‘SANGAM 07- The Reminiscence’

It was that time of the year when the alumni take a walk down memory lane and revisit the fun b-school life they left behind to pursue their careers. Yes, we’re talking about Sangam- a reunion event hosted by Kalaikom (the cultural society at BIM) where the alumni came to BIM for a night full of music, dance, camaraderie and fun. Aptly termed as ‘SANGAM 07- The Reminiscence’, it was a night where, even as current students acted, danced and sang, it brought back all the memories of the good times shared with friends.

Sangam saw a fiery and sparkling start with the fireworks show. The event saw a number of dance performances both from BIM 23 and BIM 24. The event was kickstarted with Vishwanath and Venupradeep singing a popular song. Following that was a game where couples were invited from the alumni. The girls had to stick bindis on their partners’ faces within a minute. Amidst loads of cheering, Pavithra and Choka emerged as winners! Following this game were a number of dances performed. Rakshita and her group perfomed to a medley of songs and ended their performance with a dance to celtic tunes. Shilpi and Avirupa danced to Madhuri’s tunes with the title track from the movie ‘Aaja Nachle’. Bonny gave a stellar solo dance performance to bhangra and indipop beats whereas Sowmya and Dhananjay sang and strummed on the guitar.This was followed by spectacular dance by ‘Rolling Rockers’ of PGP-1. A short play was performed by PGP I students which talked of love strategies to win over the lady. The event ended with another fireworks show and then the dance floor was opening up to students. Students and Alumni danced the night away and in the end, each one retired to their rooms after having loads of fun and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Hopefully, this SANGAM helped forged new bonds between students and strengthening the old ones.The entire event was hosted by PGP I students and Kalaikom to make it as enjoyable to the alumni as they enjoyed staging the show.

Spl Lecture on "Management Consulting"

BIM students had a privilege of interacting with Mr. Jayaraman, a B. Tech from IIT Madras and MBA from Wharton, working with the Boston Consulting Group, Boston for the past five years.

Mr. Jayaraman spoke to the students on “Introduction to Management Consulting”. He started off with the history of consulting explaining how initially Banks were providing Consulting services but this practice of combining Financing & Consulting functions under the same roof was soon called into question. Though Frederick Taylor is supposed to have pioneered consulting it was Arthur D. Little the world's first management consulting firm and today is one of the world's leading management consulting firms, working closely with Fortune 500 firms across the globe. McKinsey started its operation in 1920’s as a strategy consulting firm, BCG, known for having a more analytic approach to strategy formulation, was started in the 60’s. Many consulting firms were later formed by the former employees of leading consultancy firms.

The Big Four is a term used to indicate the main powerhouses of consulting, PWC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young. They all began as auditing firms before leveraging their expertise and knowledge to succeed in the field of Management consulting.

The functions of Consultancy firms can be broadly divided into Strategy, Process & Implementation. Any project is carried out through these phases. Mr. Jayaraman gave an overview of the functions involved in these phases. He also spoke about the career prospects in Consulting.

In India, McKinsey started its operation in 1970’s to become the first firm into Management Consulting, Boston Consulting Group is present in the country from 1985. Recently various Indian software firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, etc have forayed into the implementation phase; they are seen as potential competitors to global majors like Accenture and IBM in the near future.

During the second session, the students were given a real life consulting case & Mr. Jayaraman explained how to approach the problem in a systematic manner. The case was handled in an interestingly and innovative method employing the various management concepts and bringing out the solution from the students in a phased manner.