Tag: business management

Purvodaya 2021 – Excellence Through Resilience

Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur, is proud to host the first-ever online adaptation of the institute’s Annual Business School fest Purvodaya, an amalgamation of different events where budding managers from top business Schools test their mettle against one another. The central theme – “Excellence through Resilience” – is especially relevant in contemporary times because of the pandemic’s devastating effects. The role of resilience is all the more critical regarding the shifting geopolitical, economic landscape as building adaptable businesses has been the mantra of the corporate world steering across these unprecedented times.

The three-day affair is a prodigious mix of competitions spanning across multiple domains like consulting, analytics, finance, supply chain management, and social entrepreneurship and is all set to launch on 5th February 2021. The event will be graced by the esteemed presence of our Chief Guest, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal’ Nishank’, Hon’ble Minister of Education, our Guest of Honour, Mr Ronojoy Dutta, CEO at IndiGo and Mr Vinod Gupta, philanthropist, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and founder of the Vinod Gupta School of Management. The event will also be graced by Mr Ramesh Ramadurai, Managing Director of 3M India Limited, Dr Raghunath Anant Maashelkar, a Padma Vibhushan Awardee who has served as Ex-Director General of CSIR and Mr Sanjeev Sharma, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, ABB India & South Asia. 

This festival provides an ideal platform for aspiring leaders to sharpen their skills as top B-school talent across the country come together to test their prowess against their peers. The enthusiasm surrounding the preliminary rounds has given us a glimpse of the intense competition that we are to witness in the finals. Deliberations with renowned industry stalwarts are also spaced throughout the event to inspire the budding managers in their corporate journeys ahead.

The event attracts CXOs, strategists, technology evangelists, thought leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals pioneering change to come together to analyze real-world business scenarios and bring to life theoretical concepts in a practical framework. It is a platform for the industry and academia to come together to engage in discourse and the students to draw lessons from this. The Leadership Summit is all set to go live on 6th February 2021 will witness the fusion of enriching insights put forth by renowned corporate leaders from different realms of industry on the topic – “Reimagining Leadership: Building resilient and sustainable businesses.” Additionally, the fest will also play host to Reminiscence, the annual alumni interaction session that is a testament to the institute’s legacy.

For more details please visit: https://www.purvodaya.in/

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Higher Risk in Concentrated Business Control – VGSOM Researchers

Award-Winning Research from IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management Indicate Higher Risks with Family-controlled Firms

In an award-winning research study conducted by faculty and alumni at IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management, the researchers have found that family and family control ownership is negatively related to firms’ profitability due to lags in management. 

The study is based on decadal data from 2007 to 2017 of 421 listed firms in emerging markets which have at least 5%-20% of the equity capital is owned by a family group including concert promoters. The results show that family-owned firms dominant with concentrated ownership pay lower dividends leading to lower valuation and higher idiosyncratic risk.

“While the firms undertake significant trading in the stock market, high-risk tendencies and lower dividend payouts are the outcomes of ineffectiveness in managerial decision-making and policies. Our study points to the concentration of ownership as the primary reason rather than to the information asymmetry,” explained Prof. Arun Kumar Misra. 

The researchers used three measures of firm profitability, namely, return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and earnings per share (EPS).

“The results on the relationship of firm profitability with ownership structure (family and non-family firms) are consistent across all three measures in the context of the list of Indian firms in our sample,” said Prof. Abhijeet Chandra.

“Our findings are in line with the uncertainty and signaling theory, suggesting that (a) dividend is preferred over uncertain capital gains by investors, and (b) higher dividends signal superior health (lower risk) of a firm. The payment of low dividends negatively influences the firm-specific risk,” he further added.

The study has been named for the ‘Emerald Literati Award 2020 for Highly Commended Paper’. The paper titled  ‘Impact of ownership structure and dividend on firm performance and firm risk’, has been published in the international journal of Managerial Finance by Emerald Publishing Ltd. UK. The authors included Dr. Abhinav Kumar Rajverma, Former PhD Scholar, VGSoM (2015-2018), currently Faculty (IRMA, Anand, Guj.), Dr. Arun Kumar Misra, Associate Professor, VGSoM, Dr. Sabyasachi Mohapatra, Former PhD Scholar, VGSoM (2011-2015), currently Faculty (IIM Bodh Gaya) and Dr. Abhijeet Chandra, Assistant Professor, VGSoM. The editorial team said that it is one of the most exceptional pieces of work they saw throughout 2019. 

Citation: Rajverma, A.K., Misra, A.K., Mohapatra, S. and Chandra, A. (2019), “Impact of ownership structure and dividend on firm performance and firm risk”, Managerial Finance, Vol. 45 No. 8, pp. 1041-1061. https://doi.org/10.1108/MF-09-2018-0443

VGSOM Assigns COVID Case Study

IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management assigns Pandemic Case Study for Organizational Leadership education

It has been almost 2 weeks since the teaching and learning at IIT Kharagpur has gone virtual. The Center for Educational Technology at the Institute has been using the online interface Webex for conducting classes across all levels of study. Shorter sessions are also being conducted through Zoom. 

Several research groups are also conducting studies on people’s perception and behaviour towards COVID-19 through progression of time. In one such initiative, the Vinod Gupta School of Management, business school in India of IIT Kharagpur ranked among the top ten in India, has launched a project based on COVID-19 pandemic. The project titled “Invisible Leadership and the CoronaVirus Pandemic” is being assigned 126 students in the second year MBA class at the School as part of the Organisational Leadership course.

Speaking about the project Prof. Susmita Mukhopadhyay said, “Pandemic or any other wide spread disease such as COVID-19 demand exemplary leadership and decision-making capabilities to manage finances, human resources, supply chain and overall business operations. Managers if prepared for desperate times may even plan and improvise the desperate measures. The project aims to teach the students to see the power of invisible leadership in the fight against a pandemic.”

“Leadership is more about taking tough decisions now while keeping the greater good in mind than appeasing your countrymen with misleading information. Covid-19 has turned every one of us into soldiers fighting for the very survival of our species and the real leader here is invisible. So when we miss the leader micromanaging things, we look inward for leadership,” said Pinak Samui, student at VGSOM.

The students will be studying the facts from diverse shades of leadership and understand the ethical issues connected to such situations as COVID-19 pandemic. They will also explore whether the Pandemic itself has acted as an invisible leader in enhancing work-life balance of people, cohabitation of species and environmental sustainability.

“We have given the topic to the students to have a free flow of thought and explore the topic from various perspectives, frame the case based on archival news and keep track of day to day developments and strategies undertaken by governments and other related stakeholders. We plan to develop business case studies based on the project output,” remarked Prof Biplab Datta.

Student Feedback:

“This assignment has helped us to keep track of the COVID-19 situation and all related happenings as they are happening around the world. It also helped us to dive deep into the invisible leadership principle and apply the same, in order to add a new perspective to the current situation, just like looking through a different lens,” said a student Pritam Sharma.

 

Sharing about his learning, another student Aniket Sanyal said, “Leaders, who can take quick actions, who are flexible in adapting their bold decisions to suit the needs of a situation, will have more success in a crisis environment.”

VGSOM’s Placement Record

IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management Completes Final Placements in Record Time with 31% PPOs

India Today       NDTV

With the onset of 2020 IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) has set a new record with close to one-third of its placement offers being PPOs. It has also become one of the first management schools to conclude its final placements for the 2019-2020 academic year.

The MBA Class of 2020 have mostly opted for Consulting as their preferred domain with a dominant share of 26%. Among the other key domains are Operations, Sales & Marketing, Analytics and Finance with 19%, 17%, 15% and 12% of the offers respectively.

Among the top recruiters were ITC, Accenture Digital, Amazon, PwC, Deloitte, Blackbuck, ZS Associates, Titan, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Oxane Partners, Vedanta, ICICI Bank, Axtria, Tiger Analytics, Wipro, IBM, IDFC First and Tata Power. In a first several new corporations participated in the campus placement drive. These included McKinsey, Crompton, EPIKInDiFi, Facebook, Cogoport, Media.net, Loadshare and Mahindra & Mahindra.

Top 25% of the students have secured an average compensation of ₹ 23.2 LPA and top 50% and ₹ 20.8 LPA. The highest offer also rose up to ₹ 29 LPA.

The Dean of Vinod Gupta School of Management, Prof. Prabina Rajib, remarked, “VGSOM was able to defy the current economic slowdown due to the School’s unique pedagogy, calibre of students and focus on learning outside classroom. I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our cherished corporate partners and alumni whose trust and unreserved support ensured a successful placement drive at the campus.”

The School is constantly upgrading its teaching and learning experience as well though collaborative and new academic programmes. It has recently tied up with Singapore Management University (SMU) to develop a broader view of management studies with constant upskilling through projects with companies like Lendingkart, GSK, Citibank, and DBS. As part of this experiential learning program, a group of participating students also secured runner up position in a portfolio simulation competition organized jointly by SMU and Stocktrak.

About VGSoM (IIT Kharagpur)

The Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSoM) is a premier MBA institute of India which was established in 1993 under the aegis of IIT Kharagpur and is the first management school that was set up within the IIT ecosystem. The institute is ranked as one among the top B-Schools of India that is equipped

International Outreach Programme @ VGSOM

Economic Times         Jagran Josh       India Today       Times of India

IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management has signed an MoU with Singapore Management University for ‘SMU-IITKGP Inclusive and Immersive Experiential Learning (I2XL) Programme’. The programme is aimed at providing a managerial education and business school experience like no other – one that encourages students to apply classroom concepts in a global business environment. The scope of the MoU will include student projects and immersion programmes, reciprocal exchange of research and teaching staff, research and other collaborations.

The programme is focused on enriching the students with managerial concepts through classroom lectures on portfolio management, alternative investments, innovation and entrepreneurship, and technological adaptation. Another feature of the programme was industry interactions regarding practical challenges in financial markets. The programme has been designed with a two-fold objective – expose students to the dynamics of functioning on an international platform and complement classroom learning with a global business perspective.

Twenty-five students from MBA and Executive MBA of VGSOM participated in this collaborative programme who were selected based on their prior work experience in diverse sectors.

Eminent academicians from Singapore Management University and industry leaders offered experiential learning experience at the first edition of the programme. Another remarkable aspect of this programme was the live industry projects undertaken by the students under the aegis of corporate giants like DBS Bank, Citibank, GSK and niche players like Lendingkart and BondEValue.

Prof. Prabina Rajib, Dean, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur, on the success of the programme remarked, “We are very proud to include the International Immersion Programme in our curriculum. Its right emphasis on theoretical and practical learning coupled with the unique international exposure it offers the participant makes it a priceless experience. We plan on increasing the number of participants in the years to come to extend this opportunity to all our students, making this a yearly event. We are confident that this collaboration between two institutes of global repute will promote excellence in managerial education globally.”

Students were allowed to showcase their business acumen through a live simulation exercise on Portfolio Management which was both engaging and challenging. The field trip included a visit to the Singapore Stock Exchange with a focus on the global economy and technological adaptation in an exchange. Students further got the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion with Asia’s leading business leaders which gave exposure to the students to understand the Indian business scenario from a global perspective and consider international career opportunities.

Students further worked on challenging business problems requiring leading-edge technological solutions based on a strong understanding of fundamental business concepts. These projects which form a part of the MBA curriculum are currently afoot with mentors from both institutes and respective companies being assigned to guide the students.

“This practical approach based on real-life projects is the singular feature that makes this international immersion programme unique among other such programmes by B-schools in the country,” said one of the participants.

Recounting his SMU-IITKGP I2XL experience, Swastik Paul, a final year MBA student, says, “It was the best part of my MBA journey and gave me an edge over my peers. The interactions with industry experts were extremely insightful which provided me with invaluable professional experience. I highly recommend this programme to all who would like to explore and shape their careers on a global stage.”