The week that was !

This week's post is a personal post - but then, since all of you who are reading this are people who matter to me - I thought you might want to know about my experience of life last week :) For people who dont know much about me, I started a course on entrepreneurship at IIMB last week.
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What a eventful week that was. Last week I completed the first of my 'face to face' session for a course on 'management program on entrepreneurs'.

My course began last sunday, when I went for the inaugural function for our batch which was clubbed with the valediction function of the previous one. Let me describe my experiences as I felt it.

Now, never in my student life, even though I was an above average student, did I ever imagine, that I would have the profound privilege of studying in one of the premier educational institution in the country. The IIMs and the IITs were always a place of awe and mystery for me.

Therefore, when I drove in on sunday evening, I kept wondering to myself - what the hell did the profs see in my Statement of Purpose that made them select me.. ! Was it all a mistake ? I need to be watchful - I was about to hob-nob with one of the top most intellectual crowd and teachers in the country ! :) Well, I wasn't disappointed. The kind of speeches our professors gave to welcome us gave us a very good idea about what we were into. What with one of the profs rattling off Sanskrit sholka to substantiate every piece of advice he was giving us - well , you see, it is all there in the vedas ! :) And another one talking about how our generation needs to work on making our country one of most respected ones in education and other fields. The night ended with the "networking" dinner with our senior batch. Now , you need to remember - this was a course on entrepreneurship - so the introductions that night went -
"Hello, I am abc and I run "xyz" " . That was funny ! :)

Day 1 - We were advised to be half an hour early at the classroom . We were given instructions on how to go about making ourselves comfortable in the new campus - and exactly at nine am - we get a glimpse of what education at IIMB could be.

We were introduced to the Accounting professor - Mrs. Hema Krishnamurthy . A simple, graceful , beautiful, short lady in her mid fifties - she spelt poise in every thing that she was doing . One of my first thoughts were - I had heard that people at IIMs do not look after their personal appearance - Well, my experience was quite different - I thought they took extra care of their appearance - They looked so so so good !! And they had their intellect to match ! :) Mrs Hema Krishnamurthy took us through the accounting lecture like a seasoned teacher. She knew her subject well and had rubbed shoulders with the top in various industries she had worked in. But the best part was the clarity and ease with which she delivered her lecture and made accounting sound so simple - Thats another thing - have you ever noticed that as people become more and more realized , they tend to make things more and more simpler - the ones for whom life sounds complicated, are the ones who haven't figured it out at all. :)

The next part of the day was with Prof Kumar who talked to us about different people's experiences in starting their ventures - and how they either succeeded or failed in their dreams. Well, this lecture made us realize how similar we all were to the heroes in the case studies we were looking at . For one, both ( them or us ) did not have any clue on how our dreams would actually shape - except for our gut feel, conviction , and drive to make it all happen. Another interesting thing that Prof Kumar talked about , was on how much "gut feel" plays a part in the decisions we make in our life. He was telling us if anyone of us hears around 10 ideas and we reject 9 ideas based on our gut feel - 90% of the times, we are right. Its only one in a thousand cases, where one of those 9 ideas make it big. Well I was happy :) - cos, I could also see that the gut feel of the profs told them that Kruti was an idea worth pursuing - well, that was heartning !

One class that I absolutely enjoyed was the Statistics class. This class was taken by the smart, tall and super fast prof , Prof Shankar. And until this class began , I did not realize how much I had missed maths !! God , I think I came the most alive in the statistics class - completely enjoying the statistical conclusions and riddles that this professor put up !! He took us through mean, median and mode all over again with very good examples of where it could be applied practically.

Well, if anyone of us thought that intellectual crowd is boring - I was pleasantly proved wrong . Here I was in the midst of the best of the intellect and I could only think of them as very very interesting. One more thing that I noticed in the professors was that they never ever rejected an idea - whether it was put randomly by a sleepy student, or whether it was a well thought of question. They had the knack of listening to that question and bringing it to the subject that we were being taught. I could go on and on.

And now about my fellow classmates. First glimpse of my classmates looked as if I was here with the smartest and coolest crowd that I could imagine. Each one of the student here was so alive and bursting with ideas. They were from diverse fields like machine tools, agricultural products, agriculture, construction, IT and they were from all over the country - Rajasthan, Kerala, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Tirupati ! My only question was, a lot of these guys look like kids - have they really made it big in their ventures ? Well I was proved right on both my assessments - around 50-60% of the crowd "was" below 30 and yes, these guys "had proved" that they had it in them to run their own businesses. Some other day, on some other post, I intend to put up the list of the profile of my classmates with a link of their business websites. We had huge mix and match of students - We had the highly energetic kid Devi( sorry girl :) ) who seemed to be the center of everyone's attention , we had 25-26 year old guys like Sid - Who kept us entertained with their wise cracks:) And we had the very very very wise :) 51 year old Anand - who ran multiple enterprises in Rajasthan - and as the crowd said - kept them running without a single phone call made back home. !


The cherry on the cake had to be the last day of the class - We were split into groups of five and each group had to present one venture to the class and the professors . My group chose "Kruti" !!!! Boy oh boy ! Was I nervous ! Every other group talked about how they made money out of their ventures and here I was - I had so far, only thought about breaking even ! I was even wondering was it a good idea to present Kruti at all ! :) But then made a good powerpoint
presentation , and 'lo and behold' ! we presented Kruti in all its glories and shortfalls. Can you believe it ! The crowd loved Kruti ! My classmates gave me ideas on how I could take my idea forward - They offered me help in doing my research and how I could raise money for my project. It had to be a dream come true !! :) I was left with that if this group of people could be impressed, then obviously I was doing something right - and Kruti has a long long way to go.

With that fulfilling end to a week long session ( The next face to face is on Mar 22 ) , we bid good bye to all our professors and classmates who had come from all over the country.

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PS - The pictures in this post are a few glimpses of the flora and fauna of IIMB .( The pics are not so sharp - will try and put up better pics )