I retired to decent applause and lots of “wow that was amazing” “killed it” from batchmates.  It was a real thrill, I enjoyed and fortunately others did too! My resume turned out to be prescient. I did it twice in 2 weeks, once again performing as the opening act for a local comedian during Equinox (ISB Mohalis annual alumni gathering)

My Habits improved. Throughout this term I was magically able to wake up earlier and earlier.

Through a workshop for Product managers conducted by one of our alumni Nishant Pandey (who is EVP – Product at InfoEdge) I became aware of the Anna Karenina principle. I now am a firm believer in the Anna Karenina principle. And I want to tell it everybody, even it’s 2 AM at a party and we’re both kinda drunk and sleepy.

Three of ISB’s flagship events happened back to back. First ILS (ISB Leadership – a general gathering of CEOs, business leaders and other big shots) followed by Equinox (the annual alumni reunion for the Mohali Campus) followed by Artha (a finance conclave). The theory is that ISB knows the students just sit around and do nothing after placements so they jam as many events as they can before placements, so that students motivated by fancy work on their resume put in some effort.

Academics started to get slowly switched off as the placement season started coming on. People slowed down their efforts in class, some bunked altogether (it is very difficult to bunk at ISB, attendance is compulsory and missing more than 2 classes is usually a grade drop -  a very severe penalty).

My compulsory courses were Corporate Finance 2 (CFIN2)and Strategies for the Digital Economy (SDEC). I picked Entrepreneurship (ENTR) and Managing Teams (MGTM) as my electives.

We were taught CFIN2 by Shashwat Alok who really impressed me with his methodical teaching of finance and helpful background details despite finance being (rightfully) considered one of the most dry and boring subjects. SDEC was a wonderful introduction to the patterns behind technology businesses, we were introduced to fun stuff like cross/same-sided network effects, switching costs, etc. that are concerns for most digital platforms. We were taught by Prof Ravi Bapna who has done some cutting-edge work in finding out what drives consumer choice. ENTR was great overview of the various types of businesses and through the cases, we discovered the various struggles and pitfalls that an entrepreneur might face. I also learnt how to think financially about a business and calculate how many co-founders one should have! MGTM was all about being good people managers. We conducted several RAP sessions (a structured form of feedback) on each other and learnt how to think about peoples performance and help it improve. Overall, I really liked my courses. It reflected in my increased GPA too :P

Towards the end of the the term, we also had section awards where I was awarded “Most Likely to Success”. Neat XD. 

Placement season kicked off in earnest.  We had overview session about how the process is going to work. I’ll give you a quick low down.

ISB has a department called CAS (Career Advancement Services) which is sort of our BD team. It manages the school’s relationship with companies and invites them to participate in the placement process. As the placement sessions kicks off, students and recruiters get access to the college placement portal. Companies signup and post jobs. Student apply to these jobs as per the specified deadline usually with just their resume, some with an additional cover letter, presentation or solution to a problem posted by the company. Those who clear this round (i.e. those who get an interview shortlist) are invited to interview with the company during placement week. Placement week is divided into Day 1, Day 2, .. with more elite companies in earlier days. An additional constraint is that you can have max 6 shortlists for a given day. More details than necessary already shared.

So, for a student, your personal funnel looks like:

Apply with Resume (+ possible PPT) > Interview shortlist > (Possible) GD/Group round > Interview round (Usually 3-4) > Job offer > FAME AND FORTUNE AND SUCCESS  

It is considered a level-playing once you get the interview shortlist as interviewers/companies adjust for your past experience (or lack of it) when interviewing, so the biggest initial challenge for most students is to get shortlists from their desired companies.

So the race to polish your resume to its hilt begin. To add to the mess, the ISB official resume format is dense like a log table with half inch margins and a size 11/12 font. Students end up packing this resume with information from edge to edge in the hope of not missing a single fact or anecdote that could land them their coveted jobs. For reference, my resume went from a cosy looking document with 550 words and ample whitespace to 806 words packed on a single page. To add to the fun, we had multiple sessions from different folks telling how to write the optimal resume. Which brings us to the dilemma of the century: RAC or STAR?

Students started sending in their resumes to alumni for reviews which started the barrage of feedback that is often conflicting feedback and many times hurtful (“Is this your first review?” an alumni will say before pointing out mistakes no one caught before). And slowly, super polished and prepared resumes started coming to life.

As students got fatigued of polishing their resumes, interview prep began. As the term ended, most people formed their study groups for placements, huddling with people having similar career aspirations.

As a sure sign of placements kicking off, companies started visiting campus for their pre-placement talks. As usual, the first company to visit was McKinsey. (Having attended career sessions to understand the consulting job, I had paid rapt attention to the details of a consultant’s job and concluded that it is not for me, so I promptly decided to give it a miss). Samsung and Media.net followed soon after. Microsoft even conducted a PM workshop to familiarise students with the process of building products and providing an inside view of the job of a product manager. It was also a great chance to network with Microsoft employees (all of who also happened to be ISB alumni).

The Top 3 consulting companies run their process nearly a month ahead of all other firms with the shortlists coming the first.  Though I hadn’t applied, as results started coming out, some were elated while many hearts were broken. Expected shortlists, shocks both positive and negative went around. Shit had started getting real.

THIS.WAS.SPARTA.

No one went home during the term break.

Term 5: Armageddon

Acads was the lowest priority activity this term. While earlier there was disengagement, this term there was active disinterest. The acdemic objective went maximise score most to minimize time. Students typically have to take 4 courses per term to get enough credits to graduate, this term most folks took 3 courses (the minimum you can take). I did the same. Additionally, all my courses were on the same day, so every alternate day and on weekends, I got the entire day to myself for complete uninterrupted placement prep.

Though I did have some very interesting courses. Term 5 had Marketing Research (MKTR), Marketing Services (MKSV) and Portfolio Management (PMTS). Marketing Research was one of the worst courses that I went through - an excessive analytical focus (this course was all about conjoint analysis), 8 AM classes, average professors and better things to than focus on studies meant I could barely involve myself with the subject and any involvement just felt horrible. The other two courses were amazing. Marketing Services was about designing service businesses but Professor Piyush Kumar took the course far beyond that. We not only learnt how to think about a business as a service system but also to develop a philosophy for our business that aligns it correctly with the market. The idea of designing a system that is a set of coherent choices instead of focusing on just the idea or the market was a good way to think about a business. Professor Piyush teaches the course in a very contrarian way with fun statements like “the customer is collateral damage” and “employees and customers are just constraints to profit”. The course embodied thinking about a business from a purely financial perspective, like a baniya would. Portfolio Management was introduction to the basics of modern portfolio theory along with some knowledge of how to think about and manage your own assets. It was course with a lots of practical take-aways. It was my first finance elective and I thoroughly enjoyed it, possibly because this course had a good mix of finance theory as well as human psychology.

PM Challenge

One of the other reasons for participating in case competitions is the many companies use these as screening tools to find good candidates. Many companies offer direct entry to the interview round or a chance to interact with senior company leaders along with other prizes. So, case competitions become a route to sneaking past the competition when it comes to recruitment. One such competition I had in my sights was the Microsoft PM Challenge. Having worked as a start-up product manager and having decided to not pursue any other role, my goal out at ISB was to get into one of the big firms and work on consumer products with a large scale. So Microsoft and Amazon were the two companies I had in my sights. The PM Challenge offered a PPI which was a great way to increase my chances of getting selected. Having done a bunch of competitions with similar folks, I decided to rotate and teamed up Pooja Sinha, a former engineer from Microsoft. Our problem was to improve Sharepoint, Microsoft internal-wiki tool. I applied all my knowledge gleaned from working on SEO for Instamojo to create some fun new features. We also took ample help from alums to understand how to go about competition. We brainstormed, wrote, rewrote for 2 whole days before submitting our final entry. And soon the results were out and we had won! I was thrilled because I felt closer to getting into Microsoft.  

Off with a bang:

As a reality towards how good (or rather how bad you are at interviewing), the college arranges for two-three mock interviews with college alumni. One is just at the start of the prep season and the rest towards the very end. My first mock interview was scheduled with Sharad Agarwal, an experienced product manager at Flipkart. Given other work/commitments and how early in the prep process this was, I was hardly prepped for the interview. I was hoping to mostly wing it. I had been going through interviewing frameworks and had been discussing them with my group for the past week, so I felt I’d do ok. But I was not prepared for how badly I would screw up.

My interview was the last on his list and by the time my turn came, it was time for him to leave for his flight. So he gave me the option of interviewing over VC later or doing a walking interviewing. Not wanting to delay this, I decided to go for it right away. This means, me and Sharad are walking out of the library, across the college hallways and into the dining area with him bombarding me with questions and me trying to keep my sanity intact. Sharad was not one to let people off easy, the walking interview started with “I meet 20 new people every day, tell me something that will make me remember you”. This was followed by questions around my work-experience and then a design question. Having not being prepared for any behavioural questions, I was already flustered by the effort required to pull coherent answers out of my head. Despite having prepped a little bit, when I was handed the design question I jumped to the answer without clarifying any details about the problem. I made the most classic mistake. I realised this while I was giving the interview and wanted to end the interview right there. What’s the point of continuing when you’ve already made a bad impression, but I soldiered on anyway. At the end of the interview, I asked about whether such an interview performance would lead to a job offer, he stated the obvious when he said no. I was annoyed that I had screwed up in the dumbest way possible and fallen prey to my old habits. But at the back of my mind I was happy, badly screwing up this mock interview at the start of the prep season was the perfect way to light a fire and get me motivated to prep intensely in the coming days. Having gotten my resume reviewed and coming with PM experience, I knew that the only barrier to me getting good jobs would be interview performance.

Placement Prep 24x7

Placement season kicked off with people working with their study groups to discuss interview questions together. This was an entire group of 3-5 people discussing a question like “How would you launch a grocery delivery service for Flipkart”. Here the entire group would slowly go through a known PM interview framework to familiarise themselves with the process of conversing in an interview. Group solving involved a lot of brainstorming and multiple viewpoints, solving a single question took 1.5-2 hours.

The first lesson learnt was to negate one’s natural instinct to provide an answer to a question as soon as it is asked. This is natural and normal habit that can wreak havoc in interviews. In normal life, the person in front of you is strapped for time and wants an answer as soon as possible. During interviews, the aim of the question is to understand the candidates thought process and clarity in thinking; the answer is many times immaterial. So instead of answering the question, you want to lay out the problem in front of the interviewer, tease out its various aspects, before moving towards your solution. All along making good conversation with your interviewer.

Once people were familiar with the flow of breaking down an interview question and had seen what kind of viewpoints they personally miss out on, the focus shifted to 1:1 mock interviews. 1:1 interviews were more time efficient (taking 20-45 minutes) and focused on only your answer. Later as people gained confidence, they did mock interviews with alumni. Alongside, people were devouring PM prep books, online videos on interviews and more to up their prep game. Interviewers also frequently have general discussions about the latest trends in tech, this meant everyone went scrambling to TechCrunch and other tech publications to understand what’s the latest in the industry. Along with my group, I think I averaged 1.5 interviews/day during prep season. It not just the interview that takes time, you also have to make notes about where you faltered and what you could’ve done better, followed by reflecting on how you can improve. So, an actual interview along with note-taking and mistake-finding is 2-3 hours long. The most common interview question for product managers is the design question “How will design an alarm clock for blind people”. Having practised the hell out of the design questions and experiencing fatigue and boredom with doing design questions all day long, we soon moved to other general questions like market-entry, strategy, technology stacks, etc. Interviewers can ask whatever they please and regardless of how much you prepare, one must be ready for thinking on the spot and still sounding composed, intelligent and eloquent! Nonetheless, I had tried my best to structure the interview process and practise the hell out of it. By the end of the prep season, I ended up with 14 question types with frameworks and typical responses for every question-type. This structure was not something that I was given but one that emerged from repeatedly interviewing with fellow students. This repository of knowledge itself was a great source of confidence.

D-day draws closer

Companies had started posting jobs and deadlines had started flying past us. I was on the shortlists for Media.net and Matrix Partners (a venture capital firm). After having spoken to a friend who worked in VC, I decided against pursuing it further and just winged my Matrix interviews.

Most things were getting into place when we got a little surprise. Flipkart (the biggest startup story out of India and one of the best companies to work for) was going to conduct a Day 0 process, a whole three weeks before placements.

What is Day 0? As I mentioned earlier, all interviewing happens during placement week which consists of Day 1, 2, 3 etc. However, some companies conduct their process early, interviewing candidates before everyone else. Flipkart had just closed it submissions 2 days earlier and they were coming for interviews 2 days from now. I was amongst the people they had shortlisted. This was going to be my first real interview. Having screwed up multiple big company interviews before this, I was melting with nervousness. During the cab ride to the hotel that morning, despite being the most experienced candidate, I was the biggest nervous wreck. Flipkart was one of the companies I really wanted to work in. I was sweating profusely and nearly shaking, so much was at stake! Luckily, I was not amongst the first to be interviewed. Held up in the room full of candidates, as time passed by my nervousness mostly melted away with the ticking of the clock. Watching a few folks clear clear their first rounds gave me immense hope and calmed my nerves. My interview was scheduled for 12:30 but it only began at 3, after a really lovely lunch. My first two interviews happened pretty much on the trot followed by a 4 hour wait. Luckily, the recruiter had decided that people getting rejected would get the bad news right away so that they needn’t wait for long with false hopes of going ahead. Friends I knew who I expected would get the job offer, didn’t make it past the first round itself. The waiting room started to empty out. At 8:15 I went for my third interview and an hour later I had my final interview. All interviews had gone good, I had not screwed up anywhere and the conversations had been great; especially the last one with the Director of Product. There were five of us left in the room, nervously waiting for the final result. Not sure if we’d be in out or out. The recruiter appeared and started calling us out one by one. The first two people to get called out had come back with rejects, the third person to get called was me! My mind was going bonkers, was I also going to get rejected or would I be the one from whom the accepts list would start. I nearly went blank after the recruiter told me that I had made it. I just checked with him again that there would be no further rounds and let the happiness sink in. Me along two people from my very own study group had cracked the Flipkart PM job and we were all elated. The team took us out for a late dinner, belting some chicken, beers and VAT 69 along with some good conversations. This was surreal. It had happened so fast and here I was, exactly where I wanted to be, struggling to believe that I was really there. The joy actually actually took a couple of days to sink in. It was like someone told the clock that there are going to be no deadlines anymore. Purpose fulfilled. The other two were happy with their results and decided not to prep further. I still wanted to give Microsoft a fair shot. Getting the job offer from Flipkart really killed my motivation to prep, it took me a while to get back into prep mode.

Two weeks went by slowly and D-day drew to a close. The whole Mohali campus flew to Hyderabad and checked into the Holiday Inn. It felt so good to partake in a hotel breakfast spread again. Microsoft conducted a pre-process round before day 1 and I managed to clear that ok, despite being the slowest/last one to do so.

Having been through a whole interview process and having an offer in hand, I was much less nervous on Day 1.  My Microsoft interview slot was scheduled at 8 AM but predictable delays meant that I went in at around 8:45. I had three interviews on the trot. My very first question was a standard technical one “How do you reverse a linked list?”. Having never coded professionally and having been a product manager since the past 3 years, this one caught me by complete surprise. I reached into the deep recesses of my memory, recalling information from 12th standard computer science classes to come up with an answer. After going through the problem and getting a hint from the interviewer, I gave what looked like a satisfactory result. The remaining questions were design problems and I was able to tackle them fairly well. I had my second interview was immediately after and unfortunately I got frightened because of the person interviewing me. My interviewer was the head of AI at Microsoft India, being aware of his made me fearful and put me on the backfoot. I also for some reasons assumed that this is a “leadership round” and that we would have general career discussions, no actual problem solving. So it took me while to figure out that he wanted me to solve a design question. Even then my performance was just ok, I struggled to switch modes and work my way towards a solution. Luckily, I did manage to get third round immediately after which again went splendidly well. Having finished all three of my interviews with Microsoft by around 10/1030 AM, I walked out of there with moderate confidence of landing the job. Moderate because the second round had not gone too well. Then I was off to check out my salary at Flipkart, I discovered that I was the only one they had offered a PM 2 role to. All other people selected were for PM 1. Lucky me. CAS sort of forced me to sit for Myntra despite me trying to convince them otherwise. My first Myntra interviewer was the person who had given me one of the worst interview experiences of my life a year earlier (this was before ISB). Having met him again, I decided to stay calm and give it a clean shot again with no biases. The Myntra interviews were also very conversational with the team having former entrepreneurs working as PMs, something I’ve observed in many good teams. Here too I managed to get through all the rounds and given the nature of the interviews was expecting a positive result. I ended up getting my Microsoft result indirectly - A friend had overhead the Microsoft team talking about the selected candidates and my name was amongst them. I didn’t know whether to believe the rumour and start dancing already. By evening time, I received both the results. I had cleared both the companies. I was ecstatic to have cracked, though being tired I didn’t really show it. So, Microsoft it is!

After this I went home and slept for 5-6 days straight. I had fallen a little sick and was exhausted along every dimension due to the placement process. It was a good rest.

Term 6: Where is my promised land?

85% of the batch got placed during the first week itself. A splendid result. Expectations in term 6 (now that most of us are placed): Oh I shall be free as a bird, mingle freely with my fellow mates, pursue my hobbies, travel, live my passions.

Reality: It’s fucking cold. I’m practically paralysed and all I do is dreaming of crawling out of bed. There are too many assignments and lectures to keep up with. Life is a chore.

On the acads front, this was one of my worst terms. To keep the load low in in future terms, I decided to take five courses this term (against the typical 4). Not a good idea. Seems like the college administration knows that students are just going to fart around after placements so they over-loaded students with assignments.

My courses were Designing the Digital Value Chain (DDVC), Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 (LSAW), Asset Management (AMGT), Managing Complexity (MGCP) and Distribution Channels (DBCN).

I sampled DDVC and felt it was a bad course from the first lecture itself. However, I woke up hungover for the 2nd round of elective bidding and couldn’t muster the willpower to log on and drop/swap the course. A terrible decision.  LSAW was ok. I should have realised that ISB courses barely go into the depths of any subjects, so it best to focus on width and avoid courses you’re familiar with. LSAW and DDVC aimed to teach about ad-tech + social media landscape and emerging technologies respectively. As someone clued in heavily to the tech scene, they were completely redundant for me. Asset Management was tour of the Nobel Prize winning papers in finance, it really helped me get up to speed with a global understanding of markets and understanding the trend of indexing. We studied Warren Buffet and a few other successful investors and tried to understand if it was skill or luck that drove results. Distribution Channels was a nice window into what it takes to put products (Typically FMCG ones) on shelves for consumers to be able to purchase. We learnt an extensive framework to analyse the quality of a distribution channel. The course was taught by Professor Ahmed Timouni who is an extremely methodical and thorough educator, discussing the finest details of every case. Managing Complexity was taught by Ed Rogers, the Chief Knowledge Office of NASA. Though many people didn’t get this course I thoroughly enjoyed. It covered a vast array of ideas from game theory to making concept maps to understanding the rules of any system and trying to predict its behaviour. We discussed how the rules of a game/system if poorly setup can inevitably lead to disaster regardless of how smart the people involved are. As a fan of all knowledge about human systems, this course was an absolute thrill.

But things actually changed. No one gave a flying fuck about acads, even the usual suspects were chilling now that the incentives were gone. A lot more people went to the gym and plated TT and other good stuff. Lucky students who took easier/fewer courses also watched movies and TV shows. This was not a pleasure bestowed on me. 3 out of my 5 courses had an assignment submission for every class, that’s pretty much all I did during this entire term.

But I did manage to do a few fun things.

After years of thinking about it, I managed a trip to Amritsar and visited the Golden Temple. The food in Amritsar is amazing, everyone should go to Kesar Da Dhaba and belt the amazing food and sweets there. The paranthas in Amritsar are so full and rich with butter, all other paranthas seem fake.

I travelled to Hyderabad for the national finals of the Microsoft PM Challenge. We were competing against all the elite B-schools in the country (IIM A/B/C, XLRI, ISB). After a fun networking dinner, a slew of presentations, we discovered that … we had won again! Unbelievable but true :D I was happy that I got to visit the Microsoft India campus, which turned out to HUGE. It is right next to ISB Hyderabad and shares a wall with it! A fun highlight was a visit to Microsoft Garage, a makerspace for employees with 3D printers, soldering irons, circuit printers, VR/AR headsets, etc. where employee can work on side-projects. It seemed really cool.

I scrambled across the country to attend two friends wedding back to back. My journey to Hyderabad involved me missing flight for the first(?) time in my life, for no fault of my own. My Air India flight from Chandigarh to Delhi was delayed and to my dismay, I realised my connecting flight was in another terminal which is Delhi means I had to travel 10 kilometres away :X.

But the weddings were great and it was good to meet friends after a long time. Though very sober conversations happened.

There was a campus bonfire which broke the tradition of people just idling away in their rooms.

This term was the least I prepared for any exams ever. I hope the cold warms up soon.

This post is way overdue because I just went through the most packed term to date. (Yes I know I’ve been saying that for every term till now)

Last term was load, this term was overload.

The cocktail called “inundation” had three potent spirits. First, we had five courses (as opposed to a typical four) and each of these courses were packed with demanding assignments making it hard to get by with just paying attention in class and studying. Second, all clubs got going in top gear – alumni sessions, recruiter visits, resume reviews, study trek planning and much more. Finally, there was a flood of case competitions, from Amazon ACE (which happened before the term itself) to UHG Optum to ABG Stratos and many more.

The packed schedule began even before the term. After term 2, I thought I’d have a chill 5 day term break but the most of my time went away in solving Amazon ACE. This term we had Operations Management, Management of Organisations, Managerial Accounting and Decision Making, Corporate Finance, and Responsible Leadership. Corporate Finance was by far my favourite course – it started an interesting exploration of the guts of finance and ended up jargon-busting a lot of terms for me. Made me feel like I’m one step closer to understanding markets. Managerial accounting was also interesting because it taught us how managers account for costs and determine profitability for individual business/product lines, which is very different from financial accounting which is done at the firm level (and with very different goals).

In the spirit of keeping us on our toes, our study groups were shuffled this term. My new team was filled with rock stars who show up to study group meetings with assignments (nearly) complete and ready for quick discussion, which meant I was always struggling to keep up with what was happening. This dynamic was very different from my pervious group where we would do assignments together with ample discussion, allowing everyone sufficient time to catch up. Due to the overload of assignments, most groups (including ours) split the work – which means that instead of the group doing an assignment together, pairs or sub-groups of people would tackle individual assignments. This felt like a real downside to me because I really enjoy taking a crack at assignments and learning along the way.

Term 3 is when priorities start to change, academics went out of fashion and club activities, case competitions and (still 2 terms away) placements take their place. One unique component of education at ISB is class participation; 10-15% of your marks in most courses are allotted to how well you participate in class; this includes answering questions a professor may ask, sharing your owning experiences relevant to a topic being discussed; and in some form or the other, just talking. With 70 students in a class, it becomes just logistically hard for everyone to get a chance to speak. Yet, in the last two terms people did try a lot to get their points heard. This term however, a huge chunk of the class decided that they don’t care anymore, which was lovely! The fight for airtime usually means a lot of banal points. However, this left class participation to much smaller group of people. In a classic case of the lemons problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons), these people aren’t the ones with the best points.

Something truly different that I did this time around was going bald. After experiencing a thinning hair for a couple of years, I knew I’d have to embrace the bald look someday; with the alternative being to get some hair transplant done. It’s something I wanted to try out anyway, so I decided to just go for it. To compensate for the missing hair on the head, I decide to grow a modest sized beard and swap my glasses for ones with a much thicker frame. The look drew caused shock and confusion amongst people. Most people were stunned. Many asked why I had done this, inquiring quietly if I had done this because of a death in the family. Many laughed. A sizeable chunk couldn’t recognize me. It was truly enjoyable to watch people’s reactions. With no hair on my head, I finally was free from the worry of hair-fall. With thinning hair, every strand of hair you find lying around gives you a little sorrow as it reminds you that you’re slowly going bald, and old. By embracing the bald look, I felt extremely relieved and free. I recommended this to anyone who get feeling under-confident or annoyed because they’re losing hair.

A fun thing that happened this term was Aikya. Aikya which means oneness is ISB’s effort to get students to be a part of the local community. Every study group is allotted an Aikya family from the local community. The families are welcomed on the first Aikya day with a student dance performance, plays and other performances followed by a dinner. Our Aikya family was super fun, they were a couple from the Panchkula area; the wife was an ISB Alum from the class of 2006 and her husband was IIM Ahmedabad graduate. They were working in Mumbai about 10-12 years ago, when they decided they had had enough of the city’s hustle and bustle and moved back. They are an entrepreneurial bunch, after setting up a Biryani delivery business, they are now doing an education venture (wow). The husband was an extremely humourous gentleman and kept joking around. We had a great time sharing our experiences with them. After wrapping up dinner and taking a picture, they left for the night. Leaving us with invitation to join them whenever we can with promises of good home food and Old Monk.

This term we had Elective Bidding. Unlike BITS, where every student got assigned a random priority number and could use that to select available electives, here everyone gets 4500 points and has to bid for electives. The administration conducts pre-bidding rounds to understand demand for various electives and puts a final number of electives and seats. Elective seats are limited, and bidding is a live process - meaning everyone logs into their PCs and places continuous bids for electives they want. This also means that you can lose an elective you’ve gotten at the very last second because someone came out of nowhere and bid more than you – which is what happened to me. Fortunately, there are additional bidding rounds and I hope to get my elective back!

This term was a complete blur. It really pushed my limits and I’m happy for it! Despite my best efforts to plan things to keep activities manageable, I ended up sleep at 5 on a couple of days. It has also reset my expectations. While last time I was looking forwarding to a relaxing term break, this time I’m actually gunning to finish a few case competitions and get back to running. Relaxation has exited the lexicon.

Last time we chatted it was just before my end-term exams for Term 1. After the term wrapped up most people decided to use the 5-day term break to travel around, the majority to nearby hill stations in the Himalayas. I instead had nobler intentions. I stayed back to enjoy some thinking time – using it to evaluate which sectors I want to work in, swim and run more to compensate for the near-zero physical activity during the term and also create a plan for the Business Technology Club. Did I tell that I’m the President of the Business Technology Club? The nights during the break on campus were used for either exploring restaurants in Chandigarh or playing Monodeal (I won a lot!)

Term 2 came in like a storm. I may have said term 1 was a rollercoaster, in hindsight, that was a chill summer vacation. As you can see in the schedule, we have some assignment or the other every single day and workload felt two orders of magnitude larger. We have five courses for this term – Global Economics, Competitive Strategy, Marketing Decision Making, Decision making and Optimisation and Business Communication.

Out of these the Business Communication course (BCOM for short) is my hands down favourite. Hearing the name you may think BCOM is about writing emails and making presentations, but this course goes far deeper than that. BCOM was all about ones beliefs and how this manifests in the way we communicate. Through the course we learnt how our past experiences shape our belief and value systems. Consequently, everything we experience is reality interpreted through these beliefs and value systems. Though I was roughly aware of such ideas, it was great to see a framework put to this. Additionally, as part of the class, we examined and challenged a lot of our beliefs, it was great to see how so many things that are ingrained in our minds as reality are actually just our subjective interpretations of it. The course was conducted by Professor Girish Manimaran who is an ISB alum. He was probably one of the most perfect speakers I’ve seen to date. It was interesting to hear the story of Prof. Girish, he went from working at HUL managing half a billion dollars of cash on their treasury team to starting up as a leadership coach.

Another interesting course was Competitive Strategy. Yay, strategy! The number one business buzzword on the face of the earth. We kick started the course by studying the fabled Porters 5 forces model which determines how profitable an industry is likely to be. For me this was hard formalisation of the subjectivity in business. When engineers or physicists, calculate the forces on a building, they are objective and arrive at the same (or similar conclusions). That a building can withstand X amount of force is a testable fact. On the other hand, the Porters 5 forces model is rife with subjectivity, every person applying the model can choose to give different amount significance to different facts based on his experience or knowledge. That to me was a shock and also another chance to appreciate subjectivity in life.