Confluence 2013 - The international business summit of IIM Ahmedabad began yesterday and will run for three days until Sunday, 1st December 2013. The summit, inaugurated by the institute's Dean of Faculty Prof. G. Raghuram, aims to explore the theme "Traversing Turbulent Times - Obstacles to Opportunity". It aims to understand the secret of navigating periods of crisis and find a way out of the turmoil. [/b]
Day 1 of Confluence was dedicated to entrepreneurship and had speaker sessions by Chander K. Baljee, Chairman and MD of Royal Orchids Hotel Limited, Dr. Mukesh Batra, founder and CEO of Dr. Batra’s Positive Health Clinic, Ashish Hemrajani, founder and CEO of Bigtree Entertainment and Rahul Narvekar, CEO of indiaroots.com. These entrepreneurs took the audience through the hurdles they had to cross in order to get to where they are today.[/b]
Chander Baljee took the audience through the story of his success. What started out as a leased hotel in Bangalore that was eventually shut down went on to grow to 24 hotels in 16 cities across India. Mr. Baljee was of the opinion that people and organizations became efficient during bad times. Royal Orchids went through its fair share of good and bad times before they grew to the massive size that they are today. According to him, the easiest thing is to make an excel sheet but assumptions are only for the paper. [/b]
Dr. Batra provided valuable insights into how the landscape of homeopathy in India had to be transformed from something that was viewed as a personalized treatment to something that was scalable, professional and replicable. He also spoke of the inspiration to start his venture and how the institution was started in order to keep the professional secrets of homeopathy from dying with the practitioners. [/b]
Ashish Hemrajani, the pioneer of online ticketing in India spoke about his journey in bringing the concept alive in India. He highlighted the obstacles he faced in setting up an online booking portal, the consumer insights that went into it and also about the democratization of information for entertainment. Before online booking portals, there was no source of information about ticket availability for people.[/b]
Rahul Navrekar’s story is that of a man who lost his job on the day of his wedding and has been on a riches to rags roller coaster ride 5 times. A Mumbai boy who met a Delhi girl online, he has been yearning to go back to Mumbai for the past 12 years. Meanwhile, he went on to transform India's first mall, The Ansal Plaza. Currently, he is the CEO of a NDTV group company and plans to ride on the e-commerce wave. His exploits also involve dealing with the Mumbai mafia and scripting with Anurag Kashyap. [/b]
Apart from the speaker sessions, there were also multiple events held through the day which tested various skillsets of the participants. Competitions in the spheres of speaking, finance, media and business were conducted through the day for the benefit of the participants. Other main events included the management competitions like Stock Maniac which tested the participants’ trading knowledge, Talk the Sale which brought out the master negotiator and sales person in the participants, Chakravyuh which dealt with policy making and Corporate Combat, the ultimate test of a participant’s business acumen. [/b]
Confluence - Day 2 - Highlights[/b][/b]
The second day of Confluence 2013 - the International Business Summit of IIM Ahmedabad, saw a plethora of speaker sessions, events and workshops. With a theme "Traversing Turbulent Times - Obstacles to Opportunities", Confluence today, had a speaker session on 'The Global Turmoil & The India Story' followed by the first-ever Media Conclave at IIM Ahmedabad.[/b][/b]
Speaker Sessions[/b][/b]
The Global Turmoil & The India Story[/b][/b]
'The Global Turmoil & The India Story' was a panel discussion on the effects that the global turmoil has had on India and factors internal and external to India that have constituted the India story in these volatile times. [/b][/b]
Dr. C Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, Former Member of the parliament and Ex- Governor of the RBI, spoke first. He outlined the causes of the global economic turmoil and went on to enumerate that it was factors such as price shocks, a configuration of economic and non-economic factors and issues such as the drought year in 2008 that contributed to the relative slowdown that India is facing. He also mentioned that the delay in completion of important infrastructure projects was adding to the slow growth. According to him, certain macroeconomic issues that needed to be tackled were taming of inflation, balance of payments and fiscal deficit. He emphasized that the crux was to accelerate growth rate, accelerate project completion and provide an environment for overall growth. As globalisation cannot be escaped, Dr.Rangarajan reiterated that "We need to create a situation where we can take full advantage of globalisation".[/b][/b]
Mr.Vinod Rai, Ex-CAG and former Chairman of the UN Panel of External Auditors, took the discussion further by enumerating the issues facing India, such as the fact that federalism had come under pressure from regional governments who focussed on their states only. He spoke about issues such as the required resources for infrastructure projects not being made available and the limitation of 'non-creation of rural assets', the mistrust developed between the government and the private sector. Throwing more light on the underlying factors, he mentioned that markets cannot be administered and that they also need to be nurtured and developed. Mr.Rai’s emphasis was on the principle that governance should be founded on the edifice of morality. He iterated that the policy paralysis was an alibi being used to cover for non-performance, but was very positive because the population in the age group of 18-25 are educated, aware and have the purchasing power and advantage of social media. He said he was optimistic that this Gen Next in a resilient country would actively contribute to the cleansing of the systems responsible for the issues plaguing the country. In support of his optimism, he mentioned that the TRAI regulator, Power regulators, Airport regulatory authorities were rays of light at the end of the tunnel and also made an important point that "Turbulent times throw up leaders".[/b][/b]
Mr. Ajit Ranade, President and Chief Economist, Aditya Birla Group, was the third speaker in the panel. Very popular among the youth, Mr.Ranade is an alumnus of IIMA. He enthralled the audience in his open way of communicating and gave various anecdotes about how turbulent times essentially meant that nothing was predictable. Right from the IMF funding back in 1993 to the current sugarcane farmers’ protests, Mr. Ranade gave varied perspectives to looking at turbulence. He spoke about the disparity in some sectors having been fortunate to have undergone reforms, but others such as agriculture being largely 'unreformed'. His emphasis was on the fact that the distance between the government and citizen needed to be shortened, and the three F’s - Funds, Functions and Functionaries, were required for the same.[/b][/b]
The Media Conclave had Prof. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai and Mrs.Madhu Purie Trehan address the audience on the topic: 'Is the Business of selling news a sustainable corporate model?' [/b][/b]
Prof. Paranjoy G.Thakurta, Independent Journalist & Educator, spoke about the various forms of media and how, as the form changed, the way the corporate model worked for each form also changed. He drew on examples from sensationalist pieces of news coverage masked under the guise of journalism, that are outright in violation of the principles of media ethics.[/b][/b]
Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-chief, IBN News Network, in a candid address, spoke about the corporate model for news. He spoke about paid news, carriage fees and how content is being contrasted by issues like these. He also mentioned that he believed that the rating system employed for Indian Television media was flawed and the revenue system for the same was under strain. Mr.Sardesai emphasized that the Indian media revolution which has been taking place for the last 25 years, needs to go to the next level now and address these concerns so that responsible journalism may sustain. [/b][/b]
Ms. Madhu Purie Trehan, Founding Editor, India Today, gave a unique perspective to the audience by presenting a case study. She spoke about the transition of articles from being honest news to sponsored features. Ms. Trehan stressed that now that every citizen can be a journalist, the days of a few people sitting in a conference room deciding the news of the day are gone. Through various examples to classify events that showcased people as disruptors, settlers or game-changers, she got the youth in the audience thinking by asking them to ponder upon which category they would like to belong to. [/b][/b]
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Events[/b][/b]
The day saw a multitude of events across all spheres of management. [/b][/b]
'Campaign for a cause' saw participants who had a passion to help resolve key issues plaguing the country present their solutions for the issue based on the relevant public policy followed by a social media campaign for the same. Mrs. Mallika Sarabhai, renowned social activist and classical dancer, and an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus judged the event and gave insightful feedback to the participants about how they could further develop their efforts in the endeavours they had undertaken. Many innovative ideas were showcased, ideas pertaining to necessity of sanitation, infanticide, troubles faced by farmers in the country among many more.[/b][/b]
Confluence 2013 also saw the GE Genius event, in partnership with GE which had the finalists present detailed solutions to a healthcare management case study provided to them. The event was judged by members of the senior management at GE and had teams from ISB, IIM Raipur, SIBM Pune etc having a go for the first prize of Rs.1.5 lakhs! [/b][/b]
Chakravyuh, the public policy event, featured participants go through a series of rounds consisting of essays, quizzes, and a unique event wherein the finalists would be assigned a politica party and had to deal with a simulation of a crisis that they were provided. [/b][/b]
Many more events from the domains of Strategy, Public Policy, Finance and Marketing were featured. Events such as M&A frenzy that involved mergers and acquisitions case study, Run an NGO and Corporate Combat – A simulated strategy game were also featured today.[/b][/b]
Sunday: The Culmination of Confluence[/b][/b]
Sunday will mark the last day of Confluence, and will feature competitions such as International Case Masters, House of Commons, Ad Quotient and The Next Chanakya. It will also have Speaker sessions on Inspiration from Ms.Anu Aga, Mr. Ashwin Sanghi and Air Commodore Rajesh Isser.[/b][/b]
The final day of Confluence 2013 came to a close today at IIM Ahmedabad. The event saw enthusiastic participation from the students in the various events lined up throughout the day as well as a jam-packed house during the speaker sessions.
The theme for the speaker series on Day 3 of Confluence 2013 was inspiration and the speakers lived up to their billing by mesmerizing the audience with their stories. The first speaker for the day was Ms. Anu Aga, the former Chairperson of Thermax. Ms. Aga shared three stories with the audience - one about her journey through life and how she managed to cope with the loss of her near and dear ones. The next story was about how she and her team at Thermax scripted the turnaround of the company during the economic recession. And finally, she told the story of Shaheen Mistri, the CEO of Teach for India and urged the students to join the movement for the betterment of our society.
The second speaker for the day was Mr. Ashwin Sanghi, the bestselling author of Chanakya Chant. Mr. Sanghi spoke about how his grandfather inculcated in him the habit of reading and writing, about the inspiration for his first book and also about how he coped with the innumerable rejections that he had to face from various publishers before his books were finally printed and went on to become bestsellers. Mr. Sanghi also inspired the students to not give up on their dreams while also talking about a five point strategy to achieve success.
The final speaker for the day was Air Commodore Rajesh Isser talking about spearheading the Uttarakhand Flood Relief Operations. Mr. Isser talked about the various difficulties and challenges that he and his team had faced during the massive rescue and evacuation operations after the flash floods in Uttarakhand, not only in terms of the bureaucratic red tape but also in terms of various health and operational issues. Mr. Isser recounted various stories of bravery where common people put their lives on the line in order to ensure that a few more human lives could be saved. These stories were truly inspiring and were met with a standing ovation at the end of the speech.
The final day also saw enthusiastic participation from the students in various events such as Bizquizzitive, the flagship quiz contest of Confluence, with a total prize money of over 1 lakh, AdQuotient, where the participants had to come up with an ad campaign for a leading web portal and the flagship case writing competition, International Case Masters.
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