Samanvaya – HR Summit

Samanvaya 2011 – first edition of the HR Summit of IIMKashipur, was held on December 15th 2011. The event witnessed a congregation of eminent industry personalities in the field of HR, academia and students onto a platform to put forward and discuss their views on ‘Aligning Employee goals with corporate vision’. The discussion revolved around on how to ensure employee engagement and motivate employees to align their respective roles with the mission, vision & goal of the organization. Mr. Aquil Busrai, CEO-Aquil Busrai Consulting and Former HR Director of IBM, delivered the keynote address. Dr Devi Singh, Mentor Director-IIM Kashipur and Director-IIM Lucknow, Prof. Roshan Raina, Dean-IIM Lucknow and Prof Manoj Anand, Convener-IIM Kashipur taskforce, addressed the gathering. Veteran HR professionals from Dabur, Tata Motors, HP, Videocon, IDBI, APC, Titan, IGL, to name a few, constituted the audience. Mr. Aquil Busrai, in his keynote address, shared his views that Attraction, Retention and Training (ART) as the key ways to improve employee engagement and align their goals with the corporate vision. Mr. Busrai put forth the idea of ‘Take My 40 Hours’ as an initiative by the industry persona to spend 40 hours in an year, an equivalent of 5 working days, on a business school campus to give the required inputs to nurture the future leaders. Talking of retention, he shared an instance where 30% of employees leaving a company gave the reason of poor growth prospects, while a same fraction of people staying with company said it’s for higher growth prospects. The keynote address was followed by corporate luncheon, buzzing with an electrifying level of interaction amongst the guests. Thereafter, in the panel discussion that ensued had Mr. R S Yadav, VP-HR, IGL and Mr. Atul Asawa, VP, Flexituff as the panelist’s who shared their insights and experiences on employee engagement. Many guests expressed their delight while attending the event, first of its kind in the region, and affirmed that this first step will go a long way in benefitting the industries, especially of Uttarakhand and UP.

Finance Club Organizes Sessions on Equity, Debt and Corporate Finance

 

 The students at IIM Kashipur have developed quite an inclination towards the area of finance. Being taught a course on Financial Reporting and Analysis in the first term by one of the best faculty of IIM Lucknow- Prof Manoj Anand, the students got an opportunity to get a holistic view of the world of Finance which furthered their interest in the area. Keen towards enhancing their knowledge of finance through various initiatives, event and activities, a group of students got together and started the Finance Club – IIM Kashipur.

The fundamental belief of Finance Club has been that knowledge can be increased by sharing. This encouraged the Finance Club to start knowledge sharing sessions wherein some guys having knowledge in Finance by certifications like CFA, NCFM etc and past experience in the domain of finance started acquainting the batch with basic concepts from different areas of finance. After an initial session on the overview of financial markets, the Finance Club conducted sessions on Equity, Debt and Corporate Finance.

The session on Equity was conducted on 31^st August 2011 and the speakers were Pulkit Taluja, Ravikant Sharma and Varun Kumar Agarwal. In the four hour session, the speakers covered the topics: Basic Equity Concepts, Equity Trading, Stock Indices, Models of Equity Valuation, Key Financial Indicators related to Equity and Industry and Company Analysis. The questions asked by the participants made the session interesting and the team of speakers didn’t move ahead until the doubts of all the participants were cleared.

The session on Fixed Income was conducted on 5^th September 2011 and the speakers for the session were same as that in equity. Apurv Pandit, Editor – Pagalguy, also attended the session. It was a two hour session and topics that were covered are: Fixed Income Fundamentals, Fixed Income Markets, Fixed Income Instruments and Fixed Income Risks. The Finance Club plans to conduct another session on this topic to cover its breadth and depth.

The session on Corporate Finance was conducted on 22^nd November 2011 and the speakers were Abhishek Kamble and Pulkit Taluja. The topics covered were: Capital Budgeting, Cost of Capital, Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Leverage, Working Capital Management and Financial Statement Analysis. The knowledge of this subject is important from a manager’s point of view as it caters to various decision making problems and their evaluation criteria.

Some members of the finance club have also started taking independent projects the results of which we would share in the near future.

 

 

 

 

Pepsico – Plant Visit – 18thNovember 2011

Pepsico – Plant Visit – 18thNovember 2011

On 18thNov. 2011, the first batch of IIM Kashipur visited the bottling plant of PepsiCo in Bazpur, Uttarakhand. It was the first official plant visit as part of industry interaction of the students. Students were accompanied by Mr. Dinesh Saxena and Mr. Daljeet from the administration. On arrival at PepsiCo bottling plant, students were received by Mr. Maya Prakash from the HR department. After a small introduction session, the students proceeded towards the manufacturing unit where the students were introduced to the quality officer and his associates. As a safety requirement, everyone was required to wear leather shoes and the students complied with this requirement without fail. Anyone entering the manufacturing area is required to cover his heads and shoes and the required kit was provided to us. After all the essential safety and quality control requirements were fulfilled, we entered the production floor and were taken to the various sections of manufacturing viz., Water treatment, Syrup mixing, Bottle molding and Filler Units. After the production floor, students were taken to the warehouse. We got the opportunity to meet the store manager, who was recently awarded by Ms. Indra Nooyi for his warehouse management techniques. He briefed us on different warehouse management intricacies and students got their doubts clarified on supply chain issues. Later students had a 45 minute interaction with Plant’s HR manager, Amitabh Adhikary and Manufacturing manager in a conference hall. HR manager briefed about the plant’s organizational structure, various incentives being provided to the employees and the culture of the organization. Manufacturing manager briefed us about the different KPIs, seasonal challenges, price fluctuations of key ingredients and other minor issues. This was followed by a healthy Question-Answer session. Members from Placement Committee and Industry Interaction committee had a short meeting with the HR manager. They expressed their eagerness to have a long term relationship with PepsiCo and received a positive response. Overall the visit was successful in terms of the insights the students received about supply chain management and the overall manufacturing process. It also opened doors for further interaction and industrial assignments.

 

 

 

Finance Club Organizes its First Knowledge Sharing Session

 Finance Club – IIM Kashipur organized its first knowledge sharing session on 20^th July 2011. The agenda for the session was a basic overview of financial markets. The speakers were Ravikant Sharma, who has prior work experience with a hedge fund client, and Pulkit Taluja, who has cleared CFA Level 1 and has experience in finance domain. Both the speakers are first year students of the inaugural batch of IIM Kashipur. The session started at 6:00 pm after the end of all lectures scheduled for the day and ended at around 7:00 pm.

The session started on an interactive note with speakers asking the participants about their expectations from the session. The areas that the two speakers covered were classification of financial markets, players in the financial market with emphasis on investment banks, primary and secondary markets, trading and a bit on derivatives. The speakers kept clearing the doubts of the participants as and when they were raised during the session. The session ended with the speakers’ taking feedback from the participants.

Considering that it’s the first batch of the institute and there are no seniors around to guide the students, forming the Finance Club and conducting these sessions within three weeks of the start of the PGP programme is an appreciable effort by the vibrant student community of the institute. The Finance Club will continue to hold these sessions and delve deeper into the field of finance. Overall the event was well organized and the speakers did their best to meet the expectations of the participants.