Movie Review: Kai Po Che

A cut above

When the script is the undisputed star of a cinematic project, a film like Kai Po Che is bound to be the result. The principal pivots of the plot are predictable – cricket, religion, kite flying, male bonding and entrepreneurial ambition. But there is nothing remotely fusty in the efficient manner in which they are woven into the film’s engaging and heart-warming tapestry.

Kai Po Che is in the main faithful to the source material – Chetan Bhagat’s The 3 Mistakes of My Life – and turns the written text into a well-crafted film that thrives on restraint amid all the dramatic flashpoints at its heart.

Three buddies, Ishaan, Govind and Omi, want to set up a sports goods shop and a cricket training academy. Ishaan is a district-level cricketer-turned-coach while Govind is a man adept at playing with numbers. A property owned by a temple trust is acquired, thanks to the good offices of Omi’s maternal uncle, a rightwing political activist. The threesome’s bonding is also severely tested by two cataclysmic events – the devastating earthquake of 2001 and the post-Godhra riots of 2002.    

  
Director Abhishek Kapoor, who is also the co-writer of the screenplay with Pubali Chaudhuri, Supratik Sen and Chetan Bhagat, does not resort to the kind of melodrama usually associated with stories of buddies caught in the emotional eddies of life. Especially impressive is the unfussy way in which Kapoor rings the curtains down on his story of love, humanity and hope.

The performances of the lead actors exude an air of naturalness that adds to the film’s appeal. Sushant Singh Rajput, in his first role on the big screen, makes a deep impression as the no-nonsense Ishaan. Amit Sadh, playing the impressionable Omi, articulates the confusion of a man torn between his commitment to his pals and his rising allegiance to a seductive new cause with minimal effort and maximum conviction. But the actor to watch in this film is Raj Kumar Yadav. As the calm and focussed Govind, he traverses an entire gamut of emotions with the ease and confidence of a seasoned screen performer.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Competent administrators?!?

Competent administrators can do more justice to their posts

The grind that one has gone through dealing with Indian bureaucracy not only represents their corruption and sloths but also their incompetence. The flaws in the recruitment process and the regulations of the bureaucrats have overbearing effect on the outcome of their efficiency level that really doesn’t match what it should be. A very important Ministry like Defence or Science & Technology are no different either, with the recruitment process of bureaucrats lacking in every aspect of the yardstick and in the process inviting criticism that can put the Ministry off-guard regarding the credibility of the employees of its bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats are recruited from the general streams and then trained to hone their skills required for the requisite job. The training and their ability to grasp the skills requires a few years – and since they generally are positioned at a particular office for 5 years before they are rotated – the cycle almost comes to completion by the time they are ready with their wherewithal for the job and they are moved out! Therefore the looming wastage of time, human resource and money is enough to prove that the government is not doing its bit to improve the quality of its bureaucrats. In Ministry of Defence, particularly, this kind of knowledge and expertise gap frequently leads to delay in different activities like acquisitions, training, military readiness and expenditure. The late Mr. K. Subrahmanyam’s recommendation suggested on the similar line highlighting the incident of Defence Ministry duplicating the military’s file through the bureaucrats as a case in point.

 Praveen Kishore, a World Bank fellow, and a candidate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government in one of his reports suggests that "Opening up the higher civil service, particularly at the senior levels, could be beneficial." This can obviously act as a catalyst to the general improvement of Ministry's infrastructure, acquisitions and project completion. In China, more than 75 per cent of political seats are occupied by young technocrats thus making sure that the efficiency is at its peak from day one, unlike our country wherein bureaucrats take years to get settled and conversant with work culture and technology. The same is true for UK, Singapore and other nations. A few nations went ahead and have established world-class institutions of politics, governance and administration. Such institutions are present in nations like China, US, Israel, Mexico, Mongolia, Singapore, Ecuador, New Zealand, Japan, Sri Lanka, Liberia and even in Kuwait - to name a few, literally.

Currently, there is no system or procedure of even evaluating the 'acquired-competence' of a babu even after five or six years of his recruitment. In spite of suggestion in ARC (that has been acknowledged and accepted), no much heed can be seen in administrative reforms. This gives rise not only to corruption but also creates leakages in the delivery mechanisms. Without an iota of doubt, an war veteran or an seasoned aviation professional would do more justice to Defence or Aviation respectively than a bureaucrats with an Arts background.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

BBA Institute

The new fleet of x-men!

China's current eugenics movement has the potential of rewriting history

Conventionally, the concept of eugenics seems to be a plot straight out of Idiocracy or the imagination of Frank Herbert. Eugenics is actually an applied science of the biosocial movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population, usually a human population. Contrary to expectations, it is being practiced behind closed doors in various countries since centuries. For the uninitiated, China has been operating the world's largest and most successful eugenics program since the last 32 years.

The then reformist leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping, who came to the power after Mao’s death, had figured out that China’s success was critically dependent on population demographics apart from economic policies. Consequently, he drafted the ‘one-child policy’ to restrain China’s population. However, one of his most renowned strategies, “Comprehensive National Power”, was intended to create China as the global human capital hub. In order to materialise his ambition, the 1995 Maternal and Infant Health Law (also known as the Eugenic Law) was implemented to enforce prospective brides and grooms to undergo rigorous physical examinations to determine their fitness for reproduction. China has also implemented laws that restrict people with IQs lower than a defined standard, from having children.

The nation has been investing massively in genom research on human mental and physical traits. BGI-Shenzhen, one of the world’s premier genome sequencing centres, is sequencing more than 50,000 genomes per year. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller’s report has highlighted that “the BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of IQ-predicting alleles. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually – but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximise the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilised eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of ‘preimplantation embryo selection’ might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation.”

China is currently officially promoting eugenics but has a rather long history. Eugenics became a hysteria among not only scientists but also among physicians and lawmakers in US in 1900s. Additionally, Adolph Hittler attempted it more aggressively to create a 'pure line of Germans' in the 1930s. The eugenics movement had failed at the beginning as most of the traits studied by eugenicists had little genetic basis as it targeted for elimination of the 'unwanted' from the human population (complex and subjectively defined traits as "criminality," epilepsy and bipolar disorder) than inclusion of better programmed humans. However, scientists are more optimistic about the Chinese attempts; at the same time, China's recent radical sports achievements (especially at the Olympics) has also raised many eyebrows.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education

How the fight to kill brick - and - mortar is getting dirty

India has witnessed a near flood of online retail stores in the past two years. and shoppers in India have responded well. But with good news comes the bad – the clutter is growing. What are the portals doing to win in the fight to kill offline retailers and grab attention in a growing online buyer market? By Anirudh Raheja

Rohit Mathur, one of the few thousands of teenage college-goers in the small tier III town of Bikaner (Rajasthan), in the past three months, he has ordered for himself an Angry Birds labelled tee from Myntra.com, a pair of Puma floaters from Jabong.com, and a pair of Red Tape boots from Bestylish.com. Mathur today symbolises the kind of equality that online retailing has brought about amongst shoppers in large cities and small towns; what one living in a metro city like Delhi can buy, he too can!

 The internet revolution has done much to lead the buyer crowd to the water. Actually, if you judge by the manner in which penetration in the country is growing (41 per cent CAGR as per Assocham and comScore), there is much to happen still. As the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, the current number of Internet users in India stands at 150 million (divided in a  2:1 ratio between urban and rural India). This number as per McKinsey & Co is set to touch anywhere between 330 to 370 millon by 2015, giving 30 per cent of Indians access to online web portals that could guarantee huge cash flows for these portals. So how big are the potential revenues? As per McKinsey, this growth in Internet will boost India's GDP by over $ 70 billion over the next three years (to $100 billion by 2015). Of this pie, $34 billion will go to Internet portals by 2015 (in 2012, these portals earned a topline of $14 billion).

Though a couple of years back when online shopping was introduced to the nation, initial concerns were voiced over trust and security factors involved in the purchase process (related to quality of products and financial transactions), much of these concerns have disappeared today. This is evident from not just the fact that despite a cash-on-delivery option by portals, most shoppers use their debit cards (58 per cent; as per Assocham), but also from the manner in which visitor count to these online portals have risen in recent months. In October last, of the 67.86 million unique internet visitors, 60.2 per cent spent time surfing online retail portals (source: comScore). These are definitely encouraging signs for the online retail market in India, which still accounts for only over one per cent of revenues that the overall organised retail market makes. Brick and mortar still rules. But the equation is changing fast.

As much a party as Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, Myntra, Indiatimes shopping, Snapdeal, Homeshop18 (the largest in terms of unique visitors since May last year) and others of their clan are having, there is a growing storm that brings with it a sign of trouble. Reality is, portals today are finding it hard to differentiate themselves.

Some choose to claim superiority based on volume – the count of brands in their inventories. Others have a price war going – giving the best at the least, a strategy that renowned strategy guru Michael Porter would not recommend.

Thankfully, a handful of the brains behind these portals do appreciate that promise on volumes (brand count) or prices do no good in the long run. It is  the excitement that a particular portal can deliver in the form of consumer experience that really matters – whether it be to promote good word-of-mouth or to pump-up toplines. Rashmi Berry, CMO, Homeshop18.com agrees: "E-commerce is about user experience and hence referral. One needs to understand that a lot of growth is coming through an engaging experience and hence word of mouth." Then there are companies like Jabong that not only offer the quickest delivery time (it became the first one to promise delivery on the same day in H2, 2012) but are also enhancing experience of buyers, by offering personalised services with their 'Stylist on Call' for all round support to customers for making purchase decisions.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography

Two essential aspects of the Rajinikanth story make any attempt at constructing a narrative instantly fascinating. One, the rags to riches tale of a bus conductor who went on to become one of the most luminous icons that Indian cinema has ever produced borders on the fantastical.Two, the reasons behind the fanatical following that Rajini commands is difficult, if not impossible, to put a finger on.

On the first count, Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography is a lively recap of the life and times of the Superstar, crammed with anecdotes, analyses of the career-defining films and the assessments of those who have known and worked with the star.

Film critic and journalist Naman Ramachandran, who, we are told, “was placed on Planet Earth for the express purpose” of writing this book, has delivered a highly readable account that is made all the more entertaining by the fact that he combines the enthusiasm of a self-avowed fanboy with the clinical detachment of a professional critic.

From the personal to the professional, and the commercial to the spiritual, all of which are essential to the understanding of Rajinikanth the man and the actor, Ramachandran goes over every facet of the superstar’s life. He draws upon the reminiscences of Rajini himself and his relatives, friends and associates.  

The book contextualises the apotheosis of Rajinikanth within the tradition of Dravidian politics, the history of post-Independence Tamil cinema marked by the MGR-Sivaji Ganesan duopoly and the perspective of the pan-Indian Hindi movie industry. Rajini not only starred in many remakes of Mumbai hits of the 1970s and 1980s on the way to becoming the pivot of the Tamil cinema business, he also acted in several Hindi films without quite replicating his southern success.

On the second count, while Ramachandran does devote many a page to grasping the precise nature and substance of Rajini’s stardom, he faces the obvious obstacles. How do you explain in accessible terms the humongous appeal of a man who isn’t a handsome hunk and thinks nothing of appearing in public without a starry mask?

The author quotes a fellow journalist to assert that “Rajinikanth is the end of analysis”, but he does offer interesting glimpses into how and why this Kannada-speaking man of Marathi descent has swept away all competition in Tamil filmdom in a career spanning over three decades. Always a workaholic known for his professionalism and speed, he had as many as three dozen releases in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada in 1978-79.

This was a crazily frenetic period. MGR had just bowed out to concentrate on politics. Rajini and his contemporary Kamal Haasan (he had 33 releases in 1978-79) moved into the breach. Rajinikanth, generous to a fault, is unstinting in his admiration for Kamal Haasan. “I grew as an actor watching Kamal Haasan acting,” he tells the author. “I had the good fortune of being able to observe Kamal Haasan from close quarters…”

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

The auto bloodbath

Going by how matters have been in the past year, there is little hope that India’s auto industry will grow beyond the single-digit mark in FY2013-14, even if macroeconomic indicators and economic sentiments improve substantially

This kind of brutal bloodbath was not witnessed even after the global financial meltdown of 2008 when it appeared as if Apocalypse and Armageddon had jointly invaded the global economy. From about 1.6 million domestic sales in 2007-08, passenger car sales fell marginally to about 1.55 million units in 2008-09. Not just that, the auto industry registered a spectacular turnaround almost immediately and kept growing at a very healthy pace. By 2011-12, passenger car sales had reached close to 2.68 million units. Something similar happened with sales of commercial vehicles that reflect even better the state of health of an economy. From about 490,000 units in 2007-08, sales crashed to about 384,000 units in 2008-09 in the aftermath of the global financial meltdown. But as with passenger cars, the recovery was swift and sure. By 2009-10, sales of commercial vehicles had recovered smartly to 532,000 units and crossed 800,000 units by 2011-12. The magic one million mark was looking very much within reach. And everybody was going ga ga over the brilliant prospects of the Indian auto industry. Some over optimistic souls even started predicting that the auto industry growth rates in India will keep outpacing that of China and that India could well emerge as one of the five largest auto markets in the world by 2020.

In 2010, the consultancy firm Ernst & Young conducted a study on behalf of Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India. The E&Y study predicted that the Indian automobile market would clock the fastest growth rates between 2010 and 2020. Average annual growth rate for the Indian market between 2010 and 2020 was pegged at 14%. The average annual growth rate for the Chinese market was pegged at 8%; the forecast was 6% for other emerging markets and just about 4% for developed markets belonging to G-7 countries. According to the survey, domestic sales of cars and SUVs would jump to 5 million by 2015 and further double to 10 million by 2020.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Who Says Modi Bhai and Rahul Baba are the only choices for Prime Minister?

Congress leaders were triumphant after results of the Gujarat assembly elections were announced. Senior leader P. Chidambaram said in virtually as many words that Congress had won because it had restricted Modi and BJP to barely 115 out of 182 seats. For Modi fans, the script was entirely different. His third successive election victory made him a strong contender to be the BJP candidate for Prime Minister. In Jaipur recently, nervous Congressmen heaved a sigh of relief and shed tears of joy when Rahul Baba finally agreed to lead the Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Since then, we have seen an overdose of articles and columns comparing the two as potential prime ministers. If you go by excitable media reports, 2014 could well be an American Presidential style election where voters will have to choose between Modi Bhai and Rahul Baba.

But I most humbly disagree. If you look deep and hard, India has literally a wild variety of choices when it comes to who should be the Prime Minister. Come on, if Deve Gowda, the late I. K. Gujral and Manmohan Singh can become Prime Minister, surely almost anybody can. And I am not talking about the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Jayalalitha as strong contenders. In the true spirit of democracy, I cast my net wide and far and came up with a very rich catch of choices. Here is a not so comprehensive list of gifted, talented, visionary and messianic Indians who have superb qualifications to be the next Prime Minister of India:

Asaram Bapu: Who better than this fountain of Vedic Wisdom and champion of gender equality and female empowerment. I am not so sure about what his domestic and economic policy agenda would be. But I am absolutely convinced this great man will do a superb job of making all our borders safe and secure. You see, almost all his female devotees will be dispatched to our borders. Dancing to the tunes of devotional songs, they will all keep asking real and alleged enemies to treat them like sisters. The Pakistani soldiers will be so inspired that they will start beheading themselves. The Chinese would be so shell shocked that they would promptly give up all claims on Tibet. And there will commence a citizen movement in Bangladesh that will demand the return of all illegal migrants from India. Each cabinet meeting will be a Satsang where Asaram Babu will drop further pearls of wisdom.

Akbaruddin Owaisi: This mind blowing orator and contender for the Nobel Peace Prize will firmly have a simple domestic agenda. His first decision as Prime Minister will be to declare the birth anniversary of the last Nizam of Hyderabad as a national holiday. His second decision would be even more historic. He will decree that all police stations in India be shut down for 15 minutes once every week. That will enable the 25 crore Muslims of India to show the 100 crore Hindus of India who the real Boss is. Even as Hindus and Muslims indulge in a new national pastime and sport called This Week in Riots, the new age Nizam will go to London as a medical tourist. This will greatly improve relations between the former Imperial Power and the new Caliphate. Owaisi will also announce a weekly award worth Rs.100 million for a slogan writing contest where you will be encouraged to denigrate Hinduism. Hordes of media celebrities and secular activists and academicians will literally kill each other to become participants

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Productivity Unveiled – learning by doing

A look inside an auto plant reveals how learning by practically doing leads to higher productivity

For a period of 15 years beginning in the mid-1930s, the Horndal steelworks plant in central Sweden had been neglected. Except for minor repairs and replacement of broken equipment, no new investments were made to modernise the plant. Despite this apparent neglect, output per worker at the plant rose steadily at about 2% per year. Erik Lundberg, the Swedish economist who first observed the “Horndal effect” called it a case of “pure productivity.”

One oft-cited source of productivity is learning by doing, which is the ability of workers to raise productivity through experience. In fact, economists have credited the Horndal effect to learning by doing. The longer workers do the same type of job the better they get. The result is higher production without having to put in new machines or hire more workers.

Several studies have looked into the overall dynamics of the learning process - how fast productivity gains accrue, and whether knowledge acquired from experience can be forgotten over time and if it spills over to other areas of production. But partly because of lack of data, these studies reveal little about how learning occurs at a plant, making it seem as though productivity improvements from learning by doing arise spontaneously as production increases, without any scope for managers to affect outcomes.

To find out the specific mechanisms through which learning takes place, I along with Steven D. Levitt and John A. List, professors in the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics, analysed detailed production records from a major carmaker’s assembly plant. Beyond showing evidence of rapid learning by doing, our study, Toward an Understanding of Learning by Doing: Evidence from an Automobile Assembly Plant, provides insights into how workers’ experiences at a plant can lead to greater productivity.

The study finds that the knowledge individual workers gained while working at the plant was quickly incorporated into the production process. Workers, together with plant managers, made adjustments to the assembly line based on what they learned, changes that benefited the next batch of workers and boosted overall productivity. It’s instructive as to how piecemeal, even mundane changes can add up to substantial improvements in the production process.

LOOKING UNDER THE HOOD

We measured productivity increases from learning by doing by looking at the assembly plant’s defect rates over the course of a year. The plant assembled three variants of a model built on a common midsize-car platform. The shared platform means the three variants had similar body frames and powertrains but required different parts and assembly procedures. Immediately before we started our study, large changes were made at the assembly plant. The platform had just undergone a major redesign that included both mechanical and aesthetic changes. The automaker also altered the assembly line’s physical layout, brought in new machines and equipment, and modified the production process to emphasize that teams, rather than individual workers, would carry responsibility for a particular task in the line.
 

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

BBA Institute

DealBook: M&As this year

there has been a steady decline in the appetite of Cash stressed indian companies as well as their global counterparts for M&A deals in the last couple of years. Moreover big ticket M&As haven’t demonstrated expected synergies. Both, deal value and volumes have seen a tremendous downfall. B&E presents a snapshot of how the M&A landscape has panned out so far this year

M&A deals lose sheen

The number of M&A deals and the corresponding deal value for the first nine months of the year are on consistent decline. While in the year 2010 and 2011 deals valued at $42.5 billions and $37.6 billion respectively were completed in the first three quarters, the value fell sharply to $29.4 billion this year. On the other hand, number of deals have fallen sharply from 511 (9M 2010) to 438 for the corresponding period in 2012. The figures clearly indicate that M&As are loosing the sheen and have failed to deliver the promised value over the last few years. Further, with economic uncertainty looming large in and around India, the road ahead for such deals does not seem to be a smooth ride either. Unless organisations around the world demonstrate exceptional performance, the state of M&As is most likely to be dismal.

Cross border deals score well over domestic

82.56% of the M&A deals closed by India companies in the first 9 months of the year were across the border. This involved many big ticket deals like the $1.8 billion acquisition of RBS’ retail and commercial banking business by HSBC UK. Apart from this, Indian companies were also very active in looking out for small and medium acquisitions related to oil & gas and other natural resources. These acquisitions will eventually prove to be the backbone for the vertical integration of businesses and in the coming days, one can expect to see more such deals. On the other hand, foreign companies have also consistently engaged in buying out promising Indian companies. However, most domestic M&A deals have been undertaken to achieve operational and financial synergies between companies.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

BBA Institute

2 minutes of despair?

In the light of its harmful properties, the widespread use of maida in India must be banned at the earliest

It is almost impossible to find any eating joint in India that doesn’t use maida, which is the starchy white part of the wheat grain, as an ingredient in its kitchen. Maida is also been consumed directly or indirectly in Indian households. But the lesser known fact is that it is identified as a major source of diabetes & related diseases.

Maida causes blood sugar imbalance and has a negative effect on insulin. Besides, it contains anti-nutrients, which can affect the digestive process and make people more prone to heart and kidney diseases. Surprisingly, not many people know that maida is originally yellow in color and the hazardous benzoyl peroxide is added to turn it into white. This additive has already been banned in China and EU. But in India, maida – with benzoyl peroxide as an additive – is still one of the most highly consumed food products.

Today, maida constitutes a major chunk of the Rs.85 billion Indian bakery market, which is growing at 12-15% annually and is a cheap ingredient in breads and other eatables. Even popular FMCG companies use the ingredient. A case in point is the instant noodles category. Even though atta variant noodle categories are becoming prevalent, the consumer demand for the original maida noodles still persists. Not only do companies refrain from educating their consumers about maida’s ill effects, even the government strangely is ignorant. The government must urgently take steps to ban white maida and products that contain it.
 

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education

“No pharma company is in favour of price control”

Shakti Chakraborty, Group President India Region Formulations, Lupin Ltd, on why pharma companies are not in favour of pricing control on drugs

B&E: The National List of Essential Medicines includes the reference molecules only and not their “me too” versions that can be made by making minor tweaks. Does it make the list meaningful?
Shakti Chakraborty (SC): There is nothing like tweaking a molecule. So if you list Ibuprofen as a molecule under the NLEM then the molecule is covered. It doesn’t matter by which name it is sold in the market. Any new addition or subtraction to the formulation can be done by introducing a totally different molecule which may or may not be covered by the NLEM. By definition all the derivatives of a molecule are also covered under the list. For example, in Lupin’s case we have a molecule called doxophylline, which is quite different from theophylline (both are used for the treatment of respiratory diseases) Theophylline is listed under the NLEM but the department says that doxophylline is a derivative of theophylline and hence, is covered under the list.

B&E: The methodology to arrive at the price of a drug is by taking the weighted average of the prices of three top selling drugs in a particular category. What could be its implications on drug prices?
SC: As of now nothing has been finalized on the methodology. The health ministry is proposing to take the weighted average of the lowest three priced brands instead the highest three. If you ask me, no company would like to have this kind of control. For a top class company with good R&D effort, manufacturing facilities etc., you need to incur significant costs. By putting a price ceiling, there will be no incentive for a company to do R&D and bring out quality products. The lack of clear policy is also hurting the strategic planning of the companies. I feel that the market is smart enough to decide the price of a drug.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
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