Amidst the grand celebration of the German Days in Mumbai, IGTC hosted another extraordinary Certificate Awarding Ceremony for the 9th EBMP Mumbai Batch 2018 – 2019 at the RWITC, Turf Club, Mahalaxmi. 32 graduating managers had a new story to tell and it looked nothing like their past. Their learnings were significant – holistic but focused, action-driven business acumen, high customer orientation and uncompromising attitude toward personal values, and social and environmental responsibility. Something had changed as they had travelled together on the learning journey for the past one year, making them wiser and more confident to stand out, face challenges and emerge as future CEOs.
The dignitaries for the event were Chief Guest Jürgen Wolf, Managing Director, Häfele India; Guest of Honor Dr. Jürgen Morhard, Consul General, German Consulate General; IGCC President Georg Graf; and IGCC Director General Bernhard Steinruecke along with IGTC Director Radhieka R Mehta. The audience included many corporate partners, HR partners, IGTC faculty and families of the graduating managers.
The ceremony was marked with inspirational speeches, sharing personal life lessons from the dignitaries to the graduating managers:
- Bernhard Steinruecke, in his opening remarks, reiterated that skilling and reskilling should be a lifelong process that is imperative to keep pace with the changing world. He also commented on the beautiful coincidence of having the soccer legend Klaus Augenthale’s presence during the German Days, who was going to coach young girls in the game of soccer. There was no doubt that IGCC has many innovative ways to instill the message of skilling and reskilling!!
- IGCC President Georg Graf advised on the importance of both professional and personal ethics. Passionately, he exclaimed “You and me are responsible for our value systems. One should not believe in people who put others in a corner and claim that they are the ones behind the work done. There should be disbelief in people who want to build concreate walls and live behind the walls.” He concluded his speech by appreciating the good work done by IGTC and complimenting the family members of the graduating managers for their unstinted support in the learning process.
- Guest of Honour, Dr. Jürgen Morhard, Consul General, German Consulate General congratulated everyone on their success and reflected on how it was a proud moment for all the IGTC faculties and families. He shared his personal story of how participating in a rowing competition taught him the value of team work and the importance of having the most appropriate leader. In this experience, he also learnt life lessons of always having a vision of what the fellow competitors are doing. He concluded his speech by stating “Indian hearts and German minds have always had a lasting impact. IGTC professors have given the toolbox and the program has changed you internally. Now work according to your instincts to create a phenomenal impact.”
- Chief Guest, Jürgen Wolf, Managing Director, Häfele India shared his personal experience of the time when he was completely unaware of the know-how of different departments in his organisation. His quest for learning made him know more about each of them. Even at the age of 62, he ensures that he learns something new daily. This helps him overcome challenges and inadvertently gets exposed to more knowledge. He also strongly advocated that learning is perpetual and it should never stop.
With such a distinguished dais and audience present to applaud the graduating managers, they also ensured that they spared no effort to brilliantly showcase their year-long learning journey, which had culminated with the holistic capstone project:
- Vikrant Yevle, Research Executive, BASF India Limited was the first to take the stage to introduce each and every batch mate with a personalized introduction that did justice to the camaraderie that they had grown to develop at IGTC.
- Gurpreet Kaur, Key Accounts Manager, Häfele India and Disha Aggarwal, Director, Pheonix Appliances Private Limited elaborated that course was perfectly designed to enhance their thinking process and decision making skills and to mould their future as desired by them. One of the best things that they claimed to take back from the course is the experiences of their fellow classmates and professors. Everyone had brought some experiences to the table when they started this course but they soon realized that whatever they had learnt, whatever that has brought them to IGTC, won’t take them where we want to go. And hence they learnt how to unlearn and to prepare themselves to be in the management of change.
- Himanshu Mamtani, Zonal Manager – Key User Sales, Bosch Limited presented the futuristic, important and value adding project in his organization, because it had an environmental cause and impact. The project involved developing BS VI injectors for light commercial vehicles on roads with lowest cost and ease of adaptability that will further simplify the use of tractors and other off-highway applications within 4 years from now. With the programme learnings, the group was able to make the project economically viable, work on reduction in cost/unit, and dive deep into exploring the savings potential. He summed up “learning is called as experiential as when we learn, we are able to emit, able to demonstrate improvement at our workplace in-terms of KPI improvements”.
- Sayontoni Banerjee, Senior Executive and Rohit Mishra, Business Development from Siemens Limited, presented their capstone project, which was a live business plan to localize the existing Siemens Vacuum Circuit Breaker (designed at Germany), so that it would make their electricity grids better, smarter and more reliable. This project was perfectly positioned under the ‘Make in India’ program driven by the government. Their project aimed to reduce the cost over existing product and import content, to drive business through direct and indirect channels, to improve the market share and profit margin, and to improve operational efficiency and control inventory by standardization. All aspects of marketing, operations, finance, costing and strategy, culminated to positively reduce the material costs. This led to higher margins and ultimately identification of a higher addressable market through kit concept for global Siemens factories and Channel Business for Retrofit and OEMs. The team profusely expressed their gratitude towards the distinguished faculty for their mentorship and support in the execution of this live project.
- Philomena Fernandes, HR Business Partner, Inde Global Consulting LLP and Mandar Vilankar, Senior Manager, Quality Assurance, Siemens Limited presented their entrepreneurial project, wherein they had joined hands with a start-up named Brightsandz to embark on a mission to spread awareness about Electro-Magnetic Pollution and to promote the use of laptop radiation shields. They assimilated their yearlong learnings in a) understanding the market, b) formulating a promotional strategy and focusing on the price cohort to arrive at the apt price c) studying the advantages of the patent law which could be applied to product development and its promotions, d) creating a material flow and a single line flow for production that helped them to cater to the increased demand with cost optimizations and e) preparing the P&L and other financial statements. Based on these learnings, they were able to help Brightsandz to sell more than 300 plus pieces of the electromagnetic shield in the last six months as compared to 500 pieces in the previous five years.
- Viraja Redkar, Strategist, Uma Surgicals and Disha Aggarwal, Director, Pheonix Appliances Private Limited shared their social cause project, which was based on integrating a day-care and old-age home together under the same roof. Learning about the changing demographics and an increasing average life span in the subject of Economics, there was no doubt that these two industries (childcare and eldercare) were going to see a huge boom in the future and never go out of demand. This team based their project on assimilating the 8Ps of service marketing, supply chain and its effects, and correct pricing that would influence the service to emerge with a strong, impactful project that moved the audience due to the sheet passion with which they believed in it and presented it!
- The graduating managers’ extraordinary tribute ended with a personal poem penned by Himanshu Mamtani, Zonal Manager – Key User Sales, Bosch Limited, thanking each and every faculty member with a little anecdote, on behalf of the entire batch.
Finally, it was time to award the much-awaited certificates and trophies to the graduating managers, to give a vote of thanks to the dignitaries for their precious time and encouragement, to take a trip down memory lane with a video flashback, and to end it all with a ceremonial cake cutting and a little jig on DJ Bravo’s Champion! It was surely an afternoon to remember, followed by an extended after-party at the IGCC Oktoberfest with the German band Die Kirchdorfer! The euphoria and memories will remain etched just as deep as IGTC’s best wishes to all of them for a very bright and phenomenal future.
