“We were just having fun, little did we realize that we were making memories”- Anonymous.
It was a beautiful afternoon at the hilltop campus of SIBM and after having a heavy lunch, I was in no mood of attending a three hour lecture! But little did I know that the next three hours would possibly yield one of the best experience of my life at this B school so far! It was the Operations Management class and the lecture was to be delivered by one of the oldest,wisest and the most humble faculty at campus. As the class started , the initial anticipation of the class running on presentation slides proved to be true. Slide number five it was, as far as I remember( I was bored until then, so had taken an “interesting” task to count how many slides are left).
“How can you make a winning product” - the slide read in big sized font. The idea immediately triggered a lot of products already in my wandering mind-stylish branded clothes, iphones,and what not! The professor, without revealing anything about the slide further, divided us into teams of ten people. Before I could comprehend what was impending,the wise and aged Professor, interestingly, took out a torch from his bag- a mini torch. It was black, worked on thin pencil shaped batteries, had a simple on-off switch and of course, lens at the front. The professor, with a smile on his face said, “Here you go son, make this torch a winning product! You have got five minutes and make sure that you don’t add too many features to it or overprice it!”.
It took us(my team) a while to really make out a winner USP of a simple torch! But what resulted next was the fun part- Brainstorming began and in no time we started laughing out loud on the craziest ideas that were coming up- “Hey! Let’s make it a disco light torch!”- suggested one of my peers. “No, let’s add some USB charging capability to it”-suggested another. “Let’s add pepper or red chilly powder spray to it!” - another suggested and we all started laughing. I never knew that group activity would turn out to be such fun amid serious evaluations! So then someone suggested to add the spray powder at the other end of the torch.”So you say that if someone tries to attack you, you spray the powder from the other end but the light of the torch falls straight onto your eyes!”-I said. Then all burst out laughing again. Where we were trying to develop the product that saves us, we did not consider that the light of the torch might flash on our face instead!
Finally, we came up to the idea of a torch that has a recyclable powder spray box, and while the spray works,the torch light is switched off for that moment to help the victim escape. Everyone liked our presentation and we were glad that we could make an ordinary torch a winner product! Just when you would be wondering if we have a product name or not, yes! We did have! Our modified, winner torch was called the “Mirchi Torch”!
I hope someday such a product goes live and it keeps reminding me of that wonderful afternoon Operations Management Class at SIBM!
Which ABG Company I would like to work for-
“Fashion needs glamour, provocation and broken taboos” - Carine Roitfeld.
These lines describe my love for fashion since childhood and hence, to turn that into a career perspective cannot just get better! I still remember going to Pantaloons, with the excitement of pre Durga Puja shopping,having grown up at Kolkata. This emotional connect with the idea of looking good,being expressive as well as loving pantaloons makes ADITYA BIRLA FASHION AND RETAIL my favourite choice to work for, without doubt!
The HR 2020 vision, the Aditya Birla Group Leadership Program and the Group HR Program entices me as an Aspiring HR!
SHANTANU CHAKRABORTY,
HR, SIBM PUNE