Rural Rural Sab Karein, Rural Kare Na Koi…

– Rajkumar Jha, National Creative Director, Ogilvy Outreach

The above lines from Rajkumar Jha had the audience glued to their seats, all ears for what he was trying to get across.  One of the panelists at the Leadership Summit, Jha, along with his fellow panelists, had their respective topics by the horns – all set to take the Summit progressing for the entire day.

Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, got through with its annual event, the Leadership Summit 2013 in style.  Hosted at the Darbar Hal, City Palace, the proceedings began with the traditional lighting of the lamp.  This was followed with the welcome note and motivating words by the Maharana of the City of Lakes, Shri Arvind Singhji.  Director of IIM-U, Professor Janat Shah subsequently came in next to announce the proceedings and hand over the podium to the student comperes and panelists.

Consisting of the students of IIM-U, faculty and staff members of IIM-U, renowned and eminent personalities of Udaipur and the highly placed panelists, the Leadership Summit had Ashok Chawla, the Chairperson of the Competition Commission of India as the Key Note Speaker.  A highly distinguished Civil Servant, with four decades of experience at the Federal and State level along with international exposure in Multilateral Agencies, Chawla gave his 8 point speech, which set the ball rolling for the day.

The Summit, the board work of the students of IIM-U had three main themes as its platform – Focal Points Shift of Indian Economy from Urban to Rural; Supply Chain Redesign and Changing Roles and Styles of Leadership.

Understanding what the Rural market is all about, perceptions at either end of the consumption chain, importance of analyzing opportunities in the large market available in the rural segment was what the panelists discussed in the first of the three themes.  Panelists included Rajkumar Jha, O&M; Murli Krishna Parna, COO, Sagar Ratna Restaurants Pvt. Ltd; Dr. Nagarajan Sivaramakrishnan, MD, Mother Dairy and Piyush Srivastava, SME Consultant to Zee Business.  Jha gave a critical overview of the need to relate to rural so as to facilitate market augmentation and grow with the rural economy, whereas Nagarajan explained how the management of flow of funds to and from the rural economy are the key to success.

The need to Redesign Supply Chain Management Strategies and align SCM with Business Strategy was the second discussion topic, which had Hardeep Singh of Walmart; Ajoy Chawla, CSO, Titan Industries Ltd.; Sanjeev Singh, Head Supply Chain at Tata Steel – Wire Division as the panelists.

The panelists discussed the need to redesign the SCM strategy, the responsiveness of SCM to variability and volatility in the market environment, the demand of competitiveness and the much more aware customer.  Sanjeev Singh highlighted how social media is impacting customer service and driving the change in supply chain, while Ajoy Chawla talked about the new normal in SCM, placing emphasis on volatility, segmentation and human resource as compared to conventional supply chain systems, which stressed more on efficiency, productivity and inventory control.

Sandeep Sen Global CEO at Aegis Ltd; TCA Ranganathan, CMD, EXIM Bank; Sudhir Kumar Shetty, Group COO, UAE Exchange Centre and Ashish Bhatia, COO, Sistema Shyam, Rajasthan Circle were the panelists who discussed changing leadership styles very eloquently, sharing their experience and comparing various styles of leadership which facilitated the correct approach to materializing goals.  In the words of Shetty, for one to achieve the goals and realize dreams, it is very important to have a clear vision, execute a well-defined plan, implement the correct management direction and inculcate values in the entire exercise.

The 2^nd year PGP students, Anjan Goswami, Vinay Tejasvi and Vivek Pandey were the moderators for the three discussion panels and had planned the approach very well.

‘AARTH’, the Finance Magazine of IIM-U was unveiled at the culmination of the event.