perfect relations at delphique 2010 compendium on social media discussion
DESCRIPTION
Perfect Relations Digital recently shared their inputs on social media trends at MDI.They were the knowledge partners in the event conducted by the management schoolTRANSCRIPT
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
Delphique 2010
20-21 NOVEMBER
INDIA INC.
THE PATH TO TREAD
IN THE NEW DECADE
DELPHIQUE 2010
2 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Contents Management Development Institute, Gurgaon ............................................................................................... 3
Delphique ....................................................................................................................................................... 4
Note from the Secretary .................................................................................................................................. 5
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Our Sponsors .................................................................................................................................................. 7
Our Knowledge partners ................................................................................................................................. 8
Inauguration ................................................................................................................................................... 9
Research Panels ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Communications panel .................................................................................................................................. 10
Entrepreneurship Panel ................................................................................................................................. 15
Finance Panel ................................................................................................................................................ 18
Human Resources Panel ................................................................................................................................ 22
IT Panel ......................................................................................................................................................... 26
Marketing panel ............................................................................................................................................ 30
Operations Panel........................................................................................................................................... 33
Strategy Panel ............................................................................................................................................... 36
Social Responsibility Panel............................................................................................................................. 40
Valedictory .................................................................................................................................................... 44
Media Coverage ............................................................................................................................................ 45
Feedback from Panelists................................................................................................................................ 50
Photo Gallery ................................................................................................................................................ 52
Team Delphique ............................................................................................................................................ 53
Contact Us .................................................................................................................................................... 54
DELPHIQUE 2010
3 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon
Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, a top business school in India, is a flourishing cauldron of
excellence in management education, high quality research, executive development, and value added
consultancy. Having established its footprint worldwide, MDI‟s vision is to become one of the top business
schools in the world.
MDI‟s vision brings a global perspective to all its activities. Driven by this vision, MDI has constantly
endeavored to grow and consolidate its global network. Our aim is to incorporate the world‟s best academic
practices into all our programmes, namely our management and executive programmes, as also our training
programs for the Top Management of the corporate world.
MDI has consistently focused on designing practice oriented learning and a contemporary industry-focused
curriculum, driven by our strong corporate interface. This unique blend of MDI‟s global perspective and strong
industry linkage contribute to bringing best practices to corporate, through training programs as well as action-
centric research and consulting
.
DELPHIQUE 2010
4 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Delphique
As MDI‟s flagship event, Delphique conducts quality research and industry review, and is attended by distinguished
guests from industry and academia. As a student-driven initiative, Delphique offers a unique platform for
comprehensive corporate interaction and access to research on contemporary business issues through engaging panel
discussions, merging theory and practice in a way very few forums do. The theme for this year, “India Inc: The path to
tread in the new decade”, is highly relevant to the strategic perspectives of Indian businesses.
With topics ranging from the growing importance of Tier II/III cities and Digital and Social Media to Human Capital
Management and challenges and opportunities in financial markets, the presentations of student research and the
subsequent discussions by industry practitioners defined our points of view. The discussion panels included various
business functions such as Marketing, Finance, Strategy, Communications, Human Resources, Information
Management, Operations, and Entrepreneurship and socially relevant issues such as Food Security.
With MDI‟s strong commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, not only were there dedicated panel
discussions on social entrepreneurship and food security to sensitize students to this increasingly relevant way of
thinking and of doing business, but we also endeavored to walk the talk by making this event a green and sustainable
one in every measure, small and large.
DELPHIQUE 2010
5 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Note from the Secretary When I started my journey as the Secretary, Delphique
2010, I knew that the opportunities that existed were
immense, but the challenges that lay in the path weren't few
either. Having cult companies in each field of management
as the Knowledge Partners of various panels, and having 50
top corporates in the MDI campus over two days was a
humongous task. We, as a team not only had to emulate the
success of Delphique'09, but we also had to transcend
Delphique to new horizons.
Carrying forward the legacy of Delphique, the theme
decided upon for Delphique 2010 was “India Inc: The path to tread in the new decade”. After having surprised
the world by leading the path to recovery, India stands at a transition point where the coming decade promises
economic and social leadership. This was what we wanted to have as the major backdrop of Delphique'10.
As Albert Szent rightly said, “Research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else
has thought”. With topics ranging from the growing importance of Tier II/III cities to challenges and
opportunities in financial markets, the presentations of student research and the subsequent discussions by
industry practitioners defined the research carried out in various panels.
With MDI's strong commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, not only did we have dedicated panel
discussions on social entrepreneurship and food security, but we also endeavored to walk the talk by making this
event a green and sustainable one in every measure, small and large.
When I look back at Delphique, I remember the words said by Dr.Gopal Pingali of IBM. He said, "Delphique is
one of the best events that I have ever attended, and the way I have been looked after at MDI, I will never forget
that." These encouraging words, coming from a very senior professional on the first day of the event filled me
with such enthusiasm and optimism that I said to myself - nothing would go wrong from here. And by God‟s
grace, nothing did.
There are a few people without whom the event wouldn‟t have been what it turned out to be in the end. The
unflinching support extended by Director Sir, Prof V.K.Gupta and Dean Sir, Prof. B.A. Metri went a long way
in ensuring the success of the event. If there's someone who has been instrumental in ensuring that each and
every detail, however miniscule ,was planned before hand, that person is Prof.Neelu Bhullar, Area Chairperson,
Students Affairs. She has been the unrelenting force behind the Delphique team throughout.
Last but by no means the least, is Team Delphique. As the secretary of Delphique'10, the voyage of more than 5
months had been full of ebullience. And it has been because I had a team with me which was as passionate as I
was. The efforts put in by the entire team just cannot be described in words. The credit of success is often
attributed to the leader. But I strongly believe that the leader is as good as his team and it is the team which
inculcates the strength and confidence in the leader to carry out the challenge.
This, truly, has been a journey of a lifetime!
Harmanjeet Singh Baweja
Secretary, Delphique‟10
MDI, Gurgaon
DELPHIQUE 2010
6 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Acknowledgements
Success is never achieved alone. It is achieved only through the combination of team efforts and support and
motivation of the people around them. For the success of Delphique 2010 , we would like to take this
opportunity to thank each and every person who has contributed in making this event the success it was.
We deeply appreciate the constant support given by the Director Sir, and thank him for encouraging us to go
ahead with all our endeavors
Any talk of encouragement is incomplete if we don‟t thank the Dean, Professor B.A. Metri. We can‟t thank him
enough, for the interest he has shown in the event, and for being always ready to take time out for us.
The guidance and wisdom of a lot more experienced person is
invaluable while handling an event of such a huge magnitude.
We thank Neelu Bhullar Madam for the concern and
involvement she has shown towards the event. It‟s not untrue
to say we would have had a tough time organizing this entire
event without her knack for spotting loopholes and her
meticulous planning.
We would also like to thank all the faculty mentors who were always there for the students, constantly
guiding and supporting them during their research.
Professor Ashok Kapoor
Professor G.K. Agarwal
Professor Gita Bajaj
Professor Kanwal Kapil
Professor Radha Sharma
Professor Rohit Prasad
Professor S Chaterjee
Professor Sandeep Goel
We would also like to thank the panelists for having agreed to come over and share their insights regarding the
functioning of corporate entities, and the sponsors for showing their complete trust in the institute. All these in
conjunction with the effort of the students helped in the making the event a grand success.
DELPHIQUE 2010
7 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Our Sponsors
Title Sponsor
Associate Sponsors
Online Media Partner Web Partner
DELPHIQUE 2010
8 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Our Knowledge partners
Communications Panel: Perfect Relations Entrepreneurship: NEN
Finance: ICRA HR: Hewitt Associates
IT: Dell Marketing: Madura Fashion & Lifestyle
Operations: Keane Strategy: PricewaterhouseCooper Ltd.
Social Responsibility panel: Youth for Safe Food
DELPHIQUE 2010
9 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Inauguration
The 14th
annual National Management Convention of
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon,
Delphique 2010 was auspiciously inaugurated on the
November 20, 2010. The occasion was graced by the
esteemed presence of the Chief Guest, Mr. Anil Sethi,
Vice President, TCS, the Guest of Honor, Mr. Vivek
Sharma, Program Director, Gandhi Fellowship Program,
Kiavalya Education Foundation, Prof. Vinod K Gupta,
Director, MDI, Prof. B.A. Metri, Dean, MDI and Prof
Neelu Bhullar, Student Affairs Chairperson, MDI.
Mr. Anil Sethi is director and VP, SMB cloud sales
services at Tata Consultancy Services, prior to which he
has also been with Microsoft as the group director-OEM
and also as VP, ASEAN/SA at IBM, Singapore.
Mr. Vivek Sharma, Program Director at Gandhi
Fellowship Program, Kiavalya Education Foundation,
spoke to the students regarding his exciting journey,
switching across three careers, from journalism and
technology, and finally into working with NGOs. He
inspired the students to explore various opportunities
over the 2 years and understand their passion and pursue
their career in an area where their heart really lies. He
spoke about the need for the younger generation to get
involved in solving significant national problems and
deliver impact across the country. Mr. Anil Sethi,
director and VP, SMB cloud sales services at Tata
Consultancy Services, shared with the audience his
experiences in the corporate world. He spoke in detail
regarding the effects of globalization on the ways of the
business world, and other emerging trends that could
impact the world in a big way in the years to come. He
also spoke about customer satisfaction and the constant
need for companies to revise their strategies to adapt to
the ever-changing consumer dynamics.
Prof. B. A. Metri, dean, MDI spoke about the growth of
Delphique over the 13 years, and the way it has
gradually evolved into its currently effective form, and
its currently unique form in which the students are
exposed to the various fields of management
specialization. He also spoke regarding the immense
learning that the students get by interacting with the
corporates through this event.
Prof Vinod K Gupta urged the students to be involved in
events like Delphique to ensure their overall
development and not to restrict them to academics alone.
He asked the necessity for the students to develop a
sense of corporate social responsibility.
Research Panels
Communications panel
Knowledge Partner
Discussion Topic: Social Media Campaigns –
Uncovering design intricacies
Social Media is scaling new heights in India. Many
companies are focusing on the use of Social media for
tangible and intangible benefits. The core objectives for
a company to employ social media campaigns may
include increasing awareness, generating leads,
increasing sales / market share, managing crises and
image, changing consumer perceptions and influencing
consumer behaviour.
These trends give rise to issues concerning the Why,
What, Where, When, Who and How of Social Media,
that need addressing.
As a part of their research, the students tried to answer
some of these questions, including the behavioral
drivers of social media participation and the ingredients
of successful social media campaigns, relevant to the
Indian culture and context.
The panelists‟ experiences and points of view on these
topics built the students‟ understanding of the subject
through a blend of theory and practice.
The emerging issues and paradigms of Social Media,
which need implementation know-how to churn into an
empirical base of knowledge, include the behavioral
drivers of social media participation, the key factors of
social media campaigns that use these drivers to ensure
success and the extent to which culture, region and
gender determine behavior and success factors.
There is a whole gamut of issues, challenges and
opportunities, facts and fiction in Social Media even
beyond what the students studied, that are key to the
effectiveness of Social media campaigns and that the
students gained a better understanding of, through the
opinions of the panelists.
Faculty mentor
Prof. Gita Bajaj
Prof. Gita Bajaj is Associate
Professor and Chairperson,
Corporate Communications at
MDI Gurgaon. She has
completed GCPCL at Harvard
Business School and is an HBS Affiliate. She is a
prolific writer and along with a colleague, she was
bestowed the Gold Medal for writing the Best Case in
India in the ISB IVEY Case Writing Competition, 2010.
She was a member of the Ministry of HRD‟s Committee
for Negotiating the Education Sector under the WTO
regime. She is also on the Board of Studies, All India
Management Association – Centre for Management
Education.
Prof. Bajaj has been training managers of various
organizations including Cairn Energy, Eli Lilly, Hero
Honda, ABB, Roche Pharma, Nestle‟ India, IBM
Daksh, Coca Cola, Birlasoft and HP.
She teaches Managerial Communications, Negotiation
Skills and Case Writing at MDI Gurgaon. She has also
taught at IIM Calcutta and to executive participants of
University of Maryland. Her research interest area is
DELPHIQUE 2010
11 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Crisis Communications and impact of new media on
Communication. She has to her credit more than 200
articles published in national news papers and many
published teaching cases.
Prior to joining MDI, Prof. Bajaj worked in the industry
for almost 12 years. Some of the organizations that she
was associated with include The Hindustan Times, The
Pioneer, and NIEPA. Her assignment with the
Hindustan Times was as the Editor of HT Horizons and
HT Careers.
Panelists
Mr. Aman Gupta
Mr. Aman Gupta is the Chief
Executive Officer of Imprimis Life
PR, one of the leading PR and
communications firms in India. It
offers services ranging from media
relations, crisis and reputation management, training,
market research, public affairs and communications.
He has more than ten years of experience in strategic
communications and media across a wide spectrum of
industries. His professional experience includes
communications around product positioning and market
development as well as national media campaigns and
media training. He has developed and implemented a
continent-wide media and market program for more
than 50 clients including names like – IIFT, GEMS
Educations, Edexcel Learning, ISB, ICFP, Educomp etc.
Mr. Gupta holds a postgraduate degree in business
management, with a focus on marketing and brand
building, from the International Management Institute in
New Delhi. He is a frequent contributor to leading
national and international journals. He was awarded a
fellowship by TED, the leading conglomeration of the
top 500 people from technology, entertainment and
design. He is also the founding associate member of
Baird‟s CMC, the global conglomerate of senior
communications and public policy advisors networked
across the world.
Mr. Chiragh Cherian
Mr. Chiragh Cherian is a young
and energetic individual who has
best used his learnings from
various spheres where it‟s needed
most today, the Internet. He has
also had the privilege to work in
various industries and currently
heads the Digital PR practice at India's largest public
relations firm, Perfect Relations.
Prior to his tenure with perfect relations, Mr. Cherian
has had an extensive experience in marketing at
Europe‟s largest Asian TV network, Zee network.
During his career with Zee, his quick ability to absorb
and implement gave him opportunities to explore other
career options such as events and PR. He was a key
person to organize, market and PR large scale annual
events such as the Zee carnival and the Zee cine awards
across Europe. His contribution assisted in the channel‟s
continued growth and in maintaining the channel‟s
leadership position.
Apart from this, in his initial days Mr. Cherian has also
had experience in Sales and Advertising. His innate
ability to meaningfully combine and apply his learnings
from various cultures and professions to a measurable
outcome in this new and upcoming field of digital PR is
well recognized not only by his colleagues but all the
various industries he has served in his short period with
Perfect Relations.
Mr. Deepak Mukarji
Mr. Deepak Mukarji, Country
Head of Corporate Affairs for
the Shell Group of Companies
in India, is a seasoned
professional with over 26 years
of experience in creating the
space for business to grow in
India.
As a communications and management leader with
various multinational organizations, he has nurtured the
license to operate by driving strategic positioning of
DELPHIQUE 2010
12 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
issues across industry profiles. He has strong credentials
in corporate image and expectation management with
key stakeholders and decision influencers including the
government, civic society, institutional vested interests
and media.
The industries Mr. Mukarji has worked in include
engineering, publishing, chemicals, the United Nations,
telecommunications, insurance and energy. The brands
he has worked with include JWT, DuPont, the United
Nations, Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies), MetLife and
Shell.
An erstwhile theater personality with over 350 stage
performances, 2 television serials & 1 television film, he
is also a published business writer in various
newspapers and has written an article on PR for
Encyclopaedia Britannica. He has lectured at various
management schools and has attended business
leadership programs at IMD in Switzerland and Henley
Management College in UK. He has authored a book of
short stories and is working on a novel while living in
Gurgaon with his wife and son.
Mr. Gaurav Mishra
Mr. Gaurav Mishra helps global
brands benefit from Social
Squared, the intersection of social,
as in connecting people, and social,
as in benefiting the society, as
Director of Digital and Social
Media at MS&L Group Asia.
He has studied at IIM Bangalore, held senior marketing
roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at
Georgetown University as the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow,
launched crowd-sourced election monitoring platform
Vote Report India and co-founded social media agency
2020 Social.
Mr. Mishra is frequently invited to guest lecture at
business schools, speak at conferences and lead
workshops. He is also frequently invited by Indian and
international media, including the Wall Street Journal,
Forbes, Business Week, CNN, BBC and CBS to
participate in panel discussions, write articles, comment
on stories and contribute op-eds. He advises several
non-profits and startups formally or informally, both on
the product and the strategy side.
His blog, Gauravonomics.com, has been voted as the
Best Business Blog in India by Indibloggies, and is
among the top 150 advertising and marketing blogs
worldwide, as per AdAge Power 150.
Mr. Mishra has written several book chapters, including
for the acclaimed book, “The Age of Conversation”, and
is now working on his first novel.
Ms. Meena Vaidyanathan
Ms. Meena Vaidyanathan is a
consultant on business
development and strategy,
focusing primarily on social
enterprises. She has contributed
in creating significant brand
impact through focused
customer programmes, online
marketing, media visibility, and
innovative marketing strategies over the past 17 years.
She is presently working with Dialogue Social
Enterprise as a Director for Development creating a
global programme to build awareness on the importance
of trust, empathy and respecting human diversity while
empowering people with disabilities. She has worked in
Monsanto, Honeywell and HCL Technologies in the
past, before she turned a full-time social entrepreneur.
Ms. Vaidyanathan has worked closely with business
schools like Harvard and INSEAD on several case
studies and played a key role in the conceptualization,
production and marketing of the book Employee First
Customer Second published by Harvard Business
School Publishing.
She is also a partner in Niiti Consulting, a consulting
company seeking to be a change agent for society, by
supporting organizations that aim to create a strong
social impact by providing local sustainable solutions
around business strategy, marketing and execution
support.
Ms. Vaidyanathan is a Biotechnologist by training and
holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Business
Management with a specialization in Marketing. She
DELPHIQUE 2010
13 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
teaches occasionally in business schools on effective
business communication, brand management and crisis
communication. She is a voracious reader, enthusiastic
traveller, singer and an occasional blogger.
Student Research Outcome
1. Segmenting can be done on the basis of gender.
Using social influence and flow experience
related communication we can tap the male
community because these two constructs are not
visible for females in their social media
behaviour.
2. A social media website or campaign should be
perceived as enjoyable as well as useful.
Although there is subjectivity in the definition of
what is enjoyable, one factor which can predict
usefulness is how easy it is to use it.
3. Do not restrict the user‟s ability to navigate within
a social networking website or campaign; rather
play the role of a facilitator. Eg. Photo tagging or
designing/customizing your dream car in an
automobile company‟s page.
4. In general we find that majority of the people
have a low network size. A social media
campaign focused on enjoyment would be best
served by going in for a mass broadcast. However
a social media campaign which delivers value for
the social media users should be more focused
towards individuals having a high network size.
Eg. Book reviews from popular reviewers
5. Communication in social media should be an
integrated effort; it should not be focused on only
one medium. People with multiple accounts may
not use all those accounts with the same
frequency. Hence, it is better to have a multiple
pronged communication reinforcing the message
of the campaign in most popular social media
websites.
Following are the factors that have been identified as
very important for the success of social media
campaigns. Their presence increases the probability of
the success of the campaign manifold. They have been
ranked in the order of their importance for the success:
1. Making sure that they do not spam the followers
2. Listening
3. Maintained by Humans
4. Innovation
5. Integrating offline marketing
6. Building relationships with followers
7. Using blogs and following other people‟s blogs
8. Branding social media presence with company's
logo and other promotional information
9. Humor
10. Launching a micro campaign before going for
costly campaign
11. Being consistent with update schedules
12. Using freebies like e-books, free products and
white papers
13. Not Selling
14. Sharing company events
15. Having a limited presence
Panel Discussion
Mr. Gaurav Mishra spoke about the Pepsi Refresh campaign
and that a lot of fresh perspective is required with each
campaign. He also spoke about the growth of Social media
from a niche medium to a mass medium. He spoke of the
importance of traditional media, the social media and the
paradigm shift in the usage of these media, a value
proposition shift.
Mr. Deepak Mukarji spoke about the relevance of Social
media in various sectors. He spoke about the challenge of
taking social media to the traditional people who do not use
3G or GPRS enabled phones and companies whose
operations favour more traditional paradigms. He in
particular spoke about how Anand Mahindra took customer
satisfaction to another level by use of twitter.
Mr. Aman Gupta focused on the importance of innovation.
He also spoke about getting influenced by the feedback
acquaintances share about various movies, shows etc. He
focused on the concept of bait where the consumer sees the
benefit that he gets from any campaign and is attracted only
then.
Ms. Meena Vaidyanathan spoke about designing a social
media campaign with key features being ease of use,
defined segmentation and use of employers as ambassadors.
She also spoke about specific sites to research on like
innovators.com by the students of Cambridge. During her
talk, she talked about Social Media Campaigning specifics
and tangibles that could be used to quantify and increases
the effectiveness of such campaigns.
Research Team
Aakanksha Jain
Aman Garg
Anshul Gupta
Jaban Jyoti Phukan
Lokesh Harnal
Madhvi Marathe
Payal Aggarwal
Raghoo Puri
Rahul Kaushal
Rahul Sharma
Swati Bhadada
DELPHIQUE 2010
15 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Entrepreneurship Panel Knowledge Partner
Discussion Topic: Social Entrepreneurship in India
Transforming ideas into economic opportunities is the
crux of entrepreneurship. The role of entrepreneurship
and an entrepreneurial culture in economic and social
development has often been underestimated. Over the
years, social entrepreneurs have acted as the change
agents for society, seizing opportunities, improving
systems, inventing new approaches and creating
solutions to change society for the better. Whatever the
definition of entrepreneurship, it is closely associated
with change, creativity, knowledge, innovation and
flexibility-factors that are important sources of
competitiveness in an increasingly globalizing world
economy.
These trends give rise to many issues surrounding Social
Entrepreneurship, that need addressing.
For the environmentally and economically sustainable
growth of the country, the role of social entrepreneurs
and entrepreneurship is of paramount importance.
Creating solutions to change society for the better and
challenging the status quo would increase our
competitiveness in an increasingly globalizing world
economy.
Faculty Mentor
Prof. Rohit Prasad
Prof. Rohit Prasad was VP of
Strategic Initiatives at Xansa, a $
700 M BPO and IT services
company before joining MDI as an
Associate Professor in Economics.
He has also been a senior IT
executive for companies in the US and India looking
after large offshore engagements¸ Corporate Knowledge
Management¸ and Internal Communications. He has
handled the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in
two organizations and has served clients in North
America¸ Europe¸ and Australasia. He has also taught at
SUNY Stony Brook from 1991-1997. His areas of
interest include monetary theory¸ public policy¸ and
practical applications of game theory to business. He
presented papers at the International Conference on
Game Theory at SUNY Stony Brook¸ 1996¸ and 2006.
His thesis “Public Good and Macroeconomic Policy in A
General Equilibrium Model” models the fiscal and
monetary policy choices of the government in the
context of a monetary equilibrium. He writes regularly
on Economics in the financial press. Professor Prasad‟s
educational qualifications include BA (Hons.)¸
Economics St. Stephen‟s College¸ Delhi University,
MA¸ Economics¸ Centre for Economic Studies and
Planning¸ JNU¸ Ph.D. Economics (with specialization in
game theory)¸ SUNY Stony Brook
Panelists
Mr. Ashwin Raghuraman
Mr. Ashwin Raghuraman is
currently the Vice President at the
India Innovation Fund, an early
stage venture capital fund
promoted by NASSCOM. He is
responsible for initiating deal
flows, fundraising, evaluating
start-ups for investment and
supporting portfolio companies in the technology sector.
In his earlier role at NASSCOM, he was responsible for
creating the India Innovation Fund. He managed the
Innovation Initiative at NASSCOM and was instrumental
in creating a Special Interest Group on Embedded
Systems, an Auto Component-Information Technology
cluster. He also led the NASSCOM Innovation Awards
program, which recognized the most innovative
companies in the ICT sector. Mr. Ashwin played
business and operational roles at Wipro Technologies
and Maersk, Singapore, prior to this. Mr. Ashwin has
been a member of the SIP-EIT committee to evaluate
start-ups for providing funding for International patent
and the CII committee on Security and Imaging. By
education, he holds degrees in Engineering and Masters
in Business Studies. He was an active sportsperson and
now avidly follows Arsenal in the English Premier
League
DELPHIQUE 2010
16 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Mr. Anoop Kaul
Mr. Anoop Kaul, based in Delhi,
is the National Head of Financial
Inclusion of BASIX Group which
works in the Livelihood Promotion
space. A post graduate from the
Delhi School of Economics he
worked with the State Bank of
India for 35 years before joining BASIX in 2007. While
in State Bank he held senior level positions in the State
of Gujarat, West Bengal, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh and
Bank‟s Central Office and seen all aspects of Banking
and Financial Sector. Later he was on deputation to GE
Capital at Delhi where he worked as Chief Financial
Officer in SBI Credit Card joint venture. In BASIX, he
was the Chairman of the Rajasthan Livelihood
Promotion Initiative under which 4.1 million BPL
families were enrolled for Financial Inclusion in just 45
days, a global record. He is a Director on the Board of
Basix Academy for Building Lifelong Employability [B-
ABLE] as well as a Member of the Governing Council of
BASIX Academy. He is on the Executive Committee of
Bhartiya Samruddhi Finance Ltd., an NBFC and the
flagship company of BASIX Group.
Mr. Anupam Jalote
Mr. Anupam Jalote is currently
working as the Director – CEO
of GreenOil Energy Sciences
(Pvt.) Ltd., an entrepreneurial
start up that he has promoted –
for producing second generation
biofuels and renewable electricity
via the reforestation of
wastelands in a unique, inclusive project. He is also a
Partner in Jigyasa Consulting, a Singapore based
consulting firm. He is a techno-commercial expert with
over 22 year leadership experience in the fields of
Telecom, Renewable Energy, Green House Gas
Reduction / Clean Development Mechanism and
Management Consulting. He has core competence and
hands-on experience that enables him to advise
organisations on Organisational Design, Business
Process Reengineering. Mr. Anupam holds an MBA
from Purdue University and is a graduate from Lucknow
University with specialization in Statistics, Mathematics
and Economics. He is a regular speaker at various
business schools and media events.
Mr. Sanjay Kapoor
Mr. Sanjay Kapoor is currently
working with NEN as a
Consultant since April, 2010
looking after Entrepreneurship
Development of 30 leading
Management, Engineering,
Vocational and Arts/ Science
Institutions in Delhi NCR region,
working closely with and supporting young
entrepreneurs. He has been an entrepreneur for 14 years
with expertise in Franchising and managing Small
Businesses. He has run franchisees of 3 International
companies in the domains of Computer Education with
NIIT Ltd, Computer Troubleshooting with Computer
Troubleshooters, USA and Immigration with WWICS,
India for a total of 12 years. He did his MS in
Consultancy Management from BITS – Pilani and did
Bachelors in engineering and telecom from BMS
College of engineering.
DELPHIQUE 2010
17 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Panel Discussion
The panel discussion focussed on entrepreneurship
in the coming generation which would work towards
solving social problems such as hunger, poverty etc and
how that would help a country like India grow.
All the panelists also pointed out the difference
between entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship
and reminded the audience that the role of the social
entrepreneur did not imply his foregoing of profits.
The discussion also touched upon the changes in
the core values of an organization as it grows in size and
about the difficulties in tracing the trajectory of social
enterprise, as it grows in size.
All the panellists shared their viewpoints and their
experiences and talked about how the work they had
been doing in their respective fields had helped create
employment and benefited the society.
A discussion was also done about the difficulties
faced by social entrepreneurs in setting up their business
ventures and the regulatory issues that need to be
addressed
Mr. Anoop Kaul talked about the role of
Microfinancing and the work done by Basix India
limited in this space. He pointed about the role of MFI‟s
in fostering the growth of education and small
entrepreneurs in the hinterlands of India.
Mr. Ashwin Raghuraman talked about the role of
India Innovation Fund and its role in promoting product
orientation in the Indian IT industry. He also talked
about the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in getting
the seed funding for their projects. He explained the role
of technology in helping create jobs for the society. He
talked about the digital divide and serving the people at
the bottom of the pyramid.
Mr. Anupam Jalote dwelled about the social
impact of a purely technical project such as a powerplant
and went on to relate that to projects having core values
that benefit the society. He talked about the role of
electricity and power on demand for the people residing
in the villages and how it can improve the productivity
and efficiency.
Mr. Sanjay Kapoor apprised the audience about the
role played by NEN in fostering entrepreneurship. He
talked about the various initiatives of NEN and the
impact of the same. In particular he talked about the role
of NEN in the education sector.
The role of government in facilitating the rise of
social enterprises was discussed at length by the
panelists. The discussion emphasised about the role of
government as the biggest provider of capital and how
the government is helping to create awareness about
social issues.
The discussion also touched upon the role of
microfinance institutes and the role of the kind of money
invested in the businesses and how it dictates the growth
path followed by social enterprises.
Prof.Rohit Prasad and the other panelists talked
about the role of academia in helping to hasten the
growth of this nascent industry. Academia and studies
can help validate the models of the entrepreneurs and
lead to more such sustainable models.
DELPHIQUE 2010
18 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Finance Panel Knowledge Partner
Discussion topic: Role of financial markets in
developing India - Key Challenges and opportunities
Indian economy is one of the fastest growing
economies in the world, backed by physical and
financial infrastructure. The issues of capital allocation,
financial inclusion, infrastructure funding and
regulations are the challenges before the financial
environment of the country. Development of financial
markets presents an opportunity to overcome these
challenges. Indian markets are currently in
development phase. Only equity market has
significantly developed and has expanded in terms of
participants and volumes. Indian growth story has
brought this increased interest in equities. This has led
to increased interest to find new avenues of
investments. This creates a necessity to build other
financial markets in India. Financial inclusion is the road
ahead which involves innovations, refinement of
regulations and visionary time and fund investments.
Financial innovation can also help to develop the
markets by providing easier access to cheap capital and
this will in turn help to grow the economy. The need
for new investment opportunities in India is helping to
increase the depth of capital, money, for-ex and
commodity markets.
This research identifies the key success factors of global
markets and the strategies that India can implement to
further the development of Indian financial markets.
The study gives an analysis of these strategies and
issues that India will face in their implementation. It
analyses the challenges faced by Indian markets and
opportunities that India can capitalize on.
Faculty Mentor:
Prof. Sandeep Goel
Prof. Sandeep Goel is an Assistant
Professor in the domain of Finance
at MDI. He started his teaching
career with the University of Delhi
and has about eleven years of
teaching and research experience. His special areas of
teaching and research interests are Financial Reporting
and Analysis¸ Management Accounting and Control,
Corporate Finance¸ Corporate Governance and Earnings
Management. Dr. Goel did his Honours in Commerce
from Shri Ram College of Commerce¸ University of
Delhi. He then got his Master’s degree in Commerce
with specialization in Finance from Department of
Commerce¸ University of Delhi. He earned his doctorate
in Finance on ‘Management of Finance in Public Sector
Enterprises
Panelists:
Mr. C. S. Mohapatra
Mr. C S Mohapatra is an officer of
the Indian Economic Service of
1986 batch and is currently
Director in the Capital Markets
Division of the Ministry of
Finance of the Government of
India. He handles Secondary
Market and International
Cooperation. Apart from the wide experience spanning
over 22 years in key positions in various
Ministries/Departments of the Government of India, he
has also taught Economics early in his career and was a
Banker for some time. Mr. Mohapatra is an M.Sc in
DELPHIQUE 2010
19 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Economics from the London School of Economics and
Political Science and is presently engaged in his doctoral
research at the Centre for Economic Studies and
Planning in Jawaharlal Nehru University. He also has a
Masters degree in Analytical & Applied Economics from
Utkal University and holds an M.Phil from Punjab
University. He is a member of the Secondary Market
Advisory Committee of SEBI.
Mr. Lakshminarayanan Ramlingam
Mr. Lakshminarayanan
Ramalingam is a delivery director
in BFS, Cognizant. He has been
working at Cognizant for 11 years,
moving between various roles,
starting as a Senior Business
Analyst and moving into account
management and finally to delivery management,
where he has been working for 6 years now. Prior to
joining Cognizant, Mr. Ramalingam worked for Infosys
for a year and for a boutique Product Company for a
couple of years.
Mr. Ramalingam holds an Engineering degree from Birla
Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and a PGDM
from IIM Lucknow. Mr. Ramalingam holds the
distinction of receiving the PGP Chairman’s medal for
standing 3rd in his academic batch.
Mr. Mohit Bhatia
Mr. Mohit has professional
experience of over 15 years in
the Financial Services Industry.
His educational background
comprises a BE (Mechanical
Engineering) and an MBA-
Finance. He started his career
at Kirloskar Pneumatic Co Ltd in 1992 and worked there
till 1994 after which he pursued his MBA from
Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon.
After completion of his MBA in 1996 he has worked
with three of India’s leading mutual fund companies in
areas of Equity & Fixed Income Research and Sales &
Marketing. Before joining Axis Bank in his current role
as Zonal Wealth Head – North India, he briefly worked
with Anand Rathi Financial Services as a Senior Vice
President in the Private Wealth Management division –
Delhi.
Mr. Vivek Mathur
Mr. Vivek Mathur is a Senior
Group Vice President of ICRA
Limited and member of
rating committee of the
company. He holds a
Bachelor’s Degree in
Commerce from University of Delhi and Chartered
Accountant from The Institute of Chartered
Accountants of India. Mr. Mathur has an aggregate
work experience of 19 years, out of which he has been
associated with ICRA for a period of over 15 years.
Student Research Outcome:
For debt market, all countries studied in the research
have a bouquet of debt instruments of various periods
varying from a few weeks to a couple of years in both
the government backed and privately backed
instruments. In India, policymakers face challenges in
developing these markets by focusing on areas like
effective market mechanism, robust trading platform,
simple listing norms and development of market for
debt securitization.
For Indian forex market, there have been major
positives like the introduction of currency futures for
USD, EUR, GBP and Yen against the Rupee. However,
the excessive foreign inflows into Indian assets, has
been a cause of worry for the Indian authorities as that
has led to rapid appreciation of Rupee which in turn
translates into decreased competitiveness for Indian
exports in the world markets.
In India, corporate bond market is in its infancy both in
terms of the market participation and the structure
required for efficient price discovery. Public offering of
bonds being expensive, time consuming and procedure
oriented, corporates have been finding it easier to
either borrow from banks or make a private placement
of their bonds. Though there has been slow
development in revitalizing the bond market, newer
challenges face the country.
DELPHIQUE 2010
20 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
The opportunities for financial inclusion that India can
utilize revolve around IT-enabled financial inclusion. It is
essential for doorstep banking as IT solutions enable
large transactions like processing, credit scoring, credit
record & follow up etc. It can significantly alter the
cost, distance and access equation for poor people.
Mobile network operators need to be at the forefront,
creating the “roads” on which new products and
services can travel. Now, exchanges are looking into
using mobiles to reach the rural areas. The major issue
that India will face is Obsession with certainty. Lack of
communication, language barriers and low literacy
levels, Lack of awareness about financial services and
products, complicated procedures, Lack of legal identity
are further hurdles in the way.
Panel Discussion
Prof. Sandeep Goyal opened the panel discussion by
thanking the other panelists for attending the
Delphique Finance Panel discussion. He highlighted the
importance of financial shenanigans and governance in
today’s world with an example highlighting the need of
corporate governance.
Mr. Lakshminarayanan Ramalingam followed up by
questioning the need to control FIIs in India. He
continued with the need for fundamental innovation in
financial products and the role of securitization in the
market development context. He extended this need to
the Indian debt market development its importance.
Later in the discussion, he highlighted the differences
with which markets in East and West have developed
and underlined the transparency required in the system
to develop the corporate debt market.
Mr. Mohit Bhatia also talked about the need to develop
the debt market by highlighting that National Stock
Exchange (NSE) was envisaged for dealing in wholesale
debt. About the issue of FIIs, he pointed the fact that
International investors had more stickiness with Indian
Markets than ever before and the decision to increase
limits on investments in bonds showcases that India is
confident about these investments.
Mr. Vivek Mathur opened the discussion by
appreciating the work of the research panel and the
relevance of the topics discussed in Indian context. He
continued by mentioning the difference between
growth oriented investment and speculative
investment and what India can learn from China in
terms of infrastructure development. Thus he pointed
means to channelize investments in India through
individual savings and international investors instead of
banks which creates asset-liability mismatch.
Mr. C. S. Mohapatra started by congratulating the
research team for bringing out brilliant research
highlights. He mentioned that his insights were purely
his opinion and personal views. He talked about
aspects like the importance of NSDL, the ease of
entering the Indian Capital Markets, the sovereign
credit ratings of India and the Financial Sector
Legislative Reform Council. He continued by
highlighting the role of Credit Rating Agencies in
developing the Indian Financial Markets, especially the
Debt Market. He concluded with the need of forming
regulatory bodies for catering to financial conflicts of
interests.
DELPHIQUE 2010
21 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Research Team
Ankur Bharadwaj
Chintan Singh
Debajyoti Mitra
Gaurav Tripathi
Manu Krishna Saxena
Milind Agrawal
Pratyush Mishra
Raghav Nanda
Rajat Maheshwari
Varun Shah
Human Resources Panel Knowledge Partner:
Discussion Topic: Human Capital Management Models
in the Service Industry
Organizations have come to realize over the years that
improving technology and cutting costs enhance
performance only up to a point. To move beyond that
point, the organization‟s people are its most important
resources. In the end everything an organization does
depends on people. To get the best out of people the
organization must offer a healthy work climate where
they can us their knowledge skills and abilities fully
with organizational goals. There is where HR managers
play a crucial role – that of bridging gaps between
employee and organizational requirements by adopting
appropriate HR policies strategies and practices. Human
capital management is about optimizing the performance
and capabilities of management and employees
Human Capital Management can be defined as an
integrated effort to manage and develop human
capabilities to achieve significantly higher levels of
performance. Intellectual capital can be classified as
organizational capital (institutionalized knowledge
possessed by an organization), human capital
(knowledge, skills, abilities and capacity to develop and
innovate possessed by people) and social capital (the
structures, networks and procedures enabling people to
acquire develop intellectual capital).
The students‟ research brought forth the theoretical
aspects as well as the models and systems practices in
the industry, the various drivers of human capital
management were identified and the research was
carried out in the basis of these drivers.
The panelists‟ experiences and points of view on these
topics built the students‟ understanding of the subject
through a blend of theory and practice.
Faculty Mentor:
Prof. Radha Rani Sharma
Prof. Radha Sharma has 3 decades of
experience. She has been appointed as
the ambassador for India for the world‟s
most prestigious professional body –
Academy of Management, USA. She has taught MBA
courses at ESCP, Europe. She has received four gold
medals for academic excellence. She is on the editorial
board of several national and international journals. She
is a passionate researcher and has received the AIMS
international “outstanding management researcher
award”. She has also received the faculty award at MDI.
She has published 9 books. She has also undertaken
training and consulting in various verticals of Human
Resources. Some of her assignments have been
sponsored by the UNICEF and the World Bank
Panelists
Mr. Amit Jagga
Mr. Amit Jagga is responsible for
managing the HR function for
IBM Global Process Services –
NCR and Chandigarh. He has been
working with IBM for the last 10
years. A seasoned HR Professional
with experience in multiple roles
within business, recruitment and
HR. He has a Bachelors Degree in Business with
specialization in HR and has done Executive PG Course
in HRM from XLRI. He has also been a part of an
Accelerated Advanced Management Program from IBM
in collaboration with Harvard University.
Mr. Daljeet Singh
Mr. Daljeet Singh is the president –
strategy & organizational
development of Fortis Health Care
Limited. Prior to his current role,
Mr. Singh was the Chief Executive
Officer of Fortis Health Care Ltd.
Before joining FHL, he was the
Director in charge of HR,
manufacturing, and external relations with ICI India ltd.
with a proven track record of growing diverse
businesses through his leadership. His key achievements
have been in the field of developing progressive HR
DELPHIQUE 2010
23 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
strategies, and ensuring their implementation,
organizational restructuring, building a high
performance culture and leading teams to deliver
business values. He is a gold medalist from IIT Delhi
and a commonwealth scholar to the senior management
program at the Manchester Business School.
Mr. KK Ahuja
Mr. KK Ahuja is advisor and
head operations, Napino Auto and
electronics ltd. He has an
experience of more than 40 years
with various leading public and
private organisations. He was the
director on board of various
companies of the Dalmia group,
General Manager – HR of Usha
International and Chief Personnel Division of IDPL. Mr
Ahuja is an expert in Industrial relations environment,
developing people based competence strategy. Under his
supervision, Napino Auto and Electronics has been
conferred with a certificate of commendation for best
practices in HR in CII HR conclave 2010. Mr Ahuja
takes keen interest in management education and has
been a visiting faculty at MDI, LBSIM New Delhi, LBS
Bareiley, and Amity Institute of Management. He has
presented papers in international conferences and
authored several books on management.
Dr. Maninder Khalsa
Dr. Maninder Khalsa has
professional experience of over
19 years in customer service &
sales operations and managing
learning & development and
over 13 years of experience in
HRD & Learning &
Development consulting. He
has been performing at national
role for last 9 years. He has also been a speaker at
various conferences including “Power Industry–National
Training Policy.” He has done a Ph.D. in Business
Administration from AMU, an advanced course in
„HRD and Research Methodology‟ and holds a PGDBM
from IMT, Ghaziabad. He has worked with a number of
companies such as WTTIL, Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Godrej
Nelco, among others.
Mr. Shiv Chandra
Mr. Shiv Chandra is working with
Aon Hewitt
Student Research Outcomes
1. The HR Managers emphasized that Systems
pertaining to Leadership Practices are well defined but
employee surveys show otherwise.
2. Employees feel that career development
programs were not adequate.
3. Information systems pertaining to knowledge
systems have been rated low consistently by HR
Managers and employees.
4. Average HCM scores of firms in the BSFI
sector higher than the scores of IT/ITES companies
5. None of the drivers achieved a Maturity Level
of 4.
6. Although all organizations laid a lot of emphasis
on trainings, the employees feel that the trainings were
not well-defined and effective.
7. Various different practices are followed across
companies in the service sector however most of them
are common for all of them.
8. Some of the issues faced In the service industry
are:
a. Attrition - McKinsey Associate Partner, Supriyo
Sinha said that nearly 63,000 employees of public-sector
banks will retire from the service over the next three
years and banks will have to devise ways to overcome
this challenge.
b. Talent Management - India meets only 15-20%
of the demand for Knowledge Process Outsourcing. By
2009, there will be a shortage of at least 3, 00,000
professional in outsourcing in India.
c. Training and Development - $126 Billion Spent
on Employee Learning and Development in 2009. "The
findings in our latest State of the Industry Report clearly
demonstrate that executives and business leaders know
their investments in employee learning and development
are keys to survival, recovery, and future growth”
DELPHIQUE 2010
24 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
d. Employee Engagement - Employee engagement
is the most important driver for Talent retention.
9. From the employee angle, outcomes that HR
desires are being achieved. Leadership development
programs are not widely known of because a small
number are exposed to them. There are two roles that
HR has. The functional role, which deals with expertise
and the team role which is not clearly defined. There are
three things that happen in an organization. Alignment,
the process of execution, and the process of renewal. An
interesting definition of the role of an organization
is:”To survive in perpetuity”.
10. The role of an HR manager is to create an
ecosystem where the leadership can do its job. The HR
manager must facilitate leaders to be able to perform
their role. From the research findings, it was seen that
the business leaders have scored highly, HR managers
have not. There is too much emphasis on systems and
initiatives. They have become the end in themselves
rather than the means.
Panel Discussion
The discussion started out with Prof. Radha Sharma
acknowledging the presentation of the research team.
She then gave her thoughts on the findings and some
comments for further discussion by the panel. She
mentioned how the importance of human capital was
first recognized in history by Adam Smith. From the
1960s onwards, beginning of the knowledge era, land,
labor etc. have been replaced by human capital as the
primary factor in wealth creation.
The next to speak was Mr. Shiv Chandra of Hewitt. He
said that all the issues highlighted by the research are
very relevant today. He commented that the
methodology adopted had a prime focus on models of
Human Capital. As important as it is to understand
models, it is equally important to be able to implement
them. He said that one failing of the HR professional is
that that he tries to jargonize, make things that are
simple, esoteric. What the research findings show is that
on from the employee angle, outcomes that HR desires
are being achieved. Leadership development programs
are not widely known of because a small number are
exposed to them. Mr. Chandra then gave his thoughts on
workforce optimization, how to be proactive as an HR
professional and what is the right amount of HR.
Prof. Radha Sharma commented that there is a
difference between Industry and academia and both have
their roles in development of the profession.
Mr. Amit Jagga of IBM was the next speaker. He gave a
very interesting example where he quantified into rupee
amounts the cost that attrition has to an organization.
According to him, 30% of profits were compromised as
a loss due to attrition. Another example that he gave was
the quantum of applicants that a large IT firm such as
IBM needs to reach in order to meet growth needs. One
cannot have a gate keeping mentality when doing such
mass recruiting. The discussion then turned to how this
function of HR is akin to supply chain management,
when the massive inflow and outflow of Human
resource is involved. This reaises the question is attrition
really an HR problem? Is it the CEO‟s problem? It is an
issue of leadership and HR has an important role to play.
Mr. Jagga gave an analogy of an „emotional‟ bank
account of an employee. The employee has a mental
balance with the firm. If it is positive, he is happy
working there, if it is negative, it is a cause for concern.
Mr Daljit Singh was the next speaker. He said there are
two roles that HR has. The functional role, which deals
with expertise and the team role which is not clearly
defined. There are three things that happen in an
organization. Alignment, the process of execution, and
the process of renewal. An interesting definition of the
role of an organization is:”To survive in perpetuity”. He
took the example of the Tata group. Mr. Singh said that
the HR manager must have his finger on the pulse of the
organization.
The next speaker was Mr. Maninder Khalsa. He said that
the role of an HR manager is to create an ecosystem
where the leadership can do its job. The HR manager
must facilitate leaders to be able to perform their role.
From the research findings, he pointed out the business
leaders have scored highly, HR managers have not. He
said there is too much emphasis on systems and
initiatives. They have become the end in themselves
rather than the means.
DELPHIQUE 2010
25 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Research Team
Hemanth
K.R.Ramakrishnan
Kanika Kakkar
Kartik Gupta
Parul Malik
Piyush
Prerna Mathur
Roshni Arora
Ruchira Pandey
Sachin Batra
Sohil Hemnani
Swathi Pasumarti
Tushar
IT Panel
Knowledge Partner:
Discussion Topic: Outline and Application of next
generation CRM
There are various pieces of CRM we currently
understand – 360 degree view of customers, integrated
marketing communication, Above the line & Below the
line channels to interact with the customer, org-wide IT
systems (SAP, CRM software) etc are some pieces of
this definition today. While these really help
organizations focus their energies, it seems we are
nearing the inflection point where the returns from
these start diminishing, given that these have now
become ubiquitous. Hence, there arises the need to
understand the future CRM drivers.
The research included identification of the future
drivers of CRM and then the various methods of
capturing sentiments along with their inherent
advantages and limitations, thus arriving upon a market
segmentation methodology for better customer
servicing. The discussion focused upon the future and
current challenges/ limitations facing the evolution of
CRM to next level and the future of the CRM – from
technology as well as marketing perspective The growth
drivers for the CRM in future was discussed, with
particular emphasis on social CRM, focusing on the
moral and ethical aspects of using information from
sources galore
The subject of focus in the discussion was how to go
about finding new avenues of reaching out to
customers so as to gain competitive advantage
throughout the value chain of an organization.
Furthermore, the discussion also focused on how to
harness the full capability of the ever emerging
technology, since the technology, along with its
benefits, also brings quite many challenges with itself.
Faculty Mentor
Prof. Kanwal Kapil
Prof. Kanwal Kapil is an Associate
Professor in the field of Marketing
and Chairperson Open-
Programmes at MDI. Prior to
joining MDI he has worked with
IPM as Deputy Director and IMT
Ghaziabad as Assistant Professor.
He has worked in various companies such as Chemtrol
technologies¸ L&T and Cipla handling product and
brand management functions. He has been active in
academics for last 13 years where he taught various
courses such as Marketing Management¸ Brand
Management¸ and Consumer Behavior. Dr. Kapil is
actively involved in executive education¸ consulting and
research. Apart from writing three books he has also
published research papers and case studies in various
international and national journals of repute. Dr.
Kanwal Kapil holds PhD and MBA in marketing.
Panelists:
Mr. Murthy Chebiyyam
Mr. Murthy Chebiyyam is
currently the program director
of services Quality at IBM
Research India. He has 29 years
of experience in Electronic
Components/ Hardware
Systems, Reliability and Quality
Assurance, S/W Project
management and Quality Assurance, Total Quality
Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Business risk
management, Knowledge Management, Information
Security Management, Disaster Recovery & Business
Continuity Management, Customer SAT Management.,
and Services Value management. He has been defining
and driving Service Quality & Service Value research
agenda for IBM India Research lab. He has also been
influencing the impact of service quality/ value on
contract growth, client loyalty & global reference
ability in a B2B contracts.
DELPHIQUE 2010
27 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Mr. Ravi Pratap Singh
Mr. Ravi Pratap Singh is
President, Nucleus School of
Banking Technology (NSBT)
which is a new division of
Nucleus Software Exports
Ltd., started by Mr Singh
himself. Prior to this, he had
a long stint as President,
Global Delivery at Nucleus Software. His entire career
was spent designing, developing & delivering software
solutions for global Banking and Financial Services
leaders like Citibank, Bank of America, ICICI Bank, HDFC
Bank, SBI, Standard Chartered and many others. He
started his career 25 years back with Nucleus Software
as a summer trainee and grew to head its operations
quickly. He headed the delivery operations for more
than a decade before moving to the new venture. He
did his graduation in Economics from SRCC, Delhi
before doing his Post Graduation in Computer
Applications.
Mr. Sudeep Goswami
Mr. Sudeep Goswami is the
Senior Manager – Analytics
at Dell International
Service. He has been in this
position for over 4 years.
He is currently leading the
Commercial and Services
marketing Analytics team at Dell Global Analytics. He
has led and successfully executed several key strategic
projects for Dell, in the areas of Supply Chain, customer
experience and alternate hiring channels. Previously, he
was a consultant at Satyam Computer Services Ltd.,
where he worked for nearly 2 years. He has also worked
with Britannia and Infosys. He holds a PGDM
(marketing) from IIM B and is a Ceramic engineering
graduate from IT BHU.
Mr. Venkatesh Sarvasiddhi
Mr. Venkatesh Sarvasiddhi is currently the head of
Student Skills & Employability Initiatives at Microsoft
Corporation, India. His primary responsibility is to
engage with the Student
community across India
understand their
requirements and create a
strong and sustainable
engagement framework for
Microsoft India to empower
the Education community
with programs like Students to Business Programs for
Skilling & Employability, Student & Faculty Trainings
and certifications and also to drive the Corporate Social
Responsibility engagements like Digital Literacy
Certifications at one India level. He was awarded the
prestigious Microsoft Gold Star Award for the year 2009
by the Chairman Microsoft India for his outstanding
contribution in setting up of India community council
(ICC) with INETA & CULMINUS. He was also featured as
one of the Frontrunners and the Youngest AVP of
Corporate India at the age of 26, by Business India 23rd
March 2008 edition.
Student Research Outcomes:
The findings can be classified into 3 broad categories:
1. Identification of drivers of Next Generation CRM
2. Capturing Sentiments – Methodology, Tools
3. Suggesting Segmentation Methodology using the
Sentiment Analysis Outputs
The initial phase involved identifying the drivers for
next generation CRM and research findings clearly
pointed to Social Media as one of the major drivers.
Social media is the platform where majority of the
consumer-company and consumer-consumer
interactions are happening and this trend will be
gaining more momentum in future.
These developments have made companies give serious
thought to the development of a social media strategy
as a way to leverage the strength of the medium. Dell
Social Media Strategy had been discussed and the
merits of listening methodology of Dell were seen.
Based on the parameters of the research as set by the
research partner, the research team concentrated on
looking at Sentiment Analysis as one of the ways to
leverage power of Social Media. As part of this,
DELPHIQUE 2010
28 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Sentiments were defined in the context of research and
then the methods to capture the expressed sentiments
were identified.
In the next stage of the research, the segmentation
methodologies currently being used to effectively use
the outputs of sentiment analysis were researched and
an in-depth analysis carried out on the applications,
strengths and limitations of the existing segmentation
methodologies. The existing segmentation method was
found to be insufficient in capturing the sentiments in
an effective manner through application of the
methodology for various alternative scenarios. This
finding made it necessary to come up with improved
segmentations methodology.
An extensive research was conducted and intense
brainstorming sessions were conducted by the team to
come up with an alternative segmentation
methodology. This methodology was a multi
dimensional segmentation model and it was mapped in
a way so as to be applicable for a diverse range of
situations. This methodology was built with an inherent
flexibility which allowed it to be applicable for every
situation. The improved methodology needed one to
have data on the same consumer for multiple
parameters which is difficult but is being made possible
as the social media evolves. Companies are investing
huge amounts of money so as to get the data on
multiple parameters and this methodology is a good
way to benefit from the investments made.The
limitations of the segmentation methodology suggested
had been discussed. One of the limitations stemmed
from the limitation of sentiments analysis itself.
Sentiments being a psychological parameter had a
limited area of application.
Panel Discussion: The discussed was moderated by Prof Kanwal Kapil. He
gave his view points on the limitations posed by
sentiment analysis tools and also the moral and ethical
implications of capturing sentiments. He also talked
about the important concepts of Customer lifetime
value and customer referral value and their practical
usage.
Mr. Sudeep Goswami talked about the social media
strategies adopted by Dell. He said that Dell being the
second biggest eRetailer after Amazon, it is important
for Dell to understand the sentiments expressed by its
customers. He opined that due of the growing
importance of the future drivers of CRM like social
media, it is important to have the entire product
development steps based on customer feedback. Mr.
Goswami talked about how Dell’s products are
designed based on customer feedback. He talked about
an incident where Dell’s B2B client’s employees were
chatting on their intranet that they don’t like gray
colour laptop and how Dell incorporated such
comments.
Mr. K P Sharma talked about how listening to social
media has helped Dell. He said that every week around
10 million users call Dell and that 30% of them are
recorded by Call clinic Tools for analysis. He also talked
out how capturing sentiments helped in understanding
the drawbacks of Dell’s unsuccessful products by giving
an example of Dell’s DVD Drives. Only after the
feedback from customers were they able to understand
that temperature was one of the failure points. He also
compared the social media usage patterns of China and
India and said that data gathered from Social Media in
China is much higher than that of India.
Mr. M Chebbiyam brought in the technology
perspective of CRM. He identified three major success
factors for CRM. Firstly, he said that we should target
agent proficiency where the calls are transferred based
on either the language spoken by the caller or the
criticality of the issue. He talked about the concept of
agent “buddy” where an agent can assist customer
transactions. Secondly, he said that it is important to
manage the call volume effectively. Finally, it is
important to make customer happy and relaxed -
sentiment analysis can play a major role. He said that
same sentiments can be expressed in same/different
languages depending on different regions and also that
different methods of CRM must be used for different
verticals. He concluded by saying that the outcome of
Technology should be to enable company for better
decision making.
DELPHIQUE 2010
29 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Mr. V Sarvasiddhi discussed about the social media
engagement plan at Microsoft. He said that earlier
Microsoft used to rely on research done by Gartner and
Forrester but now it has created its own blog
department. It now launches its products to the top 150
technology bloggers identified by the blog department.
Microsoft also invites such bloggers to their major
events so that they have better knowledge about their
products. Microsoft also conducts Tweeter contest
where 5 persons with maximum tweets are selected
and they can ask questions directly to Steve Ballmer.
Mr. Sarvasiddhi also said that this trend cannot be
stopped and that it will continue growing. Hence,
leveraging technology is also very important.
Mr. Ravi Pratap Singh focussed on the CRM strategies
of the Banking Sector. He said that the biggest
challenge in banking is to provide a single view to the
customer. Other challenges include identifying unique
customers and reliability of the data. He said that banks
still thrive on transactional data even when customer
dissatisfaction happens before they even start their
transaction. Ex: Opening an account and getting all the
rights. Speaking of technology, he said that it should
assist a company in effective data mining that can be
considered for better outcome (decision making). He
also said that Social Media is still not used for profiling
of customers because of lack of information. He
concluded by saying that though many tools are
available to capture and analyse the sentiments, only
those tools should be used which are in perfect
alignment with the overall strategy of the company.
Research Team:
Abhinav Dakalia
Anil Choudhury
Debmalya
Esha Sharma
Piyushi Sobti
Preetam Biswas
Raghunath Ganti
Shantanu Verma
Sushma T
Tarun Dudeja
Vivek Jain
DELPHIQUE 2010
30 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Marketing panel Knowledge Partner
Discussion topic: Marketing strategies for apparel
brands to gain market share in tier-2/3 cities
Currently India is at the maturity stage of the organized apparel market with increasing spending power and foreign and domestic players have already crowded the tier 1 market. Hence apparel brands performing well in tier-1 cities need to see beyond and tap growing opportunities in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. The research was done for Madura - Fashion and Lifestyle - A Division of Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited to determine marketing strategies (marketing mix) for apparel brands to gain market share in tier-2/3 cities who are currently doing good in Tier-1 cities (focus of medium apparel brand like Peter England). The research consisted of :-
Understanding of consumer (across different variables)
Understanding the competition/local brands Drivers and nondrivers of apparel in these
markets Ways to leverage its market share and gaining
preference Cluttered presence or exclusivity - Right
strategy
Faculty Mentor
Prof. J. N. Godinho
Prof. J N Godinho is an
Associate Professor in the field
of Marketing at MDI. He has an
Industry experience of 29 years
spanning 15 years in the
marketing of fashion textiles, 9
years in international marketing and 5 years in
managing the operations of medium sized Export
Oriented Units. His areas of interest include Strategic
Marketing¸ Brand Management¸ Sales and Distribution
Management¸ and International Marketing. Professor
Godinho is a PGDBM from Indian Institute of
Management¸ Ahmedabad (Batch of 1974) with
specialization in Marketing and BSc (Physics) from the
University of Madras
Panelists
Mr. Amit Sahni
Mr. Amit Sahni is the Group
Business Director – IMRB
International. He is responsible
for Bharti Airtel account for their
Mobility, International and DTH
Retail Research. He has worked
with clients in the domain of
telecom, DTH, FMCG, Retail and Media. His areas of
expertise include market research, brand management
and sales/marketing. Prior to joining IMRB in 2007, he
was working with Vardhman Textiles for around 8
years. He has received letter of appreciation from GM-
Marketing of Bharti Airtel Ltd for preparing Retail
Effectiveness Model. He has done his MBA (marketing)
and BA (Economic honours) from Punjab University,
Patiala.
Mr. Kedar Apshankar
Mr. Kedar Apshankar is currently
working as CEO of Peter England
segment in Madura Garments.
He holds an MBA from SIBM,
Pune and did his graduation in
Mechanical Engineering. He has
been with Madura Garments for
6 years now and has set up several major brands. Prior
to joining Madura, he was with Britannia Industries for
10 Years where is he was actively involved in launching
new brands and developing flagship brands. He
achieved the Best National Young Manager award in
2005 given by AIMA.
DELPHIQUE 2010
31 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Mr. Mrityunjay Kumar
Mr. Mrityunjay Kumar is the
national head of retail and Sales
at ITC Ltd - Lifestyle & Retail
Business Division. He has been
in this position for over 8 years.
He was previously the Division
manager, Sales Operations at
ITC Ltd for 2 years. He did his MBA in Sales and
Marketing form Kurukshetra University.
Mr. Nitin Mohan
Mr. Nitin Mohan is the Director
of Blackberrys, the manufacturer
– retailer of men’s formal wear.
Nitin Mohan is a commerce
graduate from Delhi University,
followed by a post graduation
degree from NIFT. He specializes
in Garment Manufacturing Technology. Nitin, in the
capacity of a director is responsible for production, new
product development, R&D, design; entire back end
operations.
Within the span of 18 years he, along with Mr. Nikhil
Mohan, has taken the brand to all states of India.
Research Outcome
The company should increase the variety in the casuals
segment: Elements especially in tier 3 cities. The variety
exists but is not reaching there. Elite should also be
made available since there’s a large population that
buys from metros and tier 2 cities. Facility to stitch
again should be made available in tier 3 since many
people still believe local brands fit better. Though heavy
discounts are a norm in the segment, this strategy
should not be adopted as it affects the quality
perception adversely. A seasonal 15-20% discount can
be given. This brings the price comparable to other
brands because 600 with 20% is 480 and that is what
other brands are selling. Discounts like up to don’t work
well customers. They want a clear idea of the discount
available inside. It goes well with the brands image of
being the honest shirt. The communications should be
targeted towards the men. The objective should be
make the customer aware of a brand which has high
Quality, good Fitting, great Variety .Also make them
aware of inside brands so that like elite especially for
tier 2 cities where awareness of inside brands was
especially low.TV still is the prime source of
information. Hoardings leading to stores in tier 3 are
important since decision on which store to go are made
after reaching the market. There’s a preference for
multi brand stores and it will be best to keep the entire
range of Madura Garment’s brands in one store
(specifically for tier 2 cities) so as not to lose the
customer to higher or lower price points. For tier 3
cities Exclusive stores are still the way to go because PE
has a USP for office going public. The location of the
above talked about store would be best suited in a
centrally placed mall/shopping centre. A separate
section can be introduced displaying the fresh stock
Panel Discussion
Mr. Kedar Apshankar first raised the point that we
should first find out whether we have fully saturated
the potential of tier- 1 markets before entering tier- 2
and tier-3 markets. He highlighted the point that
national ready to wear apparel market was very small in
number. So there is a huge growth opportunity over
here. He also gave an insight about the mindset of
consumers who don’t know about their needs and what
exactly do they want. Awareness drives the apparel
industry so companies should focus on increasing
awareness among consumers. He also raised the point
that we are the youngest country in the world so
casuals are going to be in great demand. He also
acknowledged that aspirational level in tier- 2 and tier-
3 cities were very high.
Nitin Mohan also said about increasing awareness of
consumers about the brand.
Mrityunjay Kumar raised the point that a brand faces a
lot of challenges as consumer preferences changes
from region to region . He said that the requirement in
South are different from that in North, East and West.
So creating a complete package for the entire country is
very difficult for the brand.
Amit Sahni raise the point that brands cannot miss out
the tier-2 and tier-3 cities as the aspiration level and
DELPHIQUE 2010
32 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
confidence in brands of the consumers was very high in
these areas. The retailers are also expanding to tier-2
and tier-3 cities as the return on investment was very
high.
Research Team
Anuj Mahajan
Ayushi Agarwal
Deep Patel
Jasjeet Singh
Kanika Narang
Rachna Agarwal
Rahul Jain
Rohit Agarwal
Saaransh Malani
Sharad Deep
Tanika Gupta
Operations Panel Knowledge Partner
Discussion Topic: Cloud Computing: The answer to
supply chain problems
By 2012, research firm IDC estimates that $7.7 billion
will be spent worldwide on cloud services, but the lion’s
share of it will go to ERP and CRM cloud services
providers, not to supply chain management. Supply
chain cloud solutions lag the marketplace, but there are
signs now that initial enterprise anxiety about
outsourcing supply chains is starting to fade. There are
two aspects to the benefits of cloud computing models
for manufacturing and logistics organizations:
1. To remove the internal costs associated with
running the IT infrastructure.
2. The benefit of augmented visibility across
organizational boundaries, particularly if a 3rd
party is involved.
Here are some of the current supply chain problems
that companies are fighting: Support of the community
collaboration, Re-projecting forecast, Workflow
visibility. There is a widespread agreement that this is
an area particularly well matched to current cloud
provider strengths. A typical cloud supply chain solution
already has the entire infrastructure in place to solve all
the above listed issues with lowest possible costs.
Panelists
Mr. Ashish Mehta
Mr. Ashish Mehla is
Senior Director, Global
Business Analysis
Practices at Keane. With
15+ years of experience,
he has proven industry leadership in building and
leading Business Analysis & IT Consulting organization
along with the expertise in Strategic Management,
Business Development and Quality. Being a certified six
sigma black belt, he has leveraged various tools and
techniques to enhance the business analysis delivery
capabilities. He has invented highly effective System
Testing methodology to automate the identification of
System Test Cases from requirements resulting in 60%
cost reduction and optimizing the test coverage. He has
managed highly complex business analysis assignments
in the areas of Business Process Mapping /
Reengineering, Application Portfolio Management,
Forward Engineering, Reengineering and Reverse
Engineering. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in
Computer Science and an MBA
Dr. Gopal Pingali
Dr. Gopal Pingali is
currently the Program
Director for IBM Cloud
Center of Excellence and
Collaboratory for Service
Science. In this joint role
role between IBM's Global Technology Services (GTS)
business and IBM Research, he has a dual role of
serving as the global leader of the GTS Cloud Center of
Excellence, an organization of technical experts with
the mission of driving adoption and enablement of IBM
Cloud offerings, as well as being the senior lead for the
Research Collaboratory for Service Science, established
in association with the Indian School of Business (ISB) at
Hyderabad. He has obtained his Ph.D. in Computer
Science and Engineering from the University of
Michigan in 1993, worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ
from 1994 to 2001 when he joined the IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center at
Hawthorne, New York.
Mr. Prashant Agnihotri
Mr. Prashant Agnihotri is
currently head of
GSM/EDGE Product and
Solutions Management
Global at Nokia Siemens
Network. Fifteen Years of
Diverse experience in Telecommunications and IT
DELPHIQUE 2010
34 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
ranging from leading extremely large Multiple Billion
Euro Large Global Business, leading Product Solutions
and applications sales to managing Telco network
evolution, expansions, network rollout needs. He holds
a diploma in management from FORE School of
Management and has done his engineering from YMCA
Institute of Engineering.
Mr. Tej Nirmal Singh
Mr. Tej Nirmal Singh is
highly committed and
flexible business
professional, having 23
years of Hands on
experience in the area of
Supply Chain & Projects.
Experience encompasses the areas on Production,
Planning, Inventory Management, Material
Management, Procurement, Logistics, Imports-Exports
& Projects. He has worked in various Industries ranging
from Automobile, Consumer Durables, Fashion
accessories, Consultancy & Telecom. Currently he is
heading the Supply Chain for Ericsson - Region India
(RINA), responsible for complete supply chain for 5
countries in the region.
Student Research Outcome
Cloud computing is definitely the next big thing;
however it yet needs a lot of awareness in the industry.
The current concerns circle around security issues as
well as lack of standard practices in the industry. There
is also a concern about shifting to different
technologies which is both time consuming as well as
an expensive affair. Cloud computing provides huge
potential in SMEs due to the cost reduction it provides.
However there is a lack of awareness and also standard
industry practices needed to tap this market. Cloud
computing is definitely helpful in removing supply chain
bottlenecks through real time data and standardized
interfaces across the entire supply chain, however
process shift and the ensuing training is a huge concern
for large companies. There is also no one solution to all
supply chain problems. There is a definite need of
customization especially at the SaaS level to cater to
varying needs of customers. Cloud computing can also
be used in the public domain to streamline national
supply chains like the Public Distribution System.
Various vendors are eyeing this space for showcasing
the benefits of cloud computing.
Panel Discussion
Tej Nirmal Singh: On speaking on viability of
collaboration through cloud computing, Mr.Singh made
a point about small operators being prevelant in India
supply chain and the difficulty in getting real time data
from such nodes.
Prashant Agnihotri: When point came on how cloud
computing is going to impact common man, he agreed
that ‘Yes, cloud computing is the future’. Belonging to
telecom industry, he stressed on cost cutting in the
industry for end to end delivery solutions. He stressed
on a point that companies should shed their inertia and
adopt the technology. Though he agreed on the
security concerns over data transfer through public
clouds, but he was very much positive on taking risks
and challenges for integration of departments across
the company- be it marketing, sales, operations, design
or finance.
Ashish Mehta who was beautifully moderating the
discussion made an interesting point about data of UID
available and its possible utilities by various
government bodies to provide quick & innovative
service to citizen.
On asking about challenges to adopt cloud computing,
Mr.Singh again picked up micro players like small shop
owners who would be required to upload data on
cloud. He raised issues like training of these people to
make them competent to use cloud, cost involved and
acceptability at that level. But taking the example of
telecom penetration and 3G entering our world, he
expressed sheer optimism on these changes taking
place very fast.
DELPHIQUE 2010
35 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Research Team
Akshat Gupta
Anirav Sen
Ankur Sharma
Anshul Sehgal
Aviral Chandra
Hareet Arora
Harman Baweja
Kumar Niraj Mohan
Manan Nagori
Pooja Shirkhande
Simron Sharma
DELPHIQUE 2010
36 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Strategy Panel Knowledge Partner:
Discussion topic: Role of Digital Channel in the
changing Insurance marketplace in India
India has a very huge potential for Insurance sector and
therefore it is necessary to not just reach out to the
urban population but to also reach out to the bottom of
pyramid which comprises of people living in rural areas,
villages, mid tier cities and towns. The panel
concentrated on the need to increase the pie available
to insurance companies by tapping the rural market,
providing customized and simple to understand
products.
The panel intended to focus on the need for insurance
companies to evolve their business models and
constantly innovate by providing new products targeted
to new customer segments. In addition to this, the
panel also delved upon how digital channels would be
utilized in the complete value chain rather than only for
pre-sales activities, thereby providing increased
customer satisfaction.
Given the current regulations related to Insurance
sector, it was important for the panel to focus upon
understanding the need to relax the norms to further
develop the opportunities in the digital space in order
to remove the inertia preventing the insurance
companies to adopt digital channels fully.
The importance of increased awareness about
insurance and building trust among the customers was
researched upon. Given the increasing importance of
digital channels as a medium of communication, the
panel also discussed the role of digital channels to
spread awareness and how companies can use these
channels to augment and supplement the traditional
channels, thus providing a holistic perspective to the
discussion.
Faculty Mentor:
Prof. G.K.Agarwal
Prof. G K Agarwal is a Professor in
the field of Strategic Management
at MDI. He is the Chairperson In-
Company Programmes for Public
Sector. He has been conferred
AIMA Fellowship and given HR
Leadership Award by Employer Branding 2007-08 and
was listed among 40 Most Powerful HR Professionals in
India (2008) by Fun & joy at Work¸ Mumbai. Professor
Agarwal’s educational qualifications include B.Tech.
(Mechanical Engineering)¸ I.I.T.¸ Kanpur and
M.S.(Industrial & Management Engineering)¸ M.S.U.¸
USA
Panelists
Mr.Anurag Dua
Mr. Anurag works with the
Consulting practice of PwC
India. He has been with the
Firm for the past 7 years. He
is primarily supports the
Financial Services clients in
the area of information
technology strategy and implementation, covering
areas such as enterprise architecture, portals, business
process management, content management,
knowledge management etc.
Mr. Shalabh Saxena
Mr. Shalabh Saxena is currently
the Senior VP – Sales strategy
and Business Development at
Canara HSBC Life. His job
involves business planning,
exploring new avenues for sales
and new tie ups, etc. He has
been working in this position
for over a year. Prior to this, he was the senior VP –
DELPHIQUE 2010
37 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Customer service and branch operations for a period of
over two years. He has also worked as the National
head, sales planning for ING, and as Standard
Chartered’s Regional Head (North), Assets.
Mr. Yashish Dahiya
Mr Dahiya is the Co-founder
and CEO of
Policybazaar.com, India's
largest financial services
comparison site. Prior to this,
he has been the Co-Founder
& CEO at First Europa,
Managing Director at
Ebookers Plc and Consultant at Bain & Company. He is
an alumnus of IIM-A and IIT-D. He also did a 1-year MBA
from INSEAD.
Student Research Outcome:
The research conducted by the students led to the
following inferences-
Preferred Channels: Initial Policy Purchase: Most
customers prefer buying initial policies from agents,
followed by banks and the internet. Mobile technology
is yet to catch the imagination of customers with
respect to insurance policy sales.
Preferred Channels: Premium Payments - internet
emerged as the most preferred channel for premium
payments, followed by banks and agents.
Channel Associations: Convenience is the most
important factor for mobiles and agents, while safety
ranks first with respect to banks.
Reasons for falling out of the Insurance Net:
Respondents claim to miss premium payments due to
lack of time. Most respondents were comfortable using
technology to make premium payments, while a
majority also said that if reminded regularly, they would
never miss making a premium payment.
Digital Channel: Stakeholder Analysis
1. Insurance Company
Analysis: The proportion of insurance purchases/
renewals online via insurers’ websites will increase.
Digital Marketing will reduce the churn and there will
be a reduction in administration and claims settlement
costs. For example, better data analysis may improve
risk selection, while the detection of insurance fraud
and tighter control by partner companies can help to
reduce claims costs.
2. IRDA:
Analysis: It will help ensure fair treatment to
policyholders through reliable information and prevent
fraud and other malpractices through digital signature
and other privacy encryption. It will also facilitate
awareness and growth of consumers by providing
information on their policies, obtain price quotes on
possible new policies, or submit claims and increase
productivity and provide ease and simplification of
processes. IRDA will be able to track the activities of
Insurers as they happen.
3. Customers:
Analysis: It will ensure increased opportunity to
compare policies through online visibility and help
minimize time and costs while buying insurance or
paying for premium. Reduction of paper work involved
in claims and efficient grievance handling and customer
care services will also be facilitated through this.
Recommendations
Improving Channel Effectiveness: Channel
effectiveness can be achieved through the use of
multi-distribution channel to exploit the natural
synergies among the networks.
Increasing Market Penetration
o Cross-sell or up-sell opportunities: Use of
technologies like SaaS. Internet can also be
used to identify needs of the customer
based on tracking the type of insurance
products one is looking for (analytics and
data mining can be used). Online channels
allow an insurance company to react
quickly to ever changing market conditions.
o Promotion and branding: Internet acts as
an open channel to reach out to non-
customers as well along with the
customers. There is a need to gain market
information by collecting customer
information and gauging market sentiment
through use of analytics to monitor
DELPHIQUE 2010
38 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
customer traffic and reactions on social
channels for the company. In addition,
there is also the necessity to get customer
perspective; discuss common interests and
relationship building.
Improving the website utilization: Directory Listing
and search engine listing of the website. Links and
back-links to the website. Chat room posts and
presence in social media. RSS feeds, newsletter,
briefs on insurance sector are some of the
recommendations.
Tapping UID: Improved payment systems and more
accurate computation of Actuarial risk. Increased
customization and establishment of identity. UID
will finally help reach the bottom of the pyramid
and tap the untapped potential of the insurance
industry.
Panel Discussion
Professor G.K.Aggarwal started the discussion by re-
emphasizing the relevance of the discussion topic and
inviting Mr. Saxena to voice his opinions and
experiences regarding the research presentation. Mr.
Saxena set the tone of the discussion by highlighting
the expectations from the digital channels in the field of
insurance. He pointed out that digital channels do not
have the same role to play across all aspects of
insurance; rather they have to be implemented
differently and have different functions to perform with
respect to life, general and health insurance. He opined
that for implementation to become prevalent, it is very
important for digital channels to deliver scale and
constant cash flow to the insurance companies. He also
pointed out that it is very easy to reach out to the
urban population – but that comprises of just a small
percentage of the population. This poses a great
requirement to reach out to the bottom of the pyramid
- 65% of people living in villages and rural areas. With a
low insurance penetration and inability of the insurance
providers to reach out to this segment, the role of
digital channels is critical.
Mr. Ashish Dahiya expressed the opinion that the
biggest challenge today is that insurance companies are
reluctant to employ digital channels to sell insurance to
the customers. They are still dependent on their
traditional agent channels for lead generation and sales
of policies. If the insurance companies fail to recognize
the potential of digital channels, they would be unable
to make inroads in the market – urban or rural. Mr.
Saxena voiced his disagreement by highlighting the fact
that more and more insurance providers are
recognizing the difficulty of reaching out to the mass
without digital channels and that they are actively
looking out for feasible, effective solutions to do so.
Mr. Anurag Dua stated that internet is not the only
digital channel that can enable this penetration. With
mobile penetration being much higher than internet
penetration, m-commerce would play a critical role in
defining the digital insurance space. Digital channels are
not meant to replace the traditional channels; rather
they should be used to supplement the existing
traditional modes, which can be achieved by
empowering the agents with digital channels. This
strategy would result in reaching the bottom of the
pyramid as well as increased market penetration. He
also touched upon the inertia of insurance companies
to adopt digital channels and include them along with
their traditional channels.
Moving forward, the panel discussed that unlike
developed countries, where insurance is planned holds
importance, in India it is low on priority and considered
secondary in their expenditure plan. One of the
challenges that was identified by the panel was that
some of the insurance offerings are quite complex
which require face-to-face interactions with the
agent/company and such aspects cannot be covered by
digital channels. The panelists proposed that in order to
reduce the trust deficit on digital media, the agents
should be given technology to access all products of all
the insurance providers with the same commission.
There should be regulations in place so that this
technology enablement is not restricted to any one or
few insurance providers. There should be overall
technology enablement throughout the value chain and
not just for pre-sales lead generation.
Research team:
Adithya N
Gaurav Anand
Ingit Tibrewal
Jalad Mukerjee
Lakshmi G
Mohit Tyagi
Priyata Modi
Shrikanth SNR Rayasam
Shubhi Gupta
Sumit Agarwal
Umang Choudhary
Vishwas Saxena
Social Responsibility Panel Knowledge Partner
Discussion Topic: Politics in the food industry of India
When one talks of the problems regarding food in India,
it can be divided into 3 broad categories:
Food Poverty
Food Security
Food Safety
Food Poverty deals with a sizeable chunk of population
not being able to afford healthy and nutritionally
adequate food. Food Security means there being enough
food available for the entire population. Food Safety is a
new issue that has come up where the concern is
whether the food is safe for regular consumption.
Government of India has subsidized fertilizers and
pesticides to increase food production and tried to
establish food security. Yet India faces glaring food
shortages. It has been proven that organic food is much
safer than its scientific counterpart, yet farmers are not
ready to produce it and even when it is produced, the
consumer does not accept it and doubts its authenticity.
What creates these gaps? Why is so much stress laid on
intensive farming even when it has been proven that
pesticides poison our food?
Is there a need of introduction of GM crops or is it just
another way to render us helpless and dependent on
modern corporates. How has the farmer, who is
supposed to be a producer, been affected by
consumerism?
The students‟ research tried to find out the degree of
awareness of the average Indian about these issues and
their willingness to bring about change. They suggested
the measures that could be taken by the producers, the
sellers and the consumers to ensure that the food that
India consumes is safe.
The panelists‟ experience and points of view on the
topic built the students‟ understanding on the subject.
Faculty Mentor
Prof. Ashok Kapoor
Prof. Ashok Kapoor has over
32 years of professional
experience in industry and
academia. He has a Bachelors
in Mechanical Engineering
from BITS, Pilani and a
Masters in Management
Studies with Distinctions from
the same Institute.
Professor Kapoor‟s industry experience includes
companies of very high repute such as Voltas Ltd.,
Eicher Ltd., Sankey Wheels Ltd. (GKW Group),
Shalimar Paints Ltd., and Sahara India Group in the
areas of Corporate Communications, Marketing,
Marketing Services, Training, Corporate Strategy and
New Projects . Prof. Kapoor is very active in Social
Service and runs a trust named Stmarg which works in
the area of Social Entrepreneurship, Value Based
Education, Health Related Projects and Generating
Resources for other NGOs. He has been an Honorary
Consultant to Parivar Seva Sansthan (Marie Stopes
International, India), Sehgal Family Foundation and
India Quality Foundation.
Panelists
Mr. Ajay Kanchan
Mr. Ajay Kanchan is a versatile
professional with 29 years of
experience in active journalism,
corporate communication,
development sector and is a
United Nations film director.
The turning point in his life
came when maverick filmmaker
Mahesh Bhatt spotted a storyteller in him and
encouraged him to go behind the camera. Their very
first venture “The Calamity That Was” was an eye
DELPHIQUE 2010
41 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
opening film on the Super Cyclone in Orissa that
exposed the callousness in dealing with disasters in
India. His latest film “Poison on the Platter”, on the
impact of GM foods on human health and environment
has made the biotech industries run for cover and has
sensitized people about the perils of unnatural foods.
The film succeeded in getting across the message to the
public at large and in making everyone think about the
issue. Mr. Kanchan has a Masters degree in Sociology
and Population Studies.
Mr. Bhaskar Goswami
Trained in agriculture
economics, Mr. Bhaskar
Goswami is an agriculture
and trade policy analyst
associated with the Forum for
Biotechnology & Food
Security, India. Over the last
17 years, he has worked with
various national and
international bodies covering domestic and international
policies that affect agriculture. He works closely with
farm movements and NGOs across countries on
promoting sustainable agriculture, and writes
extensively on agriculture and trade issues in the media,
highlighting links between biotechnology, agriculture
and food policies, trade policies, IPRs, poverty, and the
implications of the free trade paradigm on developing
countries.
Mr. Yudhvir Singh
Mr. Yudhvir Singh is a
farmers‟ leader from
Delhi. He belongs to the
farmers‟ organization
called Bhartiya Kisan
Union (BKU), which is a
national movement of
farmers spread mostly
across north and central India. He is also the co-
coordinator of the international peasants‟ movement
called La Via Campesina. La Via Campesina is the
international movement of small and medium farmers,
landless people, fisherfolk, indigenous people, women
and rural youth. La via Campesina struggles for food
sovereignty and farmers‟ rights.
Student Research Outcome
The research on politics in the food industry was a
research directed towards the understanding of the
policies and practices of government, corporate and
individuals pertaining to the food industry. The research
divided the issue along 3 lines
1. Food Security
2. Food Safety
3. Food Poverty
Primary research conducted by interviewing families in
Gurgaon indicated a certain degree of awareness about
food safety – including GM food, organic produce etc.
However, a large proportion of the sample was still
hesitant to purchase organic food due to extremely high
prices, low immediate availability and lack of a proper
certification facility – to label organic food as indeed
organic food.
The secondary research was a fact finding mission to
ascertain the ground situation regarding food production,
storage and distribution of food grains, farmer suicides,
the frameworks of the government policies and
legislation such as the Food Security Bill, Food Safety
and Standards Act etc. It also looked in detail at the
controversy surrounding the launch of BT Brinjal in
India – a review of the statements, justifications and
literature from either side of the dais.
This was followed by the analysis and extrapolations of
the insights gained from the research above. The
effectiveness and the need for government steps relating
to farmer loan waiver, fertilizer subsidies – particularly
on Urea etc. were determined. Even the much reveled-
about „Green Revolution‟ – its need, its timing, its
impact – was questioned as part of this analysis. The
present status of farmers in Punjab, which was the
epicenter of the revolution was studied – which noted
their dissatisfaction with the low yield and productivity ,
low marginal returns on investments and the
deterioration of the natural bio-diversity of the region
due to use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The recommendations emphasized the need for better
legislation – and more importantly better execution of
the legislations to ensure adequate nutritious food to
DELPHIQUE 2010
42 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
everyone. The research threw the spotlight on the fact
that food production was not the core of the problem –
but transportation and storage were. The issue was one
of food poverty.
In light of renewed emphasis on Green Revolution in
India – the recommendations focused on the Non
Pesticide Movement being undertaken. In Andhra,
organic farming practices being successfully employed
by Bhaskar Save and the seed initiative by Navdanya -
initiatives which were economically, socially and
environmentally sustainable.
Panel Discussion
The discussion was moderated by Prof. Ashok Kapoor.
He laid emphasis on students being socially responsible
as they are the future leaders who can influence
decisions of future generations. He gave insights from
shastras and told about the classification of food as
satvik, rajasik and tamasik and stresses that we as
consumers should understand the different types so that
we can take decisions about the quality of food we eat.
He also laid emphasis on water, and its importance and
the shortage of water for the coming generations.
Mr. Yudhvir Singh gave his insights about the problems
which farmers are facing which are majorly due to lack
of political will of the government. The major problem
according to him is not the agricultural production,
which is sufficient to feed whole of India, but the
purchasing power of people. Agricultural produce is
rotting in the storage facilities of the government, and
people are dying of hunger. This is due to the wrong
policies. Farmers are not given the adequate minimum
support price for the produce to support their living,
which forces them on a suicidal path. He also talked
about the American and European model of farming and
the direct subsidy given to farmers there, which gives
them huge competitive advantage. He also raised
questions about the quality of GM crops which are still
not properly tested and do not have verified results.
Mr. Bhaskar Goswami gave the technical details about
the agriculture trade and a global perspective. He talked
about the cartelization of a small number of big private
companies which control the seeds, fertilizers and the
produce. In India, bulk food produce is controlled by
government which claims to not having funds to
distribute the produce to poor. He talked about the
speculation of prices in the commodity market which led
to artificially high prices and a situation of shortage of
food in year 2008-09. Some companies which are not
associated with the food cycle in any way were trading
in large volumes and were instrumental in high prices.
He also talked about the policies which are against the
farmers and promote corporatization of agriculture
which is leaving farmers workless and forcing them to
migrate to the cities. He also discussed about the role of
US in regulating the world produce.
Mr. Ajay Kanchan‟s film, “Poison on the platter” was
screened by the research team, which was a
documentary about the GM crops and its effects. It
showed the realities about the GM crops and the ill
effects it generated on the agriculture produce and
human body. Mr. Kanchan talked about the decreasing
quality of food available in the market and consumer
having no choice to select. He gave his insights about
the GM crops and told that after the introduction of BT
cotton in US in year 1996, the production fell each year
till 2002. And the very same year in 2002, India adopted
BT cotton. This resulted in decrease in production. What
were the reasons India choose to adopt a failed
technology? The promises of GM foods of quality and
large production were not met and still India adopted it.
He concluded by illustrating how the west is moving
toward organic farming and India is using a failed
technology by going for GM food.
DELPHIQUE 2010
43 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Research Team
Mohit Gulyani
Nikhil Singhal
Rinshul Pruthi
Rohit Sharma
Shreyas Parvate
DELPHIQUE 2010
44 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Valedictory The Valedictory function for DELPHIQUE 2010 was
privileged to have Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal, Founder and
CEO, Daksh and currently, Managing Director, Helion
Ventures Pvt. Ltd. (a VC firm) as the Chief Guest. The
other distinguished guests at the function included
Prof. Vinod K. Gupta - Director, MDI, Gurgaon, Prof. B.
A. Metri - Dean (PG Programmes), MDI, Gurgaon and
Prof. Neelu Bhullar - Chairperson (Student Affairs), MDI,
Gurgaon.
The Director expressed his deep sense of satisfaction
conceding that DELPHIQUE 2010 had, in its 14th year,
amassed new heights and that its successful
organization and execution was indeed a proud
moment for the institute. He congratulated students for
the quality of the research work done and commended
all the research teams for the insightful, commendable,
deeper understanding of nuances of business that it
had brought forth. He praised DELPHIQUE for its ability
to bring more than 50 top corporate leaders over this
period of 2 days which had led to bountiful exchange of
ideas. The audience was also appropriately praised for
the thought – provoking questions they put forward. He
also commended DELPHIQUE’s increased focus on
entrepreneurship in line with the vision of the institute.
Sir also extended his full support and co-operation for a
bigger and better DELPHIQUE next year with the aim of
making it a prime event among B-schools.
Mr. Sanjeev Agarwal, in his speech, commended
DELPHIQUE as testimony of MDI’s closeness with the
industry and on trying to ignite the spirit of
entrepreneurship among the student community. He
urged students to take up the challenge of
entrepreneurship without being in awe of the
challenges and risks fraught with such a decision. In a
lighter vein he remarked that if he has been able to
make his mark as an entrepreneur then it would also be
possible for others. He exhorted students to follow
their calling in life and to be brave enough not to follow
the beaten path, which would definitely make them
successful. He shared with us the story of how he
turned into an entrepreneur and how his prior
experience on grassroots management, having an
adequate sense for the bottom of the pyramid and end-
to-end project management helped him in good stead
in this respect.
He emphasized the importance of grasping the
essentials of all the different management verticals like
finance, marketing and HR if one hopes to be a
successful entrepreneur. He also highlighted the role of
decentralization and empowerment of people play
while a company tries to scale up. While giving us his
perspective on the factors which would play a decisive
role in the coming years, he mentioned several factors
like globalization, increased use of technology,
increased consumer empowerment and timely
utilization of opportunities lurking at the bottom of the
pyramid.
The Valedictory function concluded with the Joint
Secretary, Delphique, thanking our Director, Dean and
Chairperson (Student Affairs), on behalf of the entire
team, for their unflinching support and whole-hearted
co-operation over the past 2 days in making the event a
success. We also had a vote of thanks for Mr. Sanjeev
Agarwal for taking time from his busy schedule to grace
the event as its Chief Guest and sharing his valuable
insights with the students and urging them to follow
their dreams.
DELPHIQUE 2010
45 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Media Coverage
Tribuneindia.com Dated: 25 November 2010
DELPHIQUE 2010
46 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
mbauniverse.com Dated: 22 November 2010
DELPHIQUE 2010
47 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
indiaeducationdiary.in Dated: 22 November 2010
DELPHIQUE 2010
48 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
IndianExpress.com Dated: 20 November 2010
DELPHIQUE 2010
49 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
DELPHIQUE 2010
50 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Feedback from Panelists
“Commendable effort; keep at it. Continue to embed your knowledge in the real world”
-Mr. Daljit Singh,President Strategy, Fortis
“Great effort by team and objective research reflecting real world and open to learning”
-Dr. Maninder Khalsa,Head Talent Development & Nurturing, Viom Networks
“The presentation was extremely good. The study group knew what they have done and did
a comprehensive and intellectual work and need to be complemented”
-Mr. K.K. Ahuja, CEO Napino & Electronics
“Extremely topical and insightful presentation and discussion. All the best! Look forward to
more such interactions”
-Mr. Shiv Chandra, Aon Hewitt
“Great program. I was impressed by the way it was organized”
-Mr. Amit Jagga, Location HR Leader, NCR&Chandigarh, IBM
“I am very happy that in an esteemed institution like yours there is so much interest being
taken in social enterprise. Congratulations organizers of Delphique for this. I would request
MDI to look at policies/regulations in social sector & trigger reforms. By being located in
Capital they should be able to work”
-Mr. Anup Kaul, Senior Advisor Livlihoods,Basix
“Great organization. What impressed me were the quality of questions asked by the
audience and the nature of topics. Well done!”
-Mr. Ashwin Raghuraman,Vice President,India Innovation Fund
“Loved the fact that MDI wants to expose its students to the world of social entrepreneurs.
Bright students. Good questions. Well organized. Congratulations!”
-Mr. Anupam Jalote,CEO,Greenoil
“Wonderful program – Delphique. Students should walk the talk now – go out and do
something and tell us about it. Thanks.”
-Mr. Sanjay Kapoor, Consultant, NEN
“Wonderful experience. Good presentation. Very nicely moderated session. Great bunch of
students”
-Mr. Sudeep Goswami, Dell
“Very interesting experience to be part of the panel. I learnt a lot with interaction with
other members and students.”
-Mr. Murli Chetoyyami
“Excellent work done by students. I learnt a lot out of the presentation as well. I feel that
the panellists that were brought together was very good”
-Mr. R.P Singh, NSBT, Nucleus Software
DELPHIQUE 2010
51 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
“Excellent work and really impressed with detailing. Excitement and hunger to do more. I
would love to work with MDI for more association.”
-Mr. N.P Sharma, Dell Director
“Good work done by students. Great experience”
-Mr. Venkatesh S, Head-Student Skills & Employability, Microsoft India
“Very good research. Good organization”
-Mr. Yashish Daheja, CEO, Policy Bazaar
“Excellent work and really impressed with detailing. Excitement and hunger to do more. I
would love to work with MDI for more association.”
-Mr. N.P Sharma, Dell Director
“Insightful work. Good secondary research”
-Mr. Pratik Gupta,Senior Consultant,PWC
“Had fun. Keep it up”
-Mr. Gaurav Mishra, Director of Digital and Social Marketing,MSL Group Asia
“Amazing Report!! Excellent job”
-Ms. Tinky N
“Good, well organized. Keep it up”
-Mr. Prashant Agnihotri, Head of GSM, Nokia Siemens
“I would compliment and congratulate you on doing such an excellent job organizing
Delphique. The dedication and passion of the students really stood out. I am impressed by
both the research work presented and the commitment to every detail in running the
conference. Keep it up!”
-Dr. Gopal Pingali,Prog Director,Global Centre for Cloud Coputing, IBM
“Excellent research using the secondary data and that too in just few weeks!! You have
taken the “HAPPENING DOMAIN” for your research. WOW!! Thanks a ton for your invitation
and hospitality which was ‘Planned’ so well. All the best”
-Mr. Tej Nirmal Singh, Head SCM, Ericsson
“I very much appreciate the research efforts and the sincerity in organizing this quality
discussion. It was of immense pleasure to interact with the team of budding researchers
who had almost brought all the issues of finance. I wish the students, organizers & teachers
of MDI all success in such endeavour ”
-Mr. C.S. Mohapatra, Director, Capital Markets
DELPHIQUE 2010
52 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Photo Gallery
DELPHIQUE 2010
53 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Team Delphique
Pooja Shrikhande
Hitesh Yeolekar
Swathi Pasumarthi
Rohan Kumar
Tarun Dudeja
Sachin Batra
Vishwas Saxena
Deep Patel
Sushma T
Madhur Kathpal
Nikhil Singhal
Deepika Mangla
Swati Bhadada
Shauvik Chakraborty
Abhishek Singh
Rahul Sharma
Kandarp Suchak
Piyush Aren
Parul Malik
Tanika Gupta
Vineet Singh
Ritesh nagpal
Urvashi Agarwal
Annapoorni CS
Himani Kansara
Jayneelsinh Jadeja
Pranshu Agarwal
DELPHIQUE 2010
54 | INDIA INC – THE PATH TO TREAD IN THE COMING DECADE
Contact Us
Event website: www.mdidelphique.com
College website: www.mdi.ac.in
Secretary
Harmanjeet Singh Baweja +91-9560102468 [email protected]
Joint Secretary
Rohit Agarwal +91-7838451879 [email protected]