How Information Technology Makes the World Flat? Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR like Ishan Institute of Management & Technology are engaging in some very academically and worldly wise business research on globalization and emerging trends. The academic community along with the students have collaborated on some exciting academic projects using exploratory research to uncover some amazing insights on the way information technology is playing the role of an enabler of a flat world to perfection. Based on the inputs of the two opposing schools of thought on globalization we bring you the inside story of information technology and its application in different walks of business life along with the visible impact that it is making on lives of people.

At the top MBA College in Greater Noida, we have done extensive studies on the two opposing camps. The first camp of business management thinkers consists of those who have voiced their evidences in favour of the hypothesis of the connected world. This track is called by different names such as the borderless, flat or small world. The top thinkers are Thomas L. Friedman, Kenichi Ohmae, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, Prof. Arvind Panagariya and Prof. Avinash Dixit. On the other hand there is a school of thought that opposes the notion of the flat world and looks upon globalization as a work in progress.  Comparing and contrasting the two schools would not have been enough in the absence of empirical evidence on information technology and cloud computing based applications in business and governance. The findings of the research are summarized here as follows:

Rising Proportion of Ecommerce in International Trade

There is evidence on the rising proportion of ecommerce as a part of international trade in goods. A report published by the American business research firm McKinsey asserts that ecommerce accounts for 12% of the volume of international trade in goods. Ecommerce companies like Alibaba, Amazon, EBay, Flipkart and Rakuten have taken ecommerce beyond boundaries. Some of 50% of world’s traded services are digitized.

MSME are the New Micro-Multinational Companies of Today

The MSME sector is engaging in digitization like never before and is coming up as a new sector that is ready to transcend boundaries. It has been reported that Amazon hosts more than 2 million third party vendors on its platform, all of them are MSMEs. EBay accounts for more than 2/3^rd of its procurement from MSMEs that are highly active in the field of digitization and are connecting to customers through online, pocket internet and mobile apps development. The MSME sectors of emerging economies accounts for 68% of the payment transactions that PayPal does in a financial year.

Competing with Big Data and Advanced Analytics

The volume of global data gets doubled every 20 months. This is a finding published in a report published by PwC. If anything it shows the growth of big data at a breakneck speed. The production of big data is increasing while the costs of usage of data are falling continuously indicating that business firms stand to gain from falling long run average costs of production of data. Data visualization, cloud computing, cloud hosted software, wireless communications, internet of things, machine learning and advanced analytics are extending the power and reach of information. For example, Acxiom is a U.S.A based company that offers profiles of 50o million customers with each profile being enriched by more than 1500 data points that is streamlined from a data set of up to 50 trillion transactions. Advanced analytics in the form of machine learning and artificial intelligence allows firms to scale up the process of customer centric learning massively at a very low cost and thus produce customized offerings of goods and services. This massive automation of customer centric business functions is a direct outcome of the usage of advanced analytics.

Automating Knowledge Work

Take the case of IBM Watson, which is a one of its kind platform for artificial intelligence based computing system. IBM Watson was trained and coded to read the medical reports of 600,000 people, 1.5 million patient records and 2.0 million pages of reports of clinical trials on cancer. Today IBM Watson is the backbone of the decision support system meant for oncologists at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Clearwell Systems is a Silicon Valley based company that offers legal document processing services for its clients. Recently the company employed knowledge work automation software that scanned more than 0.5 million documents to conclude that less than 0.5% of the documents were relevant for pre-trial case study references. While many may argue that the results had nothing encouraging for the company, it must be noted that had the company got the work done manually it would have taken more than 50 people and over three months. The work was completed in sharp 3 days thereby saving costs, time and effort for the company.

Offering Fresh User Experience to Customers

The rising income levels and employment generation in emerging economies is leading to faster internet adoption and higher rates of mobile internet penetration. While the scenario augurs well for emerging economies there are extended opportunities for improvement in countries like India, China and Bangladesh. India’s digital penetration is only 10% and that of China stands at 40%. The business value that can be created in these countries based on digitization is truly enormous.

For example Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) in Bangladesh for example has achieved a customer headcount of 1million mobile payment subscribers in the first 10 months. Standard Bank of South Africa has reduced new client acquisition costs by 80% for smart phone subscribers. Kenya’s Google sponsored iHub Project offers financing options to entrepreneurs and start ups on the basis of mobile apps development services. In India, Hindustan Unilever offers smart phones to distributors and even local shop keepers operating mom and pop stores to coordinate on issues of inventory management, marketing strategy and demand forecasts to streamline the supply chain.

Improving Governance, Education and Health Care

Governments of different countries are proactively engaging in consolidating their interface and outreach to citizens using web technologies. India has enrolled 400 million citizens into the Aadhar Program which is the world’s largest biometric information bank. The Aadhar Program aims to disburse $ 50 million worth of subsidies to the poor by means of direct cash transfers and saving $6billion annually in fraudulent payments. In Bangladesh, more than 90% of child births occur beyond hospitals. A mobile –notification system issues alerts to teams of mid-wife techies, nurses and child care experts to the required places. The system has an efficiency of 89%. The government in South Korea has initiated the e-People project which enables citizens to file online petitions for reporting issues of corruption. A PPP( public-private partnership) in China offers a cardiovascular monitoring system by transmitting data from the bodies of the patients directly to the doctors in Beijing, who then suggest treatment over the phone.

At the top MBA College in Greater Noida we have and are still engaging in high quality business research on the adoption of digitization and its impact on the global economy. The above piece of literature is based on inputs from business research projects done by students of the PGDM and MBA courses and mentored by the academicians of the business school. Ishan Institute of Management & Technology is the first business school of Greater Noida.

Globalization Then and Now: Insights from the Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR have been a part of the journey called globalization. The academicians engaged in teaching, mentoring students and researching on business in top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR have seen the city come off age in terms of its urban infrastructure, values and lifestyles,  retail landscape and fashion trends. These factors can hardly be called metrics of globalization by any serious academic but it makes enormous good sense to refer to these as the most visible signs of change. Probably a substantial proportion of the Indian population came to terms with the term “globalization” and its tangible impact on their lives in the year 1991 when the then Finance Minister and now Ex-Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh presented the Union Budget that announced India’s arrival on the big stage amid the chaos and cacophony emerging from Eastern Europe on one hand and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the West. This is a story that has now become the stuff of legends and has been shared by most parents with their children. It seem subversive if not paradoxical that a country that has been at the centre stage of globalization for more than 3,000 years now has had to wait for so many years to know the clinical terminology of the phenomenon.

Where Does Globalization Belong?

A lot of water has passed since then under the Tower Bridge and hopefully business leaders, entrepreneurs and policy makers are no more busy debating if the world is flat or not. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top MBA College in Greater Noida, we academicians face the recurring question: “What is Globalization?” We get to face this question in primarily in the lectures of papers like business environment which is a combination of macroeconomics, Indian economy, international trade and political economy. The other paper that finds active and intellectually stimulating debates on globalization is strategic management. In reality we academicians assert and believe that the question on globalization and its discontents ought to be asked in lectures of business communication. Globalization is the integration of different nations by means of building of economic, financial, social, linguistic and political interfaces. While the interfaces may differ in form and content, the building or development of the interface is essentially a part of system design for communication. Globalization is communication at the highest level in aggregated form where by people, corporations and governments of the two or more nations are senders and receivers and there is constant feedback that allows the system to keep perpetuating the next levels of conversation. Each cycle of communication generates a feedback, gets embedded in the history of the world and sets the stage for the next level. Globalization is a dialogue among corporations and governments of different nations with people at the centre stage.

Globalization Then: In the 20^th Century

If an academician from a business school had to go through the archives of globalization and read through the dust smeared annals of the phenomenon, one would have to identify events that would figure in the timeline of the world and serve as milestones to reach where we are today. As such based on literature review of some of the very known faces in studies on globalization like Prof. Amartya Sen, Prof. Joseph Stiglitz, Prof. Pankaj Ghemawat, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, Prof. Debraj Ray, Prof. Pranab Bardhan and Prof. Kaushik Basu that timeline shall consist of the First World War, Second World War, the independence of India and Pakistan in South Asia, the fall of the Third Reich, the formation and failure of the League of Nations, the formation of the United Nations Organization, the formation of the European Economic Council, the formation of World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the formation of NATO, the formation of the Warsaw Pact, the beginning of the Non-Alignment Movement(NAM) , the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of USSR, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the invention of the internet.

Globalization Now: In the 21^st century

Globalization and the very nature of the process of integration and inter-connecting of nations has transformed in a big way. The economic and political landscape did change and beyond an iota of doubt accelerated the process by removing barriers to free trade, consolidating economic integration and move towards singular currency (like in Europe). Yet one has to accept that the most defining moment of change was perhaps the last mega-event of the 20^th century. It was the invention of the internet followed by the stream of inventions of email by Ray Tomlinson that facilitated people to people connect without any censorship by governments of nations and without any deliberate attempts at gaming the system by any blue chip corporation. Post modernism which is the phrase that best describes globalization in the 21^st century has been driven by the rise and rise of information technologies. The biggest drivers of globalization in the 21^st century have been technological breakthroughs that have improved exchange of data and information, knowledge intensive services, free flow of information and flows of innovation in both the directions. 

While many people may add a few more inventions like the development of search engines by both Google and Microsoft, we have seen it included in the broader spectrum of the World Wide Web.

Is the World Really Flatter in the 21^st Century?

After the above shown analysis there is still that one question that the devil’s advocate would bother to ask. Has the world become really flatter in the 21^st century? How does the world stand today in the 21^st century vis-a-vis that in the 20^th century? Does globalization have the same meaning that the Washington Consensus had inferred in the end of the 2oth century? Does the world take globalization as free mobility of factors of production and networking of markets? Is there something more to globalization than just networking of markets? As long as there are people who stay disconnected from the markets and governments, the work is only half- done. The debate on the normative aspects notwithstanding here is a list of the biggest differences between the capital intensive globalization of the 20^th century and the digital globalization of the 21^st century.

At Ishan Institute of Management & technology, the first graduate business school of Greater Noida and one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR we have integrated these subtle changes into the academic curriculum of MBA and PGDM courses. Till date more than 50 research projects have been undertaken on the tracks of globalization, technological drivers and financial integration. 

Gandhian Innovation: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR make continuous attempts to align classroom learning with industry best practices. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the first graduate business school of Greater Noida, we have endeavoured to integrate the best practices of innovation management into the academic curriculum for management courses. Given that Delhi NCR has one of the best job markets in Asia, there are obvious advantages that the academic community of top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR get to avail of. Our interaction with alumni, business executives and entrepreneurs has led to the institutionalization of fundamental and advanced concepts of innovation management into the academic curriculum.

Every great academic institution has an academic culture of its own and builds on certain strengths. As a matter of principle, Ishan has always intellectually and academically championed the cause of economic and social inclusion. It is in this context that it may be asserted that over the last 21 years the first MBA College in Greater Noida has programmed its academic design in favour of concurrent themes like emerging economies of Asia and Africa, financial inclusion and of course Gandhian innovation. The writing on the walls of the business school is that frugal innovation, jugaad innovation, reverse innovation, disruptive innovation, BOP innovation and associated tracks that enable business leaders and managers to achieve high performance with fewer resources have always been highly popular.

Gandhiji’s Talisman and Gandhian Engineering: Key Features

Does Gandhian Innovation really adhere to the principles of Gandhism? How can Gandhian engineering be relevant to India in the 21^st century? Does the Gandhian school of thought offer a viable business and revenue model to multinational corporations seeking to strike gold in India? Does Gandhian innovation offer opportunities to maximize shareholder value in emerging economies? While there are ideas and opinions in business that may be intellectually stimulating to academicians and even the exuberance of youth may once in a while romance the aura of social entrepreneurship, it is worthwhile to ask if Gandhian innovation offers a core value proposition to business enterprises. Hence the academicians at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top MBA College in Greater Noida have done our best to answer these questions by means of lecture sessions, business research projects and case studies.

Gandhiji continues to be an enigma in business schools. The reasons behind saying so are multiple. First, Gandhiji’s principle of non-violence stands in sharp contrast to the free market economy that India has embraced now for the last 25 years. Economic reforms are meant to engineer an economic system that works on the basis of meritocracy and does great justice by rewarding the efficient and punishing the inefficient. This carrot and stick policy may work wonders in the free market institutions like blue chip corporations and MSME sector where investors want their due and seek to maximize shareholder value. Even employees and customers shall see nothing wrong in sticking to meritocracy. Any profit maximizing enterprise shall support this. Yet the same cannot be said of the government. Investors, employees and clients are economic agents who engage in transactions but citizens are not. Second, in an emerging economy like India where more than 60% of the population lives on a daily wage less the $2, who shall take the responsibility for the inefficient and weak? If this sizeable chunk of the population is left out what shall remain of the free market? Third, at the microeconomic level the free market economy motivates individuals to be driven by enlightened self interest. These economic agents are called rational people in the pure economic sense. Why should these rational people leave behind self interest to pursue something as weird as Gandhism?

Gandhian engineering is characterized by high technical efficiency, high economic efficiency, adaptability to local conditions of time, space and scale and focuses on people, planets and profit simultaneously. These are the most important characteristic features of Gandhian innovation. As such there are multiple technical, technological, talent and temperament challenges that obstruct Gandhian innovations. All Gandhian innovations are essentially engineered to use fewer inputs like raw materials, spares, fuels, fixed and recurring capital. Products like Tata Nano, the HUL Pureit, Tata Swach, Le Chal, Mitticool, and Chotukool are just some of the examples of new product development that have embraced the principles of Gandhian engineering.

There are deep running economic, scientific and social ramifications of Gandhian engineering in an emerging economy like India. While enough has been conceptualized by Prof. C.K.Prahalad of Michigan State University and R.A.Mashelkar of Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai on the theme of bottom of the pyramid market it is clearly evident that Gandhian engineering is corporate India’s answer to low cost new product development for the poor, low cost technological expertise, employment generation, revenue generation in rural markets, volume business and revenue generation in Bharat and climate change. It is remarkable that most cases of Gandhian engineering in the areas of product and process innovations are carbon and water positive. Tata Nano by virtue of being distributed and sold in the form of disintegrable tool kits in showrooms has drastically reduced the logistics costs associated with the sales of the brand. Pureit makes no use of electricity or any other form of energy and thus virtually gives back a lot more to society. Coco Cola has engineered visi-coolers that are 33% more energy efficient and thus enable retailers to reduce sales costs to the tune of 33% and also energy consumption and the company’s carbon footprint.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the premier MBA College of Greater Noida and one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR we have 7 case studies on Gandhian engineering in the past year. The department would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Abhishek Kumar Singh, student of the 19^th batch and now working with Price Waterhouse Coopers in setting the tone for path breaking research by conducting an in-depth study on Gandhian engineering in Mission Mangalyaan by ISRO.

Searching for the Mahatma: Insights on Gandhism from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR like Ishan Institute of Management & Technology have regularly engaged in intellectual pursuits that put the construct of a free market with freedom ahead of a free market itself. Coming straight from the horse’s mouth and that too from one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR which in itself has been a supreme epitome of free market mechanism, the statement may appear to subversive if not paradoxical. History repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce. Being an academician who has spent the formative years of his career teaching macroeconomics that is built on positivism, one can only appreciate the stark truth that is ingrained in opportunity cost, sacrifice ratio and compromise.

While most business schools that render MBA programs stylised on Anglo-American manuals of management stop at the teachings of the Chicago school that there are no free lunches in economics, top business schools in Delhi NCR like Ishan Institute of Management & Technology extend this learning to embrace yet another truth that the need for achievement, power and affiliation are all based on the quantum of the self that we are willing to sacrifice. To love a goal is to achieve it. To achieve a goal is to submit to a mission. To submit to a mission, is to sacrifice the gloss. To sacrifice the layers of gloss is to be content with the core. The distinction of the core and gloss perhaps is a capability that true managers, executives and business leaders possess in abundance. Almost a hundred years ago, the Mahatma had showed this to the world. Great business acumen, great transaction oriented behaviour, great team building, great enterprise creation and even great social and community building stand on the pillars of how much we are willing to compromise. Perhaps it is this understanding that makes the Mahatma truly invaluable to business schools. As documented in one of the earlier blogs, there is a scope and necessity for the evolution of an Indian school of business management. Whenever this foetus gets engineered into a new born baby, it shall evolve inside the womb of India (as an economy and a market) and shall inherit the genes of Gandhism to the fullest.  In the next few paragraphs we take a look at the rationale behind this statement and why Gandhism has to make its way stumbling and staggering into the academic curriculum and marketable skill formation of aspiring Indian managers and business graduates.

Gandhi and the Science of Adapting to Time, Space and Scale: Gandhian Innovation

There are many facets of the Mahatma’s life and teachings that show different colours. There are many instances which to a business executive may seem to be logically inconsistent. As much as the Indian school of thought bases itself on obedience versatility and the spirit to experiment go for a toss. Innovation gets strangled in the rough and coarse hands of compliance mode of governance. The biggest truth that emerges out of the different colours of Satyagraha is that truth should not be sought in the bisection of actions into black and white. The market is a place full of colours. Each colour calls for a different solution to a unique problem. Adaptation is the truth that continues to evolve in a market that always evolves. Adaptation along the parameters of time, space and scale leads to the engineering of optimal solutions that fit into situations. The realization of this teaching of Gandhi is the foundation of Gandhian innovation and design thinking for bottom of the pyramid markets like India. It is Gandhian innovation that can enable win-win situations for the corporate sector to do well in the market by doing good to the society. This is what top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR should ideally do to enable business graduates solve the management challenges of the 21^st century.

Gandhi and the Art of Human Engineering: Leadership in Focus

There is a standard principle of individualization in Homeopathy stated by Dr.James Tyler Kent. The principle asserts that each individual has a distinct and unique biological system. Hence prescription for any ailment is based on the individual under consideration. Based on the fact that every individual is distinct there is both a scope and necessity to take cognizance of the individual. Diversity is central to the social fabric of India and as we step into the 21^st century there are conclusive evidences coming forward that constructed teams that are high on diversity of race, community and gender are much better placed to handle different business situations. Diversity manifests in multiple problems. Diversity when it emerges out of differences of skills, backgrounds and opinions and held together by the glue of leadership becomes a boon and when left tampered with to neutralize the complementary effects arising out of differences leads to disaster. The capability to move forward with a diverse set of stakeholders like investors, clients and employees together is a skill that has to be learnt, emulated and repeated constantly. This is where Gandhism becomes a great manual for the modern day practicing manager to follow.

India and Bharat are two distinct pictures emerging out of the same land and as we step into the 21^st century it is becoming crystal clear that the reconciliation of the market and the nation is easier said than done. To integrate free market democracy while consolidating free social democracy is the steepest of mountains and the most uphill of tasks. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA colleges in Greater Noida we have been engaging in mentoring MBA and PGDM students to achieve just that through high quality business research backed by inputs on social sciences like economics and sociology. We are the fist graduate business school and MBA college in Greater Noida.

Globalization, Global Exposure and the Global Citizen: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

At one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the academic, business and student communities have been engaging in acts of global exposure for the last twenty one years. One of the reasons that students opt for MBA courses in the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR is that the place offers a window into the world of opportunities. Probably it is fashionable for academicians of higher education to harp on the strings of well chosen homilies that are outright bookish and textual in their endeavours to define globalization. Given that globalization makes its presence felt in the literature review of more than one academic discipline, the biggest challenge for business school academicians is to optimize the definition that best reflects the aspirations of the community that they epitomize. To put things into a capsule form, there are economic, cultural, social, political, financial, technological, linguistics and historical dimensions of globalization. The reason behind taking up the title of globalization in an academic blog from a business school in Delhi NCR is to ask ourselves about that community of people and category of business interests that we aim to support through our rendition of a definition of globalization. As intellectual as the title gets, it makes enormous good sense to assert that the function of an academician, an intellectual and specifically even a business school faculty is to offer the best possible choice available from a range of options as referred to in his seminal work “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” by celebrated American cognitive scientist and logician Noam Chomsky.

Cherry Picking the Truth of Globalization Sans the Colours of Ideology

Most academicians have unfortunately got accustomed to the bad habit of painting an academic concept in colours of ideology and thereafter presenting a half baked truth on the floor of the classroom to young minds in their lecture sessions. The results are obvious and lackadaisical. As renowned business theoretician Peter Drucker had once written in his book The End of Ideology, the best thing about the 21^st century is that it marks the end of empires that were  built on ideologies that have all at some point of time crumbled to defeat and despair in the face of surmounting empirical evidence pointing to the contrary. Business school academicians for example did rightly celebrate the fall of a myth of the dictatorship of the proletariat when the Gulliver’s giant USSR collapsed and the Berlin Wall was brought down by people from both the sides of Germany. However they for obvious reasons best known only to them fail to acknowledge the fact that a school of thought in business management that fails to defend the lives of 25 million people annually on account of poverty is a failure and a big one at that. They remain conspicuously absent and deafeningly silent on the fact that 8% of the world’s population consumes 70% of the world’s resources and generates 30% of the global climate change. This is where there is a pressing need to obliterate the very narrow view of globalization that has been unfortunately propounded by Anglo-American schools of business thought based on “financialization.” To think of the world as a market, human lives as commodities, problems of local communities as opportunities to extract super normal profits and enlightened self interest or individualism as a sacrosanct philosophy implies that globalization to some MBA and PGDM Colleges is a ‘race to the bottom” to quote the iconic Columbia economist Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati.

Engineering Globalization to Expand Horizons and Enhance Choices

Contrary to the dogmas that exist on the right, left and centre, globalization is the process of connecting nations in the world by means of economic, technological, cultural, linguistic, political and social interfaces that are engineered to achieve desired objectives. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR and the first MBA College in Greater Noida, we assert that globalization is communication, the language of it best defined in content and form according to the objectives of the communication. We assert that globalization without human engineering turns into carnage of the worst kind where people and planet lose out the pole positions of priority to profit only. We assert the view that it is not in the best interests of investors, clients and employees of any business enterprise to lead sequestered lives in a small world where streamlining the flow of information with regard to the availability of alternatives can expand our choices. In a world that is connected and mobility is enhanced it is possible to make optimal choices for work, investments, education, health care, entertainment and more. In a world that is not connected and mobility is depleted it is possible to make sub optimal choices only.

Globalization is a process and it is for business executives, investors, employees and clients to drop anchor on objectives of economic welfare and not just financial gains. There are three statements that can be stated in defence of this assertion. First, is the quote of U.S President Barrack Obama “If you are only thinking of material gains and what is in it for me, it reflects a poverty of ambition?”  Second is the title of a watershed work in development economics by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, “Development as Freedom.” Third is the quote of the renowned Cambridge economist Dr.Manmohan Singh, “There is no free market without freedom.”

At the top PGDM College of Delhi NCR, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, we have conducted more than forty international seminars on tracks of global importance. These international seminars have been graced by the auspicious presence of avant grade ambassadors of governments of different nations. Students of PGDM and MBA have been enabled and empowered to expand horizons by engaging in research in peoples and problems of communities and offer solutions to solve problems and make a visible difference to their lives. In our journey towards global exposure in recent years we have received support from the ambassadors and governments of the following countries: Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzigovinia, Denmark, Darussalam Brunei, Zimbabwe, Iceland, Italy, South Korea and Mongolia.

Tagore and Indian Management Thought: Insights on Tagore from a Top MBA College in Greater Noida

At the top MBA College in Greater Noida, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the academicians of the faculty of business administration have engaged in researching on new frontiers of management. Over the last twenty-one years of running the most successful PGDM and MBA courses in Delhi NCR we have seen the world of management evolve. Evolution never stops so watching it happen does not suffice when it is not backed by application of insights into business. Over the years the academicians of one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR have realized by virtue of corporate interface, alumni interactions, academic and business research that India does not have a management school of its own. This piece is dedicated to the man who first laid the seeds for an Indian school of management thought.

Civis Britannicus Sum. Management thought in its present avatar is essentially a brainchild of the Anglo-Saxon civilization. The raisson d attire behind this is twofold. First, industrialization as an economic, technological and social process originated in the womb of Great Britain. The phenomenon that Professor Arnold Toynbee has referred to as the “industrial revolution” owes its birth to British technocrats, entrepreneurs and innovations. The second reason is that while globalization has been in vogue since the dawn of human civilization, the process has gathered maximum momentum since the days of the Raj and now that we live in a unipolar world after the demise of the Gulliver’s giant that USSR was, it is only modest to anticipate that for the next 100 years United States of America will continue to be the sheet anchor of globalization. The centre periphery argument, the north south debate and theses of Syed Amin, Gunnar Myrdal and others who have followed capitalism closely all agree to the fact that globalization has always revolved around the economy of a super power and smaller economies have consistently endeavoured to gain by rowing their boats towards the super power. Sanjeev Sanyal, the chief economist of Deustche Bank has coined this as “Triffin’s Dilemma.” Now that emerging economies are leaving no stone unturned to rewrite the rules of the new international economic order, questions will arise on India’s contribution to management. It is not mere jingoistic nationalism that leads the author to investigate into this case. The merit of this case is established on the premise of the paradigm that globalization as an economic growth process has been a liberation to some, as a social reform process it has been benevolent to some but as a gold standard of economic development has lacked scalability. The truth is as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have argued, there has to be a domain of local management thought within which innovations and solutions to business issues and beyond have to be searched for. To cut a long story short a failure to develop a local management approach directly shall translate into a failure of globalization in the concerned country.

“Country”-the term is both ambiguous and half baked. A country stands at the cross road between a nation and a market. A nation is not a nation without sovereignty and a market is only a market sans considerations of statehood and idealism. In the context of management thought then, management gurus shall have to first define the lens through which they see India. Is India a market or a nation? Does India have a management thought of its own or do we still live in the cloud cuckoo land where anything that suits Anglo-Saxon taste buds is believed to be fine with India?

There are important footnotes in India’s business history and the most celebrated of all is the establishment of India’s first IIM at Calcutta. Interestingly India’s first business school-Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM) also came up in Calcutta. In 1961 another leaf was added with the establishment of what is now the best business school in India- IIM Ahmadabad. None of this is incorrect but the facts overshadow earliest developments in Indian management thought and education. If the author be allowed the opportunity to play devil’s advocate he shall exhibit the audacity of calling business historians, post colonial idiots seeped in Macaulayism.

To put the question of defining India as a nation or a market in perspective, management academicians and students must recognize that India became a nation in 1947 and was a market at best during the days of the British Raj. Before the advent of the British era India was neither a nation nor a market. The author shall leave the task of defining what India was before the Raj to historians.

“Tagore and Management Education”- a book written by Prof. Mohit Chakraborty of Vishwabharti University points to the first attempt of an Indian academician to crystallize India as both a nation and a market. Prof. Chakroborty points to Rabindranath Tagore. The first attempt to draw a framework encompassing profits, people and planet had led to the idea of a hamlet called Shantiniketan. The first attempt to distinguish between India and Bharat and thus recognize the scope and necessity to study and implement rural management led to the Sriniketan experiment. The first attempt to conceive of a rural industrial fair of a global scale was a challenge indeed. Even today many management gurus of the Havard School would question if the words “rural” and “global” could go hand in hand. The “Poush Mela” at Shantiniketan has over the years blossomed into what naysayers had said “impossible”- a rural fair that attracts local artisans like painters, weavers, sculptors, cobblers, photo artistes, singers and blue chip corporate houses on the same footing. These are just some of the few firsts that Gurudev has to his name. The rest of his contribution to Indian management thought is covered under the establishment of Vishwabharati University.

It is common knowledge that globalization has many dimensions-economic, social, political, linguistic and cultural. While it is fashionable for academicians in top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR to present globalization as a process with possibilities, the challenge for business leaders and executives is to premise globalization as a paradigm for a viable business model. Who else other than Nagavara Rao Narayana Murthy (N.R. Narayana Murthy) of Infosys fame can be more befitting to draw reference for the afore said purpose. The founders of Infosys including Murthy himself had in the infancy stages of the company envisaged the now legendary Global Delivery Model (GDM). While there is literature abound on GDM, it always makes sense to hear it from the horse’s mouth. N.R.Narayana Murthy’s “Better India Better World” accommodates the best possible definition and practical illustration of what is GDM, how it can be applied and why it is scalable. Going by the illustration that Murthy puts forward, i,e. procuring labour from where it is best available, procuring capital from where cost of capital is the lowest, manufacturing where operations are most economically viable and selling in markets where margins are highest following the concept of arbitrage and speculation in international finance, the first successful experiment on GDM is the establishment of Vishwabharati University. Yes, the archives substantiate the premise. The schools of language came up with aid and knowledge resources for Japan and China. The corpus of ready to invest capital was procured by means of crowd funding from Great Britain and France. The university got its first official vice chancellor in independent India in the form of Rathindranath Tagore- a US educated scientist. And yes Americans were generous enough to share lab equipment and transfer scientific know how in setting up the departments of zoology, botany and chemistry. More over the study of Sanskrit was initiated at the Vishwabharti University on the advice given by the great son and social reformer of India- Swami Dayanand Saraswati to Maharishi Devendranath Tagore during the former’s visit to Bengal thus lending the university its strong Indian roots.

Despite some of these great achievements, Indian management gurus have not recognized Tagore as a management guru. The obsession with Anglo-Saxon and American management thought has unfortunately deprived India of the same footing as the Japanese, the Germans and the South Koreans who all have developed local management thoughts to make globalization work better in country specific contexts. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR, we have designed an academic curriculum that has India roots and can scale global heights.

How to Streamline and Detoxify Life on the Fast Track: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR?

Ishan Institute of Management & Technology is one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR. For the last twenty one years we have built on a legacy of producing business executives and business leaders to serve corporate India and the world. In these twenty one years the world has changed a lot and so have the contours of corporate life. Life on the fast track has never been easy but the truth is that speed, scale and space have become daunting challenges like never before even in our personal lives. One of the reasons behind being hailed as one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR is that Ishan has consistently reinvented its curriculum to offer not just academic lessons but real business lessons that transform a man into a business executive. Having said this, it is important to remark here that the lessons that go into the making of a business executive are as much about managing business as it is about managing oneself. Managing a business starts with managing and taking care of one self. Very often we have observed that a man who cannot manage his life cannot be expected to manage a business. So at Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, management starts with managing the man.

Manage Tasks Not Relations

Ever wondered what makes business leaders from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh so successful at managing business enterprises? They manage tasks not relations. They manage their work not the boss or colleagues. At home and office how often do we play into the hands of our loved ones or those who are close to us? The truth is that every business executive with the slightest business sense formulates a to-do list and sets time limits for each of the tasks on the to-do list to be completed. Yet very few people are able to achieve all the right marks on the items of the to-do list every day. Unless we resolve to stick to working for ourselves ad for the sake of what we want, we will always be caught up with tasks that lead to wastage of resources, time and efforts. It is easy to manage tasks when you do not have to manage relations. Do not let that family photo, phone call from your friend, message from your pal or any other distraction asking for a favour get in the way of your focus.

Less is More and Small is Beautiful

Ever wondered why some of the best business leaders in the BFSI vertical come from the Marwari community? They understand economic efficiency like nobody else does. The willingness to do more with the existing set of resources and achieve more within the constraints imposed on them is a skill that few people have. Those who do realize that more than the numbers of resources, it is resource allocation and optimization that is important. In many top business schools in India and across the world we talk of green business, technical efficiency, products and process innovation and yet fail to follow suit in our lives. Realize that less is more when we learn to make the most of less.

Do What You Love and Love What You Do

What makes Denmark stand out in Europe? What makes Bhutan stand out in Asia? These two countries are not even half as big as India. Every time you chase a target you will always fall behind in the race of life. Targets are illusions. One leads to another and there is no pit stop in this race. The results are exhaustion, burn out and fatigue. Do what you love and love what you do. The result is happiness. Happiness is what you experience without a heavy wallet, glamorous clothes and a swanky new apartment. There is absolutely no point in chasing anything unless you enjoy the chase. Enjoy the chase and you will regularly be hitting the target.

Decide on Having an Identity that Adapts to Time, Space and Scale

Who am I? Who will give the answer to this question? Does the answer have to change? Is there any correct answer? The answer to all of these questions is yes. When you wake up in the morning and dress up in that executive power suite, take your breakfast and zoom to the office with the laptop bag on your shoulder, you are mercenary on a mission for your enterprise. Look no further. From Monday to Saturday evening do not think twice about this question. You are what you are. When at work do not let anything else come your way. Your enterprise is your shop and the market is your address. You have no business mixing family with business. You have no right to let go an inch of space to your competitors or give a piece of your mind to colleagues and clients for what has happened at home. From Saturday night to Sunday night you are the doting father, loving husband, a very caring son and a friend to your children. Do the household chores, help your wife buying groceries, empower your children to decide what is best for them, sit by your parents and listen to them. You have no right to hurt them for what you are going through at work. Scale up this dichotomy for days, weeks, months and years.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top MBA College in Greater Noida the faculty of business administration believes in human engineering. Our PGDM and MBA courses are about self discovery. The discovery of the world can wait. Look inside and explore the new you!

Growth Agenda for Ecommerce Companies: Insights from a top MBA College in Greater Noida

A top MBA College in Greater Noida, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology has seen the ecommerce industry jet setting from the stage of infancy to take off in the recent years. This is reflected in the numbers that the top MBA College in Greater Noida has to show in terms of campus placements, summer internships, workshops and seminars. To penetrate through this hullabaloo around the new found money milking proposition the academicians of the faculty of business administration that offers MBA courses have engaged in intellectual surgery. In this piece we focus on building an agenda for growth of ecommerce companies. Looking into the new financial year we take a look at the challenges that ecommerce companies in India are likely to face and the best possible solutions to those challenges.

Pilot Study before Entering a New Ecommerce Business

Before entering a new ecommerce business it is highly advisable to conduct a pilot project study with an eye on the following particulars. The pilot project study should focus on the factors of market size, ecommerce readiness, scope of growth, CRG issues and the format of competition. These factors have been listed here based on the findings of academicians of the top MBA College in Greater Noida in their research papers. The academicians of the graduate business school have observed that market size in ecommerce is critical to entering a new venture. The total market valuation, average gross merchandise value and average gross sales achieved by existing businesses are some important metrics. Ecommerce readiness index as such is a highly technical concept depending on many factors such as modes of payment along with their individual transaction costs, risk factors associated with payment modes, technological drivers of business, backend investments required in fixed asset creation, rent or lease for inventory management and streamlining the supply chain. The scope of growth shall necessarily vary from city to city and hence must be studied while focusing on local parameters like demographic profile of internet users, type of value components that customers of the area prefer, customer valued experience, internet penetration, internet surfing and downloading speeds in the local area, etc. CRG issues in the context of ecommerce include taxation policies, caps on foreign investments in online retail, caps on sourcing from vendors, digital ombudsmen, solutions providers, etc. Competition has got to be studies for both the offline and online segments. Competitors may be classified as click and mortar, brick and mortar and online.

Adapt the Technological Drivers of Business Continuously

The ecommerce vertical is a highly technology driven field and thus business enterprises and executives need to study the technological drivers on a day to day basis, watch for new trends that might be shaping and most importantly question the user friendliness of the technology being put to use upfront.  The choice of technology should be assessed against the parameters of time, scale and space. While metropolitan cities in India offer scope for the use of mobile apps development and mobile app based sales, it needs to be seen if the surfing and download speeds in the remote areas of India support the same. Web based sales and business development may offer better routes for interface with the customers in these areas. Again, website development needs to cater to responsive design to offer customers the delight of mobile shopping experience.

Valued Customer Experience around Delivery, Payments and Transactions

More than the product or the service it is the perception of the product or service that the customer develops at different stages of the purchase cycle that matters. Steve Jobs getting the LISA to say “hello” not because it must but because it can is just a very abridged version of the statement. To this extent it has been felt by researching academicians at Ishan Institute, one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR that the convergence of online and offline routes of business is critical to the success of ecommerce ventures. As the customer moves from research, purchase and fulfillment stages it is important that the business enterprises adapt its value proposition in accordance with the expectations of the customers. Multiple technological routes like tablets, PCs, smart phones, mobile apps need to be offered to facilitate easy transition from one stage to another. Again it must be remarked that while small cities in India are the next frontier of growth in ecommerce and thus exude confidence, there are challenges in the form of operations and delivery in the absence of an integrated end to end logistics infrastructure on the ground. Again the most desired form of online purchase for Indians is cash on delivery (CoD). The CoD mode of transaction increases transaction costs by adding labour costs of SDPs, travel costs, risks of cancellation of orders and reverse logistics, financial costs and shoe leather costs of cash handling.

Costs of Customer Acquisition

The percentage of online purchases resulting out of website visits in the context of an emerging economy like India is a meagre 2%. While the data is discouraging from the perspective of online sales and business development, it must be said that the data also reveals an important insight. The remaining 98% of the website traffic necessarily use the web interface for executing an online research and understanding the brand positioning of the company. They are also likely to switch from one brand to another brand very easily with almost zero lock-in costs and switching costs. Thus ecommerce companies need to reinvent their brand proposition and the value offering of their products and services constantly.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA and PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR we are in the process of conducting a massive research onslaught dedicated specifically to ecommerce to enable and empower aspiring managers and alumni of MBA courses tap into opportunities in ecommerce.

Global Business and Tech Trends in Ecommerce: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Greater Noida

At one of the top MBA Colleges in Greater Noida, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the last year has been exciting and happening for both academicians and students. We have been collaborating in researching on different aspects of the ecommerce industry both at the national and global levels. At the global level ecommerce has evolved better and thus grown faster and better than in India. Given that ecommerce is a technology driven vertical, it gives the impression to many people in business schools that the key driver of business growth is technology. As business academicians at one top MBA colleges in Greater Noida, we beg to differ. Based on the empirical evidence that our students and fellow academicians have collected we assert that the synchronization of technology with the business and revenue models matters the most. Technology in isolation does not achieve the desired targets of business growth. As such we have based this piece on business and technological trends that are shaping the contours of the ecommerce vertical at the global level.

Global Rankings of Ecommerce Companies

Based on the net product sales, Deloitte has published the findings of its research. Amazon stands right at the top of the global rankings with net product sales of U.S $ 61 billion. The other big global company JD.com INC from China comes in second position followed by Walmart and Apple both from the U.S. The complete list of the top ten global companies in ecommerce is given below.

How Does India Compare to the Global Ecommerce Market?

As an MBA College in Greater Noida, we get to interact and learn about the ecommerce industry best practices being followed by their business executives in the markets of Delhi NCR. Again, we have also collected data from our alumni working in the ecommerce vertical in the overseas markets. We have tallied the differences that we have observed. Our students who are pursuing PGDM and MBA courses have also engaged in researches to identify the differences between ecommerce in India and the rest of the world. Here is a list of the major technological and business trends that we have observed.

Global Ecommerce Market Runs on Non-Price Competition

The global ecommerce market is more into the market morphology of imperfect competition and has evolved tremendously over the years. The pattern of competition in the global ecommerce market is based on non-price competition. Companies operating at the global level have looked to focus on customer retention and profitability by building key product and brand differentiators Non-price competition has enabled these companies to compete against each other and yet grow organically in terms of gross merchandise value and net product sales without having to sacrifice their profitability. This has been possible through focus and innovation in process and product development, embracing of technological platforms like big data, internet of things, machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing solutions. On the other hand companies in India like Flipkart, Amazon India, Snapdeal, Jabong and others have looked to build on market share and new client acquisition in the B2C segment. This has allowed them to grow in terms of sales volumes but the gross revenues have been compromises on by means of offering heavy discounts, offers and loyalty programs.

Business and Revenue Models in Vogue

Companies in India are trying out multiple business models to stay afloat in a market that is becoming increasingly crowded. Some of the top Indian ecommerce companies and their business model types are mentioned below:

To survive and sustain in the market, companies are also taking advantage of multiple revenue models.

Yet another interesting observation about the ecommerce market in India is that it is witnessing very aggressive mergers and acquisitions that in the near future should lead to consolidation fragmented market share and a steady increase in revenue streams owing to the gain of product specific SBUs. In the year 2014, the acquisition of Myntra by Flipkart was worth INR20 billion and was the biggest in that year in India. This deal was closely followed by the acquisition of Pilani Softbus that used to run the online ticket booking portal redbus.in by the South Africa based Ibibo Group for INR 135million and the acquisition of TaxiForSure by Ola Cabs for INR200 million. The observation that emerges here is that most of the M&A activities have taken place in specific product led verticals. The rise of vertical specific companies in India and at the global level shows the dominance of vertical specific e-tailers over multibrand online retailers. A complete list of vertical specific ecommerce firms in India and the world as given below points to the insight.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR our students have worked on more than 200 research projects on ecommerce till now and have attended 7 workshops on best practices in ecommerce vertical. The clips of data offered in this piece are fragments of research projects done by students under the mentoring of academicians of the faculty of business administration and top business executives from ecommerce industry in India. 

Comparative Dynamics of Ecommerce in India: Insights from Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR are engaging in serious conversations with ecommerce companies these days. These conversations are meant to tap the employment generation potential that these ecommerce companies are bringing to the table. While some ecommerce firms have been able to scale up their operations and have gained market share, many others are still in stages of infancy. It makes enormous great sense for top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR to look at the ecommerce vertical with not just a sense of urgency but also with a sense of importance of purpose. Ecommerce is here to stay in India and the vertical is expected to register growth in the coming years. With all the rhetoric surrounding he ecommerce boom in India, it is worthwhile for top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR to objectively assess the comparative strengths and weaknesses of India and rest of the world. More over it is also worthwhile to assess of the current growth spree is a bubble or is here to sustain itself in the long term.

Ecommerce Insights: How do the Numbers Stack Up?

After all the hullaballoo on ecommerce explosion, it is obvious to ask for the relative performance of India against the other major ecommerce markets in the world. In countries like United States of America and China, the ecommerce market size exceeds U.S. $ 150 billion. In comparison to these countries India is still in stages of infancy although there are no doubts about the growth rate. An estimate made by PwC asserts that in the last five years the ecommerce market size in India has had a CAGR of 35% which is impressive. The market size has grown from U.S. $ 3.8 billion in the year 2009 to U.S. $ 12.6 billion in the year 2013. Studies conducted by IAMA (Internet and Mobile Association of India) show that online travel leads in terms of market share with a clean 70% followed by other verticals like electronic consumer goods. Both the market place and online segments of e-tailing have grown by 10%.

In the domestic e-tailing segment the market share by revenue is split as shown above. The data collected by IAMA for the year 2013 show that electronics is the largest product segment with 34% followed closely by apparels and accessories with 30%. Books have a market share of 15%.

Comparative Factors that Will Fuel Growth of Ecommerce

According to Ecommerce Europe, the United States, United Kingdom and China together account for more than 57% of the world’s total B2C ecommerce sales. In the year 2013 China had total ecommerce sales of U.S. $ 328.4 billion and India had total ecommerce sales of US. $ 10.7billion. This effectively meant that India’s total sales stood at 3.3% of that of China in the year 2013 despite having a strong demographic dividend profile just like China. Probably the reason behind this deficit is the fact that India’s internet penetration stands at 46 million households against 207 million households of China.

However studies by PwC, ASSOCHAM, Ernst & Young and IAMA offer conclusive evidence on the growth prospects of the ecommerce vertical in India and the rest of the world. Here is a capsule form of the findings of the major research works conducted so far.

India has a relatively low but very fast growing internet population of roughly 243 million people as measured in the year 2014. 

India also scores pretty badly in terms of internet population as percentage of total population. As such only 19% of the total population of India consists of internet users. 

The analysis of the demographic dividend that India has its disposal further bears testimony to the prospects of growth that India has in the ecommerce vertical. The demographic segmentation of the total internet population of India reveals that more than 75% of the internet users in India belong to the age group of 15- 34 years of age. This age group consist of the biggest customers of online merchandise and thus reflects growth potential.

Financing Ecommerce Growth in India

With the new government being elected in 2014, investor confidence has found its way back into corporate board rooms. In the year 2014 investors had strongly rooted for the ecommerce vertical with big investments in some of the top companies and financed their expansion strategies. Several of India’s PE funds have been very active in financing expansion of ecommerce companies in India enabling them to achieve a scale up.

Here is a list of the major investments made by PE funds in ecommerce companies in India in the recent times.

The above data had been collected by students for their summer internship project on ecommerce for MBA courses that mandate research work. The data was collected from a publication of Venture Intelligence and mentioned in the bibliography.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the top MBA College in Greate Noida the academicians and students of the faculty of business administration have collaborated on various research projects to bring you industry specific insights.