On the concluding day of the Business Orientation Program (BOP), Mrs. Deena Mehta shared her views about the stock and securities market. She began her interaction with the history of stock exchanges and markets in India. Then she described how late Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance group, popularized the investment in stock markets. She touched upon the intricacies involved in stock trading and also the scams which happened in the business. To be successful in the financial intermediation sector, she advised students to develop good written, presentation and management skills.

He talked about the infrastructure development in the power sector, highway sector and the development of the airports in India. He described them as the foremost sectors which play a pivotal role in the development of an economy. He gave examples of the US and China and compared India with them. This helped the students to understand the Indian economy much better and helped the students to compare the developed countries’ economies with India on the basis of Infrastructure. He also spoke about the doubling of the investment in the infrastructure. The examples he gave helped the students to understand the various challenges and constraints at three different levels i.e. at the Commercial banks level, the Sponsors’ level and at the government level. He concluded the session emphasising on the need of qualitative improvement and opportunities in the infrastructure sector of Indian economy.

According to Mr. Chaudhary, entrepreneurship is a mentality/attitude. He spoke about the desired qualities and traits in an entrepreneur. He stressed that the success of an entrepreneur is determined by his execution skills and that capital and idea are the enabling elements.He went on to talk about his role models Steve Jobs, Anand Mahindra, and Shobna Bhartia and how they inspire him. He explained that budding entrepreneurs have a multitude of avenues today, like bootstrapping, incubators, venture capitalists, angel investors, etc.

He signed off by sharing his experiences of his journey towards entrepreneurship, the birth of DenuoSource and his accomplishments thereafter.

The erudite chairman, by interweaving the magic of storytelling, talked about the importance of imbibing in ourselves the right attitude and set of values which shall take us a long way in our careers. The scope of SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) was the focal point of his address. Mr. Chowdary spoke of how Talent Sprint was founded, its mission and some of its’ latest achievements like the iPEARL platform. As for those seeking top management posts in different industries, he stressed on in-depth domain knowledge as the need of the hour. Moreover, the importance of innovativeness and creativity in the technology sector was highlighted.

He concluded the highly informative and morale boosting session on a sanguine note by quoting "If you are passionate, you can do wonders."

He talked about the influences of the young minds on the consumer preferences. Terming India as the “butterfly” country, where decisions are dominated by the younger generation, he emphasized on the need of grabbing their attention on the very first attempt standing out from the clutter. By sharing his personal experiences with his daughters, he gave an insight of the productive aspects of smartphones. He also compared the evolution of smart phones with that of feature phones and the complexity associated with the smartphone industry. He also talked about the importance of the growing segment of SME/MSMEs as a major part of their enterprise sales. He also stressed that RIM’s approach to innovate requires it to focus on the profit pyramid rather than the revenue pyramid and stated that the fact of life being innovative constantly. Mentioning Barack Obama’s winning quote, “Tonight you voted for action not politics”, he stressed on the shift of RIM’s brand image to the “Action is here” campaign and guided the students to be more action oriented.

Towards the end of the session, he shared his valuable life experiences and was emphatic that the best combination of success is success with humility and gave pointers on how to succeed as corporate leaders.

Mr.Ramesh highlighted the opportunities and challenges of Consulting in India and talked about the business environment around the globe. He emphasized on how important it was to be tech savvy and solution oriented. He opined that the “graveyard of companies” consists of companies which have not been updated on various emerging trends in the society. He spoke on what qualities a consultant should have, supporting it with some of his personal experiences. He went on to say that India is a multidisciplinary service oriented society and discussed how the consulting sector should be able to meet this integrated requirement. He mentioned the key to success was attention to an “intention economy” and keeping a keen eye for the emergence and demise of services with continuous evaluation.

Mr Phanindra Sama, shared that to gain dominance in diversified sectors, you need to first gain dominance in your primary sector, which for redBus.in was the success mantra.

Talking to the students about how the company came into existence, he stressed on the need to identify a situation and force a solution out of it. Thereafter he mentioned the personal trouble he had run into, and came out with the idea of redBus.in as a solution. He provided the students with the insights of how the software is benefitting the company, customer and the intermediaries.

Further talking about the invention of the name redBus, he shared that the logo indicates energy, vibrancy and young attitude of the company (Incidentally being Vastu Compliant).

He spoke about the win-win situation that the products of the company created for all the stakeholders. The features of the product include valid mode of authentication, ease of mobility and benefit of booking to-and-fro bus journey ticket, to the customer.

Stating e-commerce as a boon, he mentioned the use of analytics and how it was leveraged by redBus to grow exponentially in a short span of 6 years.

Mr. Sama ended the session with an enlightening video which motivated the students to accept shift as and when it comes.

Mr. Ramesh started his interaction by laying emphasis on the future of the financial services sector. With about 80% of employees in Financial services firm extensively dealing with Sales or Marketing, he talked about the exciting career opportunities in Financial Services and the possible risks in this sector by giving various instances and examples. Challenges with respect to the present per capita income and the ease of doing business in India, according to him have created opportunities for the current generation of students. Mr. Ramesh ended the session by requesting all the students to keep their “Moral compass” right.

The second day of the Business Orientation Program saw Mr. Anjani Sinha, talk about the importance of Futures Market , Forward markets & Spot Exchange and how they help the farmers protect themselves from price volatilities and help with the physical trade on commodity markets. Mr Sinha enlightened the students about the evolution of the National Spot Exchange and the factors leading up to its creation. He talked about how good management has helped in providing more transparency and better corporate governance practises. He touched upon E-gold and other initiatives by National Spot Exchange that have helped in revolutionising commodity trading by providing better prices to the farmers and commodities to the consumers at a reasonable price. With the help of spot exchange unfair price discovery, effects of cartelisation on prices in an auction and limitations of the sellers due to price risks can be curbed providing fair price realisations to the seller.

Mr. Sivakumar , started the session by highlighting the four major pillars of India’s Agri Business sector, the expected size of the sector, the changing consumption pattern of the consumers, our production potential and the business environment in this sector. He also emphasized the 360° opportunities in this sector namely the possible innovations with respect to the consumer perspective, effectiveness with respect to the farmer’s end of the chain and lastly efficiency along the whole chain. He also laid emphasis on some key caveats, including the need for R&D in Agri Business and the importance of futures market to enable the farmers to protect themselves from price volatilities as well as figure out the expected demand from the consumer’s side and change his pattern of production accordingly. Lastly he pointed out ITC’s e-Choupal as a major step in this direction.

What essential competencies do you look for while selecting people for managerial positions?
The first and foremost thing we look for is attitude. No doubt, the person should be technically competent, but positive attitude makes the person. Also, it is comparatively easier to teach the rules of the trade, but building an attitude is far more difficult.

Do you have any comments regarding attrition rates in organizations?
I have some very radical thoughts which might not sound very feasible today. Whenever someone leaves an organization there are endless reasons stated. But I believe that the bottom line is “I didn’t like my Boss”. When I joined an organization, the attrition rate was 30-35%, and attrition rate is directly proportional to dissatisfaction of the employees. We tried a lot of things and don’t know what worked but in a year, the attrition rate came down to 18%. I feel that when somebody is leaving an organization, the Exit Interview should not take place immediately. Rather it should happen after a span of a month because by then the employee would not be over powered by any ill feelings for the company.

What are the challenges posed by the movement towards virtual organization structure?
I believe that the role of HR is expanding and getting even more varied. Last year at some point of time, I was looking after HR Operations in more than 12 countries. I always felt that I was awake 24/ 7. People were working at all hours.

In such a virtual structure, the communication that takes place is majorly through e-mails, phone and video conferencing. So it’s more challenging but exciting at the same time.

Having spent a day with the students of IMT Hyderabad, what are your views and advice to us, the budding leaders? Advice is something which is more in supply as compared to demand. And its free too. But I am not an advice kind of person. All I would like to say is that always strive for the best. There are so many opportunities on the horizon. So you should all work hard, be abreast of all the recent news and developments and always carry a positive attitude.