Illuminar’ draws its roots from the Latin word ‘illumina’, which means to enlighten. The third edition of School of Business Management, NMIMS Mumbai’s annual business conclave was held on January 21. The idea behind the conception of annual congregation was simple — that a theoretical education alone does not complete MBA.
Illuminar 3.0 was divided into two halves — the finance conclave and the marketing conclave.
Finance conclave
With ‘Volcanomy: Expecting the Unexpected’ as the theme, the stage was set for discussions on testing times for businesses around the world.
Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist of CRISIL was the keynote speaker, and he shared his view from the economic research and consultancy segment perspective. He also highlighted the effects of OROP, seventh pay commission, Brexit, and demonetisation on the Indian and global economy.
Arun Thukral, MD and CEO of Axis Securities, discussed about financial solutions and portfolio management, even as Rishi Aswani, director of Duff & Phelps, shared his thoughts from corporate finance and valuation side. He also highlighted the importance of factoring in changes and happenings in valuing companies.
Amit Jain, managing director of Blackstone Private Equity, brought the private equity angle into the discussion, even as Anil Sarin, chief investment officer of Equity, Edelweiss Capital, talked from Investment Management segment’s perspective.
The panel discussion provided great insights to students, as experts from different facets of finance took to stage.
Marketing conclave
The theme of the marketing conclave was ‘Marketing Metamorphosis’ — exploring how marketing function has evolved over time.
The conclave in itself was composed of two primary formats of dialogue. First, there was a panel discussion that was moderated by Sujay Karnad, head sales at Mahindra Vishwas, and rural marketing facultyat SBM, NMIMS.
The panel discussion kicked off with a video about the infamous photographic film product company, Kodak. Aiming to throw some additional light on the theme “Changing the focus of the marketing lens”, Karnad’s opening lines summed up the mood — “Kodak filed for Bankruptcy in 2012”.
The panelists were Nupur Gurbaxani, AVP of International Business, GCPL; Manish, CEO and co-founder of Digiosmosis; Priyanka Chaturvedi, national spokesperson for the Indian National Congress, and Srijith, DGM of Mahindra & Mahindra.
The panellists reached a consensus on how though platforms may have changed and evolved, the core tenets of human behaviour have remained the same.
The second component was a series of short, power packed talks, ‘Capsules’, ranging between 15-25 minutes and aimed at delivering an effective dose of marketing in a short duration.
The first capsule was delivered by Govinda Raj Avasarala, Head of Mobility and IoT Product, Vodafone. He rightly concluded that the future was already here, just that it wasn't evenly distributed. Rajesh Sahadevan, Partner of Centre of Gravity threw some light on ‘Human Centred Strategy and on how to understand human behaviour, and its importance in the grand scheme of corporate strategy.
Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm, delivered the third capsule on the importance of digital disruption.
The best however, was reserved for the last when Anupam Dutta, MD and Chairman, Allied Blenders & Distillers, keynote speaker, delivered the final speech.