The world renowned Cranfield School of Management in the UK will present a scholarship to any member of the three leading IFAC accountancy bodies in Sri Lanka, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the Institute of Chartered Accountants Sri Lanka (ICASL) or the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants Sri Lanka Branch (CIMA). Full Time MBA Programme Director Sean Rickard who informed Sri Lanka of the scholarship said, “We hope the scholarship attracts candidates who will benefit from this initiative and that, with the help of the accounting bodies in Sri Lanka, it will raise Cranfield’s profile. We are extremely grateful for the support of the institutes in this. We will be reviewing the success of the programme after two years.”

ACCA Sri Lanka’s Immediate Past President, Dilshan Rodrigo, himself an alumni of the Cranfield School of Management extends his best wishes to all candidates and says, “I hope most sincerely that this initiative will signal the birth of a new generation of professional skilled managers who will add value to the corporate boardrooms of Sri Lanka.” Stating that this is truly a world class MBA ranked consistently as one of the top MBAs in Europe, he adds, “This one year full time programme is ideally suited for members in middle and senior management positions with ambitious career goals.” Rodrigo, who has continued to maintain ties with Cranfield, further reinforced the relationship once he became President of ACCA Sri Lanka, sourcing resource speakers for the ACCA National Conferences in the last two years. “Two people who played significant roles in mooting this scholarship from the Cranfield end are the former Director of the MBA Programme Professor Leo Murray who was the Keynote Speaker at our conference in 2006 and has a soft spot for Sri Lankans and Sri Sriskanthan, a Sri Lankan faculty member on the MBA programme.”

Cranfield has produced a distinguished honour roll of MBA alumni from Sri Lanka over the last two decades including Managing Director of Hatton National Bank Rajendra Theagarajah, Senior Vice President of WNS Arul Sivagananathan and Group Financial Controller of Stretchline Hasantha de Silva. Members of ICASL, ACCA and CIMA must apply directly to Cranfield School of Management, for which instructions are available on the Cranfield website ww.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/mba/, marking the application ‘Sri Lanka Scholarship’.

More : dailymirror.lk

In business, it’s the early bird that rakes in the moolah. Taking cue from the age-old proverb, two MBA students have turned entrepreneurs even before graduating.

H.R. Sampreet and Saurav Dhiman, second-year students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have launched their own company, Enfount Business Solutions. Their maiden venture is Bulkdeals.co.in, a Bangalore-based online retail window specialising in institutional and organisational buying of laptops, desktops and other electronic items.

“Across campuses, students form groups to buy computers so retailers give them a discount,” said Sampreet. “But this happens locally and in an unorganised manner,” he explained.

The duo saw a business opportunity in this campus trend and created an online platform that is a one-stop-shop for bulk deals of laptops and desktops of all brands.

“Here, students can register and get great deals directly from the brands,” Sampreet said. “We estimate this to be a Rs 200-400 crore market. The brands, too, were looking for a single window to reach out to the student community. We had the business model and wanted to hit the market early, so we started even before graduating,” he added.

The company is partnering with almost all top brands such as Dell, LG, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and HCL.

The website had over 1,000 visitors in the first three days of its launch and already has more than 300 members and over 20 registered colleges, including all the IITs.

When asked how they plan to balance studies with running a business, Saurav said: “It is all about time management. Our business requires just two or three hours a day, which we can easily put in.”

More : telegraphindia.com

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

Samford University’s Brock School of Business is changing the schedule of its evening MBA program.

The graduate program - taken often by working professionals - is being revamped into two semesters that are nine weeks each with a 10-week summer semester, the school reported Thursday.

The program used to have five, nine-week terms in a year.

Under the new schedule, each course will meet for a two-hour class each week, giving students more time to study and learn the material, school officials said.

“We have retained the flexibility and convenience for working professionals through the option of attending one evening a week,” said Larry Harper, director of Graduate and Executive Education Programs at the Brock School of Business in a news release. “In addition, students can complete the degree in as little as 12 months by attending full-time or 22 months by attending part-time.”

The new curriculum covers all business functions and is designed to offer a more complete general management experience. Students also learn to exercise ethical business practices.

“Managers need comprehensive skills and sound values in order to achieve the disparate goals of their investors, customers, employees and the public at large,” said Beck A. Taylor, dean of the Brock School of Business. “At the Brock School, our charge is to help current and aspiring managers to discover solutions that meet these goals.”

The evening MBA program is the oldest in the state of Alabama and takes applications year round. Students can enter the program in January, June and August.

More : bizjournals.com

Education should focus more on morals and ethics and should fight against fundamentalism, St. Joseph’s College principal Friday Ambrose Pinto said on Thursday. Education for the poor too is a vital aspect that should be taken up, he added. As Pinto speaking at ‘with relevance Excellence “, a conference of Catholic College of Karnataka on Thursday.

Speaking on ‘Vision of Christian higher education and its overview, and implications of Christian education, education Friday Pinto said should make people more moral and humanizes them. “While maintaining the highest standards, its demands that we produce a radical change in the person we educate - from selfish concerns to generosity to others.”

Emphasising on education for the poor, Pinto said Friday: “Education should struggle against unjust society, it should cater more to the poor and programmes should be taken up to empower them. Principal of St. Stephen’s in New Delhi, Dr Anil Wilson called for steps to rediscover the real meaning and purpose of education. “Let systemic changes be a reasoned response to needs and not a knee-jerk reaction to the time.”

The objective of the day-long conference was to create a model which is yet local to global, spiritually vibrant, socially relevant, emotionally balanced and leading to human enrichment. Deliberations also included topics like, if excellence in education can be fused with greater accessibility to Christian institutions.

Among the other speakers were Professor Jose and PD Leader of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Rev. Joe Fernandes, Vice-Provincial, Salesians of Don Bosco, Bangalore and Head and Professor, Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, Joe De Mannath .

An extension of the knowledge base, more than anything else, strength of will of the Indian economy in the 21 century, as it is a conscious move to a central pillar of the knowledge of the nation’s Development planning.

This was the message that resonate in every conversation in recent weeks with companies and researchers throughout India.

At the opening of the annual summit of partnership, the Confederation of Indian Industry in Kolkata invited donors mid-January, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a plan to establish a Commission of knowledge. His agenda specific to know, but Mr. Singh’s message was loud and clear: the time for Inde’s leap is here.

Economically, India is at its best post-war period. The currency reserves exceed $ 131 billion - sufficient funds for imports rose by nearly two years. And the knowledge base has been too long without continually expanded is a strength.

“Think big, bold feel about our country,” said Singh, his audience, mostly corporate India.

India is on the cutting edge of knowledge, not only before the command of the English language. The level of competence in English, without the benefits of knowledge in many areas, none other than the ability to work for low English Master.

It would not be a nation globally competitive. Japan launched its leap without much spoken English and second in the world of the economy. Thus, China.

India is now better placed than postwar Japan and China. His brain is enormous power and English is an official language by far across the country. The association represents the new generation of specialists in India with their Western counterparts in technological capacity, economy and ingenuity of each platform oratory is rare in developing countries.

It is this combination of brains and language, that India is the main meeting point for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), otherwise known as information technology capable of services (IT-ES).

With this advantage, the Indians have the brain bank working more software, keeping accounts and Back-Office, functions for Western groups.

Today, American schoolchildren Santa Barbara after Michigan and Massachusetts are learning math and science online every day by the guardians to rest in places like Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the South India. The potential of this new service line is so great that “approximately U.S. $ 10 million-$ 12 million to the economy this year.

India, the assets in emerging countries tutoring, “said the president’s career launcher, Satya Narayanan, supra, was on January 16 at national level will be put into circulation daily, The Indian Express, mental strength is its superior in comparison with competitors like the Philippines, Singapore and one in Asia - Pacific countries.

Launcher is a career 10 Online brain, that school in Massachusetts, USA. There is also some 20 years, earns $ 350 per month for a pocket money tutoring online and USA children, as tutors say that the Americans in their own curriculum is never difficult, because “we Indians are intellectually superior.”

These allegations prahlerisch it may seem. But how is beyond try to study, many American and European certificate India brain power by one against competitors in the allocation of work in India demand for high intellectual performance for the recruitment of graduates of Indian universities learning.

“The best of India is comparable to the best in the world,” says Dr. G. Prakash Apte, director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), it was found that 200 super-brain of each year.

The support of this thesis, Pawan Kumar, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is now President and Chief Executive Officer of software developer VMoksha Technologies, said that in the years 1980, software, state - US field and was a “person outside India, India was thought likely to produce software.”

We now but the situation has changed, America and the world are in India hit the doors of orders. This country deserves $ 12.5 billion last year, outsourcing services, with an increase of 16.5 billion dollars this year. In addition, Indian people overseas, many of them in key positions of jobs in global companies, pump $ 4 billion-$ 5 billion per year.

India brain Well, Mr. Kumar said, is reflected in the structure of the population and the number of graduates license and other specific qualifications Indian universities and institutes of higher learning.

More than 500 million Indians are under 25 years. About six million of them deserve a bachelor of science, economics or art each year and 400000 others deserve to graduate engineers. Nearly half of these graduates of engineering software specialization.

In addition, 1200 young men and women specializing in the areas of management and technology just over half a dozen institutes of engineering, technology and management, as IIMB, across the country.

If his intention was evozieren a sense of patriotism and pride among young graduates of IIM Bangalore, M. Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, doubtless succeeded.

Time, the convocation address on the 30 annual Convocation of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Mr. Anand Mahindra, invited the graduates to create a model of capitalism compassion and investment with integrity. ”

He advised the students strap on an anti-gravity belt, had three buttons: one to turn off their failure mechanisms of protection, the second to activate its secret weapons (brahmastra) and the third to activate self-belief. In his view, India is not USP’s Low-Cost yet the advantage of linguistic knowledge in English, but ensuring the lowest cost through innovation. Following the example of how Mahindra’s Scorpio R & D team, he said, “We are against a fee of $ 120 million, while the USA have not done so to $ 600 million.”

IIM-B Terming as “one of the best business schools in the world,” these studies Harvard Graduate asked the party from 2005 to tackle the gravity and soar high. ”

“You are the first generation of Indians to be completely free. You are diploma, if India wins its second freedom fight,” he said.

On the convocation today, four students were the headlines a Fellow of the IIM-B, 192 students were established by the degree of post-graduate diploma in management, 54 students have graduated from a PG software business management and 28 students were graduates PG-Public Policy.

INDIA could leverage their cost-cum-competence of his great talent of a potential innovation of the race, which is not only the exchange would be made innovation, but also where R & D on the basis of innovation centres, which by Western societies, because scientists defined Dr. RA Mashelkar.

Time, the convocation address in the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), the Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr Mashelkar said real and unique, India offers a genuine Global R & D platform has been enormous. He said, to the costs of R & D is the share in the developed world as a whole move of India’s R & D was last year, 5 billion, less than the budget for R & D Companies like Pfizer one.

The assertion of one dollar in India offers much more than anywhere else in the world with Indian world-class technical staff, 250 universities, 1500 units of R & D, several IITS and engineering colleges, said the Dr Mashelkar has been an extraordinary rich resource that has been insufficient within the space of the Indian R & D chance. ”

Dr Mashelkar was proud of indicating that National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) of CSIR has been a pioneer in benefits and recognition of the need to technoglobalism. The process of globalization of R & D NCL began in 1989 and today it has an impressive list of international clients such as DuPont, Dow and Eastman, ICI, General Electric, Cargill, and UOP.

He told NCL: “We believe always ask what the basis of competence, skills and technologies, we must build? Rather than the stereotype question of what products or processes that we need to develop and market? “This change in the strategy, he said, though released, what happens in” NCL important objective for many chemical companies through Today’s World “.

Dr Mashelkar did not share the idea that the real advantage of the expansion in India as a hub of innovation, which is characterized by foreigners rather than Indian companies. He cites a school of thought, prove that gradually reverse the brain drain. Given that India is a large site R & D in the world with the best companies are their biggest challenges of R & D in India - whether in preparing its new Intel chips or GE organization its last reactor manufacturer - it would normal Indian scientists stay here, to meet association and also satisfy his love for his children grow up in India.

He said that outsourcing to India, the objective of R & D as a place in several other areas. He cited the example of drugs and medicines, he said more and more emphasis on diseases for the poor - along with the overall development of social insurance funds say that there are still opportunities that India could become a target for the creation of global knowledge for global good by the overall funding.

He said that the challenge was, as we continue to tap the incredible dynamism of global R & D, so that the institutions and Indian companies might think, managing the creation of highly paid jobs and development of new industries.

This would require, he said, “a sustained commitment to investment in science and technology to strengthen research infrastructure, skills development and ways to quickly integrate new knowledge and technologies into products and the increasing access to sources of innovation, development of technology centres incentives and government, protection, including protection of intellectual property on science-based High-Tech-inventions.

Who are the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs of the corporate world? Ever heard of co-opetition? And how does one term mutual funds that will not cover liquor companies?

Not just the competitors, even the audience had a fun time, guessing answers to these questions at the finals of the business quiz, conducted by the IIM-Ahmedabad Alumni Association’s (IIM-AAA), Chennai chapter, here on Sunday.

In the end, when the Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Tiruchi, walked away with the IIM-AAA Anchor Cup 2006, it was a well-earned victory, followed by S.S.N School of Management in the second place and Bangalore’s ICFAI Business School in the third. The P.S.G Institute of Management, Coimbatore, stood fourth.

The quiz was being held to sensitise business school students in south India to the latest corporate happenings, said A. Satish Kumar, president, IIM-AAA Chennai chapter. Anchor Health and Beauty Care was the chief sponsor.

The preliminary written test had been conducted in Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore and Madurai. The finals consisted of 12 rounds, including an audio-visual round, two oral rounds and a rapid fire round, with quizmaster S. Jagan keeping the momentum going.

The last winner of the trophy was also BIM in 1994 after which the quiz was discontinued till the IIM-AAA decided to re-launch it, Mr. Satish Kumar said.

Handing over the cup to the winning team, N. Murali, Joint Managing Director, The Hindu , said such quiz contests should be made part of the college curriculum as they were not just clean fun but also of educational value.

THE SECOND batch complete the Graduate Diploma in Post-Infrastructure Management (PGDIM), proposed by the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), is scheduled for the beginning of the School of Management for buildings, facilities and development strategies (MINDS) India, here.

The PGDIM one year full-time for graduates in all disciplines of engineering sciences, including agriculture and the technical architecture and doctorates in other disciplines.

The program focuses on planning tools, project management, Contract Management, Infrastructure Finance, Information and communication technologies (ICTs), applications and geographic information systems; strategic environmental assessment, legal and regulatory environment and emerging paradigms.

ISD signed a Memorandum of Understanding

The city-based Dayananda Sagar institutions (ISD) has, in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uganda as a technical partner and academic institutions of higher education is it in Uganda, for the know - make the ISD.

The partnership, according to the authorities JG allows upgradation of existing programs and new programs from time to time in institutions of higher education in Uganda. “DSI, put its infrastructure and the Faculty for teachers and students work on joint programmes and Bangalore in Uganda,” she said.

In addition to the partnership allows the exchange of professors and students between universities in Uganda and DSI.

DSI receive students in universities in Uganda charging on its institutions of higher education within the partnership.

The technical and scientific cooperation in information technology, engineering, management, languages, health sciences and health care.

As part of the agreement, which Sagar group will help to plan and build a pediatric health care in Uganda with the commitment to the development of national centres of education in this country, JG President D. Hemachandra Sagar.

The declaration of intent was signed by Fred Beyendoca, High Commissioner and Nimisha Madhvani, Deputy High Commissioner of the Government of India in Uganda, and Dr. Sagar.