Cover Story

Big guns are back
IT biggies, private banks and consulting firms sweep top notch talent at India's premier B-schools in 2010.

Up again, but not in the stratosphere
Pay packets get fatter, but cease to matter. Grads choose long-term career over riches.
Return of the IT czars
After a tough year, IT companies return for engineering talent. PSUs continue strong.
The curse of 2009
The class of 2009 at premier B-schools was in the right place, but at the wrong time. Are they going to be permanently behind in position and compensation? A year later, BT takes stock.

2010-06-13

Digital

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Editors note

From the Editor

In the last couple of months, some two lakh Indians have entered the job market for the first time in their lives.

Letters

Change and Thrive

Innovation (BT cover, May 30) reinforces the Schumpeterian truth of living in a competitive business environment in which companies need to innovate constantly if they have to succeed.

Utility

Converting a bad appraisal...

...Into a new beginning. Here's how you do it.

People, places and products

Here is a take on people, places and products doing the rounds these days.

Features

In 2009-10, the Indian currency recorded the largest ever one-year appreciation in its history. Despite the recent bouts of depreciation, it is most likely to appreciate further in this fiscal year. Why? By how much? And what about volatility? BT invited two experts to answer these questions.

IBM's Indian silver bullet

After a 2004 buyout, IBM refrained from integrating Daksh into its fold letting it bloom on its own. Not only has the business grown ten-fold, Big Blue is now turning to the Indian outfit for its next big bet: Analytics.

Daimler's made for India mission

The world's largest truck maker is leaving no stone unturned to make a mark in India, one of the toughest commercial vehicle markets.

The Kamath ICICI Bank has to watch out for

Punjab National Bank, with K.R. Kamath at the helm, has come from behind to dethrone ICICI Bank from the #2 spot in Indian banking in terms of total business. The latter, however, claims it hasn't been displaced if you compare the two banks' total assets.

Guru of Generics

For most of its 40 years, Lupin seemed to be just another Indian pharma company trying to make hay in the US generics market. Today, it is a global generics firm to reckon with, taking on giant Teva on the value-creation front.

Titan springs back

India's largest watchmaker was buffeted by the slowdown for the last two years. Now the company thinks it's back on track and plans to be a $2.5-billion firm by 2014. Here's how.

Technology

Enter the Android

Google's mobile operating system is winning new customers the world over. We are sold too.

Money

Master your money

Rules tend to overlook the most important part of a financial plan-you. Learn how to customise your strategy according to your personality to increase its efficacy.

Leadership Spotlight

Leaderspeak: C.K. Ranganathan

Here are excerpts of a small Q&A with C.K. Ranganathan Chairman and MD, CavinKare

Jobs

Can social media help you get a job?

Yes it can, but watch out for pitfalls.

Focus

Making the 3G bounty count

The 3G auctions have swelled the government coffers by almost Rs 70,000 crore. BT asks a few economists to give their wishlists on how best the government can use this windfall without frittering it away on wasteful expenditure.

Powering ahead, finally

Capacity addition during the 11th Plan improves significantly.

PIIGS can't fly but FII bucks sure can

The European crisis and its subsequent management will hit inflows from the FIIs, but only in the near term.

Regulator in the muddle

J.S. Sarma, the low profile 61-year-old Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), was a much-talked about man last fortnight.

Well Said

Qoutes that mattered in the last fortnight.

The big battle for the small car

It's an inverse equation: Small wheels, big volumes. If you're in, consolidate. If you aren't, get in as fast as possible.

Whatever happened to Ram Mynampati?

One-and-a-half years after Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju's I-cooked-the books e-mail landed up in the inboxes of Satyam's board members, the man is yet to be sentenced.

Hawala goes west

It's time for another quintessential Indian invention to get western recognition.

Cracking Cognac

Cognac is to brandy what Bentley is to upper crust cars. But the French want their cut of this expensive brew.

Review and Technology

We try out a slab of aluminium that is also a phone and a brilliant new portable drive.

"Markets have exaggerated Europe's problems"

In a candid interaction with Rajiv Bhuva, Peter Sands shared his thoughts on the global developments and the bank's experience through the turbulence.

BT-Ernst and Young Deal Watch

PE firms Bain Capital and TPG Capital acquired an undisclosed stake in Lilliput Kidswear—manufacturer, retailer and exporter of children's apparel—for close to Rs 385 crore.

Columns

Demystifying cohorts

In 2010, IIM-A turned its placement system on its head. How well did the new cluster system work? BT gives you a first person account.

A bittersweet employment market

Smart employers have decided to filter freshers for life skills- creativity, confidence, curiosity, learnability and teamwork- rather than technical skills.

Unicorns

India's top recruiters

Thirteen B-schools, 10 engineering colleges, 2,566 job offers. Who are the top 30 recruiters at the leading professional institutes in India?

Corporate

Yash Birla goes to school

But education is just one of the new-age businesses that this flamboyant Birla scion has zeroed in on. With forays in sectors ranging from health care and wellness to solar power, the 43-year-old is out to prove that he means business. And yearns for growth.

"Manufacturing is our tradition, but services is the future"

 BT met Yashovardhan Birla to discuss his business moves and the future for his business inheritance.

Book

Interesting, but incomplete

The book, Beating the Commodity Trap, addresses a key problem in modern business, but the solutions are oversimplified.

Back of the Book

A new old fabric

An ancient town weaves technology into tradition to give the Chanderi fabric a new future.

60 minutes

"India can be the biggest solar market in the world"

Applied Materials is the world's biggest solutions and equipment provider to the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry. That vantage position gives Michael Splinter, Chairman and CEO of the $5-billion (fiscal 2009 revenues) company, a unique view of an industry in a tearing phase of growth worldwide.