Sunday, March 28, 2010

B-School Mania!!!!!!

After working in a non-rewarding IT profile for 1 year,I planned to venture into the rat race for a seat in a coveted b-school.
I spent almost half a lakh rupees for preparation and buying the forms.Slogged my a@# for 1 complete year and at the end of 1 year had eggs to hatch,all credit to the 3lakh strong "frustu" indian candidates.Luckily,I managed 3 calls XIMB,SP Jain and IIM Shillong by virtue of some academic/extracurricular stuff.

Before call:

1)Open pagalguy.com everyday in office
2)Open timesofindia.com,beta.hindu.com,livemint.com,nytimes.com in office.
3)Come back to home,slog like a donkey.
4)On weekends,waste your time on "stupid"coaching classes because you have paid for it.
5)After may,write aimcats every week and get screwed every time,no matter how much you prepare.

After Call:

Shit!!!Now,I realize,MBA is completely a different stuff,not just about QA,DI and VA.
Why MBA?Why IM?Why not MS?What are your long terms goals? such deadly questions start haunting you after you get a call for any b-school.You start showing deep interest in Indian Socio,economical,political,legal and technological issues.

The call ratio will leave you completely dumb!!!

SP Jain:10:1 ratio...for 40 seats in Information Management,400 calls.
XIMB:180 seats...900+calls....ratio much better...........
IIM Shillong:20:1 ratio...60 seats..1100+calls(seats supposed to double this year....)

Lady luck helped me crack XIMB but SHE wasn't very generous with me today.
Today,I got kicked off from SP Jain group interview........no clue why???????

With 1 year of efforts,I have just one egg to sit on and hatch and that's XIMB.

Really never thought of in cl-12 while giving AIEEE exams that engg degree is good for nothing!!!!!

But feeling really happy........I won't have to give these "stupid indian entrance exams" any more in future!!!!!!!!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Social Investment

Recently I came across the concept of "social investment".If you think,it's something to do with charity,then your absolutely wrong.It's a novel concept of offering micro credit to those who need small amount of money to start up a business or any other means of livelihood,mostly in rural areas.

Charity as a concept is not sustainable in a vast country like India where almost 42% of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.We need some sustainable solution through which the poor people can be offered financial help.This is where the concept of social investment crops in.

One of such non profit organization that allow Indians to help their fellow Indians is rangde.Visit
http://www.rangde.org.
Under this concept,you are supposed to invest in multiple of hundred rupees(you can also prefer to invest hundred rupees).You get to see the profile of the rural entrepreneurs who need money and you can choose to select any one you wish to help.This money is then sent to the borrower through an NGO which partners with rangde.
Now comes the interesting part,unlike charity,you will get your money back and that too with interest.This money will be repaid by the borrower in a period of 1-2 years(even earlier than this).You can choose to invest your interest that you earn or put forth more money.It's more like the investment that you make elsewhere but the only difference is that you are helping fellow poor Indians and you also get a small amount of interest on the money that you invest.

I really liked the business model that these people have followed.You can read the details of their business model on wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rang_De

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The metamorphosis of Samosa to "Samosa paw"

In Rourkela,the missionary schools flaunt their majestic buildings amidst graveyards.My school (boys school) is entouraged by two girls school.There used to be a graveyard infront of my school and the crowd puller to the graveyard was the "Samosa wala stall".It served some of the best "Samosas with chutney" that my taste buds have ever tasted.We used to hang out in the graveyard,sit on top of one of the coffins,enjoy the samosa and the beauties of the neighborhood girl schools added some extra spice to the chutney!!!Such was the craze of the samosas that people from far off schools also used to visit the stall.It was like the mecca for all school going teenagers.The strategic location(read the girl schools and graveyard) of the stall fetched great business for the stall owner.Not to mention,the taste of samosas shot off exponentially when it used to rain.
After spending 4 years of engineering in momos,half fry and parantha with butter,I am currently in a place where bread seems to be the staple diet!!!I get the same samosa now at thrice the price at which I used to get in school(can't blame inflation for that as it hasn't shooted 3 times....).I get the same samosa in a battered state engraved in two sides of a "paw".(compare with a dead boy covered up in a coffin....poor little samosa!!!)They call it samosa paw.The nomenclature is very simple.If you replace samosa with vada(huh...we call it aluchop in orissa.....in hamirpur we used to call it alu bonda...),it gets chritened to "vada paw".Replace vada by jalebi in a paw,you get "jalebi paw".Replace jalebi with pakodis,you get "bhajji paw".

Now I realise aptness of the punchline of SAIL..."Resources are limited but creativity is unlimited".

These samosa paws are no match for my samosa chutney of st pauls.Amidst all those noisy honking,pollution and pests resembling population of the biggest metro,the taste is hard to decipher!!!

Miss those peaceful graveyards...those lovely school days..those unrivalled "Samosas"......