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