Last goodbye

A love-struck heart's belief in forever.

But whenever did lovers part never.

A walk on the clouds facing the same sun.

But the mist of time blurs the vision.

A journey once started hand in hand.

Then one day the hour glass falls and lets loose the sand.

Time takes us on different paths.

All the pain unearths from the cynical laughs.

The hands that held, when the heart would cry

are meeting today to bid their last goodbye.

The heart that once went out to the lover

cannot but help in putting the pieces together.

Standing on different shores of the sea of life

you wonder, when you stopped to strive?

No pearls of wisdom can bring back the memories burnt.

But you emerge stronger after all you've learnt

Women@Google and ISB - a new beginning

The evening of September 17th, 2011 marked the creation of a nexus. Women@Google and Women in Business Club at ISB joined hands, and found a compatible partner for a cause. The team comprised of Mr. Sameer Bora - Digital Content and Commerce Lead (ISB alumnus – Class Of 2007), Ms. Pooja Srinivas - Manager, Sales Technical Operations, Meenakshi Dhingra - Manager, Adwords, Ashok Ranadive – Manager, Global Media and Platform Solutions, Sunita Mohanty – Online Sales and Operations Manager, and Ms. Shradha Negi, People Operations. 

WIB Club’s revised mission statement in year 2011-12 states sensitization of all members of the club towards gender-specific issues at the workplace as one of its goals. When the Women@Google team visited ISB on September 19th, 2011 to liaise with the WIB club at ISB, it comprised of 4 women and 2 men. It was great to see the men involved in this initiative. And, that is exactly what WIB aims at by sensitization of all members. Initially the discussion circled around how Google makes every effort to make life choices easier for its women employees. Such efforts span from nursing rooms for new mothers, and play areas and daycares for employees’ children to friendly maternity and paternity leave policy and the upcoming “Returning Mothers’ Program” to help women employees resume work smoothly after returning from their maternity leave. Google efforts to acknowledge women’s efforts and progress like “Women in Engineering Awards” and Google Women of Color Scholarship to help students attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (2011) were also discussed. 

Next, the discussion graduated to Google’s efforts to contribute to the society it belongs to, viz. Google’s association with Prajwala (an NGO that rehabilitates and rescues women, who are sex-workers and children), and Gayglers (the LGBT community in Google workforce). The team also charted out examples from personal experiences to emphasize how Google allows both men and women the freedom and flexibility to help them lead healthy personal and professional lives. 

In the end, while candidly highlighting the gender-ratio of 60:40 with 60% women at Google, Hyderabad, the Google team left with the following message for the WIB club members - Women shouldn’t be afraid of pursuing their aspirations, given a supportive environment; and a supportive environment is exactly what Google aims to provide to all its employees. 

Shruti Thakral

Knowledge Initiatives Coordinator

Women in Business Club, ISB

ISB Leadership Summit - Women in Business

WIB Club ILS Panel – Higher education & the India growth story

They came. They spoke. They conquered. Dr. Pronab Sen, the Principal Adviser to the Planning Commission of India, Dr. Indu Shahani, honorary Sherriff of Mumbai, recipient of “Women’s achievers award” and “Excellence in Education Award”, member of University Grants’ Commission, Dr. Shalini Sarin, Director of HR at Schneider Electric, India, Divya Ramachandran, CEO, Helios & Matheson Information Technology NA ., also an alumna from ISB’s founding batch. Four speakers. Four forces that came together and created a storm of ideas.

Organized by Women in Business (WIB) Club: Nandini Govindarajan, Saumya Joshi, Sneha Rajan, Sharon Ann Varghese, Shweta Sahjwani, Khushboo Pandey, Gunjan Paliwal, Sonali Saxena, Shruti Thakral. Moderated by Olivia Mukhopadhyay.

India is an emerging economy, at an inflection point, in need of talent. The WIB ILS discussion, thus, centred on the role and significance of higher education in India’s growth story. The issues addressed included the need for an innovation-based economy, brain drain, reverse brain drain, demand and supply in education sector, quality of education.

One of the highlights was the gap between the supply and demand of talent in the nation. Mr. Pronab Sen commented on how the economic system is churning out jobs our nations’ graduates don’t want to take up. Mr. Pronab Sen mentioned “According to statistics, the highest rate of unemployment in India is in graduate class”. Ms. Shalini Sarin emphasized that education is not being contextualized. She also added “Learning should not be offered in a tubular fashion in silos”.

Next, Dr. Indu Shahani threw some light on the issue of quality of education. She stressed upon the need for creative and independent thinkers, as well as, high-quality faculty. She emphasized the need of the hour to move from teaching institutions to research-oriented universities. She also commented “We need to be able to move from delivering knowledge to creating knowledge”. She insisted that the teachers be driven by the motto “teach from the head and inspire from the heart”.

Next, Divya Ramachandran indicated the mutual benefits corporates and academia could extract from a partnership to develop and nurture talent in the nation. Dr. Shalini Sarin added that more institutes should revise their curriculum regularly to keep up with the times, like ISB does. Divya also mentioned the recent trends in reverse brain drain, and mentioned this could be the perfect time to engage great talent.

All speakers agreed that India is at a tipping point. India has a lot of opportunities, but at the same time, there are issues staring it in the face. These issues must be addressed immediately, if the nation wishes to ride the approaching wave of success. Dr. Indu Shahani shared the following fortune cookie quote with the audience to signify the message to be left behind: “the world will accept best talent with open arms, no matter what”.

Shruti Thakral
Knowledge Initiatives Coordinator, Women In Business Club, ISB, Class of 2012

Green shoes

A lady dressed in formals steps into the room filled with bare minimum furniture - a chair and a desk. The lady behind the desk hands her 2 papers - one empty, and the other one saying "Green shoes". She is directed towards another room, this one filled with furniture - lots of chairs and tables scattered around, and lots of people. She was never too comfortable around too many people. She found a lonely little corner on a sofa at the far end. Some people are murmuring to each other, while some are perusing, and others writing frantically on their piece of paper. She settles into the couch, and takes a look around. Maybe, it wasn't a good idea. she feels old all of a sudden. She is clueless. She goes blank. She struggles. She fumbles. And then, she stumbles across an idea. As usual, she would have trouble expressing it. She was never good with prose. So she goes ahead and writes ....

I wake up each morning, take a shot of gourd juice.
Suit up my ego and vanity, and put on my green shoes.

I ride up the elevator, I've got nothing to lose.

But till I reach the top, I'd have a lot to choose.

My spirit's drunk on power, I'm running the rat-race.

Making a stack of green bills, never sure how long it stays.

Half the day passed by, the top of the roof slid by.

Yet I'm running, but who knows why.

It's time to go home, it's time to let the soul loose.

I'm finally at peace, it's time to take off my green shoes.

Disclaimer: Based on a true story

30-Oct-2010, 11:45 am, Taj Palace Hotel, Delhi, ISB Applications Round 1 Interview location

iSad - In the memory of Steve Jobs

The world lost a great innovator and visionary today - Steve Jobs, who once said:
"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do".

One of the greatest, most inspiring speeches of our times, from the great innovator himself:
Steve Jobs' Stanford speech in 2005

And, a bit about his life:
About Steve Jobs

Tete-a-tete with fellow entrepreneur- Ms. Shweta Sahjwani (CO2012) @ ISB

Friend’s wedding this weekend? Decided on the wedding gift yet? Not even after two trips to the mall? And let me guess, you are still as clueless as you were when you started to think about it! Enter wishberry.in, co-founded by ISB CO2012 student Shweta Sahjwani, in July 2010, with two friends, Priyanka Agarwal and Aditya Agarwal, she went to middle school with.

I can (almost) read your mind! “What is wishberry.in?” you’re pondering. To quote Shweta, “It’s an online gift registry service”. And she goes on to add candidly “it eliminates wasteful gifting and gift recycling. We offer registries for weddings, baby showers, anniversaries and all such special occasions”. In other words, gone are the days when your friend would receive 20 toasters, 15 dinner sets and 5 tea sets as a wedding gift; or as in my case, vouchers worth Rs. 19,000 for Lifestyle :)

Anyhow, let’s not steal Shweta’s thunder! Shweta and her friends started wishberry.in using their personal savings. Shweta was heading the Business Development at wishberry.in at inception. She was responsible for getting retailers to sign up with their portal, which proved to be a daunting task. She had to contact retailers, convince them to listen to their proposition, surpass gatekeepers to get to the decision-makers. Today, wishberry.in lists retailers including Croma, Guess, Esprit, Mango, Charles & Keith, Nine West, Vera Moda, Jean Claude Biguine, etc. After the launch of the portal, she led Operations Management while managing web-development outsourced to a team based in Kolkata. The co-founders started the business by convincing family and friends to try their service. Today, their promotion channels include facebook, google and viral marketing amongst others. It made staggering revenues through the first year of operations from July, 2010 to July, 2011.

Now, it was time to apply lessons from the “Management of Organizations” course. So my gray cells prompted me to ask Shweta about the wishberry.in team. Currently, their team has 8 people. They usually hire fresh college graduates. Now, reminiscing lessons from the “Competitive Strategy” course, I wondered, what was the competitive advantage wishberry.in offered to customers? Shweta’s eyes almost lit up when I asked her, and she went on to explain “Ever since we launched wishberry.in, multiple competitors have cropped up. This only validated our business model further, and encouraged us even more. The internet usage in India is surging higher than ever; e-commerce is climbing new heights. But we are confident, we offer a customized experience. We strove to get the best and most recognizable brands onto wishberry.in, and to avoid the clutter that normally comes with other big e-commerce websites. We also continue to make functional and operational improvements regularly to keep up with changing trends and preferences. When you register for a wedding with us, you can put up the venue details and pictures. People can enlist as contributors to your gifts. They can even create a gift fund for your enlisted honeymoon to Paris. In fact, one can even send gifts to your friends and family from overseas”.

Excited by her enthusiasm, I, then, tip-toed and tried to peek into the portal’s future. “What next? Do you see wishberry.in being bought by another retail giant or the like sometime later?” I blurted out. “Not in the near future, but obviously we will consider it if a good opportunity comes our way. Valuations of other e-startups are very encouraging. However, I believe that’s still 4 or 5 years down the line. It would take that much time for this market to truly blossom”, responded Shweta.

Finally, a message for our WIB members from Shweta: “If you have a dream. Go for it. There’s no better time than now! “What to do” is the most important element to achievement. Once you have that figured out, find out the “how to”. People love talking and advising; just find the right people to talk to! You’d be surprised how much people are willing to share with someone who is keen to learn”.

Facebook Directors’ Panel Discussion at the Indian School of Business – August 29th, 2011

The hustle-bustle died down; there was a sudden silence; their presence was being felt already. They exchanged a few modest looks amongst themselves, and seated themselves smiling all along! A quick round of introduction by the Vice President of the Women In Business Club at ISB, Ms. Saumya Joshi! And the discussion began! The moderator – Mr Salman Siddiqui, President of the Business Technology Club at ISB, started on a light note asking whether any of the three guests had a Google Plus account! The lecture theatre resonated with laughs for the next few moments! With three continents at the table, the guest panel included Ms. Kelly Graziadei, who looks after Brand Agency Strategy and Account Management at Facebook in Bay Area, California, Ms. Kirthiga Reddy, Director of Inline Operations and Head of Office at Facebook in India, and Ms. Gail Power, Director of Online Sales and Operations at Facebook in Europe.

The discussion warmed up with the Directors emphasizing that facebook is not just a social network, but a social graph of people’s online lives, resonating with Mark Zuckerberg’s description of facebook as a social utility. They also went on to stress how facebook is altering life, as we know it today, every single day. “Did you remember the Like button was introduced about a year ago?” noted Kirthiga. The audience was definitely surprised. After all, it feels like it’s the way of life now. I’ve even heard students on campus comment laughingly that Microsoft Outlook should also have a “Like” button.

Next, Kelly talked about how facebook is continually thriving to enhance users’ social experience, with efforts like Pandora that allow you to share your choice of music with friends, and how the use of sponsored stories is improving shopping experience for both, facebook users and advertisers.

Kirthiga, then, went on to stress facebook’s matra of user engagement, and pointed out the impact of applications built around this mantra, quoting Zynga (the online game developer with games on facebook) as an example. Next, she commented on the importance of mobile applications, especially for emerging markets like India, and the shift of advertising from traditional media like TV to social networking media. She stressed Kelly’s example of sponsored stories, where recommendations come from known contacts, as powerful tools of brand-building.

Next, Gail discussed the difference between facebook’s approach to advertising, in comparison to Google. She took the example of sponsored story forward, and mentioned Neilson’s survey that indicates four-fold purchase intent when recommendations come from friends.

In the end, all the three speakers addressed the Women in Business club members, and took turns to highlight the importance of cultural fit in organizations, pursuing career aspirations fearlessly and belief in own capabilities. The guests were then applauded by an audience that left the venue intellectually satiated and stimulated. With the same humble smiles over their faces, the guests then proceeded for a cup of coffee with the club members.