Insight 2014 at IISWBM

Insight 2014, a two-day seminar presented by IISWBM, in association with The Telegraph last month, made for an intense learning experience. A student pens a discussion diary for t2...

Day One began with the joint commissioner of income tax, Kalyan Nath, delivering a keynote address on the world of taxation. Next up was a panel discussion on ‘Acquisitions — cutting competition or increasing competitiveness?’ On the panel were Anirban Dutta of Jet Age Securities who is an IISWBM alumnus, Uttam Bose of Hindustan Motor Finance Corporation, Himanshu Patel of Deloitte, Arun Singhania of Paharpur Cooling Towers and Srikumar Menon of Linde Group.

We learnt about the taxation impact of mergers, how companies can merge by floating independent entities and how acquisitions help in increasing competitiveness. And we got an insight into one of the most significant mergers, that of Linde Group and BOC.

The next panel dealt with ‘Effective employee retention strategy in the booming market’ and the speakers were P.J. Anand of ITC, Chandrani Sen of HSBC, Parth Pratim Dutta of the Hotel & Restaurant Association of Eastern India and an IISWBM alumnus, and Bhanusmita Banik of Techshu.

Here we learnt how a start-up grew from a four-member team to a 60-member organisation, how career motivation differs from person to person and an important mantra: one needs to feel at home but be professional at the workplace. The HR experts also spoke on their experiences in handling human resource issues and on general employee-retention strategies of companies, workplace environment and how HR managers deal with employee problems.

Day Two of Insight ’14 started with an address by Saibal Sarkar, senior technical director, National Informatics Centre (NIC). Next up was a systems panel discussion on ‘Hack it right to stay away from hackers’ by Kushal Banerjee of TCS, Pradeep Rawat of Rawat Group, Ananda De of SA Solutions, Partha Chatterjee of Praxis Softek Solutions, Deb Kumar Majumder of IBM and Sandip Mukherjee of SimpleSolutio. The speakers started off by giving us a brief idea about hacking and what steps can be taken to protect ourselves from getting hacked, more so since online transactions have become a part and parcel of our lives. The prime factors influencing hacking and how it can affect business were discussed, and the need to have ethical hackers was explained.

The final session was on marketing: ‘Innovative branding techniques to mould consumer perception’. The panel comprised Jimmy Tangree from 91.9 Friends FM of the ABP Group, Arthur Cardozo, owner of Cardozone Communico, Ratul Mazumder of Godrej, Aji Issac Mathew of Techshu and Rajesh Variar of Keventer Agro.

Branding, as we all know, is one of the major focus areas for attracting more business. As the topic was innovative branding, the panellists presented a variety of videos on innovative branding and showed us methods to use them in day-to-day business scenarios. The need to think out of the box as well as utilise all your resources within the box was explained.

Each discussion ended with a Q&A session where we got the opportunity to get our doubts cleared by the speakers. We took away valuable lessons on the business world as well as a sneak peek into the minds of corporate bosses.

Debayan Mitra
First year, MBA, IISWBM

The Navikaran 2014 organising committee. Picture: Anirban Saha

All the clubs of the Indian Institute of Social Welfare & Business Management (IISWBM) — Abhisharan, Resonance, Verkoop and Finvestec — came together recently to organise an intra-college fest with the motto Renovation Recreated. Titled Navikaran and held in association with The Telegraph, the fest saw a variety of games that were both fun as well as educative. “It was a great experience. The students are seriously talented, both academically and culturally. This is a good initiative to encourage creativity and also managerial skills. I am sure they will flourish into the best managers of tomorrow,” said Vineet Patawari, CEO of Kredent Academy, the guest of honour for the occasion.

First-year MHRM student Aditya Gupta came first in the game organised by Resonance (photography club), MBA Rockers aced the event by Finvestec (finance club), IISWBM Knights bagged the first position in the contest by Verkoop (marketing club) and second-year MBA students Anindya Dasgupta and Debopriyo Das and first-year MBA student Detopriya Dasgupta won the event put up by Abhisharan (HR club). After the prize distribution ceremony, a DJ ended the programme on an enjoyable note.

“This programme is organised to enhance the skills of every student and make a difference in a fun way. It is a platform to discover talent and channelise it in the right way,” said Shilajit Sarkar, coordinator, Navikaran 2014.

Amitava S. Chowdhury
Second year, MRM, IISWBM