Zeopane - CMU Update

I know this update has been long overdue. I was just too busy catching up with friends in Pittsburgh, Columbus and all over the US and to some extent sulking over the CMU Results. Zeopane along with 11 other teams could not make it to the final round or even the challenge round. This might sound like a huge negative - but it really isn't.

In hind sight, we definitely had come up with a great product and a decent presentation. There were a few major issues with the business plan itself which were pointed out to us. And this feedback and the contacts we made is probably the greatest take-away from the competition. For future students, when looking for a product, you will need to look for a product in your area of strength. Pharma / Medicine wasn't any of our subjects of specialization and Diabetes / Insulin wasn't too except that I have more than a handful of diabetics in my extended family. This definitely hurt us to a great extent (not having someone with the tech expertise in there). Although I was able to answer most of their technical questions, I think having the expert speaking would have been a lot more effective.

Pharma was definitely one of the tougher tracks to be in. There were some really good teams in the Pharma track along with ours that didn't make it through to the next round.

Our team not having anyone familiar with the drug-approval mechanism in the US was definitely a weakness. Some of the terms like the 510(K) approval - our team hadn't even heard of it. On the other hand, some teams had already met the FDA and sought their views on how they should seek approval for their products.

And looking at the other presentations, one other huge weakness was not having the inventor alongside us. This greatly shows the inventor's commitment to the cause and the company (especially if he comes all the way from Hong Kong). We are now trying to convince Prof Yeung to accompany us to Rice since we do not have a faculty advisor for the competition since Prof. Larry is already in the US teaching in Darden.

One of the other suggestions we got from one of the judges was that we should probably just focus on manufacturing the microneedles and let the specialist pharma companies decide where they want to use it. The only problem we have with that approach is how to convince the Pharma companies that this works.

Overall, some great feedback, lot of learning and the realization that HKUST has a long way to go in terms of even being close to a good school for entrepreneurship. HKUST does not claim to be big on entrepreneurship. But just what being a good school for entrepreneurship dawned on me during the competition looking at the other teams, their commitment to their product, the huge investments they had made (more than hundred thousand dollars) and how much further they were into making their product commercially viable.

Looking forward to leveraging some of this feedback and giving an improved performance in Rice.

Blogger No. 2!!!

Curtis's post made me realize I hadn't introduced myself. Doing that now, although a little late might still be ok considering that we are still not too many posts into the blog. And it gives me something to blog about. And the speciality about me, even if I don't put in picture, my post can run into pages together, especially when I'm bored to death with nothing to do.

Who am I?

This is Randhir Hebbar, born in the temple town of Udupi, near Mangalore in Karnataka, brought up almost entirely in Bangalore. I did most of my education in Bangalore (Bethany, NCJ and UVCE) and worked in the IT and ITES space for about 6 years with a 2.5 year stint in Columbus, OH, USA - Mostly IT Consulting and Project Management. I've traveled all over the US, looking to exchange to London to do some Europe traveling. My biggest complaint about myself is the fact that I haven't traveled enough in India. Curtis has seen a 1000 times more of India than I. Hope to rectify that some day.

My MBA Story?

I made it thru CAT and ditched IIMs for the US Onsite trip on the advice of a few gurus (friends) who thought an MBA before you become a manager is not really worth your time. In hindsight, I really believe that is true. You can of course disagree with me and we can have a big debate over this. But that's my opinion. So if you are less than 2-3 years work-ex and you ask my advice about doing your MBA, you know what my answer is going to be. Of course, there are always exceptions.

Finally after managing a team for about a year, I realized that I just couldn't do what I or even my immediate boss was doing for the rest of my life, needed a change for the better and applied to ISB. Just doing the ISB App helped me learn my mistakes and the HKUST App was surely a 100 times better than the ISB App. And the ISB interview was fun in hind-sight. This nerdy guy trying to prove that he was better than me and that being an ISB Alumnus made him some kind of super-human. The HKUST Interview was so much more professional and to some extent so much more easier that in hind-sight, I wished it was tougher. That would have made me feel like I'd earned it. :-) You can never satisfy me, can you?

The HKUST Experience?

It's been an awesome journey so far. I've had some super experiences, learning everyday, from peers, from profs, from alumnus and lots of crazy fun times and parties here. Just meeting people from all these countries, some really special characters, working with these special characters is something wonderful.

The Highlights: All the Free lunch/dinner/cocktail parties, Mini-Olympics, ELP/RP, Case Competition, Exam-Fever (that one dreaded week in December), the past month of crazy B-Plan work and of course that hard-work paying off.

The next big event is obviously the CMU Business Plan Competition for me. Looking forward to doing well there and coming back richer (at least in terms of experience and learnings :-)). And of course, a well-deserved potential one week break in US and meeting the Columbus gang.

Directory of posts on HKUST

We will try and keep this as a directory of posts in the blogs of HKUST Students ordered by date starting from my Interview experience. Even though we don't have the numbers of the bigger B-Schools, this is a good start.

HKUST Mini-Olympics in pictures

The EIU ranking Celebrations

HKUST is EIU# 20

Gruelling second week in HKUST

Some pictures of HKUST

Decks cleared for entry

Randhir talks about his interview

Cantonese Numbers Tutorial!!!

Here's your first Cantonese tutorial - A must have to eat at LG5 where they call these numbers to get your order. :-)

Pagalguy Thread Link

Prathap and I decided to put in some effort to help out potential candidates to the next batch of HKUST as they try to find if they fit into the HKUST scene. Here is the link for those that found this site (that's rarely updated) before the Pagalguy thread

http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/international-indian-mba-schools-accepting/26693-ask-hkust-b-school-hong.html

We've had a great response so far and our response has also translated into a great number of applicants applying to HKUST. Now its upto the Admissions committee to pick the best of the lot who'll take this school to greater heights.

Pour in your questions there so next round and year candidates of HKUST can get the information they need from there.

HKUST - Now World# 17

The press release from HKUST

http://www.bm.ust.hk/bm/Web/PressReleasePage.aspx?PressReleaseId=106&Version=English

What does it mean for us? Greater recognition of our quality and better branding once we head back to India.

Congrats to ISB for debuting on the rankings at #20. That's a strong debut. :-)

Resume Improvements

Here are some things I've learnt about the way resumes should be (Thanks to all who helped)

• Find out what you are applying for. Remove all the trash that is not applicable. Just realizing this simple fact helped me make a big improvement in my resume. I know its basic. But keep this in mind and look at every word in your resume.


• The value of a line on the one page resume. Make every word and line in it count.


• Identify the key characteristics the job you are looking for requires and use everything you've done in your life that might help to add to it.


• Formatting is important - but not at the cost of content. Content rules!!!


• Don't get carried away by what you think are the achievements of your previous job. More importantly look at how you communicate that experience makes you a better fit for the current job that you are applying to.


• Mention clients by names - Name dropping always helps.


• What was the bottomline impact of what you did? Putting in numbers always helps.


• Don't bold too much in the cover letter. Mine was so full of bold that the normal characters were probably what the reader would look for.

My resume is a lot like it should have been before I started applying to most of the Banks. But then, since Banks are not really my focus, its better now than later I guess. I still know a few things I need to improve on it - but then will do that once I start my next round of apps. 

Why? Why?

Why was this blog created?

This blog was created to describe the experiences of 6 Indians in Hong Kong going through the most wonderful experiences in one of the top B-Schools in the South East Asian Region. The purpose therefore is to help future applicants/students of the HKUST MBA experience life@HKUST virtually. We had a tough time researching this school and knowing more about this school which is among the best on quite a few parameters. So a small step in easing that pain for future HKUST students.

Links to some of the Blogger's own personal blogs which might contain more relevant information are given below:

Randhir's Blog

Prathap's Blog

Why did I join HKUST?

Lots of reasons. Here are some of them:

+++ Rankings: Easily way above any other school in the region (41st in FT-2006 Ratings). IIMA, the only Indian school comes in at 98.

+++ Best Finance School: One of the best in finance. You should just see the number of finance junkies from across the world who come here either on exchange or for the full time MBA to believe it.

+++ Diversity: Our class alone has 21+ (not sure of the exact number) countries represented and there are only two people in a batch of 76 that come from the same company. Hard to imagine this sort of diversity in an Indian School. Just meeting so many different people and experiencing the cultures helps you grow as a person.

+++ Hong Kong: The financial hub of the SE Asian Region provides lots of opportunities and openings post the MBA

+++ English works: Don't believe people who say that you need to know Chinese to work here, etc. Yes, you need Chinese to work in China or maybe even in a China related consulting company. But there are lots of other opportunities here. In fact, I'd say that your English is actually an advantage here in a way.

+++ Exchange programs: HKUST has some of the best exchange programs with schools across the world including the top schools in the US.

These were some of the top reasons for my coming here. So far, so good.