Its quite a transition for a battle hardened armyman to reorient himself for the boardroom at the age of 51. Thats exactly what Col Satish Tyagi did when he opted to undergo a special program at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) called Armed Forces Program (AFP) in Business Management, early this year. In this column series for MBAUniverse.com, Col Tyagi shares his experiences at IIM-A.

AFP in Business Management is a full-time, six-month residential program for defence personnel. AFP has been designed by IIM-A at the instance of the Directorate General of Resettlement, Ministry of Defence (DGRMoD) and has as rigorous a schedule as any other IIM-A course. The objective of the program is to build on the defence experience and create management executives who can contribute to the corporate world.

Col Tyagi joined the National Defence Academy (NDA) in 1972. He served the nation in the Army for 31 years. He was part of the IPKF in Sri Lanka, handled insurgency in North East, Punjab and J&K, and founded the Counter Terrorism School in Kashmir for the Army. He also was part of the Kargil war and penned Kargils official history. He has authored Fourth Estate — a book on Kargil and the media. Within the Army, he has been a trainer at NDA, the Army War College and the Counter Terrorism School in Kashmir.

More : mbauniverse.com

Short-term FDs or long-term lock-in

Neither a lender, nor a borrower be, goes the adage. In todays rising interest rate scenario, being a borrower can be a scary scenario. Rising EMIs (equated monthly instalments) have been causing a lot of financial and emotional strain on the borrowers. Anyone who has taken a floating rate loan over the last 2-3 years can testify to that.

However, for the lenders, this is a good time to earn handsome fixed returns. For those of you who might have been worried about the volatility in the stock markets, this is the time to check out the fixed income instruments.

Currently the yield curve is almost straight, if not inverted. Hence, while the call rates are around 7.xx% today, the 10 year paper is also yielding approximately 7.xx%.

More : inhome.rediff.com

IIM-C hikes fee to Rs 2,00,000

The Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta) has hiked the fees for its postgraduate programmes by Rs 25,000 from the next session to strengthen its infrastructure.

The institutes board approved the fee hike from the existing Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 2 lakh on Sunday, an IIM-C source said on Monday.

Since IIM-C spends around Rs 4 lakh per student each year which cannot be met even with the fee hike, the board also decided to explore options to wipe out the deficit at the earliest, the source added.

More : economictimes.indiatimes.com

Government’s decision to provide 27 per cent reservation to Other Backward Classes in the centrally-run educational institutions from the next academic year will come up for judicial scrutiny on Wednesday before the Supreme Court, which will take up petitions challenging its constitutional validity.

A Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat will decide whether to stay the Centre’s January 2007 notification for implementation of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in elite educational institutions like Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from 2007-08 pending a final decision on the petitions.

More : hindustantimes.com

Moving ahead from just having visiting faculty on its campus, B-schools are now working towards having international faculty on their rolls. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), for instance, is toying with the idea of having international faculty on its rolls. The institute is in talks with a French professor to join it full time and conduct classes. Many B-schools in India have international faculty visiting its campuses on an ongoing basis. However, an attempt to have them on the campus as resident faculty is a new experiment by an Indian B-school.

More : business-standard.com

They are the bravehearts, to have chosen to go down the ‘road less travelled’. And now, for those students of IIM-Ahmedabad who would rather pass up big-buck jobs offered by MNCs to realise their entrepreneurial potential, their alma mater is poised to back them up.

The IIM-A has, for the first time, announced a ‘placement holiday’ for budding entrepreneurs in the final year batch of Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) 2005-07, allowing them to join the placement process after a year of graduation so that they get to pursue their dream of being an entrepreneur. “Students opting out of the final placement for full-time recruitment starting from Thursday to go for their own enterprise or venture will now be eligible to join the final placement in the year 2008 and 2009,” says IIM-A faculty and recruitment chairperson Piyush Sinha.

More : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Day zero of final placements at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) saw companies, who came to hire the Post Graduate Programme (PGP) students showing interest in interacting with their counterparts, the Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX), for recruitment.
An estimated 120 companies will visit the IIM-A campus this week of which around 5-7 per cent are new recruiters.
Students of PGPX are involved in lateral placements and were not originally a part of the placement week, which will see students of the flagship programme, PGP getting placed. All the PGPX students have at least one offer and are in the process of deciding on them.

More : business-standard.com

As IIM-Bangalore opened its doors for the headhunters of Indian and multinational corporate houses on Tuesday at the start of its placements, the authorities also placed restrictions on the revelation of the fat salary figures of the campus recruits.

The IIM-B authorities said from now on this will be a norm to not reveal the salary figures to the press, and that they expect other IIMs also to follow suit in this matter. The idea is to keep these details out of the prying eyes of the media, the IIM-B authorities said.

More : ibnlive.com

As expected, hundred per cent placement was recorded at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L), this year also. All 280 graduating students landed with plum jobs. Here’s how the big picture, broken down into figures and

The offers
* In all, 554 offers, 28 of them international, were made to the 280 students. The previous batch had also received 24 foreign offers. The companies were mainly from the banking and finance sectors and offered a wide spectrum of roles for the students. The year saw the second agri-business management batch passing out with flying colours, with good offers pouring in for them.

The recruiters
* O3 Capital, Avendus Advisors, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BRICS Securities, American Express, ICICI Bank were the major recruiters in banking and finance sectors. The year also saw a significant increase in the number of lateral placements with companies like Aditya Birla Group, Motorola, Rediff, Larsen & Toubro, offering profiles like mergers and acquisitions, treasury and corporate strategy offering jobs. Some of the new additions were Yes Bank, Unitech, Honeywell Consulting, Infosys Consulting, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories.

More : cities.expressindia.com

Campus recruitment in India has reached a new milestones with IIMs are churning out crorepatis for the first time. Two students graduating from IIM Calcutta this year have secured pre-placement offers of $250,000, or Rs 1.12 crore, a year from a leading investment bank for its New York desk, while a third student bagged a £120,000 (Rs 1.03 crore) package for the London desk of another investment bank.

IIM Ahmedabad, which completed its slot zero placements for the class of ‘07 on Friday, saw the highest salary touch $225,000 (Rs 1.01 crore). This was a cool $40,000 more than last year’s highest offer. A record over 100 offers were made this year compared to 86 last year, sources added. According to sources, the highest domestic salary this year at IIM-A so far is Rs 60 lakh offered to a student by Blackstone.

More : economictimes.indiatimes.com

It’s raining ripe offers at the the 13-year-old Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT Kharagpur. This year the highest salary offer has touched Rs 15 lakhs per annum. And it’s not a one off offer. The average salary package is hovering near the Rs 10 lakh figure.

The final placements of this B-school has just been concluded with a batch of 120 students placed successfully. A stunning piece of statistics reveals it all. Sixty recruitment firms vied with each other for students and the entire batch was placed on the first day itself. IT firms have picked up the maximum number of students (35%), followed by consultancies (19%), finance (18%) and marketing (17%). The remaining slots were shared by BPOs, operations and HR. Moreover, at least 20% of the students of the batch had bagged pre-placement offers at the end of their six-month internship.

More : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

You have traded in stocks on the BSE, now place bets on your favourite cricket stars. A bunch of students from IIM-Ahmedabad and IIT Rourkee have launched Cricket Stock Exchange, a gaming website, just ahead of the World Cup.

The site, www.cricstock. com, is in the form of a virtual stock exchange, where one can trade shares of Indian and international cricketers. The stock prices of cricketers will reflect their recent performance and what fans feel about them. “A lot of people are crazy about the game, including students on campus. We decided to capture the moods and sentiments of cricket fans and translate them into numbers which will be reflected in the game in the form of stock prices,” said Rahul Roushan, a final year student of a postgraduate programme at IIM-A, and one of the developers of the website.

The site, in just three days, clocked 500 registered users, from different cities of India and even countries like Pakistan, England, Australia, the US. The website has issued an initial public offering (IPO) of all the international cricketers of Test-playing countries. A person gets one million in virtual cash as soon as he registers with the website and he can use that money to buy shares of any number of these cricketers. He has to bid within a specified price range for buying the shares of different cricketers.

More : financialexpress.com

Educational institutes in the city are slowly gearing up to get disabled-friendly. With the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) taking the initiative in this direction, a few more institutes are working towards a campus makeover so that its easily accessible to both people with disability and difficulty.

A group of architects and NGOs, collectively called Access Group, will submit an Access Audit Report to IIM-A, after a three-day survey of its campus. The institute will then make changes in its existing design to make the campus easily accessible to the disabled, old and pregnant ladies, and all those with other difficulties.

“Most buildings and spaces around us are not accessible to people with disability or difficulty of any kind. They constitute no less than 20 per cent of the total population. There is a government regulation to make public utility and funding buildings accessible to all, but ironically not a single such building exists in the city,’’ said Yatin Pandya, an architect associated with Vastu Shilp Foundation, which is a part of the Access Group.

More : expressindia.com

A parliamentary committee has recommended setting up of at least one Indian Institute of Management (IIMs) in each state and also increase the number of seats in the existing IIMs. Government should create more opportunities for students in the country by opening at least one IIM in each state, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on HRD said in its report. Responding to the Committee’s recommendation, government said in its action taken report that it has been advising the IIMs to increase their student intake. The Government was also setting up the seventh IIM in Shillong. The Committee headed by senior Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi also recommended that the government chalk out a plan in consultation with IIMs to ensure that over a period of time these prestigious B-schools become self-supporting and not depend on government for normal functioning.

More : economictimes.indiatimes.com

The largest batch of army officers so far is currently taking a short course, which is specifically designed for them, at IIM Bangalore.

The officers are giving up their uniforms for another kind of battle - that of the corporate variety - and IIM-B is helping them do that.

“Before I go into the corporate world, I wanted to learn what it will be like and be prepared rather than be taken by surprise,” said Major Sipra Majumdar, Student Officer.

“I have been looking after various portfolios where I have to take decisions in all kind of situations, and I have to co-ordinate with both juniors and superiors. It actually prepares you,” said Major Nidhi Agarwal, Student Officer.

More : ndtv.com

“The MCAT’s power comes from its use as an indicator of your abilities,” says the introduction to Kaplan’s 2007 MCAT prep book. “Good scores can open doors. Your power comes from preparation and mindset, because the key to MCAT success is knowing what you’re up against.”

Test-taker Daniel Sonshine of Brown University was well-versed in Kaplan’s test techniques for the medical school entrance exam, but on Jan. 27, when he turned to the verbal section of his computerized MCAT after “nervously chugging along through the physical sciences,” he had trouble staying calm.

Per Kaplan’s advice, Sonshine sought out the easiest verbal passage first. Having settled on a passage about robotic fish, Daniel read it and then turned to the accompanying questions. The questions were about warblers.

More : campusprogress.org

At first glance, it looks like a pimped-out city bus. It’s white. It’s red. It’s black with big letters on the side and tinted glass in the front.

But inside its steel walls, perhaps, rests the key to an existence filled with exotic vacations, designer suits, six-figure deals and plump bank accounts bursting with bonds, mutual funds and rising IRAs.

On Thursday, for the first time, the Graduate Management Admission Council’s Mobile Test Center pulled into Fayetteville State University.

The bus is on a 27-state cross-country trek that started Oct. 31 at the University of the Pacific. It will end May 31 at Washington State University.

The goal of the journey is to offer Graduate Management Admission Tests (GMAT) to those who traditionally don’t have access to testing.

More : fayobserver.com

According to recent reports, roughly one in six students enrolled in higher education – about 3.2 million people – took at least one online course last fall.

These figures come as no surprise to Charles Osteen, Mid-Plains Community College Area Distance Learning Coordinator.

“The Internet is changing the way we do things today. It’s changing the way we work, the way we shop, and the way we educate,” Osteen said.

According to a recent MPCC Summary Report of Online and Distance Learning, the number of online courses increased from 13 in spring semester of 2004, to 53 in the 2007 spring semester. The number of students increased from 189 to more than 800 between 2004-2007 spring semesters. Online courses and student enrollment in other semesters from 2004 to 2007 have shown similar growth.

More : swnebr.net

Take advantage of the flexibility that today’s technology provides by going for a distance learning graduate business degree at Oklahoma State University. You won’t be alone, more than 675 students from 25 states are currently enrolled in distance learning graduate or undergraduate degree courses at OSU including 77 MBA students, 21 M.S. in Telecommunications Management graduate students, nine M.S. in Information Systems graduate students, and students in the Graduate Certificate in Information Assurance program.

Until recently, Lejla Hadzidedic was one of those students—now she’s got her M.S. in Telecommunications Management—something she earned while working full time as a VoIP engineer for Verizon Business in Richardson, Texas.

More : ccnmag.com

Management Guru’ Lalu Prasad’s special affinity with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, came to the fore in his annual Rail Budget on Monday.

Presenting the Railway Budget for 2007-08, the minister announced establishment of a ‘Railway Chair’ at the prestigious B-school for research in railway infrastructure and management. Credited with the turnaround of Indian Railways, Prasad had been invited to the IIM-Ahmedabad last year.

More : hindustantimes.com

Indore, Mar 2: The students of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore received lucrative placement offers. The maximum offer was of Rs 50,00,000 per annum and around 67 companies visited for placement.

The director of IIM, Dr SP Parashar said that there were final placements at the institution on Feb 27,28 in which the students got excellent offers. Renowned companies of India and abroad participated in campus placement. The average wages was Rs 12 lakh per annum.

More : centralchronicle.com

IIR Middle East, one of the GCC region’s most trusted names in training, has recently introduced a new product: distance learning. The programmes are modular and each course in the current catalogue consists of 10 self-paced learning modules of written material, which is provided to participants on a weekly basis. Based on the hugely successful distance learning products offered by IIR in the Netherlands, UK and South Africa, the programmes being offered in the GCC have been especially developed by expert trainers and authors with extensive experience of the Gulf region and the conditions in organisations in this region. The first four programmes range from a totally new course, Human Resource Management in the GCC, to written course adaptations of existing highly popular programmes on service level agreements, international financial reporting standards and business process management. IIR Middle East plans to extend the product range in the second half of 2007, offering new courses for executive secretaries and project managers.

More :arabianbusiness.com

Nirmal Kumar a Post-Graduate Programme in Management student of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad has vision 2020 for Bihar
At the tender age of three years, polio arrested his body growth but not his dream.

At 26, Nirmal Kumar, a Post-Graduate Programme in Management student of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, is a great example of grit and resolute character.

Kumar belongs to a remote village Risuara in Siwan district of Bihar. After clearing CAT in the first attempt and entering the impressive Louis Kahn plaza of IIM-A, which he had never heard of during his college days, was a dream come true.

“Vision 2020″, written in bold red in his dorm room looks quite like a target Nirmal set for himself. “I aspire to become a rural king, owner of India’s most respected organisation,” he says.

Determined not to take any million dollar job offers, Nirmal has decided to become a rural entrepreneur and go back to his roots.

“I have seen people in rural areas deprived of basic needs of education, health and entertainment. My idea is to develop a one point source for all these facilities at realistic prices. I want to take the advanced technology revolution to their doorsteps and address their problems,” he says.

More : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

A staggering 40 percent of IIM-B graduates, who accepted offers from global firms at the campus selection, have quit their jobs within months, in the last two years.

The IIM-B is now devising ways to bring the number of drop-outs down so that its pre-placement exercises are meaningful.

While global firms have shown immense interest in IIM-B graduates, many new recruits appear to get disillusioned with the overseas jobs and return home to work in India. IIM-B officials believe that often the communication-gap leads to the drop out.

Most employers are investment banks, consultant firms, and financial services. There seems to be a lack of proper understanding about the nature of the job among sections of graduates before they accept the offer.

The IIM-B sources said that students leave the job within two to three months after recruitment. To counter this, the placement cell intends to introduce steps to improve the counselling sessions before placements and final recruitment.

In 2006, out of the 45 pre-placement job offers, 17 were accepted, where in 10 students dropped out after six months of job at the global firm.

More : daijiworld.com

IIMs to raise their Placement Fees this season by approx. 25%

Rising costs, service tax and recognition of their own increased brand value has prompted most Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to raise placement fees this season– in some cases like IIM Kozhikode’s– even up to 25 per cent.
IIM Ahmedabad, in fact, has increased its placement fee this year after four years. It will charge all the companies a participation fee, which it was not charging so far. Around Rs 1.5 lakh will be charged to all the companies across different slots.
“We have not increased our fee because of the service tax but because our brand value has gone up. Also, our costs have multiplied,” said professor Piyush Kumar Sinha, placement chairperson, IIM A. The IIM final placement season starts on February 27 and ends on March 13.
The levy of service tax too is instrumental in the placement fee hike in these premier management institutes. The Central Board for Excise and Customs (CBEC) has levied a 12.2 per cent service tax on the placement fee collected by the IIMs and IITs. IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Lucknow and IIM Indore have prepared themselves to pay the tax.

More : www.business-standard.com