Courses this quarter

I am back in Chicago and jetlagged terribly, but somehow made the plunge back into school life. In my enthusiasm to load up on soft courses, I seem to have taken 3 courses, two of which have a big overlap.

However, the professors are all stellar. There’s Ann McGill for Marketing Strategy, Marianne Bertrand for Competitive Strategy, and there’s Abbie Smith for Financial Statement Analysis.

While there’s some overlap between McGill and Bertrand, each of them has something unique to offer.

What can I say about Marianne Bertrand’s course. At the end of the session every week, i feel so mentally fatigued. This is one course where she forces you to constantly think ..the entire 3 hours, while she paces up and down with sheer energy. Its no surprise that everytime after her class, I come home to unwind with my vinho do porto and some curry !

romancing the monsoons (the Mumbai edition)

The monsoons in Mumbai are in their final stages and so is my second internship this summer. Blatantly oblivious to the bloodbath in the financial markets and with ruminations on a delayed graduation, I have been on an experiential journey to find glee and cheer in Mumbai.

(Pardon the anachronism in this para) Right from the time I land in Mumbai, the drive home promises to be memorable. The monsoons are supposed to end, but it has been raining heavily for the last few days. As I come out of the airport, I can sense the certainly dusky yet earthy smell in the air. Everywhere, I see lush green because of the rains. Its as if Mumbai is attempting to show its botoxed bliss. As my parents drive me home from the airport, I adapt myself quickly to the constant honking, to the small cars adeptly whizzing past mine missing it by inches. I cringe a bit in my car seat. I become indifferent to stopping our car midway allowing the bovine crowd to cross the street. I breathe the seemingly sinister air as we drive by the Dharavi hutments (Mumbai’s version of Cabrini Green) . Soon after, I am on the highway and after awe-ing at a million things, commenting how they still have/have-not changed in Mumbai, we arrive at our apartment complex. The doorman opens the apartment gate and willfully carries my luggage four floors up to my apartment knowing that I will hand him a fat tip that will cater to his tippling needs for the week.

Labor, it seems, has a flat supply curve in India. There is a maid that comes in to do our household chores, but she won’t clean the bathrooms for which there is another maid that comes in during an allotted time. My parents hired a car driver for me who will drive me to my workplace, but he will not wash the car every morning. Those rights are simply reserved for the building watchman/doorman (there are at least three doormen and they have divided the cars of the apartment complex amongst themselves). The garbage collector is yet another entity who gives her attendance just about when we have our morning cup of tea. The local grocery store, at a stone’s throw from the apartment, has a few helpers who will get our (limited) groceries all the way delivered to the apartment at the behest of a phone call – free of charge. Wonder what Keynes would have to say about such a ‘labor’ market.

From day one of my arrival, I have indulged in tons of junk food. If you are in Mumbai, you are in the mecca of junk food. If you haven’t eaten either the bhelpuri, vadapav or the frankie, then you haven’t experienced the Mumbai culture. Usually the market for such foods has low barriers to entry, and the owners have full pricing power. Junk-onomics apart, you will be drawn to whichever place makes the best dish, regardless of the price you have to pay. If you are a liberal germo-phobe like me, then the irresistibly sweet and tangy, ironically therapeutic, yet outright unhygienic pani-puri is strictly off-limits unless your body has been granted auto-immunity after about a months stay or so. The bhel-puri is the motherlode within the junk food trinity. The puri’s are made from semolina and flour. The complementary ingredients are chillies, coriander and mint, and sauces made from tamarind, jaggery, cumin powder and dried ginger powder. Then there are shards of raw mango with coriander, raw onions, green chillies with a whiff of lime. (Some say that this dish is actually a metaphor for the cultural diversity of Mumbai, what with all those ingredients). Much of the pleasure of eating bhel comes from the sapid crackling noise made by the puri inside the mouth and from the gush of saliva trying to further stoke the contents inside. As you manipulate and destroy the bhel-puri helping inside your mouth, you have to simultaneously cast an eye at the visual texture, appearance and color of the dish to get a hedonistic thrill.
That… ladies and gentlemen, that… is the moment, if you were ever in search of one, to denounce all your worldly and carnal pleasures alike and become one with this so-called trigeminal truth; thats when you know that the dish has hit THE spot.

Of course, apart from the monsoons and the bhelpuri-like fast-food, a visit to Mumbai is not complete without traveling in the local trains. But that is a treatise in itself and deserves a creative mention another time, another day.

Care to differ ..Mumbaikar’s ?

References: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

bouquets and brickbats

My stint in Mumbai continues. Some bouquets and brickbats:

• While I try hard to refrain in expressing any of my predilections, this is one for which I could not stop myself lauding. Kudos to the Indian central government for strictly enforcing a ban on smoking in public places, including railway stations, canteens and coffee houses, private and public work places. Only places where one can smoke is on roads and inside homes !! The ban does not take place until Oct 2 2008, but even now a big furore is being made for it and celebrities seen smoking in such places are censured in the media to set a precedent. Kudos again on the first foot forward.
• Good to see the Indian Tourism Ministry’s mantra of Atithi Devo Bhava (The guest is God) being put in practice. This is a nationwide campaign to promote tourism but mainly endeavors to ensure that the foreigners do not get cheated/grossly overcharged/’held to ransom’ by the local rikshawallahs, taxi drivers, airport luggage porters etc. by training and educating the masses and asking them to interject if they see such a thing happening. Profusely touched.
• I am enjoying my work but whats up with SOME of the ’superiors’ at the place I am interning? They seem to be coming right out of a Kafkaesque chapter, mired in a labyrinth of unnecessary red-tape that does not sit well with the company values. Arrey bhai, is anyone listening?

post-hiatus post

Its been nearly 3 months since I have posted anything. I wrapped up my long internship and after a twenty hour long journey arrived in Mumbai to squeeze in yet another short stint in an investment bank for the next 5 weeks. Not much break between the two. Thanks to all who have written in with their comments, and for those with queries, I apologize I haven’t written back though I will do so ..slowly but surely. There’s something sinister about this summer. I just can’t get myself together to write. I scribbled and scratched over these months to write about something but it was a very superficial effort and so is this. Its only after I reached Mumbai that I had time to reflect. I was not able to crystallize the reasons as to why I did not want to write during these last couple months during my internship; it just felt good not doing so. Without giving away much details about the work that I did (just because I signed so many documents promising not to do so), I have written something for the sake of writing and by not belaboring on the more commonplace takeaways of an internship.

The internship felt like an escapist resort, not adhering to any day-to-day rules that I usually would, during any regular quarter at school. There wasn’t the regular stress of any assignments or projects in the academic sense or even exams. There was no pressure to regurgitate the course material in three hours of a final exam or in a project. Sure, the pressure was there to perform, but it was a different kind of pressure. The mindset was that of unadulterated learning. The mindset was that of juxtaposing what I had learnt during the course of the year with how things were going on in real world. The mindset was that of a corporate groupie mingling with anyone and everyone. The internship could not have been done at a better time especially when the deepened sub-prime is part of prime time. (i know..that’s cliched but I had to use it anyway). You get to hear everyone’s views including the company’s chief economists’.

My goal during the internship was not just business as usual, but also some networking. I tried hard to network. This is one opportunity when you can talk to anyone in any department. Sure, if you are crossing the chinese wall, then its better to do so during the end of the internship so that ‘Compliance’ is okay with it. Still a skeptic in this networking mantra, I prefer to not just go out and blatantly smooth-talk with people just because the school has drilled you with the importance of networking or just because of the feel-good factor. I have learned that networking is really a game of marksmanship; its akin to throwing wet paper towels on the wall trying to see which one sticks, while at the same time, taking care not to make a big mess on the wall.

As an intern, I also learnt that besides ‘Attention to Detail’, ‘Availability’ is a big factor in gaining visibility. They don’t call it face-time for nothing. An intern really has to be the first one to come in and the last one to leave. There were at least a couple meaty side-assignments I got only because I was hanging around late night and because I was known for soliciting work even though my plate was full.

During my internship, this company laid off a bunch of people. I ought to graduate by next summer if I ever want to join this company full time. Although doable, this will be a bit tough, since I took only two courses last quarter and was working full time midway through the quarter. This company is no Soldman Gachs for which I feel imperative to hasten my graduation. In fact, given the current economy and the rather not-so-upbeat feeling on recruitment for next year, I feel its best to delay my graduation a bit. This is probably the biggest advantage of a part time MBA where you can time the market (to an extent) and tweak your shelf life. The full-time students have no choice in this one. They have to graduate next summer.

Either ways, with just 4 weeks to go in Mumbai before I head back to Chicago (and I am not looking forward to Chicago yet), this summer has signs of giving me a baptism-by-fire experience.

Tandoori evenings like these

‘Twas such a great day today. seems like summer has totally arrived in chicago. Coming home from school today, you could notice everyone trying to savor the weather.

There were some, in their variegated clothing, who seemed to be making a statement. You could see them boast off their summer colors trying to soak up the sun amidst the backdrop of the slightly humid breeze. Then there were the sipping-tea-with-their-pinkie-extended types , sitting on the patio tables outside along the plush restaurants of River North where I live. The subliminal body sweat, the on and off smell of somebody barbequing in their balconies, the aroma of the wines (from practically every restaurant here) titillating your olfactory senses made the walk home pleasurable.

The hour is getting late as I type this up and the cool breeze is attempting to bring a pleasant closure to the day. I need to get up early on the morrow for a group study. I have tried hard, for the past several hours, not to rue the fact that my last 10 days in chicago will be spent wrapping up for this exacting quarter rather than in the pursuit of happiness experiencing the beautiful outdoors.

Oh..the moody MBA woes !

some lens-eye dabbling

Despite the accelerated pace of the home stretch of the Spring quarter, I forcibly made some time for R&R and dabbled with photography during the long weekend.

Here is my fledgling attempt from a borrowed zoom lens! went wrong with the aperture value on this one. Exposure could have been looked into as well.

On the M&A course again

My academic fling with this course and all things related ..continues.

The course is getting interesting due to so many reasons. The professor too, Haresh Sapra, is putting in a lot more effort than the students. The course is down to the final merger model project. However, I am a little dejected with my midterm. In spite of putting enormous number of hours studying for the course, (the additional motivation being that my internship is in M&A), I did not get good scores on it. I understand the material reasonably well but I am just not sure what went wrong. I can’t blame it on lack of studying time coz I am not even employed now.

So I spent some time in solitude trying to figure out what have I learned so far in the course. I realized that:

• When Sapra says the word “EBITDA”, I try to hone my auditory cortex trying to decipher if I am hearing a ‘Bb major’ or an ‘e minor’. No really, hear him out carefully the next time. He goes…EeBitttdaaa
• When Sapra says the words ’stock’ or ‘purposes’ or ‘basis’, its hard to not notice the glottal nature of the occlusion of his diphthong
• When Sapra talks about ‘Taxable Asset Deals’, his right arm is tucked under his left shoulder and the left wrist imitates a cherry picking action gesturing that the Acquiring company can afford to choose the assets it wants in a merger. I have yet to see him use his right wrist to do the cherry picking action.
• Lastly, at the risk of sounding like a weirdo, I can’t help but notice his striking resemblance – minus the moustache – to David Suchet (the actor who portrays Hercule Poirot) in Agatha Christie’s eponymous television series.

So, coming back to why I did not fare well in the midterm …need I say more ?

4th annual TATA India business conference ramblings

Yesterday I got to attend the Chicago GSB 4th annual TATA India business conference. Here are the main highlights:

The event began with a short but motivational speech from Luis Miranda (who is a Chicago GSB alum and currently helms the PE division at IDFC). The underlying current of his speech was his own take on the GSB mantra ‘Challenge Everything’. He cited some examples from his days at the GSB and stressed on the importance of solving any problem thrown at you instead of griping about the constraints surrounding it.

Then came along Arun Shourie who, by making an emotional appeal to the passions and prejudices of the audience, seemed to strengthen his claims. Speaking in his unique paternalistic tone, he mostly concentrated on juxtaposing India and China within the boundaries of society, execution of corporate strategy and military might. Interspersed with hindi expressions, his speech touched on some insightful perspectives on India’s unmatched societal strength and China’s forced projection of its economic development to its military strength. Just when his speech had the potential to gybe into the sensitive political climate between the two countries regarding occupied territories, some nut-job in the audience had to further stoke the fire by citing some (isolated?) incident about China denying visas to some tourists..??..whatever. Luckily, a couple of terse sentences on the topic by Shourie and we were back on track. The undercurrent of Shourie’s speech being motivation, it was sugar coated with comprehensively persuasive anecdotes.

After that was Sam Pitroda (Chairman of India’s Knowledge Commission). Sam is the person who created a million plus jobs back in 1998 due to the proliferation of the Public Call Offices (PCO). A true visionary, he sought to implement his vision after a patient 5 month wait to meet Indira Gandhi and explain his vision to her. He has quite a number of patents under his name. During his keynote speech, he voiced some truly radical ideas yesterday which I felt like subscribing to instantly (it may also have been due to his deliberate intonation and resonating voice that helped drive home the point). He talked about the role of teacher as a mentor and seemed to have his own axioms that helped brace his model viz. focusing on a customer centric model vs on a content centric model. To sum it up, he looked really old-school but had some very ‘new-agey’ ideas. if there is ever a Galt’s Gulch, Mr. Pitroda needs to be in it ..for all the right reasons.

Then up on the stage was Mr. Muthuraman (MD of Tata Steel). He was a man with a social message. The bottom line of his speech was “Happy people = Profitable Company”. His hour long speech had explicit streaks of social messages shored by the fact that TATA is ‘owned by 66% philanthropic institutions’, has ‘adopted 650 villages along Jamshedpur’ and that TATA was founded with a philosophy that the ‘prime purpose of an industrial organization is to improve the lives of people’ – quoting him verbatim. I had a major ‘Atlas Shrugged’ moment while listening to him. He also managed to put in a reference to the ‘vasudhaivan kutumbakam’ saying in Sanskrit (meaning: the universe is one big family) in the Rig Vedas and drawing parallels to it in the corporate world. He also emphasized the role of the Acquisitor as a benign entity when it comes to acquisitions and pointed out how TATA (although holds the reins to the companies it acquires) lets them function on their own citing successful examples of Chorus Steel and Nat Steel. All this seemed a perfect foil to the onslaught of the current corporate culture.

He also stressed (rather predictably) on the 1991 reforms and how they propelled India out of the state-led industrialization in the socialist Nehruvian era. This comparison (Before coming to the event, I was sure one of the keynote speakers had it down in his scratch sheet) was warranted since the controls on the private sector had just been let go in 1991 and that’s when India truly progressed or as Mr. Muthuraman put it, “India was born”. The numbers that Mr. Muthuraman quoted to illustrate the progress in the post-1991 period were a quantum leap ahead from what they were in the pre-1991 era.

<Bloggers Digression>
While on the topic of the 1991 economic reforms, did you happen to read the WSJ article “How to fix India’s Financial Sector‘ coauthored by Chicago GSB Professor Raghuram Rajan and Cornell Professor Eswar Prasad. This paper talks about regulations in the financial sector and how it has prevented the financial sector (among others) in becoming competitive and efficient. There are direct recommendations for reforms and for uncoupling the government controls on the financial sector. The language used is ‘requirements need to be eased’ and ‘India’s political process…could bog down process’ and ‘Government ownership of 70% of the banking system..hindrances to development of corporate debt ..have stunted financial development’. From what I learned reading the article and the report, it seems that private enterprise (within the banking domain) is still bound by social controls. There is still a whiff of democratic socialism and centralization within this sector. There is a seemingly apocryphal analog to the state owned railways (during the Nehru era) reflecting both the good and the bad :- The railways reflected India’s democracy in a way that the poorest Indian had become mobile (analog: the above report talks about financial inclusions within the financial sectors penetrating into the masses and how 83% of rural workers with annual incomes above the national average have bank accounts). However Private companies, during that time, would not transport goods by rail becuase of tariffs and delays and other such shackles which eventually reduced any chances of privatization (analog: the above article talks about lack of incentives of private banks to expand lending due to rate ceilings imposed by the Government). If you read the report, you will find many more examples conforming to the above analog.
<End of Bloggers Digression>

Between the keynote speakers were panel discussion on Growth Capital/Entrepreneurship etc, However there was nothing spectacular about most of these panels since there was not much time given for QnA despite the audience wanting tons of it. Also, I felt that the moderators could have done a better job time-slicing the event: some panelists just hogged the limelight while some who really should have done the talking kept quiet. The moderators should have prodded the panel guests with more questions to solicit their opinions.

To end the speaker session for the event was the rejuvenating talk given by O.P. Bhatt in his funny avuncular tone where he rattled off yet another truckload of statistics showing SBI’s progress in the banking domain and its foray into PE. But by then, I was too tired and came back home to catch up on some sleep and some R&R.

Mid quarter break

Finally got done with my M&A accounting midterm. After spending countless hours preparing for it, it feels like the quarter just got over. Came back home to start working on a case for another course that’s due on Monday. Does this ever end?

After a logical end to my case writeup by evening, I headed out with friends to the Allstate Arena to attend the Police concert. While drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers did look as if age had caught up to them, Sting, though 50+, looked as fit as a 30 yr old (I want the moisturizer that he uses). Back during my undergrad days, I even used to own a VHS (video) cassette with the entire 1983 Synchronicity album – live in concert. Yesterday evening brought back some old memories. The paisa vasool (money’s worth) yesterday was the near 2-minute (of what seemed improvised) guitaring by Summers, and then there was Copeland’s rendition of ‘Wrapped around..’ on some esoteric percussion instruments. Of course I did see Sting mouth the words ‘Mephistopheles’, ‘Scylla’ and ‘Charybdes’ in their entirety.

After the concert, there was the usual indulgence in alcohol, yesterday being Saturday night. My friends wanted to go on all the way through the morning, I was determined to put a hard stop at 2 am. It was imperative for me to catch up on my sleep this weekend. Weather was just right last night. I woke up today, however, to a wet, windy, cloudy and thus a dreary Sunday morning.

Looking ahead for the month, there’s a lot of things to do. Only a month to go before the quarter ends and I head out for my internship. Having quit my job, I am going to give myself about 3 days of doing nothing but eating good and swimming. Once recharged, I hope to give my best to the home stretch for the Spring quarter.

Top 4 reasons to …

Top 4 reasons to look forward to taking classes on the 3rd floor at the Gleacher Center:

1. This is the only floor for which: taking the stairs to go to class and taking the elevator lie on the same indifference curve.
   
2. This is the only floor where the men’s restroom has an automatic paper towel dispenser
3. On your way to rooms on the 3rd floor, you get to see THE beautiful ladies working at the Program Office at Suite # 330 (Hello ladies !)
4. Okay, so this has nothing to do with the Top 4 but what the heck is up with BombayBitch trying to take stabs at the smokin’ Udita Goswami !!