This post is about creating a solid foundation. Next, we will share test taking tips and techniques, and more than can help you ace IBSAT or any other tests you plan to take.

First things first.

You take test with your brains. You have heard about “Fit brain in a fit body.”

So start to take care of your body well, if you have not been doing it already.

If you are weak, in poor health then your brain finds it hard to focus.

People get sick due to extremes mostly.

At whatever stage of your preps you are it is important that your body and mind is in good shape.

You need energy to study – sit through exam – here are some simple tips that should help.

Simple tips.

Get into a routine. (8 am – 10pm) type. start early if you are a morning type or stay up a little if you work better at nights.

Stick to it. Creating a plan is simple, what is more important that you follow it. So stick to your routine and follow through on your ambitious plans.

Cut back on distractions (at least 4 days a week). It is totally possible to live without TV or Facebook for sometime, give it a shot and you will be happier and more productive.

Eat better. Simple, more green, less junk, some nuts, little fruit. Do not over eat.

Do not overdo anything. Do not push yourself too much. Find time to play, have fun, sit with friends and family and do not forget to laugh often.

Move around. Go for a walk – morning and evening. Morning – brisk and evening – relaxed stroll.

Drink water, take deep breaths and take breaks in whatever you do.

Dance if you can, a great way to burn calories and have fun. Best part, you do not need company to do it – just switch on the music on a player or your mobile phone and start.

So move around, be happy and more productive.

Hope you found this useful.

Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Introduction:

There are differences in the ways mobile and telecommunication business works in different countries of the world. In countries like USA and Europe, Smartphone companies partner with the telecom service providers to come up with a reduced price for consumers to avail phone along with services on contract basis. In India, however, the scenario is somewhat different. Cell phone companies and the service provider do businesses separately and people are comfortable with it. Although, a small number of joint initiatives have taken place, none of them have proven their success of scale.

The story:

The building block of RIM was a little unconventional. They had two CEOs. One for the engineering division and the other for the integration of the corporate functions. Mr. Lazaridis was in charge of engineering division and Mr. Balsillie looked after sales and industry interaction. They worked in a close liaison and the model was working well. Blackberry had a very niche offering. A Smartphone that had keyboard and customized apps for the corporate segment of the market. When iPhone was first introduced to the world in 2007, Blackberry pointed out its shortcomings like battery life, robustness etc. in public. Before iPhone, the smart phones used to run on single processor and OS used to take less memory space. Blackberry was running on single processor and OS took 32mb memory space. iPhone was a touch device that ran on dual processor and OS memory space was 700mb. For its initial product selling without partnering with any major service provider, very few people could actually afford it. But they made a pact with AT&T and came up with its combined offering starting with $199. Mr. Lazaridis, the great mind behind Blackberry realized the threat now. Given the sudden surge of the touch phone demand and Apple’s deal with AT&T, Verizone turned to RIM to come up with a touch phone that will not have a physical keyboard. Internally they wanted to call it “an iPhone killer”. So, RIM built Blackberry Storm. But the demand driven product manufacturing had to be quick. Storm had a few bugs and it was slow too. RIM stopped producing Storm. So, Verizone then turned to Google and its newfound operating system Android in 2009. Verizone started its massive marketing campaign as Motorola introduced its droid phone and pinpointed the pitfalls of iPhone with “iDon’t” campaign. As it turned out, Motorola and other Android phones gained success, but not at the cost of loss of market share of iPhone. In contrast, Droid phones started eating market share from Blackberry, Nokia and other Palm and Windows operated phones. As a result, by the end of 2011, Android’s market share was 47.3% and that of RIM dropped to 16% in US market. The main conflict boiled down to the one between software apps and reliable hardware manufacturing. RIM’s engineering principle was built on the very fact that it would provide a hardware that will be low on power usage giving it more battery life and the compact form will make it robust. But this was the need of corporate executives. With the advancement in the smart phone world, more and more people started turning to a device that will be more interactive which led to the high demand of touch phones. Other requirements were smart camera and apps. So, Blackberry ventured into that world and came up with Blackberry 10 OS. But the developers’ network for Apple and Android were huge and well-established. So, they failed to compete with Google Play or iStore. As a reult, they failed to gain market share in normal consumer market. And the corporate execs did not want camera or fascinating apps. So they also complained. So, RIM lost market share there too.

Introducing BBM to non-Blackberry phones:

Instant messaging is the new “big thing” in the mobile era. We have witnessed Facebook acquiring Whatsapp for 19 billion USD in this line. Well, Blackberry is the pioneer in this area. They first introduced BBM as a wireless instant messaging service. It quickly became popular among the Blackberry users. The advantage of BBM is that BBM does not use cell phone number for the service. Rather, it generates an unique BBM pin for a phone. Since this pin is a randomly generated number, the privacy is higher. To add to this, the developers brilliantly incorporated the display of time of delivery and time of reading the message. A number of new players evolved in the same area fighting for market share in iOS and Android phones. So, Blackberry made a strategic move. It also introduced BBM app to non-Blackberry phones for free. The BBM user base increased from 60 million to 80 million.

Conclusion

But since then, the number of BBM users has not increased much and remained stagnant. Those, who registered for BBM in the “hype of getting a BBM Pin” given it was a “corporate status symbol” for long, do not find it so effective. So they have turned to other instant messaging apps. As a result, the number of active users have decreased significantly. At organization level, the collaboration of engineering and functional team was a differentiating factor and once a thing to be boasted about. But lack of mutual accountability and communication have ripped that off. So, the situation right now is such that it is painful to see the greatest innovator of “once-upon-a-time” is bleeding right now and desperately looking for a way to get back to the mainstream.

Article by Subhadeep Das

With the mushrooming of B-Schools and a large number of students passing out year after year from these B- Schools pose a big issue of employability. There exists a big gap between the quality stuff passing out and the demand put forward by the industry. Even a mediocre management student is conditioned to dream big of having a high profile and high package job. This may also be attributed to their high monetary investment in the MBA program. In the era of fierce competition some students struggle to make a career for themselves and match up the expectations of the industry due to their limited capability.

It is sad that these students end up doing odd jobs like tele-calling, sales job, outsourced staff etc. for a meager salary with no job satisfaction. The irony is, they still dream to be a corporate professional or be part of MNCs. They appear to be lost in their career focus. No doubt B-Schools impart quality managerial skills like leadership, entrepreneurship, negotiation, interpersonal and in-depth coverage of business strategy, ethics & governance in addition to the domain specialization areas- finance, marketing, HR, IT & Operations with all sorts of innovative teaching pedagogies- but gaps still remains when it comes to placements.

Moreover study conducted by Web portal-MBAUniverse.com and Merit-Trac showed that many employers are of the opinion that majority of MBA graduates in India are not employable. Excluding the top 25 B Schools, the remaining provided only 21% of their graduates with a job. The employability of the graduates from these schools was actually worse in 2012 (21%) than in 2007 (25%). The number of MBA seats in the country has increased from 95,000 to 3, 50,000 from 2007 to 2012. The quality of education apparently did not keep pace. Aspiring Minds- a national body conducting employability test AMCAT says almost 50% of the students are not employable in functional domains for lack of domain knowledge. Whereas 32% management graduates lose out in the job front because of lack of English language skills and Cognitive skills. Major chunk of the B-Schools generating mediocre caliber students are still struggling with the fierce competition and employability quotient of their students. These B-Schools and students have to understand the grave reality faced by them. They should look beyond the conventional business verticals like big MNCs and reputed business houses which are highly competitive for many students to cope up.

B-Schools should widely explore the growth potentials in the area of Small & Medium enterprises, Non-profit & For-profit ventures, small business owners & contractors, Government sectors- Civic bodies & Municipalities etc. Under the public bodies, we have health, education, transport, fire services, disaster management, infrastructure etc. There are whole lot of labor intensive areas- security agencies providing personnel, logistics & supply chain, distribution, construction industry, hospitality, ATM management and replenishment of cash etc. There can be many similar types which might not have been mentioned here. The career prospects in these untapped areas may open up enormous opportunities for MBA graduates. Though initially MBAs cannot expect a high package and a very elite job profile, but definitely they can look forward to a sustainable long term growth opportunities. Of course students have to be apprised of unleashing these growth opportunities to their advantage. A consciousness of stewardship has to be created to make these industry verticals grow to their side. Honing of entrepreneurial skills coupled with right kind of managerial competencies is a key for growth in these areas. As a result, MBAs can be instrumental in spearheading the growth of business from a holistic perspective. Entrepreneurial skills and managerial competencies gained and applied by students will lead to-

• Professionalizing the Small Business Owners & SMEs.
• Professionalizing the Non-Profit & service oriented ventures.
• SMES and similar subsidiaries dependent on large industries for their business may gain better lobbying & negotiation skills from the MBAs.
• Non-profit ventures with a professional approach may fulfill the criteria of CSR schemes propounded by many large industries.

All B-School programs have a mandatory summer internship project in an industry. But additionally they should think of exposing students to other business verticals for live projects and internships. Management students should be oriented to take up projects in civic departments, NGOs, health projects, small businesses etc. in the first semester of their course. Once in a week they can be sent to the field in one of these areas and they can be guided & evaluated by the allocated faculty mentor. This can be spread-over to the entire semester. Likewise in the second semester, students can be exposed to doing a live case study on Small & Medium Enterprises. It can be pursued under a faculty mentor with the standard parameters set for conducting the study by the students. These efforts open up wider placement opportunities for students and also enhance their employability as per their capability and skills. Students are also conditioned to look beyond large business houses and MNCs. It is a very positive way of channelizing the career focus of struggling students in the right direction. Subsequently it may also give direction for some entrepreneurial ventures by students.

Article by Dr.Latha Ramachandran, faculty, IBS- Mumbai

In 1999 Bill Kincaid released its brainchild to the world. It was named as SoundJam MP. The idea was simple: to give the world better musical experience. But it was still little known to the world as it did not get the expected market penetration. Apple acquired SoundJam MP in 2000. This was the company that is known to us as iTunes today. As Steve Jobs, the founder and ex-CEO of Apple puts it, iTunes was the first introduction of its kind to the music lovers of the world where people could purchase, download and listen to music, audio podcasts, watch music videos, TV shows etc. legally. As it is a very lovable user interface to the music listeners, it also helps prevent piracy in a big way.

Deal details:

On 28th May, 2014 Apple completed its latest acquisition in the form of Beats Electronics. Apple announced that its acquisition is worth 3 billion USD. The breaking of that amount includes 2.6 billion USD cash transaction and 0.4 billion USD worth of stock transaction that is expected to close by the end of 2014. Are we expected to witness similar turn of events as with iTunes? Let’s wait and watch.

The Beats’ way:

In 2006, famous rapper and hip-hop producer established a electronics music company ‘Beats Electronics’. In 2008, it launched its first ever product: Dr. Dre headphones by Beats. The company channeled its efforts to manufacture more and more audio devices like speakers and earphones. Soon it got a popularity in the upper bracket of the music goers. One premium feature that Beats had was its outstanding and unparalleled bass sound. As Dr. Dre wanted to bestow the listeners with wholesome music experience through headphones. He sensed the market demand for such a product at that point of time. Later the company diversified in online music industry. A particular reason for its popularity was also its amazing marketing practices. It did strike one too many branding deals during several hit hip-hop and pop music release. Since that was one of the creamiest part of their share of pie, it made huge sense. By 2012, it had 64 percent market share in headphone market with the product price greater than 100 USD. Beats purchased licensing agreement to distribute its online music channel to mobile manufacturers. For a brief period of time (2011-12), HTC had majority stakes (50.1 percentage) in Beats.

Why the acquisition?

This is Apple’s largest ever acquisition in terms of price tag.

The relevance of selling iPhones:

As Apple CEO rightly puts it during the official press release of the deal, “Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple. That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.”

Apple is pioneer in the Smartphone market with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store and reinventing a new way of computing through iPad. If they can integrate Beats online music and headphones here, that can talk a long way to the intersection of music crowd and Smartphone users.

The dark days of iTunes:

Apart from being a revenue generator, iTunes was a major way to reach to the crowd as it was available on all the platforms. Now since the music services like Spotify and Pandora have come to the market, they are eating market share of iTunes. So, Beats can be a strategic move to give iTunes a second life.

Bringing in the marketing talent of Beats:

The marketing strategy of Beats centers around the Pepsi-Cola war survivor genius Saint John. He worked with the giants of present music industry. The list ranges from Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Eminem to Ketty Perry and it goes on. If Apple wants to beat the likes of Google and Facebook in terms of reach, then this can prove fruitful. It can be a great way to reach the younger crowd. There are plenty of other ways to monetize on this depending on the growth plan of Apple.

Integration:

As part of the negotiations, Dr. Dre, the founder and Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder will be part of Apple’s payroll. Dr. Dre is also the senior vice president of Apple now. Apple must be looking for a way for Beats to fit into the organizational structure of Apple.

According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president, “Music is such an important part of Apple’s DNA and always will be. The addition of Beats will make our music lineup even better, from free streaming with iTunes Radio to a world-class subscription service in Beats, and of course buying music from the iTunes Store as customers have loved to do for years.”

Article by Subhadeep Das

                  Introduction :

On 22nd May, Flipkart acquired Myntra. It is a big story in e-commerce sector and speculations have been all around. The most interesting and perhaps best cited reason for the deal is that they now jointly want to take on Amazon, a company with 20 years of global exposure. Amit Agarwal, the VP and country manager of Amazon India, said in response, “We don’t get distracted by competition”.

Deal details :

Sachin Bansal, the co-founder and CEO of Flipkart, has said in a press conference, “It is a 100% acquisition.” Mukesh Bansal, CEO of Myntra is going to join Flipkart board and will head fashion division of Flipkart. Myntra will run as an independent unit. Although none of the “Bansals” (Sachin, Binny or Mukesh) revealed any details of the deal, according to the sources, Myntra could be valued at more than 300 million USD (approx. Rs. 1800 crore).

Growth of online sector in India:

The e-commerce sector of India has grown significantly for last 5 years. People have got over the inertia of online payment, all thanks to the e-retailers to introduce transparent and lucrative offers. With the reasonable pricing of broadband connections, the spread of internet has grown more than ever. To add to this, reasonable presence of even faster connections like 3G, 4G LTE have inspired more “netizens” of India to go for online deals.

Advantages for Flipkart :

Present e-commerce sector of India:

Total retail space for India is around 600 billion USD. Out of that, organized retail constitutes 40 billion USD or 6.67% of the pie. With the help of Govt. policies, the organized retail has a huge scope for growth. The total size for e-commerce is round about 2 billion USD or 0.5% of the organized retail. The number of online users in India is in excess of 150 million. Currently, only 20 million online users do online transactions. These are rookie numbers and are expected to grow rapidly. Now, with the steep growth curve of spread of internet, there is a sizeable market opportunity waiting to be tapped. Under such circumstances, the e-commerce market is expected to grow to a level as big as 20 billion USD over next three to four users.

Industry consolidation :

Both Flipkart and Myntra are Bangalore based company and were established in 2007. None of them has yet reached the breakeven point. And as Sachin Bansal puts it “growth is more important” and profit will follow. However, from the investors’ point of view, the story is a little different. Sooner or later, they will always look for returns. So Flipkart and Myntra cannot afford to grow indefinitely without looking for profit. Now, Amazon is the big fish in the market with very deep pocket. They have the luxury of going for growth without caring for profit in the beginning given in online space price discount war is a major deal converter. So, it is in the well being of both Flipkart and Myntra to go for the industry consolidation. Otherwise it would be a matter of time for Amazon to take the lead.

Beating the competition :

Amazon came to India in 2013. Although its Junglee division could not make significant impact, Amazon.in has progressed swiftly over time. And given Amazon’s deep pocket, global exposure, high efficiency, matured technology plaform and pool of experienced executives, there is huge potential for Amazon to become the market leader in the growing e-commerce space of India. Being ex-employees of Amazon, Sachin and Binny Bansals can realize the pressure of the threat. On the other hand, Flipkart is the market leader in books and electronic gadget business in online space. It has a Gross Merchandise value of approx. 1 billion USD. Myntra is a big name in online apparel industry. The total size of apparel industry in India is around 60 billion USD. Gross Merchandise value of Myntra is 200 million USD. The size of Myntra is half of the largest online fashion store, Shoppers Stop. So, if Flipkart and Myntra come together but still can work as independent entities, there will be a diverse range of product portfolio to compete with the likes of Amazon which has 15 million products across 24 categories in its 11 month presence in India. Also coming together and using mutual facilities will help increase the cost effectiveness. So they did.

Conclusion:

The analysts can feel the heat of the new battle among the online portals, probably even more so for the soaring temperature of hot summer. But the fact remains this is the first of its kind of acquisition our country has seen. Will this add fuel to the need for new growth strategy of Amazon India? Is Amazon looking for an acquisition in India? When asked, the executives did not deny it and tried to avoid the question. Now that triggers interesting next phase of the online battle.