IMT Hyderabad Newsletter: Empressario Dec 2012

Year-end & Entrepreneurship: Looking Back & Forth

EMPRESSARIO …An Entrepreneurial Insight

DECEMBER ‘2012 Vol. V Iss. 1

IMT Hyderabad

CONTENTS Prarambh Speaks……………………………………………………1 AUTHORSPEAK Getting Candid with Shankar Jaganathan…………….2

Monthly Features Year-end and Entrepreneurship: Looking back and forth..............................................................................................6 The Bangalore Beginners .....................................................10 The Social Enterprise Magic Bus……………….…………..13 THE TIE-ISB CONNECT………………………………….……….16

Add-ons Readers’ Corner……………………………...……………………..18

Team Prarambh ..…..…………………………………………..…...19

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Prarambh Speaks “One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this — To rise above the little things.”

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John Burroughs.

We are near the end of the year and as in the human nature, we tend to contemplate the consequences of our actions in the year gone past and seek solace in the fact that the New Year would open up new vistas for us. This optimistic trait at the year-end gives us strengths to overcome any sorrows or losses we might have seen or suffered and gives us the spirit to sail through in difficult times in future. It helps us move forward on the learning curve, learn from our mistakes and try to avoid any further tribulations. Similarly, we face situations in business and new ventures, wherein we can get disheartened easily, but there is definitely something about the New Year and human nature that makes people move ahead stronger, with better practices and ideologies to make our entrepreneurial venture stable if not completely successful.

In this edition of Empressario, we seek for guidance and look for practices from leaders and academicians regarding making your businesses worthy. We had a couple of major events on campus, the first one was the visit of students from Portland State University (PSU) for their Social Enterprise Design in association with IMT Hyderabad and SEMagicBus. The interaction between students of IMT Hyderabad and PSU was educational – cum - cultural, with events like visit to villages, debate on social acceptability of social enterprises, cultural events with drama, dance, etc. We would be hosting students from Columbia University too in January for their project work on Social Enterprise Sustainable Development. Another major event during this time was the visit by author Mr Shankar Jaganathan to our campus during the book tour of his new release, The Wisdom of Ants – A brief history of Economics.

The session was intended to give insights about how economics evolved over time and how it affected every strata of life with its different schools of thought.

We also had students visiting the ISB-TiE summit in Hyderabad, wherein they got the chance to hear and interact with Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors, about the nuances of starting a business and how to make one’s ideas sustainable.

All in all, the year was an eventful and insightful, making us think over our strengths and weaknesses and putting forward the opportunities and threats which one can capitalise and strategize to make oneself successful and sustainable. After all, businesses are all about sustainability.

Happy Reading

Team Prarambh IMT-H|Prarambh

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AUTHORSPEAK Getting Candid with Shankar Jaganathan (By Rohit Seth)

The author of the recently released book “The Wisdom of Ants: A brief History of Economics”, Mr. Shankar Jaganathan recently visited IMT Hyderabad for a book reading session on the 17th of December 2012. This is only his second book after the first one on Corporate Disclosure. He shared his views at length about the history and evolution of economics through ages, cultures and religions, in order to explain the audience about how economics developed into a distinct discipline. The discussion ranged from philosophers’ opinion on economics to disciplines it is derived from, the economists who have significantly contributed to the evolution and up to developments in the economics science in the recent history of The Industrial Revolution, The Great Depression and the recent Economic Meltdown.

pursue what I wanted to. After I became a CA, I completely got into the corporate world and it was only after a few years when I came back to my hometown Bangalore and had met my limited financial goals, I decided to explore teaching as a part time faculty in different MBA Schools. Along with teaching I also decided to pursue research as a process of learning which resulted in my writing.

PRARAMBH: How did you decide to become a writer when you already had an established corporate career?

Shankar Jaganathan: In my college days I wanted to do an M.Com and become a Lecturer as teaching is my passion. But in India traditionally parents don’t agree to that because they don’t want us to regret later for not having done a professional course like others in the family. So I took up CA course, after which I was free to IMT-H|Prarambh

PRARAMBH: From where did the idea of a book on the evolution of economics come into your mind, considering that you are a chartered accountant and you have already written a book on Corporate

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Disclosures, which deals with the origin of business and financial reporting?

Shankar Jaganathan: As I looked around I saw books on economics are always written by economists. Due to their special training, a lot is presumed and hence it is difficult for a non-economist or a layman including me to understand it.

Hence I decided to look at the origin of economics to understand it better. To use an analogy, Economics is in the sugar state right now but earlier it would have been in the jaggery state and before that in the sugarcane form. I thought that if I could trace the evolution of the discipline from sugarcane to jiggery and sugar then it would be a lot easier and interesting for all of us to understand and relate from where it comes and why is it in its current form. Hence I started tracing the origin of economics to ethics –the sugarcane state and writings in the commercial tracts the jaggery state before coming to Economics as a distinct discipline, its refined sugar form.

PRARAMBH: What is your next venture? Are you planning for another book?

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Shankar Jaganathan: Yes, I have begun research on it. I am exploring the theme of Virtuous Corporation in contrast to Utilitarian corporations.

Utilitarian corporations pursue profits as their primary goal, whereas for virtuous corporations it is only a by-product with their pursuit being something else.

Looked at in another way, they are companies that are not owned by shareholders. Instead they are owned by a community or by the employees and/ or other stake holders like suppliers or customers. These businesses have a holistic approach to management. For example John Lewis Partnership in the UK which is a 10 billion dollar retail company.

In India there is the India Coffee House which is owned by their employees. I want to see if profit maximization as a motive is removed from the company’s philosophy, then what will be the management principles that will drive the business? My plan is to take one company as an exemplar for each domain of management like the HR, R&D, Finance, Sales and Marketing, and so on and see how their management decides. I expect this project to take about 2-2.5 years. In the interim I have titled the project IF Mahatma Ran the India Inc. The objective is to visualize a fictitious corporation, like the Unicorn among animals, which would reflect the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, who viewed businesses as the virtuous corporations. The desire is to initiate a dialogue that questions the basic paradigms in management.

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PRARAMBH: Do you think that writing as a profession is Entrepreneurial?

Shankar Jaganathan: If you look at it only from the point of returns, no, writing is not entrepreneurial. I would be very happy if the royalty from my books is able to recoup all my expenses or the cost of my time spent in writing. Writing doesn’t pay in India as of yet. But there is a valuable by-product from writing. It builds you profile and personality that helps in consulting. People and companies start recognizing and valuing your inputs a lot more. So it is good for you as a person to have written a couple of books when you are in the consulting line. Looked at differently, writing is as entrepreneurial as it gets, because both need passion and the bullheadedness to pursue your dreams despite the stark prospects.

PRARAMBH: What are your impressions of our Institute and the Students?

Shankar Jaganathan: As I drove down to your institute, I was wondering where in

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the wilderness I was going. Once I reached this place and interacted with your faculty first and then the students, I realized that this is one of the finest institutes I have visited in a long time. The facilities on offer are compact and comprehensive. It is good to be isolated in such a manner as it promotes a singular focus on the job at hand, which is learning, reflection and introspection. The relationship between the students and faculty is very close, which is something I greatly admire having personally benefitted from it.

As a student I was extremely fortunate to be in close touch with my teachers. I continue to keep in touch with some of them even today. This I believe is an extremely healthy facet for learning. The presence of overseas students and faculty in your campus also promotes a richer experience and develops a cross cultural sensitivity that is very valuable.

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AUTHORSPEAK: Snapshots

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Monthly Features

Year-end and Entrepreneurship: Looking back and forth (By Anurag Kashyap, Great Lakes, Gurgaon)

A year in the communication era is quite a long time. Minds capable of changing the cosmic vagaries had been pushing their limits to conceptualize what we never thought of using earlier. The scintillating year is sailing through and has brought along the successful tidings of many innovations and ingenious concepts. The paraphernalia of events has built upon a fantastic cinematography for the genres in the likes of Entertainment, Information Technology, Retail Business, Automotives etc.

window aka screen is inside your mind.

We will take a look on some of the maverick advancements in following lines.

An Indian Innovator has won $50,000 to realize his concept of touch-screen Braille devices.

Information Technology: Comprehensively most of the innovations have been in the Information technology field, and have brought forward some ground-breaking concepts which are too awe inspiring.

Brainwave headband has debuted in Paris wherein a computer

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MIT media lab has worked on to develop a bulb called LuminAR which will make any surface a touch-screen where ever it illuminates.

Biomimicry: A term which means: using nature as a source of inspiration for sustainable technological advancements.

A team of young entrepreneurs have prototyped a self-filling bottle with water, mimicking the Namib Desert beetle. This beetle can pull water from air and the prototype has been conceptualized on the same lines.

Automotive industry has witnessed some fantastic innovations, which have given a whole new idea of driving.

TOYOTA is testing cars for one of its concepts which ideates communication between vehicles on the road and live feeds to entail maximum road safety prevention.

Subaru’s eyesight anti-collision system brakes automatically when moving under 19 mph to prevent any probable accidents, and alerts driver on higher speeds (also tries to apply brakes if driver doesn’t do anything).

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Agriculture: Malaysian venture for Autopot systems where each plant in its pot has automated delivery of water and nutrients and this has helped the farmers in saving their efforts and time to invest in other tasks, besides optimizing the usage of water and nutrients.

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Retail Brilliance shines off with more ideas of service offerings to consumers.

Dollar shave razor where the startup offers monthly subscriptions of quality razors using direct-to-consumer manufacturer method.

BeachMint, a California based company has started using personalized recommendation to their shoppers based on their designer preferences.

GoPro camera, created by Nick Woodman, has entirely changed the video filming methods to present the views which were never possible before.

Vyclone: An application which can connect four cameras (till date and are working for more) in any place and make your device an editor of their videos.

Dolby has again revolutionised the movie watching experience with the Atmos technology.

It reproduces sound even above your head and not just left, right or centre. It truly is 4D for your ears.

Entertainment: The celluloid unfurls more of its wings to deliver the extravaganza. Some of them are lined up in the following lines.

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With the advent of the most festive season of the year there are plenty of opportunities to be cashed. The Retail business and online marketing have been mushrooming at a very fast pace. The ignition started with Diwali in India and Thanksgiving in western worlds and now the stage unfolds for the bigger game. In most of the countries merchants starts preparing from October and in Canada after Halloween. Retail Innovations get one through tough weathers and also bottom-line gains. Promotional pricing masquerade the shelf goods and more so with innovation leverage. Now time alone remains as a factor which will provide aplomb to the revelation of any new technique across the world in the year end.

An Indian Innovator has won$50,000 to realize his concept of touch-screen Braille devices.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.� ― Peter F. Drucker

Keep watching.

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The Bangalore Beginners (By Rohit Seth, 1 st year, PGDM, IMT Hyderabad)

“The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities”

business expert if he were told that Bangalore is rated as one of the top ten (9th place) destinations for entrepreneurs to startup companies in the world by The Startup Genome Project.

The time just ripe for a wave of Entrepreneurial Spirit to run through the country with young talent becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities that lie at hand, ready to be exploited, in order to make lives easier and to overcome some of the insurmountable challenges of yesteryears. The GDP may have slowed down to just 6% which is the “Learning Curve” Growth rate but that has no significant effect on the long term prospects of the country being the one of the largest markets in the world, based on which Entrepreneurs decide on an innovative business idea.

Intellectual Capital of India has a long history of ushering startups and businesses on the path of scalability and sustainability. It has been a lucrative destination for foreign businesses and Indian Entrepreneurs to base their operations at. And this is one of the reasons why it won’t be a surprise for a I M T -IMT-H|Prarambh H|Prarambh =

It is in the company of Silicon valley, New York City and London who occupy the top three spots. Mumbai is ranked 20th on the same list. This is a significant achievement Empressario

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because of India is ranked 132nd on the ease of doing business list and 173rd on the ease of starting a business list, formulated by DoingBusiness.org.

The history goes back to IBM being one of the major MNCs to establish their headquarters in the city followed by many others. The famous IT revolution that took place with Infosys & Wipro and the UB Group’s venture into limelight was also based out of Bangalore. In the recent years two of the biggest ventures like Flipkart and RedBus have also come out of Bangalore. But this is just the outline of the larger picture of more than 800 startups companies that have registered in the city over the last 5 years. These startups offer a wide variety of solutions ranging from Doctor on Call, Ecommerce, Healthcare, Travel & Hospitality and even Quizzing. Some of these Ventures are AliveNow Inc, Capillary Technologies, Forus Healthcare, Innoz Technologies, Wingify, Wifinity Tech and Zenga Media.

But the focus is on technology and innovation which forms the theme or commonality amongst the major chunk of startups. This also suits the views of the Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors who prefer financing companies with this very focus.

So what differentiates Bangalore from the rest of the country, which fosters the growth of businesses in the city? 

The IT companies have converted the city into a huge collection of the brightest minds of the country, which increases the probability of an idea coming out of this set.

There are an increasing number of entrepreneurs who are people who have left their jobs in the IT Companies and gone ahead with the ideas they had.

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The culture of professionalism that is inculcated in the large populace of Software Professionals helps them to take that discipline into their businesses and implement plans with worship.

The funding that is available at all stages by an extensive network of VCs and Angels. It is also about networking through clubs like The Bangalore Entrepreneurs and

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TIE(The Indus Entrepreneurs) with over a thousand distinguished members who meet up on a regular basis to discuss plans.

Incubation and management consulting facilities available through various MNCs and the Indian alternatives that set benchmarks in their fields.

The Infrastructure with the best Airport in the country, the IT Parks etc have created an environment where business flourishes due to abundance of facilities and business oriented policies that have been a long standing constant across governments.

The quality of the educated public that accepts the startups by understanding the ideas put forward and is ready to try out the new goods or services at hand.

The quality of Educational Institutions like Indian Institute of Management, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Aeronautics Institute, IIT Chennai(nearby) and

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many other smaller institutes that attract a lot of young bright minds and fulfill the needs of the industry.

Exposure levels of the people working in the software industry helps them understand the needs of the working professionals and companies. It also gives them access and understanding of the technology that can be used to carter to those needs.

The Research into technology and software solutions that go into the IT companies creates an innovation oriented mindset in entrepreneurs who strive to think beyond what already exists in the market.

With so many factors at work Bangalore definitely sets itself apart from its other close rivals in India that are Mumbai and Hyderabad with the latter coming up on the lines of Bangalore. In the words of S Gopalakrishnan form the Ecosystem that is well suited for Entrepreneurship.

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The Social Enterprise Magic Bus (By Pearl, 2 nd year, PGDM -FINANCE, IMT Hyderabad What an amazing day it was!

Collaboration of individualism and collectivism would lead to wonders that was what we students of Entrepreneurship Development, IMT Hyderabad along with students from Portland State University experienced when we together went to a nearby farming hamlet named Lambadi Thanda as part of a collaboration for the SEMagicBus, the social entrepreneurship program by Portland State University.

The entire agenda of the exercise was to chalk out an issue that might be plaguing the area like safe drinking water problem, education, waste management etc. to do primary research and find out the attitude of the population towards the issue, analyze and propose a solution.

The PSU students are currently pursuing their MBA program and come from rich and diverse backgrounds.

They were accompanied by two faculty members, one of which is Kim Alter, Founder and Managing Director of Virtue Ventures who is coordinating the event from the PSU side.

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The Social Enterprise Magic Bus is a social entrepreneurship exercise wherein the students from the Institute of Management Technology – Hyderabad (IMT-H) worked in mixed teams with the students from Portland State University (PSU). The students participated in social entrepreneurship activities in the Indian rural context by travelling to Bhimavaram and doing a rural mapping exercise in the villages.

Apart from that, they also visited a rural BPO and evaluated sustainability projects for Byrraju foundation. Lastly, the mixed teams from PSU and IMT-H designed a social marketing campaign in the villages neighboring IMT-H (Lamadi Thanda in Pedda Shapur and Matherpally Thanda) and made innovative presentations to the faculty overseeing this exercise in an attempt to reach the Indian rural audience.

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All the students were divided into groups of 4 where each group had 2 students from PSU and remaining 6 from our institute, each group had to address one issue. And we all headed up to the village to do our primary research. Here we were given one hour to do the primary research.

Some groups divided themselves into sub groups and some went as one group to every accessible corner in the village.

Seeing our guests, people here were so excited that everyone came out of their homes to take a peek. This made it easier for us to interview for our research. We all went house-to-house, person-to-person getting information about their demographics, occupation, income level and their attitudes to change if a better and affordable solution could be provided to them.

After our research, all of us went to a school and the children were very excited to see our foreign guests and they were interested to take a snap, had a running race and even started dancing with them.

the problems being faced by the villagers.

Some presented as a short film, some groups played a small skit, a street play, unique artistic presentation etc.

The whole exercise was very beneficial and effective for all of us. We explored lot of problems prevailing in the villages. This is happening just because of the lack of motivation, knowledge and resources to people living in those areas. We wish to take all necessary and possible actions towards the solution of the problems that were identified during the exercise in order to provide a better and healthy living environment for the villagers.

To align the foreign students with the Indian culture, students from Portland State University were taken to Shilparamam for both shopping and understanding the diversity that pertains to the Indian context.

We returned to our campus and were instructed to present the solution not in PowerPoint presentation format, something unique and that too in 90 minutes. This was really challenging for us and hence, all of us altogether in our groups started generating ideas.

After end of 90mins the presentation process started, each and every group was amazingly innovative and came up with lot of unique and productive solutions to IMT-H|Prarambh

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The Social Enterprise Magic Bus: Snapshots

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THE TIE-ISB CONNECT (By Rohit Seth) “You must fall in love with what you do, because being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, and overcoming a lot of adversity. From that love will come the dedication that will get you out of bed at 4 a.m. because of a great idea you just had and get you to work till 11 p.m. and not feel tired.”

Founder of Mumbai Angels and Founder Kae Capital Sasha Mirchandani, Former Cabinet Secretary TSR

The TIE-ISB Connect is a joint venture of The Indus Entrepreneurs Hyderabad and Indian School of Business. It is a forum that brings Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and Academicians together to interact and help build successful enterprises. The conference has been an annual feature for the last 6 years with over 50 speakers, 30 venture capitalists and 1000 professionals last year. This year’s theme was “Growing Your Company- the Next Big Leap”.

Subramanian and many others dignitaries.

There were also special appearances from the famous Telugu Music director and Entrepreneur Ramana Gogula, British Deputy High Commissioner Hyderabad Richard Hyde and Visual Quest India Founder Birad Rajaram Yajnik.

This year the summit was a Grand success with Business leaders and Entrepreneurs of all sizes and backgrounds with different plans met to discuss about how to grow their businesses into bigger and more innovative organizations that cap provide wholesome and sustainable solutions to the society. It was an extremely rich gathering of Individuals, both speakers and listeners, with experiences and intellects and achievements that rarely assemble on the same platform. The group of speakers included Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Shri Kiran Kumar Reddy, Founder of Global Super Angels Network Rajesh Shwahney, Angel Prime’s managing Director Bala Parthasarthy, Co-

There were several events including Jumpstart Workshops for startups, Leadership Connect for Entrepreneurs, discussions by Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists and Private Equity Investors on the types of businesses they look out for and what is required for any business to approach them. There was extensive talk about all the issues that need to be taken care of by an entrepreneur at all stages of business on a policy as well as operational front. Discussions were also held on specific sectors of the economy like education and healthcare where there is a need for development and therefore the entrepreneurial opportunities. To top it all there was BizQuest, the Business Plan

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Competition where 216 growth stage businesses applied for a funding of 1 crore to the winners and incubation and business acceleration facilities to the top 6. The three winners were Catamaran Water Based Solutions, Thrillophilia and Eco Care.

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Students from IMT Hyderabad attended this conference in order to learn from the immense amount of knowledge and pearls of wisdom on offer for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur. They key takeaways from the various discussions were as follows:

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The focal point was innovation and the use of technology to solve problems and build businesses around it. Most of the Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors didn’t intend to invest anywhere else.

The focus was on three aspects of business, Globality, Intensity and Collaborations. It was all about creating a space of your own and

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venturing into newer waters and trying to be number one in it.

The advice on choosing a business investor was to work with a person or organization that carries the smell of the business you are in and is passionate about the idea just like you are.

Quality and best practices can never be compromised for money.

There needs to be an idea, a passion, a belief and a never give up attitude. Entrepreneurs never quit.

Apart from the discussions, there were opportunities to talk to all the speakers and to the others in the audience after every session at tea, lunch or dinner with band performances to round off the night.

The three day event had immense amount of knowledge and opportunities on offer for anyone who has aspirations to build a business.

“Entrepreneurs are people who are naïve enough, not to see the obstacles that are so obvious to others” -Ramana Gogula, CEO, Earthen Glow

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Add-ons Readers’ Corner Got any comments? Would you like to contribute to the newsletter? Get back to us at: ecellprarambh@gmail.com.

Your comments/views and articles would be published from the next issue. A few things to be kept in mind:  Articles/comments should not be demeaning / damaging in nature.  Articles should be to the point and of around 500 words.  The decision of selecting the articles to be featured and the number of such articles rests with the faculty mentor and editor of the newsletter.

So put on your thinking caps and show us your intellect side.

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Team Prarambh

Faculty Mentor Dr. Archana Pillai Core Members: Arjun Chaudhuri Udit Luthur Divya Vuppala Vaibhav Chabra Manish Vishnu M. Designing, Compiling & Tech support: Pankaj Kumar Gaurav Prateek Mukherji Editing team: Rohit Seth Anshika Rai Ridhima Kumar Ameya Lingaraju

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Write to us: ecellprarambh@gmail.com OR Follow us at:

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Institute of Management Technology, Hyderabad Survey No. 38, Cherlaguda Village Shamshabad Mandal, RR District, Hyderabad-501 218 (A.P.) Tel: +91-40-30461650-53 Email: info@imthyderabad.edu.in Vol. V Iss. 1

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Fax: +91-40-30461654 Website: http://www.imthyderbad.edu.in Dec 2012

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