Prerana 2006 at NITIE
 

Prerana 2006 Inauguration

The decade old PGDIM course in NITIE, today launched its three day annual B-school fest, Prerana. This year a socially conscious theme prevailed for the event. NITIE's new Chairman of Board of Directors Shri Sudeep Banerjee and the esteemed Shri Jairaj M Phathak were the guests .Both are eminent civil servants and without doubt extremely versatile gentleman.

In the director's words, "The ideologies of  NITIE's two fests Lakshya and Prerana are intermeshed. Lakshya is the ultimate goal and Prerana is the inspiration, the enlightenment, the urge to reach the goal, the guiding philosophy of NITIE's PGDIM students."

Once the inaugural lamp had been lit, the guests came to the podium and spoke to the audience for a few minutes. Dr. Sudeep Banerjee expressed his pleasure at being associated with NITIE for more than a decade. His observation was that in the face of a collapse in imagination in the method of imparting education, Prerana's theme is an interesting and off-beat route to revitalizing students.

"The major concern of NITIE is to equip students to better the world bequeathed to us. Not being concerned by the plight of the under privileged is a failure of teaching. It is gratifying to note that the PGDIM students chose Mumbai to make a small inroad in the process of betterment."

Dr. Phathak, who spoke about Urban management and Development, expressed his trust in the steady income from various sources such as property tax, octroi etc. that can help boost municipal development.

The Dean of Placements, Shri A.K.Pundir, rounded off the inauguration with an inspirational speech that urged on the management students of NITIE and appreciated this year's salutation - NITIE's Salaam Mumbai.

Mumbai Master Plan

In Winston Churchill's words "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." These five minutes aren't even enough to define the spectra of problems Mumbaiites go through everyday. Rising real estate and water supply problems, ineffective transportation and last of all tackling both man and nature bred terrorism. Wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?

In a unique endeavor, the PGDIM batch of NITIE had invited business schools all over India to solve the problems of Mumbai under the aegis of their annual business conclave, Prerana. Mumbai is today facing innumerable problems on several fronts. Broadly they can be classified into the following four areas.

* Transportation
* Housing
* Water Supply &
* Disaster Management.

The participants had been requested to choose one out of the four of the above areas and prepare a master plan for the city.

The eminent jury which had consent to grace the event were as follows:

Mr. Chandrasekar Prabhu – Ex-President, MHADA
Mr. VK Pathak – Principal Chief, Planning Division, MMRDA
Mr. Gautam Mukherjee - Head Corporate, Business Development, Indian Express
Mr. Debi goenka – Environmentalist

The solutions provided by the students can be classified into the above four categories:

• Transportation – Some of the solutions provided in this category were increase in luxury buses, exclusive BEST lines, dividers near bus stops, increase and graded parking fees, installation of public communication systems. A very inquisitive and impressed set of judges voiced their concerns on the loss of BEST passengers to share autos as a cost and time effective mode of transport and blamed the failure of implementation to lack of identification stakeholders.
• Water Supply – The main concerns voiced in this section was the leakage through water loss which amounted to nearly 50%. The solutions provided ranged from switching to HDPE pipelines leading to reduction in leakage, installation of Geographical Information System for monitoring leakage from a central location, pro-active metering charging by quantum of water consumed. A mention of public – private participation with a regulatory authority. At this the jury stepped in and made a mention of rain-harvesting and the inappropriate pricing policy of the BMC.
• Housing – Some of the ills in this section that were portrayed were the unplanned development, slum dwellers, demand and supply mismatch. Some of the solutions that were proposed included income based price slabs, deregulation, modification of Rent Control and Urban Land Act, shift from crowded areas to Navi Mumbai, bridge the demand supply gaps.

After his speech, he threw open the discussion for dialogue between the students of NITIE and other visiting B Schools.
 

Cite De La Prerana

Cite De La Prerana was conceptualized to bring together stalwarts from all walks of life. This year to explore another facet of professionalism in association with Prithvi Theatre's celebration of Prithvi Raj Kapoor's 200 birth centenary, NITIE Business school's Prerana showcased Working Title's production of Ramu Ramanathan's play Mahadevbhai (1892-1942) on the evening of 3^rd November 2006 on the NITIE lawns.

Mahadevbhai (1892-1942) is a tribute to the modest, self-effacing scholar, whose personal account Ramu Ramanathan used for his script, who served as Gandhiji's closest aide from 1917 until his death. Through Mahadevbhai's narrative we are taken through several historic acts and moments that decided the fate of the nation, such as Dandi March, Champaran and Bardoli Satyagraha.

All through the past week there had been skepticism about his ability to take to a stage because of illness and he thanked NITIE and said that it was the only college that had come down to visit him and wish him a speedy recovery. He said it was an honor to play for NITIE, one because it was one of the top business schools in the country and because he realized the effort the organizing committee had put in to get him down to campus. The best part of the whole evening was that he could identify himself with the pulse of the crowd as much as they felt a part of his songs.

The First Runners up prize went to Sanika Rathod, IIM I , while the winning award went to Akansha Mohla, NMIMS.
 

NITIE Prerana 2006: B-Sultans

"B-Sultans" has been the grandest event at NITIE's Annual inter B School festival Prerana 2006.

Prerana 2006 B-Sultans presented an unparallel arena for the clash of titans from India's premier B Schools.  Devoid of fuzzy rankings or heralded pedigree 6 teams from different B-Schools slugged it out against each other in 5 variegated contests. These teams qualified from a stringent sieve of a multifarious case competition.

The participants were handed a Case Study before their arrival to NITIE which involved research on the Intellectual Arbitrage. It tested the participants on conceptual clarity, understanding of business environment and approach towards problem solving in IT Business.

The first four events, spread over the first two days, tested the teams on various managerial aspects – convincing power, time-management, team functioning, marketing capabilities, financial acumen, multi-tasking and creativity.

Day2 Sizzled with 3 contests.

Contest 1 – The Fin Game was a simulation of day-trading done by teams to handle their stock by investing real-time on the NSE/BSE listed companies. Based on fluctuations of the market, the value of their portfolio quivered. Continuing for 5 hours, the Fin Game ran in conjunction with the other two contests.

Contest 2 – The Shop required the teams to work as team players in a "trading-market" scenario requiring efficient team work and decision-making. The tasks were not limited just around trading, bidding and dealing but quick fire tactical decisions.

Contest 3 - The Green Product Design exacting creative skills had the contestants presenting innovative product designs for specified products with a twist – making commercially feasible and environment friendly products.

For each event the team earned Internal Trading Rupees or ITRs that impacted the performance in each event.

The second day opened on the wonderful and sunny morning in the NITIE Lawns and with instructions from the organizers and inspiration from Dr T Prasad, the untiring mind behind Mandi. The event kicked off with a sales stint by each team on the second day of Prerana. Each team was given a fixed inventory of educational toys made by an NGO called Navnirmiti, to go out and sell in the streets and markets of Mumbai. The participating teams were asked to part with their money and handed a traveling allowance. With a limited time-period of 5 hours and with overseers from the organizing committee keeping a check, the sales and convincing prowess of the teams were tested in the place where it matters the most – the market, or colloquially the Mandi.

On 3^rd day of Prerna the case study solution presented by each group was judged by eminent panelists from Cognizant Technology Solution. The participants had done an in-depth study on current trends in the Software Industry and they talked at length about niche strengths and improvement areas for various Indian companies and the multinational firms in India. The conclusion drawn by most teams hovered around the fact that Labour Arbitrage and Intellectual Arbitrage should go hand in hand for ensuring success of software firms and they should capitalize on core strengths on the basis of geography, language know-how and expertise gained in one particular technology or business domain.

This final round saw the 6 teams compete to decide the last team standing………… the ultimate managers…………… the Sultans of Business!

The jury expressed extreme satisfaction at the exploits and results of the six teams and finally the team from XLRI – NIRMAAN was adjudged the B - Sultans

Invest

Conceptualised in 2005, Invest strives to promotes excellence by encouraging management students interested in equity research and security markets as a career option, to display their potential to eminent professionals of the industry and gain new insights and ideas for further learning.

In the preliminary round of Invest 2006, participants from all over India were invited to submit an equity research report recommending a stock, out of the enlisted 200 stocks, elucidating Long Term Investment Strategy. Out of these, the 5 top entries were selected for the finals.

The jury included some renowned people like, 

 K. Ramachandran – Senior Vice-President, Head – Advisory Desk, BNP Paribas
 T. Balasubramanian – AVP, Adventity
 Prof K.V.S. Narayan Rao – NITIE

The jury gave their feedback about the performance of the participants and their opinion on "the current valuation of the stock market. Is the valuation overheated or are we observing a fundamentally correct growth" before the results were announced.

Winners – NITIE – Sameer & Vivek
Runners up – XLRI – Puneet & Apoorv

Finding out the best quizzing brains at NITIE' Prerana 2006.

The Prerana Business Quiz truly held its reputation as one of the best events, and served as the best ending to these enthralling three days. It brought out the best in the participants, and proved that it takes more than General Knowledge to be a brilliant quizzer.

The quiz master was none other than Gautam Bhimani of ESPN fame, and having Gautam host the show was the icing on the cake.

There was a preliminary elimination round in the afternoon, which was a written one. For the semi- final rounds, six teams of corporate and six teams of students had to be shortlisted. However, the preliminary rounds had led to a tie breaker, where in the students category, 5 teams were placed in the same position, and one of them would make it to the finals as the sixth team.  The Team from NMIMS, Govind and Shoubik cleared the tie-breaker, and became the sixth team.  

Among the corporate, 2 teams had the same scores, and the team Accenture and Jay Water Thompson, comprising of Saurabh and Gururaj respectively, cleared the tie breaker round to become the sixth team.

The finale was a interesting six round event, where all the teams gave their best. In between, there were Audience questions as well, with many prizes.

Finally, as the curtains came to a close, the third prize was won by the corporate team from TCS, second by the student team from IMT Ghaziabad, and the first prize by the corporate team from Deutshe Bank and Sun Micro systems. Mr. Bhimani was given a memento by our honorable director, Dr. S.D. Awale.

Thus ,came an end to this year's Prerana, truly a memorable event in many ways.
 

Source: By E-mail (November 6, 2006 / November 8, 2006)

published on IndianMBA.com on November 8, 2006 / November 9, 2006

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