The Hindu Business Line : <I>`Life is a battle' </I>

Twenty-six-year-old Vivek Anand is the General Manager of Deccan Engineering Enterprises, Hyderabad. He has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from IIM, Kolkata, and is today building his family business, changing the company from an Indian fabricator to an international specialty vehicles fabricator.

On what B-school taught him

I think the most important things that I've learnt at IIM-C are confidence and competence. It gives you the confidence to face the world and it has also taught me what competence really is, the depth to which analysis should be done and has put me in touch with a top class set of people.

On what B-schools must teach

I believe that a B school teaches you what you want to learn from it. The flexibility given to you allows you to explore the field of your interest to the depths that you wish to go. The flip side being that a fresher tends to have a lesser focus and tends to look at the academic achievements rather than true learning! That is what one should learn from a B-school rather than wait for it to teach!

On a defining moment at B-school

It would definitely be the strategic management class in which we spent around 15 hours studying a case of competition between Airbus and Boeing, went through their annual returns, analysed profitability vs long term goals.. and at the end of the three-hour heated case discussion, we're told by the Prof that both of these firms have to go ahead with their research as their governments will both back and fund them as this is an industry of strategic importance! It made us realise how critical it is to have a complete perspective of the issue on hand.

On applying what he learnt at the B-school

B school teaches you to handle the pressures of life. That you play hard and fight harder and that what matters is not how the battle turns but how well you've fought it. Beyond the technical knowledge and techniques that we learn this I believe holds us in good stead in life.

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