Hyderabad, Mera pyaara Hyderabad

My association with Hyderabad has been a long one. I started my schooling here but had to go back to my native place due to a unfortunate event. But I came back again in 1983 to Hyderabad and joined United High School, which is non-existent today. I studied in that school till 8th class and then moved to Unique Public School now known as Unique High School.

Hyderabad was quite different in those days. It used to be dry and hot during summers but rains came pretty quickly. Whenever there used to be a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal it used to rain continuously for a week or so but it was more of a drizzle rather than heavy downpour. There used to be few kirana and general stores and one or two medical shops in the IDPL colony area. Ration Shop or the Fair Price Distribution Shop was an important part of life apart from the lending library that I used to visit almost everyday.

We used to play cricket everywhere as there was so much open space. My travel into the city was either to the railway station at secunderabad or to the bus station at gowliguda to travel to my native place and that usually happened in the summer. But then after I finished my schooling things took a dramatic turn. The student general bus pass was such a boon in those days. You pay about 32 bucks and you can travel on any bus at any time free of cost. It was during this time that I explored Hyderabad as much as possible. Me and my friends used to go to Afzalgunj or Chikkadpally to visit the Central Library. Books always were my good friends and always gave hope that there are great things somewhere and you will get to experience them someday.

Many times when we had no classes we used to stand in the bus stop and based on the route of the bus that comes first we used to choose between a movie or library. I managed to see all the bond movies during this time. Telugu movies were considered only they were big hits or were directed by Ramgopal Varma, Maniratnam etc or were of heroes like Chiru and Nag. Hindi movies were rare and of the few I remember Khalnayak and Baazigar were the best.

Life suddenly changed with job and the routine changed totally. I got into the book collection hobby in a big way during the first two years of my career. I even got myself photographed with the books standing on my side - hehehe. My first visit outside Andhra Pradesh was to Mumbai. My good friend Jeelani Basha was with me and we enjoyed that trip so much. We were attending a training program at Voltas, Thane and we stayed in a hotel near VT, which is now known as CST. I liked Mumbai so much for everything it is, it's such an interesting place but I liked Hyderabad much more. Hyderabad is a relaxed, warm, calm and laid back city but Mumbai is a place where everything and everyone is in some urgency. It's about 3 years since I went to Mumbai and I am sure nothing much have changed in the main city.

There are lot of things that are quite Hyderabadi, which you can find only in Hyderabad, in my profile - My school and college, Bakelite Hylam, Middle Earth, Ivy Comptech and Sierra and finally ISB. If ISB opens second campus at Mohali then it is a different story but as of now ISB still is exclusive to Hyderabad.

This move is the most significant one but I'm looking forward to it mainly because two of my good friends are in Delhi

Key word searches

Using the stat counter I track the kind of key word searches that lead to my blog. It is frustrating to see that after getting search results you don't really get any further information. So I have decided to add some details about each of the key words that were searched on google:

1. rao korupolu: Rao and I are in the same section - Section E. Rao has lot of experience in IT and was with Oracle before joining ISB. He has been elected as the General Management club president. In general people say that Rao is a calm, composed,mature and credible person. Due to the kind of exposure and balance he brings to the table, people generally take him seriously and respect him easily. Rao is in the same student village as I am and we generally go to the classes together and sometimes do combined studies. I observed that Rao works very hard and is focused on studies apart from the club activities. Rao is from Hyderabad and I met him once before joining ISB
2. ratnakar gore: I met Ratnakar in December for the first in the Hyderabad admits group. He takes a lot of initiative and was one of those highly active admits on the orkut and microsite. Ratnakar again is from IT background and has significant managerial experience. I can now say that Ratnakar is a good friend of mine. During term 1 we did a lot of combined studies. Ratnakar has been elected as the Business Technology Club, which has the highest number of active members. He is a highly mature, down-to-earth and social person.

3. rajeev bharadwaj queen's mba: I and Rajeev met during the ISB admissions phase. Subsequently Rajeev got admission from Queen's and decided to go to Canada. I have been in regular touch with Rajeev since then. He too is from IT background and has a significant work experience. He is very passionate about business and management.

4. pgpx, no essays: Apart from ISB I applied to IIM-A PGPX as well. The advantage of applying to pgpx is that you don't have to pay any application fee and you need not write the essays till you are shortlisted. Only shorlisted are supposed to write essays. Though I applied to this course, later I decided to stick with ISB considering various factors (personal and career)

5. is 690 in gmat good enough? I scored 690 and did get admitted. 690 is good enough if you have other significant things such as, work experience, diverse industry experience or significant achievements. If you are banking on your academic performance as a differentiator your GMAT score should be higher than 720. So, whether GMAT score of 690 is enough or not depends on the other aspects of your candidature

6. isb 2008 essays topics: I didn't check what the essays are but got an idea from the yahoo group. While writing essays keep in mind that you application, CV, evaluations and essays should present a consistent, and coherent picture about you. The amount of effort you put in into your essays is correlated to the level of seriousness you have. If the seriousness is displayed in the interview too, then your chances are bright. My suggestion is, don't worry what the topic is, just write the essays honestly in a way that you can relate to your life, career and your personality. Take help from others only in fine tuning language and structure but notfor the basic idea. The idea must be yours.

7. isb ideal student profile: There is no ideal student profile. As far as I have seen there is so much diversity that you find people with exact opposite backgrounds are here. But some common aspects are that you find them brilliant, focused, multi-faceted ad highly competitive.

I hope i provided some information on each of the key words. Hasta manyana

Dr. Dunked

Fun continues at ISB and this time its my studygroup mate Dr. Viswa's Birthday. Dr. was a willing victim. We led a procession from SV1 to the rec centre. There was a proposal to dunk the mascot, monitor aka maneater, and me (highest CP in marketing. I tried to divert the focus onto others. When we reached the pool excitement was so high that people forgot the birthday boy and went after the monitor and the mascot.

Later they turned to the doctor and he got dunked gracefully. After that they indeed turned to the studygroup mates and me and the other two got dunked and what followed after that sheer madness and by the time the madness ended everyone except the one lady who scared of water got dunked. Then we did a rang-de-basanti type trust dunking. The cake was rightfully used to smear Dr's face completely and in the midst of this some people discovered another secmate is the twin brother of Dr who got separated at birth and did the cake smearing to him too. He must be wondering why that special treatment was given to him. As someone said brothers need not be born under the same roof, after all.

Some pics for you to share the fun:

Midnight dunking begins

Till now lots of dunking has already happened but the first midnight dunking for the class of 2008 happened yesterday. It was A's Birthday and a mail was sent by N to all the Hyderabadi gang. After circulating about 15 mails it was confirmed that we would meet at G's place, which is below A's birthday. About 15 of us reached there, rang the bell and took A in dunking procession. A was very graceful, though he was not comfortable he never resisted. After A it was the turn of his spouse Ch.

Along with the B'day boy three others got arbit dunked. Most hilarious was that of KC. AN is more or less the official photographer of sec E and Hyderabad gang. He has a nice camera. Some pics:

It's a great feeling

When some put in so much of effort for others whom they even don't know well, I don't know why, I feel the touch of humanity. The unselfish, no motive work evokes a great emotion.

That's what I felt about the effort put in by the Class of 2007 in the orientation week for us, Class of 2008. All of these alums have been placed and would have had a so many other things to catch after the hectic year at ISB, but they instead chose to be here with us and help us to get inducted into ISB.

It was also great to see all the talent ISB has recruited this year. There are great artists who can sing, dance, play instruments and write and direct creative skits.

ISB also has been very successful in attracting more experienced people. This year there are about 70 students with more than 8 years while there were about 40 of them last year. In the general management club informal session the whole discussed around two topics - Leadership Programs and Executive Placement.

I have more or less made up my mind that I will join just two clubs - General Management club and the consulting club. I would like to invite as many senior people as possible for the speaker series. That way it would add value to the students and also would give a glimpse of ISB to the external world.

I am pretty happy with my decision to join ISB, in fact I would say thrilled, after meeting my batchmates. But as usual there are some studs and I hope they stick to the extra curricular activities. Lots of parties have been happening around but I have decided to get my complete sleep as the preterms are about to start from Monday.

It's really difficult to remember what is decriptive statistics and what is inferential statistics but I'm slowly getting in to the grove. Wish me best of Luck people.

Orientation blues

3 days of orientation and lots of muscles and bones paining in the body. First it was the amount of information that is needed to be absorbed after the relocation adjustments, second the going through the physical grill of searching the treasure hunt clues by running around the campus in about an hour.

But all in all it was quite exciting. Finally I could meet my study group mates - 5 of them, quite enthusiastic and with lots of energy levels. There is one doctor in the group too, seems to be lot of diversity.

The nominations for the GSB core group are to be submitted by tomorrow and I already saw about 5 of them with papers in hand pleading everyone else to sign in support of them. Good for them and good for me. I don't think I would have the mindspace to get into any full time resposibility keeping in mind the goals that I have set for myself.

That's all for now, need to get ready for the full day team building program planned for today, hope it will be cloudy.

Last working day at office

Today will be my last working day at office. Officially I will be relieved on 9th but I don't think I will be doing any work on that day.

I started working way back in 1994 and since then it has been a tireless tirade. The first job as Sales officer with a publication company ended unceremoniously but after that every job change had been a very well thought and planned one.

I could manage all those changes with relative ease as the change was only for me. It feels a little odd to think that will not be working from 10th and also that I will not get paid. For the first time, I am full time into studies again after my Diploma. I really look forward for this college experience, something I have definitely missed.

ISB would be a interesting place with so many types of people. One of my learning goal is to understand so many diverse individuals and their motives.

Some of my goals at ISB are:
1. Know as many great people as possible
2. Establish a global network. Increase size and scope of my planet.
3. Reinvent myself
4. Develop and implement a Health Management Plan- Physical, Mental and Spiritual, as defined by WHO
5. Write papers/articles
6. Decide what exactly I'm going to do - immediately after ISB and long-term, both
7. Relax and Enjoy. Though a lot has ben said about the schedules and the pressure at ISB, I personally feel I am going to enjoy as I would be doing something I love - Learn, learn and learn
8. Play - whatever is possible at ISB
and I'm sure I would find few more.

ISB Admission cycle - Step by step timelines, part 2

In my last post I have detailed the steps up to taking the GMAT. Till this point it is generic and would be common for most B-school aspirants. Some other things that were very useful at this stage were - A word document passed on by ex-colleague Ritu, having a PC with broadband connection, my boss's advice, and the coaching centre.

After taking GMAT, the journey took a different turn. Till now the path was pretty straight forward and I could get lot of guidance. Different concerns started cropping up. Some of them were - would I even get shortlisted by IIM and ISB, is 690 good enough, what would be my AWA score, how would I justify a low AWA score if it is low, is my profile good enough and so on.

Step 6: The next step is to start working on the application. Immediately after reaching home I submitted my IIMA-PGPX application. The PGPX application is very simple in the first stage, you don't need to write any essays. Only the short listed need to write the 5 essays, 500 words each.

The whole GMAT thing drained me so much that it took me a month to recover and focus on ISB application. The key learning is that have lots of buffer time between GMAT and the application deadline. I have registered myself on the ISB online application site immediately after they activated it. I have filled in all the basic details like personal details, experience, education etc. I didn't touch the essays before GMAT at all. The main tasks that were to be done are Essays, four of them, Evaluations, I decided to get three instead of two minimum required, and getting copies of the necessary documents.

Step 7: Writing Essays for ISB application
The topics were little twisted and you have to present your point in a different way. At this point something very funny happened. I posted my profile on the isb-pgp yahoo group to get a general feedback and I did get some positive feedback. Apart from that one of the replier suggested that I can take external help in getting the essays right. To this another applicant by name Prashant Agrawal, based out of London, reacted very strongly contending that it is not ethical to take external help in writing the essays and the whole thing snowballed till the time that the group moderator intervened and forced Prashant to stop from further posts. Funny, ain't it, people have so many faces.

My essay writing started around 30th August and ended only by 25th September. I had done about 4 to 5 revisions before pressing the submit button. Initially I just wrote whatever came to my mind in a word document and each essay was going up to 800 words, min and the word limit was 300 words. Next I tried to cut down on sentences, repeats etc and could cut them down to 400 - 450 words. This took almost 10 days. After this I invited one of my junior colleagues. Mr. Rohan Kashyap, to review them critically. He bought out some very good points and highlighted the weaknesses.

In the next phase I rewrote the essays and forwarded to them one ISB alum, whom I knew a bit closely and to another friend of mine for review. They suggested few changes and finally I took the essays to my verbal coach for GMAT and took his help to check the grammar and style. He helped me in finalizing the essays. Even after that I made some minor changes but more or less finished them.

Around the same time I got a shortlist from IIMA and I used these same essays with some minor modification. To be honest, I was not so keen on IIMA but I couldn't just leave it like that and another point was that I was fully drained by ISB essays. Fortunately IIMA's word limit is 500 words and I happily expanded the shorter essays.

Step 8: Evaluations
This is one area I had a certain advantage. My current boss then, and my previous two bosses were very close to me and I had a good relationship with them. The relationship was very professional and was built mostly on work related interactions but at the same time i had put in effort to be in touch with them and help them wherever possible. It helped that I never moved Hyderabad and I could be in touch with them regularly. I spoke to them first and them send them the soft copies by mail. It was pretty simple with my then current boss. One day I went little early in the morning and waited for him to come in. As soon as he was in, it was 9:00 AM in the morning, others would come in only after 9:30AM, I took a print out and quickly went in. He finished the whole thing in about half-an-hour and showed me the whole thing before sealing as directed by ISB. I was happy as he could clearly rate where I was good and where I needed to improve. With the other two I had to push a bit and before the deadline got both of them. Both of them also showed me their ratings before sealing. There was no specific benefit of seeing your own ratings but it gives you some comfort. Also all three of them were honest and I in no way influenced their ratings. The ratings were no goody-goody.

Step 9: Submission of the application

This was the easiest of all. Just keep your credit card with you for online submission and collate all the documents for hard copy submission. I submitted the hard copy on 2nd October as it was the day of Dasera and anything that is started on that day is supposed to be successful and indeed it did :)

For IIMA it was far more simple, all I had to do was rewrite the essays, get a digital photograph and submit it online. No application fees, may be that's one reason I pursued it till the end.

The next phase was waiting for shortlist, preparing for the interview, attending the interview, waiting for the result, and finally you get to know what happened to your dream of getting into the B-school.

My next post follows shortly.

Two more weekends

Last two weeks have been hectic and saw lot of action. I'm not talking about the world cup or the gruesome murder of Woolmer but I'm referring to action in my personal front.

I have been to Annavaram and then for a couple of days to Vizag Rishikonda beach resort. This weekend I have managed to finish lot fo pending things such as aplying for original degree from the university, meeting my jigree dost and so on. Few highlights about Annavaram:

Throughout India there is a common practise to conduct a pooja called Satyanarayana Swamy Vrat on occasions such as Gruh Pravesh (House warming ceremony), Marriage etc. Annavaram is the place where this particular god resides. The hill on which the temple is located is called Ratnagiri and there is a small river by name Pampa next to it. Another speciality of this place is that all trimurthy - three gods namely Vishnu, Siva and Brahma are present in the same temple.
There are two levels in the temple, in the ground floor you have the feet of Satyanarayana swamy and that is a represenation of Brahma. In the top floor Satyanarayana swamy (Vishnu) along with Padmavathi and Lord Siva.

Everyday couples come from different places and perform the vrat in the temple.

From Annavaram we went to Vizag and stayed at Rishikonda APTDC punnami resort. I met a very good friend of mine who is into share broking. We had some nice time at the beach. When I woke up the next day morning and trying to get the sunrise view, I realized that it was Solar eclipse. I managed to click few snaps of the eclipse. As I was near the ocean I went for a bath in the ocean - Samudra snan.

This weekend, we, ISB admits hyderabad, met for dinner at Blue Fox minerva Grand, Secunderabad. On Sunday I attended an engagement and I was the official photographer there clicking pictures left and right (it was a digital camera).

Today I'll be going to Andhra Bank to finish loan formalities.

Another surprising happened yesterday. My old colleague Geeta Naresh, currently with Wipro, Gachibowli had called up and informed me that my picture has come in the Times of India second page. It was a pleasant surprise to find the picture of the OBT program that I conducted when I was with Middle Earth Consultants about 2 years ago at Infosys Hyderabad campus.

Nothing specific about that program or me was mentioned, the article was about adventure based learning. I think Nitin Sanker, Principal Consultant, Middle Earth must have handed over that snap to TOI.

Find below the scanned images:






more at: http://www.mecindia.in/march25th.html

ISB Update: Preterm troubles

One more month to go, but looks like the troubles have already started. Took two preterm tests - cleared one and couldn't clear one. I have realized that my stats knowledge iss very basic and just before that in the morning I was promising couple of other admits that i will help them in stats. I need help now. I could clear accounts test and yet to take the quant test.

Troubles apart, we had lot of fun yesterday morning. All the ISB Hyderabad admits met up at Barista, Jubilee Hills once again. Barista appears to be the favorite one and I'm sure we will drop in even after the course starts at ISB.

There were five new admits who came to the yesterday meet. We missed on Arjun's intro, in all the meets he used to be one to start the round alomost everytime. Ashish's intro about his surname which goes as "Na rao Na reddy but my surname is naredi" seems to be getting little old as couple of others stressed on the Reddy and the Rao being their surname.

Till now I have met about 25 admits fromm Hyderabad and I'm sure there will be another 15 of them who didn't appear at the meets for various reasons. We can safely assume that there will be 40 admits from Hyderabad.

All in all it was great fun and all kinds of topics were discussed, right from laptops, loan application, weight reduction, hair saloon to a quiz on Harry Potter. We planned another meet on 31st March of 1st April and I hope that we will have full house then. Some pictures that I took yesterday:

It's me, Pooorvee and Krishna Chaitanya

Karthik, Yeswanth, Prashanth(hope I'm not wrong), Prashanth's wife (name ??)
Preethi, Ratnakar and Priyanka

Meghna, Anand, Charanya, Karuna, Sravanthi and Jagan

Ashish Naredi, Madhu, Rudraksh, Saraswati, Namrata, Poorvee, Nidhi Reddy and Sumiti Tayal

Holi with the ISB Hyderabad applicants group founder members

Arun, Rajeev, Prabhakar Reddy and Sravanthi
Arun, Rajeev, me and Sravanthi

That's me