Second Session of IIMUSA Fall 2007 Convention

Second session of the IIMUSA Fall 2007 convention started with a presentation on new IIM Alumni website, intranet, e-mail proposal by Atul Kumar, an IIM alum and volunteer of the organizing committee. The website will integrate the global IIM alumni community, and create a social & professional network for India's most famous professional managers.

Next on agenda was the highlight of the day: panel discussion on "Changing World Economic Order - what it means to India?". Panel represented the wide spectrum of highly accomplished IIM alumni - Sanjiv Jhaveri, SVP & Head of US Equities of Nomura Securities; P R Chandrasekar, President of Wipro - North America & Europe; Shekhar Mukherjee, Principal, Headstrong and Monish Kumar, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Dr Kaushik Sengupta, noted academic and Professor, Hofstra University moderated the panel.

Sanjiv opened the discussion by commenting that there is a significant investment shift towards emerging markets, and India is one of the largest beneficiary. His Wall Street view puts that trend as irreversible. In the spirit of full disclosure, Shekhar Mukherjee admitted that Indian outsourcing truly started as "body-shopping" and Y2K played a huge role in stabilizing that industry. But the Indian companies quickly demonstrated strong strategic thinking by moving away from body-to-bill model towards value-added services model and even set up pure consulting subsidiaries like Infosys Consulting to fill the huge void between high end strategy firms like McKinsey and pure software development companies. Monish mentioned globalization has graduated way beyond tokenism and "corporate talk". BCG, the blue-blooded consulting firm, held the annual partners summit in New Delhi this year for their 500-strong partners to personally experience and feel the tremendous growth and optimism among Indian business. He also noted that when BCG started in India few years back, it was primarily to have a presence in India to support their global clients who have chosen to do some business in India. Today, the Indian operation supports primarily Indian corporates, and some odd MNCs, and is a force to reckon with. Shekhar summed it up well by saying that Wipro has 70,000+ employees globally and growing everyday. He has a sign outside his office now - "Trespassers will be hired".

Audience questions were sharp and provocative. To a question that "all of these seem to good to be true", Shekhar agreed that this incredibly good trend may not last long if the societal fabric of India is disturbed. While the biggest beneficiary so far are educated urbane youth, the biggest challenge is how to spread the benefit to the lowest strata of the Indian society and how to bridge the growing income gaps.

Kaushik did a terrific job in keeping the participants focused, and the audience engaged.

Alan Krishnan, an 1981 IIM alum who traveled from Washington DC, delivered the vote of thanks