update from me

Sorry its been a while ( almost more then 2 months) that i have posted. Last 2 months was quite interesting and hectic for me. Month of Jan we had remaining 3 core exams ( Business economics, accounting and Finance) . I got to say accounting was my most dreadful exam of all time i thought i would flunk at it although the results proved otherwise !! Overall I am happy with my results of 6 core courses ( marketing , strategy, Business economics, accounting and Finance).

Based on how i fared in these exams and also my involvment in these courses proved a point that finance is not my cup of tea !! Finance is good for any industry and very useful but it is not what i see myself doing for life. Also the recent recession proves that not many jobs are out there for finance and it is really not a good time to be in there.

So where do you want to be or where do you see yourself in next 10 years i asked myself whilst sipping coffee and looking at beautiful sunshine outside my flat.. My Gut said strategy, marketing and P&O would be my strong areas although i really appreciated economics and accounting. As of now i plan to get into business development or strategy consultant in telecoms or IT. Back up option in this difficult times would be to get into project management in high techs. Time will tell when my MBA ends sept 2009 till then i have few things to enjoy ...electives, IED project ( very interesting expereince till now , and final thesis)

........to be continued

Happy new year to all my friends and readers

Happy new year to all my friends and readers. I have now more then 2k visitors to my site feel happy to see people from various countries visiting the blog:)
Its been a while that I blogged !! its been a hectic/relaxing month so far. Hectic since exams are going on i am done with 4 out of 6 till and 2 more to go till next friday 23'rd Jan..I am waiting so much for 23'rd :) exams have been good till now. I will pen down details on my experience after exams. Till then bye and have a good time

Ciao
Praveen

David Wood's visit to Imperial Business school

Today we had a pleasure of having David Wood , EVP of Research at Symbian, Ltd ( my previous employer) in our Business school. David is now responsible for understanding and guiding Symbian's response to disruptive trends in technology, business, and society. I have met David for couple of times in Symbian from my personal opinion he is very humble, has always quest for innovation(which is core to symbian's value) and very well respected person in Symbian.

The talk we had was on "Building the killer mobile experience of 2013" detailing on Innovation, Platforms, Agility and Open source.


It was really a good talk and personally it inspired me in some front for my MBA thesis !! Thesis topic isnt decided yet by me but i think I am moving towards it :)

bye for now need to head for some sleep

Cheerio

Is 3G and WIMAX disruptive for India?

As India is preparing for the rollout end of this year to mid next year of 3G and WiMax services it represents a significant move forward for the Indian mobile telecoms Industry. I could find some very positive news that India to have 230 m 3G subscribers by 2013

3G and variations of it first got rolled out in Japan back in 2001. 3G essentially allows you to shift data faster over the mobile phone network thereby opening up many new services and possibilities (such as video telephony and high speed data services for downloading information and surfing the web). WiMax is similar to home wireless technology. Where-as home wifi only reaches out a few hundred feet, WiMax has a much wider range many across kilimeter. It also offers speeds that are far greather than 3G. To WiMax in to reality, just image that you can be anywhere in the city of Mumbai, lets say, and flip open your laptop and get on to the web instantly regardless of where you stand. Work from the park, the local Cafe Coffe Day, from home or at the airport terminal. WiMax allows this and that too at high speed.

The advantage of 3G to mobile phone operators is that there are a lot of phone models in the market aleady which already support 3G out-of-the-box. With further investment in installing 3G transmission towers the basic infrastructure for 3G in India can be rapidly rolled out. WiMax, on the other hand, could take a little longer to become widespread. The equipment necessary to receive WiMax signals isn’t readily available in India yet and transmissions in the WiMax spectrum is some-what limited to date. In India, Tata Communications has been experiementing with a WiMax trial and Bangalore and hopes to expand this across Mumbai and Delhi once spectrum has been allocated.

What really interests me is that WiMax has the potential to reach remote rural populations in India where existing mobile coverage is patchy or non-existant. This would open up the possibility of bridging the digital divide and binging the advantages of access to the Internet to whole new communities. History has shown that Internet access in rural areas of India has been mostly a good thing with a great examples being the e-Choupal project, which enables farmers to get price of grain and seed direct from market instead of going through the middle man via internet terminal in their villages and farms.

Access to the internet in rural areas also spreads the influence of better and wider education to all of India’s population, helping to unlock the latant tallent of a youthful and eager work force. Ultimately, however, as technologies like WiMax and 3G reach the masses, it will enable India to innovate and invent in ways it hasn’t done so before. Entepreneurs up and down the country as well as would-be entrepreneurs will suddenly have a new medium to release their ideas through. When I look at the divide between the uptake of broadband internet and mobile telephony in India, the choice today is clear. More Indian’s today own and use a mobile phone and the number of mobile subscribers dwarfs the number of broadband intenet subscribers. Everyone from your ricksha-wala to duba-wala, city slicker to gardener, cleaner to call centre worker now owns a mobile phone and the uptake is unstopable.

Although market saturation of mobile phone ownership is some years off in India, like its global counterparts, Indian telco’s will eventually start to feel the pinch and one way to sustain and increase revenue is to expand sevice offerings.

3G and WiMax will enable Indian telco’s to offer their subscriber base a multitude of new services including premium video content, video to video chat between hand-sets (and cross network), selling software to mobile phone business users and innovating in the burgeoning mobile phone games industry. Like it’s console games counterpart, mobile gaming is booming in International makets and there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the case in India once the networks enable people to download large files to their phones. Culturally, Indian’s differ in many ways to the world at large and one of those differences is the high value placed on education. Nintendo already realises this and its DS games console, coupled with the plethora of recent educational titles that you play on the Nintendo DS is taking off like hot-cakes. This is a natural appeal and fit with the Indian psychi and mind-set.

Finally, 3G will allow Indian users to upload photos and videos from their phones to the web and partipicate in the mobile social networking space beyond the confines of SMS and becomes what is coined as citizen journalists. Indian teleco’s will probably offer a selection of data packages to subscibers, although like the west, most teleco’s will no-doubt standardise data tarrifs on flat rate “eat as much as you like” structures to reduce confusion and streamline billing.

There are countless ways the Indian telco’s and consumers will benefit from 3G and WiMax and I cannot wait for this market to blossom in India. With over 71 countries now offering 3G to its consumers, it’s time for India to join the 3G club and perhaps suplant it altogether with WiMax.

Go India go !

Diwali celebration : MBA

We bunch of Indians in MBA class arranged for few sweets to all our classmates. The same evening we went to diwali party. It was fun = good food, good dance and good way to know your batch mate. My perception is you get your friends in class in a bit different angle at parties. the point i am leading to is parties are good for networking ;).

We went to a restaurant called as urban turban.. the food and ambiance was good !

Leadership brand

This video talk by harvard business school gives good insight on how one can develop his own brand. Basically it means how I can use my strengths to deliver more value to others.

Obama becomes new US president

One interesting aspect about Obama:A guy born to a Muslim father of African origin and a Christian mom, An American, half Kenyan, half white, half black,raised in Indonesia and graduated from Harvard, who have Hussain in his middle name can became US president.

So that means people actually vote for the most competent guy in the race, especially during a crisis, color and race wont matter during tough days.

Hope we will see changed world which Obama promsies !! and no wars please.
Though I have read that his policies are good for indian americans but not as a whole for India when compared to republicans. I think world peace is more important in this point of time.

Why Ideas remain as ideas

Why do we fail to take idea's forward and execute it??

We are totally not convinced that the idea will work
we dont have passion to execute an idea and thus don't take the risk
we don't have necessary skill set to execute it
we assume things will work in a certain way, but reality will be something else
we are not sure whom to trust and wont share ideas with others
we don't want to move out of comfort zone
Probably your ideas are ahead of time
You shared it with wrong people
You lack the environment, which encourages ideas

may be ..hmmm may be..End of the day what matters is whether you executed it or not

What is management consultancy?

What is management consultancy?

As a MBA student all we hear in today's world( after credit crunch and pretty low investment banking jobs) is shift towards management consultancy. I could gather very good idea of the information below.

Consultants are hired by companies who need a fresh outside perspective along with the problem solving and analytical skills.

Management consulting firms can be classified on the basis of their functional area such as specializing in giving advice on general business strategy question, or providing advisory services in niche and specialized areas like technology, marketing, finance, operations or HR. An alternative/parallel way of classification can be on the structure followed, i.e. some concentrate on a specific industry area like financial services or retail, while there are some which are huge and have divisions that provide advice on everything from top-level strategy, to choosing which software to install, to interesting things like saving money on paper clips.

Consulting firms are typically organized according to industry and type of problem as well. For example, a firm like Bain & Company might focus on strategy problems only but in virtually any industry. On the other hand, there can be firms which focus on a particular industry only but advise on nearly any type of issue. Many of the larger firms however have a matrix organization, with both industry practice groups and functional practice groups.

Saying this, there is one thing which management consulting firms have in common: they all are powered by their people, their IP. The only product which a consulting firm ultimately has on offer is its employees' ability to solve the problem. As a consultant, you are that problem solver.

Types of Consulting Services
Management consulting firms provide services in 6 primary categories: Pure strategy, Operations strategy, marketing strategy, IT strategy, Financial strategy and HR strategy. The figure below shows how these areas fit together.









Strategy Consulting: It helps client's most senior executives understand and face the macro level challenges of running their companies. Eg. Recommending a new strategic direction for a growing telecommunications company or to understand why a particular company always lose money and how they can reposition themselves to milk profit from new markets.

Marketing Consulting: Consultants work with senior marketing or BD leadership to shape overall marketing plan or develop detailed approaches to launch a new product or optimize existing ones. E.g. To evaluate the ROI in various marketing and sales activities


Operations Consulting: Investigating customer service response times, reducing inventory and backlog levels, looking at the supply chain are some of the works that a consultant working in this domain does.

IT strategy Consulting: Helping clients achieve their business goals by leveraging in depth knowledge of computer and telecom hardware, software etc. There are two kinds of consulting, IT strategy and IT implementation consulting.

Financial Strategy Consulting: 3 primary categories, Corporate Finance, Risk Management and Insurance, and Corporate restructuring or turnaround consulting.

HR strategy Consulting: Putting the right people with right skills at the right place at the right compensation is what an HR consultant will do. They also restructure organizations, and help in change management.

Gordon Brown's visit to Imperial Business school

Today morning Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Imperial College London today to meet with academics, business leaders and MBA students and discuss the global financial crisis.

He met few of my class mates ..asked them how to solve credit crunch etc :)
It feels great to be part of this institution. Hope I get to met such celebreties too !

You can watch video of him talking to my collegues here http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_27-10-2008-15-47-44?newsid=47817

Good News !!

Hi Guys,

I havent updated for a while !! A good news I have left my job at Symbian and heading back to education :)... I started my full time on Oct 6 2008 at Imperial College London.

for next one year my blog will be mainly focused on

> MBA updates: I will use the blog as my diary /placeholder to update on goings
> Telecom trends: this is my passion so i will continue this posting

Cheers
Praveen