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Trip to IIM Ahmedabad

Last weekend I made a trip to my alma mater – IIM Ahmedabad. Prof. Arvind Sahay who teaches Marketing and is the Chairman of the PGP X program, invited all the entrepreneurs from my batch (and his). Ten entrepreneurs from PGP 89 came to campus and participated in various classes, panel discussions and presentations. It was great fun. With hugely successful entrepreneurs like Sanjeev Bikhchandani (naukri.com), R. Subramanian (Subhikhsa) and Rahul Bhasin (Barings Pvt. Equity) in the class, the students got a massive dose of ‘from the horse’s mouth’. More »

Tags: Business, Education, India

My Government School

I grew up in a small town called Hisar in Haryana. My father was a Professor at Haryana Agricultural University and I did most of my schooling at Campus School. As the name suggests, the school was meant for the children of University staff.

I left Hisar after my 10th boards. On trips back to Hisar to see family I would drop in for a chat with my school teachers. Then my family left Hisar and I never went back until recently the internet brought some of my old school mates together. On this trip to India I went back to Hisar and to Campus School after more than 20 years. It was quite a trip down memory lane. More »

Tags: Education, India

Indian-Americans and the Spelling Bee conundrum

In the US there is a closely watched annual contest for school kids called the Spelling Bee. Over the years, whenever I have seen the results of a Spelling Bee contest I have always noticed that there were quite a few Indian kids in the final rounds. It seems like other people have also noticed this.

One of my favourite programs on TV is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. The program covers current affairs and manages to be both funny and incisive. A few weeks back when President Bush was in India the show covered his trip. Here is a clip from one of those shows (you will need a broadband connection). On the same show there was another segment where Stewart, talking about the US-India nuclear deal, says, "We’ll help India build nuclear reactors if their children stop crushing us in Spelling Bees." He then goes on attribute Indian kids’ spelling prowess to their long names. Sivaramabalamuralikrishnan Aghilandanayagaswami Iyenggar anyone?

I decided to investigate this further. I looked at the top 10 contestants in the Spelling Bee contest from 2001 to 2005. Since the contest has elimination rounds, I had to take more than 10 contestants when they were tied for positions. Of the  59 kids, including repeat participants, who made it to the final rounds in these  years, 12 had Indian names. Or roughly 20%.

So I then went to Wikipedia and looked at their entry on Indian-Americans. According to Wikipedia, there are 2.4 million Indian-Americans in the US, or just 0.8% of the population of the United States. Well that doesn’t compute, I thought. I then normalized for the college educated section of the population. According to the US Census 28% of the US adult population has a college degree. According to the same Wikipedia entry 64% of the Indian-American population is college educated. So college educated Indians are 1.8% of the total college educated population in the US. That is still a far cry from 20%. Clearly demographics don’t even begin to explain the Spelling Bee conundrum.

There are some other reasons that could explain this difference but in my opinion don’t do it adequately. The college educated Indian immigrant population is not a random sample from the college educated population of India. They represent the cream of the crop. I would have said ‘immigrant vigour’ was another contributing factor, but then America is a land of immigrants, so that doesn’t count.

How do you explain this mystery? Do Indian genes or the Indian family environment predispose us to be good at rule-based logical tasks (spelling bee contests are all about spelling rules and not about memorizing wayward English word spellings)? Does that explain the success of the Indian computer programmer as well?

I can’t say that I know the answers to these questions. All I know is that I would like Spelling Bee to be included as an Olympic sport. It would be nice to get a gold medal for a change.

Tags: Culture, Education, India

Back to school

I am on a trip to India. We just closed our funding. Now the action in India is going to be thick as we build our team in Mumbai. The quality of people we hire is going to be the single most important determinant of our success. And so the opportunity to go talk to students at the premier business school in the country was almost impossible to turn down.

One of us was invited to go talk to a forum at IIM Ahmedabad that comprises of students interested in startups. Either doing a startup or joining one. Since I was in Mumbai and this was over the weekend, I decided to go as well. I hadn’t been there for over 10 years (I graduated in 1989) and needed just an excuse to visit the alma mater.

I went there with some trepidation. IIM A is not known to produce your entrepreneurial sort. Most students have little or no work experience, and perhaps rightly so, seek to get some. And there are all kinds obscenely high-paying jobs in India and abroad in investment banking, management consulting and other spheres that are just waiting to be landed.

I was pleasantly surprised by the turn-out. There were about 40 students from both PGP I and II (first year and second year). They were engaged and had good questions. In the break I learnt that many of them were choosing not to take up jobs but instead start a new venture immediately. I thought that was just great.

I also caught up with Prof. Arvind Sahay who teaches Marketing at IIM A. Arvind and I were in the same graduating class from IIM A. Since then he had done a Ph.D from UT Austin and had taught for a while at London Business School. Next stop - Ahmedabad. It seems many Indians abroad who are doing well in academia are heading back to quality institutions like IIM A. Arvind reeled off an impressive list of recent hires. This is great news. The 1990s weren’t the most exciting times for IIM A. Now a new generation of faculty is injecting much needed change. There are new courses, new programs (like the PGP Ex on the lines of ISB) and a lot of investment in the right things. The new campus is still not done but it looks quite impressive. Different architectural theme from the old campus, but retains some of the old flavour.

It felt good to go down memory lane a bit too. For those in the know, the magic of Louis Kahn Plaza at night does not diminish with time.

Tags: Education