Walk through the halls of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business during the school year, and along with students cramming facts for macroeconomics and operating strategy you may encounter some students stretching their bodies and doing something really unusual for business school students: relaxing.

They’re members of Chicago’s yoga club, a student group founded earlier this year by two GSB students and which last term attracted 15 to 35 regular attendees to classes in the school’s Harper Center. The classes are “time to shut your brain off,” says Jody Kirchner, one of the group’s founders.

The Chicago GSB yoga classes reflect a growing popularity of yoga in the U.S., with about 16 million Americans engaging in the practice, according to statistics released by Yoga Journal. The publication said $5.7 billion is spent annually on yoga classes and products, nearly twice as much as four years ago.
Indian Odyssey

During a school-sponsored trip to India last year, Kirchner and fellow student Doug Neal bonded over a mutual interest in yoga. Kirchner and Neal, who both had been practicing yoga for years before they met, eventually decided to start a group dedicated to the practice on campus—after Kirchner noticed that other business schools had yoga groups, but Chicago didn’t.

In midyear, Neal, a 2008 MBA graduate, and Kirchner, a rising second-year student and co-chair of the club, conducted an interest survey for the group. Of the 1,100 students attending the school, about 200 expressed interest.

Kirchner said she was surprised at the large response the survey garnered, finding that a sizable portion of the student population already practiced yoga, at least to some extent. “People I know outside of school say the same thing,” she said. “After a stressful day, it’s time they can do something easily to take their mind off their stress.”

Neal says yoga isn’t just for stress relief. “Yoga is very multifaceted, and the benefits of yoga are different for each person,” he said. “Some use it for exercise, for meditation poses, some for relaxation, some for injuries.”

MUMBAI, India — Rediff.com India Limited (Nasdaq: REDF), one of the leading worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services for Indians, announced the appointment of Rashesh C. Shah as an Independent Director to its Board. Mr. Shah has also been appointed as a member of the Audit Committee.

Mr. Shah is currently CEO of Edelweiss Capital Limited. He also serves on the Boards of several Edelweiss subsidiaries and other companies. Edelweiss Capital is a leading financial services company based in Mumbai, India, whose businesses include investment banking, securities broking and investment management.

Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman of the Board at Rediff.com India Limited said, “I am delighted to welcome Rashesh to the Board. He joins us with extensive experience and strong financial skills generated from his career in the financial services industry. His expertise will be of great benefit to the Board.”

Mr. Shah is an MBA graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Science from the University of Bombay. He is also a Diploma holder in International Trade from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi.

To head an organisation in the midst of a major solvency crisis and to leave it when punters are betting on it as the next best thing, you need more than luck. Riding the rising economy wave, RM Malla, who ended his tenure at IFCI earlier this month, left the organisation at, what many call, ‘a period of dawn’. In his new role as the chairman of Sidbi, he has to increase credit access to SMEs by giving the bank a strategic direction. When Mr Malla joined IFCI in 2001, it was reeling under the effect of bad lending in the late 90s. He had to run the organisation, yet was mandated not to lend. The FI found its feet again after a major restructuring of proposals that took shape during Mr Malla’s tenure. His former colleagues describe him as a good team leader, who was astute. “He could cut across all levels of hierarchy, and communicate,” says one of them. Some describe Mr Malla as having skills of a trader. He was instrumental in fund raising activities, and could sacrifice his self pride for the sake of the organisation, they say.
The wheel of fortune turned for IFCI, on the back of a property boom. Apart from real estate, the all-powerful security enforcement law, which allows lenders and owners of bad loans to acquire the borrowers’ assets, have helped IFCI re-price itself. Each of these bad loans can unlock real estate worth thousands of crores of rupees, capturing mind space of investors. Mr Malla was lucky to be at the helm of affairs during this phase. But this MBA graduate from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, is sometimes criticised for not giving direction to IFCI over the past six years, when the morale of its employees remained low and bred listlessness. “Maybe, he is moving away at the right time,” says a colleague.
Mr Malla, started his professional career as a probationary officer in Syndicate Bank in 1975, where he handled various areas of core commercial banking like resource mobilisation, advances to small industries and foreign exchange. He switched gears to developmental banking when he joined IDBI in the middle management cadre in December 1979. During the two decades that followed, he held responsibilities in various capacities at the head office and branches, including business development, treasury & funding, corporate finance, accounts, merchant banking, human resources and administration. He subsequently rose to the position of executive director of IDBI. He joined IFCI in 2001 after he took voluntary retirement from IDBI. He joins Sidbi at a time when SMEs are facing a number of challenges including raising resources at competitive rates. His job will involve increasing Sidbi’s branch network to reach out to SME clusters, tying up with other banks and institutions for channel financing arrangements, co-financing and developing innovative products for the SME clients, besides managing portfolio of ailing State Finance Corporations.