SNAPSHOTS

Hello Everyone!

In order to keep you informed in a systematic way about its activities, Aa Ab Laut Chalen will be communicating to you about its proceedings, regularly, from now on .

SNAPSHOTS FROM THE PAST

We as the fraternity of Aa Ab Laut Chalen firmly believe that after reading this page, you would have got some idea about the programme. However, just to provide a few snapshots from the past, for those who are unaware about Aa Ab Laut Chalen.... It is a programme led by a group of IIT alumni who have gathered years of global experience in different fields and are now ready to translate their knowledge into workable solutions for implementation of collaborative knowledge of technology and management in the various technological and management institutions in India and other countries. After a series of meetings with IIT experts from various fields, the revolution is finally taking shape and ready to boom. We invite all of you all to keep yourself abreast about the latest at Aa Ab Laut Chalen through this blog.

WHAT AA AB LAUT CHALEN DOES?

Aa Ab Laut Chalen is a collection of Faculty resource; faculty who already have the tag of 'best' in their field. It is a storehouse of Faculty and their courses and other services packaged to suit the requirements of the educational institutions. So, you have an opportunity to either work with us or buy from us. In both cases, it will be a win-win!

THE STARTERS

The programme has already taken off with Dr. Ashok Ranade providing his course called 'Collaboration Technologies' and Mr.Pradeep Shrivastava giving a course on ERP at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida ; Dr. Ashok Ranade and Mr. Pradeep Shrivastava offering a course on Social Media Innovation and Marketing at BIMTECH. The other Faculty members offering different courses are Dr. S. Venkatesh, Mr. Sanjay Seth, Mr. Timir Ghosh, Mr. Rajiv Gupte and Mr. Upal Chakravarty.

We will add and update (the existing) the other profiles soon; read on!

Aa Ab Laut Chalen - UID project leads the way

The global Indians are going back and making a significant contribution to Indian developmental efforts.
UID project, under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, has shown the way how this global energy can be channelized for significant constructive development projects.

The project will be one of the world's largest database projects which will "photograph a staggering 600 million Indians, scan 1.2 billion irises, collect six billion fingerprints and record 600 million addresses"

The poorest of the poor will become eligible for services like banking which at present can be availed of by only the privileged.


A team of about 150 has initiated the project and returning global Indians have impressive representation. "From these, 23 have come in as unpaid volunteers, 14 have taken sabbaticals from their jobs, and 23 took massive pay cuts to join the Project Management Unit (PMU) for the UIDAI"

Sanjay Swamy 
Volunteer - Financial Inclusion & Mobile Strategy
Duration - 1 year
Bio - Former CEO of mChek, a mobile payments startup; got a call from Nilekani asking him to help with financial inclusion; uses his entrepreneurial skills to convince banks, insurance companies and telcos to use UID numbers for verification and reducing customer acquisition costs.
 

Sahil Kini
On sabbatical - Process and Operations
Tenure - I year
Bio - Graduate from IIT Madras; on loan from Mc Kinsey and Company, where he worked for two years; drawn to UIDAI because it is the world’s most ambitious project. Among other responsibilities, is helping UIDAI set up its contact center.




Raju Rajagopal
Volunteer - Civil Society Outreach
Tenure - 1 year
Bio - Worked 40 years in the US; returned to India to work in the development sector; Nadhamuni introduced him to Nilekani. He is helping UIDAI to form partnerships with NGOs around the country to make sure that the weakest sections of the society - migrant workers, nomads and children - are enrolled by the project.

D. Subhalakshmi
On sabbatical - HR and Operations
Tenure - 1 year
Bio - Graduate of IIM A; 11 years into her career, working at Genpact, her boss, Pramod Bhasin, recommended her to Nilekani. She drives the volunteer and sabbatical programme at UIDAI. So happy with her work that she wants to stay on an extra year.



Jagadish Babu
On sabbatical - Technology Hardware platform
Tenure - 1 year
Bio - IISc alumni; worked with Intel for over 12 years, with partners such as software developers, prospective customers; first met Nadhamuni in the course of his work. When UIDAI’s sabbatical programme kicked off, Nadhamuni brought him over to UIDAI to manage the devices ecosystem.

Samant Veer Kakkar
Volunteer - Communications
Duration - 2 years
Bio - An LLB and LLM; while living abroad he had become acutely aware of India’s poverty and inequality; read an article about UIDAI. Quit his job at Lefebvre Hanneman Consultancy, Brussels, and his legal career to volunteer at UIDAI so that he could help others.



Ajit V Rao
Volunteer - Biometrics
Tenure - 1 year
Bio - Has a doctorate from University of California, Santa Barbara and 12 years with Texas Instruments behind him. Attracted by UIDAI’s scope and transparency, he volunteered for the biometrics team 

Read more: http://business.in.com/article/big-bet/uidai-inside-the-worlds-largest-data-management-project/19632/0#ixzz16vbCzpDW

Sevashram - the bonus phase of life

Hindu scriptures tell us about the 4 phases of life - "Chatur Ashram". Every human being coming to this planet has to pass through these 4 ashramas (phases) and in each ashram the individual has a specific purpose to live. Brahmacharya for getting education, Gruhasthashram to raise family, Vanaprasthshram for mentoring the next generation and finally the Sanyasashram for renunciation and moksha.


Read more at Suite101: The Four Ashrams or Life Stages: Brahmacharya, Grahasta, Vanaprastha and Sanyasa http://www.suite101.com/content/the-four-ashrams-or-life-stages-a9560#ixzz13WTHvlV0

The name "Vanaprasthashram" literally means that the individual will physically move to a forest (Vana), away from the busy City life. This probably is not the correct depiction of what is expected in this ashram. In Vanaprasthashram, you need not go to a jungle. You can continue to live among your family and friends but you do not have to carry on that competitive spirit, desire to conquer everything, build bigger and bigger fortune, wealth. Instead of trying to be at the center of power, you take a supportive role to help the younger generation take the leadership role. You will probably get greater pleasure to see some less fortunate people benefit than you adding something to your own bank balance. There is this basic change in attitude towards life.

I am therefore calling this Vanapransthashram by a new name - "Sevashram"

If you have graduated from IIT in 70s or earlier then you are probably already in the state of transition from Gruhasthashram to Sevashram. 

As a Sevashrami, you are probably busy helping your son/ daughter to start their own life, joined a yoga/meditation/religious group, handed over executive responsibilities to someone else. But whatever you are doing the chances are that what you are doing is with the primary motive of "Seva" to help someone else than to fight a battle to win the bigger share of the pie.

In human life, the time span for Sevashram was only about 10 years in the centuries in the past. But the life span has increased by many as 25 years in the 20th century. Read this wikipedia article. From early 20th century the life expectancy to the present in 2010 the life expectancy has gone up by almost 30 years! The life expectancy table shows that when we enter our Sevashram (say at about 60 years) we still have about 20 years to do some constructive Seva in our life. 

If only all Sevashrami IITians get organized together to channel their energies for the development of nation, we will see tremendous impact for the betterment of our next generation.

Aao Ab Laut Chalen is inviting all Sevashramis to join in and make this developing nation a better place. Please read and follow this blog at http://aaablautchalen.blogspot.com/2010/10/sevashram-bonus-phase-of-life.html

Project Profile

It’s time we compile our thoughts together. I have made my first attempt to draft a high level project profile – I should rather call it project concept.
The Product: We propose to offer complete solution to Indian Business Schools for introducing the "Doing" part of education in their courses. ("Doing" as defined by Harvard Business School in the book "Rethinking the MBA"). "Doing" education primarily consists of training in efficient use of the Technologies that are essential for any modern business manager in their day-to-day activities of managing. Based on our analysis of 2 year MBA curriculum and what the businesses will need in next 5 to 10 years, the following courses are proposed to supplement existing courses.
First Year: (1) Collaboration Technologies (2) Essentials of Business Processes (ERP Core)  and (3) Business Intelligence
Second Year: Specialization courses ERP for Operations, Finance, HR; CRM and Social Media Marketing for marketing and sales; Project Management and Research Technologies for all streams.
With this being the main product, we will provide customized solutions to MBA Schools in improvement of the quality of the education and management of the school operations.
Organization: To deliver the solutions as stated above, we need organizational capabilities in 4 areas.
(A) Faculty Resourcing: We need dedicated and competent faculty resources for course development and delivery of courses to BSchools. We propose to leverage our IIT and IIM brand and contacts to create a steady resource stream. This organization for Facuty resourcing will be named "Aa Ab Laut Chalen" to attract NRI alumni and to make it attractive to Indian BSchools.
(B) Infrastructure: All these courses are Technology oriented and Indian BSchools do not have data center management capabilities as well as resources for inhouse development. We therefore propose to develop cloud based infrastructure service. These cloud based Technology Labs will enable the BSchools to consume services on per use basis. We will try to aggregate such existing services from other service providers but in some cases we may require to host on our own. This organization will be named "ERPLabs"
(C) Course Development: Define the solution architecture, design course profiles, develop training material, train the trainers and all such activities until the marketable product is handed over for field sales will be managed by this organization.
(D) School Management Applications: In addition to teaching these technologies to students, these BSchools also have a need to improve their own School Management Information Systems. If the Schools are using these technologies in the day-to-day operations then students automatically develop very good familiarity with these technologies.
(E) CIMTECH: Additional organizational area identified is the Canadian Operations, where we will develop Global MBA program with collaboaration from an Indian Management School.

Marketing: BSchools in India have seen an explosive growth in the last decade. From 1986 to 2010 the number of BSchools in India have increased from about 200 to more than 2000. This has seriously affected the quality of training imparted. As a reaction, the students have become very selective in their choice of BSchool. The low end of the Bschools have seen very low enrollment and hence face the threat of closure. All Bschools are very seriouslythinking how they can improve the quality. The solution proposed by AALC/ERPLabs is finding strong interest. A market survey is required to assess the market potential.

Project Status:  A pilot program is launched at the first client, Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), starting December 2009. First year courses are already being offered by AALC faculty members. By 2012, the entire program consisting of all courses for both years will be operational. Marketing services of Prof Sunil Garg of IKN are being utilized to promote this concept in BSchools in National Capital Region of India. Leadeship team has been identified. Canadian operations are also initiated.
Project Phases:
Phase 1 (2009-10): Faculty Resourcing activities are already started. This activity does not require much out of pocket expenses. Already about 10 faculty members are identified and 3 faculty members are already engaged at the pilot site at BIMTECH. This activity will continue to grow even if there is no new capital introduction. These phase 1 activities are being managed on a co-operative model with all revenues directly going to the faculty. The phase 1 will result into a very clearly defined product concept, a reference client and bringing together the like mided team members.
Phase 2 (2011-12): In phase 2, we will consolidate the activities and form operating organizations to support the business development and delivery at multiple Business Schools.  Investment in market development and resourcing will help us to achieve quick growth.  Orgaanizational capabilities will be developed for Infrastructure cloud, Course Development and School Management Applications. Within a period of 2 years, we should be able to get about a dozen organizations to adopt our solutions, evolve a fully integrated solution, have trained team members who will be ready for reapid growth in the following years.
Phase 3 (2013-2018): This period will witness the cash-cow stage of project. Rapid expansion with well controlled cost structure, limited competionj and high profit margins.

Organization: The management of the organization will have key leadership positions to lead each operation area (Faculty resourcing, Infrastructure Cloud, Course Development and School Management Apps) and 3 functional leadership positions for Finance, marketing and Corporate Affairs.
During phase 1, each leader of the operational area will prepare detailed investment and business plans for approval of the investors. Ahigh level project profile will be presented to the potential investors in the last week of September. If the high level proposal has tentative approval then the operational leaders will develop detailed proposals.
Ashok Ranade is co-ordinating the Faculty Development organization.
Upal Chakravarty is leading the efforts of organizing the cloud infrastrucxture development
Pradeep Srivastava is co-ordinating the Training course material and resource development activities.
Timir Ghosh is developing the marketing starategy and organization.
Rajiv Gupte will lead the School Management Applications delivery organization.
There is a need to fill the responsibility positions to lead Financial management and Canadian Operations.

As you will notice, in the next 6 months we should primarily focus on bringing the Pilot to it's apprpriate level of completion, bring on board more faculty at additional new client locations. We can all start particpating in phase 1 in our capacity as faculty which will also provide some income but a lot more of an opportunity to consolidate our team and defining and understanding of our product.

IIT Bombay is hiring - Assistant Professors - All Departments

Assistant Professor - IIT Bombay (http://www.iitbombay.org/fan)


The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay invites applications for faculty positions at the Assistant Professor level in all Departments, Centers and Schools (visit http://www.iitb.ac.in/recruit/index.html for a listing).
Qualified candidates will be invited to an Interview in Santa Clara on September 26, 2010. Several faculty and Deans from IIT Bombay will be present to interview and make offers to qualified candidates. Subsidies for travel expenses to interviews in Bay Area are available to qualified candidates ... http://www.iitbombay.org/fan.
Successful candidates will have earned a Ph.D. in relevant Engineering, Science, or Humanities and Social Science disciplines, and have an established record of independent, high quality research. A commitment to excellence in teaching and research is essential. The selected candidates are expected to conduct leading-edge research and teach classes at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Interested applicants should provide a detailed curriculum vitae, statements of research and teaching interests, transcripts (for candidates who are currently or have recently earned a PhD), and a list of three references (with telephone numbers and email addresses). Application materials must be submitted electronically by email as a single file in editable (e.g. not password protected) pdf format to the Dean (Faculty affairs), IIT Bombay (dean.fa [at] iitb.ac.in).

Dr. Venkatesh at the Sustainable Development Program of BIMTECH

Dr. S Venkatesh, scientist of high repute from Canada, was at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida, India for initiating a new 2 year full time post graduate program (PGDM) on "Sustainable Development" (SDP). The SDP graduates will fill the need of expert Development professionals, who will help promote sustainable development in all parts of world, specially the developing countries. Aa Ab Laut Chalen is helping to bring Canadian expertise of IIT and IIM alumni to this program.

Dr. Venkatesh studied for his B.Tech from IIT Madras, M.Tech. from IISc and PhD from University of Waterloo, Canada. He has more than 40 years of extensive reasearch experience in Atmospsheric Modeling and Air Quality. As Research Manager of the Air Quality Modelling & Integration Section of Environment Canada, Dr. Venkatesh directed the R&D on numerical models for real-time forecasting and to support policy decision making in areas related to smog, acid rain and hazardous air pollutants.
Modelling techniques developed by Dr. Venkatesh have helped in accurate forecasts and hence prevention of major environmental catastrophes in Canada and in the American continent.

Dr. Venkatesh gave a very inspiring speech to the students. He narrated several instances from his personal experience, when he derived immense satisfaction to see that his personal work has resulted into major social benefits in the form of improved living conditions or catasprophes averted. All those who will graduate from this SDP, will have the same sense of satisfaction when they would reflect over their life time achievements. This is a great career, the world needs them now and will need them even more in the future. Dr Venkatesh probed the student's motivation in joining this course, their committment towards social issues and understanding of the solutions and challenges.

 Dr. Venkatesh was impressed with the deep understanding the students had about the issues and their sensitivity towards the various social problems.
Dr. Venkatesh will continue to provide his guidence for furthering BIMTECH's initiative in integrating Sustainable Development education in all it's management education programs.

Thank you, Dr. Venkatesh for this valuable gift of your time and efforts.


Aao Ab Laut Chalen!

Rethinking the MBA

Rethinking the MBA 

From June 2010, Nitin Nohria, alumnus of IIT Bombay, will
take over the responsibilities to lead Harvard Business
School, the world's most respected management education
institute. We are all wondering, where will Nitin and his
team lead Harvard? 

We get some idea of Harvard's strategic directions, from
the recent landmark research by Harvard Professors, which
 is summarized in the HBS publication, "Rethinking the MBA".
This research coincides with the year of completion of 100
 years of Management education by Harvard. For a quick
review listen to David Garvin at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBxtrbj_yXU.
The research and book "Rethinking the MBA" is also
co-authored by Srikant Datar, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus.

The research is based on data collected for the period
2000 to 2008 from 36 top management schools in the
world, detailed interviews with Deans, faculty, recruiters,
employers and other stakeholders. Six detailed case
studies were prepared.

What is required in an MBA course are three major
components - (1) Knowing - Knowledge of the various
management subjects. (2) Doing - Having the knowledge,
how to actually do things in practical situations (3) Being -
Being aware of the actual purpose of what managers do,
the responsibilities and roles of managers towards
shareholders, society at large, employees etc.

Most existing MBA programs already take care of the
"Knowing" component. Students 'know' a lot more than
even what the actual job demands. But present day MBAs
do not meet the requirements of "Doing" and "Being".
In the present context, the research identified following
unmet requirements by existing MBA programs:
(1) Global Perspective (2) Leadership Development
(3) Integration (4) Organizational Realities (Power, Politics etc.)
(5) Creative, Innovative thinking (6) Oral and written Communication
(7) Risk, Regulation & Restraint

Leading management Schools have already initiated
changes to incorporate these unmet requirements in their
MBA programs. There are however many challenges. How
to provide "doing" component? Generally to learn "doing",
the student must be in a real life environment, in small
groups, under close supervision of an experienced
professional. The same requirements have been already
successfully implemented by Medical schools and they
have evolved a model which can be easily copied by
Business Schools. Harvard Medical School has about
600 students but the faculty to teach these students
exceeds 10,000 (mainly because faculty includes
several physicians from the attached medical hospitals.)
How will Business Schools build this large, practicing
manager's teams to become part of faculty?

A part of the solution to meet this requirement is the
successful, well placed community of Alumni of these
business schools. Harvard is planning to mobilize the
alumni to add the "doing" component to their MBA program. 

Will IIT and IIM alumni do the same for their almamaters?  

Aa Ab Laut Chalen to BIMTECH, Greater Noida

Aa Ab Laut Chalen (AALC) group has taken up first project at BIMTECH (Birla Instititue of Management Technology) in Greater Noida, which is about 60 km from New Delhi and part of National Capital Region.

BIMTECH is one of the premier private Business Schools in North India. The institute has excellent residential campus with more than 700 students studying various post graduate Management diploma courses. For details please visit  http://www.bimtech.ac.in/

It all started with an invitation to teach ERP for the PGDM students. This involved understanding full course curriculum because ERP touches upon almost all subject areas taught in PGDM courses. What we concluded was that various 'Technologies of Management' need to be taught to students in the modern age of internet and information technology. The modern day Management courses need to complement with learning of several technologies of Management such as 'Collaboration Technologies', 'ERP', "CRM", 'Business Intelligence' and so on. The managers need not know how to build these solutions but must know how to use these technologies for improving management efficiency. They need to know how to design and test applications and develop organizations which will adopt these technologies effectively.

The AALC team has now designed a complete cloud based platform to enable access to these applications as well as store training resources and enable delivery of teaching of these courses with trainers who are physically located in remote parts of the world.

Some details about this project are available at https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AecGSz8Wq7OcZGRkaHM2M2ZfMTEwMnh6czRwdmhi&hl=en

Details about each course and the AALC volunteers will be published in the following posts. Please post your comments and how would like to participate.

Can you work in India and send the earnings back in Canada?

All of us keep wondering how to bring money back to Canada.

We have experience of the last 50 years. Getting even a few hundred dollars out of the country was such a difficult task. Fortunately, the things have improved a lot. Rupee is still not a completely free currency, but the rules have become very liberal. Every year you can repatriate as much as $200,000 per family member. You need to state the reason for sending money out of country and need to provide a certificate from a chartered accountant to verify the source of money. (essentially to prevent money laundering). But, overall, it is no longer very difficult to bring your own money back to Canada.

Can a Canadian citizen be employed in India? Hiring any foreign Citizen by an Indian employer is not easy. The foreigner will have to apply for work visa and the process is as difficult as getting a work visa in any other country. But it is very simple for Canadians of Indian Origin. You can apply one time and get a lifetime OCI "Overseas Citizenship of India". As an OCI, you have same previleges as any Indian Citizen to work in India (except for Govt jobs.). Check out the details about OCI rules and the procedures for application at http://www.cgitoronto.ca/OCI/ocigeninfo.html. It takes a few months to get your OCI card in hand, so please start the process as early as possible.

Shashi Tharoor: Why nations should pursue "soft" power | Video on TED.com

Must watch lecture


Shashi Tharoor: Why nations should pursue "soft" power Video on TED.com

Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education in India

In March 2009, Prof. Yashpal committee submitted their report to the government advising various recommendations to renovate the higher education system in India.

The committee emphasis concerns on mushrooming engineering and management colleges and deemed universities, with some notable exceptions, which have largely become, mere business entities dispensing very poor quality education.

However, the committee recognizes the fact that IITs and IIMs are the only bright spots in the otherwise dismal scenario of higher education in India. These institutions were created in the first phase of nation building, and kept out of traditional university structure to give them free play to be able to help the nation to have a pool of excellent engineering and managerial talent. The commission acknowledge their success in this avenue.

Looking at the enormous potential they have, it has been felt that they must strive to be models of all-round excellence, like the famous Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or CALTECH in the US. The commission further recommends, this requires rethinking to prevent isolation of the study of the engineering and management from other knowledge areas. This realization is reflected in the initiatives of some of the IITs that aim to introduce humanities and other discipline and expand their scope. These initiatives strengthen our argument that they need to broaden their curriculum framework and assume the functions of full-fledged universities without loosing their unique character. We can than look forward to the day when IITs and IIMs would be producing scholars in literature, linguistics and politics along with engineering and management wizards who would have substantial motivation for engagement with the local community, and the opportunity to use and enhance learning by solving real-life problems in their immediate environment.

While working towards this goal, different IITs and IIMs could have different strategies to expand and diversify, however the government once again have to trust on their autonomous structure.

Currently, many students passing out from institutions of higher education do so without obtaining the kind of skills they really need to work in a real-world environment. Among the drawbacks many student face the lack of ability to analyze or solve problems, relate problems to different contexts, communicate clearly and have an integrated understanding of different branches of knolwedge.

These problems can be addressed if the processes by which curriculum is designed and then syllabi are determined undergo improvement.

Alumni of IIT and IIM can take on this challenge to help the new generation to understand the reality of different kinds of work. It would allow students what they have learned in the classroom to real-world situations and in doing so not only makes them better prepared for their own entry into the world of employment or academic research, but also strenghtens their understanding of the underlying concepts they are supposed to have learned.

with inputs from Prof. Yashpal Committee report

List for a trainer assignment in India

Are you keeping track of the education scene in India?

This is one amazing growth story.

I am sure that you already know so many more IITs will start very soon.

But the educational institutes offering Engineering and all other bachelor and post graduate degrees have mushroomed beyond imagination. When Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) offered me Visiting Professor assignment, I was thinking Delhi probably will have a maximum of a dozen Management Schools offering MBA/PGDM degrees. (Just compare with Toronto and it looks right). But when I landed in BIMTECH which is in Greater Noida, only a part of National Capital Region (NCR), I was astonished to know that in Greater Noida itself there are 5 Knowledge Parks with about 160 colleges and almost every college is offering MBA/PGDM courses. Each college has a campus of minimum of about 10 acres land. Already about 100000 students are enrolled and the number is expected to grow to about 200,000 in next few years.

There are lot and lots of opportunities of training assignments in India. If you have some exceptional skills that can be offered in India in the form of training programs then please resond to this blog with your comments and email me your resume with proposed training offers at ashokr@erplabs.ca

Aa jao, Ab Laut Chalen!