MS entrepreneuship student makes DoMS proud with product sale to IndusInd Bank through Polaris Software

Polaris Software Lab Limited (POLS.BO), a leading Financial Technology Company, launched Intellect(TM) PRIVACY based on state-of-the-art technology and four patents filed by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. IndusInd Bank has become the first bank in India to implement Intellect(TM) PRIVACY, an online and internet banking security card, for its internet banking customers.

Experts estimate worldwide losses incurred by banks annually due to phishing at more than 10 billion US Dollars . The technology will protect customers and banks from practically all kinds of phishing attacks, viz. deceptive e-mail, key/screen logger, brute force/dictionary attacks and Trojans, etc.

Developed using the patents filed by K. Balaraju, a student of the MS (Entrepreneurship) programme of IIT Madras, Intellect PRIVACY uses multi factor, dynamic authentication technology providing for authorizing online banking transactions, in a completely secure platform. Commenting on the innovation, Professor L S Ganesh, Coordinator of the programme, said, "At IIT Madras, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Management Studies got particularly interested in designing an internet security technology that is cost efficient and easy to use in a rapidly growing e-commerce scenario, and transferring it commercially. We chose the Cost-Usability-Security (CUS) approach to arrive at a solution and Polaris Software created an eminently usable application for the banking industry. IndusInd Bank, which was looking for providing greater security for web based transactions, became the first organization to adopt it."
IndusInd Bank engaged Polaris Software to deliver a Portal for its Corporate Clients with specialized solutions viz, Account Services, Cash Management, Trade Finance and Supply Chain Finance. Commenting on the launch of Intellect PRIVACY, Ramesh Ganesan, Executive Vice President and Head of Transaction Banking, IndusInd Bank said, "Our Bank has utilized technology very effectively to gain a competitive edge. We wanted to ensure that our internet banking customers can transact with the Bank in a completely secured manner and at the same time wanted a customer friendly solution that is hardware independent. To this end, we found Polaris' Intellect PRIVACY to be vastly superior in anti phishing capabilities. The Bank received 'Technology Bank of the Year-2009' award in the private and foreign bank category from IBA, early this month. We are happy to innovate with another first in technology in the banking space which reiterates our vision to be one of the leading banks in use of technology for delivering solutions to our customers."

Intellect PRIVACY is a simple plastic card that customers can use to generate a one-time password (OTP) for carrying out any kind of online banking transaction including the sign on. Banks can issue booklets containing a desired number of cards that would last many transactions. The card has no pilferage value by itself and customers can easily manage it life cycle, including making a request for a new booklet and reporting loss of cards through online banking. Intellect PRIVACY is the latest addition to Polaris' Global Financial Enterprise Security suite and is tightly integrated with the Online Banking and Portal solutions.

Commenting on the product launch, Govind Singhal, President and COO, Polaris Software Lab said, "Security of online users in the banking industry is an area of growing significance. With rising instances of phishing attacks and considering the need for a secure alternative, we innovated in this area. With Intellect PRIVACY Banking Security Card, banks will be able to build and enhance online banking customer's confidence."

The press release 

Seshagiri Dhanyamraju of Mphasis addresses DoMS IIT Madras

The monthly CW session in DoMS IIT Madras, hosted Mr. Seshagiri Dhanaymraju Head Strategy and Benchmarking at MphasiS(An HP company). Sesha is responsible for strategy development and articulation, benchmarking against competitors and against the company’s stated goals, execution of key strategic initiatives on behalf of the Office of CEO.

Mr Seshagiri delivered his address in form of experience sharing session. He focused on what can go wrong in a company depends upon the way the company is run, taking the reference of Thomas Peters' book  “In Search of Excellence”. As future business leaders of tomorrow he encouraged students to move one level above concepts and think, think in a precise, logical and structured manner. More importantly, the thoughts should be followed by action and should be turned into reality, if not what we will get to see is a gap between strategy and execution, he stressed.  “Use your degrees and knowledge but don’t take shelter under them” is the view he held on the issue of management concepts and added that we should understand the limitation of management theories.

Today’s organizations are made up of people and to develop these organizations we need leaders, Mr. Seshagiri opined, further he said, we need leaders who keep learning and this was the source of competitive advantage for companies. He made it apparent that a firm needed not only a sense of purpose for itself but also its leaders. On the issue of strategy and operational excellence Mr. Seshagiri was of the view that what is important is a focus on what you should do and more importantly what you should not. On an issue very pertinent to B School education in our country, he delved into topic of disconnect between the schools and the employers.

Mr. Seshagiri then explained that corporate career is no longer a linear journey but should be viewed in form of a grid filled with diverse experiences and challenges which one should start experiencing right from early career. 

DoMS Interface Team,
Batch of 2011

A student's version of serious fun @ DoMS IITM

If waking up at six, with barely two hours of sleep to be the first ones to watch the great Kamalhasan, and head banging with thousand other insane souls on a rock concert is not fun, get a new dictionary. If you haven’t guessed yet, all these happened at SAARANG, the great cultural extravaganza of IITM. Those four days were nothing but pure unadulterated indulgence.

The rocking end of SAARANG closed the fun chapter for all the engineers, for us, Naah.... Haven’t you heard that managers always have the extra pie? We had our very own SAMANVAY, the extravagant business festival of Department Of Management Studies IITM which started on 29^thJan. Theme for the year of hope was "Colours". Is there a more apt way to start a fest, which promised to bring colours to business than a wonderful speech about innovation?

We had Mr. K. Ananth Krishnan from TCS who precisely gifted us with that. It was not just one of those interesting talks; it was more of a practical peek into the industry and its trends. He gave us an insight into how the current market is based on the QWERTY generation, and how the world has changed from one that had majority, starring at idiot boxes, to living with desktops, to having mobile as their sixth finger right now. GO MOBILE was the new market mantra. 

What next? The next thing in the place of excess information is the need for authentic information and accurate forecasting. Mr Krishnan gave the happy news to all the math geeks of IIT that “STATISTICS is going to be the order of the day for the years to come”. So people, what are you waiting for, go get your DAM books and start working.His insights about disruptive innovation and how Apple went on to become the best company by changing its strategy (form being conventional to being one that used disruptive innovation) made even the most disinterested among the audience to sit at the edge of the seat and listen with awe.

It was undeniably a very informative and interesting start to the great SAMANVAY. If you think DoMSians just believe in business, profit and fun, think again. We know our responsibilities too.That is why, we arranged for a panel discussion on public private partnership. The panel was just like the colours of the rainbow, so different in character, yet together for a greater cause.Mr. Saxena, the IAS officer, brought out the benefits of PPP to general public ,like in the health care industry. He pointed out if that such a scheme is implemented properly, the general public would be the one who gain most from it. It would be a win win win situation for all the 3 p’s, Public and Private companies, and the People. Mr T Ramaswamy, the DGM of Indianbank gave all the stats to accentuate that for a country like India, PPP would be very beneficial. He went a long way talking about debt equity ratio, the growth rate, the forecasted annual GDP and the effect of PPP on all these. It was so convincing that all the financial masters of our class would have signed a petition asking for the implementation of the same, on the spot.

Mr.Damadoran from HIndu Businessline, who acted as the moderator, had great difficulty, juggling roles between being the moderator who wanted things within the frame, and being one among the audience who were awestruck by the dimensions each speaker brought into the panel. But the real manager of the panel was Mr.Santhanam. He never supported PPP, nor did he oppose it. He pointed out situations supporting both and one that followed middle path .The case of Delhi airport, the one of Gurgaon highway, where it was a huge success and the one of the electric project where it was more than a failure.So the verdict of PPP being good or bad was: “It depends".

Thus we not only understood the benefits of PPP, but also its limitations.(Ya ya, we stopped signing petitions) If Mr.Santhanam, made us see PPP with a sceptic eye,  Mr V Sivakumar,Director, PCRA made us aware that even if PPP has to be implemented, it’s not going to be an easy task. Rome was not built in a day right. It was indeed an enlightening experience to both the panel and the audience. And it was enriched even more, by the mind-blowing question and answer session that followed. 

When the time came to draw the curtains down, the audience were sorry that it all ended so soon.

Contributed by

Revathy Easwar

MBA 1st Year 

Mahindra Satyam VP Shiv Ajagane shares 'gyan' on IT Retail & CPG Business

DoMS played host to Mr. Shiv Ajagane VP at Mahindra Satyam who spoke about the Retail and IT fields and their future outlook. Mr. Ajagane has around 20 years rich experience in Strategy Planning, Profit Centre Operations, Operational Excellence, Process Management, Sales, Support Client Servicing and team building, Team Management across Retail Merchandising, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management and Information Technology verticals. 

He highlighted the potential of the organized retail's measly 12-13% share in the Rs. 400 crore retail market. Online retailing was growing at a rate of 30-40% yearly. The retail trends were converging from globalization to localization to reduce the costs. The current retail industry was going green, shrinking store and audience size and making use of long tail strategy to tap ancillary products launched over the main product.

He talked about shifting demographics, customer expectations, creation of more value and multi channel integration for different channels. The worldwide IT spends by the industry was just 6% for the retail sector and it had a huge potential. He projected that the worldwide IT services would grow from the current $761 bn to $912 bn in the near future, with outsourcing getting a 10-30% share of additional investments. He spoke about the op 10 business and technology challenges that included business process improvement, reducing enterprise costs, business intelligence, enterprise applications, increase use of analytics and promoting collaboration technologies.

He described the hype cycle of technologies with an example of RFID adoption. He elaborated on the efficiencies of volume based SCM citing TESCO as an example wherein he made the students appreciate the scale of its operations with 265000 SKUs, 10000 suppliers and 4000 stores. He then went on to speak about the career opportunities in IT that included the domains of infrastructure and services, information design and management, process design, relationship and sourcing management and business process reengineering.

Mr. Ajagane concluded on an optimistic note by saying that the IT industry is poised for steady growth even if other cost effective centers like the Philippines have emerged. This trend is mainly due to India moving up the value chain and providing much more than just low cost services.

Team DoMS Interface

Batch of 2011