SIMSR Alumni Newsletter
With a day to go for Nostalgia - 2017, we are delighted to present to you the Imprints September Edition. We cannot be more excited to host our Alums on campus and hence we present the detailed event timeline for Nostalgia. Also featuring an exclusive interview with Mr. Aslam Karmali, CEO, Eureka Forbes Ltd, Alum of batch 1989-91. We also add strength to our team as we welcome our new Alumni Co-ordinator and the newer members to ALCOM .
With great delight, we welcome Mrs. Hemanchi Hublikar, our new Alumni Relations Co-ordinator for SIMSR. She is a double post graduate with a degree in management as well. Along with being a UPSC candidate, she has worked with June Marketing and Communications in the past . She likes interacting with people from all walks of life for a wider and diversified exposure. We are sure she will help us in strengthening the Alumni relations bond further
The New York SIMSR Alumni Meet will be held on Saturday, 14th October, 2017 at New York. This meet will be a ‘Dutch’ treat. Request your assistance for venue suggestions. More details will be communicated soon. Register Now
September 2017 Edition
Nostalgia, SIMSR’s Annual Alumni Meet, is just a day away and we cannot be more excited to host our Alums back to their Alma-Mater. The theme for this year's Nostalgia is 'Masquerade'. The event will be held at SIMSR from 4 pm. Please find below the timeline for what promises to be a memorable day for our Alumni: Alumni General Body Meeting - This meeting will showcase the progress of the Alumni Association so far and will also map the way ahead Performance by Mauj - A soulful performance from the official band of SIMSR, capturing the essence of Nostalgia by pulling a few old strings Batch Felicitation - The Alums of the 1987 batch will be felicitated in recognition of being part of the SIMSR Alumni family for the last 30 years SIMSR Superstars - The Alumni Awards: The awards, which celebrates the exemplary work done by our Alums in their fields, will makes its debut in Nostalgia Performance by Grooves - An electric piece of entertainment, performed by the dance group of SIMSR is sure to blow your mind away Parichay - The networking event, which aims to create a stronger bond amongst the participants, will then be held in the amphitheater Dance Floor - Bring your moves to the dance floor along with your old friends as the DJ drops the beat Dinner will then be served in the Chanakya lobby
AlumSpeaks
with Mr. Aslam Karmali SIMSR Alum Batch 1989-91 | CEO, Eureka Forbes Ltd.
Mr. Aslam Karmali is the CEO and Sr. Vice President of the Retail and Consumer Division at Eureka Forbes Ltd. He started his career with the Dutch multinational electronics corporation - Philips. He is a dynamic professional who has a rich experience of over 26 years in his field. Favourite Movie
Favourite Holiday Destination
One Word/ Line you say the most
Hidden Figures
Phuket, Thailand
Fear God
Favourite Quote
One word that describes you the best
Winning is in the mind
Friend
Role Model
Mr. H Chinoy - my uncle and also my informal coach Favourite Book
Whale Done! - by Ken Blanchard Q. As the CEO of Eureka Forbes (Retail & Consumer Division), what are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization? Also, what is the biggest challenge the industry leaders are facing currently? A. The most important decision is while recruiting people in the organization and this is perceived as the biggest challenge in the current industrial scenario. I don’t believe in recruiting people with specific experience in a particular geography, I believe in looking and recruiting people only for attitude and training them for skill. That has been my mantra and it will continue to be the same. To me, the most important decision is whom to recruit and then invest in building them as strong leaders for the company Q. You switched to Eureka Forbes which is an Indian Company after a long association with Philips originally a Dutch company. How easy or difficult was it to adapt to the new organizational culture? A. I used to work for Philips, a multinational company for 12 years. The company was extremely process driven, with limited flexibility. On the other hand, Eureka Forbes is more ‘intrapreneurial’. Another challenge was joining not just an Indian company but a company which was predominantly into direct B2B sales, not too familiar with the retail business. So, it was a challenge to convince people around that retail is a little different and requires a different treatment. But I am happy to say we have done well. In the last 10 years, we have grown the business by about 13 times. Q. Eureka Forbes was inducted as an HBR case study 8 years ago. These days Harvard professors are mining India for management lessons. What do you think the world has to learn from India? A. The first thing that India offers is - a country where infrastructure is still not at the global level, secondly, it offers a huge middle class - of about 77 million urban households, thirdly, it offers a very VUCA environment which is highly vulnerable, volatile & ambiguous. These kind of complexities and challenges make it difficult for management professional to succeed in such a dynamic environment. The professionals who succeeded make great case studies, are great learnings to mine and if you will look around you see some of the best global leaders today like Indira Nooyi and a host of others like Satya Nadella, all of them from India. It shows the kind of wealth of management talent that India brings to the world today.
If you want something badly, believe me, it is achievable. The whole mind, body and soul will work towards reaching there.
Q. What is your take on dealing with stress and how do you rewind after work? A. I believe the best way is to live it separately. I never mix the person who is as a professional and the person who is a human being. They should always run parallelly to each other. So, when the two are living separately, there is no stress. Problems come when you merge the two, when your professional and personal life are constantly battling each other.
Q. Adding to that question, in today’s world, is it possible to keep personal and professional life separate, because work has become such that you are working 24*7? A. There is a very famous phrase which says “work-life balance”. In today’s professional world it’s a challenge though. Thus, work-life integration is the answer. You integrate work and life together. So, you run them parallelly, enjoying both.
Q. What are the significant learning you had in two years at SIMSR? A. The first learning I had was that of multitasking -a very critical thing I learnt here, as in the corporate world you need to multitask all the time. The second thing I learnt in SIMSR, was a very deep learning that if you really want to achieve something in life and if you win in your mind, you will get it. SIMSR is where I germinated the seed of winning in my mind, in this very building. If you want something badly, believe me, it is achievable. The whole mind, body and soul will work towards reaching there. Q. Your batch comprises of industry stalwarts like Madhusudhan Kela, Ajay Kapur, Jacqueline Mundkar and many others. Are you still in touch with them and any fond memories that you remember? A. I am very happy to share that we have a WhatsApp group of SIMSR batch of 91. We party together, celebrate birthdays, go for holidays together and its one of the most active Whatsapp groups I have on my phone . The memories back here are not about competing as class mates, but about deep bonding and that’s what gives us the mileage today - 25 years later.
Dubai had its first official Alumni meet on 4th August, 2017 The event saw a turnout of 44 Alumni from different batches Dr. Monica Khanna, Prof. Isaac Jacob. Dr. Radha Iyer and Dr Bharati W flew from Mumbai to attend the meet The Alums felt nostalgic and were overwhelmed to meet their college-mates across different batches
The finals of Spriha 2017 - the summer internship competition organized by the Public Relations Committee, was held on 19th August, 2017. Inter-Finals of SPRIHA 2017 Winner Dhaval Patel of PG Core had interned at Performics.Convonix Ms. Hemal Shah, Alum of batch 1994-96 and Ms. Medha Shitut, Alum of batch 1996-98 were amongst the panel of judges. The intra - semi finals of the same was held on 5th August, 2017 and the panel included our prestigious Alums:
Mr. Neeraj Vakil, Batch of 2004-06 Ms. Neha Gupta, Batch of 2005-07 Dr. Anantkumar Bhide, Batch of 2005-07 Ms. Pragya Gaur, Batch of 2006-08 Mr. Yezad Mistry, Batch of 2007-09 Mr. Manoj Bhatia, Batch of 2008-10 Mr. Jiten Muni, Batch of 2008-10 Mr. Samia Ansari, Batch of 2008-10 Ms. Shweta Goyal, Batch of 2008-10 Mr. Jinesh Vasa, Batch of 2008-10
The inaugural ceremony of the new MCA batch of 2017-20 was held on 8th August, 2017 Ms. Unnati Mistri Agarwal, Presales Consultant at Vistaar technologies and MCSA Alum of batch 2001-03, was the guest of honour and motivated the incoming batch with her inspirational talk.
Anveshan, the meet between the first year students and our Alums of the recent graduating batch (2015-17), was held on 10th August, 2017
The students got a good look at the recent industry trends and cleared all their doubts regarding life in the industry
The event saw a turn out of fourteen Alums addressing more than a hundred juniors, giving them insightful advice on what career choices to make during the next two years
Job Opportunities Total no. of recruiting companies 10
Total no. of Vacancies 21
Top Recruiting Companies (in August) HSBC Clix Capital PayU Payments Private Ltd Invesco Accenture Kantar Harvard Business Publishing Galderma India Private Ltd To share a job opportunity at your organisation write to us at
simsrjobs@googlegroups.com Connect with our Alum family by signing up here-
Alumni Portal Sign-Up
Team Alumni Relations Advisor Dr. Radha Iyer Chairperson Dr. Bharati VW
We welcome these very talented juniors as a part of the ALCOM 2017-19. These budding youngsters are talented, dynamic, enthusiastic and brimming with energy. We are very excited to work with you all and wish you all the best for the next 2 years!
Welcome to the Alumni Committee!
Manager Arvind Pandi Dorai Co-ordinator Hemanchi Hublikar Team Imprints Chief Editor Arvind Pandi Dorai Editor Suryani Sinha Ray Contributors : Kushal Thakkar Tulika Singh Sreya Mukherjee Divya Parekh Ishita Gulati Devayu Panda Yesha Kulshreshtha Arvind Rungta (Convener, Alumni Committee) Kushal Thakkar (Co-Convener, Alumni Committee) Surabhi Singh (Co-Convener, Alumni Committee)
Prof. Isaac Jacob recently published 4 Indian cases for the 15th edition of Kotler and Keller's book on marketing management.
The cases are based on Zicom, Mirchi and Mime, Wonder Cement and Oreo
We wish him all the best for his tremendous feat. Contact Us
Write to us / Contact us alcom.simsr@somaiya.edu 022-6728 3120