That day…

I wake up at 9 AM. I am already late. Try to set a new record in getting ready. Trying to beat the record I set yesterday.

I am ready. It is 9.30 AM. The professor would be getting ready to enter the class now, as I leave my home and run towards my bike. 

I try to find the shortest and straightest route possible. Quite difficult considering the route I take everyday really is the shortest and the straightest.

I keep looking at the time on my bike’s display, by now knowing which part of my journey cost me a minute and which part saved me one. I reach the campus and park my bike; wishing the parking was right outside my class!

I take an entire 2 minutes to decide if it is appropriate to enter or not. A couple more come along who believe it is their right to enter regardless. So I try to blend in and slyly make my way to the nearest vacant seat. The class ends.

I go near the canteen and try to spot as many people I know as possible. I know this is going to end soon. I go up to the third floor and enter my workplace. I go back down and attend more classes.

Once classes end, I go to work. Try to do what is possible, with my friends, right there in that room. We fight, yell, scream, laugh and play catch.

The sun changes color and the sky disappears soon after. I am still there. We are still there. I go back down, meet more people. Try to find out who is going where for dinner. Make a decision based on what combination of people and food suit me the most that day and tag along. It has normally got more to do with people.

With tummy half-full, I come back with them to the hostel. Stay till we hear the guard whistle. Say our byes and start walking in opposite directions.

As I make that lonesome walk, to where my bike is parked, all I think of is that I will soon not be lucky enough to say goodbye to friends everyday. Hop on my bike and take a relatively leisurely ride home. 

Reach home and fill up my tummy. Switch on my laptop and see all my friends yet again. All of them present, as mere names on my screen. All I think of is that I will soon not be lucky enough to see this screen full of friends again.

It is now 3.30 AM. I blink off to sleep, knowing very well that I have to set new records once I wake up. 

That day……..was everyday.

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Careers in Marketing

Following is a general and broad list of careers one can have in the field of Marketing. (Courtesy Prof. Ramki who is an MMS marketing faculty in SIMSR and BMS marketing faculty in colleges like Jai Hind, HR, etc.)

For obvious reasons, I would refrain from putting anything in detail and just put the list here. For more details, you can try and contact him as he provides guidance in this field.

So here goes:

1. Sales
2. Distribution
3. MR
4. Advertising
5. Brand Management
6. Retail
7. Logistics & Supply Chain
8. CRM
9. FMCG
10. Consumer Durables
11. B2B
12. Banking & Insurance
13. Airlines
14. Hotel
15. Travel & Tourism
16. Telecom
17. PR
18. Event Management
19. Media Management
20. Data Analytics
21. Marketing Consultancy
22. Entertainment
23. Marketing Finance

There is a lot more to it than this list of course. Details like the type of jobs and skills required.

So, hope this helps you in some way.

An ad I made

This is an ad I made for my IMC project. Please try and give feedback on it.

They are all my classmates so probably they can relate to it better.

What does a ‘team player’ mean?

I have seen this word in a lot of resumes. And being in the Placement Committee, I have seen more than my share of resumes.

Every person mentions this quality as his strength. Strength is supposed to be something unique that others might not possess, otherwise it is not something worth talking about. However, how many of the people who include it actually have it? And what do they think it means?

No doubt that this is a typical management jargon. However, it has been often used in fields as varied as sports and some other varied field I cannot think of right now. Moving on, the thing about jargon is, it is often open to interpretations. And with a jargon which has two words, you can never be sure. For example, anyone who plays in a team can be called a team player. Try and argue with that! But it is not that simple now is it.

According to me, a team player is someone who thinks about the team that he plays for when he is playing in that team. For example, I am in my class football team, volleyball team, some project team, the placement team and I guess you get the drift. All these teams perform and behave differently and have their own micro-culture and their own unwritten rules. This comes with the fact that the players in each team are different from the others. But, I need to differentiate my efficacy and draw a line between each team. And finally if at some time I am not performing for any of these teams, I should be the individual I actually am so that I can adapt myself to the next team.

While writing this post, I am not in any particular team, and hence I can write without any of my teams affecting the way I am writing it. None of my experiences in any team is influencing me in any way while I type this down. But, all of the experiences will influence me as an individual that I am. Go ahead, join more teams. Become a team player in each of them so that you become a better you.

Affiliate Marketing Vs Ambient Advertising

I am to write a 2500 words White Paper on Affiliate Marketing for a competition. I hope that with the little experience I have of working in the internet industry, it will give me some kind of advantage.

The other topic is Ambient Advertising and even though advertising does attract my attention, I think I can do more justice to Affiliate Marketing. However, if I do choose Ambient Advertising, I guess I will learn a lot more about something I don’t really know a whole lot about. But I think it is not that broad a topic in the first place.

Help?

Recession-Proof Graduate

via slideshare.net

This is an absolutely brilliantly written e-book. I can relate to most of what he says and really think he is making the most sense than a lot of people have in a really long time.

I know it is a bit longish for you impatient readers, but this is A MUST READ!

Universities should go on the Cloud

A few days back when the Class XI forms were uploaded, it seemed like a great idea. Finally it was going online. I had stood in serpentine queues at 8 or 9 different colleges after my Class X results were declared. It took me two days to collect all forms and then a whole day getting them filled up and then two more days submitting them back in respective colleges. Not to forget the numerous photocopies and the various attested documents. It was a lot! I know of parents who took a week off to do this for their daughters and sons.

With all of this getting online, the pain is much lesser in the admission process.

However, inspite of doing a dry run of the website with close to 1,000 forms loaded, the site crashed on the first day itself. It just could not handle the load of thousands of students accessing the weak little defenseless webpage. You can’t really help but sympathise with the webpage, the website, the webmaster and above the poor little servers. This overloading is however a normal phenomena across Universities and colleges. It affects the Board results, the admission results, the CAT results, the CET results and the list goes on. All we can do is blame the Universities.

It is not, however, the fault of the Universities. One can say that they can just buy the extra bandwidth and server space and computing power. But all of this is not exactly cheap. And they will need all of this only once a year! Quite a conundrum.

The solution according to me is Cloud Computing. Now, my regular readers (yes, all the two of you) must have already read about my summer project here and here. My project actually comprises of research on cloud computing; and that according to me is the perfect solution in this case.

To all the non technical people and IT engineers, cloud computing is nothing but a set of servers configured as a cloud, wherein the users can take the advantage of all these networked computers and use the infrastructure as they like. It is set up in a way that the users can scale up their requirements as and when they want, and the system automatically provisions all of it to them. So theoritically, you will never run out of bandwidth and storage space. This is perfect for all those people who have low requirements except for those few days when they experience a sudden spike difficult to deal with. It would be extremely expensive to provide for this spike and have the infrastructure be wasted the rest of the time.

This is exactly what our colleges need. I just checked out the google trends results for some of the common search parameters related to admissions and results and below are some of the findings:

1. The number of searches for “CAT Results” in January every year, is more than 20 times the searches throughout the year.

2. The searches for the word “IIM” in the months of December & January is close to 50 times the searches the rest of the year.

3. The number of searches for “SSC Results” in the months of April (the time of the exam) & June (the month of the result) is more than 25 times the searches the rest of the year.

You can do your own little analysis at http://google.com/trends.

Our colleges can have their minimum bandwidth requirements throughout the year, and during the one or two months during the results and admissions, when it peaks in terms of visitors, automatically scale up. They would not need to move a finger. The cloud will take care of it. All they have to do is pay for the services every month depending on their usage.

I hope they are listening and implement this. Not only is this lesser headaches for everyone involved, it is also cheaper compared to scaling up your own infrastructure trying to provision for the peaks.

Do you think this makes sense? And if it does, you think it will be implemented?

MMS CET 2009 final results out

Yes, they are out and the next batch of MMS students will now be working towards making their choices for the colleges.

Hope you make an informed choice and get what you deserve.

Here is a list of top ten colleges in MY opinion. This is my opinion only and it is meant only for guidance and not as any advice (not on my conscience will I take that).

1. JBIMS (No question about it)
2. K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research (SIMSR) (NOT because it is my college)
3. WE School (Welingkar)
4. Sydenham (Has lost its old charm)
5. N L Dalmia (One of the best for finance)
6. SIES (Was better than Dalmia a couple of years back)
7. MET (Trying to get there)
8. PUMBA (Strong alumni but no alumni network)
9. St. Xavier’s Institute of Management Studies (Will climb this table soon)
10. IES/ Chetana (It becomes difficult to choose at this point)

All the best to everyone who is going to fill out their option forms soon.

P.S. I am an MMS student at SIMSR and this is my opinion and I don’t expect anyone to agree with me.

IT is my desitny?

I have never been a person who believed in destiny. I never wanted to believe that certain things in my life have already been decided. It somehow makes me feel uncomfortable. However, I am being made to rethink.

As quite a few of my imaginary readers would know, after finishing my Junior College, I started doing my graduation degree in Engineering (IT). Yes, I thought I want to be a Software Engineer. But almost all of you know that I am not one! Halfway through my graduation, I realised I *don’t* want to be an engineer. I dropped out and finished my graduation in Management (BMS). I have always been a tech freak and staying updated with technology is one of my passions (This was the logic behind becoming a Software Engineer).

I graduated in Management and specialised in Finance in my final year. Although I was certain that I wanted to make a career in Marketing. Taking Finance was my way to show myself what I would have to do rest of my life if I did opt for a career in Finance. It worked out for me. I sat for placements, I did get a good job in Marketing and I did do very well at the job. The job in question here though, was (yes, you guessed it) at an IT company! But I really didn’t mind it, I really like this field remember? The company was Directi, which is a great company to work for. I was working for their business unit called Logicboxes and had absolutely brilliant, young, like-minded people working around me. All in all, an awesome learning experience.

Having worked there for a year, I knew I had to study more and secured admission at K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research (SIMSR) for an MBA, specialising in Marketing. I am having a great time doing my MBA and through my first year. MBA demands you to do a summer project at any organisation, in the two months between the first and the seond year. Again I sat for placements, I did get a job in Marketing and hopefully will do very well again at this job. The job in question here again, (yes, you guessed it) is at an IT firm! This time however, it is at a bigger company called Patni Computer Systems Ltd. and this one usually competes with the Infosys’, the TCS’ and the Wipros of the world. So a bigger company and hopefully better too, but still in IT!

So inspite of avoiding being a Software Engineer, am I destined to work for IT?