Reflections of Term 1

Term 1 is slowly inching towards a close. We have marketing exam on 22nd & that will be our last exam in term 1.

What have I learned in Term 1 ? What difference has it made it to my life ? It is perhaps a big question. Neverthless I will make an effort to answer that.

Financial Management :

We had the prep courses by Mr. Raghu Iyer. We came to know about the Indian P& L s & Balance Sheets. I understood by reading these 2 statements we can know about the health of the company. We also understood that these nos can be fudged & fool people . His explanation of what happened in Enron case was too good. We came to know how one should not run a company. Mr.Krishnamurthy Surysekhar started where Mr. Raghu Iyer left. Mr. K S as I had mentioned in the earlier post taught as the American way of Accounting. He went into the details of the individual items that are seen in the Income Statement, Balance Sheet & the cash flow statement. In his midterm we had set right jumbled balance sheets & the effect of transactions on Assets , Liabilities , Owner’s Equity , Retained Earnings & Net income. His lectures on Stock Dividends (small & big) , Types of investments – Trading , Available For Sale & Equity Method Securities all gave us a vivid picture of specific American GAAP was. In spite of all these controls there are people who outsmart all of us.

Marketing Management :
Dr. Paul left us craving for more on Marketing. We understood the important role that marketing plays in modern business. The various branches of marketing targeting , segmentation & positioning , 4 Ps , Branding, PLCs ,Portfolio analysis & business strategy etc., For more details pls refer my earlier post on Dr. Paul.

Business Statistics:
Mr. P K Viswanathan covered the importance of stats in business. Key learning would include sampling / ANOVA. Stats will be useful in Marketing & Operations.

Philosophy :
Very interesting & we invested a lot of time on this subject. Gives you the opportunity to introspect & improve oneself. Vivekananda’s readings are real good material , but one needs a lot of patience to understand the real meaning of what he says.

Macroeconomics:
Dr. Rakesh Singh took macro for us. He used give us a lot of assignments for every class. We used to slog for every class of his. It was good learning. He is not the kind of guy who concentrates too much into theories & numbers. He is very practical & looks at what macroeconomics means to a MBA grad. He is an authority on rural marketing & I really can’t forget his last class. The essence of what he spoke in the last class is as below:

What a class we had!! Truly inspiring… Our Prof Rakesh Singh showed his class today in his last class. We were discussing the case of Indian Economy from 1991 till date. He summarized all the happenings from 1985 – Rajiv Gandhi , 1988 – when India pledged gold in UK & then the great BoP crisis of 1991, the reasons of 1996 slowdown ( cooked by Congress ) & then the so called shining India. We discussed the role of politicians in fooling people. Examples of recent TN elections Karunanidhi promised one kg of rice at Rs 2.0 .Comparisons to Shivsena’s victory in Maharashtra, when SS announced Jumka Baker for Rs 1.0 was very apt.

Sustaining the shine ………….What we need to do to sustain the shine ? Investment in institution building ( reforms in labour, police , judiciary & bureaucracy)

Pitfalls in Agri Sector ;
Ban on exports
No contract farming
No interstate sales
Low govt procurement price
Sale only to mandis

The food processing sector has a potential to grow as a 30 Bn dollar industry if there are encouraging policies by government.

Chinese:

This is one class I am really struggling. Perhaps I unable to over come my inhibition to learn something totally new. The prof is a veteran & slogs to make us learn. He also has started giving quizzes in every class, so that we take Chinese a bit more seriously. I hope I learn up fast.



Overall it has been a great experience at Great Lakes. Hope the results are good as well. Meanwhile the second term has also begun. We have got real big names lined up in the 2nd term. Now more on that after a while : -)