Sunday, January 31, 2010

Numbers do lie!

The motivation behind this post is recent recall by Toyota and Honda. And this comes an exact year after Toyota became No. 1 in the world in terms of sales.

This highlights the classic "Means v/s Ends" debate. Has Toyota cut corners in race to concentrate on sales and sales only? And this recall is NOT an one off event for a company which is known for Quality, an organisation which gave the concept of Q.U.A.L.I.T.Y. to the world. For the uninitiated, read here.

Such issues creep up when giving out various awards like best salesman in an organisation, World's No. 1 company in revenue etc. Are the methodologies adopted being equally scrutinized here? I am not pointing fingers against anyone in particular but since in these recent times, these awards have become so important that achieving numerical position sometimes overrides everything else these days.

Even 3 idiots had this dialogue when Boman Irani says that he has brought his college to the position of No.1. And Aamir replies, "What exactly is No.1?"

I feel the question still remains unanswered....

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Empires of the Mind

This is one of the events in Intaglio, the Annual International B-School meet of IIM Calcutta. It was an on-campus round with prelims and a final round.

Prelims round consisted of a treasure hunt followed by solving upto 12 puzzles. We were given 6 clues which pointed to 6 different locations in the campus. We had to find out those locations, note down the phrase written there and rush back to the place where it started. On submitting the phrases, we were given 12 puzzles to be solved then and there. And this whole thing had to be done in a maximum of 2 hours. We solved around 9 puzzles and thought it was decent enough.

And it was decent enough :) We were invited for the finals in which there were 5 more teams with us. The final game was even more interesting as it involved both game theory and strategic planning to the max! We were 6 mafia gangs and first had to bid for raw materials to make 3 types of weapons. All three weapons used 3 types of materials, though in different quantities and we had a limited sun of Rs. 20,000. Also the weapons so made had different attack and defense capabilities and total available raw material quantity was fixed too. We first thought of right 'weapon-mix' and then bid accordingly for the raw materials.

Our bids were good enough and we made the requisite number of weapons as planned. In the next round, teams were given option to buy more raw materials but a higher price or sell extra raw materials but a heavy discounted rate. The next round involved open negotiations between teams for trade weapons if the need be. We tried with 2 teams to negotiate but they failed. In the end, they did not hurt much :)

Next round was even more interesting in which teams could make alliance with 1 or maximum 2 teams. And then it was WAR time where teams had to attack each other. Points were given according to attack and defense capabilities of each team. Following this, teams were given extra cash and weapons at a fixed rate and we could buy as per need.

The final round was another war but this time no alliance were allowed as each team was on its own. The final score was the numerical sum of the attack and defense abilities and the final result is here.

Some prize money is on the way...!!!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

When Facebook was all colours

Jan 8, 2009 -> The chill in the air was less than the usual in Calcutta. It also marked the beginning of our festival. As always, I got up and got ready to attend the various competitions. But as an avid net user, I made a point to check my mail, notices and facebook. But something was different on facebook today! Some people had colours had their status messages and the only common chord was they were girls who had done this. I did not pay much heed to this and ignored it.

In the evening, however when I checked facebook again (after like 12 hours), this disease of putting-clour-status-message had spread like fire in the jungle and even had colors on gtalk statuses..!!

So, as curiosity would have it, I decided to find the reason of this. But I was lucky that a friend of mine put this link to tell the reason. Please read it and then you will understand how ridiculous the whole thing is! I mean the cause the fine but the way it is done is absolutely crappy. Using facebook to vent my feelings, I updated my status and result is there to see.

Some of the better ways

1. Having a dedicated online portal for this or open a discussion board in facebook.
2. Use print media like newspapers and ladies-magazines like Femina et al.
3. Prime-time serials attract the target women to the max and hence it would be best to do so.
4. With FM radios back in vogue and ladies equally interested in listening to it, I don't think we are far away from the people whom we want to reach out!

I feel that because we have internet and facebook, makes it imperative to USE them too...

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Newsmakers of 2000 - 2009

First of all, I don't buy the argument that decade has ended; it will end in 2010. I say so because there was no zeroth year, i.e., there was never a date like January 1, 0000. I am sure it started with Jan 1, 0001. So, if we count 10 years starting from the latter count, then decade starts from 2001 and ends with 2010. Well, since everyone is hailing it as an end of decade, so it be!

Here I have to tried to list of some of the highlights of the past decade and will try to break from the clutter of general stuff like Wall Street collapse or terrorism (read 9/11, Mumbai attacks et al). It is not that I don't feel that they were defining moments in the past years, but enough has been documented about them and I wont be doing justice by writing on them. So, here are my personal top-10-top-of-the-mind-recall..

1. Amitabh Bachchan - If the pre-2000 years were his worst years, then 2000 was the year of his comeback. Thanks to Kaun Banega Crorepati, it helped him to come out of difficult financial situation and also a comeback in Bollywood. He acted with some big names in Mohabbatein, Aks, Ek Rishta, Aankhen, Khakee and above all Black, which earned him a National Award for his performance.

2. Google- Though started in 1998, it gained prominence starting 2000 or 2001. The company has replaced the word 'search; from everyone's dictionary now. And the company is not known in search only; its other offerings have been instant hit and made life easy for millions across the globe. Be it GMail conversation or Google Talk simple interface or picasa to upload pics or Google Maps...you name it and its there.

3. Roger Federer - What started with a victory in Wimbledon 2003, no one thought that FedEx (as he is popularly known) will dominate Men's tennis as he did it till 2008-09. Though the grip seems to be loosening a bit now, I personally feel he will achieve a Grand Slam in a calendar year.

4. Twenty20 - How can we forget this new format of the sport of cricket?! When ODIs were introduced, people were thrilled to see the new format. But with fast paced life, even an ODI seemed to consume a lot of time and the interest in the game was diminishing. Since, need is the mother of invention, T20 was invented to bring back the interest in the sport. Involvement of players has made ODIs an high scoring affair and increased the result percentage in tests!

5. Airbus A380 - An engineering marvel! It made 850 people (all-economy) flying possible. Though marred by continuous delays and other issues surrounding it, no one can take away the sheen of the biggest bird in the sky today. Waiting to sit in it some time soon :)

6. iPhone - Only an Apple could have created such a hype for something like a cellphone which forced people to queue up outside its stores way before the stores were to be opened. The 'touch' experience was the USP and Apple made us aware that even aesthetics matter in something like a cellphone. On similar lines, I would say even Moto Razr took the world by storm when launched. Razr was the world's largest cellphone in aggregate terms for a long time, only to be beaten by iPhone.

7. E. Sreedharan - The person behind Konkan Railways and the Delhi Metro, seemingly impossible tasks given the constraints. Though Konkan Railways opened in 1998, he shot to fame after taking up the herculean task of building metro in a well-established city of Delhi. More than that, the project is running within and ahead of schedule and even surviving the pressure to complete a larger network before the Commonwealth Games 2010 in the city.

8. Telecom companies - Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, DoCoMo, Idea and the list goes on and on. The sudden mobile explosion that took place in the country is because of presence of such companies. Though the industry is regulated, the prices are unthinkable when compared to world standards! 1p/sec or 50p/min is like half-a-dollar for a minute and that too for a STD call. No wonder, we have more mobile phones than land line phones and this helped many sections of the society as they are used not only for talking but also for information dissemination. For example, farmers get wholesale prices, fishermen receive weather updates and an investor can easily track market movements...the benefits are many :)

9. Capt.Gopinath - He wanted every Indian fly and most of them do fly now, if not everyone. The pioneer of Low-fare airlines in the country, made air travel affordable for many. It also made Indian Railways to improve it services and in the end, it is the consumers who are benefiting the most.

10. IIMs - This is a little biased, you can say. But if we really think of it, then media just gives too much attention to whatever IIMs do...be it CAT leaked in 2003 or opening of new IIM or the summer or final placements or the salary figures and above the online CAT...rather its fiasco :P I feel there are more pressing issues than salaries being offered in IIMs which require media attention.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

2009 - The year that was for me

Jan 1 - Party in OH with JBS performing

Jan 28 - Eveready Contest Finals

Till March first week - Term III

March second week - Delhi trip :)

March 13 - Came to know about being posted to Thailand for the internship

March 15 to April 5 - Chilling out in Mumbai

April 5 - Induction in Aditya Birla Group and flying to Bangkok in the night

Till May 30 - in Thailand

June till Aug - Term IV which which meant lots of projects and helping out juniors for their summer preps in the CV department

Aug 22 to Sep 7 - US Trip :) :)

Sep onwards - Term V with Durga pooja break and mock interviews for juniors and the summer placement process

Sep 30 - Oct 4 - Gangtok sight-seeing

Dec 5 to Dec 11 - Trip to Shillong et al

Dec 12-13 - In Surat for Ameya's marriage

Dec 24 - Watched a cricket match for the first time in a stadium and that too in Eden Gardens!

Dec 25 - 3 Idiots!

Dec 31 evening - Avatar 3 D

Dec 31 23:59:50 - Reached the party venue in the campus :)

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2010 :)