Submitted by Vivek Negi, Co-Chair of the Sports Club
Date – 10 December 2014
Activity Organizers – Nanyang MBA Sports Club (Vivek and Aditya)
Participants: 14 MBA(FT), 1MBA(PT), 1Exchange, 2 PhD(NBS), 2(Guests)
Venue – Air Rifle Club, NTU
While exploring NTU during the induction period, I came across the NTU Air Rifle club and felt that the Sports Club should organize an air rifle shooting for the Nanyang MBA cohort.
Submitted by Sunitha Vijiyasingam, Co-Chair of the Social & Cultural Club
Being a part of an international cohort of MBA students, fellow Indian classmates and I had the opportunity to share a part of our culture with the rest of the cohort – Diwali, otherwise known as Festival of Lights.
By a stroke of sheer luck, the festival fell just after a very busy first trimester and immediately after our last paper. We gathered together to celebrate Diwali and Oktoberfest on 21 October. Diwali is an extremely important festival in India – Deepavali or Diwali is certainly the biggest and the brightest of all Hindu festivals. It’s the festival of lights that’s marked by a few days of celebration. In each story of Diwali, the underlying significance is the triumph of good over evil; from darkness into light.
Submitted by Johnny Kwon, Co-Chair of the Banking and Finance Club
On 5 December 2014, the Nanyang MBA Banking and Finance club organized a networking session with industry professionals at Three Bistro, located near Suntec City. Three Bistro is managed by a Nanyang MBA alumni and we were fortunate to have our event accommodated by her. The event had a successful turnout and the invited guests came from a wide range of banking and finance fields namely: Treasury sales, equity sales, equity research, remisier, private banking etc.
It was an excellent opportunity for the MBA Banking and Finance Club members to network with industry professionals to better understand the various positions available in the banking and finance industry, understand the job scope of these positions and develop contacts within the industry.
The ambience was cozy with nice music in the background. We had good conversations with attendees over our favorite beverages, be it beer, wine or cocktails. Following the event, the Nanyang MBA participants had a sumptuous Vietnamese meal at Millenia walk and, subsequently, headed to boat quay for further bonding. Work hard, Party hard!
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by I Putu Mahendra Wijaya, Co-Chair of the Management Consulting Club
The Nanyang Business School has been fortunate once again to host a talk and networking session with two industry leaders in Singapore. Last Monday, 15 December 2014, the Management Consulting Club (MCC) and the Women in Business Club (WBC) welcomed two great speakers to share with the students about the many different aspects in the world of business.
Our first speaker, Ms. Anu Sahai, was from ASEAN Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, and she was a former CEO & Director of Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Pte Ltd. Her session was about her career journey and decisions. She spoke about the road blocks she faced as a woman as she went up the career ladder, the dos and don’ts of the corporate world, the road blocks and struggles that all of us will face and how to deal with them. She gave numerous practical real life examples to make the session more personable and relatable for everyone. Indeed, one of the most interesting insight she shared during the corporate talk was the oft-neglected link between work-life balance, workplace success, and personal happiness. To this end, The Economist magazines recently has run several articles which show practically that longer working hours do not mean better productivity (it may even harm productivity, thanks to overburden). Hence, Ms Sahai’s insight on work-life balance was indeed one of the most important takeaways from the talk.
Next, we were also very fortunate to host Mr Dion Groeneweg, a Partner in Mercer Consulting. During his session, he instilled passion and curiosity among the participants about how the practice of human resource consulting is about to be revolutionized thanks to the development of technology. Particularly, he shared with us the interesting evolution that has happened in the sphere of human resource consulting: how some aspects of the human resource are now on the convergence path with IT consulting, and paradoxically, how human resource will result in more specialization in the future – a trend which will bring more transparency and efficiency to the world of human resource management. Indeed, these dynamics in the industry are exactly examples that you would not find in textbooks.
Some day in the future, perhaps, we will find these topics in textbooks. But for now, at least, the students at the Nanyang MBA program have the privilege to have a sneak peek at all these exciting development before everyone else, right from the leaders themselves. It was indeed an exciting experience to go through.
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by Vivek Negi, Co-Chair of the Sports Club
Date: 16th November 2014
Activity Organizers: Nanyang MBA Sports Club (Vivek and Aditya)
Participants: Total 24 — 17 MBA Full-time, 2 MBA Part-timer, 3 Exchange Students, 2 Partners
We gathered at the bus stand near the Graduate Halls to wait for the bus at 9:30am. After a late night outing the previous night, some people found it hard to get up early (it was early for a Sunday). Mr Exco President turned up looking like a zombie.
The venue was at the School of Paintball which is near NTU and it took us around 10 minutes to reach there. The paintball arena was about size of a football field and there were bags filled with air kept at different positions to create hiding places in the battleground.
The organizer gave us safety instructions and told us the rules of the game. Then the organizers made a statement that those who were not feeling manly could wear a protective vest. This statement forced guys to go without the vest and take shots on the body.
The 24 participants were divided into 4 teams and each team was distinguished by a different coloured face mask. There were 3 plastic pods near the centre of the field and teams had to compete to get the pods in their possession.
The teams made strategies giving different roles to different team members. Some people went all out shooting wildly while others were very calculative and played safe. In the first round, Teams 1 and 2 played against each other, and Teams 3 and 4 played in the next game.
The respective winning teams played against each other to declare supremacy and the two losing teams also played against each other. Lot of paintballs did not burst and just ricocheted off players’ bodies leaving painful marks. Those body marks changed the girls’ fashion for the next 2 weeks. Now the event has become known as “Painball”!
Overall, it was great fun and left us with loads of memories (and bruises).
Teams 1&2:
Teams 3&4:
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by Vivek Negi, Co-Chair of the Sports Club
Date: 8th November 2014
Activity Organizers: – Nanyang MBA Sports Club (Vivek and Aditya)
Participants: 13 MBA (Full-time and Part-time), 3 Exchange Students, 1 MBA (Part-time previous batch)
Venue: Sport & Recreation Centre
Games: Tennis, Futsal, Slackline
After finishing our poster presentations for one of our elective courses during recess week, the Nanyang MBA cohort was full of energy and went to play sports at the school’s S&RC.
We started the sports afternoon with tennis. Boon Huei was providing expert help to novices like Anand who soon found that the tennis ball was too small to play with.
While some were enjoying tennis under the sun, a group shifted to the futsal court. It was great fun to play in a small court but soon people started feeling drained as the energy and intensity of the game was immense. Even though there was shade, the heat and humidity was high. We took frequent breaks to rehydrate ourselves.
Finally the heat and humidity took its toll and we packed up. Some left to cool down in the swimming pool while the adventurous ones stayed behind to experience slacklining thanks to Herve. It was fun to watch someone on slackline trying to maintain balance. It looked as if the person was swimming, dancing, making tai chi poses in air.
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by Anggono Natalnugroho, Co-Chair of the Marketing & Entrepreneurship Club
About twenty entrepreneurial like-minded people, an equal mix of MBA and graduate students, attended the StartMEup session last Friday, 21 November, at The Nest Theatre, Innovation Center. This event is organised by the Marketing & Entrepreneurship (ME) Club, supported by NTUitive, the university’s innovation and enterprise company. StartMEup aims to seed collaboration between business graduates and technologists, and meets them up with startups and support networks all over Singapore.
Swarnajeet Mukherjee, a serial entrepreneur, opened the session with the keynote topic “Turn Ideas into Action”. He suggested the importance of starting a business before a venture. Essentially, it means a startup should start as early as possible executing the idea, getting initial customers, serving them the best we can, getting feedback from them, then once the business is stable, we may start to think about a venture, i.e. getting funding from venture capitalists, etc. Another important thing he stressed on is about partnership. For instance, if we start a business selling an innovative pencil, then our impact will be amplified if we can also partner with a startup who sells books. Partnering with complementary product is a way to scale up our business faster. Think this as Network Economy.
The second guest was Fang Kok Boon, chief executive of Blacksmith, the world’s first rotary 3D printer startup. He spoke on the topic of sharing secret ideas. In short, we should not be paranoid in sharing our ideas to everyone, with only two exceptions — Do not share your idea with a venture capitalist who invests in startups like yours, and do not share to those who have the same area of interest as you, obviously. About Blacksmith, he was inspired by an old turntable record player when prototyping the rotary 3D printer by himself at home. Supported by NTUitive, he successfully funded his idea via Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform, in just June this year. Currently in production, this 3D printer will be sold at $2,999. Pretty reasonable, right?
The third speaker was Steve Wah, CEO of Smoov, an online payment gateway like Paypal, but focuses on SME in the Southeast Asia region (now operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines). You would think that it is crazy to get into an already fragmented payment apps market. However, Smoov’s offering is not just another app. It offers a very unique proposition, a platform for SME, which would not be taken away even by Apple Pay or Google Wallet. A very sound business model, just like what we learn as business students about strategy.
The final speaker of the session was Frankie Lee, representing NTUitive. He explained about the technology and support available from the Innovation Center. This is the guy you want to talk to if you plan to start your own business after graduation. NTUitive has been established for a very long time and enjoyed success from the beginning (at that time it was under the name of NTU Ventures). Frankie is a Nanyang MBA alumni and owns more than 2 startups since graduated. You can tell he is very passionate about entrepreneurship. Most of the attendees came to connect with him after the event.
The ME Club realises that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Perhaps very few of MBA participants will start up their own business after graduation. Nevertheless, NTU offers many opportunities for startups. Hence, the ME Club tries to optimise the available resources, technology, funding and network of talents for developing an entrepreneurship culture in the Nanyang MBA. We hope it can inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The ME Club Co-Chairs would like to thank Vivek Negi (the last minute MC), Trung, Jiajia, and Liu Lei for their ideas, feedback and moral support, and NTUitive for connecting us to the startups.
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by I Putu Mahendra Wijaya, Co-Chair of the Management Consulting Club
Hitachi Global Solution Corporate Talk by Mr. Michael Travis, Chairman Emeritus
On Friday, 14 November 2014, the Nanyang Business School has been fortunate to receive a visit from Mr. Michael Travis, chairman emeritus from Hitachi Solutions Ltd. The Management Consulting Club, together with the Wine Appreciation Club, has been honored for being given the trust to host him throughout his visit in Nanyang Business School.
The event started at 15h30 with a presentation by Mr Travis titled “Consulting & Professional Services Perspectives”. Within the presentation, Mr Travis shared with the attendants of his experience heading Hitachi Global Solution, as well as some the recent important trends in the professional service industry.
Some of the interesting insights that he shared is the scale and revenue partition of Hitachi as a conglomerate company. Founded in 1910 by an engineer Namihei Odaira, Hitachi has grown from its initial business in electric induction motors into large conglomerate in Japanese industry. As of 2014, Hitachi businesses encompass areas from Digital Media all the way to Construction Machinery. No doubt that Hitachi has been recognized in the world as one of consistently top performing companies, as evidenced by its annual subscription to be listed in Fortune 500 global companies. As of Financial year 2013, Hitachi reported top line revenue of $93.4 billion from all of its business units, one of which is Hitachi Global Solutions, which Mr Travis had the experience to lead & grow the business.
Furthermore, Mr. Travis also shared his insight about the future of consulting industry. One of the important trends, he pointed out, happens in the sphere of IT development. In particular, he argued that the development of the “internet of things: manufacturing 2.0” – where machine can have “social network” between them – would unleash a tremendous potential in the manufacturing in the new world.
Important around the idea of internet of things is the capability of machine to collect data, thanks to proliferation of sensor, and processes them in real-time to be presented either to another machine – which would help crunch those data – or to a human user – who will make the final critical decision in real-time if any intervention is needed. Such real-time data gathering & information processing will bring efficiency to a level never before attained in the past, simply because the availability of data which were not present.
As such, the development of internet of things becomes not only the latest fad in the technology world, but could have a tremendous impact in the sphere of strategic planning and decision making in the business world, particularly in the sector of manufacturing and public transportation. Indeed, one of the key takeaways from the presentation is the implication of the internet of things to the consulting industry: we can expect that the internet of things would create a middle-field battle ground between companies that traditionally offers services in strategic consulting, and those that customarily offers services in IT consulting.
After an interesting presentation, the attendants were then entertained with a fine selection of wines, cherry-picked by our wine connoisseur, Ms Stephanie Zhao – c0-chair of Wine Appreciation Club; accompanied with excellent light snack matched against the wine, finely selected by our caterer Fusion Spoon. All in all, the atmosphere of the entire session was very collegiate, and we were very fortunate to have the opportunity to talk in person with someone as important as Mr Travis.
Indeed, the Management Consulting Club and Wine Appreciation Club hope that the event could mark as the beginning of long-term relationship between the Nanyang MBA program & Hitachi Global Solutions. Bonne Continuation!
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by Ho Xiaoyuan, Co-Chair of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Club
On 15 Nov 2014, the CSR Club organised a trip to Chen Su Lan Methodist Children’s Home, as part of the partnership with Nanyang Community Club in the Christmas Make a Wish project for the needy children. The Home provides care, protection and shelter to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
During our time at the home, we interacted and played with the children. An important part of our task was to help them to decorate their wish cards for the Christmas, indicating the gifts they would like to receive for the coming holiday. They also wrote thank you cards in advance to show appreciation to the donors for their gifts.
The wish cards will be displayed on a Christmas Tree in Nanyang Community Club and the public can adopt the wishes on the card by buying gifts indicated on the cards. The CSR club is also looking at the possibility of publicising this at our upcoming New Year Charity Ball so that attendees who want to participate by buying the gifts can do so.
All of us enjoyed a fun and meaningful afternoon interacting and getting to know the children better. We look forward to similar opportunities in future to reach out and contribute back to the society.
For more information about Chen Su Lan Methodist Children’s Home, click here.
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
Submitted by Sharan Grover, Co-Chair of the Technology Consulting Club
On 13th Sep 2014, the Graduate Student Council organized a bowling competition at Chevron, Jurong East. The Nanyang MBA sports club brought it to the MBA students, who greeted it with a fair amount of enthusiasm.
Some of us were looking to win the competition, while others just went for fun.
However, as soon as the whistle blew for the games to begin, the hidden bowler inside each one of us woke up, with everyone looking to better the rest. Some of us got too involved in the game, getting quite emotional on not being able to win their individual group at least, if not the contest.
The camaraderie and bonding that sports brings with it was quite evident, as everyone enjoyed themselves, with even those who were hugely disappointed at not winning, joining in the fun and frolic that followed.
For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.
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