Bharat Sharma says that exchanging daily notes with his faculty mentor at KIAMS was the key to a successful summer internship at Kalyani- Lemmerz Ltd.

When Bharat Sharma was selected for a Summer Internship at Kalyani-Lemmerz Ltd. in Pune, he knew it was going to be an acid test of the management skills acquired at KIAMS. Kalyani-Lemmerz is a JV between the Kalyani Group and Hayes Lemmerz, Germany – the world leader in wheel rim technology, supplying to automotive manufacturers like Daimler Benz, General Motors, Ford and Volvo, among others. The KLL management had outlined a very clear-cut Operations project for him – how to reduce the cycles time of the machines on the shop floor. A B.Tech in Electronics and Communication, Bharat knew well that his Engineering background was going to be of little use in the KLL manufacturing unit in Khed, Pune. The success or failure of his SIP would depend entirely on the ‘KIAMS effect’. When he embarked on his journey from Harihar to join KLL, Pune, there were many doubts in his mind, but if there was one thing he was absolutely sure about, it was that the KIAMS family would stand by him, come what may.

“The one thing that I absolutely love about KIAMS is its diversity of students and faculty. And yet, it always feels like you are part of one big family. Coming from the extremes of Noida and Jaipur, the moderate climate and greenery at KIAMS have been a welcome change. But if there is one thing that is a hallmark of my first year at KIAMS, it has to be the vast amount of experiential learning that came my way. Probably because of the formidable Kirloskar brand, KIAMS actually presents a small sample of corporate life to its students. In hindsight, all this was great preparation for the SIP at Kalyani-Lemmerz.”

Everyday for the next two months, Bharat Sharma was on the KLL shop floor at 8:30 AM Sharp, moving from one machine to the other, noting the cycle time and observing the process. At all these times, he also keeps a sharp eye out for any area where time could be reduced by applying the Operations Management concepts taught at KIAMS. There were huge challenges he faced in order to do this. He was required to conduct motion studies on machine operators, but a motion study is done on a single operator on a daily basis, while operators on the shop floor were not fixed, but worked on a contractual basis. This meant that the operator that was his subject for motion study on a given day may not have been present the day after that. The other big challenge was that quite a few of the activities that were time consuming and contributed to cycle time were safety measures for the operators. Challenging these measures without due thought could have proved hazardous.

“The Production Manager was very supportive, and guided me well at the conceptual level. The Line Supervisor was also of help at the hands-on level. But for all practical purposes, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get far without the always-at-hand support of my faculty mentor, Prof. E. Anand, and my alumni mentor, Dill Saphal. Almost on a daily basis, I would be involved in detailed discussions on the challenges I faced, and my mentors and faculty members at KIAMS would be sharing focused reading material with me, which was invaluable.”

It was an altogether different high for Bharat Sharma when, after just two months of  internship, three of his recommendations for reducing cycle time were accepted and implemented by the management on the shop floor of Kalyani-Lemmerz Ltd.  At the end of his SIP, Bharat was appreciated by the Plant Head as well as the VP, HR, for doing a “great job”.

“Right from scheduling my interview at Kalyani-Lemmerz (by Ms. Shruti Das of the Placement Cell), to getting the right mentors, KIAMS played the supporting role to perfection. It is for this reason that I would like to advise my juniors to always be in touch with their faculty guides and mentors at KIAMS as they have seen their students closely not just in the classes, but also through the SIPs . They are the best guides and advisors that they are likely to have.”

Bharat Sharma is now absolutely certain that the best attitude to carry to the corporate world is ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’. He credits KIAMS with showing him that in today’s world it is no longer the fittest who will survive, but the ones who are capable of adapting to given circumstances.

New KIAMS entrepreneurship club, Udaan, aims to encourage students to think beyond.

With the creation of an entrepreneurship cell, Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) has taken one more step towards providing its students a holistic learning environment.

Founded by second-year KIAMS student Shailendra Chaturvedi, the club aims to promote creative thinking among students, motivate them to take up the challenges of entrepreneurship, equip them with the necessary skills and provide them any assistance they may need.

Outlining the activities planned by the club, Shailendra said they would organise entrepreneurship development programmes such as workshops, seminars and case studies of start-ups. They would also hold a business plan competition every year, arrange meetings with entrepreneurs and guide and assist students in various aspects of entrepreneurship such as preparing project reports, obtaining project approval and acquiring loans and.

According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies and Confederation of Indian Industry, if India wants to be a developed country by 2020, it needs to create 10 million jobs.

“Entrepreneurship is the only answer,” said Shailendra.

“In India we have a large number of technical and management institutions, churning out a large number of engineers and managers but most of them are job seekers, instead of job generators. To change the trend, to produce job generators, we need to produce entrepreneurs.”

This entrepreneurship cell is an endeavour “to encourage students and professionals alike to think beyond conventional boundaries, to think beyond having a secure future, to stop giving into the pressures of everyday life, to stop living their fears and start living their dreams, to keep faith in themselves even in the toughest of times, to foster the spirit of creating something unique, creating their own space, their own impression, in their own way, with their own sweat and blood.”

Shailendra felt that KIAMS students and the institute itself will both benefit from the creation of the e-cell. Students will develop the skills necessary to think and act entrepreneurially, identify new business opportunities, learn to manage a family business and learn to turn their ideas into marketable innovations. They will benefit from increased employability as companies prefer students with enterprising qualities like innovation, leadership and problem-solving.

In turn, KIAMS will get a chance to build a network with existing entrepreneurship communities and many prestigious B-Schools. It would do this while increasing its branding and publicity through a newsletter which will be going to many corporate houses and educational institutions.

The e-cell, named UDAAN, is already having an effect.

One of the selected first-year representatives, Nikita, said at first she “was not at all interested in becoming an entrepreneur” but as she learned more about the e-cell and entrepreneurship, “my point of view truly changed.”

Fellow first-year rep, K. Girish, said he did a lot of research about entrepreneurship cells at various B-Schools, which made him realise how big a thing this group was and what prominence it had in other B-Schools.

“This made me want to be the entrepreneur rep even more because I would be given the chance to put forth my ideas and grow this club in KIAMS.”

And the third club rep, Vikas Kalani, said: “All three of us hope to take UDAAN to a new height as it was a dream to be lived and felt. We will make UDAAN an important and essential part of KIAMS.”

Presenting KIAMS to The Public is Brand Club’s Goal

Spreading the word about Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) is the aim of the Brand Club. Their goal, said co-ordinators, is “to bring to the world news, events and happenings of KIAMS that have a positive effect on our lives, every day.” There are seven members who co-ordinate the various activities of the Brand Club, which include making sure various events like quizzes, seminars and B-plan competitions are always on the agenda for the benefit of the batch. KIAMS organizes various events throughout the year and the co-ordinators said: “Our club’s work is to publicize these events through various social media networks.” Being involved in the Brand Club serves to enhance the educational experience they are receiving at KIAMS.

“Organizing the various events of KIAMS gives us hands-on experience and gives an opportunity to learn things not taught in books. It makes us street smart,” said the co-ordinators. It also allows them to put textbook theories into practice at the events. “Various theories like the Gantt Chart have been used by us to keep the events running smoothly,” they said. Their work, however, is not without challenges which have to be overcome.

“A common challenge we face every day is the language barrier and we keep good contact with the locals, who help us in the various events like some research work and Pragati-type events.” Choosing to have co-ordinators rather than a leader or president tends to make the task of running the club less demanding. “Having co-ordinators is in fact easier,” they said, “because all of us are equally adept at handling the various activities of the club. The team functions as a whole and things are divided as and when they arise.” While it is a student-run club, faculty member are always on hand to help whenever they are needed.

“Ours is a student club which highlights the various student activities organized by the batch,” said the co-ordinators. “The faculty plays a supervisory role whenever necessary.”

Understanding Operations The Aim of KIAMS “Virtual” Operations Club

A “virtual club”, the Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) Operations Club’s goal is to gain a good understanding of
operations.

Club members said they want to learn “what is really happening in the industry.”

A relatively new Operations club, began in 2011 and consists of 13 members from the seniors, 10 from the juniors, three faculty members and alumni. Because the Operations Club is a “virtual club” operating online, it doesn‘t have any co-ordinators. “We just have initiators – students who started the club,” said club members. Being an online activity, anyone can initiate a discussion and we all participate.” With a forum on Facebook, “We get a lot of responses from the students. For example if we post on a particular topic, students usually give their point of view on that particular topic and will give live corporate examples in which the concept is being used.”

The club has also caught the attention of KIAMS faculty.

“Earlier there was input only from students, but now faculty as well as alumni working in the operations sector also comment on the topics,” said club members. “It’s a two-way interaction. If students have any questions, they can ask their questions on the forum and the faculty/alumni always respond.”

In addition to its online activities the club does organize some events.

“We do have some sub-events happening during Pragati. Even during Operacy we organize some Ops-based quizzes – themes may differ from year to year.” Being in the club, having to manage time for discussions, members have learned if having a face-to-face discussion doesn’t work they can always connect on Facebook and have an online discussion. It’s a continuous process providing daily interaction with classroom knowledge forming the basis of discussion.

As with any organization, there are challenges to be faced. “One challenge that we face is that sometimes new concepts that we post as topics on our FB forum get only bookish answers from students,” said club members. “Earlier, when the faculty and alumni were not a part of this forum, we were not making much progress in terms of real-life examples being given to us. Also, sometimes when we want actual data, or examples of real-time implementations, getting them can get difficult. But with the faculty and alumni coming in, it’s now much better.”

While Prof. R.N. Venkateshwara helped start the club and even held a session on an operations topic to help members to understand the field, students took over the club from there.

“But we do have a lot of support from faculty and alumni on our online page,” club members said. Future plans include converting the  club from a “virtual” organization to a physical one, but in the interim they can be contacted at their Facebook thread: https://www.facebook.com/groups/161946767207751/

Kalasanchay: KIAMS Cultural Club is a Platform For Student Talent

There’s more to life at Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies than lectures, and Kalasanchay, the cultural club, provides it.

Kalasanchay gives students a platform to exhibit their talents by holding cultural programs and celebrating major festivals from across India to bring students closer to one another and learn to appreciate different cultures.

The club is headed by two representatives on each location  from the current batch who are selected by their peers. Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate in any event being organized, with the purpose of Kalasanchay being to promote the students’ hidden talent.

The club gets rolling right from the start and co-ordinators say the first event is the Rotunda session where they perform in front of seniors during their initial 15 days on campus as juniors. The first major event is the cultural performances during Operacy, a management festival students organize, with the second being cultural performances at Samanvay, the alumni meet they organize.

Apart from this, the club helps celebrate festivals like Onam, Christmas, Eid, Holi, and Ganesh Chaturthi. Organizing these events is a learning experience that ties in with their studies say the club co-ordinators.

“All these events require a lot of effort from everyone involved,” they said, noting they learn teamwork – how to work with people and motivation – how to get people to work. The art of negotiation is also learned “when you have to go to the management to get budgets for the event.”  Co-ordinating the cultural club can be a challenge.

The best and the worst resource to have is people,” said the co- ordinators. “You have to be able to manage them very well. A lot of times
people back out at the last minute or they are just not interested. At such times you have to hold them close and motivate them and get them to work.”

Rather than have a leader or president, the club is headed up by co- ordinators whose role is only to facilitate the bringing together of
people during events and to help manage the events. The two representatives get together the people who are participating in the event.

Kalasanchay is very much a student-run club.

The role of faculty is limited,” said the co-ordinators, “as their main objective is to teach us management fundamentals. The most they get involved is to come along with us and sing and dance with us during the events.”

There never seem to be enough hours to accomplish all you want to do, and
one current project co-ordinators have had to leave for their successors is
the creation of a core team of Kalasanchay called Colours that would help
improve the organizing of events through division and delegation of work.

Their advice to those following in their footsteps is: “Know how to get people to work with you and how to say no to things that you know will not work for the event.”

Student Involvement The Aim of KIAMS Sport Committee

The goal of Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies (KIAMS) Sports Committee Ashwamedha is to integrate all the students into different sporting activities which help them to learn teamwork and to co-ordinate – but it isn’t easy.

 “Like in every organization there is a hierarchy to go through, convince and get an approval from,” said the co-ordinatiors, “similarly every event has to be clearly permitted by our senior management and given a no-objection certificate. Students at KIAMS come from different parts of the country and have a different mindset. Making them get on the same platform has been a challenge.”

The committee itself consists of three senior representatives and three junior representatives, a mixture of male and female, and selected by senior sports representatives based on their physical capability and their understanding of how to manage and co-ordinate sporting activities for the current batches.

They chose co-ordinators to lead the club, rather than have a designated leader or a president.

“A president is someone who enforces a system where a co-ordinator is one who has power and power simply means the ability to influence. This is the factor we co-ordinators utilize to make things happen in the world”.

Organizing KIAMS Premier League (KPL) (inspired by the Indian Premier League) it also conducts Ashwamedha which consists of different sport tournaments between senior and junior batches.

The club has also introduced a Frisbee game with some innovative ideas and also is also playing outside the campus for KIAMS, currently with Grasim Industries.

Co-ordinating the club has been a learning experience which complements their studies at KIAMS.

The co-ordinators say the experience has taught them how a simple idea can be built into a big event.

“It has taught us how to bring people together and make an event happen. Every event we have conducted at KIAMS has been a project – a learning project that has its goals, objectives, milestones and limitations.”

By serving as co-ordinators, the group has learned how to put theories learned in the classroom into practice.

“In our classroom we are taught principles, ethics, system and boundary conditions,” they said. “These things have been implemented by us in conducting every event. We have understood the importance of a sporting activity.”

The role KIAMS faculty plays in the sports club is one of encouraging maximum participation by students, whether in an active or passive role.

“Our faculty encourages us, or rather demands from us, that we create events which do not only engage the students taking part, but also encourages the students to join in as spectators and supporters,” said the co-ordinators.

Their words of advice for future co-ordinators? “Work is to be done – not avoided.”

KIAMS Marketing Club Aims to Provide a Competitive Edge in The Business World

Learning more about marketing to gain a competitive edge in that area of the business world is the aim of Kirloskar Institute of Management Studies’s (KIAMS) Marketing Club.

Along with two coordinators, the senior club consists of around 15 active members and among the juniors, there are three coordinators and 20 active members.

The purpose of the club is to improve students’ knowledge of the world of marketing and it plans all activities accordingly. The club has organized events such as visits by guests or alumni to share their experiences and visits to different alumni offices to see how things are done.

It plans to have the students work on different real-time scenarios and give their analysis of the situation – one such analysis of the FDI situation has already been printed in Chanakya (KIAMS Newsletter) – and aims to do weekly sector-wise organizational marketing strategies analysis and to be displayed on a social networking page and notice board to grab everyone’s attention.

Some of the events the club conducts are: Marketing Quiz, Ad-Mad Competition, case studies, article analysis and presentations.

Organizing such activities itself is a learning experience for club members, as they take the concepts learnt during classroom sessions and apply them to real-life examples of marketing. The activities of the club also give members experience in managing people and tasks and in meeting requirements,  expanding their outlook and broadening perspectives.

Club members discuss contemporary case studies or issues in the marketing world and try to analyse them using related theories and to get practical exposure. In events such as the Ad-Mad competition, before doing concept designing for ads, members first look at them from all perspectives derived from theoretical knowledge.

The biggest challenge in running such a club is to keep students motivated enough to attend meetings on a regular basis. To meet that challenge topics of discussion for each meeting are decided by group consensus. Because club activities are a student initiative, not an individual effort, instead of having a president, the club has coordinators whose job is to communicate with members and decide on meeting times and schedules. The coordinators, along with the rest of the members, decide on topics for meeting discussions or decide on future activities.

Again, the club being a student initiative, faculty are usually not involved, but act as guides whenever any difficulty arises in understanding or accessing any resources. At times, the club invites them as judges for competitions.

Since assuming their responsibilities, today’s club coordinators have learnt a lot and to future coordinators, they say this responsibility requires a lot of patience and effort. At times, students may not agree with what you think and at such times, the objectives of the club have to be given paramount importance. Their advice to those who will fill their shoes: Be practical and realistic in your approach. Make sure you have your fundamentals in place before moving further.

KIAMS Club Aims to Take Mystery Out of The World of Finance

Team Memebers of the Finance Club

 First Row (L-R) Abhijit Chowdhary, Sakshi Malik, Sumit

                         Mittal, Sandhya Pai, Neha Mehta

Second Row (L-R) Prashanth Dar, Srikant Boddu, Arjun GM,Sohom Roy, Amit Gajera, Antriksh Khandelwal, Ashish Gutgutia, Gopal Agarwal, Prinsu Jain, Maheepal Kalal, Vinod Daryani, Umesh Soni, Ashwini Kumar, Amit Jain, Ankur Arora, Harish, Shyam Sundar, Gaurav Chaudhary

Third Row (L-R) Sakshi Malik, Vithika Gupta, Roma Kumari, Nidhi, Pooja Tharad, Manisha Bansal, Kamini Sharma, Divya Sharma, Rajni, Pratibha Saxena, Anupama Pandey, Vijeta Deuskar, Debapriya Waddar, Sethulaxmi Gopalan, Kriti Wadhwa, Kusha Bagga.

 

Exploring, understanding and teaching the intricacies of the financial world
are the aims of Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies’ Finance Club.

The club’s vision is to make finance easy for those who think it is difficult as well as promoting financial theory and practicing it so it becomes a part of one’s life. It aims to give students a chance to improve their understanding of the intricacies of the world of finance, foster an environment where they can learn, share, participate, organize and network with industry and KIAMS alumni, thereby helping them achieve their career goals.

Toward those ends, the Finance Club organized QUID PRO QUO in Operacy, the management fest organized by KIAMS. It holds fortnightly meetings to discuss current events in the sector and related theories and terminologies and is organizing a mutual fund game on an intra-college level. The club also organizes documentary screenings relating current events to course content along with guest lectures, case study discussions, finance quizzes and other games related to finance.

Running such a club is not an easy task. One of the toughest challenges it faces is the busy schedule of students. With courses running full-swing, projects, assignments, tests and quizzes, it is still important to keep activities of the club happening at a steady pace and make sure there is healthy participation.

The activities of the club have therefore been organized so sessions are not only a great learning experience, but also a stress-buster. After a week of courses which have been seriously demanding, the club ensures it has a documentary viewing, or some finance-related game, to keep up the enthusiasm, have some fun and learn at the same time.

As most students are not conversant with the basic terms used in finance, the club plans to organize quizzes on these terms and sessions to make it easier for people to work on Excel. The club hopes to attract more industry participants to share their views and experiences. Other plans call for starting a monthly newsletter for the institute and organizing visits to leading financial institutions so students can have first- hand experience of their operations.

While it’s a student club, the student coordinators don’t hesitate to pay tribute to the role faculty has played in helping with activities, saying faculty has provided a lot of guidance, support and assistance. The faculty has always been forthcoming and with their rich experience in both academics and industry have helped immensely in developing interesting as well asinsightful approaches toward complex finance topics, said the coordinators, noting in particular the efforts of Prof. T. Vishwanathan and Prof. Atul Kulkarni (visiting faculty).

Rather that have a president or one leader, the club is headed by four coordinators: Anish Wadhwa, Laxmi Gupta, Md. Taslim Arif and Sakshi Vatsa. There are around 30 members, but club meetings and events are open
for all to attend.