My most-favourite piece ever

A must-watch for Modi Fans!

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

INDIA

Cooperation v/s Competition

Sadly, I am nomore a MENtor! [:(] (Deva can empathize best!) Yesterday, I happened to attend the Annual Felicitation Program of ISMP (Institute Student Mentor Program). The program started with Lunch followed by a panel discussion on the Future of DAMPs (Department Academic Mentorship Program). I was amongst the 6 panelists and thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. But, what I was inspired most from was Prof. Vikram Gadre's (easily one of my favourite professors, during my 5 year stay in IIT-B) talk towards the conclusion of the program.

I can categorize his message into 2 points:
1) Competition can help bring the best out of every individual but cooperation (team spirit) if added to it can bring the collective best out of the entire group, which will be greater than the total quanta achieved in the absence of cooperation. He stressed the importance of having cooperation at the right places. He pointed out that normally students tend to cooperate where they should not, like during the exams, while solving assignments (by copying) or in short, when it appears to be a convenient tool or a shortcut. In instances otherwise, we just have a sheer competitive spirit which even leads us to undercut our peers at times. Competition is something which is quite abundant present all around but let's add some cooperation to it and it might give sweeter fruits.

2) It is your age to build character and not a personality type. Don't build a personality just because that's the way you would love to see it on your paper (resume) in a desired form; rather work towards building a strong character which if written on a paper illustrates your true personality. In short, according to me, his message was to make us realize that do not do things just for the heck of it. Do it only if you are thoroughly convinced and you feel you will enjoy it!

By the way, I have founded a new club recently, alongwith Devasheesh, called Lazeez Lazies and the reason for I being out of blogging scene for a while now, can be partially attributed to the same! We are planning to float honorary memberships of the club to a few distinguished lazies, very soon! :) However, if you feel you deserve one, please write to us.

Sharma

India Rising : A must-watch

Courtesy: Deep :)

Determination at its Best!! :D

My production on CNBC-TV18 | Tech Show | June 2006

This was my independent production for CNBC-TV18's weekly show - The Tech Show (now tech2.0). This was a part of my Internship at the Mumbai bureau in Summer-2006.

Is this why, you tweet?

Check out:
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5158699/i-tweet-therefore-i-am?skyline=true&s=x

Booz & Company's take at World Economic Forum, Davos

Outlook Business’s Coverage on Young Entrepreneurs; includes Hellointern’s Co-founders

Watch out for the Outlook Business (Issue: Feb 8th - Feb 21st) on Young Leaders. The issue gives a cover-page mention to the Hellointern.com's Co-founders besides featuring them as part of the story on Young Entrepreneurs! :)

Cheers,
Sharma

Mint Coverage on Internships & Hellointern's role

Hellointern amongst India's 25 hottest web-enterprises!

Hellointern Reloaded

After having a successful 2007-08 season with over 120 companies participating in the process, our initiative Hellointern.com is all set to kickstart the recruitment season of 2008-09. And, this time with a completely new and automated web-platform especially tailor-made to the requirements of our users. The new state-of-the-art version makes the life of the internship-seekers and the recruiting companies easier than never before, by offering a multitude of search options.

Please check out the latest version (www.hellointern.com), spread the word around and feel free to give us suggestions. (if any, in a personal e-mail abhishek@hellointern.com)

Sharma

Beyond DADAgiri

This time it's too strong a temptation to resist! After almost 2 months of retirement from blogging, I am back.

Indian Cricket is at the end of an era - the era of DADAgiri. The illustrious cricketer, one of the all time greats, India's top bet in ODIs ever only next to Sachin, Media's favourite, the Prince of Kolkata, DADA, Bengal Tiger, also known as Sourav Ganguly has finally declared his 12-year long innings. He is not just a cricketer but a living example of an exceptional fighter!

You love him or hate him, he will always be remembered as someone who left his deeeep impression on the landscape of Indian Cricket. He is the man who almost brought a renaissance after it had suffered a major blow by the match-fixing scandal. It's a cliche to mention that he is the one who was behind the regained unity of Indian Cricket Team. He is the man who is undisputedly the best captain, India has ever had in both versions of the game (records prove so). Rahul Dravid once said: "In off-side, first there is God, then there is Sourav Ganguly".


You must be wondering why I am making such a post at all. Well, the purpose is not just to show my blind-love for DADA but also to sum-up the learnings or the inspirations which we all can take from this man called Ganguly. (applicable even for his worst critics)

1) FIGHTER-to-the-core: The will to make a comeback even after being hit by a boulder on head.
2) No matter, who writes you off and how.. the internal strength and courage is just enough to counter everything.
3) Leadership lessons:
+ Fight for your team-mates, make them feel special and secured
+ Speak your mind out, be aggressive
- Lobbying harms in long-term
- Leading from the front is "must" to command team's respect
- The burden of leadership can never be a permanent excuse to defend the individual failures
4) The go-getter attitude, affinity to take challenges
5) Dictating the life on own terms; being in a position to call shots oneself
6) Self-Respect: No Compromises
7) Making the correct choices and not just the popular ones
8) The art of taking revenge(smooth, calm, impactful way) with a punch - refer to the Chappell saga
9) AGE no BAR: He has proved time and again, if politics is left aside, that he still is amongst the best. (refer to his batting average and performance of last 2 years)
10) Conviction to prove the merit: I will just say that this man, who was even discarded from the Irani Trophy squad citing reasons of age / performance, has slapped hard on the faces of the previous 5 wise men by not only hitting a century but also proving that he still represents the crème de la crème. And, I am sure the mark of the slap will remain on the faces for quite some time! :)

I am sure this man will continue to inspire many more junkies like me in the time to come!!

Hats off to DADA!

Sharma

A "Must Read" for Future Entrepreneurs!

This is really a masterpiece from Sanjeev Bikhchandani - Founder, Naukri.com! In this article, I feel, he has portrayed the practical aspects of Entrepreneurship, pretty effectively.

http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/14022048/Entrepreneurship-it8217s-a.html?h=B

- Sharma

Words of Wisdom

Just now, got a meaningful (rarely so) forward (e-mail). These are the words of wisdom by Swami Vivekananda! I really find this interesting!


"

When I asked God for strength
He gave me difficult situation to face.

When I asked God for Brain & Brawn
He gave me puzzle in life to solve.

When I asked God for Happiness
He showed me some unhappy people.

When I asked God for Wealth
He showed me how to work hard.

When I asked God for Favors
He showed me opportunities to work hard.

When I asked God for Peace
He showed me how to help others.

God gave me nothing I wanted
He gave me everything I needed.

"

Words from the "Baazee"gar!!

I went to listen to the guy who has quite a lot of brands: IIT > Wisconsin > Harvard > Apple > McKinsey > Goldman Sachs > Ebay > Baazee, associated to his fame. YES, I am talking about Avnish Bajaj who came into the limelight in 2004 when he sold Baazee to Ebay.
I must have attended atleast over 100 such talks in last 4 years, but this one was one of the special ones!

Here are some useful excerpts from his Talk:

1) Do take your studies seriously! This doesn't mean, just scoring good grades. Even if your grades are pathetic, but you focus really hard on ensuring a good learning - you may still be better off than most of your studious peers. So what matters more in the long run, is the learning and not just a number.

2) It's a fashion statement: "You don't need to be educated to be a successful Entrepreneur". And, we jump on to the examples of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, for a quick defence. At the same time, we ignore so many thousands (a huge majority) of such drop-outs who fail to make it big in life, in short "unsuccessful"!

3) He also pointed out that "you all" (audience mostly comprising of IIT students) have a platform set in life and each of you are going to be successful in life. It's just that you need to keep faith in yourself and keep working hard.

4) He believes that it's mainly the team which decides the success of any business, ofcourse, with the leader/CEO keeping the vision and showing the path.

Q&A Session

One gentleman in the audience asks: "It is often said that the great people are the ones who create something original and not just copying! In a sense, Baazee was started inspired by e-bay because at that point of time, there was opportunity in India. Do you regret, when you look back, that you should not have copied it?" In the meantime, Avnish listens to the question quite patiently and gives an answer, with a big smile on his face: "I look at it as an arbitrage and not copying" he continues,"I think that 95% of the entrepreneurs fall in this category where they observe the results of other existing businesses and then finetune their models, as the risk is lower in this case, while, there are only a few great people in minority like Steve Jobs who push their agenda and dream singlehandedly. (example: before the launch of i-Pod, many players also tried to come up with a similar product in the market, Sony being one of them, but they all failed badly. Inspite of that, Steve Jobs stuck to his dream of coming up with a portable music player and ensured that the product reaches all parts of the world and sells). And, I am not that great!"

- Sharma

3 Js, 3 Cheers!!!

I had never thought, I would discuss movies someday on this blog! But, here it's a temptation too hard to resist. :)

John Nash, James J Braddock, Jeffrey Wigand! You must be wondering what is common between these three names except that they all start from letter 'J'. Well, two attributes: One, they all are special heroes, one can look up to, whenever one wants a candy full of inspirational and motivational flavors. Two, also the primary reason why a ranked lazy creature like me is making this post, all the 3 characters have been played superbly by one genius called RUSSELL CROWE (in the movies A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Insider).

All the movies are utterly inspiring and you would always want to watch them again and again! In all these movies, Russell has portrayed the characters so well and so real that after watching each of them, it forced me to doubt if the real heroes had themselves acted in the movies. Everytime, I was so excited that I couldn't resist myself from thoroughly going through the personal websites of these J-heroes, immediately after the movies finished!

Isn't it also amazing that the same actor, a Kiwi native, was chosen to depict the greatness of these legends in movies, all, churned out of Hollywood? By no means, it was easy to play any of these characters. Those of you, who haven't watched these movies yet, please do so asap. I bet, you would be extremely charged up by these fantastic pieces of genius. Afterall, atleast in Bollywood - you don't get to see such performances too often, in your lifetime! Do you?

- Sharma

Thanks to Google Calendar

It feels good to be writing a post again, though after a long time. It's just that last 15-20 days have been a little tight.

Time and again, Google demonstrates its greatness and quintessential utility in some form or another. It's always interesting to try its new innovative features. This time it was the Google Calendar which really saved me from missing a lecture. (No, it's not that I mind skipping one! but when you are academically so lukkha, even a boring lecture starts feeling like a good enough source of entertainment! :P)

I have been using the Google Calendar for quite a while now but got to know about the Mobile Set-up, a few weeks back. (For those who are not aware: On activating the Mobile Set-up, Google sends you a reminder sms before each engagement.) I activated it just for fun. But last Monday, 6:20 pm, I was just enjoying the weather, looking out of the window, as I was under the assumption that my evening was free. Suddenly, I hear an sms beep and the sms reads: "Reminder: MEMS Course @ Mon Jul 28 6:30pm - 8pm". I was definitely going to miss the lecture as I thought it was scheduled on Tuesdays. I was so thrilled to have got benefited by that silly feature! I hope my friend Google helps me rectify many more imperfections of mine, in the time to come! :)

Sharma

Bye Bye Dost!

It was not just another Monday. It was Akhil Lodha's last day on campus - the day he earned his B.Tech, M.Tech degrees in Computer Science with flying colors. He invited me for a dinner just before leaving. We went to PopTates, Saki-Naka. It's a cliche to mention about our common petoo type attitude when we are out to a restaurant. So, the delicacies kept appearing and vanishing!
Then, we engaged into a flashback discussion of our IIT lives - A long discussion where each shared his key learnings, shockers, setbacks, bad patches in last 4/5 years. In the hindsight, I must say that approachwise, we two are a little different but when it comes to the ambitions we carry, we appear very much concurrent.

The topics which we mulled over were like: Role of IIT "Bombay" in our development, Role of Mumbai City, which areas we desire to have explored better (our answers turned out to be exactly complimentary), the role of Networking in life - its positives and flip side, the true passion of solving research problems v/s solving them with a motive of publishing papers etc etc.

I am listing here some of the mutual conclusions on random random topics:

1) Popularity and Effectiveness - They can't go hand in hand.
2) Be happy in life, treat happiness as a journey and not the destination. Don't treat happiness as conditional.
3) You have got just one life to live. Either live it your way or waste it living someone else's way.
4) Remember your past achievements whenever your morale is down and you feel low. Take strength from them. Showing courage and defeating the situation is a habit which you develop over a period of time.
5) You learn the most when situations are adverse"st"! A fierce impedance comes only to test your inner strength and to give you pieces of learning.
6) Escaping from problems, critics, enemies is never a solution!
7) Don't fear anybody as long as you know you are correct.
8) If you are consciously sure of yourself, stones like back-bitching, J-factor feedback from friends/critics won't have any impact on you.
9) Listen to everyone but in the end, do what you like! No harm in getting influenced as long as your mind also supports it logically.
10) You can not fool all the people all the time - Abraham Lincoln
11) In the long term, truth comes out!!
12) Hard work follows binary logic. If your input is 1, output will also always be 1 if not always in the form you expect it to be then in some other form. The time lag maybe there but you will realize it sometime in your life.
13) When you look back, you can interestingly verify: why certain incidences happened, why certain choices were made. In short, everything seems to converge in the long-term.
14) Role of Mnemonics in memorizing words! :P
15) How many true friends can you name in 10 seconds with no effort?
16) There is huge difference between a Friend and a True Friend.
17) Why do we tend to gel better with people who are not our direct peers ? Is it because peer to peer friendship is mainly governed by just need-help relationship ?

In all, it was really a quality time that we spent. After a long, I got an opportunity to talk at length with this sweet genius friend of mine. He is going to US now for his MS in Computational Finance at CMU. Dude, I know this is not a place to write testimonials but I shall just say that you are one of the sweetest friends I have ever had, I feel lucky to come to IITB to know your more. Though, it feels bad that you won't be around anymore, But, when I just foresee what you are headed for, the pinch is all gone. All the Best dude for future and I hope your dream of having a Dukaan on Wallstreet will come true someday very soon! :)

- Abhishek