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CREATIVITY KAKARMAYUDH 2010 If you happened to be at the CMbasement on Wednesday 25 August 2010, you would have thought, for a moment thatIllumina had arrived a couple of months early this year. Because the scenes onewitnessed were no less than a mela. It was the venues for the ultimate showdownof inter section rivalry at MDI- it was the Creativity Ka Karmayudh. This event organized by MarQuity sawall the six sections battle it out for glory with the backdrop of KoK-thesports championship. The brief given to the participants was, well, brief: Eachteam had to portray their section as a brand, promote it and outdo the othersusing saam-daam-dand-bhed. The results were far fromordinary. By Monday night, the CM mess was painted with posters of all thebrands, some praising their own brand, some mocking the others. Online campaignwas in full swing with blogs and FGacebook communities being floated. The mainpre event attraction was the bhasad mail chains exchanged on Mandevian mail. Allit took was a promotional mail from one team, and the rest 5 would tear it apart like minced meat. Finallyit was D-Day. All six brands had setup their stalls in the CM basement. SectionA were “Aazaad Bhediye”; Section B called themselves the “Bodacious Bandits”; SectionC became the “Caminey Crusaders”; D were the “D ke Dhurandar”; HR was brandedas “Hell Raisers” and IM unpretentiously said “IM what I AM”         The judges: Kaustuv, Riddhi,Omkar, Abhinav from the senior MarQuityteam, were given a ear shattering welcome with every team chanting theirslogans- the wildest one of them being Dhurandars’ “Khachar Khachar KhacharKhachar- Hu Ha Hu Ha”. The Brands displayed their stallsone at a time. There was the brand logo, tagline, jungle, slogan, flags, posters,cutouts- basically anything that could possibly woo the judges. So while AazaadBhediye had a simple and subtle message to “Save Paper”, Bodacious Banditschipped in a special performance by Ms MDI aka Shakira. If Caminey Crusadersaggressively chanted “Sabsey bade Kaminey Kaun? Section C, Section C”, D keDhurandars’ mascot Kaustubh made sure he was above the rest, literally.HR hadtheir mascot Abhibnav depicting hell in its purest form with Kriti striking allthe right beats on the drums , and IM had their own little party going, whatwith the exchange folks swaying to rustic Bollywood numbers. Bodacious Banditsstole hearts with the Bira video featuring , well, Bira with his message-“there is a Bira in all of us” working wonders for the Bandits. This mega event saw BodaciousBandits get richer by 1500 rupees and more importantly, 50 KoK points. CamineyCrusaders walked away with a neat 1000 bucks. The results were very wellreceived and congratulatory emails were exchanged between sections. BodaciousBandits’ “Bira” video on Facebok had 42 likes on last count from acrosssections and even from PG09. This just goes to prove that amidst all the intersection rivalry and war; there was an underlying sporting spirit of healthycompetition which was the essence of the whole event. This Karmayudh was WAR,and nobody came out without having a blast.
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BTL Talk Session with Mr. Olivier Blum, Managing Director, Schneider Electric India
The ongoing Business Thought Leaders (BTL) Talk Series saw Mr. Olivier Blum, MD, Schneider Electric India, gracing the campus with his presence and kind words. Mr. Blum has been with Schneider Electric for the past 17 years, and before he took over as MD of India operations, he was Director-Marketing for Schneider Electric China. Mr. Blum began the talk by listing a few facts about Schneider Electric. As a Fortune 500 company, it employs well over a hundred thousand people in over a hundred countries. He said that the € 15.8 billion company sees itself as a "Global Specialist in Energy Management". There were gargantuan challenges that the world faces today in the field of sustainable use of natural resources. There was a pressing need for energy conservation and smart energy management, keeping in mind the population and consumption trends of the future. He summed up the Vision of the company thus: "To achieve more by giving less"- succinct yet powerful!
Mr. Blum then went on to talk about Schneider Electric India and how they were a relatively late entrant in India, having been set up in 1963 as a Joint Venture with the Tatas. Currently, Schneider employs about 8400 people in India, spanning 12 factories and 6 R&D centres. He estimated that energy consumption in India is going to grow four-fold by 2030 and Schneider Electric could play a very integral part in making that a reality. In India, his objectives were broadly two-fold: firstly, to gain market share, and secondly, to serve the country by making energy more efficient and to provide energy solutions to all. From a Rs. 2,000 crore company at present, he envisions Schneider to become a Rs. 5,000 crore company by 2012, before hitting the magical mark of Rs. 10,000 crore by 2015.
About India and his experience so far, Mr. Blum was of glowing praise for the country. He valued the latent potential India offered to the world market. Also, India made for a challenging place to work, because of the various constraints in the country."This is what I truly believe: as a company, if you can succeed in India, you can succeed anywhere in the world", he observed. According to him, Schneider India had been a product-oriented company in the past, but now it is consciously moving towards becoming a "Product and Solutions" company. His main challenges in India were to "grow, grow, grow. And grow faster than our competitors in a growing economy". Also, his focus was to keep all his employees suitably motivated so that they can keep innovating and reverse-innovating to improve the quality of life here.
Mr. Blum also briefly touched upon global issues, something which, by his own admission, he was not very aware about. According to him, China's rise in the past 30 years had changed the face of the global economy. Also, he saw the global financial downturn of 2008-09 as a "blessing in disguise", because it has enabled people to start thinking radically differently and has helped relaunch global energy consciousness.
The session ended with a small question and answer session, where Mr. Blum fielded questions thrown up by MDI students. The questions raised from the benchmarking of intellectual capital in India, the challenges faced by a Product and Solutions company as opposed to a Product company etc. It was no doubt an inspiring talk, and this could be gauged from the fact that the session ended not because the students ran out of questions to ask, but Mr. Blum ran out of time to spare. But, as Change Masters and Thought Leaders of tomorrow, we aren't complaining
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ICICIdirect.com ASPIRE!!! In association with ZeeBusiness Delhi City Round – MDIAuditorium  Some people say that creativity and thinking donot mix well. That is what Zee Business’sICICIdirect.com “ASPIRE”, the Music to Money college challenge, set out todisprove. A competition with a very different format of a money quiz followed by a warof bands mesmerized all. The challenge consists of 11 city rounds, followedby 4 zonal rounds and then a Mega Final at Shillong.  Thefirst day of the city rounds for Delhi (NCR), August 25th 2010, washeld at the MDI Auditorium. 32 teams fromvarious NCR colleges turned up to audition for a place in the final city round.Top eight teams were selected on thebasis of a musical performance in front of the judges.
Thecity final round, August 26th 2010, consisted of eight teams from the Delhi-NCR - Schoolof Planning and Architecture, Galgotia Business School, Amity Business School,IMT-Ghaziabad, Bhartiya Vidya Peeth, Amity School of Engineering and Technology,International Management Center, and the hosts MDI.  Theprogramme started with the money quiz, which was being managed by Quizmasters. It consisted of fourrounds namely a multiple choice round, theme based round, wealth creation roundand buzzer round. The teams were divided into two groups offour each. Lohit Rastogi and Balram Ramesh represented the team fromMDI. They did the college proud by topping the quiz round and earning a totalof 35 points, with the second team coming at 25. Thenthere was an audience questions round which got enthusiastic participation.Goodies and prizes like mobile phones by Olive, a CD of Bandish (the band), andgift vouchers from Shoppers Stop were distributed. Mr. Vishal Gulecha, head of equity products, ICICI direct.com, gave amoney talk. He explained the students how money could never be converted intowealth if proper care is not taken. He also inspired them by encouraging themto make a fresh beginning whenever a setback is encountered.  Thiswas followed by the Music Performance round. Sagar Thakur, Kriti Binani, Mayank Bukrediwala, and Akshay Malhotra represented the teamMDI. The contest was judged by Mr.Subeer Malik from leading Indian band Parikrama& Mr. Deepak Nair and Mr. Chris Powell from the upcomingIndian band Bandish. A South-Africanbased band, If 6 Was 9, also playedand the audience was spellbound by their performance. Then the much awaitedperformance by Bandish took place.Everyone clapped and waved to their tunes. They also did a song from theirlatest album titled “Bandish”. After such spellbinding music, the city resultswere announced. The top four teams that made it to the zonal level were: 1. Amity Business School 2. Galgotia Business School 3. IMT Ghaziabad 4. School of Planning andArchitecture Thefour teams were felicitated by the judges with a trophy to show for theefforts. The event ended on a good note with Mr. Deepak Nair, lead singer of Bandish,encouraging the participants to keep the spirit alive. He said that it was whatmattered in the long run.
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22August 2010  “Entrepreneurship:What’s the Big Idea?” was the topic of interactive seminar cum workshop held on22nd August 2010 where David Wittenberg, CEO, The Innovation Workgroup was invited to talkto the participants of Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon by theEntrepreneurial cell of the Institute aptly named SEED.
The evening was openedby Nakul Gupta, FPM 2010 student who introduced the Session. Shuchi Tomer, aPGPM 2010-12 student presented flowers to the Guest. Before starting, Davidasked the audience their expectation from the session, and also laid down thatfor him two things were important in the session: a) There should be a valueaddition at the end of the session, and b) Participants should have fun. Davidshowcased couple of currently successful enterprises that started with a simpleinsight idea or concept that had the potential to solve a strategic “big”problem by giving benefits to the people and “How will it make someone’s lifebetter?” as the litmus test for the growth potential of the idea. Davidelaborated on the four levels of Entrepreneurial success, four traits and threeskills of Successful Entrepreneurs, and where to go from here? One of theinteresting exercises he did was the “assessment of one’s risk taking profile”as one of the critical traits of an entrepreneur. Another interesting trait heshared was trustfulness (not trustworthiness) which means how much you can puttrust into people. He also insightfully brought about some of the prevalentdominant values and cultural dimension in Indian society that in some ways doesnot promote or support the idea of entrepreneurship. Students raised severalquestions related to their ideas and also about the some of the challenges theyface in formulating, prioritizing, and finding the path to take it forward to asuccessful venture. In the last section the discussion moved over to “where dowe go from here” which is the roadmap of taking the idea further to realizationand execution. Students did an exercise to look into their potential ideas andits assessment that helped them to assess, prepare them for next steps actiononto the journey of becoming a successful entrepreneur. “SEED will work towardsdeveloping ideas into ventures, and this session is just the beginning”, saidHitesh Kumar Kyal, chief coordinator of the newly formed Entrepreneurship cell.All the members of SEED are striving hard to make it an exciting hub ofEntrepreneurial action. He informed that many activities, seminars, workshops,and interfaces with successful and emerging entrepreneurs are being planned inthe near future. MDI is one of the top 5management schools in India. SEED (Nurturing Entrepreneurship) is a student bodyat MDI supported by MDI’s Centre For Entrepreneurship (CFE), headed by Prof.Rohit Prasad to encourage, and foster the spirit of enterprise within andoutside MDI. Please ‘Follow’ us on twitter (SEEDMDI), ‘Become a Fan’ onFacebook (SEED – MDI), ‘Subscribe’ to our Youtube Channel (SEEDMDI), and ‘logon’ to our website (www.seedmdi.org) to get moreinformation on the workshop, and to stay in touch with SEED’s futureactivities. 
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Spurt’ing’..Spurt’icious’.. What is this Spurt thing?.. Love ya Spurt.. a few statusmessages adorning the GTalk SM windows of ManDevIans during Aug 11-13. August 11th was not just another day in the lifeof a ManDevIan. An eerie of excitement and fun was in the air as everyone inMDI – from the faculty to the students, from the twenty-year old PGPM guy tothe thirty-odd year FPM candidate, from Sharmaji to the Scholar’s housekeepingguy – was speculating about the enigma named - Spurt ’10. HR Direction (HRD) launched Spurt ’10 as a three-day eventaimed at integrating the MDI community, generating a buzz in the otherwiseboring academic schedule through innovative concepts and to kick-start HRD’sactivities for the academic year 2010-11 on a high note. On the back of severalbranding techniques, including innovative first-time ‘push’ and ‘pull’strategies, Spurt ’10 turned out to be one of the biggest intra-MDImultiple-day event (in terms of participation) organised by an academic club @MDI during the past two years. J Over 125 students thronged thestate-of-the-art auditorium for three days and battled against each other toemerge winners of the first edition of Spurt. A peep into the real thing... As part of the ‘TrasherHunt’, the first day saw participantsrummaging through places they would ordinarily not touch with a pole, lookingfor objects that they’d fling away without the slightest care in the world. Thesecond day saw participants put on their ‘Haggling Hats’ and beg;plead; cajole; coax and well, haggle. Because, here, losing pride was just theonly way to avoid losing the shirt. Finally, as part of ‘Coz Grey Matters!, a ward ofbusiness riddles were hurled at participants – pictorially, verbally and unfortunately,relentlessly. The only matter of any importance in the event was grey, so participantshad to be sure to bring along with them an extra helping of mind. Because if theydidn’t have “mind”, they probably won’t matter in the end. Dear ManDevInas, Thanks a lot for taking such keeninterest in Spurt ’10! We shall try to bring such events for you in the futureas well.
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ASPIRE ICICIdirect.comASPIRE is India’s 1st National Music to Money College Challenge for participants from businessschools and professional colleges across India and it will be telecast exclusively on Zee Business. The city rounds for the Delhi NCRregion will be held on 25th-26th August, 2010on MDI campus. 25th willbe the auditions and 26th will be the final round taking place atthe MDI Auditorium. Teams from colleges from the entire NCR region will bepresent to compete for the zonal spots. Therewill be 11 city rounds, followed by the 4 zonal rounds in Zee Business Noidastudio. Following which the mega final is expected to take place in RockCapital of India – Shillong. The competition has two partsto it – Music Performance: The competition would beconducted in two categories – HindiPopular & English Popular.
Money Quiz: This comprises ofobjective questions from Indian business and financial markets with specialfocus on equities. The details for the same can beseen at http://biz.zeenews.com/aspire/
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“Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?” - Aristophanes  Arguments have forever driven the brightest minds around the world. It is imperative that today’s managers be well versed in the art of discussion, lest the board rooms of the future slip into anarchy. It was with this understanding that debaters from MDI’s batches of 2011 and 12 conceptualised Vagmi – MDI’s debating and discussion club. The immense interest in the art of debating was more than obvious, as Vagmi opened its first debating session to a classroom filled to the brim. The success of the Special Interest Group is evident from the fact that it conducted its first extempore competition this month. Further activities lined up are debating events, discussions, mock parliaments, United Nations Model conferences, extempore and JAM sessions, U-turns, etc. Considering the spectacular success witnessed by the SIG, the launch of the club is expected to fill a long existing void in our understanding, as well as the art of discussion.
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 Muskaan was a collaborative initiative of Samaritans, the social initiative and CSR club of MDI, and Deepalaya, the renowned NGO working in the field of child education. Held on the July 16th in the MDI premises, Muskaan was aimed at spreading a smile on the face of the children from the Ghusbeti residential centre of the NGO. What the Mandevians did not anticipate is the sense of elation that they would eventually go back with. The event was inaugurated by Prof. B.A. Metri, the dean of Post Graduate programmes in MDI. He addressed the audience acknowledging the contribution of Deepalaya to the society and encouraging the students to do their bit for the cause as well.  Muskaan showcased folk dances from the region of Bengal and Punjab. The children performed with utmost confidence and the audience did everything to encourage them. The colourful costumes and the lively dance kept the audience spell bound. The children also presented Hindi and English songs in collaboration with the MDI band Mandolins. Together, they formed an entertaining combination. The experience was special for both the children and the Mandolins – for the children, because of the joy of playing with a well equipped music band and for the Mandolins, because of the one of the kind opportunity to play for a cause. Mandolins also dedicated a few scintillating performances to the kids as a small token of their appreciation. The audience also witnessed the great work done by Deepalaya over the last 3 decades in the form of the short film. Ms. Sudha Parthasarathy, Executive Director of Deepalaya spoke with passion about her work, telling Mandevians how they could make a contribution to their work. She rightly said Deepalaya was about spreading the ‘light’ of confidence and self reliance. However, nothing could have summed up the event better than the remarks of one of the visiting children, Brijesh, who said that Deepalaya for him, was a God sent gift for a better life. Muskaan concluded with a sale of art and handicraft items made by the children of Deepalaya. The success of the sale was evident by the big crowd thronging the desk and many going back empty handed because they were a few minutes late in making their choice. The 90 minute long event served its objective of building an instant connect between the children and the audience that comprised of MDI faculty and students. The response of Mandevian Jayneel says it all “It (Muskaan) really touched me deeply. The kids and their performances, their tales and their talents really took me into a different world ... made me forget the rigours and tensions of our college ... and relax and share a smile ... with the kids ... and appreciate the simple things in life.”
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On Saturday, July 10th, 2010, Mr David Butler, VP-Design, The Coca Cola Company addressed students at MDI about the business aspects of design, and the importance of viewing design, not as a way of affecting objects but as a way of thinking. Over the years, design has increased in significance, especially with the coming to age of emerging markets, and business implications thereof. Mr Butler focused heavily on the current capability of design to affect a customer’s buying decision. As a company, Coke manufactures simple products; however, design still goes a long way in distinguishing them from the competition. Considering the fact that Coke operates across 206 countries (which is larger than the presence of the UN!) designs today dictate the success of failure of both individual products, brands and the company as a whole. Design, however, has no contemporary definition. It seems subjective and often has multiple interpretations. Coke’s aim is to turn design from being subjective, elite, superficial and random to simplistic, synergetic, sharp and concrete. The priority of design has moved from being optional and object oriented, to critical and capability oriented. Due to technological changes and the allied changes in expectations, market dynamics have significantly changed, and Coke now has to compete with retailers’ own in-house brands, such as Walmart’s Great Value juices. Mr. Butler took students through Coke’s entire design history, and showed how design helped Coke become the brand it is. Stressing on the art of problem solving, he illustrated Coke’s earlier focus on vertical problem solving and its current transition to a horizontal and synergetic approach. He took students through Coke’s new design endeavours, explaining why each of them was significant. Overall, for Coke, design is the art of making things better. Mr Butler then took students through Coke’s Global Design Agenda, which is to define strategic value, create clear standards, design modular systems, develop own capability and measure effectiveness. The session culminated in a round of questions, which related to application of design to global markets, difficulty of making managerial decisions on design, importance of reinventing oneself while retaining the brand identity, etc.
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