Insight 09: Session reports!

The two day annual symposium hosted by LIBA – Insight ’09 came to a close today after a series of presentations and lectures from the leaders across different industries such as auto, retail, IT, telecom and many more. The presentations reflected the achievements and ideas of the masterminds in developing successful business models. The event was inaugurated by Mr. C.K. Ranganathan, CMD, CavinKare Pvt Ltd. and Chairman, CII Tamil Nadu State Council, followed by the keynote address from Mr. Ravi Santhanam, MD, Hindustan Motors, and a special address from Mr. Bijou Kurien, President and Chief Executive, Lifestyle, Reliance Retail.

In the inauguration address, Mr. Ranganathan scaled out four basic principles of building a successful business which will be adaptive to any uncertainty to the students of LIBA, prospective managers and entrepreneurs of the future.

Mr. Ravi Santhanam proceeded the session with a very remarkable presentation illustrating some exclusive case studies of business models that have been seen developing in certain sectors. With his presentation he well set the tone of the symposium leaving the students and the audience enthralled.

Following that was a special address from Mr. Bijou Kurien, elaborating the “behavioral change in the Indian consumer and the lesson learnt from the West”, which has created a great impact on the retail sector and is expected to keep evolving hence forth. He further detailed on several aspects of the retail business scenario and studies on the changes in the past decade.

Post the special address was a session on digital strategies taken by companies on marketing efforts. The key speakers of this session were, Mr. Satya Prabhakar, CEO, Sulekha.com, Mr. Rohit Mull, Head – Marketing, HDFC Bank, Mr. Rajesh Jain, MD, Netcore Solutions and Mr. David Appaswamy, CCO, Sify Technologies. The session illustrated the innovation and wonders that can be achieved by adopting marketing through digital strategies. This was followed by the session on social entrepreneurship. The session was facilitated by Villgro Innovation Foundation, NalandaWay Foundation and Matchbox Solutions.

The second day of the symposium began with presentations on the business models in Telecom from the market leaders Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Alcatel-Lucent Network. In this segment, Mr. Arnaud Soubelet, CEO, Alcatel-Lucent Network, Mr. Himanshu Kapania, COO, Idea Cellular and Mr. Kumar Ramanathan, CMO, Vodafone, gave an array of informative and educative presentations to the students.

Mr. Kevin Theinemen, Country Manager – India & SE Asia, Caterpillar began the studies on business models in Manufacturing followed by Mr. A. Viswanathan, MD, Visteon India. The student

Post that was the sessions on business models in IT industry from Mr. H R Srinivasan, Vice Chairman, TAKE Solutions, Mr. Jeya Kumar, CEO, Patni Computer Systems, and Mr. Sanmitra Trivedi, Head – HR, Member of Board, Verizon Data Service India Ltd. To address the students from the HR stream, Mr. Sanmitra Trivedi delivered his speech on the lines of the role and effective value of HR in the growth of a business.

The symposium came to a close with the valedictory address by N. Murali, MD, The Hindu, and concluding speech from Fr Christie, Director, LIBA. But going by the true LIBA spirit the conference only came to the end after famous cake cutting ceremony by all the students of LIBA.

The Protocol of Insight

Here's a little tit-bit on how we go about calling speakers for the Symposium. Once the theme is zeroed-in on, we decide the tracks for the conference. The tracks this year are pretty straightforward, as you'd already know.

The Speakers' Team of Insight sends out invites to hundreds of potential candidates across the country. Every year, we deliberately make an effort to ensure that the conference grows in stature. Just to drive my point home, here's an excerpt from one of the emails sent out to a potential speaker who declined our invite due to prior commitments:

The INSIGHT protocol mandates the speakers to be from the league of Chairmen, CEOs, MDs, CMOs, COOs etc. It would be kind of you, if you could request Mr. X to suggest someone of the same stature from Company Y to grace the podium of INSIGHT'09 .

Which is exactly why the tagline of Insight '09 says: "It doesn't get bigger than this"

Financial Prudence and Insight '09

Recently, a colleague of mine showed me a list of prospective speakers for our Symposium from the brochure of an event held a year ago at a top college in Maharashtra. It was a conference, similar to ours, but the cost was touted at a record Rs.40 lakhs! I yawned. This was mentioned on their brochure before they announced the list of speakers. It was also specifically mentioned that they'd spent close to Rs.40 lakhs on PR.

Which set me thinking... in this day and age of Social Media Marketing, PR Partnerships and tie-ups galore, do you really need to spend that much on PR? What's the end goal one expects out of such profanity? And pray, why mention a capital sum of 40l before you announce the names of dignitaries?

We at Insight'09 have an allocation of Rs.0 for PR. Yup, you heard that right. Apart from poster printing, we're spending nothing on PR. Nil, nada, boojyum. And we're proud of it.

Three Social Entrepreneurs, One exciting session!

Social Entrepreneurs are by themselves, are a rare, but fast-growing breed. The phenomenon that is Social Entrepreneurship probably is catching up faster in India than anywhere else in the world. To showcase their unique business models to the world, three social entrepreneurs have agreed to share their Insights on 5th November @ Hotel Greenpark. Ladies and Gentlemen, here's unveiling the three organizations whose founders will enlighten us with their business acumen and social motives that have led them to accomplish great success. This is just the beginning of course. Click on each of the links below to know more!!

Sriram Ayer, Founder, Nalandaway Foundation

Mr.Stan Thekaekara, Director, Just Change

Neelam Chibber, Founder, Industree Foundation

Insight "Calling"!

The Stage is being set and the curtains are being laid for one of the biggest Management Symposiums – LIBA Insight ’09! Now that the tracks have been selected, the Speakers Committee has moved into action to bring the best track leaders as Speakers.

A sneak peek into Speakers room:
Amidst a lot of discussion, we get to see people staring constantly on their laptops and making all possible human emotions, at the moment the phones are the most “in-demand” commodities of our life, and not to forget the ‘Eureka’ moments that we get when the name of a new speaker strikes us like a thunder bolt out of nowhere!
The action in Committee’s room is more than what we get when an action movie director shouts “Action!”

After lot of information gathering and brain storming and discussions, a database of prospective invites was created (One folded corner of our sheet also had the name of Mr. Barack Obama.. did we hear Think Big? )
Social Entrepreneurship is a kind of offbeat track. But it is something which cannot be ignored. How can you ignore a phenomenon which changes million lives every day? These are the people who are transforming India with their powerful vision and rock solid determination. The Speakers committee shortlisted the best of these Entrepreneurs for Insight ’09. It is very difficult to tag a social Entrepreneur with the term “Best” though, since all are working towards betterment of society.

The best part is the ‘feel good factor’ when we speak with these change makers. It feels great to call people who went against the tide just so that someone could live a better life! And it would indeed be very interesting to know how a Business runs out of fulfilling the needs of people and the strategies adopted to expand it beyond horizons.

A lot of work to be done to get the speakers finalized. Cannot wait for the sense of achievement when we will actually see them sharing their views at LIBA Insight ’09!

- Yours Super-Excited, Highly Energized
Speakers Committee

Tracks for Insight '09

With less than two months to go now, we are inching ever closer to D-day. Tracks for this year are as follows:

• Manufacturing

• IT

• Telecom

• FMCG

• Social Entrepreneurship

We have one more track to decide on, and here are our options:

• Venture Capitalists

• Hospitality

• Pharma

• Internet based companies (such as Yahoo etc.)

Hope to get this done by end of this week. Website under construction. Should be up in a few days' time (Fingers crossed)

A Track on Social Entrepreneurship?

With the concept note almost ready (yes, it's been dragging on for a while now, we hope to wind it up soon), the next step would be to freeze on individual tracks. "Tracks" or sessions last for a few hours, with a panel of speakers voicing their opinion on a topic related to the theme. For example, Insight '08 had industry-wise tracks like Infrastructure, Real Estate, BFSI etc.

As I was leafing through this week's edition of Outlook Business which focusses exclusively on "Social Entrepreneurship" (SE), several new and exciting business models in this area caught my eye. According to the legendary Bill Drayton, Social Entrepreneurs are "men and women with system-changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems". Mr.Drayton was the one who coined the term in the 1980s.

Would it be a nice idea to organize a track exclusively focussed on SE? We could invite Ms. Saloni Malhotra, who runs four rural BPOs across Tamil Nadu, providing livelihood to 100 employees who earn Rs.5000/month. Is this a game-changing business model? (http://www.desicrew.in/) A vital input (HR sourcing) has been altered. Could BPOs flourish in villages, which was hitherto restricted to urban areas alone?

Or maybe we could invite Mr. Stan Thekaekara, who wants to create an alternate trading system directly linking producer and consumer groups, thereby helping adivasis in the Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu take control over prices, and thus, their lives.

These are just a few examples of interesting innovations which might shake existing business models from the ground up. The team at Insight is still debating on whether to include such a track on Social Entrepreneurship or not... what our decision is, only time will tell. Watch this space for further details.