Initiative by AIMA

B-SCHOOL BEAT

Shaping Young Minds is an initiative of All India Management Association (AIMA) to create a platform for young professionals and management students to interact and seek active advice and suggestions from icons in the fields of art and culture, media, education, business and so on.

After Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Indore, the programme came to Delhi last week.

The speakers for the Delhi session included noted sarod player Amjad Ali Khan; former Union minister and IIT Delhi chairman of the board M G K Menon; and Gail India CMD Prashanto Banerjee.

FMS wins Insignia 2005

Two students from Delhi's Faculty of Management Studies won the first prize in Insignia 2005.

The objective of the competition, which was sponsored by Lucent Technologies, was to create an approach strategy for establishing the Lucent brand in India.

The business plan had to cover positioning/ approach Lucent needed to take in India, the media plan and advertising support required, as well as the target group for advertising. Insignia 2005 saw an enthusiastic response from selected campuses across the country.

Nipun Sharma & Shalini Das won the first prize and a prize money of Rs 30,000. The second prize was won by Ashish Dhongde from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Lucent Technologies put the submissions received for the contest through a rigorous assessment process that comprised three levels of assessment on pre-defined criteria.

The assessment criteria were based on the ability to think "out of box" with an interest and flair in marketing. The contest was open to all students pursuing (full-time) masters / postgraduate programs in business administration or Management Studies from IIMs, FMS, JBIMS, S P Jain and MDI.

MDI convocation

The Gurgaon-based Management Development Institute recently held its 10th annual convocation ceremony. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia was the chief guest at the function.

Degrees were awarded to 209 students from the 2003-2005 batch of the post-graduate management programme, the executive programme and the national management programme of the institute.

This year's honors went to Kamal Kapoor and S Rajagopalan of NMP, Ashutosh Datar, Raja Dutta, Anuja Mishra, S Ganapathy, Manesh Jain and Ankit Gupta of PGDBM and V Ramanathan of Executive PGDBM.

Business simulation lab

The Mumbai-based Institute for Technology and Management (ITM) recently launched a business simulation lab, becoming what it calls "Asia's first centre of excellence to teach management students about real-time experiential learning in modern financial markets, as an integral part of the MBA (financial management).

The lab uses simulations of modern financial markets to give students first-hand experience of how different types of markets respond to information; how different types of market participants exploit informational advantages (or protect themselves against informational disadvantages); and how regulations on trading and information disclosure affect market behaviour and trader wealth. The

lab has 30 dual flat panel trading stations equipped with NSE.it software and real-time data feeds, Bloomberg data feed, three plasma projection screens, two Trans-Lux datawalls and an integrated sound system.

The lab's primary focus is to promote experiential learning by providing an opportunity for students to implement the material they are learning in the classroom.

The software allows each participant to manage a firm (or part of a firm), choosing investment, financing and reporting policies, product lines, production and sales prices; the software will allow the firms to interact in a complex economy.

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