Passline Business Magazine Jan-2013

PASSLINE Jan 31 - Feb 28, 2013

2COVER STORY

PASSLINEJan 31 - Feb 28, 2013

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From the Editor

Editor & Publisher

Varghese Paul

ChennaiAugustine JosephPh: 09381000534

Bangalore

Jayachandran0988699331

Manager-MarketingSajan K09895344485

Keethara Publications Pvt Ltd38/125 1st Floor, Narakathara Road, Kochi-682 035, Kerala, India.Phone : +91 484 4027002Editorial : +91 484 3043572Marketing : +91 484 4010075 484 3043325

Marketing Office:G-238, K C Joseph Road, Panampilly Nagar,Kochi-682 036Marketing : +91 484 4010075e-mail : [email protected]

Varghese Paul

The never-quenching thirst

There is a reason for choosing gold as the topic of this column. I came across an article which appeared in a daily immediately after the increase

in import duty of the metal from 4% to 6% recently. It is amusing to know that despite the price rise during the last fiscal, India still remains the largest im-porter of gold to the tune of 800 tonnes worth $60 billion in value, compared to $40 billion a year ago, thanks to the slowdown in the economy and the dearth of alternative investment options. Thus gold contributed to the coun-try’s import bill together with crude imports which widened the trade deficit to a notable high of 5.4% of the GDP as of September 2012.

This is the national-level or macro-level scenario of the precious metal in general. It is also interesting to know how Kerala, our small state with a small population, fares in the consumption of the metal. I would request the readers of this column to recollect the speech of our Prime Minister during his visit to the state in September last year. He appealed to the people of Kerala to shed the passion for gold and urged them to convert it into cash for the nation’s growth. What prompted Dr Manmohan Singh to make the appeal is convincing for reasons given below.

Among all Indian states Kerala is the largest consumer of gold and the peo-ple of the state are also the largest users of ornaments made of the glitter-ing metal. Apart from these firsts to its credit, what is astounding is that five Kerala-based jewellery brands are doing the largest volume of business in the global jewellery market. Why are Keralites so passionate about the metal?

The reason for the demand for gold is the high per capita income of Keralites who opt for an easy investment without many hassles. Moreover, the flow of foreign money to Kerala homes enables it to make more investments. And the ideal investment option is gold, gold alone. Other investments involve a lot of intricacies and risks. Gold has had its own charm from time immemorial. Traditionally all our royal families are enamoured of amassing the yellow met-al which determines their status. It could also be easily converted into liquid form. Recently we saw the unearthing of the huge collections of gold from the Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple, Thiruvananthapuram, which the Travancore Rajas had accumulated as inherited assets of the temple and which they re-sented to part with. So the desire for possession of gold by people is not a new kind of affinity whatever community they belong to. The lure of gold is in their blood because it is a passion and fashion for them to showcase it.

The Government’s worry is that the large trade deficit gap will create eco-nomic instability as India is a big importer of petroleum products too. Hence the increase in the import duty on gold. But the irony is that despite the im-port duty increase and the Prime Minister’s appeal, the thirst for this precious metal will never be quenched as it is assimilated into Keralites’ blood.


4 IN BOX

N E W S B U S T E R S

Air Kerala no solutionYour editorial (Dec 31-Jan 31, 2013) succinctly brings to focus real

issues concerning Indians working abroad, whose remittances constitute the single largest steadily rising source of foreign exchange inflow which, according to World Bank estimates, exceeded $70 billion in 2012, the highest in the world. Considering that this huge inflow of foreign exchange comes to our country unconditionally, Indians working abroad deserve the red carpet treatment when they arrive for their brief stay or vacation in India. Sadly, these Indians are denied even the basic courtesy of enjoying a hassle-free air travel to and from India and a fair treatment by officials at our airports.

Air India, which dominates the India-Gulf sector, treats passengers in this sector as cash cows while the airline incurs heavy losses in other sectors where passengers are wooed and pampered. The solution to this problem is not Air Kerala. What is needed is to liberally open the India-Gulf sector to global airlines having large fleets of aircraft.

Indians working abroad and sending remittances regularly must be given privilege cards free of cost that must entitle them to superior quality of facilities at Indian airports as they are commercially important persons, as important as our breed of VIPs.

The other set of global Indians residing abroad and who reach out to global investment destinations are a class apart—a pampered lot—for whom the Union Government provides several schemes for profit-maxi-mizing and tax-dodging avenues. These Indians must not be the focus of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

K V A Iyer, Kochi

Mediocre NRKsFor Kerala, NRKs are a dime a dozen. But those who come in the limelight are

only a fistful. If we profile these, they may be all Padma title-holders. Examples are M A Yusuffali, P Mohammed Ali, P N C Menon, C K Menon, Ravi Pillai, Azad Moopen etc. Still there are a lot who are languishing in the background reluctant to jump into the bandwagon of the topnotches who obscure them by their mega-image.

There is need for an earnest attempt by the rulers and the media to usher them into the front row in order to tap the po-tential of the shying stalwarts. I think the aspiring NRKs should come out on their own to create a row of their own and rally to the hotspot of activities.

I find periodicals like PASSLINE spar-ing a lot of time and space to project the enterprising entrepreneurs who are in the upper strata in making investments in Ker-ala. The second-rung entrepreneurs may also try their tryst with destiny on their own or PASSLINE may do an earnest attempt to bring them into the limelight.

Prince Charles, Dubai

Best charity worker

Boby Chemmanur, Chairman and Managing Director of the Chemmanur International Group, hogged the me-

dia limelight recently when Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Liv-ing Foundation, presented the best charity worker award to the group at the Anandolsavom held at Aluva.

The group has launched an array of charity programmes. These initiatives include financial aid to women entrepreneurs, free wheelchairs for physically challenged people, financial sup-port for students from financially backward families, distribution of livestock to poor families to support self-employment, pen-sion scheme for traditional goldsmiths and ambulance service for the poor in Kannur district, among others.

In addition, the group announced the extension of its free community-wedding programme to Kannur district. It also said that nearly 5,000 employees of Chemmanur International have donated organs.

Moreover, Boby received rave reviews when the Argentine football legend Diego Maradona flagged off the low-cost heli-copter service, launched by Chemmanur International Jewel-lers, at a gala function in Kannur. State Home Minister Thiru-vanchoor Radhakrishnan was the first traveller in this chopper service named Boby Chemma-nur Airlines, which plans to connect main business and pilgrim centres inside and outside Kerala.

Maradona also in-augurated the Kannur showroom of Chem-manur International Jewellers as well as the 101st branch of Chem-manur Gold Loan

Joy A

lukk

a

Joyalukkas arrays four film starsCine artistes from four neighbouring tin-

sel towns come under one `glittering umbrella’. The umbrella is spread by jewellery mogul Joyalukkas. The luminaries who come together as ambassadors for the yellow metal are Suresh Gopi from Mollywood, Madhavan from Kollywood, R Sudeep from Sandalwood

and Allu Arjun from Tollywood. The brand ambassadors have signed agreements with the gold retail chain to launch extensive ad-

vertisement campaigns for Joyalukkas which

is planning to add another 60 showrooms to its chain in India in the next three years.

The new drive coin-

cides with the jewellery retail chain’s 10th an-niversary in India which is simultaneously cele-brating its 25th anniversary in the Middle East.

“We are celebrating our 10th anniversary in India and now our global credentials are well established and understood by the jewellery-buying public here. We feel it’s time to con-nect with them more strongly with our new mantra, ‘Be Global, Touch Local’. For this we have signed up four regional superstars who complement our brand positioning and have very strong following within select regions of

India,” says Joy Alukka, Chairman and Manag-ing Director, Joyalukkas Group.

Joyalukkas has planned an extensive ad-vertising campaign featuring each of the brand ambassadors, which will commence across the regions shortly. R Madhavan, who has been as-sociated with the jewellery retail chain for more than three years now, says, “I believe I am a very integral part of the Joyalukkas family now and it’s been my most favourite endorsement to date. The brand stands for trust, integrity, fashion and innovation, which are the values I am thrilled to be associated with.”

Says Suresh Gopi: “This is the first time I am endorsing a brand and I agreed to be a part of the Joyalukkas family only because I admire and respect Mr Joy Alukka and his phenom-enal success inspires me. Brand Joyalukkas is already well established among jewellery lov-ers and I hope my association with it will help it to bond with its customers even more and attract more customers to its showrooms.”

Kannada superstar Sudeep says: “This is a first for me too: I have never endorsed a brand before. I feel it is a privilege to start with a brand of Joyalukkas’ stature and renown. Joy-alukkas is a global brand with fantastic values and I hope my association with it will help it to grow bigger and stronger.”

Telegu heartthrob Allu Arjun has this to say: “It’s exciting to be a part of a globally renowned jewellery chain. Joyalukkas is an exciting brand, which understands jewellery and jewel-lery-loving customers the best. Its breathtaking designs and collections with the brand value proposition are a great combination I am proud to endorse.”


5

Passline News Service

Just 10 km from Thrissur city, the cultural capital of Kera-la, is another Mecca many people find as fanciful and

valuable. It is a mecca for students and their teachers and parents and com-prises a Public School, a College of

Engineering, a

Training College (BEd College) and a College of Architecture.

Chittilappilly in Adat Grama Panchayat, where the campus of the

institutions is located, lies on the Thris-sur-Guruvayur route, and is away from the din and bustle of the city but close to modern facilities. Lying at the foot of Vilangan Hills, Chittilappilly and the ideal campus, spread on 40 acres of land, are easily accessible by all modes of transport. Some world-famous pil-grim centres are situated around the

place—the Guruvayur Sree Krishna Temple, Malik-Bin-Dinar (Cheraman Masjid) and Lourdes Cathedral. The Thrissur-Guruvayur highway is only 2 km away.

“Until two decades ago many peo-ple had not heard about the place,” says Mr K P Abdul Hameed, President of the Board of Directors of Ideal Edu-cational Society (IES), which runs the institutions. “Now people think it is the centre of some of the best educational institutions in the state,” Mr Hameed adds.

Around 3,500 students flock to the institutions’ campus on weekdays (the

strength of the Public School alone is about 2,500)

not just to learn

the three R’s but to pursue postgradu-ate studies in engineering too. “It is a place offering education ‘from KG to PG’ ”, as Mr K M Aboobacker, General Secretary, IES, says.

Dr D Sugatha Kumar, Principal of the Training College, reveals to a visiting PASSLINE team, in the presence of Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker, who lis-

ten to him with justifiable pride on their faces, a very interesting episode. “A young woman came to our campus re-cently with certificates and other docu-ments. She had come to join the En-gineering College as a junior lecturer.

At IES institutions talent hunting and encouragement can be seen from the very primary section. The milieu created there is conducive to blooming and developing the students’ individual talents. The insti-tutions also try to nurture a strong teach-er-student relationship. Activity-oriented and student-centred learning is given prominence. Students, even of KG class-es, involve themselves actively in assem-bly and various other programmes.


5


6

To the wonder and surprise of everybody present in the Principal’s room, she turned out to

be one who had studied right from Lower KG to BTech in our institutions and was also our ‘Kalathilakam’, Dona Simon!”

“This is possible perhaps only in our institutions. With the starting of the College of Engineering on the same campus, a ward admitted to the LKG class can come out as a graduate engineer at the age of 22, or as a specialized engineer with a MTech degree at the age of 24, from our institutions,” chirp in Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker, warmly endorsing the Principal’s statement.

How does the IES Public School mould its students, we ask the Vice-Principal of the school, Mrs Beena S Nair, who talked to the PASSLINE team in the absence

of Mr V J Joseph, Principal, who had gone on

an urgent official tour. “The pur-pose of education”, says Mrs Nair, “is not creating doctors, engineers and other professionals, it rather aims at the holistic development of a child. Along with the professionals we need to create upright citizens who are kind, understanding, sincere and, in all respects, real human beings. Education also aims at imparting the sense to recognize and acknowl-edge God-gifted talents that an individual possesses to enhance and nurture them. Often this aspect seems to be neglect-ed today. Our aim is to allow the students to expand their selves, recognize their talent. IES tries to create musicians and singers, painters and dancers, as much as it honours academic excellence. The school magazine Idealites stands testimony to it.”

This talent hunting and encouragement can be seen from the very primary section. The milieu created there, says Mrs Daly John, Headmistress of the section, is conducive to blooming and developing the students’ individual talents. The school also tries to nurture a strong teacher-student relationship. Activity-orient-ed and student-centred learning is given prominence. Students, even of KG classes (“there is a lot of space for their activities”), involve themselves actively in assembly and various other programmes. Emphasis on spoken English has led to very encouraging results,” says Mrs Daly John. “We also conduct outdoor classes for the students so they don’t feel like being caged”.

“It is heart-warming to witness elders taking the little ones in KG and playschool to their classes. This sisterly and brotherly affection is a rare sight. The entire atmo-sphere is warm and both management and teachers are responsible for this,” says a proud Mrs Daly John. “Such an atmosphere makes kids confident when they enter higher classes.”

LKG and UKG have five divisions each with 165 stu-dents, and there are 20 in Playschool. According to Mrs Usha Kuttan, KG Coordinator, the school’s KG division is superb. “The Montessori system is merged into it to make the classes smart. It enables the child to learn by itself through the use of didactic materials. There

All heads of the institutions run by IES are agreed on one point: there is no interference in academic administration by management. Both the Presi-dent and the General Secre-tary of the Board of Directors, the top management function-aries of the institutions, accom-panied the PASSLINE team to the heads of the institutions and heard the Principals and Headmistresses showering praises on them for this rare gesture unheard of in several other institutions.

“Recruitments are all made by the heads of the institutions and top management only rati-fies them. Whenever we need personnel or whenever posts fall vacant, we just notify man-agement. They sanction the posts and we fill the vacan-cies,” says the Training College Principal, Dr Sugatha Kumar. “Since I joined the college in

2008 I have never experienced any kind of problems from management”, he says.

Echoing the same senti-ments, the Engineering College Acting Principal, Dr Veeran Kutty, who has been working in the college since 2004, says that his pleasantest experience with the college has been that he has had complete admin-istrative freedom here. “The ambience is very good, the in-frastructure first-class and the atmosphere superb. What else does one want for a smooth working atmosphere in a col-lege?”

Mrs Raji, Headmistress (Secondary), Mrs Daly John, Headmistress (Primary), and Mrs Beena S N, Vice-Principal of the Public School, all have nothing different to tell. “We are happy to have been part of such a wonderful institution of knowledge”, they say.

No interference in academic matters

V J Joseph

Beena S Nair

Daly John

Auditorium

Bus bay

Campus

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is a park for the students. Many

things which are not available for kids elsewhere are available here, includ-ing spoken English. There are special ayahs,” says Mrs Usha Kuttan. “The maxi-mum number of teachers sent for orienta-tion courses are perhaps from our school”, she says.

Audiovisual equipment, readers’ cor-ner, indoor games etc come alive dur-ing the lunch interval. ‘Talent Time’ is also organized every Friday. Displays are put up in every classroom and the courtyard. Weekly quizzes are conducted to improve the students’general knowledge. Garden-ing and games are encouraged to keep

the students physical-ly fit. There are spe-cial classes for chess, abacus and Islamic studies on Saturdays. Study tours and field trips are undertaken to expand their hori-zons.

IES Public School is perhaps one of the

few institutions which have stated its mot-to as ‘Serve One Another’—to explore, to aim higher and forge new paths to reach the ultimate goal of life. And its mission is to harmonize its aims with the principles of universal brotherhood, the aspiration of its students and needs of the nation.

The school fol-lows the CBSE pattern of

education and the medium of instruction is English. Besides English, Hindi, Malay-alam and Arabic are the languages taught. There are classes from LKG to Standard XI and XII (senior secondary stage). A residential and co-educational senior sec-ondary school, it is an ISO (9001: 2008)-certified institution.

Mrs Raji O A, Headmistress (Second-ary), speaks of how children get the plat-form for the school’s growing buds to rec-ognize and develop their hidden potential in both scholastic and co-scholastic areas and activities. “The diverse learning pro-gramme has been planned by us recog-nizing this fact. High academic achieve-ments are encour-aged in the school, with considerable stu-dent successes in various competitions as well”, she says.

On the way to and back from campus the PASSLINE team was surprised to see the fleet of the institutions’ buses plying to and fro. Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker took us round the campus and showed us the large parking centre for vehicles. We counted almost 30 parked there. “Many may be plying on the routes now. These parked ones are perhaps back after their trips. We ourselves do not know the exact number of vehicles the institutions have.

There must be 50 or 60,” they said.

Vehicles for the College of Engineering for both the students and the staff ply to and from Vadanapilly, Irinjalakuda, Koda-kara, Kunnamkulam, Guruvayur, Cha-vakkad, Vadakkekad, M G Kavu, Thiroor, Mannuthy and all suburban areas of Thris-sur.

The campus of the College of Engineer-ing includes the main multi-storey college building with 12,800 sq metres of built-up area accommodating classrooms, tutorial rooms, drawing halls, computer labora-tory, administration office, department of-fices and staff rooms. The top ambience on this world-class campus is highly con-ducive to technology education.

Since Dr N N Vijayaraghavan, who was the Principal, left, Dr M K Veeran Kutty, a much-experienced professor and expert, is in charge of the college today. He feels that the ambience here is wonderful and the infrastructure world-class. The college is conceived as a high-tech technical train-ing institution offering six BTech degree courses and the MTech course. The BTech courses are in Applied Electronics and In-strumentation Engineering; Civil Engineer-ing; Computer Science and Engineering; Electronics and Communication Engineer-ing; Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. The MTech is in Geotechnical Engineering.

With the constantly growing and knowledge-based industries now occu-pying centre stage in development, says the college management, there is an in-creased demand for quality infrastructure to accommodate and support develop-ment activities. The need for infrastructure has forced development to take place in unsuitable ground and environmental con-ditions. Construction projects coming up in adverse ground conditions require ex-perts with thorough understanding of geo-technical engineering for providing proper foundations for the proposed structures. It was recognizing the importance of this and considering it as a social responsi-bility that the IES College of Engineer-ing introduced the MTech Geotechnical Engineering course in the Department of Civil Engineering. Our institution is the first self-financing college to offer this course in Kerala and the second in the state to do so.

Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker say new PG courses are in the offing and ef-forts are on to secure autonomous status for the college and to develop it into a centre of academic excellence. Its depart-ments also undertake consultancy work which promotes interactive cohabitation

What kick-started it to happenThe wonderful campus and the elegant buildings that we witness at the once-

remote Chittilappilly are the effort of 87 good-natured, society-loving, dedicat-ed and far-sighted people. It is their investment that made this possible. How did the idea of such a venture of monumental nature occur to you, we ask Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker. “Some of us were in Qatar when the Iran-Iraq war was at its height in the late 1980s. Middle East Educational Services (MES), which we had already started there especially for expatriate Indians’ children, can be said to be the precur-sor to IES. Many Indians left the place for home during the war fearing its echoes in the whole of the Gulf. So MES in Doha had to be wound up. Those who quit Doha and other places in Qatar would, we thought, find it difficult for their wards to continue their studies back home. This motivated us to start a school for them in Thrissur. We chose Thrissur because it is an educational centre.”

Is there any preference for expatriates’ children? “Certainly. But we admit local children also. In fact there are large numbers of them in our school.

Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker say that at no time had the founders any motive other than helping society behind their starting the school. The 87 philanthropic men invested money not hoping for any return. None of them (some have left for their heavenly abode) have received anything in return nor are they interested in it. It is a kind of sentiment that one can hardly see anywhere else,” they say.

Usha Kuttan

Raji O A

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PASSLINEJan 31 - Feb 28, 2013PASSLINE Jan 31 - Feb 28, 2013


8Founder members

The following are the 87 founder members of Ideal Educational Society:

Abdul Azeez K P; Abdul Azeez P K; Abdul Ghafoor H; Abdul Ghafoor P; Abdul Hameed K P; the late Abdul Kader C M; the late Abdul Kader

P A; the late Abdul Kader Y M; Abdul Karim K; Abdul Majeed K B; Abdul Rah-man M K (Chalakkudy); Abdul Rahman V K; Abdul Rahman M K; the late Abdul Rahman P M; the late Aboo P V; Aboo R V, Aboobacker K; Aboobacker K M; Aboobacker K P; Aboobacker M E; Aboobacker N M; Aboobacker P A; Aboobacker T K; the late Abu Fareed P M; Abutty A M; the late Ahamed Kutty P T; Alikutty C; the late Ali Muhiadeen; Ashraf V K; Basheer Ahamed P T; the late Bhuhari P P; the late Ghulam Mohiuddin; the late Hamza P K; Has-sanmon R V; Hyder P P; the late Ismail M K; the late Kader A V; Khalid T K; the late Kunhahamed K; Kunhahammed G P; Kunhi Mohamed K (Alankode); the late Kunhi Mohamed N M; the late Kunhi Moidunni K V; Kunhi Moidunni V C; Kunhimon A V (Kadayil); the late Kunhimon A V; the late Kunhimon K A; Kunhumohamed K (Punnayoor); the late Kunjumuhamed K P; Mahamood V V; the late Mammu Haji T K; the late Marakkar Thamarassery; Mashood K K; the late Mayin C H; Meeran P N; Mohamed Ali K K; Mohamed Ali K P; the late Mohamed Ali M M; Mohamed Ashraf K V; the late Mohamed Haji U P; the late Mohamed Jaleel A V; Mohamed M (Perumpilavu); Mohamed M T; the late Mohamed P K (Kohinoor); Mohamed P K; Mohamed Usman A A; Usman A T; Mohamed Usman K T; the late Mohamedunni A V; the late Moideen E M; the late Moidunnikutty R O; Mubarak Abdul Rahman; Mohamed M C; the late Mushab A, the late Musthafa R V; the late Pareekutty A A; Saidalavi K; Saida-lavi P T; Said Mohamed P; Shamsudeen A; Siddique O M; the late Siddique P C; Siddique B M; Syed Mohamed P T; the late Ummer K P; Ummer N K and Usman A K.

with local industries. Approved by the AICTE, the college is affiliated to Cali-cut University. The student intake for the courses is 60. Besides, there are three NRI and three merit seats.

What attracts visitors to the college campus is the well-spread mosque for Muslim students, including girls, to of-fer their prayers. There are separate hostels for men and women. The can-teen, IES Food Plaza, is a large and spacious two-storeyed building pro-viding hygienic vegetarian and non-vegetarian food at nominal rates.

The college is a centre of excel-lence for consultancy and there is a Microsoft campus agreement pro-gramme. Though an engineering col-lege, it imparts professional ethics and value-based and character develop-ment programmes. There is a full-time placement and career guidance divi-sion. The college also boasts all latest

amenities and facilities.

“The pass percentage is 70%-80%. Our students are nationally com-petitive. We are 12th in univer-sity ranking in Kerala and are soon to have National Board of Accredita-

tion recognition which will mean we will have status. There is no college in Thrissur which has this recognition”, says Dr Veeran Kutty. “Placementwise also the college is faring well. Such companies as Infosys and Sobha Developers have employed our stu-dents”.

We ask Mr Hameed and Mr Aboobacker as also Dr Veeran Kutty about IES’s BArch (Bachelor of Archi-tecture) programme as the Principal, Prof Baby Paul K, was not available.

Dr M K Veeran Kutty

Dr D Sugatha Kumar

Architectural colleges are very rare, they say. “We are just starting it. There was some delay as the authorities in-sisted on a separate building for it. It is ready now.” The five-year course has been approved by the Council of Architecture and is affiliated to Calicut University. The graduate programme in architecture, design and structure of building covering the sociological, systematic and environmental aspects seeks students having skills like draw-ing, writing, exploration of the given topic, practical and managerial abil-ity in identifying and solving problems and architectural presentation etc. The subjects for the course include mathematics, CADD, urban econom-ics and sociology, history of architec-ture and interior design. The minimum qualification for applying for the course is plus two with 50% marks. The stu-dents should have studied mathemat-ics with physics and chemistry in their 10+2. The aspirants should qualify in the NATA Entrance Test.

The Training College, says Dr Sug-atha Kumar, who joined as Principal in 2008, is functioning very well. “It is one of the best of its kind in Kerala, with state-of-the art facilities and equip-ment. However, training colleges in

Kerala, as in other states, lack enough students. Most youngsters to-day choose pro-fessional colleg-es. Traditional courses, there-fore, suffer,” he says.

There should be at least 50 stu-dents for a BEd college to enable it to stand on its own, says Dr Sugatha Kumar. There are now 130 training col-leges in the state. It is difficult to get enough students in these circumstanc-es. Actually there is scope for only 50 BEd colleges in the state,” he adds.

“We are however continuing to get students. Only, expansion is the prob-lem. For starting an MEd course also the difficulty is getting students. We are therefore not considering it now”, he says.

Another chaotic situation is that BEd classes start only in November. They should also follow the working of schools and colleges—from June to March. Only then can there be system-atic functioning of training colleges.

Kindergarten & Primary Block

Sitting (from left): R V Hassanmon (Vice-President); A M Abuty (Treasurer); Musamil Al Ali (Senior Vice-President); K P Abdul Hameed (President); K M Aboobacker (General Secretary); K P Abdul Rasheed (Secretary); A V Kunhi-mon (Joint Secretary).Standing (from left): N M Aboobacker; T K Nabeel; T K Khalid; K V Mohammed Ashraf; K T Mohammed Usman; Mohammed Rafeeq; M T Mohamed; C Alikutty (all Directors).


BOARD OF DIRECTORS


9

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in Kerala today, re-sponsible to the c o u n t r y ,

the environs and the customers.

Asset Homes’ 16 ongoing proj-ects include, besides Kasavu, Casa Grande, Bellevue, Pallimukku, Kochi; Synergy Heights, Tripunithura, Kochi; Silver Swan, Aluva, Kochi; Silver Streak, Aluva, Kochi; Patio near Edap-pally, Kochi; Signature Phase II, Ka-zhkoottam, Thiruvananthapuram; Midtown,Poonkunnam,Thrissur; The Portico Phase I, Kadavanthra, Kochi; Picasso Palette, Devalokam, Kot-tayam; HK Hallmark, Payyambalam, Kannur; The Portico Phase II, Kada-vanthra, Kochi; Sapphire,Kanjikuzhy, Kottayam; Ocean Grove, South Chit-toor, Kochi; Asset Towers, Opp Lulu Mall, Edappally, Kochi

Guided by ethics, ‘Celebrating Re-lationship’ is Asset Homes’ motto. And Asset Homes does live up to it, as it keeps in touch with each of the cus-tomers, long after they have moved into an Asset home.

Awards and honours often follow meritorious services. The year 2010 witnessed Asset Homes bagging the prestigious CNBC Awaaz-CRISIL-CREDAI Award 2010 for the most innovative project Asset Silicon and Cyber Heights, at Kakkanad. The con-sequent year the builder won the Real-ty Plus Excellence Awards 2011. Asset Homes was honoured with Seven-Star rating by the prominent rating agency CRISIL in 2010. Asset Homes Private Limited was selected by Rotary Inter-national District 3201 for the Voca-tional Excellence Award 2009- 2010 in recognition of excellence shown by the company.

Asset Homes stresses relation-ships—the bond between the pro-moters and the clients, among the occupants and among the promoters themselves. According to Directors Mohammed Saleem K A, Anil Varma and Sunil Kumar V, “relationships is the core of the manner we do busi-ness.” They believe in giving a cre-ative touch to an otherwise prosaic business of construction.

The setting up of Asset Homes can be described as a visionary move, at a time when others were engaged in tra-ditional real estate business. Moham-med Saleem, (MD of Asset Homes)who was Chief Operating Officer with BPL Mobile, says: “I know that I wanted to enter real estate; that was clear from the takeoff Kochi has wit-nessed in several parts. But we didn’t

want to go along the beaten track. We laid stress on building customer trust through honest deliverables, providing investors and employees with a fair return, and attaining and sustaining a clear preference in the property devel-opment sector in Kerala as a socially responsible company.’’

Anil Varma, who started Varma Construction in 1997, has a brilliant track record in the field. He is a stick-ler for quality. “Cost-wise and mainte-nance-wise,” says Anil Varma, “Asset Homes projects are of superior quality, and we are very particular about this.”

According to Sunil Kumar V, the usual practice for private construc-tions is to buy some land, build a proj-ect and pre-sell it. Normally, the con-struction company arranges loans for clients from a bank with which it has a close relationship. “However,” stress-es Sunil Kumar, “we have learnt about what the real estate market actually is. Of course, we were new to the field as a brand, which has had its advantag-es—we had no problems with the past.”

Asset Homes: 5 yrs, 5 cities, 50 projects

Casa Grande


9REALTY

Mohammed Saleem

Sunil Kumar

Anil Varma


10

The media, Indian as well as foreign, celebrated the gang

rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi for several weeks. Such incidents are not rare in India but they get very little media attention. Some newspapers and news services played a major role in developing the incident into global news that could eclipse debates on all other substantive issues.

A newspaper report said the inci-dent caught even the attention of the US Government. In its edition dated

January 5, 2013, the paper said: “Ac-cording to (the US) State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, who has not been keeping well for the last few weeks, was aware of the Delhi gang-rape case. Nuland had said,”We have as a government worked very hard around the world with regard to combating violence against women.” The newspaper report ends with a hilarious tone by quoting UN

statistics on rape: Annual rate of rape incidents in the US was around 30 per one lakh population, compared to the less than 2 of India!”

US culture has turned every bit of female anatomy into objects and sub-jects for commercial sex and violence. Thanks to the ongoing reforms, India has been catching up with the West, pretty fast, and crimes against women have been rapidly increasing: 24,206 rape cases were reported in 2011, an increase of nearly nine times com-pared with 1971, according to a recent official blog put out by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Crime rates (in-cidents per lakh population) against women continue to increase in urban areas, despite improvements in polic-ing. In 2011, it was 21 for the 53 cit-ies with more than 10 lakh population, taken together. This was only 18.9 for the country as a whole.

With Vijayawada on the top having more than 120 crime incidents against women per one lakh population and Vasai Virar at the bottom with less than six incidents, the 53 Indian cities, cov-ered in the official database, provide an extremely diverse pattern of crime against Indian women. The hypothesis of RSS chief Mohan Bhagat that rape incidents in India are mostly confined to certain urban areas, where people in large numbers have taken to the Western style, deserves serious inves-tigation.

Obviously, there is a big cultural di-vide among our population centres with regard to crimes against women. With 4,489 crimes against women, Delhi was the topper in 2011, accounting for more than 13.3% of all such crimes registered in Indian cities, with more than 10 lakh population. Other leading cities were Bangalore (1,890), Hydera-bad (1,860), Vijayawada (1,797), Ahmedabad (1,762) and Mumbai (1,700). The data related to the differ-ent types of crimes against women for the four metros—Delhi, Mumbai, Kol-kata and Chennai—and the country as a whole is:

Crime statistics over the past years indicate that Delhi, as the capital of In-dia, has a big lead over all other cities with regard to crimes and crime rates against women. Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, unlike Delhi, are dominated by the culture of their respective re-gional nationalities. Delhi is dominated by immigrants of diverse nationalities and communities, and hardly has a culture of its own. True, the city had been looked upon as the citadel of In-

Delhi—capital of crimes against women

Crimes against women registered in 2011 per Lakh populationType of crime All India Delhi Mumbai Kolkata ChennaiAll crimes 18.9 27.5 9.2 8.2 8.0Rape 2.0 2.8 1.2 0.3 0.9Kidnap, abduction 2.9 10.3 0.9 0.8 0.5Dowry deaths 0.7 0.7 0.1 0.1 0.2Cruelty by husband 8.2 9.2 2.1 3.9 2.6Molestation 3.1 3.4 3.0 1.8 0.8Other crimes 2.0 1.1 1.9 1.3 3.0

Data source: Crime Statistics 2011: Ministry of Home GOI

dian patriotism for several decades in the past, but two decades of economic reforms have transformed it into the capital of crony capitalists and lumpen proletarians, who enjoy, in a big way, the patronage of the two mainstream political parties, the BJP and the Con-gress.

Women are least respected today in our capital and crimes against them are on the increase, despite the far superior police forces and security in-frastructure at its command, compared with the other three metro cities. Clear-ly, it is a cultural aberration, which has afflicted a major part of Delhi’s popula-tion. The situation is best explained in the words of Delhi womenfolk. Quoted below is an extract from a long tweet composed by a young Delhi woman in the context of the recent gang rape:

“I love Delhi, the city. I love its wide, open roads, its wonderful architecture. “…I’ve made great friends in Delhi. I went to a wonderful school in Delhi. I’ve also suffered in Delhi…

“I’m one of millions of women with tales to tell of how Delhi has ground our self-respect and security to dust. General descriptions of harassment can’t adequately describe the horror a woman faces every day in the city. There isn’t a single moment when

you’re walking its streets that you can think, “I’m safe, I can breathe easy and enjoy the sunshine. What a lovely day!” If you have breasts, you’re fair game. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, how old you are, you can be a man’s property. You can be used for his gratification. You can be dominated. I don’t want to recount

the hundreds of times I’ve been groped in crowds in Delhi. Hands moving over you, pinching your bottom, rubbing your breasts as you desperately try to find some inch of ground that will be safe. Women routinely carry sharp ob-jects like needles and drawing instru-ments to dissuade such attacks but there are too many incidents to deal with…

“…I accompanied my friend’s relatives to a function at Pragati Maidan. With us was her 70-year-old grandmother. The lady was a widow, dressed in the characteristic white sari. She hobbled on a walking stick. The ground was crowded and dusty. As we made our way through the crowd, a young adolescent boy shoved his hand between her legs. He felt up a 70-year-old woman hobbling on a walking stick. We were unable to reconcile this incident with any semblance of logic or sense. Why did this happen? Just. It was a female with female parts, which

Crime statistics over the past years indicate that Del-hi, as the capital of India, has a big lead over all other cit-ies with regard to crimes and crime rates against women. Kolkata, Chennai and Mum-bai, unlike Delhi, are domi-nated by the culture of their respective regional nation-alities. Delhi is dominated by immigrants of diverse na-tionalities and communities, and hardly has a culture of its own. True, the city had been looked upon as the citadel of Indian patriotism for several decades in the past, but two decades of economic reforms have transformed it into the capital of crony capitalists and lumpen proletarians, who enjoy, in a big way, the patronage of the two main-stream political parties, the BJP and the Congress.

K Vijayachandran

SOCIETY


11

of course are the property of every hu-man in Delhi blessed with a penis…

“…As a student in Delhi, I’d attend tuitions literally across the road from where we stayed. The proprietor was a burly man with a shy 14-year-old son. Every evening, after classes dispersed, it was that young boy’s job to make sure we girls safely crossed the street. That’s all. He’d just stand outside the gate and make sure we crossed a dis-tance of 50 feet safely. He wasn’t wor-ried about us being hit by cars. He was making sure we didn’t get molested. If a mob of men had shown up, the poor boy wouldn’t stand a chance. And yet, he’d be there every evening, standing alert and looking responsible for us.

“...If you think misogyny and sexism are the refuge of the rich and power-

ful alone, think again. As I sat in a car in Delhi, a beggar came up to my win-dow, begging for alms. A pathetic crea-ture shod in tatters. He saw that I was a woman and suddenly his demeanour changed. His face lit up in an evil sneer and he started flicking his tongue in and out. I was so stunned I laughed. Here’s this pathetic creature with no food or clothes to sustain him but so desperate was his sexual need and so fearless his demeanour that it trumped all else. A woman can be fucked. Should be fucked. Oh, and can I also have some money for food?

“…Delhi’s sexist culture is a fester-ing cesspool that permeates its families. A friend of mine lived in a joint family in a palatial house. Rich, educated folk. I remember we were nine-year-old girls,

hanging out at her house, playing with Barbie dolls. Her younger male cousins barged in and started creating a ruckus. We shooed them away, treating them as a nuisance but they had a stunning response up their sleeve. These boys brought their GI Joe figurines and said, hum tumhare Barbies ka rape karenge. We were stunned. These were six- or seven-year-old boys. They probably didn’t even know what rape was. They didn’t even know how it was done.

“… There are some well-reasoned arguments why we shouldn’t trivialize the larger issues surrounding rape by laying blame at the doorstep of one city alone, but there’s a reason for this in-sidious association; it breeds and lives on the fear that power creates. Let’s just call Delhi the capital of subjugation. I

also need to mention that I’ve never felt this CONSTANTLY afraid in any other city in India. You can quote examples of rapes in Mumbai, Kolkata or other cities and you’d have a point. This pathetic patriarchal culture pervades India, but there’s no other place quite like Delhi where patriarchy and power mingle to create a sense of male entitlement.”

Testimonial by this immensely sen-sible woman, born and bought up in Delhi, based on her own life experience is in harmony with the statistical data on crime against women in the country brought out by the Home Ministry. Cer-tainly this is not the Delhi of the 1970s and 1980s that I had known: Within a couple of decades, Delhi has trans-formed itself into the capital of crimes against Indian women

How different are home loans for NRIs ?Passline News Service

Kerala’s property market is dominated by non-resident

Keralites (NRKs), more than 50% be-ing driven by them. According to real estate companies, the market is get-ting vigorous and enquiries are com-ing in. The recent property expo held in Kochi by the Kerala Chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Devel-opers’ Association of India (CREDAI) attracted much attention. There was also an exhibition of building products held in Kochi, which also saw many footfalls. All this shows a revival of interest in housing, especially from NRKs.

It is pertinent in this context to know of the housing loan schemes for non-resident Indians (NRIs) and how they are different from those for residents. Many of the schemes for NRIs have now been simplified. There are also diverse schemes available now, mak-ing their dream of owning a home a reality. These schemes are also push-ing up the property market, which had remained sluggish following the global recession, all over the country, espe-cially in Kerala

How are home loans or, rather, are they, different from loans for resi-dents? NRI home loans are now easily available in India, subject to fulfilment of certain conditions. Home loans can be taken for any property ready for possession or under construction, construction of property on an owned plot or for alterations to existing prop-erty. Buying of a plot also qualifies for a home loan.

Income and educational qualifica-tions play an important role in deciding

the maximum amount of loan available to an NRI. Banks allow an advance of 80% to 85% of the property value, subject to the gross monthly income (GMI) of an individual. The maximum amount granted is in the range of 36-40 times the GMI.

Some banks also go by the ratio of equated monthly instalment (EMI) to net monthly income (NMI). For exam-ple, State Bank of India (SBI) allows an NRI with an annual income of up to Rs 2 lakh to pay only 40% of his NMI and EMI. For those earning between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, it is 50% of NMI, and for those earning more than Rs 5 lakh annually it is 55%.

Other banks have different criteria depending on educational qualifica-tions, place of residence etc. With ICI-CI Bank the minimum annual salary required is 36,000 dirhams, for those residing in West Asia, if the tenure is within five years, and for tenures be-tween six and 10 years, the income requirement is set at 48,000 dirhams.

For those residing in the US and other countries, the respective limits are $30,000 and $42,000. The criteria differ for the self-employed, depend-ing on the educational qualifications. Again, it is important to note that only graduate NRIs can take home loans in India.

While a resident can take loans with a maximum tenure of 30 years with some banks, the tenure for NRI home loans is restricted. It is available within the range of five to 15 years. Extension beyond 15 years, in excep-tional cases, is at the discretion of the bank and in exceptional cases.

The rate of interest on NRI home loans is higher to cover the higher risk involved. There is generally a margin of 0.25%-0.50% charged.

The documentation required for NRI loans is also different from that for resident home loans. Documents nor-mally required are copies of the pass-port, valid visa and work permit, con-tract of employment, work experience certificate and statements of NRE/NRO accounts.

For those residing in West Asia, a copy of the employment card is also required. Salary certificates should be attested from the embassy if salary is not getting credited to a bank.

It is not necessary for an NRI to wait for his next trip to India to apply for a home loan. Many banks have branches in places like Dubai, Singa-pore, London etc, where NRIs can ap-ply. Banks like ICICI, HDFC and Axis

also extend the facility of online sub-mission and status updating.

NRIs would require executing a general power of attorney in favour of a resident Indian who would act on their behalf with the bank. If the power of attorney is issued while the NRI is abroad, it needs to be signed in front of the embassy official.

The repayment of loans can only be through non-resident external (NRE) or non-resident ordinary (NRO) accounts with remittance from abroad. No other funds can be used for repayment of these loans. The repayment needs to be made in Indian rupees.

When there is a change in status from NRI to resident the loan is reworked according to the revised income, and interest applicable is charged and the tenure is also revised.

NRI home loans are now easily available in India, subject to

fulfilment of certain con-ditions. Home loans can be taken for any property ready for possession or under construction, con-

struction of property on an owned plot or for alterations

to existing property. Buying of a plot also qualifies for a home loan. In-

come and educational qualifications play an important role in deciding the maximum amount of loan available to an NRI. Banks allow an advance of 80% to 85% of the property value, subject to the gross monthly income (GMI) of an individual.

HOuSING FINANCE


12

1. TENDER COCONuT WATER

Project cost (10,000 coconuts)Land 60 cents

Building - 3000 sq ft Rs 20 lakh

Plant & machinery Rs 40 lakh

Electrification works Rs 10 lakh

Preliminary & pre - operative expenses Rs 05 lakhWorking capital (margin money) Rs 15 lakhTotal Rs 90 lakh

Tender coconut wa-ter (TCW) is a gift

of nature which is the first soft drink in the world. It is rich in vitamins, miner-als, proteins, amino acids, sugars and other biologi-cal growth factors and en-zymes. It is an eco-friendly refreshing drink. TCW is a

natural isotonic beverage which has almost the same level of electrolyte balance as in our blood. It is the ‘fluid of life’ that promotes anti-aging, healthy cell growth and rehydration.

Coconut water of 6-7 month stage is first ex-tracted from the nut using a vacuum suction device It is then filtered through pressure filters and then mixed with the desired proportion of additives plus sugar and concentrated to the appropriate level. The water is then packed in pouches/cans and retorted in an autoclave, after which it is cooled in a stream of cold water. Ten thousand coconuts would yield about 2,000 litres of tender coconut water.

2. VIRGIN COCONuT OIL

Project cost (15,000 coconuts per day)Land 40 centsBuilding -3,000 sq ft Rs 27 lakhPlant & machinery Rs 45 lakhElectrification works Rs 10 lakhPreliminary & pre-operative expenses Rs05 lakhWorking capital (margin money) Rs. 10 lakhTOTAL Rs 97 lakh

Wet processing of coco-nuts is a new process of

oil extraction from fresh matured coconuts producing high-value, high-quality virgin coconut oil (VCO) rich in vitamin E and pos-sessing a long shelf life of one year. This technology is capable

of complete utilization of the coconut. Apart from virgin coconut oil, a number of other value-added coconut products like coconut milk, low-fat coconut

powder, skim milk and packed coconut water could be developed from the process. A plant processing 1 lakh nuts per day can produce 7.5 tonnes of virgin coconut oil, 9 tonnes of medium fat DC, 11,500 litres of matured coconut water, 16.5 tonnes of skim milk and 11.5 tonnes of coconut shell.

Coconuts are deshelled followed by paring. Pared coconuts are disintegrated by passing through a hammer mill/disintegrator where shredded coconut gratings are forced out. The disintegrated coconut gratings are pressed in a screw/hydraulic press to extract fresh coconut milk. The coconut milk is filtered and passed through a high-speed centrifuge wherein the coconut oil gets separated from the coconut milk. The coconut oil is then packed in consumer packs in an automatic packing machine. Ten thousand coco-nuts would yield about 600 kg of virgin coconut oil.

3. DESICCATED COCONuT

Project cost (15000 coconuts per day)Land (cost variable) 50 cents

Building 2000 sq ft Rs 18 lakh(process area)

Plant & machinery Rs 25lakh

Preliminaryand pre-operative expenses Rs 5.00 lakhElectrification Rs 5.00 lakh

Working capital (M Money) Rs 10.00 lakhTotal Rs 63.00 lakh

Desiccated coconut is the white kernel of the

coconut, disintegrated and desiccated to a moisture con-tent of less than 3%. It is white in colour. It is a popular com-mercial product having de-mand all over the world in the confectionery and food indus-tries, as one of the main sub-sidiary ingredients of fillings for

chocolate, candies etc. It is also used uncooked, as decoration for cakes, biscuits, ice cream and toasted short eats. Common grades of desiccated coconut like granulated and fancy cuts like flakes, treads etc are popular. Granulated cuts include coarse medium fire and superfine grades.

The fresh matured coconuts are dehusked and deshelled manually using hand tools. The deshelled coconut kernels in the form of round balls are pared using scrapers to remove the testa. The pared kernel balls are then cut open to drain off the water and then washed thoroughly in fresh water to remove the in-vert sugars from the inner surface of the kernel. The kernel is then ground into a fine mass using hammer or pin mills.

The ground mass is blanched with live steam for about 20 minutes to bring down the microbiological counts. The blanched mass is then dried in hot air dri-er at a temperature of 80-90oC for about 10 hours so as to bring down the moisture content to below 3%. The hot air drier is provided with a drying chamber consisting of a series of trays, which hold the feed. Hot air is blown into this chamber from an external source through blowers. The dried mass is tested for moisture, free fatty acid and microbiological counts. The product is packed in polythene pouches. Raw material 10,000 coconuts will yield one tonne of des-iccated coconut.

4. SPRAY-DRIED COCONuT MILK POWDERProject cost (Capacity 20,000 nuts/day.)

Land 1 acre

Building-8,000 sq ft Rs 60 lakh

Plant & machinery Rs 175 lakh

Electrification Rs 30 lakh

Preliminary & pre-operative expenses Rs 25 lakh

Working capital (m money) Rs 40 lakhTotal Rs 330 lakh

Coconut milk powder is the dehydrated form

of the coconut milk. This product has a good keeping quality and retains the natu-ral flavour, texture and taste of coconut milk. CDB in col-laboration with CFTRI has developed technology for

spray drying of coconut milk, which is the most po-tential method of preservation of flavour and texture of coconut milk with good keeping quality. The pro-cess involves deshelling, paring, disintegration of the kernel, squeezing the comminuted kernel in a screw press, standardization of coconut milk with maltodex-trin and sodium cassienate, pasteurization spray dry-ing and packing in aluminium packets.

The powder is easily dissolved in water to form a milky white liquid with the flavour and texture of co-conut milk. To make coconut cream, it is suggested to mix or blend 100g powder with 120 ml water. The product contains 60.5% fat, 27.29% carbohydrates, 9.6% protein, 1.75% ash, 0.8 to 2.0% moisture and 0.02% crude fibre.

Coconut milk powder is whole coconut milk that has undergone five major processing steps—extrac-tion of the coconut meat to get the milk, formulation, pasteurization, homogenization and spray drying. White coconut meat, after removal of shell and par-ing, is passed through a rotary wedge cutter; the grated coconut meat is pressed in a screw press to extract the coconut milk.

Viable ventures for venturesomeAt a time when the Government is dead bent upon creating investment opportunities, especially for budding entre-

preneurs, the job-seekers are turning job-givers and the investor fraternity is groping for a viable project to invest in, here are some worthwhile proposals and their details. Nowadays, coconut farmers are finding it difficult to make ends meet because they fail to get a good price for their product. But, coconut and its contents can be put to profitable use by many. The technical and financial feasibility details can be got from the Coconut Development Board (CDB). Below are the project details:

COCONuT BASED PROjECTS


13The coconut milk is formulated by addition of

8%-10 % maltodextrin as carrier. This formulated coconut milk is then pasteurized, homogenized and spraydried. Twenty thousand coconuts would yield about 1,000 kg of coconut milk powder.

5. COCONuT CHIPS

Project Cost (10,000 coconuts)Land -40-50 centsBuilding -2000 sq ft @ Rs 800 per sq ft 16.00

Plant & Machinery 18.00

Electrical Installations 3.00

Preoperative Expenses 1.00

Working Capital Margin 4.00 Total 42.00

Coconut chips are a ready-to-eat snack

prepared from 9-10-month-old coconuts. It can be pre-pared by dehydrating the intermediate moisture co-conut kernel. Intermediate moisture coconut kernel is the mature coconut kernel after removing the moisture

content of the kernel partially by osmotic dehydration by using osmotic mediums like sugar syrup. Coconut chips are crispy and can be packaged and marketed in laminated aluminium pouches, which will have a shelf life of 6 months.

Since it is in ready-to-eat form, it could be used as snacks at any time. Coconut chips with different fla-vours can be prepared by adding the required flavour essence in the osmotic medium. Instead of sweet, salted coconut chips and medicated coconut chips can also be prepared by suitable change in the os-motic medium.

Fully matured coconuts are used for the prepara-tion of chips. The coconut kernel is cut into the form of chips using chipper. The cut chips are soaked in sugar or salt solution for about 40 minutes. The chips are then baked in hot air oven till the products attain golden brown colour. Ten thousand coconuts would yield about 1,000 kg of chips.

6. COCONuT SHELL POWDER

Project Cost

Land require 40 cents (cost variable)Building (2000 sq ft) Rs 10.00 lakhPlant & machinery Rs 25.00 lakhPreliminary & pre-oper expenses Rs 5.00 lakhElectrification works Rs 10.00 lakhWorking capital (margin money) Rs 10.00 lakh

TOTAL Rs 60.00 lakh

The coconut shell powder finds exten-

sive uses in plywood and laminated board industries as a phenolic extruder and as a filler in synthetic resin glues, mosquito coils, agar-bathy industries. Coconut

shell powder is preferred as substitute for bark powder, furfurol and peanut shell powder because of uniformity in quality and chemical composition and also has better properties in respect of water absorption and resistance to fungal attack.

Coconut shell powder is manufactured from matured coconut shell by using pulverizes/ball mills. Twelve thousand shells would yield around one tonne shell powder. The manufacture of shell powder is not an organized industry in India. It is manufactured in sizes ranging from 80-200 mesh. The Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka are the major exporters of coconut shell powder.

Coconut shells free from contamination of coir pith etc are broken into small pieces and fed into a pulverizer. The powder from the pulverizer is fed into a cyclone and the parallel product is collected in bag filters. The shell powder is then fed into a vibrat-ing sieving machine and packed according to mesh size requirements for various end uses. The rejects from the sieving machine can be recycled in the pul-verizer for size reduction. The main requirements for consistent good quality of coconut shell powder, are proper selection of shell of proper stage of maturity and efficient machinery. Twelve thousand shell will yield 1 tonne shell powder

7. SHELL CHARCOAL

Project cost (30,000 coconut shells)Land (cost variable) 35 centsBuilding 1,000 sq ft Rs 4.0 lakhPlant & machinery Rs 18 lakhPreliminary & pre-operative expenses Rs 2.0 lakhElectrification Rs 1.0 lakhMargin for working capital Rs 5.0 lakhTOTAL Rs. 30.00 lakh

Coconut shell char-coal is manufac-

tured by burning shells of fully matured nuts in limited supply of air sufficient only for carbonization, but not for complete destruction. The output of charcoal in the traditional pit method is just below 30% of the weight of

the original shells. In India the average output in the traditional method has been found to be 35 kg of char-coal from 1,000 whole shells or about 30,000 whole shells yield 1 tonne of charcoal. Shell is converted to shell charcoal by carbonization process in mud pits, brick kilns and metallic kilns. To obtain good qual-ity charcoal, fully dried, clean, mature shells should be used. Now several modern methods are in vogue for the production of charcoal. In the modern waste heat recovery unit the heat generated by the burning of coconut shells is used for drying copra and shell charcoal is obtained as byproduct.

A MS drum kiln is used for carbonization of shells. The drum consists of three sets of six 1” dia holes provided at its bottom, middle and upper layers and a lid. A detachable chimney is provided which is installed on the lid after closing the drum. The manu-facture of charcoal requires optimum carbonization of raw shells in a limited supply of air so that there is neither unburnt shell nor ash due to complete com-bustion. The steel drum is filled with raw shells after placing temporarily a 4-inch-diameter wooden pole in the centre of the drum. The wooden pole is then removed, leaving a hollow space in the centre which allows the flow of smoke during carbonization. To start carbonization, a piece of burning rag is dropped to the bottom of the drum through the hollow space in the centre. When the fire is well underway, the lid with the chimney is placed into position and the up-

per and the middle sets of holes are closed. Carbon-ization which starts at the bottom progresses as it goes up as well as radially from the hollow space. When carbonization is complete in a particular zone, a persistent glow can be seen in all the six holes of a set. When the bottom most set of holes indicate this situation, the middle set of holes is opened and the bottom set closed. The stoppage of air flowing into the bottom region avoids over-carbonization in that region. The progressive carbonization results in reduction in volume of contents and therefore more shells are added from the top. When the middle re-gion is carbonized well, the top set of holes is opened while the middle set is now closed. A further addition of raw shells is done to fill the volume reduction to maximise capacity for burning. When the top region is well carbonized, the top set of holes is also closed, resulting in complete stoppage of air inflow to the drum. The drum is then cooled for about eight hours after which the product is ready for discharge. 30,000 coconut shells will yield1 tonne coconut shell char-coal.

8. ACTIVATED CARBON

Project cost (9 tonnes/day)Land 1 acre (cost variable) Building 12,000 sq ft Rs 60 lakhPlant & machinery Rs 300.00 lakhPreliminary & pre-operative expenses Rs

30.00 lakhElectrification Rs 40.00 lakhWorking capital (margin money) Rs 70.00 lakhTotal Rs 500 lakh

Activated carbon is a non-graphite form

of carbon which could be produced from any carbo-naceous material. Coconut shell-based activated car-bon is considered superior to that obtained from other sources due to its small macro-pore structure which

renders it more effective for the adsorption of gas/va-pour and for the removal of colour and odour of com-pounds. It is widely used in the refining and bleach-ing of vegetable oils and chemical solutions, water purification, recovery of solvents and other vaporus, recovery of gold, and in gas masks for protection against toxic gases. On average 3 tonnes of coco-nut shell charcoal would yield 1 tonne of activated carbon.

The process of steam activation is carried out in two stages. Firstly the coconut shell is con-verted into shell charcoal by the carbonization pro-cess which is usually carried out in mud-pits, brick kilns and metallic portable kilns. The coconut shell charcoal is activated by reaction with steam at a tem-perature of 900oC -1100oC under controlled atmo-sphere in a rotary kiln. The reaction between steam and charcoal takes place at the internal surface area, creating more sites for adsorption. The temperature factor in the process of activation is very important. Below 900oC the reaction becomes too slow and is very uneconomical. Above 1100oC the reaction be-comes diffusion controlled and therefore takes place on the outer surface of the charcoal resulting in loss of charcoal. Ninety thousand shells will yield 1 tonne of activated carbon.

(Land and building cost may vary depending upon actual cost) Courtesy: Coconut Development Board


14

Abin K I

MICE stands for ‘meetings, in-centives, conferences and

exhibitions’ providing the gamut of ser-vices to business tourism. Kochi, nick-named the Queen of the Arabian Sea, is also the economic capital and most important industrial hub of Kerala. Re-nowned for its commerce, tourism and trade activities, it has been attracting businessmen and tourists from all over the world since time immemorial. The image of this commercial city is speed-ily transforming into an event capital because of the launching of frequent events of all forms during short inter-vals.

Event management is the applica-tion of the management practice of project management to the creation and development of festivals and events. All the major business groups are having corporate offices in Kochi and that is one reason why events are held in the city. There are lots of venues which can hold big and small events in and around Kochi. Adequate and different categories of quality ac-commodation units of all categories are available in Kochi, another reason for people to prefer it for events.

The Cochin International Airport Trade Fair Centre which opened in June 2012 is the largest venue in Kochi not connected with a hotel. Spread across five acres it has a total area of 43,000 sq ft with 30,000 sq ft exclu-sively reserved for exhibition space. However the largest event venue in Kochi is the Le Meridien Hotel and Convention Centre having 52,000 sq ft of indoor space ideal for holding con-ferences, conventions, exhibitions and travel marts of international standards. More and more event management companies are expanding their opera-tions to Kochi in order to capture more share of business.

Ease of access through all modes of transport and availability of diverse tourist attractions and entertainment options are other reasons why more events are organized in Kochi. The Cochin International Airport is well connected by international flights to

the Gulf and it enables delegates to attend the event venues with ease of access. Efforts are on to start direct flights from Kochi to Europe and this will give a great boost to the event business in the city.

Recently Kochi hosted gigantic and small events having international, national and regional importance. The following events gained greater atten-tion from local people, businessmen, academics, sports lovers and tourists in particular.

International Coir Tech Expo: This was a five-day event on coir technol-ogy held at Marine Drive and its pur-pose was to reveal all coir industry-related technological breakthroughs and to enable people to familiarize themselves with coir products. The oc-casion was also used to propagate a host of new and innovative products made from coir such as umbrellas and jackets. This was the first time that the Coir Board was holding a technology expo and it was part of the efforts to introduce substantial mechanization of the industry.

Emerging Kerala Meet: The Emerg-ing Kerala Global Connect-2012 suc-ceeded in setting the future goals of the state. A total of 4,676 participants registered for the meet out of whom 2,512 were business delegates. A large number of them, 2,183, benefited from business-to-business and business-to-government meetings. The Con-federation of Indian Industry (CII) had already announced the setting up of a Centre of Excellence in Entrepreneur-ship in the State. During the meet, 43 business proposals were discussed between different departments of the state and companies from the UK, the US, Japan, Canada etc.

Kerala Travel Mart (KTM): KTM is the lone tourism event in the subconti-nent that brings together the business fraternity and entrepreneurs behind the tourism products and services of Kerala. Its seventh edition was suc-cessfully held from September 27 to 30, 2012. It is today the largest gather-

ing designed, planned and scheduled to facilitate meetings involving buyers, sellers, the media, Government agen-cies and others. Besides buyer-seller interactions, tourism-related seminars, press meets, post-mart FAM tours and cultural evenings are organized and it gives the participants a firsthand experience about destination Kerala. Launched in 2000 as KTM, seven very successful editions have been suc-cessfully conducted over the last 12 years with the participation of buyers from around 50 countries and from other states of India.

Kochi-Muziris Biennale: The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is an international ex-hibition of contemporary art. Currently being held in Kochi it is also the first biennale to be hosted by India. The ex-hibition is set in spaces around Kochi, Muziris and surrounding islands. There were shows in existing galleries and halls and site-specific installations in public spaces, heritage buildings and disused structures. National and inter-national artists exhibited their artworks across a variety of mediums including film, installation, painting, sculpture, new media and the performing art. Through the celebration of contem-porary art from around the globe, the biennale seeks to invoke the historic cosmopolitan legacy of the modern metropolis of Kochi and its mythical predecessor, the ancient port of Muz-iris. Besides exhibitions the biennale is offering a rich programme of talks, symposium, seminars, screenings, music, workshops and educational ac-tivities for academics, research schol-ars and students.

Cochin Flower Show (CFS): CFS was held at Ernakulathappan Grounds from December 28, 2012 to January 3, 2013. Being a regular event of Kochi it could draw the attention of huge crowds including foreign and domes-tic tourists. Organized by the District Agri-Horticulture Society, it showcased diverse varieties of plants, flowers, medicinal plants, bonsai and other decorative plants from different coun-tries.

All the major business groups are having corpo-rate offices in Kochi and that is one reason why events are held in the city. There are lots of ven-ues which can hold big and small events in and around Kochi. Adequate and different categories of quality accommodation units of all categories are available, another reason for people to prefer it for events. The Cochin Inter-national Airport Trade Fair Centre is the largest venue in Kochi not connected with a hotel. However the largest event venue in Kochi is the Le Meridi-en Hotel and Convention Centre having 52,000 sq ft of indoor space. More and more event management companies are expanding their operations to Kochi in order to capture more share of business.

Kochi, the event capital, is boosting

business tourism

14

TOuRISM EVENTS



15Global Village Trade Fair: This

was held at Bolghatty Island as part of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival (GKSF) and was a one-stop shopping destination for GKSF. Spread over 24 acres, some 400 stalls in six pavil-ions showcased an array of products and services from around the coun-try and abroad. The theme video of GKSF presented a colorful pageantry of Kerala Tourism and the opportuni-ties available for shopping in the state. Six thematic pavilions—International, National, Kerala, Consumer, Brand and Weaves—and a food pavilion with over 40 stalls were part of the Global Village. Besides amusement activities, 3D and 4D shows, a magic world, daily entertainment, kids’ zone and a water-front with houseboats, speedboats and various cruise services are offered.

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD): Around 2,000 delegates from 44 coun-tries participated in the PBD celebra-tions held from January 7 to 9. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugu-rated the event and President Pranab Kumar Mukherjee addressed the vale-dictory session. The event was being held for the first time in Kerala and the theme was ‘Engaging Diaspora—the Indian Growth Story’. Issues pertain-ing to expatriates in the Gulf countries were discussed at the event. Chief Ministers from several states and the

Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab par-ticipated in the event. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry was the partner for this three-day event.

India-England Day Night One-Dayer: Yet again Kochi hosted an in-ternational one-day match after a gap of more than one year. The first-ever day night international cricket match played on January 15 at Jawahar-lal Nehru Stadium witnessed a full house as there are more enthusiastic and passionate cricket lovers in and around this city. Even European tour-

ists watch the match from the stands. The atmosphere inside the venue was rocking, amazing and splendid, and fa-cilities offered at the venue were also fabulous. The earlier matches played here also witnessed spectators com-ing in mass numbers to support their home team.

Events and tourism: Tourism is the industry which is benefited the most from events because every form of events is an attraction for the tourists. Event tourism doesn’t have any sea-sonality issue when compared with other forms of tourism. Besides the

major events, the award nights orga-nized by different groups also attract large numbers of domestic tourists. Many of the delegates coming to at-tend the events extend their stay to en-gage themselves in tourism activities. Business hotels, entertainment com-panies and travel service providers are benefited the most from event-based tourism. The image of the destination is also enhanced as a result of events of international importance on a regu-lar basis being conducted and which attract more foreign tourists. Kochi is undoubtedly emerging as a major cen-tre for convention tourism in the state and it needs numerous convention centres of international quality to meet this increasing demand. As an event venue, Kochi has great potential be-cause of its unique facilities, amenities and availability of ideal resources for developing it. The city is all set to host many more events and it will lead to business tourism development in the days ahead.

(Mr Abin is Lecturer in Tourism, School of Tourism Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. Mobile: 9037389084, email: [email protected])


16

Manappuram—energizing gold, empowering peopleManappuram Finance Limited

has in recent years emerged as a leading non-banking financial company (NBFC) in India under the stewardship of Mr V P Nandakumar, Managing Director and Chief Execu-tive Officer of the company.

Manappuram’s origins go back to 1949 when it was founded at Valapad, a coastal village in Thrissur district, by the late V C Padmanabhan, father of Mr Nandakumar. Its activity was mainly pawnbroking and moneylend-ing carried out on a modest scale. The principal asset of the company was the integrity and foresight of its found-er and among the people of the area it soon acquired a reputation as a safe haven for their investments.

Expansion: Mr Nandakumar took over the reins of this one-branch busi-ness in 1986 when his father passed away. Since then, it has been a sto-ry of unparalleled growth, with new milestones being crossed every year. Manappuram Finance Ltd was incor-porated in 1992 (the original name was Manappuram General Finance and Leasing Limited) with its registered of-fice at Valapad. It is India’s first listed and highest credit-rated gold loan com-pany and widely recognized as a lead-ing wealth creator in the Indian stock

Mr Nandakumar took over the reins of this one-branch busi-ness in 1986 when his father died. Since then, it has been a story of unparalleled growth, with new milestones being crossed every year. Manappuram Finance Ltd was incorporated in 1992 (the original name was Manappuram General Finance and Leasing Limited) with its registered of-fice at Valappad.

market. Since inception, the company has maintained a consistently rapid pace of growth. Today, it has around 3,000 branches across 26 states and UTs with assets under management (AUM) of about Rs 11,000 crore, a workforce of about 22,000 and a live customer base of 16 lakh.

Achievements: Soon after it com-menced its operations, Manappuram Finance Limited gathered several ‘firsts’ to its credit. The company was the first NBFC in Kerala to receive a certificate of registration issued by the Reserve Bank of India. It was the first Kerala-based NBFC to get a credit rating in 1995 of ‘MA’ (current rating ‘MA+’) from ICRA, recognizing the company’s ability to make timely re-payments of the principal and interest under its then existing public deposits programme. Manappuram Finance was one of the very first NBFCs from Kerala to go for a public issue of its shares in 1995. In fact, the company has been consistently making profits and consistently paying dividends from the very first full year of operations.

The company was also the first NBFC from Kerala to issue bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1 in 2007 and, then, repeat the feat twice, in 2010 and in 2011 (making it three such in-stances in five years). Moreover, in 2007, Manappuram Finance became the first Kerala-based NBFC to receive foreign investment from FIIs, and also get the highest short-term credit rating of ‘A1+’ from ICRA. In 2010, it became the very first Kerala-based company to offer ESOPs (employee stock option plans) to its middle and senior man-agement functionaries.

Other activities: As part of its di-versification, Manappuram Finance has also ventured into the foreign ex-change business with the RBI having granted an authorized dealer-II licence to the company which permits it to ef-fect outward remittances for a variety of purposes such as overseas medical treatment, higher education abroad, business travel, conferences etc. The company has also commenced instant money transfer in collaboration with UAE Xchange, Wall Street and Mon-eyGram.

Human resources: As an organiza-tion that prides itself as a pioneer and innovator, Manappuram Finance de-rives its strength from the dedication of its highly motivated staff. Right from inception, the company has been keen to spot and nurture the best available talent. The HR department of the company places emphasis on profes-

sionalism and in honing the skills of employees to maintain the edge in a competitive world. The company has a full-fledged training establishment where in-house training courses are regularly conducted in a professional manner to upgrade skills and to en-hance functional efficiency. Moreover, the company sponsors an MBA degree programme for its employees who have completed five years of service and are keen to upgrade their profes-sional skills and qualifications.

The vision: Within the next de-cade, Manappuram Finance hopes to emerge as the largest player in the gold loan sector in India and also to expand its footprint beyond national borders. The long-term vision of the company is to unlock the value of In-dia’s large stock of privately held gold (estimated at about 18,000 tonnes) to the benefit of the common people of India, most of whom possess savings in the form of gold jewellery. This is neatly summed up in the company’s corporate tagline, ‘Energizing Gold, Empowering People’.

Gold loans help the ordinary people in Kerala by providing liquidity to their investments in gold. This is the only rea-son why so many jewellery shops mushroomed in Kerala and they should be grateful to Manappuram and Muthoot. Maybe the bank-ing correspon-dent model will reduce the difficulties in access-ing banks. But for a long time, most poor people have saved in con-ventional financial instruments and, instead, have chosen to save in silver and gold jewellery. They can borrow against this, and sell it in times of seri-ous need. So, the availability of gold and gold loans is an important form of financial inclusion. Our national ac-counts classify gold purchases as a form of saving.

Companies like Muthoot and Manappuram say that the bulk of gold loans are taken to meet emergency expenditure, and are typically repaid within a few months, maybe even a few weeks. They charge reasonable rates of interest (14%-24%), far lower than traditional moneylenders or pawnbro-kers. Loans are quick, and with a mini-

mum of paperwork. So, the rise of gold lending companies has been a boon to the aam aadmi. The RBI must look at these very substantial benefits, not just the risks.

Major highlights of Manappuram in Q2 2012-13:

1. Gold loan outstanding (as-sets under management-AUM) at the end of the quarter increased to Rs 10,66,540 lakh from Rs 10,47,070 lakh in Q2 2011-12

2. Added 73 branches during the quarter and increased total branch strength to 3,044

3. PAT (profit after tax) for the quarter decreased 20% to Rs 10,770 lakh.

From the investment angle, the most significant aspect is that Mr Nandakumar made 58,809 people or owners of 84,11,87,136 equity shares (of Rs 2 FV) richer by Rs 1,470 on their original investment of Rs 10, or Rs 1,47,000 on their original investment of Rs 1,000, meaning that Manappuram made others richer or it created wealth

for others

by utilizing investors’ small amounts. This is capital growth of the finest va-riety. In addition, Manappuram helped 58,809 shareholders to participate in the industrial growth of Kerala and en-abled many to get decent jobs. Now the market capitalization of the com-pany is Rs 30,91,36,27,248 (as on December 7, 2012), grown from the original investment of Rs 3,00,00,000 around 2001. Further, a person who invested Rs 10 in 2001 would have got Rs100.60 as dividend by now. In other words, an investment of Rs 1,000 in 2001 has given a return of Rs 10,600 as dividend and Rss 1,46,000 as ap-preciation

(Information provided by Mr Babu Vettoor. Contact No: 9895356723)

GROWTH COMPANIES-IV


17

Save tax and earn moreIncome tax was intro-

duced in India in that year. In the budget that year the rate of income tax was 2% for in-comes between Rs 200 and Rs 500 a year and 4% for in-comes above Rs 500. After in-dependence we followed the British model of the annual tax exercise in the Income Tax Act 1961. With the introduc-tion of the new Direct Taxes Code this is set to change.

Tax and death are the two inevitable things in life — Benjamin Disraeli

During British statesman and Conservative Prime Minis-

ter (1868, 1874-80) Benjamin Dis-raeli’s time tax planning had not yet emerged as a widely accepted fiscal practice. Hence his statement that tax is inevitable. Not so in the modern days. Now, governments give tax re-liefs to citizens for achieving a variety of goals. In India it is now possible to make substantial tax savings if invest-ments are made wisely.

Britain was the first country to in-troduce personal income tax in 1798 as an annual tax to meet the cost of Napoleonic wars. Later it became an important and therefore a permanent source of revenue to governments the world over. For India the first budget in modern form was introduced in the Legislative Council on February 18, 1860, by James Wilson. Income tax

was introduced in India in that year. In the budget that year the rate of income tax was 2% for incomes be-tween Rs 200 and Rs 500 a year and 4% for incomes above Rs 500. After independence we followed the Brit-ish model of the annual tax exercise in the Income Tax Act 1961. With the introduction of the new Direct Taxes Code this is set to change.

The wheel turned full circle in the heyday of socialism: instead of the as-

sessee paying 2% tax and keeping 98%, he had to pay 98% as tax and keep 2% by 1972. The combination of income tax, wealth tax, expenditure tax and capi-tal gains tax made the In-dian tax system oppressive. While this was ‘progressive’ in theory, in practice it en-couraged widespread tax evasion.

As part of the liberaliza-tion measures initiated in 1991 tax reforms were also introduced. Presently the tax rates are moderate.

Even though everyone who earns income is liable to pay income tax, there are some incomes that are ex-empt from tax. For example, dividends from shares. Dividends are exempt from tax irrespective of the amount. Similarly, dividends from equity-diversified funds are also ex-empt from tax. But dividends from debt funds are taxable. Another major attraction of stock investment is the exemption of long-term capital gains from tax. Long-term capital gains are

the gains accruing to investors when they sell stocks at a profit after hold-ing them for a minimum period of one year. This exemption from long-term capital gains is available for equity-diversified funds also.

Furthermore, investments in the equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS) are eligible for exemption under Sec-tion 80c of the Income tax Act. Apart from the excellent returns from stock market investment, these tax exemp-

tions make stocks an unbeatable as-set class.

The 2012-13 budget announced a new scheme called Rajiv Gandhi Eq-uity Saving Scheme providing tax re-lief to new investors in the market. The Finance Ministry notified the RGESS on September 23, 2012. The scheme which aims to attract new investors to the equity market provides for tax de-duction under Section 80 CCG of the IT Act. Under the scheme, investors in specified instruments are eligible for tax deduction of 50% of the amount invested. The maximum amount of in-vestment that can be made under the scheme is Rs 50,000 a year.

First-time investors in the stock market with an income of up to or equal to Rs 10 lakh a year are eli-gible for tax relief under RGESS. A new investor is defined as “a person who has not opened a demat account and has not made any transactions in stocks and derivatives.” “An investor who opened a new demat account be-fore the notification but has not trad-ed” also comes under the definition of retail investor.

Investments that qualify for tax relief under RGESS are all BSE 100 stocks; all CNX 100 stocks; equity shares of Navratnas, Miniratnas and Maharatnas, units of ETFs and mutu-al funds which have the above stocks as the underlying: follow-on issues of the first three above;

1. NFOs of ETFs and MFs with 1,2, and 3 as the underlying

2. IPOs of PSUs whose Gov-ernment shareholding is at least 51% and sales turnover is not less than Rs 4,000 crore in the previous three years.

The new retail investor should open a demat account. The new in-vestor should submit a declaration in Form A to the DP (depository partici-pant) and the DP will forward it to the depository for verifying the status of the new investor.

The three-year lock-in period of the scheme will have two parts: one, a fixed lock-in period of one year commencing on the date of purchase and two, a flexible lock-in period of two years commencing immediately after the first lock-in period.

Trading will be allowed under the scheme after the first-year lock-in subject to the following conditions:

“The investor shall ensure that the demat account is compliant for a cu-mulative period of a minimum of 270 days during each of the two years of the flexible lock-in period.” Compli-ance means that the value of the in-vestment portfolio of eligible securities is equal to or higher than the amount claimed as investment for the purpose of tax deduction. Even if the value of the portfolio falls because of market declines, the account will be treated as compliant.

Exemption of dividend and long-term capital gains from tax and now the relief under RGESS make invest-ments in stocks extremely attractive. Though risky in the short run, stocks are safe and give attractive returns in the long run. Sensex (1979=100) is currently hovering around 20,000.

This translates into an annual average return of more than 18% in-cluding dividend. Indeed, very attrac-tive returns! With India expected to emerge as an economic powerhouse in the years to come, for long-term in-vestors, it would be realistic to expect similar returns in future.

(Dr Vijayakumar is Investment Strategist, Geojit BNP Paribas)

Dr V K Vijayakumar

TAX GAINS


18 News

On issues ranging from foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail

to waste management, from informa-tion technology to tourism and land problems to infrastructure woes, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy the other day opened up his mind at a meeting with a team of management students from America’s prestigious Kansas University School of Business.

On their part, the students felt that Kerala would need to improve in the fields of transportation and waste man-

agement, the two areas which found ready acceptance with the Chief Min-ister.

Proving that he could handle man-agement students with the same ease as he would field a battery of questions from the Opposition, Mr Chandy de-tailed the problems faced by Kerala and the solutions his Government was trying to address them.

The 17-member team, in India as part of a students’ exchange pro-

gramme with Asian School of Business (ASB), also posed queries on a variety of issues ranging from FDI to IT during their chat with the Chief Minister at his official residence Cliff House in Thiru-vananthapuram.

On Kerala’s stand against FDI in the multi-brand retail sector, Mr Chandy said his Government would not take any decision that would adversely af-fect thousands of families dependent on the small-scale retail sector. When told that the Congress, ruling both in

the state and at the Cen-tre, had taken contradic-tory stands on the issue, the Chief Minister said he had the permission of his party to take such a stand in view of the pe-culiar situation in Kerala.

Kerala Planning Board member G Vi-jayaraghavan, who is Member Secretary of the governing council of ASB, explained to the students how new tech-nologies would help pro-duce power from waste.

“Kerala should have been in the forefront in the IT sector, given its strengths. But we could not capitalize on these. We are now focusing on it to bring the state back to the top. There is also huge potential in the tourism sector for Kerala,” Mr Chandy said. Besides Mr Vijayaraghavan, Mr Joyce Clatterbose, faculty member of Kansas Business School, Prof S Rajiv, ASB Di-rector, and Mr G Venugopal were also present during the interface

CM opens up to US students on FDI, IT

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy with visiting stu-dents from the Kansas Business School (US) at Cliff House in Thiruvananthapuram. Mr G Vijayaraghavan, ASB Member Secretary, and Prof S Rajeev, ASB Di-rector, are also seen.

The Indian Nutritional Medical Association (INMA) in associa-

tion with Rotary Cochin Central is or-ganizing an ‘International Anti-ageing Medical Conference & Expo’ from April 26 to 28, 2013 at Le Meridien Conven-tion Centre, Kochi. The purpose of the programme is to help arrest premature ageing and promote the concept of graceful ageing, according to the orga-nizers.

Launching the official logo of the event the other day, Health and Family Welfare Minister V S Siva-kumar said such a conference was of great impor-tance, particularly in Kerala, the ‘capital of lifestyle diseases’.

The meet aims to bring medical p ro fess iona ls , scientists and re-searchers on a common platform for the benefit of the common man who wants to re-main physically fit.

“Interactive sessions being planned with health experts in the field will help the common man to a great extent. They can look forward to important health tips from these professionals”, Dr Sreekumar, Chairman of the confer-ence, said.

Eminent medical practitioners and scientists from various parts of India

and abroad will participate in the con-ference. Besides benefiting the com-mon man, the conference will also be equally beneficial to the medical fraternity who are eager to update themselves with the latest techniques emerging in the world.

The expo will have stalls put up by pioneers and leaders from the areas of health, beauty, fitness, food, nutrition, medicine, biotechnology, bioinformat-

ics, genetics, environmental science and cellular engineering.

The event is being organized to raise funds for promotion of rainwater harvesting, assistance of orphanage homes, Government bodies in preven-tive healthcare and medical aid for the poor and needy and for the creation of required infrastructure for research and training in cellular nutrition and en-vironmental medicine

Kochi to host anti-ageing meet

Health and Family Welfare Minister V S Siva-kumar launching the logo of the Anti-Ageing In-ternational Conference & Expo. Mr Vinayakumar, Mr Sasthamangalam Mohan and Dr Sreekumar, Chairman of the expo, are also seen.

The Confederation of Indian In-dustry (CII) has announced the

commencement of the fourth CII Na-tional HR Excellence Award 2013. A `Workshop on Assessment for CII Na-tional HR Excellence Award’ is being organized as part of strengthening the talent pool of assessors and to devel-op internal facilitators in organizations for the adoption of the model from February 13-15, 2013 at Park Hotel in Bangalore. The award is aligned with several criteria of the CII-EXIM Bank Award for Business Excellence with exclusive focus on the HR domain.

CII instituted the National HR Ex-cellence Award in 2009 in an effort to partner industry in the journey to-wards HR excellence and collaborate with HR thought leaders to establish a

credible precedence along with a set of benchmarks and best practices that can be emulated across organizations over time. The award has been well re-ceived by the members and has now become an annual feature of CII activi-ties. The objective is to train more HR professionals on this model and en-hance the quality of assessment of the HR Excellence Award. This is essen-tially a peer assessment framework.

This three-day workshop (non-residential) is aimed at developing skills for assessing the effectiveness of various management approaches and their deployment for achieving HR excellence. The course is newly de-signed and is aligned with the EFQM Excellence Model

Workshop on ‘Assessment for CII HR Award’Aiming for special tour packages in Kerala, Brite Holidays opened

its office at KSHB Building, Pana-mpilly Nagar, Kochi the other day. Brite Holidays Kuwait CEO Al Abbas

Mehboob Muhammed inaugurated it. K3A Zone President T Vinaya-kumar, former Deputy Mayor Sabu George, Directors K V Shaji, Anto

Kottakkal, Benny Payyapilly Pavi-zham and Joshy Manickamangalam participated.Steps would be initiated through the Kuwait branch to attract more Kuwait tourists to Kerala, said

Mehboob Muhammed. Brite expects about 2,000 tourists to visit Kerala this year. Brite has drawn up special tour packages for this purpose

Brite Holidays Kochi branch


19

Dr Narendra Kumar, President of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), who was awarded the Bharatiya Pravasi Samman recently, is being draped with ponnada by Minister V S Sivakumar at a function organized by the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Alumni.

The third edition of Coir Kerala, scheduled at Alappuzha from

February 1 to 5, will witness two-to-threefold rise both in turnover and number of quality visitors, according to Revenue and Coir Development Minister Adoor Prakash. “The num-ber of quality visitors confirmed so far has swelled manifold compared to the previous editions and the Government is expecting a direct sale of over Rs 200 crore this time,” Mr Prakash told the media at Thiruvananthapuram the other day.

Coir Kerala, the biggest-ever expo of coir and natural products in the world, is being organized by the Ker-ala Government’s Department of Coir Development, with a view to regaining the glory of coir, the ‘gold yarn’ of the state.

``We have focused on the emerg-ing markets like Africa and Latin Amer-ica this time. The response so far has been fantastic. Delegates from 60 countries will take part in the fair this time,” the Minister said.

Compared to 28 delegates last year from Europe, this time 37 have already confirmed their participation. Likewise, there is a remarkable increase in the number of quality buyers from North American, Latin American and Asian countries. Against just three last time, nine buyers from Australia have also confirmed their participation.

``The Government has taken sev-eral welfare measures to better the plight of workers in the field and sup-port the cooperative societies. This event is also another attempt to help them find opportunities in the domestic and international markets,” the Minis-

ter said.Dr Anil K

R, Director of the National Coir Research and Management In-stitute (NCRMI), said the event would be the biggest platform in the sector for international collaborations, buyer-seller meets, exchange of ideas and technology and a fabulous display of innovative coir products from across the world. NCRMI is the nodal agency for Coir Kerala.

“The last two editions were big draws. Some 150 buyers from 60 countries are gathering for the third edition, going by the response so far. We expect a counter sale of Rs 200 crore in the event, which is at the same time an expo and a brainstorming sum-mit,” he said.

“Coir encompasses every facet of human life— from doormats to rugs, rubberized coir mattresses, decorative rugs, tufted carpets and from geotex-tiles and garden articles to wood sub-stitutes. Kerala should be the natural choice for supplying the products to the Indian market,’’ Mr Prakash said.

“Started in 2011, Coir Kerala has emerged as the biggest, most influ-ential and comprehensive event on coir and natural fibre products, provid-ing ample opportunities for domestic manufacturers and overseas buy-ers to meet and interact on business, trading, joint ventures, strengthening of existing markets, establishing new markets, transfer of technology and technical know-how and widening of contact bases”, said Dr K Madanan, Director of the Directorate of Coir De-velopment

Coir expo: Rs 200-cr direct sale expected

The consolidated income of Geojit BNP Paribas Finan-

cial Services for the quarter ended December 31, 2012 went up by 15% from Rs 58.78 crore to Rs 67.75 crore and profit after tax (PAT) for the comparable period increased by 202% from Rs 4.3 crore to Rs 13 crore. During the quarter, the company’s assets under custody and management crossed the Rs 14,000-crore mark for the first time.

For the nine months ended De-cember 31, 2012, consolidated in-come went up by 5% from Rs 184.16 crore to Rs 192.81 crore. The in-crease of PAT from the comparable period was up by 355%—from Rs 14.66 crore to Rs 66.77 crore, which includes an exceptional income re-ceived during the second quarter of

Rs 36 crore on account of the sale of its stake in the JV with BNP Paribas for institutional broking.

About the results, Managing Di-rector C J George says: “Improve-

ment in the market conditions and efficient cost management helped the company to report better results for the quarter.” He also said that two joint ventures of the company, BBK Geojit Securities KSCC in Kuwait and QBG Geojit Financial Services LLC in Oman, would start full com-mercial operations in the current quarter.”

Geojit Q3 PAT up at Rs 13 cr

In line with its expansion and di-versification strategy, the Amra-

pali Group, one of the fastest-growing real estate companies in India which offers modern, luxurious and reason-ably priced homes, has ventured into the FMCG industry. Amrapali Biotech India Pvt Ltd was incorporated in 2007 to produce various food categories like cornflakes, sauces, pickles and jams and operates under the brand name of Mum’s.

With its vision to provide quality food products to its target market, the company has been able to carve a niche and a very strong customer base throughout the country over the last five years. Am-rapali Biotech has presence in 18 states with its well-established network of com-pany depot, C&F agents, CSAs, super-stockists and distributors across the coun-try and plans to penetrate the remaining states soon. Currently it exports to Nepal and plans to soon launch its products in the Middle East a n d African countries to increase its off-shore revenue and presence with an expected turnover of Rs 50 crore in the financial year 2013-2014.

The company today has a produc-tion capacity of 22,000 tonnes a year from its Rajgir plant which was inau-gurated by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish

Kumar on August 5 last. It is coming up with its ambi-tious project in Buxar, Bihar, in the name of ‘Mum’s Mega Food Park’ that will house eight food processing units such as a 100-tonne-a-day maize processing unit, a 12-tonne-an-hour rice processing unit along with units of cornflakes, grits, fruit juice, vegeta-ble pulp, aseptic canned cattle feed, ready-to-eat numkeen and dehydrated

food. With these, the com-pany hopes to cross the Rs 100-crore mark in FY 2014-2015.

Some of its reputed clients in modern trade include Big Bazaar, Vishal Mega Mart, V-Mart, Spen-cer’s, Walmart, Needs and Modern Bazaar. It is also in negotiation with Reli-ance, Namdhari’s, D-Mart, Aditya Birla Group, Metro Cash & Carry and Carre-four. It has also been ca-

tering for Government agencies like UPRKKN and Kendriya Bhandar and very near to closing deals with Central Police Canteen with plans to launch very soon in CSD Canteen.

Today 48% of the company’s rev-enue comes from general trade, 43% from modern trade and Government agencies and 9% from export

Amrapali enters FMCG sector with brand Mum’s


20 207 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi

The 32nd Annual Man-agement Convention

of the Kerala Management Association (KMA) will be held on February 7 and 8, 2013, in Kochi. The theme chosen for this year’s convention is ‘Sustainability & Growth in Challenging Times’ keeping in

view the prolonged global economic turbulence and its impact on Indian industry and business.

To be inaugurated at 6.30 pm on February 7 at the International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, the convention will have two technical sessions and one panel discussion the next day. About 1,000 del-egates, mostly company executives, professionals and industrialists including management students from across the state, are expected to participate in the biggest management meet in Kerala

Dr D Purandeswari, Union Minister of State (inde-pendent charge) for Commerce and Industry; Mr Ni-tin Paranjpe, MD and CEO, Hindustan Unilever Ltd; Mr Prasad Chandran, Chairman, BASF Companies in India and Head, South Asia; are the speakers at the inaugural session

Mr OnnoRuhl, India Country Director, World Bank, Mr Shrijeet Mishra, Executive Director and COO, Times of India Group; and Mr S Y Siddiqui, Chief Operating Officer, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd; will be addressing the first technical session on ‘Trans-formational Leadership’.

Dr Hasit Joshipura, Vice-President (South Asia) and Managing Director (India), GlaxoSmithKline, Ltd, Mr Ullas Kamath, Joint Managing Director, Jyothi Laboratories Ltd, and Ms Sangeeta Pendurkar, Man-aging Director, Kellogg’s India, will address the sec-ond technical session on ‘Driving Growth Through Competitive Advantage’.

In the panel discussion to be followed, Mr Sub-hash Menon, Chairman, Kivar Group, Bangalore, Mr K T Chandy, Partner–Tax and Regulatory Ser-vices, Ernst & Young, Mr K S Jamestin, Director–HR, ONGC, Prof Rajeev Sreenivasan, IIM-Bangalore, and Vice-President–Customer & Commercial Lead-ership, Coca-Cola, will partici pate. The theme is ‘Building Sustainable Businesses’.

Mr Sachin Pilot, Union Minister of State (indepen-dent charge) for Corporate Affairs; and Mr D Shiva-kumar, President, All India Management Association and Senior Vice-President, India Middle East and

Africa, Nokia; will be the chief guest and keynote speaker, respectively, at the valedictory session on February 8.

The third KMA-Federal Bank Excellence Awards will also be announced on the occasion. The best corporates in Kerala will be awarded for their excel-lence in the following areas during the calendar year 2012: in-house magazine published; technology in-novations implemented/initiated; CSR activities un-dertaken; innovative HR policies undertaken; green initiatives implemented.

KMA is a premier management association in the country, promoting management education and train-ing in Kerala. Established in 1957, it is one of the oldest management associations in the country and is an affiliate of the All India Management Associa-tion (AIMA), New Delhi. KMA has over 250 compa-nies and institutions as its corporate members and more than 1,500 professional managers as individual members.

The annual management convention is KMA’s flagship event. Over the years, themes of contem-porary relevance, importance and interest have been deliberated in these conventions by eminent leaders of business and industry

Largest management meet on Feb 7 and 8

In today’s fluctuating market situ-ation, not only the survival of an

entity but its sustainability and subse-quent growth should also be focused on. KMA is trying to redefine old busi-ness tactics according to the emerging market trends. The annual conferences

of KMA discuss things which help mitigate the concerns being faced by man-agers,” says Mr S R Nair, the in-cumbent Presi-dent of KMA.

In the wake of the simmer-ing economic

crisis in the world, particularly in Europe and the US, it is imperative to ensure the sustainability of companies whose economy primarily depends upon the tidings of the US and the European Union (EU). In 2008, when sub prime bubbles burst in the US heralding the global economic recession, several fi-nancial institutes as well as business entities, whose transactions were in the US dollar, collapsed at short notice.

The global economy sunk and sev-eral countries were left debt-ridden except a few including India, whose

economy was not dollar-dominated then. Besides, a few companies that fought diligently and eluded the reces-sive after-effects survived the econom-ic menace because of the strategies and economic measures taken by their administrative managers. Only those who can foresee threats in their way of business could evolve measures to overcome struggles. Once again the world is slipping to recession. Manag-ers and CEOs across the globe are evolving new strategies to cope with impending new financial threats. The evolved strate-gies can be used anywhere, with some modifi-cations. How the strategies evolved by fi-nancial pundits can be accessed by business en-tities when in need is a ques-tion that demands an answer for all those concerned, especially, business managers of Kerala, whose business-es are mainly based on exports to the US and the EU. The Kerala Manage-ment Association is such a platform.

“In a business empire, sustainabil-ity is the footing for growth, but achiev-

ing sustainability in modern times is no cakewalk,” says Mr Rajmohan Nair , Chairman of KMA’s Convention Com-mittee.

“Now most of the businesses are market-determined. After the opening up of the Indian economy our markets have become vulnerable even to inter-national happenings. Conditions in the US or Europe reflect on our day-to-day business affairs irrespective of their nature. To achieve sustainability in a minimum period after the commence-ment of the business will naturally fetch strength and credentials. This year’s KMA Convention theme, ‘Sustainabil-ity & Growth in Challenging Times’ certainly will give some impetus to our managers and entrepreneurs with re-gard to sustainability in their respective professions,” Mr Rajmohan says.

“The word recession or slowdown gives sleepless nights to people across the globe. Irrespective of the size, right from the mighty nations to small trad-ers, they all become prey to reces-sion,” says Mr Rajan George, Secre-tary of KMA. “Our Commerce Minister, Mr Anand Sharma, recently warned against a recession in 2013. Accord-ing to him, it will be the mother of all past recessions. In this scenario how can our economy survive the shock?

Or how can we float or sustain in this turbulent times?”

The KMA Convention is debating these and other related iissues and is sure to make sugges-tions to help business find solutions, ac-cording to Mr Rajan George.

“We have erudite speak-ers who have inspired our fraternity. Our symposia and seminars have excelled in im-parting novel ideas, our competitions have encouraged young and aspiring managers to catch the limelight and our annual conventions have become mega-management events,” says Mr S R Nair. It has aptly recognized and honoured leaders by bestowing on them the coveted annual Leadership Award.

“We were always quick to react to situations, whether it is a tsunami di-saster or environmental pollution. Our past and the experience and wisdom of our members will serve us to meet any contingency,” says Mr S R Nair

‘Focus should be on sustainability, growth’

K Rajan George

S Rajmohan Nair

S R Nair


217 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to-do’ list—Michelle Obama

How high have you put yourself on your list?

Women in management can shine because of their patience and multi-tasking ability and because they are less likely to be associated with cor-ruption. There are many enterprising women doing extraordinary jobs and yet they never come to notice and so are never in a position to be a source of motivation to those women who as-pire to be managers. Why do so few women, who excel in their chosen fields, join a relevant business asso-ciation? Is it because they have too many domestic commitments? I have found that it is rarely that you find women at Kerala Management Asso-ciation (KMA) lecture meetings in the evenings. Surely, working out a work-life balance would enable women to

participate and make a positive differ-ence in these associations.

And here is some evidence. In the 55-year history of KMA, Ms Pamela Anna Mathew, Managing Director of OEN India Ltd, has been the only woman elected to the Management Committee and Executive Committee, holding many other positions, before being elected President of KMA in 1992-93.

So, what is my story?First of all, being a woman, it wasn’t

easy to get an education, while getting a job was a Big NO NO! I was a late entry into the corporate world, a male chauvinistic world in which I thought I never would be able to survive. Yet, I’ve achieved my current position as General Manager of the Flora Airport Hotel, having earlier worked as a hos-pitality professional for 17 years with the Taj Group of Hotels and a few years with other chains. This achievement was made possible by determination,

commitment and lots of persistence on my part over all those years and some family sacrifices.

I had been an inactive member of KMA for several years but, over two years ago, I was invited by Mr Prem Chand, then KMA Secretary, to stand for election to the Management Com-mittee. I was hesitant at first, as KMA is a huge corporate body with very high-profile male members. To my surprise I was elected, which was a great boost to my confidence, as KMA is a very professionally run association with very high-quality senior officers. Later, I was elected to the position of Joint Secretary of the Executive Commit-tee and re-lected this year. I also have additional roles as Chairperson of the Women’s Forum and Chairperson of the Young Managers’ Forum. The Women’s Forum conducts many lec-ture meetings, as well as a Women’s Conclave, which is a one-day work-shop very well received by corporate members and entrepreneurs alike.

Women can do betterWhy do so few women, who excel in their chosen fields, join a relevant business associa-

tion? Is it because they have too many domestic commitments? I have found that it is rarely that you find women at Kerala Management Association (KMA)

lecture meetings in the evenings. Surely, working out a work-life balance would enable women to participate and make a positive difference in these associations.

One of the many awards given by KMA annually is Manager of the Year

Award. It is with great pride and pleasure I can say three women have been among the recipients. They are Ms Su-shamma Srikan-dath in 2003, Ms M S Sreekumary in 2006 and Ms Pamela Anna

Mathew in 2011. Since joining KMA, I must admit my outlook on business has changed. KMA is a superb forum for networking, updating oneself on cur-rent issues and meeting and listening to renowned personalities. It is definitely a forum to see professionalism in action.

So why not join this prestigious or-ganization? You will reap the rewards of membership just like I did and who knows one day you may well be crowned Manager of the Year. And even more importantly, in the meantime, you will motivate more and more women to fol-low your example and move into man-agement. And you will have put yourself higher on your personal ‘to-do’ list just as Michelle Obama asks.

(Ms Nirmala Lilly is Joint Secretary, KMA, andGeneral Manager, Flora Air-port Hotel)

What are the challenges?

Kerala is becoming an expensive destination. Other states are emulat-ing Kerala with power to spend more money on the marketing and better in-frastructure.

Europe, the traditional strong mar-ket of international tourists, is on a de-cline economically. Domestic tourists from upcountry look more and more to neighbouring countries as cheaper options.

The state is becoming an expensive destination. In no way can we reduce the higher cost unless the Government intervenes with positive action, the tax structure on hotels and food and the excise policy, to name the glaring is-sues. The policies with regard to these two issues are used to milk the so-called rich cow of tourism rather than as an instrument of growth. In spite of numerous representations from the in-dustry the Government has not react-ed positively to these crucial matters. Kerala has poor air connectivity both domestically and internationally which itself makes the destination expensive.

For example, from Delhi to Bangkok one can have a holiday at half the cost including flights compared to Kerala.

States like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra are ag-gressively closing in on Kerala. These are states with better infrastructure, re-sources and history, a blend of which is conducive to attracting people. Sri Lanka has settled the internal political and ethnic issues and is now aggres-sively marketing itself. Again the desti-nation is less expensive.

Having lost the technological edge and manufacturing base to Asia, the European states are in a state of flux. Holidaying is part of the European culture making it a strong market for us. But the present economic crisis is causing a shift in trends. There are shorter holidays within Europe, choos-ing destinations which burn a smaller hole in their pockets.

How to sustain in these challenging times is the question. Diversifying the supply source. Fortunately both the in-dustry and the Government are on this path. China, the Middle East, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the US

are targeted. This also calls for other fresh inputs in logistics like the guides who can speak Chinese, Russian and other languages, new safety and secu-rity support and standards. Finally, be-ing a large country with rising incomes, the domestic market will be the main-stay of tourism in Kerala as most of the large countries have experienced.

It is not about maximizing the tour-ism potential in the state but rather it is about the optimizing of the resources that will address the concerns of the socially conscious citizenry of Kerala. Concern for ecology, preserving our arts and culture and maintaining the pluralistic social fabric will be the main challenge of the future.

A continuous debate on this issue among the various stakeholders and thought leaders is already on. This dialogue will continue to address the concerns to have the least negative impact on the state in every respect.

Tourist not at any cost but at the best cost.

(Mr. K N Shastry is Ex President of KMA)

Kerala becoming an expensive destination

Nirmala Lilly

K N Shastry

‘Sustainability & Growth in Challenging Times’ is the

main theme of the 32nd annual Man-agement Convention to be held at Le Meridien Convention Centre on Febru-ary 7 and 8, 2013. This annual event of the Kerala Management Associa-tion (KMA) is keenly awaited by the professional management and corpo-rate fraternity in Kerala. The theme reflects the concerns of the citizens during these difficult times.

This concern is equally true in the tourism industry. The tourism industry in Kerala is considered a model for the rest of the country and other Third World countries.


227 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi 227 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi

Management practice is as old as organized and collective human endea-vours. The pre-historic human groups, expert hunters and fishers, planned, organized, and executed their hunt-ing expeditions deploying their strong, facing their threats and exploiting the opportunity to catch their game (goal). This is what modern corporates do to reach their objectives or the practice of 21st century management. They plan, organize and execute.

Harnessing muscle power from animals, slaves and soldiers needed enormous management skills. Alex-ander’s conquest had over a hundred thousand soldiers on horseback and their supply line was stretched from Macedonia in Europe to Sind in India. Without top-class management prac-tice it was impossible to clothe, feed, motivate and make them fight till they died. Alexander commanded and his generals executed his winning strat-egy.

Thus management practice was involved in all human achievements in the past. However its theory and or-ganized teaching was started in a sys-tematic manner only from the begin-ning of the last country, though there were a few exceptions. Chanakya wrote Arthashastra around 300 BC to educate the young Prince Chandra Gupta Maurya. It contains elaborate instructions for a ruler to manage his empire, including the rulers’ social re-sponsibility. Vishnu Sharma’s Pancha-tantra is as old as Chanakya’s work, but was told as animal tales each con-taining strategic wisdom to be used in difficult decision-making. Much later, in Europe, we have The Prince by Ni-colo Machiavelli, advising the rulers on statecraft and how power is amassed, controlled and used for enforcing the will of the State (King).

From old Chanakya and medieval Machiavelli, management as a subject of study was started early by the late 19th century. The first management degree was offered by Harvard Busi-ness School in 1921 only. By the 1950s business and management schools were widespread in the United States and most universities began offering graduate programmes in manage-ment. Canada in North America and France and the UK in Europe started management schools in the 1960s and 1970s but they were few in numbers, and were rather elitist and exclusive, compared to over 1,700 in the US by that time. The US was leading in this number game till recently, but India, a late starter, overtook all countries in the world with the staggering figure of 4,000-plus B-schools by 2012. By 1987 we had the All India Council for Tech-

nical Education (AICTE) by an Act of Parliament to regulate and control the establishment and running of all man-agement and technical institutions.

With planned economic develop-ment and industrialization starting in the 1950s, the need for business man-agers to lead these enterprises has become acute. The ICS and succes-sor IAS bureaucrats were found inad-equate for the task. The answer was creation of professional managers with management education and training at the university level on the US pat-tern, the only model for business ed-ucation available at that time. By the mid-1950s some universities in India started graduate programmes in man-

agement to cater to this need but soon found inadequate. It is at this time that IIMs were envisioned and the first IIM was established in Calcutta in Novem-ber 1961, followed in December 1961 by the second in Ahmedabad. Both were established by the Government of India based on the study of Profes-sor George Robins of the University of California. IIM-C followed closely the MIT Sloan School of Management whereas IIM-A followed Harvard Busi-ness School.

Subsequent IIMs and other B-schools followed these patterns. Today we have 13 IIMs (Calcutta, Ahmeda-bad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong, Rothak, Ranchi, Raipur, Tiruchirappalli, Udaipur and Kashiapur). Till 1990, India had fewer than 100 B-schools, but these shot up

to 700 by 2000 and 4,000 by 2012.

Kerala also followed a similar pat-tern. We started management studies at Kalamassery under Kerala Univer-sity in the early 1960s and the first School of Management Studies under the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) started before IIM-B under management guru M V Pylee. The subsequent growth of man-agement schools was slow. While our neighbouring states went around es-tablishing large numbers of B-Schools, we kept away from this global trend on ideological anachronism and pushed our MBA and other professional as-pirants in droves to other states. The

demand for higher professional educa-tion in medicine, engineering, technol-ogy, management and paramedical and nursing services was so pressing that the State Government by 2001 changed its ostrich policy and started allowing private initiatives in higher professional education.

The subsequent years saw a water-shed. From fewer than 10 B-schools, engineering and medical colleges, the number shot up to over 100 for B-schools and engineering colleges and 40 for medical institutions. The number is still growing. The investment in this sector in the last 10 years has been over Rs 50,000 crore, almost equal to the annual budget of Kerala. The intake of students is around 50,000 and the direct employment generation 20,000. The increased future cash flow and value additions from these new-generation young professionals will be 10 times the present NRK remittance of Rs 60,000 crore. They would invari-ably find jobs mostly outside Kerala.

The question and criticism now levelled is whether we need so many professional institutions. The answer is competition will weed out the weak and quality will pick up. Just as sup-ply will create its own demand, these professional graduates will find or cre-ate jobs in the growing economic tide in the state, India and the world. The boundaryless movement of all factors of production including labour globally has become a reality. A professional sit-ting at Infopark; Technopark or Infosys is doing a job for a company in Alaska or Moscow, so much so employment has become global. To work for Gen-eral Motors you need not go to Detroit; you can do it even from your home. So where is the lack of job opportunity?

What is the role of professional organizations like the Kerala Man-agement Association, chambers of commerce, universities and business in this area? They should be facilita-tors, mentors and guides. After all the fruits of these institutions are used by all these organizations to achieve their goals and it is in their interest to hand-hold them.

(Dr Abraham is Chief Editor, Veek-shanam daily)

Management education—the India storyIn India, from fewer than 10 B-schools, engineering and medical colleges, the number has shot up to over

100 for B-schools and engineering colleges and 40 for medical institutions. The number is still growing. The investment in this sector in the last 10 years has been over Rs 50,000 crore, almost equal to the annual budget of Kerala. The intake of students every year is around 50,000 and the direct employment generation 20,000. The increased future cash flow and value additions from these new-generation young professionals will be 10 times the present NRK remittance of Rs 60,000 crore. They would invariably find jobs mostly outside Kerala.

Dr P K Abraham



237 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi227 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi

At a seminar titled ‘Excellence’, conducted back in 1978 by the

Centre for Excellence, Mumbai, two in-teresting prescriptions evolved which are valid even today in the context of growth: recognize your core compe-tency and grow by design rather than by chance; opportunity is all around us, recognize, grab and exploit it. Luck is nothing but opportunity charged with effort.

If you see the few large corporates which have grown and are still grow-ing, these are the ones which recog-nized opportunity and went all out to exploit it. Most others see others grab-bing opportunity and copying the pat-tern. Open minds who are creative see and recognize opportunity quickly and the innovative among them find ways to exploit it and give the best to the customer and naturally grow.

The phenomenal growth in the telecommunication field is an excellent example of opportunity exploited. The pioneers recognized the opportunity of a mobile in the Indian market; most of the others just followed it and exploited the advantage of scale. Some of the innovative companies offered extra functions in line with customer needs (opportunities) and the industry grew exponentially.

The education industry has also displayed the acumen of opportunity recognition. The scores of institutions offering education in the distance edu-cation format, online format, one year in India and one year abroad, one year in India, one year abroad with intern-ship, leading to a job etc formats are surely examples of making the best use of opportunities.

Our extremely enterprising NRI brothers and sisters who saw greener pastures all over the world are the best examples of opportunity grabbers. They went abroad and became busi-ness leaders, establishing their lead-ership qualities even in politics. They happen to be the backbone of the Ker-ala economy.

The name of Yusuffali stands first for establishing his empire in many

parts of the world and for employing over 18,000 Keralites in all his en-terprises. This great man’s heart is always on the ground and he is avail-able to any visitor either seeking a job, donation or a sponsorship. His Lulu

enterprise of hypermarkets is a role model for any such business.

P N C Menon is a unique and un-usual businessman who says that money can only be a byproduct of success; it cannot be the motivator for success. To say that he is a construc-tion business tycoon is not really fair, because he is a philanthropist with an attitude of never taking the credit for the good work he does.

G D Naidu is the one who brought industrialization and technical educa-tion for the first time in Coimbatore. He was an extremely straightforward person and would refuse to bend to any kind of pressure. It is said that he produced a car for Rs 2,000 in 1952. He requested the Government to elimi-nate the excise duty on the car so that it would be available to the common man. When the Government refused, he took the hammer himself and de-stroyed the car as a protest.

Dr T M A Pai was an allopathic doc-tor and educationist (massive range of educational institutions). He was a true pioneer who received the Padma Bhushan in 1972. He is also the found-er of Syndicate Bank.

K M Mammen Mappillai was an entrepreneur. From a toy shop to MRF Tyres to the Malayalam Manorama was a path-breaking journey. His grit and commitment were such that not only he but his siblings and nephew got Padma Bhushan. This shows obvi-ous leadership.

Dr P J Antony, an extremely inno-vative and passionate shipping en-gineer in Kochi, is an unsung hero in Kerala. When you hear this man talk-ing about the outstanding ability of the Indian brain for repair, maintenance and reuse, you get a hint about what is in his mind. He is proud to be Indian because according to him Indian ship-

Grab opportunities and grow

The demographic advantage we have now will shortly come to the fore with positive

youth power who with their idealism, energy and get-things-done attitude will take our

country to great heights. The youth have every possible lesson in governance, management,

politics etc.

ping brains totally repaired and put back to sea a ship which was junked by New Zealanders. The rebuilt ship was taken back to New Zealand and people there raised their hands in awesome appreciation of the fantastic

redoing of it.

We have a lot of destiny-conscious peo-ple who justify their not look-ing at oppor-tunity because they believe that everything

will happen in time. Some others jus-tify that everything happening around us is due to kali kaalam.

The demographic advantage we have now will shortly come to the fore with positive youth power who with their idealism, energy and get-things-

done attitude will take our country to great heights. The youth have every possible lesson in governance, man-agement, politics etc.

The generation which bent down to the British and the present generation will soon disappear from the scene and the India which survived every possible onslaught will stand up stiff and straight. No scams, no corruption, no rapes, no suppression of women or men.

Just imagine if 50% of our popu-lation discover the nectar hidden in them. Our youngsters are seeing this opportunity. Now they are just waking up. Management leaders are those who recognize it and grow by design rather than by chance.

(Mr Rabindranath Athri is CEO, Softskill Initiative, Kochi)

Rabindranath Athri



Intersight Tours & Travels Pvt Ltd, Kochi, with an enviable track record of about two decades in the holiday manage-

ment segment, has emerged today as a highly preferred service provider for its domestic and foreign clients num-bering over a lakh a year. It has wid-ened its area of operation with offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Banga-lore, Kolkata, Kovalam and Thrissur, associated offices all over the country and overseas offices in the UK and Canada.

Intersight has also diversified into travel documentation and airline tick-eting, MICE, luxury car division, holiday management, hotel reservations etc to ensure its customers a complete holidaying experience.

Rated as the best handling agent for Kerala and inbound tourism, Intersight enjoys the best possible rates and services from some finest hotel chains in Kerala. Its customer-centric approach has been further accentuated with an excellent 24 X 7 customer support service manned by the best qualified and trained professionals.

It is today the official handling agency for India’s national carrier Air India for executing some of the highly acclaimed flyway packages in South India and has entered into strategic alliances and tie-ups with the largest hotel chain in Kerala man-aged by the Kerala Tourism development Corporation (KTDC), Axis Bank, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences etc.

Recognized by the Union Ministry of Tourism and the Kerala Government as an accredited tour operator, Intersight is a mem-ber of several travel organizations and trade and commerce bodies. Mr Abraham George (Johny), its Managing Director, is a member of the Kerala State Tourism Advisory Committee, Kerala Chapter, Chairman of the Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India (ADTOI), Vice-President of KTM, President of the Confederation of Accredited Tour Operators Association (CATO) and Vice-President of CKTI.

Intersight diversifies, widens operation

The word sustainability has great importance not only in

business but in everyday life, im-pacting the environment, the en-ergy sector etc. The sustainability of a country or its society is staying afloat during turbulence and mov-ing ahead without damage or with minimum damage to the economy. For business or entrepreneurship, sustainability is the buzzword for growth and ultimate success. In the post-liberalization era, the world has shrunken into a global village. This means our enterprises and services are easily accessible to the markets of the advanced countries and vice versa. Naturally our economy will be prone to recessions occurring in Eu-rope, the US, West Asia or the Far East. In such challenging times, how can an entrepreneur sustain growth with his available resources?

Identifying problems or the root causes of crises is the first and prime requirement during turbulent periods in one’s business. It needs care and a lot more precision. Discussions with employees, especially with the core team of the organization, are necessary at this stage. A good manager or the entrepreneur himself should also be a good listener. He should always welcome the new or innovative ideas appropriate for his business. Consultancies or advice from competent authorities and ex-perts will certainly minimize the grav-ity of the problem and enable smooth functioning of the business.

Segmentation is the key to suc-cess. An entrepreneur should con-sider segmentation of customers for his finished products or services. He must know for which segment of so-ciety he should cater. It may be for individuals, companies or a particu-

lar group, and once this is identified, he should retain them. It means nothing but finished goods. They must be customer-centric or customer-oriented. Upgrading products from time to time is also a challenging task for a successful entrepreneur. This needs research and ad-vice from market experts. A wise entrepreneur will not hesitate to alter, remodel or change his product or ser-vice. But invariably the entrepreneur has an emotional attachment to his product or service and he hesitates to change or remodel it, which may see the collapse of the business. In modern times mergers and acquisitions are the mantra for success and most big corporate bod-ies believe in ‘build, operate and sell’. The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector is yet to adopt such a practice. The main reason for this is that most of these enterprises are family-oriented and the emotional bond of the owner with the existing business is deep-rooted.

A businessman should always be consciously com-petent. He must be aware of his strength and weakness in the market and should be a keen observer of the market conditions. Removing flab and cost-pruning are inevitable steps for the success of the business. Most businesses run on wafer-thin margins. Cutting of un-wanted expenses coupled with efficient manpower use will boost efficiency. Human resource is the backbone of any business/industry. Availability of an efficient and a result-oriented workforce and maintaining them well determine the success of every business.

(Mr Mohammed Saleem is the Managing Director of Asset Homes and a member of the Managing Commit-tee of the Kerala Management Association)

Sustainability buzzword for business growth, success

Identifying problems or the root causes of crises is the firstand prime requirement during turbulent periods in one’s business. It

needs care and a lot more precision. Discussions with employees, espe-cially with the core team of the organization, are necessary at this stage.

A good manager or the entrepreneur himself should also be a good listener. He should always welcome the new or innovative

ideas appropriate for his business.

K A Mohammed Saleem

Abraham George




The wanderer must have been hardly two years old. A scrag-

gly, dark-skinned naked boy with a leaking nose.

Under a makeshift awning of a castaway Louis Vuitton flex banner, a little girl of five slept in a state of stupor. Her dress was torn and tattered. A little fly kept hovering around her leg which festered a sore.

The girl’s mother was a coolie, striving under the burning sun to earn her meagre daily wages. Straightening her back she leaned against the edge of the pit, her eyes half-closed in ex-haustion. Drops of sweat glistened on her face. Dragging herself out of the pit, she picked up her kid and pulled a ragged, torn vest over his head.

Through the glass partition at the swanky airport, her eyes flickered around the figures thronging the arrival lounge. The eyes focused on a corpu-lent lady, piled with jewels. A little boy, probably her son, was perched on a chair near her. His dress and manners projected the persona of a rich and pampered child accustomed to getting what he wanted. Irritably, he was try-ing to dodge the ‘fussing-over’ of his mother. The creamy chocolate donut forced into his mouth was spat out in exasperation.

The little one behind the glass spotted the yummy-yummy chocolate discard. With a sparkle lighting up his face and lips, drooling, he reached for-ward to snatch up the chocolate. Thud! His head banged against the glass.

He cried in pain. He suffered from hunger. He was one among the million children beginning a journey into the new India.

I remembered that haunting UNI-CEF poster which said,

“I cried for more shoes, Till I saw the boy with no feet.”The little child’s face choked me.

What have we, the citizens, our country to offer this innocent child? Isn’t it a sheer biological accident that he was born poor? Not all are born in the best maternity hospital. Not all get their entry into this world heralded by

sweets and the breaking of coconuts in places of worship.

Isn’t there some little love we can give them, a little hope, a little better life? The right to live and earn with dig-nity?

Can we give the children of today the courage to dream? Can we give them a childhood to remember? Can every businessman, every salaried employee set apart a small percentage of their annual income to make a dif-ference in the life of someone else? An initiative that can have a direct impact on the beneficiary?

Surely, the money spent every month on cosmetics or cigarettes or that evening peg should be enough to maintain a child or an abandoned elder on the barest nutrition levels. To give them an education and develop skills that makes them a productive member of society. There is a need for a new consciousness amongst those who have the power to make a difference.

It is ironical to read that the High Court has to intervene to force action against ill-equipped and badly run pro-fessional colleges. The dropouts after joining a professional college are high. The failure rate is higher. The Govern-ment blames the administration and the managements. The managements blame the uncontrolled proliferation of such colleges. Students blame the lack of infrastructure and the quality of the faculty. The faculty blame the pressure of the curriculum and the indifference of the students. It has just become a case of passing the buck.

The country needs over 500 mil-lion skilled personnel if it has to feed a growing GDP. Irrespective of whether it is 6% or above 8%, we as a nation need a continuous supply of qualified and well-trained professionals.

What is education?’ However, we can start thinking about the purpose of education. Is it to educate youth to be responsible citizens? Is it to develop individuals, as well as society, in order to ensure a society’s economic suc-cess? Or is the purpose of education to simply focus on developing individu-al talents and intelligence? Perhaps it is the balance of all three that defines education.

Education has become a cesspool of atrocities, today. There is a mad scramble for admissions to schools, and, only to find their enthusiasm and joie de vivre crumbling under a heavy load of books and homework. It is al-ways studies and more studies. Hardly

any time to play. Children are losing out on their golden years of childhood. Pressurized by parents and peers to constantly compete and be the best as it is a social status symbol for them!

Why has education become so op-pressive today? The first six years of a child are the most crucial when he is feeding his brain with vital informa-

tion of all that registers in his mind through his eyes. A school gets a child for 14 years—from Kg to Plus II. If a school cannot mould a child during the schooling years, it is too much to ex-

pect a college to change the individual in under four years with so many distractions and disruptions in place.

Let us be honest to our-selves. Let us rise above our mediocre selfishness. Let us give our children a chance to understand the meaning of childhood. Let our schools focus on the holistic develop-ment of the child rather than just on academics. Let us not gloat on the fact that we are a 100% literate state. The ques-

tion to ask ourselves is, Are we just literate or are we educated?

(Mr Balachandran is CMD, SB GLOBAL, Kochi)

Children losing out on childhood. Save them

R Balachandran



Since its inception in 2002 at Anga-maly, De Paul Institute of Sci-

ence & Technology (DIST) has passion-ately pursued educational excellence. The past decade has been a committed effort towards concretizing its vision of creating an ambience for this on a lush

green campus in a prime location, equipped with the latest infrastructure, experienced faculty and interna-tional tie-ups with prestigious universities.

DIST is managed by De Paul Educational Trust, the educational arm of Vincentian Congregation, a Catholic religious community. The institute derives its title and inspiration from St Vincent de Paul, the pa-tron saint of the Vincentian Congregation, inspired by whom its members undertake educational/charitable/spiritual activities for uplifting society, especially the marginalized sections. DIST’s vision is to mould out-standing young professionals in relevant fields.

Each of DIST’s five schools—Management, IT, Social Work, Commerce and Media and Communi-cation—is self-sufficient with its own teaching depart-ments, latest-in-class infrastructural facilities, training and placement activities, add-on courses, research projects and consultancy and extension services. The learning-teaching process in each school is mul-tidimensional. Apart from classroom presentations and assignments, students also participate in nation-al- and international-level seminars, conferences, students’ meets etc. IT-enabled training, group re-search models, latest reflective practices for student enrichment, student-led projects, students’ associa-tions and clubs and job-related placements/fieldwork practices with international faculty are some of the teaching-learning methods.

The School of Management, started in 2006, provides education rooted in human values and social concerns and brings out aspiring managers’ full potential. It offers two-year Residential MBA and MHRM (Master of Human Resource Management) programmes.

Launched in 2002, the School of Computer Sci-ence offers Master of Computer Applications (MCA) and Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) cours-es, both of three years’ duration. The school recently started a two-year PG programmme in Computer En-gineering and Network Technology (MSc CE & NT).

The School of Social Work, started in 2004, offers a four-semester PG in Social Work (MSW), which is designed with unique specialities. The School of Multimedia & Communication offers two two-year PG programmes, MA in Multimedia and Master of Com-munication & Journalism, and two UG programmes, BA in Multimedia and BA in Communication, Journal-ism & English, of three years’ duration. The school was started in 2011.

The School of Com-merce moulds business and commerce profes-sionals. Started in 2002, it offers three courses: MCom (Finance), BCom (Computer Applications—BCom Comp) and BCom (Finance & Taxtation—BCom Tax).

DIST has also developed centres for coordinating and supporting activities of the schools. DCRD (De-paul Centre for Research and Development) tries to promote research initiatives and orientation among the faculty and students. DES (Depaul Extension Services) is engaged in social service like women and child development, environmental protection and health awareness. D’Soft Solutions develops software applications and assists IT students to carry out their projects. Centre for Cultural Exchange and International Collaboration provides opportunities to students to build rapport with students from other institutions/universities. It also accepts and accom-modates students of other universities/institutions to make them familiar with our cultural heritage. The centre has tie-ups with foreign universities such as De Paul University, Chicago, US, and James Cook University, Australia, for facilitating overseas expo-sure to the students.

Consistent and effective support systems to par-ents, students and alumni is a distinguishing mark of DIST. Trained counsellors at its Centre for Educa-tional Counselling can handle any queries regarding admission, fee payment, scholarships etc.

Spacious and comfortable hostel accommodation is provided to both boys and girls. There is a cafete-ria and a health club too

DIST—timely vision, timeless valuesRev. Fr. Alex Chalangady

(Principal)

T A Vijayan

Sree Narayana Gurukulam College of En-gineering (SNGCE) was established in

2002 by the Kunnathunadu SNDP Union, head-quartered at Perumbavoor, to accomplish the ideals of Sree Narayana Guru, the great social reformer and philosopher-scholar. The func-tioning of the institution is steered by the Sree Narayana Gurukulam Trust which is committed to providing world-class facilities to up-and-coming technocrats.

The members of the trust hail from various professional fields, and they have a set objective of opening avenues to the youth in world-class higher education in engineering, technology and allied disciplines.

The college has been approved by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and is affiliated to M G University. It has separate hostels for gents and ladies. The ladies’ hostel is located within the campus.

SNGCE increased the MBA seats from 60 to 120 in 2011 and inducted MTech courses in three

streams. Its placement service could get 228 students employed in 2011 and 158 in 2012.

The college envisages more courses in computer science and electrical en-gineering in future, says Mr T A Vijayan, Executive Director.

The team of MBA stu-dents from SNGCE rep-resented by Arun Kurian, Avanish M R, Renjith Pad-

manabhan and Divya K Joy had won the Third Best Overall Award at The Young Indians (Yi) National Innovation Run-Road 2 Ideas held from November 1-4, 2012.

The Innovation Run passed through four states that have over the years demonstrated entrepreneurship and excellence. Twelve teams from various colleges across the country took part in this run wherein they got an opportunity to meet 12 innovators from Indore, Vadodara, Pune and Goa. Two teams from SNGCE and the Toc H Institute of Science and Technology had partici-pated from Kochi

SNGCE helping create next-gen technocrats


De Paul Institute of Science & Technology




SEZ (special economic

zone) status to an industrial cluster means provid-ing leasehold in-frastructure to an industrialist for setting up shop, exclusively for ex-port activities, with minimum Govern-

ment control. The single-window mech-anism is implemented in SEZs, espe-cially in the Cochin Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), to enable entrepreneurs to function smoothly. State and Central Government clearances are provided on the fast-track route. Customs clearances for export and import activities are liber-alized. The Development Commission-ers concerned are empowered to settle labour issues without the involvement of outside officials. This is a milestone in the history of Kerala. Elec-tricity, water supply and waste water treatment, disposal of solid waste etc are major issues for industrial clusters for which SEZs have inbuilt facilities and expert management. There is a senior civil servant with all stat-utory powers, appointed by the Central Government to head each zone. For all practical pur-poses, the State Government is not di-rectly involved in SEZ-sector industries.

Smart City is now a very sensitive subject which cannot be digested by the common people. Prima facie, we are not aware whether it is controlled by the Central Government or the State Government and to what extent either Government is involved in managing the affairs of the project. The sight doesn’t carry all relevant information for the pub-lic. Since the idea of the State Govern-ment is to attract investment, it should have gone for corporates like Wipro, Infosys or Tata from India which were also in the reckoning for the Smart City project. The people therefore fail to un-derstand what made the State Govern-ment compromise on many provisions of the law of the land for a foreign group without drawing lines as it is done in the case of private sector SEZs all over the country.

SEZs are given to entrepreneurs for a maximum period of 15 years in the beginning and further extension is

permitted only for five years at a time. Periodic increase of lease rent is also loaded onto the shoulders of the pro-moters of the industries. The extension of the term for five years is purely based on the performance of the unit. If the unit does not function as envisaged in the initial approval, it will be served with a show-cause notice. If the explanation is not satisfactory and further performance of the unit is not in line with the commit-

ment, it will be checked out of the SEZ, and the area will be allotted to a new unit. This statutory power is vested with the Central Government. Once such a situation arises, promoters become pan-icky about their investment. Disposal of their assets inside the zone will take time and normally proper prices for their assets will not be realized because of limited buyers.

The public is not aware whether such clauses are incorporated in the agreement in the case of Smart City. The question is whether 99 years’ lease is as good as giving the title to a party. The company which occupies the land can easily transfer the land to a second, third or fourth party without the knowl-edge of the Government bodies after a decade. By then the state’s political sce-nario may change. The transfer need not be officially announced. An internal agreement is more than enough. There are many such transfers taking place in the industrial parks. If any consequenc-es arise the area can be divided into pieces and each section can be under

Smart City, SEZ: ambiguities must goSmart City is now a very sensitive subject which cannot be digested by the common people. Prima facie, we are not aware whether it is

controlled by the Central Government or the State Government and to what extent either Government is involved in managing the affairs of the project. The sight doesn’t carry all relevant information for the public. Since the idea of the State Government is to attract investment, it should have gone for corporates like Wipro, Infosys or Tata from India which were also in the reckoning for the Smart City project. The people therefore fail to understand what made the State Government compromise on many provisions of the law of the land for a foreign group without drawing lines as it is done in the case of private sector SEZs all over the country.

K K Pillai

Best Compliments from



The question is whether 99 years’ lease is as

good as giving the title toa party. The company

which occupies the land can easily transfer the land to a

second, third or fourth party without the knowledge

of the Government bodies after a decade.


a different management of the pres-ent group. The newcomer may join `the enterprise as a legal entity and later the first party may resign, leav-ing the second party as the owner of the property.

The 248 acres of land for Smart City is divided by the Kadampara river into two pieces. The Union Gov-ernment was not in favour of sanc-tioning it as one EPZ zone probably for security reasons. Certainly there is a lacuna in assessing the security aspect as the river is flowing in the middle and building walls on the bank of the river to protect it from entry from the river may not be economical or practical.

The river is open on both sides. The local people who want to use the waterway will become trespassers as the river is in the centre of the EPZ protected area. Secondly, there is every chance of the river being used to smuggle goods from other areas to the subject EPZ and/or it could be the other way round. Anything can be taken out from the EPZ. Neither the

promoter nor the Government might have thought of this.

It is also not clear whether the ac-tivities at Smart City will be owned by Indians or other nationals. If the land allotment policy remains the same as that for other zones, then what is the speciality of Smart City? A 100-year lease, in today’s calculations, is too long a period as the whole universe is entering a fast era and our calcu-lation is certain to go wrong. There may be many grey areas to be ad-dressed for transparency.

The authorities should open their eyes to the realities and refrain from criticising the positive efforts of ex-perts in developing and improving the state’s economy. Certainly the time, effort and continued patience exercised by the personalities in-volved in this project are laudable. And the people of Kerala who have a positive outlook are waiting to see the flag fluttering in Smart City in the days to come.

(K K Pillai is anindustrialist in the CSEZ)



MBA (2 Year Full Time)

Passline News Service

The SCMS Group of institutions, one of

the foremost names in the country’s higher education sector, had its beginning with Prathap Foundation for Education and Training

launching the School of Communica-tion and Management Studies (SCMS) at Kalamassery in Kochi in 1976. SC-MS-COCHIN, as its business school

is known t o d a y , has since grown to be one of the very few B-schools in the country with all the credentials and ac-creditations that most

others look forward to with awe.

Besides the B-school, the founda-tion has established numerous other institutes of global standards, par-

ticularly in the fields of engineering, technology, mass communication and biotechnology. “SCMS stands out from institutions because of its quality, attain-ments and high performance levels. It is the only accredited B-school in the state. According to the All India Coun-cil for Technical Education (AICTE), accreditation is the final test of qual-ity for a business school. Most of the PGDM (Postgraduate Diploma in Man-agement) B-schools claim that their PGDM is equivalent to MBA (Master of Business Administration). This claim is illegal as long as they do not have an order from the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) to that effect. We are the only autonomous B-school in Kerala which has got MBA-equivalent recognition from the AIU for our PGDM programme.

We are, again, the first B-school to get ISO certification for quality man-agement and teaching system. We are also the lone recipient of a grant from the AICTE for our excellent perfor-mance record,’’ says Dr G P C Nayar, Chairman of the SCMS Group. “We provide an ethical dimension to man-agement teaching with emphasis on

good behaviour and social responsibil-ity. Ethics is taught as a full course at SCMS,’’ Dr Nayar adds.

The foundation has expanded its reach and opened its new centre in Bangalore—SCMS COCHIN Banga-lore Centre. The group has also ap-plied for university status for it. “We do

not deviate from the moral and ethi-cal principles that are dear to us. We will, perhaps, be the only group which does not charge capitation or levy any amount other than that prescribed for our programmes,” says Dr Nayar.” In Karukutty, near Kochi, is situated the group’s engineering college on 32 acres of land. There is a plan to start a new engineering college there.

A feature that makes SCMS unique as a business school is its tie-up with great foreign institutions like La Trobe University, Deakin University, the Uni-versity of Canberra, University of Ap-plied Sciences-North-Western Switzer-land, North Carolina Central University and the University of Colorado. “Pres-ence of faculty members from across the globe provides our students with a global perspective. Professors from foreign and other universities take classes as part of this tie-up. SCMS has also established a chair on climate change with Professor Cleo Pascal of Chatham House, UK, as consultant professor and Dr C K Rajan as profes-sor,’’ says Dr Nayar.

According to him, SCMS is the only institute which had achieved 90% placement even during the recession. “Almost 95% of our students have been getting placement, in reputed companies, ever since SCMS was established in 1992. Curriculum in-novation and periodic upgradation of the teaching and training system make SCMS different from other B-schools. Our academic committee reviews the curriculum every six months and brings in innovative areas,’’ he adds.

“SCMS aims at grooming leaders of tomorrow who will uphold the philos-

ophy of social commitment and ethical behaviour while creating wealth for the nation. Specialized training is provided at SCMS to improve students’ com-munication skills, public speaking and presentation skills and interpersonal re-lations skills. Students shed their shy-ness and inhibitions so that they can get on with all sections of people,’’ he

says. SCMS also focuses on develop-ment of the analytical ability of individ-uals so that they take intelligent busi-ness decisions. All these programmes aimed at personality development are conducted by special experts who come from different parts of the coun-try. SCMS has an annual budget of Rs 1.5 crore for this purpose.

To further extend its social respon-sibility, SCMS has established a char-ity foundation, the ‘G P C Nayar Foun-dation’, with an initial corpus of Rs 1.5 crore for offering scholarships to finan-cially poor students who join institu-tions under the SCMS Group.

SCMS-COCHIN offers MBA-equiv-alent PGDM, and one-year postgradu-ate diplomas, recognized by the Kerala Government, in Marketing Manage-ment, Human Management, Materials Management, International Manage-ment, Foreign Trade Management, Public Relations, Advertising and Jour-nalism.

The other institutes that constitute the group are SSET-Cochin (SCMS School of Engineering & Technol-ogy); SSTM-Cochin (SCMS School of Technology & Management) offering MBA and MCA; SSET Bioscience and Technology Division SCRCT-Cochin (SCMS Centre for Research, Consul-tancy and Training); NSIPADS-Cochin (NORKA-SCMS Institute for Paramed-ical and Development Studies); SSHM & CT-Cochin (SCMS School of Hotel Management & Catering Technology); SAAMS-Bangalore (SCMS Academy for Animation and Media Studies); SSIS-Cochin (SCMS School of Inter-national Studies) and SCMS-Cochin Trivandrum Centre

SCMS—standing out from the rest

Dr G P C Nayar

The SCMS Group plans to develop an academic complex on Smart City campus at Kakkanad in Kochi with an investment of Rs 150 crore, says Group Chairman G P C Nayar.

“The Kakkanad region has about 50,000 people working in various in-dustries and the number is expected to touch 4.5 lakh by 2020. SCMS will render state-of-the-art academic service to the working executives of this fast-developing information technology hub of Kerala,” says Dr Nayar.

The plan is to start a higher secondary school and a management and technology training institute to cater to the children of the executives working in Smart City. The first phase of the project will be complete by 2016.

Rs 150-cr complex soon on Smart City campus




ence for nurturing and nourishing entrepreneurial spirit among its stu-dents.

``BMIM believes that what human mind can conceive can surely be achieved. We are holistic in whatever we do. We empower our students to achieve more. Our watchword is flex-

ibility, planning, patience, commit-ment, humility and networking. We give comprehensive training to stu-dents with special emphasis on mak-ing them responsible citizens having a secular outlook, moral values and abiding faith in God expressed in ac-tive concern for others,” says Rev Dr Varghese K V, Director of BMIM,

about the institution’s secret of suc-cess.

MNCs and other companies like Max New York Life Ltd, Reliance Tele-com, Apollo Tyres Ltd and Tata-AIG Life are the college’s industry part-ners. A dynamic and vibrant place-ment cell guarantees 100% job assur-

ance. The coaching given is meant to create managers with a wide vision of social commitment and humanitarian considerations for fellow beings.

The experienced faculty members also focus on shaping the students into first-rate citizens, apart from pro-viding the usual curriculum-oriented

training. They also help them acquire soft skills. Thus BMIM is preparing for a revolution in the field of man-agement studies with a different ap-proach to training students. ``Today’s students are tomorrow’s citizens. The future of the nation should be safe in their hands. It does not matter whether the students are from man-

agement or technology wings. Social commitment and a humanitarian ap-proach go a long way in making good citizens. BMIM’s role is to help its students become good citizens. We want to make the coaching that we give a brand in itself,” this is what the college says

BMIM:moulding managers with social commitment

Bharata Mata Institute of Man-agement (BMIM) of Kochi is

one of the leading B-schools in Kerala with a different approach to manage-rial education and training. It is not turning out economy-oriented man-agers but socially committed human beings.

In this era of global-ization where the econ-omy is the supreme power for sustainable development, manage-ment experts serve as an axis power. The development of indus-tries and the economy is vested in the hands of management profes-sionals. Analysing each minute change in the economy and creating new tactics for devel-opment are not easy tasks in a com-petitive economy. A successful man-agement expert is the outcome of an experienced management resource. BMIM has been established to serve as a centre for training future manage-rial experts.

Unlike most well-known B-schools which produce just management ro-bots, BMIM engages itself in shaping socially committed management pro-fessionals. And the college knows that bringing out socially committed man-agers is just like extracting diamond from coal. But this is what it has been doing since its establishment in 2005.

BMIM comes under the decades-old Bharata Mata College, is affili-ated to Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and approved by the All India Council for Technical Educa-tion (AICTE). A nationally accredited institution of higher learning, BMIM is owned and managed by the archdio-cese of Ernakulam-Angamaly.

Hemmed in on all sides by a devel-oped township of Greater Kochi, prox-imity to the industrial hub of Kerala backed by the prestigious Smart City, nearness to the Cochin International Airport at Nedumbassery—with all these facilities and future opportuni-ties, BMIM provides the best ambi-

Fr (Dr) Varghese Kalaparambath

7 - 8 Feb- 2013 International Convention Centre, Le Meridien, Kochi 29




The Albertian Institute of Management (AIM), Kochi, is one of the best B-schools in Kerala.

Coming under the auspices of the great educational heritage of the Archdiocese of Verapoly, AIM im-parts high-quality, value-based, industry-focused management education.

The objective of AIM’s MBA programme is to ac-quaint the students with the dynamics of the busi-ness environment and the principles and practices of management and to develop their analytical skills, strategic thinking and decision-making capabilities

with emphasis on the holistic development of the individual, imbibing the mission of the in-stitute.

AIM has already achieved remarkable success in the field of management studies through its highly systematic system of coaching. Dr George Sleeba, former Chairman of Fertilizers and Chemicals Tra-vancore (FACT), serves as the Director of the in-stitute and Dr George Thomas as the Dean. ``AIM focuses more on fieldwork and industrial visits and this helps the students to know the intricacies and challenges in the field. The committed faculty mem-

bers are a bless-ing for this insti-tute,” says Rev Dr Clement Vallu-vassery, Manager of AIM.

The courses at AIM are affili-ated to Mahatma Gandhi Univer-

sity, Kottayam, and approved by the All India Coun-cil for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi. Applicants will have to appear for MAT/CMAT, at-tend a group discussion and personal interview. A bachelor’s degree, recognized by M G University, with minimum 50% marks in aggregate is a must. Final-year students can also apply. Apart from the core papers, the fourth semester course includes electives in Marketing, Finance, Human Resource Management, Information Technology and Opera-tion Management.

AIM brings out Erudition, a publication that in-corporates articles on various areas of management, business and research. Students are actively involved in a string of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities which include organizing rural camps. Reflections, a monthly newslet-ter, is also in the account.

Ten percent of the classes are han-dled by industry experts. Case study-driven MBA programme is the highlight of the institution. The course structure includes four semesters dealing with

management-allied sub-jects.

The institute gives top-most priority to placement of the students. AIM has nearly 50 prominent firms as their recruiters. Repro-graphic service is available in the library. The online database includes Emer-ald and J-Gate. D-Space is also available. The classrooms are designed to promote and facilitate participative learning. The campus is Wi-Fi-enabled and the institute has a modern, air-conditioned computer lab managed by a single Fedora Core 7 server with a student-com-puter ratio of 2:1

The students of AIM are members of profession-al bodies like the Kerala Management Association (KMA), National Institute of Personnel Management (NIPM) and Indian Society of Training and Management

Dr Clement Valluvassery Dr George Sleeba

AIM moulding the best MBAs

Mar Athanasios College For Advanced Stud-ies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), a postgraduate

and research institution, was started in 2001 with the objective of offering specially designed courses in Business Management, Information Technology and Biosciences. MACFAST is owned and managed by the Corporate Educational Agency of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tiruvalla, with His Grace Dr Thomas Mar Koorilos as the President and Patron. In the past 76 years this edu-cational agency has contributed to the establishment of a large number of schools, col-leges, hospitals and medical and paramedical insti-tutions throughout the country.

The college offers MBA, MCA, MSc Phytomedi-cals Science and Technology, MSc Food Science and Technology, MSc Plant Biotechnology, MSc Bio-informatics, MSc Biochemistry and MSc Biotechnol-ogy.

MACFAST owns the state’s first on-campus com-munity radio station, Radiomacfast 90.4, called ̀ Nat-tukarku Koottayi’, Fr Pradeep Vazhatharamalayil,

Principal of MACFAST, being its Chairman. The col-lege also has the first solar campus in India, with the solar project having a capacity of 30KW. It envisages the use of alternative sources of energy.

The college undertakes some clean and green community projects like ‘Tiruvalla—A Clean and Green City’—from NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) to IMBY (In My Backyard), which aims at segregation of resources and greening in a decentralized method at the micro level.

MACFAST has also made a mark in philanthrop-ic deeds by launching ‘Hrudaya Spandanam’ offer-ing 50 free heart surgeries for the poor and needy. It also started a movement against the abuse of drugs,`War Against Drugs—Awareness for Healthy Habits in People.

MACFAST’s mission is to transform young peo-ple into value-driven agents who would significantly contribute to improving their immediate community, the state, the country and the world at large. A re-search journal titled Journal of Science, Technology and Management (JSTM) was also initiated in 2008. JSTM is dedicated to bringing together research in these three fields from around the world.

The key strength of MACFAST is its high-tech IT infrastructure. It plays a pivotal role in the functioning

of all departments. Every discipline taught in the col-lege is highly IT-centered. Additionally, developing the right attitude towards a career is of utmost im-portance. The Career Management Centre provides a complete training package to ensure a good career start and sustained growth.

The MACFAST Industry Interface (MII) function-ing at Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, and now at Infopark, Kochi, is a unique initiative to bridge the in-dustry-academy gap. Academy to industry, industry to academy, corporate badging, corporate scholar and entrepreneurship development initiative are its innovative programmes.

In keeping with India’s Vision 2020, students are equipped to be the changing agent that will revitalize and sustain this revolution. MACFAST is striving to inculcate a flair for leadership, dynamism, courage of conviction and unwavering commitment to excel-lence.

MACFAST grooms masters in all fields

Fr Pradeep Vazhatharamalayil

A view of the college





‘With a dif-f e r e n c e ’

is the slogan for all the courses the Holy Grace Group of Edu-cational Institutions,

Mala, in Thrissur district, offers. What Holy Grace strives for is the overall development of the students, making them professionals rather than mere scholars. The institution recently di-versified into the engineering stream, with the inauguration of the BTech course for women.

The Holy Grace Group came into existence in 1999 under the banner of Holy Grace Foundation, a registered charitable and educational society, with the slogan ‘Committed to God and the Country’, under the visionary leadership of educational entrepre-neur Raju Davis Perepadan, an ad-vocate. Raju Davis is a 2007 winner of the Swami Vivekananda National Award for his contribution to innova-tion in the academic field. He is also the recipient of the Nehru Award and the Gandhian Award for his novel ideas in the education sector.

Holy Grace is different

Raju Davis Perepadan

The Holy Grace Public School was started in 2000. Its objective, is to offer world-class programmes, designed to help each pupil realize his/her full po-tential at affordable cost.

Coming after the school and the MBA College, the engineering college, started in August 2011, has a lot of in-novative ideas. The BTech course is affiliated to Calicut University and is approved by the AICTE. It is a com-plete industry-endorsed package, and all that the industry needs are strate-gically wrapped around as super-com-petency add-on modules. There are a host of exceptional features or ‘differ-ences’ in the institution.

The students of Holy Grace are enriched with visits by high-profile and skilled faculty, including those from abroad. Its ‘child-friendly’ CBSE School and ‘B-School with a difference’ are both the first of their kind in India. Grace Public School, the very first at-tempt in the education sector by Raju Davis, has now gained wide attention

after pupils from faraway places came to study in the school after realizing the school’s uniqueness. The school has classes from LKG to XII, and there are about 3,000 pupils in the CBSE Residential School. The institution of-fers foundation courses for IIT and IAS from Standard IV onwards, and 30% of the time has been set apart for co-cur-ricular activities. Its Plus-Two course has been integrated with entrance coaching conducted during the class time itself.

The faculty at the MBA College, started in 2005, includes former Vice-Chancellors. A majority of the teachers are those who have passed out from either foreign universities or the IIM. This is the only college in India offering world-class SAP-ERP along with MBA. The facility is offered absolutely free of cost.

The institute gives opportunity to all management students to visit indus-tries in China and Singapore at no ex-tra cost. It has been ranked one among

the best 100 col-leges in the country in various rat-ings. It also boasts an unbeatable record of placement. The college is affiliated to Calicut University and is approved by the AICTE.

Yet another remarkable service by Holy Grace is the Learning Disability Research Centre, which provides reg-ular training to those pupils who have difficulty in learning.

Raju Davis is the President of Se-vanagiri Sevanalaya, an orphanage, having 50 inmates. Holy Grace con-ducts many charitable activities, includ-ing daily food supply to economically weaker patients in the Government Hospital at Mala



32

Adi Shankara Institute of Engineering & Technology (ASIET), established at Kalady

in 2001 with the aim of providing value-added tech-nical education, soon became the most-sought-after institute in the technical education sector in Kerala. The college is run by Adi Sankara Trust, a registered trust which has made an indelible imprint in the educational arena. The college is affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University, Kot-tayam. In 2011-12, 298 students got employment through placement facility. They were absorbed in TCS, Godrej, HCL, UST Global, South Indian Bank, Federal Bank and ICICI. The pass per-centage never falls below 67% in any semester. Now 87% of the students become eligible for placement recruit-ment. Industry institute-interaction has signed a memorandum of understand-ing (MOU) with Sree Ram Group, Info-sys and ISCC Labz.

Special workshops on robotics, eth-ical hacking and signal processing are conducted by experts from IIIT-Bangalore and IIT-Kharagpur. Special refresher courses on information security are conducted under the auspices of C-DAC, Thiru-vananthapuram, for the staff of the college.

Every year the college conducts a national technical cultural festival called Brahma. Brahma-2012 was conducted from March 15-17. A total of 1,391 students from 69 colleges participated in var-ious competitions in Brahma-2012. One day of the festival was devoted to pure classical arts and this was for creating interest in all classical arts forms in professional students.

The institute has been accredited with ISO 9001:2008 certification. This is the first new-gen-eration engineering college to get the prestigious international standards certification for the quality system of technical education. ISO standards con-trol the quality aspects from the moment a student enters campus. From that moment, the transforma-tion of the student into a totally competent engineer is the responsibility of the institution. The certifica-tion is done by KPMG Quality Registrar and ac-credited by the Dutch Council of Certification.

At present the management of ASIET is in the hands of Dr B S Krishnan, the Managing Trustee.

The college is headed by the electronics wizard, Dr S G Iyer, the Principal, who is ably assisted by a group of young, dedicated and competent faculty.

Adi Sankara Trust was set up with the blessings of His Holiness Jagadguru Sri Sri Sankaracharya Mahaswamikal of Sringeri Sarada Peetham and guided by the great vision of Adi Sankara. The trust

today owns five prestigious education-al institutions—Sree Sankara College, Sree Sarada Vidyalaya, Adi Sankara Institute of Engineering and Technol-ogy, Adi Sankara Institute of Manage-ment and Technology and Bharathi Theertha Education Society.

Inspired by the ancient philosophy of Adi Sankara, the trust keeps the light burning for the generations to come. It has been a pioneer for the last 50 years in catering to the growing demands of highly specialized science graduates and technologists. The objectives of

the trust include the bringing of excellence in engi-neering, agricultural and medical fields by organiz-ing higher education courses in these areas. The trust also plans to run educational institutions and hostels akin to the ancient `gurukulas’. It stands for secular moral values, giving importance to Indian culture. Popularizing Sanskrit education and in-depth study of Vedanta thought is another objec-tive.

The institution envisages providing an apt en-vironment for individuals to transform into techno-logically superior, socially committed, spiritually el-evated and nationally responsible citizens. It aims to build a strong centre of excellence in engineering and technology targeting global standards.

The Department of Management Studies of ASIET has an amiable environment which stimu-lates learning and encourages overall development of the individual. The noble quality inculcates ethi-cal and spiritual values and innovative thinking in the students. The college consistently aims to im-part quality education based on empowerment of participants through involvement and guidance of the faculty members.

The students are given an active role in the teaching-learning process through live classes. The students get periodic industry visits. Personal-

ity development, communication and presentation skills and group discussions are the regular fea-tures. Invitees from the manufacturing and service sectors address the students frequently on current management developments.

The campus recruiters include national and multinational organizations and the college targets job placements for all students by the end of the programme. The faculty comprises experts with good academic qualification and extensive industry experience.

Courses offered: Affiliated to Mahatma Gan-dhi University, Kottayam, and approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi, the college offers value-added education in the following disciplines:

undergraduate courses: 4 Year (8 semes-ters) BTech degree courses in Applied Electronics and Instrumentation; Electronics and Communica-

tion Engineering (two batches); Computer Science and Engineer-ing; Electrical and Elec-tronics Engineering; In-formation Technology; Mechanical Engineer-ing; Civil Engineering (approval awaited).

The total intake per batch is 60, making a total of 420 students in the first-year BTech class.

Fee waiver scheme: From (2008-09) a new scheme has been launched. Meritorious but eco-nomically backward students will be exempted from paying any tuition fee at all. Two seats are reserved for girls and one for a physically handicapped stu-dent in each branch of the BTech class.

Special features of MBA courses: Emi-nent faculty having industry and academic expe-rience; guest lectures by experts from the fields concerned, industrial visits to facilitate industry in-teractions; case method of teaching and learning to impart practical knowledge; frequent conduct of seminars on various management topics

Dr B S Krishnan

Dr S G Iyer




33• Effective participation in man-

agement fests; placement training by ac-credited trainers; placements offered by reputed organizations for performing can-didates.

Department of Management Studies: The MBA course was started in the institute in 2001 and the program is recognized by AICTE and affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. At present fourth and fifth batches of MBA students are being skilled in various disci-

plines of management.

The Department of Management Studies, a part of ASI-ET, has at present eight permanent faculty members and another four visiting professors with industrial and teaching experience ranging from 8 to 30 years in their respective disciplines. Almost all faculty members have undergone the Faculty Development Programme at IIMs in their re-spective areas.

MBA at ASIET offers specializations in Marketing Man-agement, Human Resource Management and Financial Management. The institute is also planning to offer non-credit papers in contemporary areas of management like logistics, entrepreneurship management etc.

Salient features of ASIET: Highly qualified and ded-icated faculty; state-of-the-art laboratory, library and work-shop facilities; ultramodern classrooms with latest teaching aids like P3 ceramic boards, public address system and LCD projectors; fully air-conditioned and well-furnished seminar hall and conference rooms; ample provision for sports, games and cultural activities; institution-industry in-teraction; mandatory regular industrial visit; guest lectures by industry/commerce experts.

Research Centre: The Centre for Research in Infor-mation Security in ASIET is meant to inculcate innovative practices among students. The institute’s intention is to make it a centre of excellence in the horizon of advanced computer science and engineering. The centre is equipped with state-of-the-art facility in design, development, test-ing and evaluation of research projects. The main areas of focus are information security, image processing and data mining. The infrastructure of the research centre will cater to the needs of various research projects of the engineer-ing students.

The centre will function in collaboration with various industrial establishments, educational institutions and re-search organizations of esteem.

PG courses in engineering: MTech Computer Sci-ence was started with the first batch having 18 students. The Research Centre in Computer Science was inaugurat-ed by Dr A P J Abdul Kalam on October 13, 2010; M Tech in Electronics & Communication: specialization VLST & Embedded System; MTech in Electrical & Electronics: spe-cialization in Power System & Power Electronics; MTech in Communication Engineering (awaiting approval)

Corporate social responsibilityAs a part of its corporate social responsibility

(CSR), Adi Shankara has set up a computer lab of 20 machines in the Jana Seva Sisu Bhavan at Aluva. Batches of 60 students frequent the Bhavan every Sunday to teach the inmates computer programmes.

Moreover, the institute is undertaking electrifica-tion work of 93 houses of the poor. Students from the institute directly go to the houses and do the wiring for electrification in Vengoor panchayat and Moodaku-zha.

In addition to this, 400 students in 100 batches go to residences in and around Kalady and Angamaly to give awareness to the public to curb electricity con-sumption.

The institute, in association with Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, is to conduct free medi-cal camps in paediatrics, dental care, ophthalmology and gynaecology on February 9, 2013 for about 1,500 people.

Companies which visited ASIET till 2012 Oracle, Infosys, Perot Systems, TCS, CTS, Cari-

tor, Convergys, Sonata Software, Hexaware, Trivitron Biomedicals, NeST, Sify, UST Global, Reliance Com-munications, HCL, Wrench Solution, PCIL, L&T Info-tech, Lycatel, Sutherland Global Services, IBM, Tata Elxsi, Godrej Infotech, Appollo Tyres, Slash Support, Shri Ram Group of Companies, Subex Azure, Fifth Generation, Financial Technologies, Erbis Biomedical, Syntel, Federal Bank, South Indian Bank, HCL Tech-nologies, Orion India, ICICI Bank, IGate Patni, HDFC Standard, IBS, Sysbiz, Thyrocare

Placement track records ASIET in its endeavour to strive for academic excellence has crossed

the thousand mark in placement offers in the first decade.

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Software 160 170 175 180 190 100 198Core Industry 10 20 13 20 30 41

BPO 12 10 10 17

Total 170 190 200 210 230 100 256





Agile project management is an iterative method of determin-

ing the requirements of engineering and information technology develop-ment projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. An agile project is completed in small sections called iterations. Each iteration is reviewed and critiqued by the project team, which may include representatives of the client business as well as employ-ees. Each project iteration is typically scheduled to be completed within two weeks. It requires empowered individ-uals from the relevant business, with supplier and customer input. There are

also links to lean techniques, Kanban and Six Sigma. Agile techniques are best used in small-scale projects or on elements of a wider programme of work, or on projects that are too com-plex for the customer to understand and specify before testing prototypes.

The idea of agile project manage-ment was originally conceived by Jim Highsmith, where he states, “Many ag-ile teams are now caught in a dilemma. On one hand they are told to be agile, flexible and adaptable, but on the other they are told to conform to pre-planned framework of scope, schedule and cost. Agile teams are striving to meet one set of goals and managers and executives are measuring against another set”.

Software development is a complex endeavour. The process is entirely in-tellectual, with all intermediate prod-ucts being marginal representations of the thoughts involved. The materi-als used to create the end product are

extremely volatile. Scrum is a simple set of practices and rules that encom-passes the transparency, inspection and adaptation requirements.

Scrum addresses the complexity of software development projects by im-plementing the inspection, adaptation and visibility requirements of empirical process control in a set of simple prac-tices and rules. Scrum employs an it-erative, incremental process skeleton on which hang all of its practices. The skeleton operates this way: at the start of each iteration, the team reviews what it must do. Then, it selects what it believes it can turn into an increment of potentially shippable functionality by the end of the iteration.

The team is then left alone to make its best effort for the rest of the itera-tion. At the end of the iteration, the team presents the increment of func-tionality that it built so that the stake-holders can inspect it and make timely adaptations to the project. The heart of Scrum occurs within the iteration. The team takes a look at the require-ments, the technology and evaluates each other’s skills and capabilities. The team then collectively devises the best way it knows to build the function-ality, modifying the approach daily as it encounters new complexities and dif-ficulties.

The team figures out what needs to be done and determines the best way to do it. This creative process is the heart of the Scrum’s productivity.

Scrum implements this iterative, through three roles: the Product Own-er, the Team and the Scrum Master. All management responsibilities in a project are divided between these three roles. The Product Owner is re-sponsible for representing the interests of everyone with a stake in the project and its resulting product. The Product Owner achieves initial and ongoing funding for the project by creating the project’s initial overall requirements, return on investment objectives and release plans.

The list of requirements is called the Product Backlog. The Product Owner is responsible for using the Product Backlog to ensure that the most valuable functionality is produced first and built upon; this is achieved

by frequently prioritizing the Product Backlog to queue up the most valuable requirements for the next iteration. The Product Owner is responsible for the success of the product. The Team is responsible for developing functional-ity. Teams are self-managing, self-or-ganizing and cross-functional.

A Team is responsible for figuring out how to turn the Product Backlog into an increment of functionality within iteration, and managing its own work to do so. The Team members are col-lectively responsible for the success of each iteration. The Scrum Master is responsible for the Scrum process, for teaching it to everyone involved in the project, for implementing it so it fits within an organization’s culture and still delivers the expected benefits and for ensuring that everyone follows its rules and practices.

A Scrum project starts with a vision of the system and a simple baseline plan of cost and timeframes. The vision may be vague at first, stated in market terms rather than product terms. The vision will become clearer as the proj-ect moves forward. The Product Own-er is responsible to those funding the project to deliver the vision in a manner that maximizes their return on invest-ment.

The Product Owner formulates a plan for doing so which includes a Product Backlog. The Product Backlog is a list of functional and non-functional requirements that, when turned into functionality, will deliver this vision. The Product Backlog is prioritized so that the items most likely to generate value are top priority. The Product Backlog is divided into proposed releases. This is a starting point and the contents, priori-ties and grouping of the Product Back-log into releases are expected to and

Agile project management—a methodology mantraAn agile project is completed in small sections called iterations. Each iteration is

reviewed and critiqued by the project team, which may include representatives of the client business as well as employees. Each project iteration is typically scheduled

to be completed within two weeks. It requires empowered individuals from the relevant business, with supplier and customer input.

Prof Job K T




usually do change the moment the project starts.

Changes in the Product Back-log reflect chang-ing business re-quirements and how quickly or slowly the Team can transform the Product Backlog into functionality. All work is done in

Sprints. Each Sprint is an iteration of one month. Each Sprint is initiated with a Sprint Planning meeting, where the Product Owner and Team get together to collaborate about what will be done for the next Sprint.

The Sprint Planning meeting has two parts. The first four hours are spent with the Product Owner presenting the highest priority Product Backlog to the Team. The Team questions about the content, purpose, meaning and inten-tions of the Product Backlog. When the Team knows enough, but before the first four hours elapses, the Team selects as much Product Backlog as it believes that it can turn into a com-pleted increment of potentially shippa-ble product functionality by the end of the Sprint. The Team commits to do its best to the Product Owner. During the second four hours of the Sprint Plan-ning meeting, the Team plans out the Sprint. It creates a design within which the work can be done. Scrum requires Teams to build an increment of product functionality every Sprint. This incre-ment must be potentially shippable, for the Product Owner may choose to im-mediately implement the functionality.

Each increment must consist of thoroughly tested, well-structured and written code that has been built into an executable one. The user operation of the functionality must be documented, either in Help files or user documenta-tion. This is the definition of a ‘done’ increment and it should factor into how much work a team can take on in a Sprint. It takes some development organizations awhile to be capable of building something this ‘done’. Since the Team is responsible for managing its own work, it needs a tentative plan to start the Sprint. The tasks that com-prise this plan are placed in a Sprint Backlog; the tasks in the Sprint Back-log emerge as the Sprint evolves. At the start of the second four-hour pe-riod of the Sprint Planning meeting, the Sprint has started and the clock is ticking towards the month-long Sprint time-box.

Note that Sprint Planning meet-ings cannot last longer than eight hours. They are time-boxed to avoid

too much hand-wringing about what is possible. The goal is to get to work, not to think about working. Every day the team gets together for a 15-minute meeting called a Daily Scrum. At the Daily Scrum, each Team member an-swers three questions: 1) What have you done on this project since the last Daily Scrum meeting? 2) What do you plan on doing on this project between now and the next Daily Scrum meet-ing? 3) What impediments are in the way of you meeting your commitments toward this Sprint and this project?

The purpose of the meeting is to synchronize the work of all Team members daily and to schedule any meetings that the Team needs to for-ward its progress. The team members are inspecting each other’s work in the light of the team’s commitments and making adaptations to optimize their chance of meeting those com-mitments. At the end of the Sprint, a Sprint Review meeting is held. This is a four-hour time-boxed meeting where the Team presents what was devel-oped during the Sprint to the Product Owner and any other stakeholders that wish to attend. This is an informal meeting, with the presentation of the functionality intended to foster collabo-ration about what to do next based on what the Team just completed.

The Product Owner and stakehold-er inspect the Team’s work in the light of project goals and make adaptations to optimize their chance of reaching those goals. After the Sprint Review and prior to the next Sprint Planning meeting, the Scrum Master holds a Sprint Retrospective meeting with the Team. At this three-hour, time-boxed meeting the Scrum Master encourag-es the team to revise, within the Scrum process framework and practices, its development process to make it more effective and enjoyable for the next Sprint. Collectively, the Sprint Planning meeting, the Daily Scrum meeting, the Sprint Review meeting, and the Sprint Retrospective meeting implement the empirical inspection and adaptation practices within Scrum.

The requirements for the prod-uct being developed by the project(s) are listed in the Product Backlog. The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, its contents, avail-ability and prioritization. The Product Backlog is never complete and the Product Backlog in the project plan only lays out the initially known and best-understood requirements. The Product Backlog evolves as the prod-uct and the environment in which it will be used emerge. The Product Back-log is dynamic, in that management constantly changes it to identify what the product needs to be appropriate, competitive and useful. As long as a

product exists, the Product Backlog also exists.

A burndown chart shows the amount of work remaining across time. The burndown chart is an excellent way of visualizing the correlation between the amount of work remaining at any point in time and the progress of the project team(s) in reducing this work. The intersection of a trend line for work remaining and the horizontal axis indi-cates the most probable completion of work at that point in time. The burndown chart helps to ‘what if’ the project by adding and removing functionality from the release to get a more acceptable date, or extending the date to include more functionality. The burndown chart is the collision of reality (work done and how fast it’s being done) with what is planned or hoped for.

The Sprint Backlog defines the work, or tasks, that a Team defines for turning the Product Backlog it selected for that Sprint into an increment of po-tentially shippable product functional-ity. The Team compiles an initial list of these tasks in the second part of the Sprint Planning meeting. Tasks should

have enough detail so that each task takes roughly 4 to 16 hours to finish. Tasks that are of longer estimated time are used as placeholders for tasks that haven’t been finely defined. Only the team can change the Sprint Backlog.

The Sprint Backlog is a highly vis-ible, real-time picture of the work that the team plans to accomplish during the Sprint.

Scrum is revised specifically to wrest usable products from complex problems. It has been used success-fully on thousands of projects in hun-dreds of organizations over the last 16 years. Scrum is not for those who seek easy answers and simple solutions to complex problems; it is for those who understand that complex problems can only be met head on with determina-tion.

(Prof Job is a senior faculty mem-ber at the Centre for Management De-velopment, Thiruvananthapuram)



Stupendous developments are taking place in the global business scenario. Two of the

most conspicuous are the geographical shift in the market potential and the growing presence of dynamic firms from emerging economies. The ad-vanced countries—North America, Western Europe and Japan—are relatively shrinking in the market while the markets of the emerging and developing countries, particularly the BRIC* and the N-11*, are growing explosively.

Driven by several economic, social (particularly demographic) and political forces, the business landscape of the world has been fast changing and by the middle of this century the global economy will have undergone a far-reaching restructuring. Gone are the days when large well-established companies from the developed countries (described as ‘incum-bents’ by Sirkin, Hemerling and Bhattacharya in the book Globality: Competing with Everyone from Ev-erywhere for Everything dominated the global busi-ness scenario. Firms from the developing economies

(termed challengers) are challenging the dominance of the incumbents and increasing their share in many industries.

The last few decades have seen the rapid and widespread rise of new enterprises in developing countries and many old firms, large and others, have grown dynamically and expanded globally. As a re-flection of these, the number of developing country firms in the Fortune Global 500 has been on the rapid rise. In the 2011 Fortune 500, a developing country (China) had the third largest number (73—up from 46 in the previous year) of firms. India, which made an entry into the Fortune 500 in the recent past with Indian Oil Corporation, had eight companies in 2011 consisting of five public sector and three private sec-tor firms. In 2011, India ranked 13th among the For-tune 500 companies (and third among the developing countries). Indeed, ‘go global’ has become a manta even with numerous medium and small enterprises of developing countries. Further, the policies of the governments of several of these countries supported the growth of the domestic firms, both state-owned and private, into MNCs. An important objective of conferring the Ratna status by the Union Govern-ment on well-performing public enterprises by giving them greater functional and financial autonomy was to encourage them to emerge as global giants.

The challengers from developing countries are strongly slashing at the incumbents. According to Sirkin et al, “it is like a tsunami—a series of low-pow-

erful waves caused by an under-sea disruption that crashed against the shore and surge for inland—than the single sharp crest of a tidal wave.” They are fast-growing, hungry and have access to all the world’s markets and resources. The challengers are showing up everywhere—in each other’s mar-kets throughout the world, in mar-kets that are less developed than their own, and, increasingly, in the developed markets of Japan, west-ern Europe and the United States.

The incumbents are facing the growing threat form the challeng-ers at a time when their home mar-kets are showing signs of satura-tion or decline in many industries because of the drastic decline or saturation of the population. In other words, the challenges are eating away an increasing share of even the shrinking cakes at a time when at least maintaining the ag-gregate level of sales is essential for survival.

The challengers in many cases are better pitched than the incum-bents—low-cost domestic environ-ment, fast-expanding domestic market, increasing supply of hu-man resources of all categories—

unskilled, skilled and talented—entrepreneurial dy-namism etc. The easy access to foreign capital and technology helps level the playing field.

The situation for the developed country firms to-day is very different from the past when they could expand into the developing markets with hardly any challengers. The incumbents today face a dual chal-lenge: defending the home market from the challeng-ers and effectively competing with the challengers in the foreign market.

The developing country firms are no more the typical labour-incentive, low-tech producers. Many of them are highly innovative.

The categorization of industries into glooming sunset and booming sunrise industries has not de-terred the developing country firms from building up strength in the sunset industries while many incum-bents appear to have preferred to exit these indus-tries. The challengers have grown enormously by acquiring such businesses of incumbents and also organically so that they have become major global players in several of these industries. The good for-tune of the challengers is that in their home markets most industries are growth industries. Several of the challengers have been globally consolidating their commodity business. Challengers have been glob-ally expanding their businesses organically and in-organically in the sunrise industries and knowledge economy too.

In all categories of economies—low-, middle- and high-income—a major part of the incremental income and employment is generated by the ser-vice sector. Developing country firms present an impressive performance in sectors like IT and ITES (incumbent- challenger differentiation is irrelevant in such industries). Not only that Indian firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro and several others are globally well known, a significant part of the requirements of the IT professionals of multinationals (both in their home market operations and offshore businesses) are supplied by developing countries like India.

While several large and well-known incumbents in the financial sector collapsed and weakened un-der the global financial crisis of the last years of the previous decade, the financial sector of countries like India has shown great resilience, strength and substantial growth impulses. Several banks from de-veloping countries, including State Bank of India, are in the Global Fortune 500.

The aggressive foreign thrust by the de-veloping country firms is reflected in the booming FDI outflow from them boosted by rising volumes of cross-border M&As (mergers and acquisitions). Many developing country firms, including Indian, have been on an overseas buying spree. Cross-bor-der mergers and acquisitions are major globalization and competitive strategies employed by companies across industries and regions. One of the interesting things recently is that the big fish swallowing small fish theory is not always true. Tata Steel’s acqui-sition of Corus and Tata Tea’s (now Tata Global

Dr Francis Cherunilam

Emerging global competition and challenges to sustainability, growth




Cochin-683 106, Kerala, India. Tel: 0484 - 2623803 (30 lines)E.mail:[email protected] Website: www.scmsgroup.org

SCHOOL OF BUSINESSSCMS COCHINTM

crea

ted

by: www.fullmoon.co.in

Proof of the Pudding is in the EatingQuality and value of a product or service is assessed and evaluated on the basis of its net effect on the consumer.

PGDM of SCMS54 Companies visited SCMS campus for placement in 2011-12This year 28 Companies visited SCMS campus for placement upto 20th Jan. 2013. 5 more months are there to complete the course.

ELIGIBILITY: MAT / CMAT / ATMA /XAT / CAT score accepted.

programme and planning to write any of the above admission tests can apply. Selection is based strictly on merit.

Visit our website www.scmsgroup.org/scms to know more about us and for applying online or down-loading application.

Apply before 15.02.2013

In the matter of academic performance extolling non academic virtues and claims will only mislead the gullible.The internationally accepted criteria for judging a business school is the placement

activities that take place in the campus. SCMS COCHIN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS is way ahead of its competitors in this key aspect of quality.

Beverages) acquisition of Tetley are examples of small fish swallow-ing big fish. A number of companies have grown very big by acquisitions. There are several Indian companies which have entered the list of global top companies in the respective in-dustries by inorganic or both organic and inorganic growth like Tata Steel, Tata Tea, Essel Propack, Bharat Forge etc. A significant share of the total revenue of many Indian compa-

nies now comes from foreign markets.

TNCs from developing countries share a num-ber of common features. The World Investment Report 2010, for example, highlights the follow-ing points in respect of the TNCs from BRIC:

They have developed various ownership-• specific advantages that allow them to be competitive in foreign markets as well as in their own markets. Initially, firms tend to expand mainly into their • own region, often into countries with which they had close cultural links. A growing num-ber of TNCs have ventured further afield, however, in search of new markets and re-sourcesA large number of TNCs from BRIC are moti-• vated by strategic considerations rather than by short-term profitability, reflecting the role of state-owned enterprises in the outward FDI of the group. Many of the TNCs have become truly glob-• al players, as they possess—among other

things—global brand names, management skills and competitive business models.Supportive Government policies have backed • the rise of outward FDI.

The market shift referred to above, caused by the economic and demographic trends et al and the trends in the supply chain management and techno-logical developments impacting business process structuring, has ushered in a new era described by Sirkin, Hemerling and Bhattacharya as globality, “a different kind of environment, in which business flows in every direction. Companies have no centres. The idea of foreignness is foreign. Commerce swirls and market dominance shifts. Western business or-thodoxy entwines with eastern business philosophy and creates a whole new mindset that embraces profit and competition as well as sustainability and competition.”

A salient feature of the current business envi-ronment is the unprecedented access to everyone, everywhere and everything thanks to the universal liberalization and technological revolution. This lev-el playing field liberates the new firms from sever-al handicaps which would have otherwise affected them. In other words, the challengers are enjoying several benefits which were not available to the in-cumbents during their development stage. There is, however, no denying the fact that the global liberal-ization has substantially benefited the incumbents by enabling them to leverage their dominance and strengths so as to find alternatives to the domestic market constraints and to exploit the expanding op-portunities of the emerging and developing markets. They are also benefiting by accessing the talent pool, low-cost labour and other resources of these

economies. To a significant extent the incumbents have sought to fight the challengers, by accessing the low-cost environment and growth impulses of the emerging and developing markets, by restructuring the supply chain and business process and collabo-rating with challengers.

*BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China, used for the first time by the global consultant firm Goldman Sachs (GS) in 2001. Late in 2005, GS introduced the concept of the Next Eleven (N-11), with a view to identifying those countries that could potentially have a BRIC-like impact in rivalling the G7. Their main common ground—and the reason for their selection—was that they were the next set of large-population countries beyond the BRICs. The N-11 is a very diverse grouping that includes Bangla-desh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.

(Dr Francis Cherunilam is Director, Kochi Busi-ness School, Kakkanad, and former Professor and Chairman, Marketing Area, IIM-K; Director, School of Management Studies, Cochin University of Sci-ence & Technology; and Director, Albertian Institute of Management, Kochi)



What do you say about this year’s admis-sion? Why do you think a majority of students opt for FISAT?

FISAT has emerged as one of the most-sought-after engineering colleges in the South. It has gained high acceptability in the professional edu-cation sector within a decade. After the completion of final allotments of engineering seats under the Government quota in 2012-13, FISAT is the only self-financing engineering college in Kerala where not even a single seat is lying vacant. This when more than 15,000 seats in the state for the engi-neering stream are lying vacant this academic year. Top-ranking students in entrance examina-tions have opted for FISAT in the centralized allot-ment. In management admissions too, many top-ranking students have joined FISAT. The institute has attracted students from all over the state, and from other parts of the country and abroad. The to-tal intake of the BTech stream in the college is 504. The total number of students in BTech, MTech, MBA and MCA courses is above 2,500.

We have seen a proliferation of self-financ-ing engineering colleges in Kerala. How is FISAT unique?

In a competitive world, students are looking for quality educational institutions. Each student is confident about FISAT. The quality of students coming in directly reflects on the results as well as the placements. Better students bring better results and better placements. This will attract better stu-dents again. From its first batch in 2006 onwards, FISAT has secured colourful results and this year also four FISATians have been ranked among the top four in BTech and MCA. FISATians have also brought laurels to the institution by setting new re-cords in placements. The Placement and Training Centre grooms students through a series of skill enhancement programmes to be the best.

FISAT’s library is contributing much to the in-stitution’s quality. It has 235 print periodicals and

40 publications from IEEE, Springer, J-Gate etc. The fully automated library has more than 50,000 volumes of textbooks and reference books in over 12,000 titles.

It provides online databases carrying peer-re-viewed articles and course pages for students and can also be reached by phone and e-mail.

What is your outlook for FISAT as a research centre?

The management’s vision is to develop FISAT as a Centre for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Re-search very soon. Our ECE Department and CSE Department have already received funding from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for strengthening their research activities. FISAT

FISAT— South’s hot education destination

Federal Institute of Science And Technology (FISAT) is the brainchild of Federal Bank Officers’ Association Educational Society (FBOAES), an initiative of Federal Bank Officers’ Association (FBOA). Superb guidance and support by the

dedicated team led by Mr P V Mathew, Chairman, Mr Anthony Johnson, Vice-Chairman, and other office-bearers help FISAT, situated at Hormis Nagar, Mookkannoor, near Angamaly, birthplace of the late K P Hormis, great visionary and founder of Federal Bank, achieve its goals. In an interview, Mr Mathew discusses the institution’s vision, how it rose to the top and its future plans. Excerpts:

Mr P V Mathew, Chairman of the governing body of FISAT, is the Secretary of the Fed-eral Bank Officers` Association Educational Society (FBOAES). Mr Mathew is best known for his contributions to the trade union movement in the banking sector and has been the General Secretary of the Federal Bank Officers Association for the last 25 years. The Senior Vice-President of the All India Bank Officers Confederation, he has also officiated in various other capacities in numerous organizations including as General Secretary of the All India Private Sector Bank Officers’ Federation, member of the AIBOC National Negotiating Team, Trustee of Fed Bank Hormis Foundation and member of the Director

Board of Little Flower (LF) Hospital.

A visionary and institution builder, Mr Mathew has for some time now concentrated on the educational sector. He has made seminal contributions as a progressive educationist with foresight and is the driving force behind FBOAES’ vision of developing an engineering college. FISAT draws much of its inspiration from his acumen and organizational skills. From a humble beginning in 2002, FISAT started classes with 240 students and 26 staff members. Today it has over 2,500 students and 300 staff members and is ranked one of the top 50 engineering colleges in the country. The campus is vibrating with top-class curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular activities. With its B-school having the MBA course, and MCA and MTech courses, FISAT has already become a postgraduate institution in engineering and manage-ment.

Mr Mathew is also the founder President of Federal House Construction Cooperative Society which is constructing a project of 300 apartments at Karayamparambu, an emerging landmark of Angamaly. This is the fourth such cooperative venture under his leadership. In 2012, he won the Educational Excellence Award instituted by Deepika.

A native of Thycattussery in Cherthala, Mr Mathew has been settled at Aluva for the last 30 years. He had his schooling at SMSJ HS, Cherthala, graduation with gold medal from St Thomas College, Palai, and LLB from Law College, Kochi. Married to Philo, Assistant Manager, Federal Bank, the couple are blessed with two daughters, Meera Ann Mathew and Dr Minu Liz Mathew.

P V Mathew—great visionary and institution builder




Science & Tech-nology Park and Research Centre, an ambitious proj-ect, was recently launched by Union Cabinet Minister Kapil Sibal.

FISAT is the only self-financing engineering col-lege in Kerala hav-ing a supercomput-

ing system developed in-house. The research team is now working on a new edition with increased storage capacity and double speed. HPC-based mobility backend and android-based high-performance computing and porting message passing inter-face to android are the recent proj-ects completed by CHPC.

Realizing the growing importance of automation in process industries, IRACC is established under the De-partment of Electronics and Instru-mentation Engineering for promoting research in process instrumentation. The centre has facilities to simulate computer-controlled process plants, distribute computer control systems and implement control techniques. Facilities are extended for doing proj-ects by students in FISAT and other institutions.

Signal processing techniques play a significant role in fostering engineering and technology as evi-denced by the plethora of electronic devices available in the market and which employ simple to complex sig-nal processing circuitries. The cen-tre has TMS kits, signal processing stations etc and aims to be a host to research in signal processing with particular emphasis on digital signal processing.

The FISAT Free Software Cell (FFSC) is dedicated to promoting computer users` rights to use, study, copy, modify and redistribute com-puter programs. It promotes develop-ment and use of free software, par-ticularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux vari-ant. Now the cell extends its help on technical basis by doing need-based projects for the visually challenged people. FFSC conducts classes in the Linux operating system, kernel programming and Web application development.

For FFSC it was a dream come true when free software evange-list Richard M Stallman visited the campus for a distinguished lecture when he released one million lines of codes written by its students to the free software community. This in-volved more than 100 projects devel-

oped by the students under the GNU General Public Licence. The million-code project is hosted in the website millioncode.fisat.ac.in .

It is learnt that FISAT has been selected as a remote centre of IIT Bombay. What about tie-ups with others?

FISAT could become a proud partner of the ‘Ekalavya’ Project by IIT Bombay, a programme funded by the Union Human Resource Ministry. FISAT had hosted a two-week ISTE workshop on research methodolo-gies in June 2012, a two-day ISTE workshop on Aakash for education in November 2012 and a two-week ISTE workshop on thermodynam-ics in December 2012 for teachers. The classes which were online were handled by professors from IIT Bom-bay and IIT Madras. Forthcoming workshops scheduled on this project are a two-day ISTE workshop on re-search methods in educational tech-nology in February 2013, a two-week ISTE workshop on embedded sys-tem and a two-week ISTE workshop on object-oriented programming.

Recently CHPC partnered with Tata Elxsi to successfully complete a project under the Industry Insti-tute Partnership programme lasting three months. The objective was to develop ‘secure tablet integration for automotive network’. The project was completed and handed over in November 2012. Tata Elxsi appreci-ated the centre for the quality of the work and its timely completion.

In pursuit of the Academic Inter-face Programme, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) organized a FDP on software testing at TCS office, Kochi. The FDP included overview on test-ing in the software industry, trends in testing, functional testing, mobile testing and accessibility testing.

FISAT is now an online examina-tion centre for GATE, MAT, CMAT, VIT, AIEEE, TCS, TOI, HAL, IBPS-CWE etc.

What are FISAT’s co-curricular and extracurricular activities?

Professional student bodies like ISTE, IEEE, ISA and CSI and techni-cal forums like Thyra, Echo, Electra, Idea, Matrix, Forum, MCA Associa-tion and Rolling Stone are very ac-tive in the college. The IEEE Student Forum hosted the All Kerala Student Congress (AKSC) and Women in En-gineering (WIE) Forum ‘IndustyUS’ from August 10 to 12. The Student Congress attracted 300 participants from 30 colleges all over Kerala.

The CSI Student Chapter con-secutively won the best student

Dr K S M PanickerPrincipal

chapter award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The ISTE Student Chapter and IEEE Student Chapter were also selected for Best Stu-dent Chapter Awards in the past on the ba-sis of their ex-cellent perfor-

mances. The college conducts cultural festivals to showcase the talents and creativity of the students. FISATians have won prizes in arts and sports at university-level competitions.

FISAT is well known for its social commitment. How is your vision translated through FISAT?

IT Vision 2012 was a joint venture of FISAT and MAS Club, Mookkan-noor, to bring computer awareness to the rural areas of Angamaly. Its benefi-ciaries included students, social work-ers, housewives, labourers and the local community. The goal is to make Mookkannoor a completely computer-literate village. Society for Communi-cation and Overall Personal Enhance-ment (SCOPE) aims at betterment of lives by carrying out community de-

velopment programmes. ‘Kazhcha’ is a charity programme of SCOPE. The Road Safety Club INSIGHT is working to create awareness among students about road safety measures and traf-fic rules. The nature club SWAN aims at creating a new generation of youth, which recognizes the importance of preserving nature and creates eco-friendly and green solutions. Decennial homes for the homeless and a training centre for differently abled children are the new projects launched by FISAT.

How do you run the institution so smoothly without any donation and capitation fee?

It is absolutely possible to run the institution and look after all its develop-mental activities this way provided all the seats are filled. No seats are left vacant in any branch in FISAT. It is the first engineering college to implement the AICTE tuition fee waiver scheme in the state for economically backward meritorious students. Further, the man-agement offers full fee concession to top-rankers up to entrance rank 2000. Over 150 students at FISAT are study-ing under various scholarships.

Managed on a ‘not-for-profit’ basis, FISAT has an unwavering commitment to serve society with a focus on excel-lence.

PASSLINE Jan 31 - Feb 28, 2013 RN 65561/94 Reg. No. KL/EKM/116/2009-2011

Printed and Edited by Varghese Paul for Keethara Publications Pvt Ltd. 6802, Convent Road, Kochi-35 Tel 3043572 Email:[email protected] and Printed at Ayodhya Printers Pvt Ltd., Cochin-26 Design by Unnikrishnan

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