Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta Foundation Day Lecture 16th November 2015 Roopen Roy Founder and CEO –Sumantrana Management Consultants LLP. Thank you for inviting me to deliver this Foundation Day Lecture at IIM Calcutta. It is a great honour and privilege for me to have the opportunity to exchange my thoughts with you. IIM-C has a…
My Blogs
Destiny of Midnight’s Grandchildren
Indians born on or before 1947 account for just about 5 per cent of our population. In the taxonomy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous speech — 95 per cent of us were all born after the stroke of midnight when India awoke to life and freedom. But our next generation is growing up too. Those…
Demographic Dividend or Nightmare?
Is an enormous demographic dividend cheque in the mail for India? Is it pre-ordained that a young nation is destined to harvest the benefits of favourable demographics even if it does nothing? Or is there a demographic nightmare looming on the horizon? Our prime minister said, “Our youth can be an asset only if we…
Cultural Fanaticism
Roopen Roy (Views are personal) Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani girl of Pushtun ethnicity. She is barely 15 years old. She is the youngest nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in history. I hope she has the distinction of being the youngest recipient of the Prize as well. Malala authored a blog under a nom…
Crowdsourcing: a game changer
Crowdsourcing is a game changer (views expressed are personal) Roopen Roy The marvels of technology, the shrinking of distances and virtual platforms of collaboration have unleashed the power of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a term that was coined back in 2006 by writer Jeff Howe for a Wired magazine article. Although the concept was far…
Created to Last: lessons in inculturation
Roopen Roy (Views are personal) There are several theories on how companies are built to last. But remaining in business for a long time is a tough act. If you look at the Dow Jones index of 30 companies, only 4 continue from the 1960s. The churn in Fortune 500 has been equally…
Business Strategy and Mythology
Bloomberg DARK HORSE: By the end of 2003, Lenovo had spent a total of 200 million RMB on rebranding. It hired William Amelio as its CEO from Dell and set up its R&D centre in Raleigh, North Carolina. The rest as they say is history Towards the end of 2001, a US headquartered personal computer…
Budget: A Balanced Score Card
Roopen Roy (Roopen Roy is the Managing Director of Deloitte Consulting, India. The views are personal.) Several eminent economists and CEOs will be dissecting and analysing the Union Budget for 2010-11. To avoid overlaps and duplications, I intend to examine the Finance Minister’s Budget through the prism of a 5-metric Balanced Score Card. I…
BRAC
Social Enterprises to mitigate poverty : the BRAC model Roopen Roy (Roopen Roy is the Managing Director of Deloitte Consulting, India. Views expressed are personal) In the early 1990s, Dr. Josef Stadlbauer of Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW) , the German Development Bank and I went to meet the founder of BRAC Fazle…
Big Brother wants to break the code
Roopen Roy (The author is the Founder and CEO of Sumantrana, a strategy advisory firm) Principles and fundamental beliefs should be more important than expediency, always. Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani terrorist. In full view of thousands of TV viewers he carried out the 26th September 2008 carnage in Mumbai. In December 2008, the…