My experiment with "Abhyudhaya" – Rewind to 2007

After Ganapathy's memoirs, about Abhyudaya '08, we are glad to have Mahesh Sethuraman, IFMR Alumnus and Student of class of 2008 writing to us about Abhyudaya '07.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In every batch, you have two groups of people, one who take everything they do very seriously and the other, who just can’t take anything seriously. One of my fellow batchmates and friend (let’s just call him Mr. Enthu for this post) was this quintessential first group guy and I unmistakably belonged to the other group. And then there were others in between the two extreme scales whose seriousness was seriously volatile. With a mix of all these people in a group called the “organizing committee”, started our Abhyudhaya Journey. Forever the efficiency seeking MBA’s that we were, divided the organizing committee into sub groups based on - yes, you guessed it right – functions. Finance Committee, Marketing Committee, Hospitality Committee and what not.

Our senior batch had sown the seeds of Abhyudhaya by hosting the first B-School fest by IFMR. In some ways, we had a standard to match and at the same time, we wanted to leave behind our legacy too. We wanted to make it bigger and better than not just last Abhyudhaya but any other B-School fest in the country – after all, ambition doesn’t cost you anything. So with that ambition we started our sponsorship hunt, a good 6 months before the event. Never before had I felt so unwanted by so many people at once – as if we filed a legal petition asking for a share of the company’s total assets. After sizing up the situation, we realized we had two choices - one bring down our ambition to more realistic proportions and two, if need be bring it down further!

As the sponsorship hunt was going on at one end, there was a creativity war going on at the other. How to make the brochure? What events to have? Who’ll design the events? What’s the theme for Abhyudhaya? After a marathon round of discussions, debates and the occasional use of fist, we decided to settle for “See the big picture” as the theme. Finalized the events, prepared the brochure and went on a more prepared Sponsorship hunt this time. Meanwhile our finance committee came out with a budget better than our very own PC ever did – simply budgeted 1/10 of Mr.Enthu’s estimate! For all the quantitative techniques that MBA teaches you, nothing to beat sound judgment (read contemptuous) and rule of thumb, you see!

In the meanwhile some of us had participated in other B-Schools’ fests and wanted to bring in the best of those fests into Abhyudhaya (and of course weed out the worst aspects of them too). In this context, of all the fests that we had attended, “Neev” by SCMHRD was the one, we cherished the most. There were fests with huge prize money, interesting events and fabulous entertainment but nothing to beat the hospitality of “Neev”. Everyone felt so much at home in their campus. That was that –we simply wanted to be better than them as hosts. Warm, hospitable, gracious and all other such nice words we wanted on our signature board at the end of Abhyudhaya.

Cometh the moment, disappears our man! Mr.Enthu who had somehow amazingly managed to involve himself in every aspect of Abhyudhaya chose to disappear on the D-day – God knows why? (Actually I know, but private matters you see…) Nevertheless the show went on – thanks to our HR committee’s great succession planning (like, basically everyone is responsible for everything!) – and went on fabulously well.

We got the sponsorship which made our budget look conservative, hosted events that were interesting, challenging and fair – the best team almost always won – which I think is at the heart of any good competition and the event was covered on TV by SS Music too (I had to handle the most challenging task of engaging the VJ and the SS Music crew for 2 complete days – what a tough task!). Most importantly we made every participant feel more comfortable than probably they would have felt in their own campus. To me the most proud moment was, when a group of participants who had also attended “Neev” , came out and said “Abhyudhaya” is by far the best event that they had participated in and that they had not met a more gracious & warm group of people in any other B-School. Maybe Aamir Khan should feature us in the next “Athithi Devo Bhava” campaign. For proof, please refer the signature board in which all the participants had left their parting comments at the end of “Abhyudhadya” 2007.

PS: I read Ganapathy’s piece on his Abhyudhaya experience just after I finished writing this post. So I couldn’t incorporate my take on one of his points in the main post and hence this PS. He talks about our professionalism, theme, connection and all. I am duty bound to clarify some misconceived notions about our theme. As I stated earlier, we arrived at the theme of “See the big picture” after a creative war, almost by default. We debated - with a lot of passion and vigor - about so many themes and finally settled for this one, simply because the other debates were not ending and that we were running out of time to print the brochures! Thanks to our then Dean Mr.Chandrasekhar, who in his inaugural speech came out with this great interpretation of how “Seeing the big picture” was the logical next step to “Rural Rethinc” (Theme for first Abhyudhaya). “Initially we had looked inward and now we are looking outward – two critical perspectives for the sustainability of India Growth Story” – he said. And all of a sudden, we all felt a lot more intelligent and proud of our great theme, thanks to Prof. Shekar! If you have access to the SS music coverage, you can notice me repeat the same interpretation as if that was our plan all along!