“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Harold R. McAlindon. My career goal is to own a technology driven firm down the line ten to fifteen years. This can be achieved only by having a good understanding of business fundamentals and its execution.
I have been living away from my home for higher education, with my friends, right after completing my matriculation, and it has helped me to develop the sense of teamwork and recognition of others. Being a part of NCC in school, cricket and musical teams (I play Tabla) of my school, college and my organization has helped me understand and appreciate the concept of people working together towards the same goal. I am now working for more than 5.5 years in IT industry. Currently I am working in an organization, which believes and works with global teams. It has given me the skill of being flexible and better communication and good coordination. All these, along with a good academic record and technical expertise give me an upper hand to think of getting into software enterprise management course.
As Cisco Systems India team is expanding very fast now, I am slowly getting involved more into managerial activities of coordinating with global teams, resource management, working with “product line management” on defining requirements and understanding customer needs. I see this as the first step towards my ultimate goal of owning a technology firm. Hence, I would like to formalize my training and to learn necessary management skills. I believe that a management course will help me transition myself from “managing small technical team” to a business leader with a sound understanding of business goals and market dynamics.
Showing posts with label IIM-B. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IIM-B. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
PGSEM 2007 interview !
I had never planned to go for a mangement course during my initial student life. After working in the IT industry for around 6 years, I felt a need of doing management course and the obvious choice was IIM-Bangalore's part time PGSEM course, as I work in Bangalore. With a not-so-good CAT percentil of 90.42, I got a call for interview. I think this was mostly because of my experience, the company I am working for and a good acedemic record. My interview was scheduled on 14 April 2007, at 2:00 pm. I was one hour before my interview time to IIM-B. Two guys went for the interview before me and they were not happy with the interivew. The second one lasted only for 5 mins. I guessed that I am going to have a good (??) time. I was called next.....
There were two professors. One of them kept quite for a long time during the interview, while observing me and the other kept asking questions...
Prof 1: Sit down.
Me : Thankyou sir !
Prof 1: Tell us something about yourself.
Me : I started with my primary education, secondary education, graduation, masters and then about my campus interview etc. I did not only told them about the education I had, but also mentioned about the achievements I had during these phases (thanks to the pagalguy article about how to handle this questions smartly).
Prof 1: Tell me about HFCL (this is the first company I worked for).
Me : I started telling about the company, its various divisions etc.
Prof 1: No, I was asking about your branch.
Me : I worked for Research and Development division, which was a start-up. I described about the product I was working on. and that the start-up was no more there.
Prof 1: So, your product must be in the market by now ?
Me : No sir, we did the field testing of the product in Jalandhar local exchange. The product worked quite well with the defined requirements at that time. But, it was not on-time in the market. Hence it was not successful. The market requirements changed by the time we completed it.
Prof 1: What did you do and how the requirements changed ?
Me : We developed optical access network (OPTAN), which interfaced with the local exchange as the last mile solution and will be used by telecom service providers. We worked on voice only. By the time we went into the market, the requirements changed to voice, video and data. Added to that were many top-up services that were missing in our product. Also, by the time we were ready for the market, there were already many big players in this field.
Prof 1: How do you see the difference between HFCL and Cisco systems ?
Me : HFCL was a start-up company, so we had a lot of product ownership. The requirements used to be defined by the marketing team (that was formed late in the process), else we use to define the requirements. In Cisco systems, we are working on a product that is launched successfully in the market with around 80,000 nodes already deployed in the market. We get requirements from the customers and evaluate our competitors, which is quite exciting and is quite different from the start-up work. Also, Cisco has a lot of process involved and we need to work globally with other counterparts.
Prof 1: Cisco was in loss few years back, when you joined.
Me : This is not right sir. Cisco was not in loss for last few years (I gave some data for last 2-3 years). This year Cisco had revenue of $28.4 bn. Though, optical business unit was in loss for couple of years, but it doing better now.
Prof 1: What about Huawei?
Me : They are good and very cheap. They are taking up big part of the market. But, their market segment is mostly small customers. They are ready for whatever price the customer is quoting. Cisco does not deal with small customers, but it has solution for them. Big enterprises are mostly the target of Cisco. Still, Cisco is keeping an eye on what Huawei is doing. Also, Huawei was in news for the *theft* of Cisco’s IOS operation system. The matter was settled later, but had a effect on Huawei's goodwill in the market.
Prof 1: What do you mean by "settled"?
Me : Cisco believes in working globally and sharing its technologies. This should be in consent with Cisco. The same happened with Apple, when they used the name iPhone, which was later settled.
Prof 1: What do you think about the companies like Wipro/Infosys?
Me : They are good, yesterday only Infosys got its Q4 result and they have $3 bn revenue now.
Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Infosys?
Me : They are around 72,000.
Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Cisco systems?
Me : As of 2006, it is 38,000.
Prof 1: As you said, revenue of Cisco is about $30 bn and that of Infosys is $3 bn, though the employee strength of Infosys is almost double of that of Cisco. Why is it like this?
Me : This is all about the business model. Infosys is a services company, while Cisco is a product company. you don’t get much margin in services company, while in a product company, you get much better margin. Also, services company need to hire more employees due to their services to the client. I feel proud of these Indian companies, they are representing India in the world market and have become global companies.
Prof 1: Which business magazine do you read ?
Me : I mostly read business page of the news paper I also read business world.
Prof 1: You read business world.....
Me : I am subscribed to that, but I don’t read it regularly. Whenever I have time, I read few selected articles.
Till this time "Prof 2" was a silent observer to all this discussions. I too was looking to Prof 1 only as only he was talking. Prof-1 asked to prof2 : Do you want to ask something ?
Prof 2: So, you play Tabla ?
Me : Yes sir, I had a formal training in this while I was studying in class-6. I have not done any professional education. Generally people do I.A., B.A, etc. I am good at playing it, but don’t have these degrees with me.
Prof 2: Where do you play it?
Me : I generally play it on various cultural functions. I have played in my school, college, last company and now I am part of Cisco's music team called "Omnifuse".
Prof 2: When did you perform in Cisco ?
Me : I performed last in Cisco's annual function, we performed for a crowd of around 5000. Generally Cisco calls some of India's best singers for the performance e.g. Udit Narayan, Alka yagnik. Last time we had called Hariharan. Generally, we get one hour time before their performance.
Prof 2: Have you ever played with these singers?
Me : No sir, but I would definitely love to play for them. They have their own music team and they are very specific about it. There is no way they can have a new person doing it for them. You can understand the importance just by the fact that the musician setup their instruments and tune it two hours before the actual performance starts.
Prof 2: Yes, I understand.
Prof 2: Have you heard of a new instrument (he told some name, I don’t remember), that produces many sounds and has replaces "Tanpura" almost completely. (Now looked at prof 1) It is a nice instrument, I think it can replace Tabla too. (Now looked at me).
Me : (I got it all wrong, I thought he is talking about replacing the Tabla and Tabla player..) It is difficult to do that. If you talk about the light music, it is easy. But, classic raga's need intelligence of the Tabla player. I gave examples of some of the "Taal" etc.
Prof 2: I am not talking about he Tabla player, replacing Tabla?
Me : Oh, sorry, I got it wrong. Well, as I have not seen the device I cannot comment more on this.
Prof 2: You need to leave playing Tabla for doing this course. You need to study at least 300 pages per week, i.e. at least 20 hours per week of study.
Me : Not necessarily sir. I play Tabla for around 30 mins every alternate day, or after every couple of days. Generally I do it when I am exhausted. Playing Tabla refreshes me. I believe it will be helpful during my studies and I can use it again if I am tired of too much homework..
(Professors smile)
Prof 2: You play cricket too. When was your last match?
Me : Yes sir, I am a regular member of Cisco cricket team. Currently we are playing in a tournament and our team is in quarter finals.
Prof 2: Which is the team you have to take on in quarters?
Me : It is IFLEX. (I was not too sure..)
Prof 2: Which is the best team?
Me : Oracle plays well, they are definitely the best team.
Prof 2: Who is the next team?
Me : Of course, Cisco systems.
Prof 1: Do you want to ask anything to us?
Me : Yes sir. Actually I already talk many things to the seniors during seminars and my personal meetings and...
Prof 1: (Interrupts)... Which students you talked to?
Me : I talked to many of the seniors during the interaction sessions in IIM-B. Talked to professor DVR. Apart from that, I talked to Nitin (from CCPU), Abninav Modi and Raj Iyer (both from Cisco systems).
Prof 1: What do they have to say about the course?
Me : They say the course is very nice and suitable for us. Please don’t do it for the sake of doing it, be very much clear about why do you want to do it. You need to study for at least 10-12 hours per week.
Prof 1: Thank you.
Me : Thank you sir.
That was it. The interview was over in around 25 mins. I believe that it was a good interview and I should get a call, as I got out of the interview room. And now when I am writing this blog, I already have the offer letter from IIM-B with me. It was a nice experience with the interview team of IIM-B.
There were two professors. One of them kept quite for a long time during the interview, while observing me and the other kept asking questions...
Prof 1: Sit down.
Me : Thankyou sir !
Prof 1: Tell us something about yourself.
Me : I started with my primary education, secondary education, graduation, masters and then about my campus interview etc. I did not only told them about the education I had, but also mentioned about the achievements I had during these phases (thanks to the pagalguy article about how to handle this questions smartly).
Prof 1: Tell me about HFCL (this is the first company I worked for).
Me : I started telling about the company, its various divisions etc.
Prof 1: No, I was asking about your branch.
Me : I worked for Research and Development division, which was a start-up. I described about the product I was working on. and that the start-up was no more there.
Prof 1: So, your product must be in the market by now ?
Me : No sir, we did the field testing of the product in Jalandhar local exchange. The product worked quite well with the defined requirements at that time. But, it was not on-time in the market. Hence it was not successful. The market requirements changed by the time we completed it.
Prof 1: What did you do and how the requirements changed ?
Me : We developed optical access network (OPTAN), which interfaced with the local exchange as the last mile solution and will be used by telecom service providers. We worked on voice only. By the time we went into the market, the requirements changed to voice, video and data. Added to that were many top-up services that were missing in our product. Also, by the time we were ready for the market, there were already many big players in this field.
Prof 1: How do you see the difference between HFCL and Cisco systems ?
Me : HFCL was a start-up company, so we had a lot of product ownership. The requirements used to be defined by the marketing team (that was formed late in the process), else we use to define the requirements. In Cisco systems, we are working on a product that is launched successfully in the market with around 80,000 nodes already deployed in the market. We get requirements from the customers and evaluate our competitors, which is quite exciting and is quite different from the start-up work. Also, Cisco has a lot of process involved and we need to work globally with other counterparts.
Prof 1: Cisco was in loss few years back, when you joined.
Me : This is not right sir. Cisco was not in loss for last few years (I gave some data for last 2-3 years). This year Cisco had revenue of $28.4 bn. Though, optical business unit was in loss for couple of years, but it doing better now.
Prof 1: What about Huawei?
Me : They are good and very cheap. They are taking up big part of the market. But, their market segment is mostly small customers. They are ready for whatever price the customer is quoting. Cisco does not deal with small customers, but it has solution for them. Big enterprises are mostly the target of Cisco. Still, Cisco is keeping an eye on what Huawei is doing. Also, Huawei was in news for the *theft* of Cisco’s IOS operation system. The matter was settled later, but had a effect on Huawei's goodwill in the market.
Prof 1: What do you mean by "settled"?
Me : Cisco believes in working globally and sharing its technologies. This should be in consent with Cisco. The same happened with Apple, when they used the name iPhone, which was later settled.
Prof 1: What do you think about the companies like Wipro/Infosys?
Me : They are good, yesterday only Infosys got its Q4 result and they have $3 bn revenue now.
Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Infosys?
Me : They are around 72,000.
Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Cisco systems?
Me : As of 2006, it is 38,000.
Prof 1: As you said, revenue of Cisco is about $30 bn and that of Infosys is $3 bn, though the employee strength of Infosys is almost double of that of Cisco. Why is it like this?
Me : This is all about the business model. Infosys is a services company, while Cisco is a product company. you don’t get much margin in services company, while in a product company, you get much better margin. Also, services company need to hire more employees due to their services to the client. I feel proud of these Indian companies, they are representing India in the world market and have become global companies.
Prof 1: Which business magazine do you read ?
Me : I mostly read business page of the news paper I also read business world.
Prof 1: You read business world.....
Me : I am subscribed to that, but I don’t read it regularly. Whenever I have time, I read few selected articles.
Till this time "Prof 2" was a silent observer to all this discussions. I too was looking to Prof 1 only as only he was talking. Prof-1 asked to prof2 : Do you want to ask something ?
Prof 2: So, you play Tabla ?
Me : Yes sir, I had a formal training in this while I was studying in class-6. I have not done any professional education. Generally people do I.A., B.A, etc. I am good at playing it, but don’t have these degrees with me.
Prof 2: Where do you play it?
Me : I generally play it on various cultural functions. I have played in my school, college, last company and now I am part of Cisco's music team called "Omnifuse".
Prof 2: When did you perform in Cisco ?
Me : I performed last in Cisco's annual function, we performed for a crowd of around 5000. Generally Cisco calls some of India's best singers for the performance e.g. Udit Narayan, Alka yagnik. Last time we had called Hariharan. Generally, we get one hour time before their performance.
Prof 2: Have you ever played with these singers?
Me : No sir, but I would definitely love to play for them. They have their own music team and they are very specific about it. There is no way they can have a new person doing it for them. You can understand the importance just by the fact that the musician setup their instruments and tune it two hours before the actual performance starts.
Prof 2: Yes, I understand.
Prof 2: Have you heard of a new instrument (he told some name, I don’t remember), that produces many sounds and has replaces "Tanpura" almost completely. (Now looked at prof 1) It is a nice instrument, I think it can replace Tabla too. (Now looked at me).
Me : (I got it all wrong, I thought he is talking about replacing the Tabla and Tabla player..) It is difficult to do that. If you talk about the light music, it is easy. But, classic raga's need intelligence of the Tabla player. I gave examples of some of the "Taal" etc.
Prof 2: I am not talking about he Tabla player, replacing Tabla?
Me : Oh, sorry, I got it wrong. Well, as I have not seen the device I cannot comment more on this.
Prof 2: You need to leave playing Tabla for doing this course. You need to study at least 300 pages per week, i.e. at least 20 hours per week of study.
Me : Not necessarily sir. I play Tabla for around 30 mins every alternate day, or after every couple of days. Generally I do it when I am exhausted. Playing Tabla refreshes me. I believe it will be helpful during my studies and I can use it again if I am tired of too much homework..
(Professors smile)
Prof 2: You play cricket too. When was your last match?
Me : Yes sir, I am a regular member of Cisco cricket team. Currently we are playing in a tournament and our team is in quarter finals.
Prof 2: Which is the team you have to take on in quarters?
Me : It is IFLEX. (I was not too sure..)
Prof 2: Which is the best team?
Me : Oracle plays well, they are definitely the best team.
Prof 2: Who is the next team?
Me : Of course, Cisco systems.
Prof 1: Do you want to ask anything to us?
Me : Yes sir. Actually I already talk many things to the seniors during seminars and my personal meetings and...
Prof 1: (Interrupts)... Which students you talked to?
Me : I talked to many of the seniors during the interaction sessions in IIM-B. Talked to professor DVR. Apart from that, I talked to Nitin (from CCPU), Abninav Modi and Raj Iyer (both from Cisco systems).
Prof 1: What do they have to say about the course?
Me : They say the course is very nice and suitable for us. Please don’t do it for the sake of doing it, be very much clear about why do you want to do it. You need to study for at least 10-12 hours per week.
Prof 1: Thank you.
Me : Thank you sir.
That was it. The interview was over in around 25 mins. I believe that it was a good interview and I should get a call, as I got out of the interview room. And now when I am writing this blog, I already have the offer letter from IIM-B with me. It was a nice experience with the interview team of IIM-B.
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