Learnings from IIM Ahmedabad
Some of my favourite courses and takeaways from WIMWI
It’s nearly 3 AM in the night, and I’m at Vikram Sarabhai Library because the heat in the old campus is getting intolerable. As I enter the last week or so in my MBA journey, I think it’s an excellent time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
IIM Ahmedabad (or WIMWI as it is more fondly called) has an exciting curriculum and pedagogy, which, as far as I know, is one of a kind even in BSchools outside India.
There are no teaching based courses at IIMA - all courses follow a case pedagogy where students are expected to read and analyse real world business cases and the class acts more like a discussion forum for the instructor to bring out the learnings in. What this translates to is a lot of effort before each class in terms of prep itself.
The first year (PGP1) is exceptionally packed with courses that give students no elective courses to pick. The pressure of juggling academics, summer placements, career clubs, and networking, in general, is truly astounding. A famous alumnus and ex-RBI governor famously noted that if you survive the first year at IIMA, you’ll survive almost anything else in your career.
Once you survive PGP1, the second year (PGP2), on the other hand, is strikingly “free.” There are no compulsory courses to take; you get to pick electives as per your choice. Post the summer, about half the campus has a job in hand through PPOs, so the general enthu and FOMO for acads go down considerably.
For my elective courses, I focused on picking courses majorly in the Economics and Finance Areas here at IIMA. Still, I was also able to squish in some classes in Operations, Strategy and, in fact, one course even in Marketing. This post will focus on courses I took in PGP2 since I felt those added the most value for my time here!
I guess I’ve ranted for a long time about the system itself, so without any further ado, let’s begin a longer rant on my favorite courses at IIMA!
Applied Value Investing by Prof. A.N. Seshadri
This was by far my favorite course at WIMWI - taken by a visiting faculty with a brilliant track record in Stock Investing at a Public Markets fund called Nalanda Capital. While the classes were 75 minutes long, Prof. Seshadri was kind enough to entertain questions from us well into 2 hrs and more at times. Just how much he cared about the students makes it my top course here.
Key Takeaway (culted shamelessly from Buggy Humans in a Messy World):
Intelligent investing rests on three tenets. Intrinsic business value. The margin of safety. Mr. Market. If we truly understand the essence of Ben Graham’s three tenets, we’re done. There’s nothing else to sensible investing. View stocks as businesses. Roughly gauge what it’s worth in the few cases where we can. Since the world is all messy and we’re all buggy, don’t cut it too fine. Keep some cushion. View nutty counterparties as entertainment unless they offer something actionable based on the above.
Alternative Investments by Prof. Jayanth Varma
It would be a crime not to mention a class by Prof. Jayanth Varma in my list of favorite courses. This was one of my favorite courses simply because of the wide variety of asset classes discussed in the course - including Currencies, Commodities, Art, Real Estate, Distressed Debt, and wait for it… Underwriting a Divorce Settlement.
Prof. Varma is super quippy and makes brilliant one-liners that stick. Plus, the guy is one of the most well-read and clear-minded people I’ve met in my life. A must-take class!
Key Takeaways (I only remember the one-liners, so I’ll dump some of them here)
(Context - Motives of a Financial Sponsor) Money in a battle takes no sides - it has only one color.
(Context - Underwriting of Legal Proceedings) If you want to find out the actual net worth of a person, don’t hire an accountant; employ a divorce lawyer.
(Context - Commodities Investing) Investing in commodities is basically a short position on Human Ingenuity.
(Context - Cryptocurrency Bans) What do you think is harder to kill - a single blue whale or all the cockroaches in a city?
Game Theory and Applications by Prof. Viswanath Pingali
Prof. Pingali is hands down one of the most entertaining professors here at IIMA. Despite having a non-attendance policy himself, I rarely saw people miss his classes. While I went into the class feeling it wouldn’t add much value, Prof. Pingali takes a more business-oriented view of Game Theory than a mathematical one.
Key Takeaway:
Human beings are irrational agents. However, humans, when aggregated into institutions, generally are rational. When working against other rational agents, rational agents will almost always lead to an equilibrium from which no agent will want to defect. In many cases, there are different types of agents, and when agents can’t reveal who they are directly (which is most of the time), they use signals that are costly to replicate to create separating equilibriums that show their type.
Elephants and Cheetahs by Prof. Saral Mukherjee
Strategy courses like EC were a tricky one for me. I liked the key takeaways from this course, but I hated the fact that it was a 25 session course - the core ideas were discussed in 4 sessions, and the rest was just reiteration using different cases. Nonetheless, the framework Saral da provides for Operations (and Business) Strategy through this course was unique!
Key Takeaway:
A competitive business environment is similar to a jungle, and every firm is a living system in itself consisting of different subsystems. You can classify firms on various dimensions of Operations Strategy as Elephants, Cheetahs, Insects, etc. Strategy is the art of closing doors. When a business chooses a strategy, ensure that all its subcomponents choose the same strategy, else that company will not survive.
Monetizing Artificial Intelligence and Technology by Prof. Anuj Kapoor
This was the only Marketing course I took in my second year. I’m not going to lie - I went into this course because Marketing Area courses have a penchant for easy grading. BUT BOY, WAS THIS COURSE AN ABSOLUTE DELIGHT!
As someone who loves the startup world, this was the course that I felt came closest to relatability in terms of what is going on in the real world. One of the fantastic things about the course is the guest lecturers who are industry stalwarts like Anand Daniel from Accel, Movin Jain from PhonePe, and Ashray Malhotra from Rephrase.ai.
Key Takeaway:
State-of-the-art technology means nothing in a business if you can’t monetize it properly. Have a mental framework for monetizing any AI technology and ensure that the change in customer value that you unlock through technology is much more than the cost of developing it.