Concept, illustrations and graphics by Deepak Gopalakrishnan aka chuck_gopal, a Mallu-turned Mumbaikar who blogs here and tweets here.

The grand purpose of ‘SAM Initiatives’, a marketing project by three class of 2012 students of Shailesh J Mehta School of Management (SJMSoM), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay was to provide a niche marketing platform for companies, whose target customers were college students. But what became a more noteworthy purpose of the marketing effort, was that exercise notebooks which initially cost Rs 70-90 were made available to students for a disruptive Rs 15 at the IIT campus.

How? By asking local advertisers to advertise their products in the books.

The brains behind this simple plan were SJMSoM second-year students Mahtab Masood, Amit Kumar and Sumit Sharma. For the trio, the effort was two-fold. To make a foolproof attractive marketing proposition for the advertisers and to create a smart takeaway for the beneficiaries, in this case the students.

The students’ first venture last year sold 1,100 notebooks by the fifth day of sales. When asked why such a small number was printed for a student population in IIT Bombay of about 7,000, Sumit explained that the economics had not allowed them to scale further. “We had in mind about 5,000 books but considering the printing costs, we could only manufacture so many. After having sold all, we can go back to the advertisers with a new proposition detailing the success of the first venture. The next time we will aim for a larger print amount.”

In all, seven advertisers located nearby IIT-B advertised in the notebooks. Jebby Jacob, who runs a music class in Powai was one of the advertisers and is a very pleased man. He told PaGaLGuY that he had got a tremendous response from the advertisement in the IIT-B notebooks. “I was happy with the number of people who got back to me after the ad was published. The ad reached my exact target audience and so it worked.” Mr Jacob is all set to provide another advertisement if the students come to him again.

Mahtab says that the competitive advantage lay in the total experience a user got while buying the product. “The notebooks are A4-sized, spiral bound with high quality 75 gsm writing sheets and at just Rs 15.”

Sumit added that notebook was in fact not the primary aim of their marketing initiative, though an important one. “We wanted to create a database of users for advertisers and also promote the advertisers’ products online with this database.”

The notebooks besides ads, also had promotional offers, discount coupons and other valuable information such as weekend gateways, Mumbai local train map, etc. Amit explained that everytime a book was bought, the student was asked to register himself. “There was an online interface with every registration and the student was asked whether he wanted to be contacted about any promotional activities by the advertisers. If yes, he was sent the promotional information. In this way we also collected a database which could be used for any kind of marketing venture or poll purposes.”

The number of registrations on the website were by 66 unique users and the number of ‘Likes’ on the initiative’s Facebook page was 280+, while the number of webpage views on the website were 2500+.

Amit said that after a month of selling all the notebooks, they ran a market research survey among both types of students — those who had bought the notebooks and those who had not. The objective of this survey was to assess the effectiveness of brand recall of the advertisers who had advertised in our notebooks. “We came to the conclusion that almost all the advertisers had had an increase in brand retention by more than 100%,” added Amit.

The team shared a chart from the study with PaGaLGuY.

The trio is however not willing to discuss how much it actually took to print one notebook and whether they made any profits at all. But working on the initiative gave them varied learning experiences.

Having graduated from SJMSoM in 2012, the three students are now working at three different companies — Sumit in manufacturing, Amit in marketing and Mahtab in IT. But they hope to come together to carry this venture ahead sometime. The three told PaGaLGuY that entrepreneurship was where they were all headed and their pet project at IIT-B had been like a pilot.

Below is a little project report type analysis of the venture as made by the trio and shared with PaGaLGuY.

Core challenges

To provide an advertising platform to companies which target college students, making the advertisements more cost-effective and efficient along with the capability of tracking the sales of their product and having the lowest cost-per-view of the advertisement.

To provide an online interface which captures the data of the niche target segment and using the business intelligence to make specific promotional offer to the directed users.

To provide high quality notebooks to students at an affordable price along with providing necessary comprehensive generic information relevant to student need. This coupled with the capability of following their brand and getting real time update of discounts/offers.

Product/ Service Description & Value Proposition

The venture has both online and offline offerings for its customers:

Offline product: Notebook

Multi-subject A4 size spiral bound notebook

High quality 160 writing sheets of 75gsm

Aesthetically designed covers

Advertisement on separators of the notebook which acts as utility rather than obstruction

Online product: Website and social media

Personalised student account for the registered students

Exclusive offers and discounts to be delivered by email and SMS

Using business intelligence on the data captured on web for dynamic sales targeting.

Value proposition for the Students:

Affordable cost of the high quality notebook @Rs 15

Ease of availability of the notebook.

Relevant information in the notebook along with offers/discounts

Value proposition for Advertisers

Niche and targeted audience

High reach and high brand retention and recall

Sales tracking of the advertisements

Comprehensive online and offline platform with lowest cost per view of the advertisement.

Target Audience & Market Size

The plan is to sell our notebooks to college students across different campuses in Mumbai & later in other cities. The target segment is students in colleges, which are located geographically in proximity to the point of sale/service of our advertiser so as to provide a nice & targeted advertising platform. On Advertising front, we are targeting both National/Local advertisers for ales/promotions/brand building/coupons etc.

The Research

As per IDFC SSKI India Research Report 2009, there are 18000+ higher educational institutes and there were 3.1 million graduate students in the year 2010, thus the market size of the target customers (College students) is huge and is growing at an astounding rate. Also the total ad spend in India in the year 2010 was $ 6.7 billion growing at an astounding rate of 28% which is highest in Asia Pacific region, so the market potential is immense.

Concept, illustrations and graphics by Deepak Gopalakrishnan aka chuck_gopal, a Mallu-turned Mumbaikar who blogs here and tweets here.

At a time when middle rung b-schools are struggling to find jobs for their MBA graduates due to a tighter job market, leading consumer durables company LG Electronics India Limited (LGEIL) has revoked almost 25 job offers that it had made to management graduates across b-schools in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore in September 2011.

Some of these b-schools include Alliance University School of Business in Bangalore, ICFAI Business School, Pune and International School of Business & Media also in Pune, as confirmed by sources in these b-schools.

The South Korean chaebol has sent individual letters the graduates during the second week of April 2012 stating that due to unforeseen business circumstances, their job offers had been revoked. A compensation cheque worth Rs 70,000 for each graduate was also attached with the letter.

The letter read, “We regret to inform that due to unforeseen and compelling business circumstances we are not able to execute the letter of intent for employment. Therefore, it stands withdrawn.” It further stated, “As a small token and goodwill gesture from our side please accept a pay order of Rs 70,000 rupees. We assure you that in the future, as and when circumstances allow you would be given an opportunity to work with us on priority.”

A student from Alliance University in Bangalore, who did not wish to be named told PaGaLGuY, “LGEIL has been a regular recruiter in our college since the last five years. They had offered an annual package of Rs 6 lakh for sales and channel management profiles. If I get a call from LGEIL, I would definitely like to join them in future.”

Now that the LG option is out, the graduates left without a job are trying hard to find a job through other avenues. But, “It is a difficult scenario at the end of the placement season. We are still waiting for companies to come for recruitment. Had LGEIL informed us about their decision sometime earlier this year, it would have been easier for us to get placed,” he explained.

LGEIL admitted to have revoked the job offers. Vice-president, marketing of LGEIL, LK Gupta told PaGaLGuY that “Since January 2012 LG is not considering any additional staffing at entry level. This move is aligned with its vision to optimise current resources in line with global organisation structure. The candidates in question were informed in advance and duly compensated as a goodwill gesture from the company’s side. As soon as the organisation considers any additional hiring at entry level it will consider these candidates on priority.”

According to the latest published reports, LG Electronics Inc had posted a second straight quarterly loss in the fourth quarter, even though the year-to-year losses had narrowed down due to improved business in the mobile handsets and flatscreen television divisions category. Sales for LG products in the developed nations are expected to be limited due to the global economic downturn but the company will continue to bank on emerging economies such as India to grow.

But in the domestic market also, LGEIL’s revenues grew marginally to Rs 16,200 crore from Rs 16,000 crore in 2011, much below its annual sales target of Rs 20,000 crore, and is attributed to poor performance of the mobile business.

Are you aware of other cases of job offers having been rescinded at b-schools this year?

We saved MBA essays for the end of our mini-theme (covering MBA application components) for several reasons.

1. When you are competing in the Indian applicant pool that looks like one big homogeneous monolith, MBA essays are the single most effective way to achieve differentiation and stand out from the crowd.
2. Within the jigsaw puzzle that is your MBA application, the essay the most confusing and mysterious piece. You won’t know if and when you’ve completed it, because there is no standard solution that you can compare it with. The essay topics you need to tackle for a specific school are exactly the same for everyone, but every candidate ends up with a final image that is (hopefully) different and unique.
3. The essay questions tend to be introspective [pronounced een-tro-SPACK-teeb, if you are a Bengali who's relocated to Delhi]. In our lives, ruled by mathematics and technical topics that always had a right answer, the big I-word is something that most of us haven’t tackled before (unless you derive perverse pleasure from looking up big words in the dictionary).

Q1. What role do MBA essays play in the b-school admissions process?

An MBA program attracts applicants from various backgrounds and b-schools try their best to maintain diversity in the class. Often it is tough to really decide on why or how any candidate is better than the others. Beyond a particular point, a GMAT or TOEFL score doesn’t matter. Just because a few applicants scored 10 points more than many other people competing for the same seat, doesn’t make them superior. The resume has the same limitations. How can an admissions officer compare a management consultant against an investment banker?

This is where MBA essays come into the picture. They help candidates go beyond their GMAT scores, their industries and basically everything that slots them into a particular category (e.g. Indian/IT/Male/Engineer). Essays are a great way to bring the application to life.

Q2. Are MBA essays the same as Statements of Purpose (SoP)?

The basic intention of both these tools is the same, that is, to evaluate if applicants have the right reasons to join a higher education programme, but the scope and depth of MBA essays is far greater. In an SoP, as the name suggests the applicants’ ‘purpose’ needs to come across clearly to ensure that the right candidates are admitted. This format is commonly associated with MS degrees though many MBA programs also have been accepting it.

The term ‘MBA essays’ may not completely reveal the underlying concept (SoP is far more self-explanatory), but it does more or less what the SoP does, but in a more comprehensive manner. So instead of a single all-encompassing motherhood question (yes, the Maa-friendliness of this FAQ series goes beyond the title), essays are broken up into multiple topics covering different aspects that help the admissions officer judge the professional and personal calibre of the candidate.

Q2. What kind of questions do schools ask in their MBA essays?

The main topics that you’ll encounter in most of the top schools are as follows:

Why MBA: What are your career goals? How do you think a full-time MBA degree will help you achieve them? Have you considered other (non-MBA) options? If so, why don’t you think those are worth pursuing?

Timing: Why do you think this is a good time to take a break from what you are doing to go back to school? If you are younger or older than the typical candidate entering the programme, why should we select you over the others?

Accomplishments: What have you done in your professional life that you are proud of? What have you learnt from a failure?

Personal traits and qualities: Describe stories where you have demonstrated leadership, business acumen, teamwork, communication skills.

Extra-curricular activities, social involvement: Do you have a life outside work? What do you really like doing? Do you care about anything else apart from money? What makes you an interesting person?

Creativity: This could range from writing the table of contents of your autobiography to how your friends might describe you 10 years later.

The wording for the essay questions might differ, but many of them would touch upon these common themes.

Trying to wrap up the topic of MBA essays in a single post would be downright insulting. So we’ll be back with another one on essays next week.

In the meanwhile, pick up some MBA essay writing tips, roll up your sleeves and try your hand at a few of the essays listed on business school websites. It doesn’t matter if schools haven’t released essays for the upcoming season. As with many skills, this one gets better with practice too.

Are there any other burning questions in your mind that you’d like us to address in subsequent posts? Paste them in the comments below. Also, check out the earlier posts in this FAQ series if you’ve missed any.

Author Sameer Kamat is author of the bestselling (and, er, introspective) MBA book Beyond The MBA Hype where he shares insights and pitfalls that aspirants should be aware of before they embark on their international MBA journey. He is also the founder of MBA Crystal Ball, an admissions consulting venture. He claims to have completed his MBA from the University of Cambridge. You can connect with him on Twitter @kamatsameer

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Raipur which became operational in 2010, concluded its final placement process for its first-ever graduating batch of its flagship post graduate program. A total of 74 offers (including four pre-placement and eight lateral offers) were made by 51 companies to a batch of 66 students.

According to the placement report, out of the total batch of 66, two students opted out of the placement process to start their entrepreneurship ventures in the education and manufacturing sector. Yes Bank was the largest recruiter with six offers across various profiles including corporate banking, transaction banking and technology solutions.

The institute provided a function-wise drilldown for its 2012 batch.

Sales and Marketing

A market research firm made an international offer to one of the students at the institute. Roles offered in Sales and Marketing include Trade Marketing, B2B Marketing, Pre-Sales, Brand Management, Integrated Marketing Communication and Category Management. Prominent recruiters included United Spirits Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd, Godrej & Boyce, Pfizer, BPCL, Berger Paints, Hero MotoCorp, Emami, HT Media and Usha International.

Finance

Roles in this domain included Corporate Banking, Mergers & Acquisitions, Equity Research, Investment Banking, Transaction Banking etc. While an automobile company offered roles in Financial Strategy and Corporate Finance, a trading house in Mumbai offered a role in Currency Trading. Some of the major recruiters that came on campus in the function include HT Media, Oracle Financials, HSBC, Yes Bank, L&T Infotech, India Infoline and Reserve Bank of India.

Consulting

Accenture Business Consulting, Infosys BPO, Indegene, Technopak Advisors, Trianz offered a variety of consulting profiles including consulting in Solutions, Design, Transaction, retail, Corporate Planning, as well as Strategic and Medical research.

Operation

Profiles such as Supply Chain management, Strategic Sourcing, Operations and Strategy were offered by companies including Tata Motors, Berger Paints, Polaris, Hero Motocorp and TVS Motors.

IIM Raipur also shared the profiles offered by a few companies.

The institute also provided a sector-wise drilldown for the profiles offered to students.

The HBS classroom in Mumbai

There is nothing really so scholarly about Taj Land’s End in Mumbai but the classroom recently opened by Harvard Business School hosting research programmes and executive education courses, definitely gives one the highbrow feeling.

In fact, on the day that HBS is hosting a short term programme in the classroom, the part of the hotel takes on a different hue. “It is like going to school in a five-star hotel. The luxury and comforts make learning a different experience,” said one of the participants in today’s programme which was on Real Estate Strategies. Two floors up from the huge lobby of the hotel and beyond a labyrinth of corridors, all arrow-marked Harvard Business Classroom , the classroom is there in all its entirety. Styled exactly like a classroom at Harvard Business School in the US, a step inside, and the grandeur of the five star host  is soon forgotten.

The chairs are draped in red upholstery and the carpet is given a tan finish – exactly like how it is in HBS. The wall panels are brown in colour and there are some ten black boards in the classroom, six of which roll up the wall after usage. Two clocks, one with Boston time and the other Indian, placed on the rear wall reinforce, that the class is a HBS initiative. Cleverly-placed monitors and cameras make sure that at no point is a faculty’s back turned towards the class and at every moment the class can see the faculty ‘facing’ them.

According to some some participants who had come in early to check their seats today, the only change from the actual HBS class are the tall, almost-French like windows at the rear of the class. The Mumbai classroom windows not only open to a flowery and green porch on the outside, but the clam sea looming wide from beneath looks ethereal. “You don’t get this view from the actual HBS classroom. This is a lovely change,” said an official from HBS.

There are some 82 seats  in the room but  for the Develop India – Real Estate Strategies and Successful Organisations (a four day session which started on Wednesday), some 54 seats were occupied.

While the classroom was all decked-up to give the real HBR look, one wondered actually on the kind of audience that would patronise the kind of learning being doled out here. For instance, why would people connected to the real estate industry in India which is by and large still unorganised, pay Rs 2,04,750 lakhs (plus taxes which works out to some Rs 2.35 lakhs according a participant) and attend a lecture by professors who are possibly so far from the way the industry operates here?

The HBS classroom in Mumbai

In India, real estate, fringed by a few big names, is still mostly run in a very ‘local’ manner. A lot of work is outsourced and people are not known to be too committed. Sharp market mechanisms of supply and demand and little check on the quality of construction/materials are some factors that have earned the industry an ‘unprofessional’ tag.

Are HBS faculty aware of the intricacies of this trade?

To which one of the students, rather participants, Amit Sarda from Simplex said that he enrolled in the class to learn more.  “It would be good to know what experts  have to say about the industry and if it is coming from Harvard professors, why not.” When asked whether  HBS faculty could really give tips on running an industry which is still rather unorganised,  Amit’s answer was that the real estate market is changing. “Earlier issues like TDR directed how the market was being treated, today it is a lot about design and aesthetics. And am sure in this class, I will get to know about these newer developments.”

One participant said that even if HBS teaches theory, it is still  update information which is not easy to come by in other circumstances. “The theory will be in accordance to world trends and that is knowledge as well.”

Another participant Ashraf Bawa who had come all the way from Bangalore said that it is important to know what is happening in the industry globally. Mr Bawa, who is the Director of Vishwas Bawa Developers added that he likes the idea of meeting people from the real estate industry and learning something new as a group. He agreed that even after so many years the real estate industry is not run in a very organised fashion in India. “Yes, there is a lot of local flavor to it and there are different skills required to stay in this industry. A course such as this will keep me clued on different tools and practises that I can use. And it is always good to know developments in other countries.”

When asked about the hefty fees, most students said that participating in a programme conducted by HBS, ornaments the bio-data like nothing else and in a way covers the costs. “Besides, for many of us, it is not possible to do an academic programme so late in life and when our business needs us physically on a regular basis. Taking a break for four days in a different environment can be refreshing,” said a student.

The HBS has lined up programmes in business, government and academia and on a bouquet of subjects such as corporate social responsibility, building global enterprise,  case writing and course development for the next few months in the classroom.

In fact in the enclosure just outside the HBS classroom, there are desks and chairs and research students were seen discussing their case work with HBS officials. Eversince HBS  opened its India Research Center in Mumbai in 2006, its  faculty has written 90 new cases on companies in South Asia that are taught in HBS’s educational programs globally. In 2008 Harvard Business Publishing established a wholly owned subsidiary and started offering executive education courses in Hyderabad and Mumbai.

But the classroom in Taj Land’s End was thrown open only in March this year,  giving a new look to the hotel and a different touch to teaching.  For most of  Wednesday and for the next three days, this corner of the Taj Land’s End is definitely going to be oozing of a rather different kind of opulence, a very cerebral one.

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ranchi completed its final placements for the batch graduating 2012 with the 43 students getting a total of 65 offers across 30 companies. Five students were made pre-placement offers by the companies where they had interned and six lateral offers were made across telecom, retail and consulting.

Yes Bank emerged as the largest recruiter with a total of six offers. Three offers were made for postings at international locations in the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Finance

A boutique investment banking firm based out of Mumbai recruited offering M&A roles. Roles offered in finance included investment banking, investment banking research, credit research, retail banking, corporate banking, mortgage services and economic research. Prominent recruiters were Citibank, HSBC, Ocwen Financial Services, ICICI Bank, YES Bank, HDFC Bank, ING Vysya Bank, Aranca, CARE Ratings, ICRA, UAE Exchange and Reserve Bank of India.

Marketing and Sales

Roles in this domain included B2B marketing, business development, sales, brand management, market research, etc. HT Media, Flipkart, Godrej & Boyce, Pfizer, Maruti, Tata Steel, United Spirits, Eveready Industries, Titan, Berger Paints and Cavinkare were some of the major companies recruiting for this function.

Consulting

Ernst & Young, Sonata Software, Polaris and Actuate Management Consulting recruited for consulting roles.

General Management

Apart from Jindal Steel & Power which recruited for its Lead Management Trainee programme, RPG Group and Jaipur Rugs also recruited for general roles.

IIM Ranchi provided the details of profiles offered by a few companies.

National University of Singapore (NUS) MBA student Varun Mittal has won the Graduate Business Forum’s (GBF) 2012 Student Leadership Award, making him the first student from a Singaporean business school to clinch it. The award is given out by the United States-based non-profit foundation annually to student leaders who significantly impact the graduate business community or society.

The 24-year-old was recognised for creating an integrated application suite, called Project Maximus, which provides lifelong email accounts, unlimited photo and document storage capabilities, a knowledge and multimedia management system, collaborative learning tools and several other enterprise level productivity utilities for all NUS MBA students and alumni. The motivation for the project was borne out of Varun’s keen desire to establish a platform for the NUS MBA community to work, play, enjoy, share and stay connected through all their lives.

“Earlier, NUS MBA students used to lose their official student email accounts upon graduation, which sometimes results in them losing the social networks built during their MBA tenure. NUS MBA students also felt the need to have collaborative working and other knowledge management utilities, which would really enrich the value of their MBA experience,” explained Varun, who is an engineer by training and used to work at Singapore-based digital security solutions provider Gemalto before signing up for the NUS MBA.

He thus used his experience in the technology industry to come up with a sustainable, cost effective and scalable solution. Today, users can interact with each other through the student council web portal at www.nusmba.biz, which is also a part of Project Maximus. It is powered by Google Apps, a technology solution used by leading global universities like Harvard, Stanford and Yale. “It is a great honour to be conferred such a prestigious international award. I would like to thank the NUS Business School for supporting me throughout the initial stage of this project,” said Varun. The Uttar Pradesh native is currently in the final term of his course.

The GBF was established in 1983 and is a global organisation dedicated to developing responsible leadership and global citizenship. It runs a number of activities to support the development of leadership skills for business school students, through newsletters, shared knowledge platforms and networking events including the annual Graduate Business Conference (GBC) (http://gbc.simon.rochester.edu/), which is hosted by one of the GBF member schools, drawn from the top 50 business schools and MBA programmes globally.

The All India Council for Technical Education has approved  the executive MBA programme run by the  XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur. Called the General Management Programme (GMP), the approval has come with a change in the duration of the course – from the present 12 months, to a full-15 month schedule. The programme is incidentally, one of the oldest 1-year MBA programmes in the country and  attracts  aspirants with more than 5 years of work experience in managerial capacity. An application for the approval was made early last year.

In a way, the stamp is the first of sorts, since it is the first time that AICTE has approved of  a one-year ‘diploma’ course of a reputed institute.  Under AICTE guidelines, programmes which are of less than two years duration are considered ‘certificate programmes.’ For a ‘diploma programme’, the duration of the course has to be two years or 15 months, with a stress on the applicant’s prior work experience.  This is one of the reasons that the GMP course structure has been expanded to 15 months.

Since the approval came in only a few days ago, applicants to the 2012-2013 were not aware of the changes to the programme duration in the initial months of the admission process.  XLRI has now individually informed the students about the same via letters. The admission process for the 2012-2013 GMP batch got completed in April itself.

Fr E Abraham, director of XLRI said that the AICTE stamp will be beneficial to the students.  ”Government jobs will also be easier to come by and it will also help in getting loans as well.” Fr Abraham added that the biggest benefit in getting programmes approved is that there is no service tax levied. “This benefits students directly and they will not have to pay the service tax anymore for this course.”

Students are as excited about the approval. They had similar positive attributes to relate.  Viveik  Arora who is a GMP student from the current batch said that the stamp would mean better government jobs. “Lots of government-run outfits favour  those who have  a degree which is AICTE-approved. Secondly, those of us who plan to further apply abroad for either study or work, again the AICTE-stamp will make a big difference.”

The only noticeable hitch at this point is the timing of the placements. With  a 15-month duration, placements will also happen much later than XLRI’s two-year programme and other MBA programmes across the country. Will corporates be willing to hire people three months after the traditional hiring season? Sources told PaGaLGuY that XLRI may consider making the last three months an activity-driven work schedule, which will enable students to take part in placements and also complete the course at a convenient pace.

When asked, Father Abraham said that the present year will go on as schedule but may be from the 2013-2014 batch they will consider making changes, which may also mean starting the course earlier than schedule. “We will learn from what happens this year and then make some changes for the next course.”