Five post-graduate programme (PGP) students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have set up a Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) club to help students get hands-on experience by involving PE/VC players from India and abroad. Unlike finance clubs run by most B-schools in the country, this club exclusively focuses on PE and VC funding.

The lack of opportunities and experience in the PE and VC space led five students to set up the club called ‘Leverage’. With around 50 students interested in being members, the club will be a forum for students interested in all aspects of private equity and venture capital.

“We came up with an initial skeletal structure of the PE club by looking at institutes like Harvard and others from the Ivy League. But the end product has been entirely our idea of how a PE club should be. Although we prefer to call it an interest group for the time being, we plan to run a full-fledged club with more activities soon,” says Anirudh Singh, a member of the club.

“PE as an industry has boomed in India and we plan to invite speakers to the campus, hold conclaves, workshops and other events to provide a platform for the students and corporates to interact. Also, we are looking forward to hold intra-institute events, where the students can write an investment proposal and a panel of faculty members can judge them.

We have no restrictions when it comes to corporates as we would be involving both top- and middle-level players to encourage more and more activities in the field of PE and VC,” says Gagandeep Singh, another member of the club.

As part of formalising the club, the students are holding the first intra-institute event called the ‘Zen of Investing’, where the club plans to invite alumni working in the area of private equity, besides involving the faculty and students for the activity.

The club also has plans to tie-up with Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) students to getter a better perspective of private equity. “The PGPX students would be able to share their experiences about private equity and with their support, we plan to involve ourselves with the corporates in a deeper way through various activities, including projects and case workshops,” adds Anirudh Singh.

The club is in talks with a few corporates, who have shown interest in sponsoring the club.

“We are considering more options for funding besides the institute and the corporates we are in talks with. Currently, we are in the stage of gauging the responses from the people about the club,” says Anirudh Singh, before adding, “Although we have started out PE and VC, we may consider branching out to other areas like micro finance later.”

More : business-standard.com

Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow today announced its fourth six months General Management Programme for Defence officers. This 24 weeks General Management Programme is the fourth in a series of such programmes being organized for Defence officers, and the first at NOIDA campus. The programme is open to both short service commission officers and others. The programme was inaugurated today at the NOIDA campus by the Major General, SG Chatterji, VSM, Director General, Resettlement.

The response to the first three programmes conducted by IIML was a huge success with all 49 officers of the first programme and 60 of the second getting good job offers. The third batch, which is undergoing placements right now, is also witnessing a slew of great offers. This year after applying the selection criteria 59 Defence Officers from all three branches of the Armed forces have been selected for the programme. Out of the 59 Officers, 7 candidates are Lady Officers.

“Management education to defence personnel contributes to providing defence officers a second career choice after retirement. But the larger role in the national interest is to prepare a disciplined and responsible citizen to play important roles in today’s competitive business scenario” say Prof. NK Gupta & Prof. SC Bansal, Program Directors.

The Indian Armed Forces carefully selects Officers and continuously trains them in the art, science and craft of WINNING. Every year, hundreds of these Officers retire, with rich experience in learning, critical reasoning, objective decision making, creative thinking, leading and motivating people, running organisations and managing projects. The aim of the programme is to capitalize on these skills of the officers and optimize them to suit the corporate world’s requirements.

As in the past, the fourth programme is also expected to generate an enthusiastic response from the corporate world and given the intense nature of the programme it is sure to equip the participants with the necessary skill set so very essential to conquer the corporate world.

The objective of the GMP is to provide the participants with a basic understanding of the managerial systems and processes. The programme has been designed to provide the defence officers with basic functional inputs in subjects such as accounting and finance, decision sciences, organizational behavior, human resources management, communication skills, marketing, strategy, information technology and business environment.

The idea is to familiarize the officers with the requisite analytical tools and techniques; and develop a holistic perspective and global mindset to understand issues of an enterprise.

Source : prurgent.com

The Malaysian Institute of Integrity (IIM) will conduct a study to determine the level of perception of the people on a number of indexes.

The indexes are corruption; the quality of public service delivery; business ethics and social obligations; the stability of the family institution and community; the quality of life and community welfare; and also about people’s courteousness.

The study which began Tuesday and will run until Aug 31 is called ‘The National Integrity Perception Index Research Report 2008′.

“The study is aimed at evaluating the integrity perception level among Malaysians after four years of implementation of the National Integrity Plan. It is a mechanism of measurement to determine Malaysians’ perception of integrity given the country’s culture and situation,” IIM president Datuk Dr Mohd Tap Salleh said in a statement Tuesday.

He said the study, through questionnaires and personal interviews and involving 20,000 respondents, will use the services of 500 researchers or ‘enumerators’ who will have special passes issued by the Statistics Department.

Source : bernama.com.my

Leading business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact has roped in professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow to give its employees lessons in management skills and improving productivity.

Through electronically enabled interactive sessions, workers at Genpact’s operation hubs in Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Jaipur will learn the finer nuances of management, soft skills and strategic planning from senior professors of the business school.

This is an e-certificate programme in general management (e-CPGM) and there are 119 participants, most of whom have worked for one to three years.

“The objective of this programme is to develop managerial capabilities among people who are at the early stages of their career to enable them to effectively undertake managerial responsibilities,” said Ajay Singh, course director of IIM Lucknow.

The programme is divided into 12 modules. Keeping in mind the requirements of the industry, the modules are designed to create managerial and leadership competence among the professionals. There are 120 hours of e-enabled interactive sessions.

Singh said the programme was being run from IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus, which was being developed as a centre of excellence in the area of executive education.

The India headquartered Genpact operates service delivery centres in India, China, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the US.

An innovation expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will be visiting the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), in November to promote the importance of user-based innovations in creating successful companies.

“India and Indians residing worldwide have a wonderful record as innovators and entrepreneurs. I believe users tend to be the real developers of many important products. Recently, research by my colleagues has shown that many new companies are started by users who become entrepreneurs. Learning about how user innovations foster the creation of successful new companies will be very useful information for IIM students and others in India,” says Eric von Hippel, professor and head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and professor of Engineering Systems at MIT.

It will be his first trip to India, which he also intends to use “to forge closer contacts with my colleagues at IIM-A, who have very similar research interests”.

The lecture is part of a two-week long ‘Inventors of India’ workshop by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A. About 70 inventors and innovators of all ages and technical background are expected to be present at the event. Premier institutes could also be called to participate at the workshop.

“Eric will participate and may give the inaugural address at the workshop. In addition, he will interact with the faculty and students and explore possibilities of collaborative research. Apart from visiting some grassroot innovators, he will interact with our incubatee companies as well. Several things are being planned and we are quite excited about his visit. Also, we may ask institutes like National Institute of Design (NID) and Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), to pitch in,” says Rakesh Basant, chairman of CIIE and a professor at IIM-A.

An expert in Principle of Developing Economics, Eric has made two of his books available openly on his website at no cost to the reader: Democratising Innovation, published in 2005 by the MIT Press, and Sources of Innovation, published in 1988 by Oxford University Press. Leading companies in the world have used practical methods based on his research.

Hippel is also expected to meet grassroot innovators at SRISTI, an NGO founded by Anil Gupta, a professor at IIM-A. Incidentally, Gupta too would be lecturing at MIT as part of the Amy Smith’s International design and development course on July 16-17.

More : business-standard.com

The new admission policy adopted by the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L), has resulted in high “admission acceptance rate”. In 2007, the last admitted candidate was ranked 85th on the waiting list, but this year the rank has dropped to just 25. The fact assumes importance because IIM-L has increased the number of seats from 270 to 330 this year but, despite that, it has managed to fill seats quite easily compared to last year.

The final selections, as per the admission policy 2008, have been done after taking into account the performance of the candidates right from class X till graduation, Combined Admission Test (CAT) results, group discussion and personal interview (GDPI) and work experience. “The comprehensive evaluation also provided us better candidates to select from,” Prof SKB Nair, chairman admissions, told TOI.

The selection was done in two stages. In the first stage, candidates were assessed on a five-point scale that included CAT 2007 score (30%), class X marks (5%), class XII (5%), graduation marks (5%) and experience profile (5%). The experience profile was rated on the basis of the period of work experience in months. Lowest 0.5 marks were given for 9-11 months work experience and highest five marks were allotted for work experience of 72 months or more.

In the second stage that was also on a five-point scale, candidates were assessed on the basis of their written ability test (10%), group discussion (10%), personal interview (20%), quality of academic qualification (5%) and quality of work experience (5%). Sum of all the 10 components (stage one and two take together) were taken for a final score of the candidates for preparing merit list for the final selections. Of 1586 candidates called for GDPI, 375 had been called exclusively by IIM-L.

The main list declared by GDPI had 734 candidates, including SC/ST, OBC and physically-challenged. Besides, a waiting list of 200 candidates, only for general category, was also declared. As a back up plan, a list of 80 OBC candidates was released after Supreme Court’s OBC quota verdict. GDPI of these 80 OBC candidates were held in Delhi on May 16 and 17. “Since we had more number of candidates who got calls only from IIM-L, the acceptance rate was high,” explained Prof Nair. Classes will start at IIM-L by June 26. However, candidates will be accommodated till June 30, as many change from one IIM to another till the last moment.

Another reason, according to the faculty members, for ‘high acceptance rate’ could be that IIM-L was one of the most affordable among all IIMs. The fee hike for the session 2008-09 in PGP course had been only Rs 50,000 (from Rs 2 lakh per annum to Rs 2.50 lakh). Further, the institute had given need-based scholarships worth Rs 48 lakh to 86 students in the previous session, the highest among all IIMs as per the officials. The scholarship amount may go up even further in the coming session.

More : timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The IIM tag is earning for army officers what it regularly earns for students straight out of college: big bucks.

Over 90 per cent of the officers who made up the first batch of the Directorate-General of Resettlement-sponsored business management certificate course for the armed forces at IIM Calcutta were placed before completing the six-month course.

And the average salary was about Rs 13 lakh-plus per annum. Some got offers of more than Rs 20 lakh per annum for senior management positions, including those of chief operating officer.

Over 20 companies from various sectors — from retail and marketing to construction, information technology to banking — recruited from the campus. The companies included the Sharaf Group, ITC, ICICI Bank, Cummins, Wipro and Apeejay Group.

“The officers have immense manpower management skills and are extremely target-driven, which makes them ideal for corporate positions. But we are surprised by the response from companies,” said Prafulla Agnihotri, the programme director.

The second batch of army men expects the companies to queue up when their course ends in September. For many of the participants, who are between 27 and 55 years old, the course is an opportunity to break out of a mould.

“There is a notion that former armymen are best suited to jobs in administration or security. But army officers are capable of much more,” said brigadier Atul Mishra, a part of the second batch.

The 55-year-old wants to put into practice in the corporate world what he has learnt during his 34 years in the army. “Management is what we have been doing all our lives though we did not have formal education in the field.”

Major Biju, a member of the first batch, felt that it helped him get acquainted with the “terminology and technicalities” of the corporate world.

More : telegraphindia.com

Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta has sent provisional offer letters of admissions to nine successful candidates belonging to the other backward classes (OBC) category as per the earlier directive of the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD).

An official spokesman of IIM-C said admissions for the 2008-10 batch were being finalised and the provisional letters of offer were being sent. However, this would be subject to the directive from the MHRD expected any day now. This directive is expected to take note of the Supreme Court ruling on the issue.

Against 300 students admitted last year, about 318 are expected to make it to the Joka campus of the IIM here this year. Classes begin on June 23.

June 18-19 are the registration dates and the offer letters will enable them to make necessary preparations and expedite the admission process, the spokesman said.

IIM-C had conducted interviews for 20 OBC candidates as per earlier schedules last week, asking the interviewees to sign an undertaking that they understood the circumstances in which the interviews were taking place and that the entire process would become null and void depending on the apex court order in this respect.

More : hindu.com

The programme is targeted at executives with minimum five years of work experience. According to IIM-K, eMEP 08 is designed to impart general management skills to working professionals to enhance effectiveness of their decisions. The programme is offered in support with HughesNet Global Education, a satellite based education and training service company.

According to IIM-K, the programme attempts to fulfill the demands of the Indian corporates for continued training and development of its executive workforce by offering a wide spectrum of courses encompassing all functional areas of Management.

The programme will commence from September, 2008. eMEP’s course is designed to impart management knowledge and skills to the participants covering the latest concepts and techniques in various functional areas of business and management. The programme will be taught by faculty from IIM-K and visiting faculty from other academic institutions and industry.

According to IIM-K, for eMEP, the selection is based on executive Management Aptitude Test (eMAT) conducted by IIM-K and interviews of short-listed candidates based on the eMAT. The test will be held on July 13, 2008. Graduates or CA/ ICWA having atleast 5 years of work experience in IT, Human Resources, Marketing, Banking, Financial Services and Manufacturing sectors are eligible for eMEP. Candidates can apply for the programme till June 21, 2008.

Source : mbauniverse.com

It seems that legal eagles too, need their dose of management fundas. To help them along, IIM Lucknow (IIML) is organising two management development programmes (MDPs) in June, both related to the legal arena. While the first is on ‘Intellectual Property Management for business advantage’, the second deals with ‘effective contract management and dispute resolution’.

The programmes would be conducted by Dr Dharmendra S Sengar, professor of law & chairman, legal management group at IIM-L. He is a Senior Fulbright fellow with over 25 years of experience in teaching, training, research and consulting at various prestigious institutes in India.

The first three-day programme is aimed at middle as well as senior-level business managers, connected in any way with Intellectual Property issues.

The course seeks to arm them with modern legal tools to manage their business effectively and gain competitive advantage. This is done, among other things, through providing knowledge about the legal tools necessary for managing intellectual assets of an organisation, equipping the participants with knowledge and skill useful in evaluating and promoting legal strategies for the protection of IP and managing more effectively the potential legal risks in using IP assets while doing e-commerce.

The second MDP is designed to benefit anyone involved in managing public, private, PSUs or NGO sector business affairs and contracts, including industry executives.

More : economictimes.indiatimes.com