The 2009 edition of the tournament was the 3^rd edition of this futsal tournament. The past 2 editions have had their fair share of memorable moments. This year was no different with over 50 football enthusiasts participating in the tournament. The reason for this event generating so much buzz is ‘footer volley’. Every IIMCian worth his salt has experienced the game in one way or the other. Having either played it for hours or cheering and ‘sledging’ in the high intensity footer volley tournaments across the hostels. Hence the evolution of futsal on campus was a logical extension of this passion.

The 2009 edition of Joka Rimet Cup had 8 teams participating for the coveted crown. To make the event competitive, there was a restriction of the number of college football team players in every team. The venue for the event was the Basketball court under lights. It was an ideal setup since the court already had all the required markings and made my life (as the organizer and referee) easier. The red and green jerseys for the competing teams added ‘colour’ to the event. Not to mention, it helped in attracting greater attention by making every passer-by stop and watch the spectacle. The teams played their part by displaying some breathtaking skills on the court. Futsal is definitely one of those sports which test your team-skills. Five guys trying to build a game by passing the ball really fast on a small platform and all focussed on a single ‘Goal’. Well, that’s one management skills you won’t learn in the classroom.

The matches were played at a fast pace with the goals frequency increasing as the teams reached the serious end of the tournament. The semi-finalists were Joka Bonito, TeamWH, Fighters and my own team, Furious Reds. The Fighters literally had to fight it out to reach the semi-finals having eliminated another team on sudden death penalties as both the teams had equal number of points after league matches. Joka Bonito and Team WH played the Final with the former emerging as the Champions.  The winners had a potent strike force which lived up to its reputation by scoring the maximum number of goals scored by any team in the tournament.

The event had passion, elation as well as disappointment. On the whole it was an event that everyone enjoyed- the players as well as the spectators. Thanks to everyone involved for making it an event to cherish and special thanks to Rakesh Pai and Akhil Kulkarni for the help extended to organize the event and refereeing through the some high-tension matches.

For JokaTimes,

Sports Secretary Akshat Patil

Last weekend, a bunch of accomplished Entrepreneurs addressed an audience of budding Entrepreneurs of IIM Calcutta and other B-Schools in and around Kolkata. With a plethora of personal experiences and a great deal of valuable knowledge about dynamics of starting ones own business to offer, they ignited the young minds with a spirit of Entrepreneurship.

Ascent, the annual Entrepreneurship Summit conducted jointly by the Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) and the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI), IIM Calcutta, took place in great style over this past weekend, with leading venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, newspaper columnists and diplomats sharing the dias.

Ascent is an initiative to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship in the country, by bringing together entrepreneurs and young management students for a free exchange of views and ideas. The two day event was attended by participants from close to 10 colleges from this eastern part of the country. The event aimed at providing young managerial students an overview of the various challenges they would face in an entrepreneurial career, and to equip them with the knowledge, acumen and support they would require to start and successfully run their businesses.

The first day started off with a keynote address by Mr. Bipin K. Vohra, Chairman, NSHM Knowledge campus, and President of the Rs.3500 crore SPS Group. Mr. Vohra, in an inspirational speech, discussed how he started his business from scratch, the challenges he faced on the way, and the lessons he learnt.

In the next session, Mr. Hari Bala, CEO of OnTrack Systems, held an interactive session that introduced the audience to Roger Hamilton’s Wealth Dynamics – a profiling system that assesses one’s personality. The most engaging part of his talk was when he asked a couple of people to volunteer and identified their wealth profiles and suggested areas they would be well suited for.  One could be from the 8 wealth profiles: The creator, Star, Supporter, Deal Maker, Trader, Accumulator, Lord and Mechanic, belonging to a particular profile deeply influences the way one works, and creates wealth. He suggested that the best way to be successful is to partner with people who have a complimentary wealth profile. Following this, a sense of introspection took over the audience.

Mr. Satya Prabhakar, CEO of Sulekha.com, easily the most engaging and charismatic speaker of the day, held an enthralling session about his learnings from running a venture as big as Sulekha. In his inimitable style, through a fun presentation made up entirely of what he called “The ‘Q’s,’Cs’ and ‘Vs’” (Quotes, Cartoons and Videos for the uninitiated), he stressed on the essential attitudes required to be a successful entrepreneur and manager. His delightful sense of humour and witty remarks had the audience smiling throughout the session.

One of the quotes that caught our fancy was:  “Entrepreneurship is like wooing a gorgeous girl. You need whole-hearted desire, complete commitment, unflagging perseverance, undivided attention and undying enthusiasm. Oh, you also need some moxie, chutzpah, daring and sacrifice. She may still not relent. But sometimes, with a bit of luck, she will, and that’s payday, buddy!”

He also spoke about the new ad campaign of Sulekha.com and enlightened the audience about the philosophy on which the brand is built.

The post-lunch session by Her Excellency, Beth Payne, U.S. Counsel General in Kolkata was focused on the importance of entrepreneurs in an economy, and on entrepreneurial and educational opportunities in the United States of America. She highlighted how keen she is to facilitate investments in India.

The final session for the day was by Ms. Swati Gautam, an impressive lady and a leading custom lingerie maker in Kolkata. In a candid and simple manner, she spoke about her journey as a businesswoman, and the challenges and rewards of being a woman entrepreneur.

The second day of Ascent began with a session by the famed Mr. Amitava Ghose on “How to make effective business plans”. A strategy and corporate finance specialist with twenty years of experience in corporate finance and international banking, he focused mainly on how to pitch for venture capital. The next session was by Rudra Kumar Roy, founder and Senior Product Manager at iViZ Techno Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which was awarded Business Today’s ‘Hottest Startup 2008’ title.  Drawing from his experiences in winning business plan competitions across business schools in India and venture capital for iViz Techno Solutions, he gave an enlightening presentation titled ‘The Art of B-plans’.

Post-lunch session of Day 2 saw the results for the much awaited and intensely contested case-study and B-plan competitions being announced. The Winners of the case study competition were declared from among 37 entries.

1st: Abhishek Chopra,

2nd: Harshvardhan Ketkar

3rd (Joint): Bhaskar Kashyap; Alpesh Chaddha; Sumit Chandra.

Winners of the business idea competition were:

First: Shreya Ginoria,

Second: Smita Singh & Shweta Poddar

Third(joint): Akshay Grover and Shruti Agrawal; Akshay Tapase.

The two esteemed guests then gave individual feedback to each of the participating teams of the B-Plan competition.

Mr. Suneet Singh Bhatia, Core member of E-Cell and one of the organizers of the event, said, “We’re very happy with the success of the event and the enthusiasm and interest shown by the participants. Most importantly, we value the opportunity we had to interact with some great entrepreneurs and leaders, and to hear their views on a range of topics”. Carrying a similar sentiment, Mr. Bhupesh Pangti, Core member of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, commented “With the enthusiasm levels seen in these two days, we believe that we have achieved our objective of benefiting the student body in IIMC and beyond”.

Mr. Manish Motwani, President of E-Cell said, “We look forward to organizing more such events for the students which can give them a head start in realizing their dreams as an entrepreneur. We will also bring in i2i soon to present students with further opportunity”. As a concluding remark, Mr. Arjun Khurana, President of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, added “We believe that with such kind of events, even if one ‘sleeping tiger’ of IIMC wakes up to the entrepreneurial success awaiting him, our mission is accomplished. We have started this year with a spark in Ascent, and will follow it up with a wildfire in E-Summit 2009”.

In all, the two days proved to be really inspiring and a huge value-addition for all the participants and organizers. As they often say in the world of entrepreneurship:

Let’s keep the fire burning!

With Contributions From,

Samyukktha, Spandana & Tanvi

Yellow halogens flooded the area as the crowds cheered the arriving teams into the arena. Before you go off wondering which movie I am describing this scene I would like to clarify that this is not from any movie (from amongst the ones I know off) , ‘tis merely but a scene of the opening night of the OH Footer tournament, the patented sport of IIM Calcutta.

Each year, teams representing each level of all the guys’ wings take part for the coveted title of OH Footer champions. This year with a new batch of PGP1s adorning the scene, the tournament opened to a spectacular start. Lined up on the first day were the reigning champions H2 Top (aka MOT), with their ace player Nakul Singh Pangtey leading the attack with his precision high speed serves and Naresh Krishnaswamy with his killer headers from the net. Up against them were MOKK the team from H4 Bot comprising exclusively of PGP1s. The champions showed the stuff they were made of when the steam rolled their way through the first set winning 15-5.

The next set saw an initial fightback from MOKK, but alas it was not to be their day, as Nakul Pangtey had other plans lined up for them. Serving unreturnable serves he smashed through 10 serves in a row before MOKK could break the flow! But unfortunately they could not hold on to their serves and once MOT got the serve back they wrapped up the match in two sets. The scoreline read 15-5,15-5 a rather unfortunate result for MOKK but the scoreline belied the great performance by some members of MOKK, like the captain Gregory and Zubin.

The next match was that of KBS the team from H4 Mid, runners up last year take on the new entrants NOH, the kichidi put together from from Tata Hall & VLMP hostels. The first set was a blink and miss it affair with KBS going for a 5 member 2-3 attack as opposed to NOH’s 3-3 attack. NOH gave away 8 points before registering themselves on the scorecard, with team communication proving a big problem. First time captain Nikhil was not able to get his coordinations strategies right and NOH spent most of the time looking at each other after the ball had landed rather than the ball itself. KBS finished the match in less than 20 mins in an extremely professional manner leaving team NOH flabbergasted with the scoreline reading 15-2,15-1.

It is at this point that your truly remembered that he had a class the next day and rushed to dive into his bed. Thus ended my opening night, by no means the end, of the OH Footer Championships, the flagship event of Ramanujan Hostel.

Amrutanshu Mishra

Update: Underworld aka H2-Bot won their first match against HPaxx (H3 Bot) with a convincing scoreline of 15-5, 15-8. In the surprise of the day, MoKK learnt from their defeat earlier in the day to stun (a decidedly weakened) Chandini Bar (H3-Mid) with a scoreline of 15-12, 15-1! Captain Gregory, Keshav and Gunjan were inspirational as the team of PGP1s took last year’s semifinalists to cleaners. Chandini Bar captain Justin promised an improved showing in the next game… against smiling assassin Pangtey’s MOT.

Update2: As Rain Gods put paid to hopes of running a tournament on schedule, the New Hostel started its own footer Tournament, Flash Gordon, yesterday. We at JokaTimes have a source extremely close on the hand and will bring you updates from both footer tournaments as they progress. Time to leather some leather!

Following the announcement, a new revised list has been now put up on the official website. Joka Times understands that the new list is final and binding.

The students whose offers have now been marked “hold” are understood to be on a priority list, above the waitlisted candidates. These candidates are expected to get a ranking order from the institute in due course of time.

The candidates who were initially waitlisted will probably be considered for admission only after the on-hold candidates.

We at Joka Times wish the students all the best and look forward to interacting with them at Joka.

Link For New PGDM Admissions List: http://www.iimcal.ac.in/iimcatstat/dmindex.asp

Link For New PGDCM Admissions List: http://www.iimcal.ac.in/iimcatstat/cmindex.asp

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Update: The Admissions Office has confirmed that the students put on “hold” will form a priority list – a sort of waitlist above the initially declared waitlist. The students on “hold” can call the institute Admissions Office from 13-04-2009, Monday, 4:00 P.M. to find out the exact numbering on the priority list.

Speaking to Joka Times, Paul Savio, external relations secretary of IIM Calcutta asked the students on the priority list to get in touch with the strong Mentorship Programme in case of any queries or anxieties. The matter of the ordering within the priority list would get cleared by Monday, he said.

Joka Times urges the students to use the mentorship@email.iimcal.ac.in or contact their mentors directly to get specific doubts or queries answered. Further updates will be kept posted here at Joka Times as we countdown to the formation of a new batch at IIM Calcutta.

Admissions Office Contact Details: http://www.iimcal.ac.in/admissions/cac.asp

Team Joka Times

214 students were honoured with Post Graduate Diploma in Management, an equivalent of MBA and the flagship title from IIMC. 54 students were honoured with Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Aided Management, also an equivalent of MBA and the other flagship title of IIMC. 7 students were honoured the title of Fellow in Management, an equivalent of PhD. Apart from these, 37 students were honoured with Post Graduate Diploma in Management for Executives, the one year fast track course for company Executives. 29 students were honoured with Post Graduate Diploma in Management for Executives for Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing.

Placed in the institute honour roll for their excellent performance in academics (PGDM) were Natarajan Shankar, Mehul Agarwal, Prasoon Saurabh Jain, R Anand, Lad Prasad Bhaskar and Souvik Chakraborty. Arnab Ray and Rakesh T P were placed in the honour roll for PGDCM. Piyush Singhi received the award for Best Finance Student. Rahul Shanu received the award for Excellence in Marketing. Indibar Mondal received the Bengal Chamber of Commerce award in the area of Human Resource Management. In Extra Academics, K Anantha Krishna received the B.S. Dua Memorial Prize for Organizational Ability. Harsh Vardhan Chhaparia received the Bharat Chamber of Commerce Medal for the most balanced and progressive outlook to management problems. Swetha Vigraham received the Pawan Tyagi prize for the best sportsperson of the year 2008. Atul Mathur received the Dr. B.C.Roy memorial prize for the most outstanding contribution to campus life in the year 2008.

As the Chairman, Board of Governors declared the convocation closed after a three hour ceremony, yet another batch of students became a part of the illustrious alumni of the institute. The Chairman, PGP, in his closing address expressed confidence in the fact that these students would further enhance the brand of the institute. We, the present students of IIM Calcutta wish the passing out batch a life full of joy, happiness and success.

Rahul Dasgupta
PGP Students’ Representative