IIPM v. Bloggers Part III

I have always prided myself with my ability to crack all these puzzles that come in newspapers and comics especially the ones where you are given 2 similar pictures and are asked to spot ‘n’ differences between the two. Change the setting to a few websites with ‘similar’ data and I believe I can still do a decent job of spotting the ‘not’.

Everything written here is my personal opinion. I do not ask you to read it. If you continue to read though, you agree to not holding anything written on this blog against me. Legally or otherwise. You are doing this out of your own free will and have chosen not to press the back button on your browser.

(I got this inspiration from IIPM’s disclaimer only! (read my previous blog post))

Get to know your IIPM better!

Amidst this fiery controversy of IIPM vs. Bloggers, I set out to do some more research on IIPM and came across some facts that might interest a lot of us who have been affected in some form of the other by this eruption in the blogosphere. Note that all the info that I present here are either from IIPM websites or IIPM affiliated websites. I state here that I am neither copying content for commercial purposes nor am I reproducing the content to ‘defame’ IIPM (as if that was necessary). I have gone through the IIPM disclaimer (and their afiiliates’) with a fine comb and am doing nothing that violates their said policies.

Go to http://www.iipm.edu/ . The page you go to, on the blurb on the left, you will find the following text :

“Founded in 1973, The Indian Institute of Planning and Management has grown to become one of the most respected business schools in South Asia. Spread across India with its seven centers, IIPM has area of more than 200,000 sq. ft. and has also been vested with the most technically advanced infrastructure in business schools”

No talk of faculty, no talk of placements here but of the total sq. ft area of the IIPM schools. The infrastructure at least is something that I would like to position in front of potential students but built-up area? As you go through the website, you will find references to faculty and placements etc, but at the threshold of entry into the IIPM website, I find it rather bad marketing to just say you have a lot of floor space and good infrastructure.

Further, it goes on to say,
“IIPM dares to look beyond, and proudly understands that what we teach today, others adopt tomorrow.”

IIPM dares to look beyond what, I am unable to find a reference to on the webpage.

On the “About IIPM” link, you have a link extender called “Alliances”. (http://www.iipm.edu/alliances.html)

There you will find this as part of the text:

“Planman Consulting has been rated as India's largest multi-interest consulting firm.”

Eh? By whom exactly? Ok may be the information being absent on the website is not proof of the information’s absence at all so I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth which took me to http://www.planmanconsulting.com/ . Under ‘Overview’ it says,

“Planman Consulting is India's largest multi interest consulting and business services corporation engaging a variety of organizations, institutions and enterprises in diverse industry and government verticals”

And this is what confuses me. Planman consulting has made a statement saying it’s the largest multi interest consulting group and it probably is. But I am just tempted to wonder whether the post on the alliances page of http://www.iipm.edu/ making the same pitch draws source from Planman Consulting’s statement about itself or whether it is from an independent third party observer / auditor. Is it just me or is there really cause for confusion?

Just a nugget here: On http://www.planmanconsulting.com/ , there is a scrolling marquee on the admirable client list of Planman Consulting. Amongst other names, Planman Consulting has also worked with McKinsey and Co. Impressive, I must say!

Still on the Planman Consulting website, I navigated to “Global Locations” under the “About Us” main menu. http://www.planmanconsulting.com/global-locations.html

There is a world map with the locations of Planman’s global locations. Scroll down a little more and you will find the names of the locations too.

“Los Angeles Chicago New York Boston London Brussels Dubai Johannesburg New Delhi Mumbai Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad Singapore Shanghai Sydney.”

Scroll down a little more and you will find this.

“Planman Consulting is in the process of establishing offices in these foreign cities by the end of 2005”

If Planman doesn’t have global offices yet there, what exactly does “Global locations” in the present context mean? Hmmm. And when they say “…establishing offices in these foreign cities…” aren’t they including Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi and Hyderabad?

You know how you always did the things that you mom said you shouldn’t? So help me god for I sure couldn’t help myself when I promptly clicked the “Founder” link under About Us. http://www.planmanconsulting.com/founder.html .

Excerpt from there:

“Today, Planman has over 250 self motivated MBAs contributing to its ever increasing growth making it India's largest multi-interest Management Consulting Firm”

Interesting and positively admirable. Bravo Planman!

Until I chanced upon this itsy bitsy piece on http://www.arindamchaudhuri.com/ when I clicked on the “Profile” link on the left side menu. In the profile of the great AC, it says:

“…Planman Consulting today has more than 500 self motivated MBAs contributing to its ever increasing growth making it one of the fastest growing Management Consulting Firms in Asia and the largest Indian multinational management consulting firm…”

Ok, so is it 250+ or 500+ ? And both articles claim those numbers are relevant as of “today”!! So you might say then that, well they could actually be 600 self motivated MBAs which is both 250+ and 500+ and therefore the two pieces of information are not contra to each other. Confess then, oh paragon of logic that this line of reasoning is hardly convincing.

If you are wondering why I am dwelling so much on Planman Consulting, I think of it as an extension of the pithy maxim “ A man is known by the friends he keeps” … ergo, “an institution by the alliances it keeps”? The common thread in all this is Mr. Arindham Chaudhuri and that’s the reason for all this research.

Let me take a breath taking pause. (Hmmmmm !! That felt better) Moving on….

In the list of Planman’s Global offices on its own webpage (scroll back up if you must), do you see any references to either Kolkota or Toronto? If your vision is as good as mine, chances are you didn’t. And yet at http://www.planmanconsulting.com/founder.html , the text has this to say:

“…In just 8 years, he (Arindham Chaudhuri) has made Planman a respected and a well known name in the consulting business. With branches situated in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Toronto …”

Sheesh !!! Do I need say more?

On that note, lets get back to IIPM now, shall we? On the alliances page at the IIPM website, the page asked me to visit their jobsite for a live experience and so I heeded their request.

Can you even begin to guess what IIPM’s official jobsite is called? It would be a long shot unless you could come up with … hold you breath … http://www.groovyjobs.com/ !!! What an absolutely groovy name !!

Ok so how many of you have heard of http://www.groovyjobs.com/ ? If there are a lot of you, please do pardon this particular ranting of an urban ignoramus for the IIPM alliances page goes on to say

“..Arguably, GroovyJobs is amongst the best job sites even when compared with those that exist currently in the job market”.

The word ‘arguably’ lends itself to rather elegant usage, eh?

This one is a personal favorite of mine. Go to http://www.iipm.edu/about-iipm.html . As you read through the page, you will chance upon a statement which goes,

“..The best of learning methodologies have carved the students in such a way that no less than the Fortune 500 companies come here for placements”.

And stay with me on this one cause I am good at these CAT-type questions – no less than the Fortune 500 companies means ONLY Fortune 500 companies come for placement. It’s akin to the categorical ‘NOT’ operator in Boolean algebra. So I did the next logical thing. I checked out their placements page at http://www.iipm.edu/student-life-placements.html .

And what do you expect to read there?

This : “…some of the other big recruiters for 2005 were HDFC Bank, E-Value Serve.com, Essar Group, Shaw Wallace, Air Sahara, Hindustan Levers, National Engineering, Pipal Research, Times of India, IDBI Bank, CitiBank, Tata-AIG, India Bulls, Hutchison, Anand Rathi, Karvy Consultants, HCL Infinet and many many more..”

A fine club of “Fortune 500” companies I must say. What do you think? And in case you are wondering why the word “other” at the start of the sentence, it was because the article at the very outset said:

“The No.1‘s across industries like Oracle Corporation, G.E. Money, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, DLF Universal, ICICI Prudential, ICICI Bank, Price Water House Coopers were jostling for the zero day at IIPM.”

Hindustan Levers interestingly doesn’t appear in this list but the former one.

I reckon that if I spent some more time on the IIPM website or any of its affiliates, I would spot a lot more such interesting conundrums but I will save that for another day. Right now, I am more interested in hearing what you folks have to think about my two cents here. And just to rejig your memory, everything on this page is my opinion. Its personal and non-commercial.