MAXI Fair - A Resounding Success

Born of the vision of XLRI’s eminent professor Dr Sharad Sarin in 1979, the Marketing Fair, then a novel concept, is today an accredited marketing research tool. Conducted by the Marketing Association of XLRI, this brilliant and innovative method goes beyond the blind testing concept and uses a “mela” or carnival milieu to conduct meaningful consumer behavior research. The underlying concept involves designing games and events as surrogates to actual research questions, in order to elicit unbiased and accurate information from customers regarding their preferences and perceptions. Tales from the Mahabharat, a Bhool Bhulaiya, even the legendary Vikram aur Betaal served as themes for the stalls, and helped in eliciting the unbiased responses of more than 4000 visitors during the MAXI Fair held on Sunday, 25^th of November at XLRI Grounds.

The 29^th edition of MAXI fair was inaugurated by the District Magistrate cum Deputy Commissioner of East Singhbhum District, Jharkhand, Dr Nitin M. Kulkarni. Dr Kulkarni lit the ceremonial lamp and went around the fair visiting the various game stalls set up by the students.

With corporate support well established over the years, the fair associates itself with top brands in all categories across sectors. This year saw an entire gamut of research problems from the top manufacturing and FMCG companies and from the fast growing retail industriy. With the Steel City now among the top 10 richest cities in India (according to a survey by Delhi-based Indicus Analytics, one of India’s leading economic research firms), the companies can expect higher research quality from the fair than ever before.

Besides this, there was also the 2^nd edition of Rural MAXI Fair conducted on 24^th November at Swaspur, a village near Rakha Mines. The research problems for Rural Fair were given by top corporates, Tata Steel and Aditya Birla Group, which wanted to find out more about the vast, untapped customer base made famous by C.K Prahlad. Committed to social causes, this initiative saw the students take a small step to help the society at grassroots levels. The entire setup was done keeping the rural population in mind, with lucid games which could be easily understood by the villagers; it attracted nearly 500 people from the villages to experience the fair.

Also conducted under the umbrella of the Marketing Fair was Shilp Mela, in association with SIGMA (Social Initiative Group for Managerial Assistance of XLRI). The Shilp Mela acts as a platform for local artisans to market their handicrafts and agriculture products, thus enabling XLRI to translate its mission of social responsibility into reality.

The biggest compliment to the efforts of the marketing community of XLRI has been the popularity of the event among the localities. With footfalls increasing year on year, the fair has captured a place in the hearts of people and has now becoming a part of the history of Jamshedpur. It is a platform for the management students to interact with the community of their residence, and is an annual event which children and adults of Jamshedpur look forward to.

Not only are the Marketing issues being addressed through an innovative manner, the students are also able to practice what they have learnt in the classrooms, design research games and events and implement them in the running of the “mela”. This year MAXI took a step further and collaborated with IMRB International (part of the WPP group), the leading market research company, as its Knowledge Partner to ensure an enhanced quality of study. The sponsors for the event included Tata Steel and Aditya Birla Group as Associate Sponsors, BIG 92.7 FM and also Pepsi as beverage partner.

Posted by External Linkages Cell, XLRI Jamshedpur at 6:22 PM

Amar Babu (89BMD) as Lenovo's Managing Director

Lenovo names Amar Babu as Managing Director
2007-11-27 15:57:10

http://www.moneycontrol.com/

Lenovo today announced the appointment of R K Amar Babu as Managing Director, Lenovo India. Amar will be responsible for the overall business and growth for Lenovo in India.

Amar Babu has more than 17 years of multi-functional experience of which over 10 years have been in leadership roles. He was most recently the Chief Service Delivery Officer of Idea Cellular Ltd., and a member of Idea Cellular’s Executive Committee.

Prior to this, Amar served as Managing Director (South Asia), Sales & Marketing Group, Intel Technology (I) Pvt. Ltd., and was in charge of Intel’s business in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh), as well as all sales and marketing operations. As an integral part of the regional management team, Amar’s mandate included driving business growth and strengthening Intel’s brand and presence.

Before that, Amar was Vice President (Operations) for HCL Information Systems, where he was involved in all key strategic decisions and responsible for consumer, channel and retail business. Amar’s achievements at HCL include leading the marketing and operations resulting in significant business growth, and re-establishing HCL’s Toshiba business.

“We welcome Amar into Lenovo Asia Pacific’s senior management team. Lenovo India is a key contributor to Lenovo’s global momentum. I am confident that Amar’s ability to lead and manage high performance teams, his track record for developing internal talent and his understanding of the role of culture in a company's success will aid our growth in India,” said David Miller, President of Asia Pacific and Senior Vice President, Lenovo Group.

“Lenovo is a growing force in the global PC market and has achieved impressive traction in India, in a short span of time. I’m delighted to be part of an organization that takes pride in its multicultural heritage and customer-centric innovation,” said Amar Babu.

Amar has also worked at Citibank NA and HCL Hewlett Packard Ltd. Amar is a Management Post Graduate from XLRI, Jamshedpur and has an Engineering degree in Electrical & Electronics from PSG Tech, Coimbatore

XL Singapore - First Convocation

The first convocation for the XLRI Singapore branch will be held this Saturday 01 Dec 07 at 09:30am.

Mr. Gautam Banerjee, Executive Chairman, PwC Singapore will be the Chief Guest.

Dr. Shree extends the invitation to all the XL Alumni.

The Event would be held in "Possibility Room", Fifth Floor of NLB, Victoria Street.

The Function would start at 9:30 AM. Kindly be seated by 9:15 AM.

2 XLers on CNBC

please do have a look (it features two xlers of 84 and 87 vintages....
and someone else who looks quite familiar to me ;0))

http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/video/stockmarket/09/13/newsvideo/314454

ciao
madhukar

~~~
A fast growing economy is good news for everybody. But not for the HR Head. For him it is one big battle out there for skills and talents.To reward the trying efforts of organizations, to keep talent staying and growing, CNBC-TV18 has initiated the best employer of choice awards for the first time this year. And it was not easy deciding the winner. It took a close door daylong debate amongst an eminent jury to decide the winner, reports CNBC-TV18.

Knowledge partner Watson Wyatt placed before the jury members the findings of its survey based on its international methodology - WorkAsia ™. The core focus of this methodology is ranking employee engagement. Employee engagement constitutes commitment that is employees are motivated to help the organisation succeed and line of sight, that is employee knows what to do in order to make the organisation successful

70% weightage is given to the employee perspective. So it is an Employer of Choice awards but based on the employee perspective. The Employer is judged on the HR practices, he has put in place for which 30% weightage is given

The Jury comprising K Ramkumar, Group Chief Human Resources Officer, ICICI Bank, Madhukar Shukla, Professor, XLRI, Jamshedpur, Ganesh Chella of Totus Consulting, Chennai and Tarun Seth of Shilputsi debated the findings day long, throwing up learning’s for everyone.

The key revelation from this debate was that the adoption of well known HR practices do not necessarily bring in the highest employee satisfaction scores. This threw up surprise findings, where companies known to adopt the best HR practices did not figure in the top ten as their employee satisfaction scores were low.

But to know more and catch the winners, we will need to wait till November 27 where the Employer of Choice Awards will be given out at a glittering function at Mumbai.

XL's Summer Placement coverage on IBN Live

here:

http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/52902/summer-placements-shine-at-bschools.html

or at

http://tinyurl.com/23bsoy

ciao

madhukar

Maxi Fair (Nov 25, 07)

Maxi Fair (Nov 25, 07) Pics @ Picasaweb

http://picasaweb.google.com/madhukar.shukla/07MaxiFair/

Employer branding is tokenism in India

From Economic Times

There's a perception-reality gap

Madhukar Shukla Professor at XLRI Jamshedpur

A brand is something that is woven around a product. A good employer brand would, and should, represent the personality, the soul of the company. Building such a brand requires a lot of introspection by the company, and answering the question, “what kind of company we are, and want to become”; it must involve all the constituents of the organisation.

In most cases, however, companies treat ‘employer branding’ as a mere short-cut for attracting the talent. Instead of soul-searching, the HR departments tie up with ad agencies to conjure up an image that may be attractive to their target market, even if not their own. That’s a real dampener for new recruits––there’s a perception-reality gap they’re confronted with. The myriad ‘Best Employer’ media surveys add fuel to fire as they bring out checklists. So a ‘fun place’ for some may not be the same for others.

If one looks at successful employer brands carefully, one finds that companies do not do it consciously. For instance, when Sasken Technologies was a growing company in 2001, they decided what kind of organisation they want to be. Out of this introspection came things like their single-status policy, wherein all employees, whether the CEO or the young programmer, would be treated at par––such as every company executive would travel in the same class, etc.

Now this may attract certain kind of people, and it may also ward off others who wouldn’t like to ‘work in a commune’. Sasken certainly didn’t do this to attract talent. But later, such policies became the chief constituent of the company’s employer branding policy.

Similarly, Infosys, Wipro and TCS never consciously built a brand. They just built a workplace that would be productive and where people would be happy. Employer branding becomes a tokenism when it doesn’t fit in the DNA of the company. And, there needs to be a lot of self-sustained and conscious effort needed to create such a fit; to ‘become oneself’.

The Tatas would never like to become like Reliance, or vice-versa. The brand as an employer must provide a long-term advantage. And this advantage comes only when the profile of the candidate fits well with the profile of the company. Also, one must also appreciate that employer branding works mainly at the entry-level since the mid-level workforce and upwards look at other things, such as job profile, career enhancement et al.