Mergers – Marriage of Organizations

After a hectic academic schedule, a wave of freshness was required and it was the first MILS lecture of the academic year that brought it. Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras was honoured to invite Mr. Ramakanth Desai, Co-CEO, IT Services Business, Happiest Minds on 14^th September 2012 for a talk on “Managing new Ventures and Mergers & Acquisitions. Mr. Desai worked as Senior Vice President of Strategic Deals and Global Sales operations at Wipro.

Mr. Desai gave us insights about what actually Mergers and Acquisitions are, what are the driving factors, what are the challenges and how important is it for the stakeholders of both organizations.

He started with an example that was out of the box and clearly communicated what actually are Mergers and Acquisitions. He said that getting into a Merger is like marrying where not only people getting married are happy, but also it has to be ensured that parents of both the sides are happy. Similarly, in a Merger it has to be ensured that the stakeholders are fine with it.

Mr. Desai said that Acquisition Strategies are derived from Strategic Business Plans. Business Strategies is the root for all Mergers and Acquisitions. We learnt that we need to have our Strategic Plan in place first before we can develop an insight into Industry.

Mr. Sethu also pitched in with importance of analytics and how various Mergers and Acquisitions have occurred among many Analytics Organizations.

Mr. Desai gave us a very clear view about the roadblocks which occur during a Merger. Where Sales aspect should be taken special care of, the demographic and cultural aspects should not be forgotten. The HR policies, System Integration and Delivery Integration are also important and if not looked into may lead to failures of Mergers.

Who else could have guided us better on Entrepreneurial basics then the person who himself had experienced it. He said that to start up your own company one needs to have clear Vision and Mission, enough analysis and in-depth knowledge of Market. Mr. Ramakanth said that when you start a company you need to take one step at a time and start moving.

When asked about how do ideas strike he said ‘Walk on the streets of Chennai for six months and you will have 10 ideas to start a business. He wrapped up by saying “You need to have guts to reach the glory”.

All in all, it was an enthralling experience for all of us. The lecture was full of interesting insights and shed light on how to be an entrepreneur.

Courtesy:
Siddharth Agarwal 
Class of 2014 

Photo Courtesy:

Vinod Ellamaraju

Class of 2014