Convocation @ Alliance...

Last week we had a memorable convocation ceremony .Governor of Karnataka, Mr. H R Bhardwaj, Minister of Higher Education for the State of Karnataka and Mr. Ganesh Aiyyar, MD, Caterpillar witnessed our convocation. It was memorable for many reasons.

Now we all were Post-graduates. Two years of PGPM in Alliance Business School were finally over. Convocation was an official ceremony to announce that now we all were MBAs. Also, presence of such high profile Chief Guests and getting certificates through them, made the ceremony glittering. Moreover for the first time, we got the chance to wear robes and hoods for the ceremony.

But, I guess more importantly, for all of us, it was an opportunity to re-unite and remember our golden days of post-grads. We all had so much too share. Our lives after college, our short stints in corporate culture, our economic independence, our experiences and what not! Too much to share in just a day!

We all were feeling nostalgic on visiting our campus, and meeting our dearest friends. Felt like revisiting those memories again, spent with friends in college. I was missing those never ending lunches and dinners at the food-court, our one-night stand exam preparations and those butterflies in stomach before interviews. I was missing the unconditional support of my friends, the laughs and tears we shared. I was missing those times when we fought with each other, times when we were united against the administration on some or other issues. Was missing those projects we did together, those competitive rivalries, and the festivals we celebrated together.

Moment I was back home after the event, I realized, that all those good days are now over. I wish I could have brought them back. Few came to be a part of convocation; few weren’t able to make it. Yes we were able to meet few our old friends, but frankly, we still weren’t able to spend quality time. Thus I am waiting for many more reasons to meet my old good friends.

Dun & Bradstreet... !!!

With all your good wishes, I have been placed in “Dun & Bradstreet”, famously known as “DnB”. Being a business to business (B2B) company, very less consumers know about it. DnB affect everyone’s life all around the world. To let everyone know about the company, I decided to post a blog on it. Following is the company information.

“Dun & Bradstreet”, the world’s leading source of global business information, knowledge and insight, has been enabling companies to “Decide with Confidence®” for over 165 years. Through the D&B Worldwide Network – an unrivaled alliance of D&B and leading business information providers around the world – customers gain access to the world’s largest and highest quality global commercial business information database.

Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions to mitigate risk, increase cash flow and drive increased profitability, D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions to analyze markets, locate prospects and increase revenue from new and existing customers; D&B Export Marketing Solutions to gain significant insight into overseas markets and increase sales; D&B Financial Education Solutions to facilitate professional growth and excellence among their executives and D&B Economic Analysis Group to derive pragmatic and solution-oriented analyses of strategic economic and business developments, thereby aiding informed decision making.

• The world’s leading provider of global business information, knowledge and insight
• Established in 1841
• Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• Present in over 200 countries, in 82 languages or dialects, covering 181 monetary currencies.
• Manages the world’s most valuable commercial database with information on over 131 million business entities
• Annual revenue of US$ 1.6 billion
• Market capitalization of US$ 5.6 billion

Dun & Bradstreet Information Services India Pvt. Ltd. (D&B India) started in 1995, offers a wide suite of information solutions and its services are used extensively by banks, financial institutions, multinationals, corporate entities, public sector undertakings, exporters and importers.

To know more : DnB

Male vs Female MBAs...

"Female MBA graduates not only earn significantly less than their male colleagues, but the gap grows over time, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors tracked the earnings of 1,600 MBAs who graduated from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business between 1990 and 2006; they attribute the differences to choice of subjects (women took fewer finance courses), that women’s careers were subject to more interruptions, and that the women worked fewer hours than the men.

The main underlying reason for the second and third of these explanations is that once women MBAs had children, many cut back on hours, or dropped out—13% of the women in the study were not working at all ten years after graduating, while the corresponding figure for men was a mere 1%. The researchers stress that active discrimination is unlikely to have played much of a role in the pay gap—but the continued influence of gender roles in determining career paths is clear."

Read More : The Economist

Dare to speak in Hindi...!!!

Have you ever been scolded of speaking in Hindi ? I am sure, that the answer would be yes. It is a common phenomena in Schools (English medium) and Colleges of India. I am in a business school, and here we find students studying from every part of India. I have recently found my friends scolded of, "Murmuring" in Hindi. They believe, English is language of corporates, businesses and the industry.
Not an issue!

Languages have always helped in socializing. Let us take a day to day example. If you find your faculty, a "Bong", and you being too, you will soon find a rapport with him/her, chattering in Bengali. Similarly a "Kannadiga" would be able to please his/her "Kannadiga" teacher, "Mallu" has a good rapport with "Mallu" faculty, and the same story repeats for Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu etc.. But you cannot follow the same rule for Hindi. Dare to speak Hindi in front of your faculty! It is been considered that, English is the language of the literate, where as Hindi, "a cheap language". Similar phenomena is also seen among the students also.
Not an issue !

The issue?
Even regional languages are more respected in India than Hindi. As Hindi is considered as the language of weaker section of the society.

The reason?
Hindi is the language of the masses. And I have always felt, something which is in abundant never gets respect. Hindi being spoken in all parts of the country, doesn't get its due respect. Where as regional languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil etc. are not considered as low as Hindi, in comparison to English.

The solution?
Even I don't know. Might be people associated with Hindi literature could suggest something on it. Might be, we could ever stop thinking, one language being superior to other.

But why to blog about it?
It was just an observation, that even Hindi being our national language, it never got due respect whereas other regional languages have scored much more in dignity.
And in the end, as every one believes, Hindi is our "मात्र भाषा " !!!

My dream?
Someday, the world would be striving to learn Hindi language, similar to, as we are desperately running after English!