Bloggers List - ISB@2007

Class of 2007

Abhishek Jain
Alok Jain
Anuradha Sunku
Archana Rao
Arun Dhar
Chiranth Chanappa
Deepak Mittal
Disha Rustogi
Kapil Mantri
Karthik Bharathy
Kiran Cavale
Kishore Krishna
Krishnan Ramaswami
Kumar Rajendran
Mahesh Shenoy
Manu Karan
Nikhil Kamma
Nikhil Kaushik
Piyush Kheria
Pratima Jayaram
Priyanka Rath
Rishik Ghosh
Rujuta
Sabyasachi Mohanty
Santosh BS
Satish Udayagiri
Sharad Mittal
Shivangi Tiwari
Sowmya Velayudham
Sukalp Sharma
Sumit Poddar
Sundeep Tibrewal
Swapnil Deopurkar
Swapnil Nadkar
Venkat Raman
Vinay Pandey
Vithal Donakonda
Yashovardhan Gupta


And of-course yours truly.

This has been taken from Ram's blog

One more crash !! Support at 10250 still intact

Although the sensex crashed today, it racovered in the afternoon to close above the support level of 10250. That should, ideally hold. If it does not then there may be some more pain and bloodshed left in the market.

Dynamics of Learning

Finally figured out how to get these dynamic pictures in the header. Had tried that on my previous site a couple of months back, but had not succeeded. It may have been due to the lack of effort on my part. But today I was determined to get it right and finally, it seemed so easy and elegant.

This seems to be a pattern in my life. (at-least academically) It seems, I only get things right or get a deeper understanding if I re-read a second time. Maybe I work things out in my sleep. Talk about tapping the latent power of the mind.


Anyways, the mid term exams (here at ISB) were on last Friday. So after a couple of days of partying and catching up on sleep, people are back in full swing to studying. There weren't too many takers for the soap box presentation for two posts of directors for student body. Tomorrow promises to be more exciting with the position of PlaCom director at stake. There is one clear favourite, but maybe some black horse can win the race at the last minute. Would take some running on his or her part though.

With that, I think its time to go back to the assignments.

PS: If you like the header/title hack, you can find it here and here

Reservations: Food for though !

Food for thought

Would you want someone to vote operate on you or your loved ones, after knowing that they made it to medical school because they belonged to a special category of people and not on merit?

Would you trust an airline that got its planes designed by some one who made it there because of similar reasons a above?

Would you send someone to fight for you and trust them to defend you when he or she came from some special quota and not on the ability to defend you?

You dont get someone to represent you at the olympics, just because he came from a special group and is not our best athelete?

Hell, you dont have reservation in the Indian Cricket team. Would you let someone change that?

Do you still believe in legislation for quotas in the private industry or that matter government jobs?

Would you vote for XYZ if he carried on the chant for having quotas?

What do you want to do

Sensex Support Levels

Markets closed down more than 10 percent for the week.

Sensex - has support at 10750 levels
below this there is support only at 10250.


After mid-terms, its time again to party at ISB.

Micro Finance Institutes: The lesser evil?

A recent probe into the functioning of MFI in Andhra as recommended that MFI's should fix the upper limit of interest chargeable at 12 percent and the repayment period should be at least monthly and not weekly as practiced by some. The probe has also highlighted the human rights violations by some MFIs in collecting payments, which should clearly be stopped.

While both of these steps are desirable, the basic premise of MFIs should be social impact but with a go to market model. Because, some of the borrowers are not able to repay the money i.e. the NPA are large the MFIs have to charge a higher rate of interest from the people they lend to. The model is to give out huge number of small loans (which involves costs) to people who are in need and sometimes giving loans without guarantee(which a person may not be able to provide even though he may have intentions to pay back the loan) .

Consider a firm like Citi Financial which operates in towns and cities and lends small personal loans at 18 to 30 percent pa. On the other hand the loans charged by local money lenders in small villages can even go up to 2000-3000 % PA. With high default rate it would be difficult for these MFIs to make a real impact as they would be forced to lend only to people with a credit history and or resources to offer as collateral. So while some might suffer under the high interest rates of these MFIs majority would benefit because they clearly are a lesser evil as compared to the local money lenders(Though not all are really as bad)

Mean while, at ISB the class economist contest has been unveiled. One of the groups has got Micro Finance as the discussion topic. Sadly our group did not get that. Anyways hope to apply some classroom learning to real life topics.

Assignments- at ISB

We got our first dose of assignments at ISB. Amongst all the parties happening, majority of the people are also quite serious about doing their assignments. Others rely on the rest of the group mates (All of us have been divided into study groups of 6 each) to get them through.

The level of competition forces (rather psyches you into studying more) I have surprised my self at the amount of study hours, I have put in, during the last week. I never thought that I had it in me to do so(Although I have, more than had the share of the parties as well). I wish, I had studied a bit more during my graduation(or under grad, depending on where you live). Anyways, I am happy that I aced the first quiz (Finance). I just submitted it and scored 78/78. I am sure most others will, but that does not take away any shine from my score.

I hope the maxim.. "Well begin, is half done" , would hold true in my case as well. Although, I am not really gunning for the 'D' list or an MC job, starting well is always a good feeling.

Anyways, have two more assignments to complete during the week, and fourth prof has just posted some material for practise.

Chao, gotta study.. Oh there is another party at SV-2 tonite (Student village- 2) ... Any takes on where I mite be tonite....

Bloggers at ISB

I would like to blog more often but do not do it because of the following reasons.

1. I am lazy.
2. Too little time.
3. I would like to and have some thoughts that I want to put down but do not do so because either I do not want to share them or may not think that it adds value to any reader in any particular way. Cause, whether you agree or not you do at times want to be read but sometime you are split right in the middle.

The blogs that I want to go back and read do not necessarily have the most valid point but also articulate them really very well. So hopefully when I am thinking aloud, rather in this case I am just writing what I am thinking, I would make some sense and not just ramble incoherently.

That said, quite a few people here at ISB are frequent bloggers. A couple of them really write well. Others, like me .. Well I'd just leave that to the reader.