Enterprise Tuesday 2 (Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker)

The talk about "Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker founder and CEO of Viagogo and StarHub was an inspiring one. It was a frank talk about Entrepreneurial aspirations, markets and global business.

The key factors for a successful entrepreneur according to Eric were
1) Independent Thinker
2) Deal well with uncertainty and risk
3) Willing to take responsibility
4) Tenacious and persistent
5) Passionate - enjoying the journey
6) Ability to communicate and lead

Above all "You cannot succeed if you do not try".

I was really moved by his passion and ability to communicate so well.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

Enterprise Tuesday 1 (Motivation - Why we do it? )

Cambridge offers great opportunities for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Judge Business Schools Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning orchestrates the entrepreneurial interest through various programmes. One of the key programme is the "Enterprise Tuesday", where in entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angles take about enterpreneur-ship.

This Tuesday (23rd Oct), we had a talk by Alex van Somersen and Dr. Nicko van Somersen about their motivation to be entrepreneurs. They are founders of nCipher (http://www.ncipher.com/) and ANT (http://www.antlimited.com/), which are listed on the London Stock Exchange. They spoke about their passion and the motivating factors that led to establishing their companies.

The key mantras to take away from their talk were
1) Idea
2) Team
3) Investors - They got their investor by accident at a Hotel lobby in the US
4) Market
5) Customers
6) Advisors
7) Luck

It was a real cool session and I enjoyed it as well. Looking forward to next session by Eric Baker (who sold his company to eBay for US$307m) about "Lifestyle or Global Business" on the 30th of Oct.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

The first month

A few pictures to highlight the fun and excitement of the MBA.

Wow !!! We just completed one month of our MBA programme. It's been a real quick month. We have our first exam in a couple of weeks. The MBA is an intense program and teaches the importance of prioritization.

Its been a good week for me. I started attending some of the career events. I attended presentations by Delloite, Morgan Stanley, BCG and Diamond Consultants. Next week I plan to attend a session by the Barclay's Retail arm.

I started playing baseketball again. It's been a while since I entered the court. Enjoyed playing with some of the good players from my college (Darwin). I plan to play at least once a week.

Term-1 : Week-3 (Quick Turns)

Living in Cambridge has great advantages (don't worry too much about the weather:) ). We get a chance to meet a lot of people (academicians/entrepreneurs) who are experts in their fields. The college season has just started and the town is bustling with student activities.

Oh !! Yes !! I have started to do things I have never done before. My friends and I went to the Wolfson college for our first Salsa session, and it was real cool. I enjoyed it so much that I plan to take Salsa lessons whilst in Cambridge.

We now have a our first MBA project called the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) and it is the first real project we do as part of the MBA. There are two more big ones coming down the lane. We are a team of 5 people working on the CVP and being in a great amount of varied experience to the project. Our team comprises of

Dr. Abel (Spaniard/French who has been working in UK as a Genome research expert at EBML-EBI)
Jaison (Brit who has been working in the mining industry in Argentina and owns a company as well)
Marisa (Malaysian who has been working in the UK for Texas Instruments)
Tao (Chinese guy who has been working in China for a Telecommunications firm)
and finally your truly :)

We have started lesson on Accounting, Corporate Finance, Management Science and Management Practice. Some of these sessions have been real eye-openers and inspiring as well.

We have tons of pre-reading, assignments, career (ad)ventures and events to attend. MBA is slowly teaching me to prioritize things. Its a great adrenaline rush with so many things happening all around me.

The most important thing is that I'm enjoying every moment of my MBA; with so many new friends and new things I'm learning each day.

Week-2

It's just been two weeks and it seems as if we have been together as a group for a very long time. It's cool as we get to know everybody even better at school. So many parties, pub nights and get-together. I'm slowly fitting back into the vibrant college mode.

This week started with a session with Kevin Roberts (CEO, Satchi and Satchi), wherein he highlighted the importance of doing things differently, rather than just falling into the eternal follow-the-leader mentality.

We finished our course on Economics (wow!!! that fast). We even started working on our CVs and case interviews.

I guess the highlight of the week has been the large number of pub-nights and celebration of the Chinese Full-Moon festival.

The first week

The first week is now over and I enjoyed every bit of it. It was a slow start with introductions and a few classes. Most of the time was spent in interacting with class-mates and knowing each other better. Even though I cannot remember the names of 149 of my class-mates yet; I can remember something (e.g., name, country, industry or background) about each of my class-mates.

The three most inspiring and cool session during this week has been

1) Team building - Complex High Performance Teams with Mark de Rond (JBS Staff who worked closely with Cambridge's rowing team): A wonderful insight into teams and performing in very difficult situations.
2) Branding a City through Olympics with Lois Jacobs (President International Operations - Jack Morton) - An inspiring talk about how Jack Morton managed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics with about 4.5 million people watching the event.
3) Simulating Innovation for a More Competitive Europe by Prof. Around de Meyer (JBS Director) - The presentation had some very interesting numbers about outsourcing and how Innovation is viewed from the European perspective (Even though I don't concur to some of the finer details presented:)

The first two weeks will be a bit slow, but after that it going to get really busy starting October.

We had an Alumni meet on Saturday (22nd) and it was a Black-Tie event (The first black-tie event of my life). I chipped in £48 to attend this dinner. At first I was a bit sceptical about the huge amount (especially when you are student) for a single dinner. However, after attending the dinner and meeting the people at the dinner, I realized that it is not about the food. It was more about networking and getting one-self acquainted with formal dinner events. There were about 30 odd people from my batch who had attended, and it was real cool to see everybody dressed so wonderfully. I will post some pictures of the event at a later point of time.

Next week we have a few Case Study boot-camps conducted by the Career Services team.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how things have transpired so far. So much fun and what a wonderful batch of new friends.

MBA: Term-1: First Day at School

My first day at school (today) was real fun. We got to meet the entire batch and get a brief introduction about the whole programme.

The day started at 8.30 AM with registration and formalities. It then moved on to introductions and welcome notes. The whole day was spent pretty much in introductions, getting to know my fellow class-mates and collecting course-ware. We even had a few students from the previous batch come over and provide us a few practical tips.

Our batch consists of 149 students from 45 countries. We have people from very varied and different industries (from Plastic Surgeons to Investment Bankers).

I found it a bit too difficult to remember the names of all my class-mates in just one day. It is so much fun and a great learning experience to be amindst such a talented and diverse group.

Aidah (my wife), had also come for the tea session, where in partners were also invited. Some of my friends had even got their kids for the tea session. The kids were all over the place and having a good time as well.

At the end of the day(6.30 PM), we were quite exhausted and a few of us headed to the pub near the school.

I now look forward to head back to school tomorrow and get into our first session on Economics.

MBA-Prep (Settling down in Cambridge)

Aidah and I reached Cambridge on the 4th of September. Since then we have been busy settling in to our new environment.

Cambridge is a wonderful city. A wonderful place to relax and study. It took us about a week to get an Internet connection. On my visit to HSBC Bank today, they completed the paper work for the student loan in 30 minutes (that was very fast by Cambridge standards).

Our one-bedroom house is on the 3rd floor. Nothing fancy, nothing great......but just a nice house to spend a year in Cambridge. It is about 1.5 miles from the business school, and there is a beautiful bi-cycle/pedestrian path leading towards the school/city.

Please find below the list of things we did to make our lives a bit more comfortable (in no particular order)

1) Took the National Express from Heathrow to Cambridge (with a lot of luggage -the direct bus was very comfortable)
2) Signed the tenancy agreement for the house/flat
3) Purchased a bi-cycle
4) Got a pay-as-you-go mobile connection from T-mobile (got myself a new phone as well)
5) Got the Internet connection (Virgin media - took us a week to get this)
6) Got ourselves registered with the GP (medical doctor/surgery service)
7) Purchased a lot of house-hold items (e.g., microwave, utensils etc.) - mostly moving sales
8) Had a wonderful lunch out with 25+ of my future classmates and their families (a great occasion to know each other)
9) Made a trip to Sheffiled to meet friends
10) Got a JUSTVOIP.COM id to make cheap phone calls to friends and family across the globe


Class begins on Monday (17th Sept) and I'm now going to do some pre-reading that was recommended earlier.

MBA-Prep (Last Day at work)

Today is my last day at work. I have been part of a great organization (HSBC - Global Technology Centre) for 4 years and 4 months now. It was a pleasure managing and leading a number of challenging projects during this period.

What makes organizations really work is the people. I was fortunate to have talented and motivated folks on my teams. My managers were "cool" mentors as well.

The curtains are coming down on a wonderful and satisfying period on my life; as I look forward to newer and more challenging adventures in the future.

MBA-Prep (Chronology of events)

We are now all set to join the JBS MBA Class of 2007-2008. It's been a long journey of about 9 months from writing the GMAT to booking the flight tickets. Please find below a chronological listing the key events on this journey. I hope this will provide a bit of a overview about the whole process for prospective students.


** 30th Nov - GMAT test at Mumbai

**December - Started working on the essays and the application

**4th Jan - Query about official transcripts (wanted to know if I could send copies of the official transcripts, attested by a notary)

**5th Jan - Reply to my query about transcripts (Yes, copies attested by a notary will do)

**8th Jan - Couriered the completed application along with the copy of transcripts

**10th Jan - Received email from Admission Office confirming the receipt of application form and all documents (except the reference letters)

**17th Jan - First Referee emailed the reference letter to the admission office

**18th Jan - Couriered the application for the Gates and Cambridge Trust Scholarships

**22nd Jan - Second Referee emailed the reference letter to the admission office

**30th Jan - Reference letter sent out by the Second Referee

**30th Jan - Email from the Admission Office stating that they have received all my documents

**9th Feb - Email from Admission Office with an Interview Invite (for the 12th of March)

**13th Feb - Confirmed to take the interview at Cambridge on the 12th of March

**12th March - Interview at Cambridge

**13th March - Email confirming admit and initial scholarship of GBP 5000

**16th March - Received a package (by post) containing the conditional admit letter, financial guarantee form, acceptance form and a whole load of information about Cambridge and JBS

**22nd March - Admission office arranges for a Current Student to act as my buddy, to help me through some of my queries

**2nd April - Mailed the 'Acceptance Form' (confirming my interest to be part of the JBS-2007/2008 MBA) and the HSBC Loan application

**5th April - Email from Admission Office confirming the receipt of the 'Acceptance Form' and the HSBC Loan application

**9th April - Mailed the 'Financial Guarantee Form' (a simple document that gives details as to how I plan to finance my study - including bank statements etc) ) and a cheque of GBP 2,800 (Initial Deposit)

**12th April - An online discussion forum formed for incoming students to discuss and get queries answered (This has helped me to know about by class-mates and get inputs on various topics from the current students)

**13th April - Email from Admission Office stating that my Loan Application has been forwarded to HSBC Bank

**13th April - Email from Admission Office confirming the receipt of the 'Financial Guarantee Form' and Initial Deposit

**5th May - Since I had not heard anything from the bank about my Loan Application I checked with the Admission Office in case they have heard anything. Yes, my loan is approved and the bank was to get in touch with me very soon.

**4th June - Received a letter from HSBC Bank - Loan approved

**15th June - Got a postal letter from Darwin College offering me a membership to the College

**22nd June - Got the final tuition fee invoice (it included the Mysis scholarship of GBP 5000 - thus taking the total scholarship to GBP 10000)

**10th July - Applied for the UK Visa

**13th July - Got our passports back with the Visa stamped

**17th July - Informed by Darwin College that the College will not be able to provide us accommodation

**17th July - Checked with the Accommodation Services about any accommodation options

**18th July - University Accommodation Services offered a furnished 1 bedroom University flat in West Cambridge at GBP 665 per month

**20th July - Booked the flight tickets to London (for the 4th of Sept)

It is now time for us (Aidah and I) to relax a bit, take a few vacations, visit family and friends, watch more movies and enjoy the Indian rain.