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Balki is known for his no-nonsense approach to advertising and his “Daag Achche Hain” campaign for Surf Excel is a case in point. His “Jaago Re” ads for Tata Tea and “Walk when you Talk” Idea Cellular campaign have brought in a much needed fresh social voice to advertising. His penchant for exploring different creative avenues led him to Bollywood in 2007. He wrote and directed Cheeni Kum, with Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu in the lead. Paa(2009), starring Abhishek Bachchan, Vidya Balan and Amitabh Bachchan was his second directorial venture.

The interactive talk was held on campus as part of ‘Prodigies – the Leadership talk series’ facilitated by the student run Industry Interaction Cell of IIM Lucknow. Based on the theme of ‘Ad & Film Making – Through the Management Lens’, it was very well received by the IIM Lucknow community with a jam-packed auditorium. From the Tanishq to Idea, Surf to Havell, Balki had the audience floored with his anecdotes and insights on these brands. Over the course of an hour and a half, he took the students through his journey of ad making, playing out different ads and explaining their significance, story board and the like.

The session gave the students a flavour of how the Indian advertising industry works in general and how Lowe Lintas, with Mr. Balki at the helm, succeeded in producing top-notch, eye-catching ads. “If an advertisement does not make you interested in the product, then it is just a piece of good filming not a good ad”. Highlighting the nuances of designing integrated ad-campaigns, he shared his perspective on the changing consumer behaviour in India which throws up new challenges to today’s marketers. In response to a student’s question on ad failures and successes he said “Learn from experiences that have worked best for you, success trains you and makes you strive for more”. He also discussed with the students how the downturn and recession had actually affected the marketing ideas and budgets. The students were particularly amazed about his experiences as a director to some of the most noted actors in Bollywood.

Away from all the shine and success, Balki shared some stories from his personal life which left the audience wanting for more. Commenting on the talk, Dheeraj Sarwaiya, a second year student said, “Today’s MBA student is more enterprising and bold than ever before. We have students who choose not to tread the beaten path but simply follow their dreams in unconventional fields. These talks are a good source of inspiration for us to pursue what we truly believe in.”

This new development is very promising as compared to the last decade, where women were mostly not even considered for corporate jobs. Times are certainly better now, but it’s not as if much has changed. Fact remains that only 3% of the top CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies are women!

When the most dreaded question of any MBA admission interview is asked, “Why MBA?”, the most frequent answer encountered is speedy career progression with an aspiration for senior leadership roles and greater responsibilities. It is interesting to note that at the junior level, the number of men and women entering the industry are almost the same. However one can’t help but wonder why there is such a sharp decrease in number of women who successfully move up the corporate ladder! Why are women unable to achieve the career goals that they started out with? Is it a perception mis-match? A study by Bain & Co in 2010 provided insights regarding general trends in the top multinational corporations with respect to perceptions of both men and women.

The study reports that 80% of the women believed that achieving gender parity should be a critical business imperative as compared to only 48% of the men. Sixty six percent of the men reported that they believed women share equal opportunities to be promoted for leadership positions and alarmingly only 30% women felt the same, indicating a sharp perception gap in the status of gender parity. One aspect that both men and women agreed upon was that although there exist no gender disparity during recruitment for junior positions, there existed a significant disparity while considering promotion to senior executive roles. How exactly does this play out?

Mitali, a Junior Manager at an MNC, says “I feel that my work environment is more man-friendly”. “I think women are more passionate when it comes to work; it is like my work defines me.” She further adds, “The HR initiatives in my company are just not flexible enough”. The Bain and Co. study sends this strong message to the business leaders that majority of their employees do not see the current initiatives, such as flexi timings aimed at helping achieving gender parity, as successful. Women in secure jobs have changed to a similar post in another company only because their company’s policies did not allow them the sort of environment they needed.

The proverbial glass ceiling phenomenon has been well documented at the workplace, and it is a fact that a woman has to work much harder than a man in the same work team to gain the same amount of recognition. But this glass ceiling has given way in many organizations, and the important factor to consider should be “Is work place culture adaptable enough to retain women employees?”

Another reason for lesser number of women in the higher echelons is the issue of work-family imbalance. Not only is the woman considered to be the caregiver in a family, the Bain report also shows that more number of women are ready to relocate for their spouse’s job transfers, or choose to work from home as compared to men. Women are also more likely to take a flexible career path, and three times more likely to work part time. Company initiatives in such a case can be very helpful in retention of their women employees by allowing for part time or work from home for a period of time. But the Bain survey results revealed that the employees were dissatisfied with their organization’s insensitivity to the progression of male and female career paths. More than three-quarters of the respondents said that their company had implemented gender-parity initiatives such as flex-work programs and mentorship but mostly felt that these programs were not effective.

It would also be interesting to note, that the number of female entrepreneurs increased by 15% from last year. This could possibly be a fallout of company initiatives failing to provide women with a suitable work environment or perhaps another dimension of change in the world of business. Further studies would  give us the insight to that.

All things considered, admitting more female students in MBA colleges is a positive first step that could help open up a plethora of opportunities for women. In the end the success of any such policy would depend on the organization these women are hired into. A lot of companies of course, do have very competitive gender equality recruitment policies where they make a conscious effort to select a healthy ratio of male to female employees. The success of an organization depends on the growth that it offers to the women employees. The way forward for any company would be to have less rigid promotion processes, and career paths, and also actively promote and de-stigmatize flexible career arcs within the organization – so that the employees flourish and grow in stop and start careers.

US Tech Solutions has decided to launch its Encanvas Secure & Live ES platform in India at IIM Lucknow.  The launch is a first of its kind where a global consultancy is officially launching the software product suite at a B-school. Moreover, the company also plans to conduct a case study competition and let the winners of the contest be involved in the marketing charter for the product suite.

US Tech Solutions has also decided to work with the Incubation cell at IIM Lucknow to launch the software product at other educational institutions in India. This would give the IIM-L student community a great platform to be a part of a business enterprise even before graduating from IIM Lucknow.

The students at IIM Lucknow eagerly await the product launch given that it is a precedent across schools where a company plans an official launch at campus and let the students drive the marketing effort for the product across communities.

The launch saw the presence of the top management from US Tech Solutions including Ian Tomlin (Sales Director and author of “Cloud Coffe House” and “Agilisation” books) and Dhiraj Adya (VP-Corporate Strategy). Ian Tomlin was extremely pleased with the proceedings and student community of IIM Lucknow. “We are looking at IIM Lucknow to provide a creative platform to market our product and innovate”, said Tomlin. When asked, why only IIM Lucknow, Dheeraj replied by saying “The rigour of IIM L is much more. The media cell and IIC are doing a fantastic job out here”. Us Tech Solutions is bullish on the chances of success of their social network products in India. “If there is a place to start a new technology in IT, its India”, added Tomlin. US Tech Soln seemed optimistic about growing Indian business needs. “Business needs secure spaces to share, and we introduce social networking tools in this space”, added Tomlin.

US Tech Solutions has a highly process enabled approach developed and evolved over a period of time.  They have achieved the pinnacles of process and quality credentials through ISO 9001: 2000 (Quality Management Systems), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems) and SEI CMMi. This shows their commitment towards providing world-class solutions with standardized procedures, frameworks and methodologies to their global clients.

The Industry Interaction Cell (iic) of IIM Lucknow which is working with US Tech Solutions on this launch sees this as a great opportunity for the students of all specializations (marketing, finance, strategy et al.) to apply their learning to an event which promises to test their expertise across the board be it in non traditional marketing, marketing communication or managing technology.

An entirely student driven initiative, Ignicion’s primary objective is to ensure that prospective students get every possible help and information from a reliable source quickly. Team Ignicion maps the profiles of the aspiring candidates to those of student volunteers at IIML, in order to come up with the best set of mentor-mentee pairs.

This ensures that the mentees are able to connect better with their mentors and can get appropriate advice based on their mentor’s past experiences. To avail the benefits of this programme, aspirants who have a GD/PI call from IIM Lucknow are required to register themselves on the Ignicion website at http://www.iiml.ac.in/ignicion. Soon after registration, they are allotted mentors who will guide them through the GD/PI process and will try and resolve all their queries.

The registered candidates can also post their queries on the Ignicion forum at http://synapse.iiml.ac.in/ignicion/forum/, which shall be promptly replied to by the Ignicion team. As an alternative, candidates can also mail in their queries to ignicion@iiml.ac.in. Akshai Varma, a student from the batch of 2010 at IIM Lucknow and one of the members of the Ignicion core team in 2009, believes that after last year’s terrific response, where nearly 80% of the call getters registered themselves on the forums, Ignicion is all set to go to the next level. “The current Ignicion core team has some fantastic initiatives lined up, including mock telephonic interviews and interviews over Skype; networking through various social media portals such as Facebook, Twitter and Buzz; and regular disbursement of information regarding frequently sought topics such as Careers after MBA, Life @ B-Schools etc.”

Representative of Ignicion have also taken up the task of attending to queries put forward by aspirants on popular MBA forums such as PagalGuy and MBAUniverse. The Ignicion team has also launched Ignicion pages and communities on popular social networking sites such as FaceBook, Orkut, Twitter and Google Buzz, which focus on life at IIM Lucknow in order to help aspirants get a sneak peek into the happenings at IIM L.

Given the already huge number of hits and registrations on the Ignicion website within 2 days of its launch, this year’s programme is all set to scale new heights. For more information about the initiative, visit the Ignicion website at http://www.iiml.ac.in/ignicion, or visit the Ignicion page on Orkut and FaceBook. You may also follow the user ignicion2010 on Twitter and Buzz to receive continuous updates from Team Ignicion.

IIML over the last few years has chosen not to disclose the salary figures offered on campus as we believe salaries are just one component of the jobs offered and are in no way representative of the recruitment scenario. Hence we feel compelled to communicate this clarification because we believe it has the potential of driving aspiring students into making misinformed decisions and also gives incorrect signals about the economy.

The event is a unique initiative of the students of IIM Lucknow where they provide an introductory snapshot of management to next generation of students through a variety of games and competitions, at the same time providing them with a unique opportunity to experience life at a B-school. It was well-appreciated by the students and teachers. As Mrs. Lopamudra Sen of Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai puts it “This is indeed a commendable effort on the part of IIM Students. It’ll help the students experience the life in a business school and try their level best to be a part of a prestigious institute like IIML in the future”

The events spanned across the different verticals of management –Operations, Marketing, Finance and Consulting- and were extremely exciting. Nischay Mehta, a student of Bal Bharti Public School, Delhi ,who participated in the operations event organized by the operations interest group of IIM Lucknow, said, “We always thought of operations as a difficult subject which only involved tedious calculations. I could never imagine how interesting it is in reality”

The event also engrossed the teachers in several panel discussions and team building games. Mr.DK Chatterjee accompanying the students of La Martiniere School for Boys, Kolkata was highly enthusiastic during the event and said “It gave us a chance to interact with the professors of IIM Lucknow. We could learn several techniques to creatively improve the pedagogy that we had been adopting for years. ”

Apart from the competitive events, the event provided a platform to the school students to interact with mentors from IIM Lucknow. The B-school students were happy to relive their school lives. Amit Sharma, a 2^nd year PGP student of IIM Lucknow added on a happy note “It indeed was like the old days in school uniform.”

When asked about the event, Mr.Hussain of Allahabad Bank had a lot to say – “It’s a good cause. Being a financial institution, we feel responsible and are proud to be associated with a cause that is beneficial to society.” The run started at 8:30 AM on the 24^th of January. The crisp winter morning saw many participants of various ages and occupations. There were over 40 cadets from the NCC corps under the command of S.P.Yadav, who said, “My job was to bring them here. The rest is up to these young people to take it forward.”

The flagship event “The NEXT CEO reached a thrilling climax.” 9 budding CEOs from the top B-schools like IIMA, IIMB, XLRI, SPJIMR, MDI and IITB fought hard to win this battle of brains. Various scenarios testing their physical and mental abilities, teamwork, leadership and ingenuity were unleashed on participants and the last man standing from IIM Bangalore, Abhilash S, will take it all – a cash prize of INR 1, 00,000 and a PPI with Citibank. “I found this very interesting”, said a radiant Abhilash as he cradled his trophy. “We had to devise new ways which were off-beat. The overall experience has been tremendous. The dedication shown by the organizers blows me away – the speed with which they improvised to adjust to the weather conditions was astounding. The last round was especially compelling. Overall, it has been an Exceptional experience”.

Nidhi, a 2^nd year PM/IR student of XLRI Jamshedpur said, “Challenging! Out of the box!”

The grand finale of another flagship event – Call for Arms was one of the highlights of the day. The event saw an intense competition and battle amongst eight finalists from India’s best b-schools. If yesterday saw the teams battling on individual subject rounds related to an M&A, today the teams battled it out for a B-plan. Ankur Soni from IIM Indore said “It was a good competition. All the rounds were designed in such a way that all members had to be involved. The whole competition saw a team effort from all. We liked the concept.” The organisers had invited Mr. Parthasarthy, Head of M&A division at Mahindra & Mahindra. He announced that the winners were the team of MDI Gurgaon and the runners up were the team from IIM Ahmedabad.

It was also a day of entrepreneurial streaks as the finals of “Nirvaan – The B-Plan competition” unfolded. Winning the event were the team from JP.College, Noida. The social entrepreneurship awards were won by Army Institute of Management Kolkata, with the team from IIM Shillong coming second.

The evening saw a parliamentary style debate “Contrapunto”. 8 teams qualified after an eliminatory extempore. The topics for the debate revolved around the Manfest theme India: Expect, Explore, Experience. Performing live on campus was Kailash Kher and his band “Kailasa”. Dishing out his popular numbers like “Teri Deewani”, hundreds of music lovers thronged the grounds and enjoyed the musical maestro at his best.

Dr. Wilfried Aulbur, CEO Mercedes Benz India, Mr. D P Singh, VP S&M Goodyear India, Mr. Rajiv Kapoor, President and CEO Fiat India, Mr. Dilip Chenoy, Director-General SIAM and Mr. Dilip Chhabaria, Founder DC Design. These are the names which glittered at the conclave which was held on Saturday January 23 2010, at IIM Lucknow. The sizeable audience gathered at the conclave was a mix of b-school students from across the globe, industry stalwarts, IIM Lucknow alumni among others.

Excellence, enterprise and energy form a veritable recipe for success for the future torchbearers of industry. The youth of today need is a little nudge in the right direction, a smidgeon of guidance to set the gears of their illustrious careers in motion. Manfest aims to provide just that with Talk the walk.  This year the event promises to be bigger and better with leaders like Dr. Wilfried Aulbur, CEO of Mercedes Benz India and S Ramadorai, Vice-Chairman Tata Consultancy services expected to interact with the students.

Mr. Alfred Aulbur started the conclave with an interesting dialogue on ‘Luxury Marketing. He talked about the importance of 5Ps which have made Mercedes the leader in its market segment. He was followed by Mr. Ramadorai, who talked about the ‘The future of IT in India’. He is one of the pioneers who introduced the concept of offshore development centers. He emphasized on the leading role of India and China in these recovery times. This event attracted many-a student who wanted to get a chance to listen to such recognized leaders at such close quarters.

The day was not over yet. Abhiyan, the E-cell of IIM Lucknow organized Nirvaan-2010, the flagship entrepreneurial event of Manfest. This event gave the students an opportunity to interact with many entrepreneurial aspirants, eminent personalities from the industries, faculty and PE/VC/Angel investors.

This year, we had the pleasure of hearing from Mr. Emmet Brady, an authority on Biomimicry, an emerging thought process for new business ideas. Then we have the co-founders of Sanchetana Microfinance Private Limited, Mr. Lokesh Singh & Mr. Niraj Pareek who talked about their success, followed by Mr. Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director at Sequoia capital will be sharing his views on emerging entrepreneurship opportunities.

Mr. Brady who started off the conclave by bringing out the three elements that are important for success: planet, people and profit. He extolled the merits of an emerging discipline, Biomimicry which studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. This subject is being taught in eminent universities like Stanford and UCB.

He spoke of the importance of imbibing nature’s design to business systems. He suggested that we create conditions which are conducive to life. He believed that the students of IIM Lucknow can make it happen. This event was a great success among the budding entrepreneurs.

Anjuman – The Corporate Luncheon

Anjuman 2010 played host to a diverse group of leaders from the corporate fraternity. The key note speakers included the likes of senior leaders such as Mr. Ramadorai, the former chairman of TCS and Mr. Pankaj Saluja, Senior partner at Bain and Co, Dr. Wilfried Aulbur, CEO of Mercedes Benz India.

Mr.Wilfred Albert talked about the importance of sustainable mobility in India. He believes that the infrastructure at present is not adequate to meet the demand of the automobile industry. He also emphasized on the need for Indian manufacturers to innovate and design products that are suitable for the country’s infrastructure.  Mr. Ramadorai then talked about the India’s role in recession times and also stressed that reverse brain drain is quite visible .Mr. Pankaj Saluja then talked about the infrastructure bottlenecks in the country and the method in which foreign firms should enter India. He believes that by participating in mainstream segments, localizing 4Ps, and investing in local talent would bring in definite success.

In addition, the audience included over 80 senior leaders from the corporate fraternity and the students from IIM Lucknow. The event saw the leaders mingling with the students for a short tete`-a-tete.

Green is the buzzword what with leaders of the world holding emergency talks over global warming. “C Trader” was an event conducted by one of the on campus committees, which was organised to focus on the growing concept of carbon trading. The event concept was to assign an industry to each of the seven finalists and the objective is to maximise the NPV of the company.

The inaugural ceremony was then followed by the BizQuiz eliminations. Testing the grey cells of management students, the elims were just a prelude to select the best 3 teams from the campus. 3 outstation teams had already been selected through prior elims. With 6 of the top quizzing teams set to battle it out in the finals, it just can’t be “yet another final” can it? Hosting the finals on the main stage was Gautam Bhimani, noted TV presenter and quizmaster at ESPN-STAR. At the time of going to press, the teams were locked in an intense round of quizzing.

Biz Quiz was followed by a stunning performance by Parikrama that returns to IIM Lucknow’s Manfest after a gap of few years. It was a packed audience that greeted their performance. Capping off the day was the rock competition “Hellraiser” which was a showdown between six finalist bands from across India. Some of the names that were performing were Rabbit is Rich and Under Siege from Delhi. Hundreds of head banging enthusiasts were crooning at the fare dished out by these bands.