Its been long since I last posted...So whats happening in mastishk?????A lots actually.....all the game coordinators have completed their conceptualisation ....training has been given to the junior team.....and the 'M' word that I hate Marketing......the team of saadhu,mandar and hemi are burning the midnight oil to get the necessary moolah and numbers...the junior team...well it is a good mix of ppl who r born and brought up in IT and ppl for whom shutting down the computer means switching off the main switch.....but one thing is common between all 33(that's the team strength) of us..........the burning PASSION to make mastishk a stupendous success.....the gears have shifted...the adrenalin is pumpling.....the butterflies have taken their place in our stomachs...Mastishk 2005 here we come

Aswin ¶ posted by Aswin @ 12:05 AM 8 comments

“An idea can change your world!”.. so goes the punch line of one of the mobile service providers.. I now know what that means.. One small idea which germinated in our minds in August of last year, the idea of creating the 1st ever B-school comic character, as part of MastishK 2004.. has today evolved into a unique concept that is entertaining the management community all over the country and abroad.. The ever increasing stream of appreciation mails that have been flooding our mail box over the last 6 months are just a small testimony to the overwhelming popularity of Arbit Choudhury.. After all, how many of us, if we like something, actually go to the extent of mailing the creators about it..

The immense popularity of Arbit Choudhury during MastishK 2004, made us countinue the coic strip post the event too in the form of the Arbit Choudhury yahoo group, which sends all it's members fortnightly editions of the latest Arbit strips. We have also received offers from a couple of magazines for publishing Arbit.. Soon, Arbit will descend from the electronic world to the print media.. Hope that Arbit Choudhury will play a big part in MastishK 2005 as well..
Today, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who have contributed to getting Arbit where it is today.. Nikhil, Sabya, Payal, Milind, Ashita, Medda for helping shape the character.. Atul for repeatedly granting his scanner.. Anish for reviewing the Arbit ideas.. Alex and Neelesh for providing creative inputs.. and finally, Arijit for suggesting the name “Arbit”.. I would also like to thank all those who took time off to write Arbit appreciation mails..

Apart from most of the B-schools in the country, here are some of the companies from where people have sent Arbit appreciation mails..... Patni, iflexsolutions, covansys, mckinsey, tataelxsi, tatamotors, wipro, cognizant, ge, symphonysv, persistent, mmm, irevna, mastek, strategicindia, timesgroup, mphasis, kotak, yesbankltd, deloitte, tatainternational, tatatel, torrentpower, itc, bpl, accenture, ksa-technopak, hsbc, wildcardsystems, ndplonline, citigroup, tcs, sapient, tatachemicals, hssworld, infosys, crisil, birlasoft, caritor, punjlloyd, quark, quasarinnovations, sap, vfirst, i2, deshaw, sbicaps, o2, satyam, siemens, polaris, godrejagrovet, ivycomptech, kanbay, tvs, mahindrabt, hclcomnet, hp, ashokleyland, suth, boardex, sierraatlantic, inductis, xansa, icicibank, amdocs, rallies, maricoindia, 3dplmsoftware, keels, oracle, visualsoft-tech, igate, GE Consumer Finance, SSKI Institutional Securities, mentorware, sprisminvest, kdynamics, reliance india ltd., acs-inc, fedelity, tavant, evalueserve, genesispr, ernst & young, motilaloswal, honeywell, abp, lehman, zensar, mentorix, relianceinfo, omrsystems, icici one source, icici prudential, spectrum consultants, vsnl, ambuja cement, microsoft, afs india, futuresoft, HCL tech, SBS, IBM, GE Health Care, IDBI, comat, ericsson, citigroup, reuters, tibco, SAIL, BHEL, hewitt, touchtel india, centurian bank, lucent, slk soft, norwich union, jasubhai, irco, sonata software, bernardlabs, daimlerchrysler, vedanta, arisglobal, shopper's stop, taj hotels, jet airways, NSE....

Here are some of the best remarks we have received so far....
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“I am delighted to see your comic character. You have understood the truth of MBA.” – an e-mail from a B-School Prof.
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it really reflects the truth of an MBA Grad. I just felt my MBA days were back.
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Was very impressed with the originality of thought & the simplicity with which u guys expressed the realities of MBA education..
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You will be happy to know it was distributed to our class by a professor Suranjan Das.
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After spending 2 years in B School today got to know the realities of it. *************************************
It might surprise you that someone sent a copy of your cartoons to me here in Cyprus.
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Your work is highly appreciated by all of us working here in UK ( just tolet u know it reached here also ) .
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Arbit is the personification of the gross anomalies that the Indian business education system suffers from.
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Well if it's the "Chacha Choudhury" for the common mass, then its "Arbit Choudhury" for the MBA / corporate executive stuffs!
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Pink papers and boardroom discussions need stufflike this to come to mean sea level from time to time.
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This is really good. Carry on. It puts Dilbert to shame.
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U guys can create a niche in the Industry & also encourage the B-school atmosphere to move out of the Boredom of typical classroom sessions/guestlectures/events/parties etc.
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The Arbit Choudhary Strip is one of the best management comic strip i have seen after the Dilbert's....
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it is simply awesome. I have never seen Management studies being expressed in such a funny way
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Some of the clips are really old jokes but in comic strip, should be avoided.
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I have already spread ur creation to 100 odd ppl
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Arbit Chaudhary represents the typical "Indian MBA" and that's the best thing. It is a welcome break from Western management jokes and dull ridicule.
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it sounds amateurish and lacks maturity
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Wud thank God that we have the potential to have our own desi version of Dilbert!
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Well I myself is not from a B-School grad but then I have seen the B-School life from quite close.This sure is a good description of that. Well Dilbert talk about the lifefor an employee.. which is not the case with ARbit... I guess you should tryfocusing on the early days of Arbit in the college when he enter the B-School and gets the shock of his life to get a different picture of the B-Schools..
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the character ARBIT Choudhury is simply superb, apart from the fun part I think it carries some message for MBA criticizers, its your creativity guys. Hope ARBIT Choudhury will hover around for ever.
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I just wanted to congratulate you both on the innovative and creative idea of creating a Cartoon Character with which all of us can associate ourselves with.
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Arbit Chaudhury is a nice icon for B schoolers I'm sure.I'm very certain all the B schoolers who have read the strip would havesaid to themselves, "Hey! That's me!". I could relate to him myself! Why don't you form an Arbit fan club and ask readers for ideas.
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Though I am not a Management Grad, I am a consultant and I use all these fundas everyday. “Yeh Dil Cahe Thoda Aour”
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They say most of the Surd jokes were coined by Surds themselves.. After all it takes a real sport to laugh at one's own tribe... U guys have hit the nail on the head... MBA is all bosh... Keep up the good work !!
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And now, here is the longest mail of them all.. in it's entirety--

Dear Arbit,

Congratulations ! on your birth! Getting born is really a great experience, I am sure your dad-couple has gone through a lot oflaboured pains...
I am sure you will mature into a full fledged character like Laxman's common man if your pairents (two fathers, no mother!) put in more efforts. Cartoon characters become great not for the artwork; they become great for what they embody or what they signify. I am a fellow artist myself in another area, kind of drawn from the same crows(Oops! that 's' at the end was supposed to be a 'd') as your dad-tuple... My league is slightly different, but all of us areessentially the same, trying to see if black (humor) can make life look better if used on the dull - lifeless colors which generally come as a package deal called life.

If you want to grow healthy and strong, you need the following things:
1. Presently, you are comprehensible to only the yuppie urban crows(oops, Sorry again, read that as crowd please). Nobody said that yuppie urban reps cannot relate to the larger issues we have in the world.
2. The larger you become, the more your life & longevity. You have tomake yourself understandable to a larger audience. I feel the growth path has to be carefully planned, otherwise things will spin out ofcontrol. The way I see you growing is : MBA Crowd to Urban Youth ofall economic strata to All Youth (youth related issues) and then apan-age character (get married, have kids, all the stages of life)which has a national color and at last a humanitarian issues guy. Butall this without loosing your humor edge... Remember Mahabharat ( and even Shakespear's plays ) are relevant today ONLY because the issues they discuss are still relevant today. The packaging of these stories would look ridiculous today, [can't imagine anyone bringing a Mace or Bow-Arrows to work today and still be called sane, or even wearing thepumpkin pants of the bard's time], but a viewer sees through these
(Anger, Lust, Greed, Jealousy, etc....). So, if you wish to transcendthis pop-corn level into something immortal, aim to be someone who can speak the 'human' language. Otherwise the laurels you get today will wither out in no time. Examples : Pu. La. Deshpande (Marathi) & P.G.Wodehouse (English), two of the world's greatest humorists of theirtimes are not comprehensible to the 'today' generation, simply because their humour was strongly rooted in the world in which the authors existed:viz, middle class Marathi people and Edwardian rich inheritors of royal wealth. Even a character as great as Jeeves is slightly off the mark today as his skills of 'mixing the perfect drink\' & \'tyingthe perfect knot' are out of place today. When the world changed, they simply lost their bearings! Kind of \'great navigators with old maps!\'

3. Wind up: Well after that sermon, let me summarize. I do not see anything wrong, incomplete or incorrect in your present aavtaar! YouARE great, today! But to rest on these miniscule laurells would begross underkill for the talent of your co-dads. Soon, some girls willfall for them and make them fall enough to get married, then do the usual things and have kids and seek a secure job, and then some where down the line, after twenty years, they will show these sketches to their kids for drawing practice when they will realise that their first-born was lost somewhere in life\'s humdrum, never to be foundagain.

I would be very pleased to see you outgrow your yuppie image and become larger than life. Your dads will have to put in a great amount of thinking and research + their own life's experiences (and this willtake time, do not hurry guys, you go and get the jobs and get married in the meantime!) to make you stronger.
With the appeal of Lakshman's common man on the wane, there happens to be some space vacant at the top.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHY YOU SHOULD NOT OCCUPY THAT SLOT!

Love", ¶ posted by Wondering Wanderer @ 4:39 PM 1 comments

Well....when Aswin sent the invite to join the blog......I was whiling away my time listen to some good old Hindi film music.......And finding the invite in my mailbox, thought let me try my hand at this....before I go and find out, who has done the assignments, we need to submit tomorrow :)

I'm Jagandeep alias Jagan as my friends call me, the Creative Coordinator for Mastishk -05 and also the brains behind "Venture into Capitalism" (watch out for what it is:))).......As far as Mastishk-05 is concerned.......we have an envious task at hand; Mastishk-04 was a huge success and we plan to go one better in '05........The blog may have been dormant for a little while but the team wasn't and the ECs and the Marketing Team and the GCs (Game Coordinators) have all been working to create something which we and the Management community at NITIE can be proud of.

I've spent quite some time on this and its better I find out someone now......so that I'm able to submit the assignments tomorrow. Before I leave, I promise that I'll be back pretty regulalrly till M'05, with the anecdotes, stories and also some status updates on where we are heading.....

Hoping to see your comments and ideas for Mastishk'05. ¶ posted by Jagandeep Singh @ 8:17 PM 0 comments

It's a lazy sunday afternoon when I sit down to write the first blog of my life. Who am I? What am I doing here. To know more read on.
I am Aswin known as GAS to all my friends not because I give too much of global gyan(really??) but because of my initials(G.ASwin). So what is it that made me write this blog. I was a part of an event which transgressed all expectations and became such a huge success which even we didn't imagine was possible when it all began. Yes I am talking about Mastishk. What a journey it was.....from the moment Nikhil gave the presentation abt the online games event then called POT to the final courier which we posted to the prize winners. many sleepless nights, hours and hours of sitting in front of the computer, discussing(shld I say fighting) abt all the logical and technical issues that cropped up, that super slog which we did after the end of the first day... man those are the unforgettable moments of my NITIE life till now.That was the first time i was a part of something so succesful and acclaimed by one and all from the students in IIMA to a BSchool which has jus finished its first year. When we saw a college giving advertisements by saying one of their students won a prize in Mastishk that too in my game I felt like.....yaar I cant describe that feeling in words.
So what has happened to mastishk now? Why this blog has suddenly stopped functioning....Hmmm we were in a sort of Hibernation mode putting things in place for the next year's event to be a bigger and better one than the maiden attempt. Suraj,Anirban and yours truly have been selected as the event coordinators of Mastishk 2005 and the unenvious job of making it a success lies on our whole team of 15 members and the junior batch which will come in during the month of june.....So what has happened till now in Mastishk 2005? Wait for the next blog ¶ posted by Aswin @ 12:17 PM 1 comments

hi friendzz .....

its shoOOonya here .... back on the blog ....

well .... MastishK 2004 is over ...
the main event lasted 15 days from Sep. 27th to Oct. 11th.

Then came Prerana ... the Flagship event of PGDIM, NITIE
and we all got busy with that ....

well ... MastishK 2004 ... the event is over but not the work ... even after the event got over ... the site had to be given a finalised look ... the prizes had to be announced immediately ....

Now all that is done .... the only task remaining is the dispatching of prizes .... work in progress on that too .... hope to get that done in the next few days .... dussehra ... weekend ... other institute competitions ... have kept us busy ... and so the p[rocessing slowed down ... i hope the processing is done b4 diwali or else a lot more delay will be introduced ....

Looking back at MastishK 2004 . . . It has been a very satisfying experience ....
For the debut year .... the figures are very overwhelming ....

17,500 Hits on the MastishK website
2.500 Registrations
Paricipation from B schools across the country ....
.... some from international schools too .....
Participation from over 25 countries
Participants from more than 50 Corporate offices

So now what next .... well ... pretty obvious .. MastishK 2005 ....

you might feel it is too early to start .... but the matter is not so simple ...

We (senior batch) are there in the campus for another 3/4 months only ...

I will have to ensure that there is complete Knowledge Transfer about MastishK before we leave campus . . . or else they will have to re-invent the wheel and start from scratch ...

Maybe somewhere in the very near future ... as soon as the prizes are dispatched and we can relax a bit ... after a short break ... i will have to start putting MastishK 2005 Team in place .... will have to pass on the Torch to new bearers ....

Right now ... I am trying to figure out how will I be going about this Knowledge Transfer and Knowledge Management thing .... hope to do the best of it ....

Hey guys .... you have any ideas .... let me know ....
send your feedback / sugestions / ideas regarding the above KT/KM to hemantkumarjain@gmail.com

keep smiling and have a nice day .....

. . . shoOOonya . . .
¶ posted by shoOOonya @ 3:01 PM 0 comments

Well Friends ..
Its 6.00 Am, 14th October and I have just dispatched the Mastishk Conclusion mail to all participants. . . .MastishK 2004 is formally over. So many sleepless nights (including today’s) and so many tireless days – the effort has been worth it. Lots and lots of appreciation, feedback and lots of interaction; MastishK has become a phenomenon in the very first year of its inception.
I would like to post some learning that I have got from Mastishk:
First and foremost – nothing succeeds like success.
Second – attitude matters; aptitude is but a corollary
Third – If you feel you are correct, never shy away from trying; the world will follow you
Fourth – When you develop an offering, always try to understand how useful it will be for its users
Fifth (which is also our motto) – If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

These are pretty general learnings; well I will post more in the coming days about a lot more details and their effects. For now its Adieu
¶ posted by Nikhil Kulkarni @ 5:48 AM 1 comments

OBJECTIVE: To create the 1st ever B-school comic strip.

STEP 1: Create the character
a). Decide on who should the lead character represent. As the strip was meant for B-school junta, the lead character was picked as a B-school student.
b). Decide the name of the strip/character. After much deliberation, the character was christened “Arbit Choudhury”.
c). Design the character sketch. The likes, dislikes, aims, aspirations, habits, behavior, talents of the comic hero were defined. The final character sketch was as follows-

“Arpit Choudhury is a typical 2nd Year MBA student of a leading B-school. His life revolves around all the daily chores of a MBA education. Tests, assignments, presentations, competitions, case studies, net-surfing, chatting, ctrl+C, ctrl+V are as much part of his daily routine as food, drinks, friends and girl-friends are. Sleep is word not present in his Dictionary. As any other management grad., he dreams big, and farts bigger. He often finds himself juggling with the concepts of strategy, logistics, marketing, finance etc., and tries (in vain) to apply these in real life situations. He has come to believe- “Management is an Art… And Art is a 4 letter word, with a 'F' silent ” !’”....
His wisecracks frequently have everyone rolling in mirth. Perturbed by his penchant for blurting business balderdash, his friends jokingly call him “ARBIT Choudhury”......”

d). Design the appearance. Design of the wardrobe, the hirestyle, and looks was done.

STEP 2: Generate Ideas
a). Think of original ideas. Days were spent pondering over humor in common B-school situations, application of management funda in real life and so on.
b). Take ideas from the environments. Ideas were taken from friends and classmates.
c). Test ideas on Humor scale. Ideas were presented to a test audience, for their feedback.

STEP 3: Sketch
a). Visualize the setting. Common B-school environs were visualized.. canteen, library, class, stairs and so on.
b). Draw draft with pencil.
c). Refine Draft. The draft sketch was checked for proportions and aesthetics.
d). Finalize Draft. After all refinements, the draft was finalized by bordering with pen. At this stage, the strip looked something like this-


STEP4: Colour
a). Scan drawing.
b). Decide the colour combinations.
c). Fill colours using Photoshop. After this, the image looked somewhat like this-

d). Put title bar on top.
e). Fill in the dialogues. And finally, an edition of the 1st ever B-school comic strip gets created.

¶ posted by Wondering Wanderer @ 8:52 PM 1 comments

Blog….me ?? Nahhhhhhhhh…………

Hey ppl,
Me neither a member of mastishk team nor Prerana, but I came on this blog just to congratulate the entire team behind this awesome conceptualization of the idea of
“India's First Ever Fully and Truly Online B School Event of Management Games !"…..
as shoonya puts it….. So true!!
I’ve always been a regular visitor of all the blogs written in my campus and so I pretty well know the kind of emotional and physical turmoil this team has underwent. Well I don’t think I’ve contributed anything for “MASTISHK” ever. But everytime I visit the site I feel proud of being associated with it, one way or other.
One of the profs, today, in a class pointed out the fact that we, humans can’t be happy about someone else’s achievements. I fully agree that its difficult. But then when I realize the magnitude of hard work my batch mates, along with juniors, have invested into this, I cant feel anything but happy for them.
I am sure these are the kinda people who achieve success in life, because to be successful, I believe, u need 3D’s in urself……. dreams , determination and dedication …
And “mastishk” holds it all for them.
Good work guys !!!
Keep it up.
Me as a NITIEAN congratulate u all !!!


Snehal…
¶ posted by life.. @ 11:34 AM 0 comments