I nearly boarded the flight to Delhi last evening …. And Vandana today is eating Jalebi on my behalf at Bikanerwala :):) I so miss Delhi and Term 4 is a good indication of how life changes with PGPMAX ! In Aug we started our first term and some tentative friendships – by Dec, we are in term 4 and am in Bangalore, Gaurav and Mayur drive down from Mumbai, Vandana and Vikas get a promotion, Mano gets a double promotion – at work and at home (his son is born), Ahmed gets written about in a magazine, Arun gets a new role and half the class manages to get tickets to the US at half the price and close friends are deciding on the songs to sing during the 11 hour layover. Phew. I can go on, like the energizer bunny (Antony, stop, don’t think what comes first to your mind). Life truly changes with PGPMAX and ISB.
Term 4 can be characterised as a study in contrasts – Prof Kamma, you taught us EVA and many other things, but your humility, commitment and patience as a teacher was a permanent value add to our lives. You truly converted Prof Suren’s finance poets and philosophers into people who can ask a few logical questions when the finance rocket scientists try their tricks on them !! I even corrected Sreedhar Challa (the highlight of my day). It’s not an easy achievement – I was surprised by how well I could understand finance and connect the dots.. ROIC, WACC, Beta, NPV and many other terms that stood like the Stonehenge monoliths, unconnected, now suddenly look like the DNA strands completely connected and making financial sense. Your staying up till 1 am while we sleepily tried to complete the assignment and the last day’s negotiation exercise just endeared you even more. Your name just got added to our PGPMAX faculty hall of fame 🙂 Thank you.
The term was a study in contrasts since we also had some first time professors – Ahmed, Vivek Gupta, Sreedhar Challa and Sanjeev Bhargava besides experienced Profs like Prof Kamma and Prof Krishnamurthi. Ahmed – this is the longest you have spoken and all of us listened, raptly, Vivek – we got to see why Sony thinks of you as “Sona” and Sreedhar – you were just “chaalla” outstanding !! Antony – please let Sanjeev know, his session was outstanding, and he gets a “10” on that advertisement measurement system and a 100 for putting up with you.
Prof Krishnamurthi – your vast knowledge was visible, is there a brand that you don’t know of or a segment of customers that you havent consulted with or a wine that you haven’t targeted or a position that you haven’t taken wrt a marketing concept ? We nearly went to the dogs trying to estimate Oxyglobin’s market share and recovered a bit when we were nearly tempted to ask Dr. Mahesh Joshi to administer some to Prabhu on the dance floor on gala night !!
Meeting the pioneers and the seniors from PGPMAX 1 and 2 on gala night was awesome… Dr. Mahesh Joshi, you must be a very successful doc, your singing must bring alive even those that are dead and cure every ill of those that choose to live !! Dr. Sriram – am sure your practice must be flourishing too … Just get Dr. Joshi to sing that song as a Bhajan and quickly pull your patient’s bad tooth out when their jaw drops :):):) leveraging PGPMAX. I must say, Sanjay had the most interesting honeymoon I know of !!
Arun and Mano, I love Delhi and I refuse to sit in the 29th row next time and listen to you guys talking about Bangalore and going over speed breakers in the air. We will drive in the Yeti and the Audi – Arun you can talk to Krishnan and my mom so that I can drive peacefully and Mano will anyway be driving his car so neither one of you can preach about Bangalore.
This term we also planted the Value Creation seeds – as the rest of the program unfolds, we need to water these seeds, ensure there is sufficient sunlight and rain and enough manure so that we harvest a bumper crop from the program and leave the soil rich enough for all subsequent batches to also reap a rich harvest. That will be our return gift 🙂
Can’t wait for Term 5 …… Subbu I promise to wait at the gate of EH for my 5th instalment of Bhakarwadi 🙂