Pictures for representation only

A Kerala Conundrum

What are the conditions that will enable the entrepreneur inside many of us to find expression? C Balagopal’s book, ‘Below the Radar – The untold story of how modern manufacturing grew by stealth in Kerala’, explores this question and provokes thought in the reader, writes G. Sabarinathan, PhD1  Well before Vasco da Gama set out for Kerala in 1498, this littoral strip of land in Southwestern India had been in touch with the Greeks and then the Romans and the Arabs, writes Manu Pillai, the young sensation among historians, in…

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Elective Story

An elective, in a B-school, resembles a living organism to the extent that it needs to adapt itself to the emerging environment if it has to survive. The number of mutations that his elective – New Enterprise Financing (NEF) – has been through, over 21 years, is an example of such adaptation, writes G. Sabarinathan1 A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the last edition of my elective, New Enterprise Financing2, that I had taught at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB).  The comments on the post and…

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Making universal healthcare affordable Through her venture, in the GS-NSRCEL 10K Women program, Dr Sumona Karjee Mishra brings self-monitoring devices in healthcare to all

Prantae Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a healthcare device and diagnostic startup from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. It was founded in June 2015. Winner of the CII-IPR award for the last four years, they pride themselves on their R&D capabilities and have a DSIR-recognized R&D facility.  Prantae has received grants from DBT-BIRAC, DST, MeitY, Tata Trust, Millennium Alliance, Grand Challenge Exploration-India for product development.  During the pandemic, Prantae developed three diagnostic solutions and two of them were validated by ICMR for SARS-CoV2 detection. Their team comprises 12 young engineers and two scientists. Prantae’s…

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The High and Lows of Indian business: Four stories unravelled G. Sabarinathan shares his takeaways from Nandini Vijayaraghavan’s recent book, ‘Unfinished Business’

I first heard about Nandini Vijayaraghavan a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine forwarded a short review of her translation of Shri Krishnamoorthy’s Tamil classic, Sivakamiyin Sabadam (Sivakami’s Vow).  Tamilians of my generation, and that of my parents, grew up waiting for serialized version of this and his other novels in the Tamil weekly, Kalki.   You can get a glimpse of Shri Krishnamoorthy’s life and work at  https://www.thehindu.com/books/how-kalki-penned-ponniyin-selvan-dipping-into-archival-books-in-an-old-steel-trunk/article65949508.ece and https://www.thehindu.com/books/kalki-krishnamurthy-his-life-and-times-more-than-just-a-biography/article65296015.ece Unfinished Business is no work of fiction, although as Vijayaraghavan notes in the book, quoting Aldous Huxley,…

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Cutting-edge Research by Faculty of IIM Bangalore

Faculty members at IIM Bangalore generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general. The knowledge generated by IIMB faculty appears in leading academic journals with high citation index and impact factor. Many textbooks and working papers are written on a regular basis. Research carried out by IIMB is used to augment new courses and executive education programmes. Journal Name: MIS Quarterly Vol. 40, Issue 2, 2016, Pg. 431-445 Journal Title: The Evolution of an ICT Platform-Enabled Ecosystem for Poverty Alleviation:…

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Is Airbnb Disrupting the Hotel Industry? Probably Not Yet

Prithwiraj MukherjeeAssistant Professor of MarketingIIM Bangalore Do you run a hotel, or a hotel booking website or service? In that case, you have probably heard about the sharing economy, and the impending threat of AirBnB, an online service that allows homeowners around the world to rent out their apartments to travellers for low rates. Other instances of the sharing economy are services that allow freelancers to earn money by becoming part-time cab drivers, grocery delivery personnel or do other jobs in their spare time. In fact, even the ubiquitous bitcoin,…

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Consultation, Transparency, Feedback, Flexibility, Cost-effective Measures and Deployment of Tech Are Key to a Robust Public Policy System: Dr. Subhash Chandra Khuntia

The Chief Secretary of Karnataka holds forth on skills necessary for public servants to create a strong and sustainable Public Policy system during the inauguration of the PGPPM batch of 2017-18 at IIMB 1 May 2017, Bengaluru: “In many a case, Public Policy is created as a knee-jerk reaction. The consequences of such policies are not thought out in advance and hence prove to be patchwork solutions. Actually, we need sustainable solutions, and hence should do proper analysis of policies, create robust systems and thereby prevent lot of disasters,” said Chief…

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Make Healthcare a Fundamental Right: Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal

IIMB hosts conclave on Affordable Healthcare on Feb 18, 2017. Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal delivers keynote; Dr. Sujatha Rao launches her book ‘Do We Care?’ At a conclave on affordable healthcare in India, hosted by IIMB and SustainabilityNext, doctors and researchers emphasize the crying need to build India’s health economy, making services available, accessible, affordable and acceptable 18 February 2017, Bengaluru: “India desperately needs a holistic care system that is universally accessible and effectively reduces out of pocket expenditure,” declared Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal, CEO, Manipal Health Enterprises. Dr. Ballal was…

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