We have conducted an Industrial Tour to Bangalore in the second week of January, 2011. Students studying in MBA-I and MBA-II year participated in the activity. The purpose of the study was to take the students to real-time situations in the Industry like the manufacturing operations, business processes, and business practices in the present day organizations. We had also clubbed this experiential learning activity with some local sight-seeing in the Garden City of Bangalore.
We visited Bangalore Stock Exchange (Bg.S.E.) on first day. Mr. Prabhakar Naidu, a trader in the Exchange took our students inside and four different traders explained them the functioning of Stock Exchange and method of trading. Further he gave a presentation on the Bg. S.E. This was followed by a Question-Answer Session.
Afternoon, we went to Parle’s manufacturing unit where an employee shown us an animation film on the product mix of Parle. Follwed by this, we were taken through the manufacturing facility of the biscuits. We were bid a warm good bye with a packet of Parle-G each.
We had a day long visit to Infosys. A spectacular facility of the company is situated in ‘Electronic City’ off Hosur Road. The campus accommodating about 21,000 employees comprises of Knowledge Centre, a training facility, and conference hall linking Infosys employees globally. The facilities here are meant to develop offerings that involve business and technology consulting, application services, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering, independent testing and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing. Mr. Sairam and Mr. Naresh, both young software enginners received us and guided us to the traning centre only after a rigorous series security formalities. Students were shown an elaborate documentary on the “Global Delivery System” that Infosys has conceptualized and implementing for its own offerings. Our students underwent a day long ‘SPARK programme’ to learn the imperatives of competitive business. We were served with a lunch in the middle of the training session, which was as exquisite as the mannerisms of the young trainers.
This was the final day of tour and after having breakfast we left for I.I.M., Bangalore. About an hours drive to Bannerghatta Road from Majestic took us to I.I.M. Bangalore campus. Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, is one of the top management institutes in India. IIM Bangalore was established in 1973 and since then, the institute has evolved as a premier centre for management education and research in the country. It is the only B-School in India to be ranked among Top 10 Asia-Pacific B-Schools, according to the QS Global Business School Survey, conducted in 2009. Besides that, 'Eduniversal' (Paris) has ranked IIM Bangalore as the No.1 Business School in Central Asia, Middle East, South Asia and placed it amongst the top 27 schools, worldwide. The institute is spread across 100 acres of land, in South Bangalore. The institute provides courses in the Management field at the PG level. The major attraction to all of us however was the library boasting of a mammoth 2,25,000 titles related to varios areas of Business Management. Around 200 journals were found available for the reference of the students.
Post lunch, we reached the manufacturing unit of Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Ltd. This is the Company known for ‘Mysore Sandal’ -the oldest brand of luxury toilet soap. We were taken into to the Seminar Hall and shown a documentary giving details of the Company, its products and processes. Later were shown the actual manufacturing process from a distance. We could also have glimpses of some of the yester year brands in toiletries, and their advertisements in print media showcased in the passage.