Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Timken appoints Ajay Das (92BMD) as the new India MD

From The Financial Express

The Timken Company announced the appointment of Mr. Ajay Das as its new managing director for its business in India, headquartered in Bangalore.

In this new role, Mr. Das will oversee the continued growth of the company’s business in India, including the Timken Engineering Research Institute, the global R&D and engineering facility at Bangalore, operations at Jamshedpur and Chennai, as well as sales, marketing and all supporting functions.

“I am optimistic about returning to India and the significant growth opportunities we have in this region. Timken has created the ‘best in the industry’ engineering, manufacturing, sales and services capabilities to serve a growing customer base in India. We will continue to focus on leveraging those capabilities to improve the performance of our customers’ operations, and to deliver additional value to them,” said Mr. Das.

In 17 years with Timken, Ajay Das has provided leadership across business segments. He was national sales manager of the automotive business in India, and later was the director of manufacturing of the Jamshedpur plant between 2001 and 2005. In 2005, he relocated to Shanghai as director of new business development, and in 2007 he became the general manager of Timken’s wind energy business unit based in Canton, Ohio, United States of America.

Mr. Das received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur and a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

XLRI UAE Get together 2nd October

Hi,

We will be having a get-together on 2nd Oct at 7:00pm.

We are glad to have Fr.Jesusurajan, from XLRI-Jamshedpur, who is in town, and he will be joining us.

We aren’t sure of the schedule of Fr.Abraham; understand he is in Jamshedpur at present.

Fr.C.L George, Dean of Finance at XLRI –Jamshedpur, I understand is also in Dubai.

So he may also join us at the get-together.

Those of us who are attending, could you please e-mail your confirmation by noon on Thursday 1st October 2009.

Land phone – 04 4075326

The confirmations will enable us to know the number of attendees.

Please bring along your spouse/partner if you wish so.

The per head expense could be around Dhs.100/- if not more with food and drinks.

Please try and come at 7pm; especially being Friday, the venue can get to be busy later on and restaurants (of our choice) / tables / seats can also get to be difficult.

See you on 2nd October 2009…

Regards.Johnson.

Joy of Giving Week at XL

XLRI Campus is buzzing with the "Joy of Giving Week" celebrations... this video-clip summarises the activities of the first couple of days (Sept 27-28):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qntvTbEtZM

Madhukar's photo album: Joy of Giving Week Unveiling Ceremony

Ramaa Ramesh's moving account on facebook

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

California Alumni Meet 30 Sep

A few of us local Cisco & KLA-Tencor XLers are doing lunch next Wednesday, 9/30, at noon at the Anjappar Chettinad restaurant at the Milpitas end of Tasman drive, at the Ranch Market complex.

http://www.anjapparca.com/index.htm

If you are in the neighbourhood, do join us. Send me an email so we can make the appropriate reservation.

The occasion is to celebrate end of Q1, start of Fall, the 'very likely over'-ness of the recession or whatever else will make you have lunch with fellow XLers :-)

Regards,
Tipu
IR96

We have a nice crowd for tomorrow, with 7 'locals'.

Confirmed:
Charu Madan (IR00)
Aparna Singh (IR00)
Reema Vijay (IR07)
Samba Yarlagadda (BM96)
Tipu Purkayastha (IR96)
Sandra Mahadwar (IR86)
Sandeep Harpalani (BM92)

Will try to make it:
Shailley (IR08)
Ranu Gupta (IR96)
Dinesh Bahal (BM83)
Anurag Chhabra (BM00)

We meet at 12 noon at Anjappara. The address is 458 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035; Tel: 408 435 5500. This is on Barber Ln just as you enter the Ranch Market complex, & a little away from Ranch 99, Mayflower etc. Please be there on time.

They don't take lunch reservations, so last minute additions can always be accomodated.

See you all soon.

Regards,

Tipu

Monday, September 14, 2009

K Muralidhara (88BMD) joins the Board of Altamount

From Samay Live

Mumbai: Altamount Capital Management today announced the joining of Murlalidhara Kadaba on the board of Altamount Capital Management.

Kadaba, have twenty years of corporate experience in senior management positions with organizations such as Reliance Retail Ltd, American Express and Citibank. He will oversee Strategy and Business Development at Altamount Capital Management and will support Altamount's Delhi operations.

Till recent Kadaba served as the President and Chief Executive of the Financial Services vertical at Reliance Retail Ltd. Earlier, he worked for American Express as Country Manager for India and Area Countries, where he launched Amex's consumer banking franchise in India and introduced several successful card products including The Platinum Card. Prior to Amex, he was Vice President and Head of Investment Products at Citibank-India.

Kadaba is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur and a Graduate in Mechanical Engineering from SJCE, Mysore.

About Altamount Capital Management: Altamount Capital Management is the first of its kind Multi Family Office in India. Altamount offers Multi-Family Office services, comparable to international standards, combined with Private Investment Opportunities, offered to a network of ultra wealthy families. While the focus of these families is to build and grow their businesses, a dedicated effort and approach is needed to preserve and grow their wealth locally. Altamount Capital Management was conceived to fill this gap.

The range of services include legacy planning, philanthropy consulting, family corporate governance, private Investment opportunities for direct private investments, direct real estate, cross border opportunities and financing.

Homecoming 2009 (21-22 November, 2009)

frommgjomon1

Dear Friends,

Here is a suggested schedule for the Homecoming -2009. We appreciate your comments and suggestions to make the event in 2009 a grant success. You may kindly place your suggestions in the remarks column and send to Roshan Dastur for firming up the final schedule.

HOMECOMING 2009 (21-22 NOVEMBER, 2009)
SUGGESTED SCHEDULE
November 21, 2009

TIME ACTIVITY REMARKS
10:00-10:30 a.m. Registration (Venue: Learning Centre Foyer)
10:30-11:30 a.m. Presentation by students on Student Initiatives - Parichay, Swalamban, Dream4Others, Goonj Clothes Collection and Other endeavours
11:30 – 12:30 p.m. Campus walk
01:00 - 2:30 p.m. Community Lunch with Board members, Faculty and Students
03:00-4:00 p.m. Presentation on XLRI by the Director
04:00- 4:30 p.m. Tea at MDP Residence
06:00 -7:45 p.m. Cultural program by Alumni and students
08:00 p.m. Diamond Jubilee Inauguration followed by Dinner
10:00 p.m. Alumni meets students over music and dances at JLT


November 22, 2009

Time Activity Remarks
6:00-8:00 p.m. Golf Tournament part I at Beldih Club
8.00 – 9.00am Breakfast hosted by Mr. Rana Sinha
9.00 – 12.00 am Golf Tournament part II at Beldih Club
12.00 - 12.30 pm Price distribution
01:00 p.m. Lunch hosted by Mr. Bushen Raina
Free time for individual catching up.....

XL celeb watch - Diptesh Ghosh, BM '99

Diptesh Ghosh, BM '99, Category head at HP India for Notebook PCs gets interviewed on CNBC's Storyboard program

You can catch him talking about Notebook sales here http://storyboard.in.com/

:-)

Warm regards
Gautam
Blog: http://gauteg.blogspot.com

Campus Update - August 09

Dear Friends,
Here is a quick re-cap of the month of August, 2009.

`JOY OF GIVING' LAUNCH AT XLRI
XLRI launched the `Joy of Giving Week', a nation-wide initiative to create a festival of philanthropy, on August 21, 09. XLRI is spearheading this movement in Jamshedpur from September 27 to October 3, 2009. The idea behind such a launch is to create public awareness and seek partnerships in humanitarian endeavours. To support the nationwide initiative, XLRI has planned various activities across the city to promote the acts of giving for a cause that include mobilizing donations and distribution of 400,000 pieces of clothes. The moving spirit behind this venture is Prof. Madhukar Shukla and SIGMA the student Association.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
XLRI will be launching an Entrepreneurship Development Programme beginning October 12, 2009. This is an initiative of the Entrepreneurship Development Centre set up at XLRI.

SIX-MONTH CERTIFICATE PROGRAMME IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Responding to a specific and emerging need XLRI Jamshedpur in collaboration with Ikisan Hyderabad (a comprehensive Agri Portal promoted by Nagarjuna Group, Hyderabad) initiated a Six-month Certificate Programme in Agri Business Management. This course aims at preparing agricultural graduates for undertaking marketing and sales jobs in the agri-business industry. This unique programme was launched in Hyderabad on July 29, 09 by the Director, Fr. Abraham.

STUDENT NEWS AND ACTIVITIES
Kshitij: CII YI invited 300 under-privileged school students from over 30 schools across Jamshedpur. The idea was to give these students a platform to showcase their talent. The response to the programme was overwhelming with wonderful performances in singing, dancing, painting and Quiz competitions.

New York University's Social Entrepreneurship Conference: An abstract (for a case on NEEV Herbal Soaps) submitted by two of our PMIR 10 batch students, Rashmi Kamath and Mahima, has been selected in the NYU Stern's "6th Annual Satter Conference on Social Entrepreneurship, Nov 4-6, '09.

SPORTSCOM & MAXI organized the first ever Colloseum, a unique concept in which team owners bid for players. The teams and the players would keep on accumulating points throughout the year in various sports events. The four teams Olympians, Spartans, Titans and Vulcans have already declared the war against each other with the first battle being tug-of-war.

FIR@X organized Bullseye, an Industrial Relations quiz on 6th August, which attracted huge participation from both PM&IR junior and senior batches. There were attractive cash prizes to be won. FIR@X also organized a Live Project and speaker session for the students by Mr. Shekhar Arora, ED (HR) of Ashok Leyland.

DRACULA came up with various events during the month which included a Parliamentary Debate club which kicked off its first Debate Contest `Babel'. Apart from that, the Lits League organized Popourri, a combination of games like 20 questions, Dumb Charades etc. and the Quiz League was active with its own event.

CRESCENT presented XPLORE, a treasure hunt which invited enthusiastic performance from students across courses and batches.

SAPPHIRE presented Chaos, an innovative event which was a quiz as well as involved bidding of top quizzers of each team at the end of every round. As the event progressed, it turned out to be more and more chaotic with team sizes and even the composition of teams varying after each round. The event was very well received and appreciated by the students.

ALUMNI NEWS
Asitava Sen (93 BMD): In Mumbai, Nielsen has launched a specialist Business Consulting Services group, which will combine qualitative consulting with fact-based analytic-driven recommendations. The group will be led by Asitava Sen, who joined Nielsen as Director, Retail Consulting last year.

Monisha Tambay (96 pm & IR) has joined Subex Ltd, a leading global provider of Operations and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) as Vice President - Human Resources.
Jayanthi Rajagopalan (95PMIR) featured in Femina, August 12, 2009 for her entrepreneurship initiatives in the area of Tourism.

SAD NEWS

PK Roy: One of our former faculty at XL - Prof PK Roy passed away on July 15th in Kolkata succumbing to a heart-attack.

Preeti Vinayak (01PMIR) passed away on July 31 succumbing to Crohn's disease. Both Prof. Roy and Preeti will be warmly remembered by the XLfamily. May their souls rest in peace!

HOMECOMING REMINDER
We hope you are in the process of finalizing your plans for the annual Homecoming at XLRI scheduled for November 21 and 22, 2009. We eagerly look forward to your participation at this annual event.
Once your travel plans are finalized, please do send a mail to Roshan Dastur

Friday, September 11, 2009

Conversations with Female Contract Workers

These conversations with women contract labours in Jamshedpur were recorded by two XL students (Madhu Bala and Mahima) of the "Intro to Social Entrepreneurship" course @ XLRI during their field visit. These women get 10-15 days of work in a month, mostly at Rs 90-110/day for manual work on construction sites, which may last between 10-15hrs - with no creches, toilets, or drinking water facilities..

The family income varies between Rs 2000-4000 depending upon how many members work. Some had bank accounts, but hardly any savings. The daily struggle to survive would leave them ever-suspended in a present, with hardly any thoughts about their future. But what could be a "hope" is that they shared their assets/ resources with each other in the "basti", were less bothered/bound by "caste", and sent their children to school, as much as they could...


XLRI Students Intern with Social Ventures

From The Telegraph

XLRI pupils to learn on the job

Jamshedpur, Sept. 7: A social entrepreneurship course at XLRI will now come with an internship at a national-level NGO.

The B-school has planned to introduce internship in the curriculum of social entrepreneurship, an elective course, from this year after the success of Parichay, a social entrepreneurship programme, last time.

“From this year onwards, the curriculum of the course will include an internship programme. The idea is to enable students to know how an organisation functions. Every student will have to complete a project to learn the hiccups in the area,” said Madhukar Shukla, a faculty of social entrepreneurship.

About 14 students have already begun their internship in NGOs such as Pravah, Prayas, iDiscoveri in New Delhi; Aarambh in Bhopal; Helen Keller Institute of Deaf, Blind and Dumb, Mumbai; SEWA video in Ahmedabad and a few based in Jamshedpur such as Ujjivan and Kalamandir.

The course has also undergone a change from this year. Instead of the one-term course, social entrepreneurship will now become a two-term (six month) one.

“The purpose of the internship is to help students gain a first-hand experience of working in a social venture, in a sector of their choice. This learning will also help them to develop their business plans and acumen for latter part of the course,” said Shukla.

From this year, students were also made to do a field work that comprised meeting 10-15 hawkers, rickshaw pullers and door-to-door visit to see their lives close quarter.

“The visit has been made compulsory because most of our students come from urban middle class and if they want to bring a change, they will have to understand the lives of the downtrodden, their situation and economic condition,” he said.

“We may not earn like other management students but will be able to bring about a social change. In order to start a social venture, we need to have a vision and the internship will also make us learn about the hiccups,” said Nidhi Rawal, one of the students of XLRI who is interning at Ujjivan in the city.

Joy of Giving, Jamshedpur - Website launched

Take a look :
http://jamshedpurjoyfest.blogspot.com/

Get inspired.

Donate.

Motivate others to get involved too.