Edelweiss- Ideas Create, Values Protect

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Edelweiss is one of India's leading Financial Services Groups, with operations that span more than forty different lines of business and subsidiaries.

Edelweiss's operations straddle the entire spectrum of financial services in the wholesale and retail market segments including Credit, Capital Markets & Asset Management, Commodities and Life Insurance.

India’s growth story is driven by a savings rate of about 32%, one of the youngest populations in the world and strong domestic consumption. With a net worth of over INR 28 Bn, Edelweiss is adequately capitalised to exploit the opportunities emerging from this robust economic growth. Edelweiss employs over 3200 professionals across 229 offices and branches spread across 115 cities of India.

Their core philosophy of ‘Ideas create, values protect’ is translated into an approach that is led by entrepreneurship and creativity, and protected by intellectual rigour, research and analysis.

The Approach of Edelweiss

Edelweiss is future-ready. The company has already made proactive business investments to service emerging customer needs on the one hand, and enhance stakeholder value on the other.

Diversification:
Over the years, Edelweiss progressively widened its services basket by moving into adjacent business spaces. Edelweiss was a purely capital market-focused player a few years ago; this business accounts for only about a third of its revenues today. As Edelweiss continues to broad base revenues, a rising proportion of growth will be derived from its Credit, Asset Management, Commodities and Insurance businesses.

Strong and liquid balance sheet:
Edelweiss possessed a balance sheet size at the end of FY 12 of over INR 145 Bn with a net worth of over INR 28 Bn. Edelweiss focuses on low gearing that provided the organisation with sufficient headroom to fund growth without comprising its balance sheet integrity.

Risk management:
Edelweiss’ risk mitigation practices are strengthened through timely investments in people, processes and IT capabilities on the one hand, and credible governance practices stewarded by an industry-renowned Board on the other.

People:
Edelweiss cultivates a culture of entrepreneurship and ownership among its people. The Group continues to invest in developing leadership and managerial talent across the organization through a four-tier system of identifying, nurturing and mentoring leaders. Fountainhead, Edelweiss’ state-of-the-art leadership centre in Alibaug, is among few such centres in the Indian Financial Services industry, promoting among others, a culture of training and development across the group.

Processes:
Edelweiss has undertaken a significant restructuring of its business to enhance operational efficiencies, dividing the organization into two operational clusters; Wholesale and Retail and SBU groupings that provide the scale and ergonomic growth. The company has carried out a visioning exercise with a roll-down across the organization to ensure clear articulation of its growth aspirations.

Execution expertise:
Edelweiss’ focus on error free and timely execution across businesses represent the core of its success. It possesses strong project teams that focus on processes, reviews and deliverables. Whenever necessary, it re-engineers processes and innovates state-of-the-art technology solutions that enhance efficiency.

Brand:
The Edelweiss brand is a much respected brand enjoying widespread recognition due to consistent investment in diverse set of brand building efforts spanning both conventional and unconventional channels. The ‘Ideas create, values protect Protect’ tagline underlines all branding efforts. A testament to the quality of the reputation being enjoyed by Edelweiss is the fact that Superbrands India has recognized Edelweiss as the Business Superbrand in the year 2011.

The Key People

Rashesh Shah - Chairman and CEO

Rashesh Shah, Chairman and CEO of the Edelweiss Group has over twenty years of experience in financial services in India. Prior to founding Edelweiss, he worked with ICICI, then India’s premier industrial development bank and today its largest private sector bank. In 1996, encouraged by the opportunity in the financial services sector as a result of economic reforms and liberalization in India, Rashesh founded Edelweiss with initial equity capital of INR 1 Cr (USD 250,000). Since then, Edelweiss has grown into a large diversified financial services house offering Credit, Capital Market, Asset Management, Housing Finance and Insurance products to a wide range of Institutional, Corporate and Individual customers. From 10 employees in 2000, Edelweiss is now 3,500 employees strong, with a net worth of over USD 500 Mn. 

Venkat Ramaswamy - Executive Director and Co-Head, Wholesale Capital 

An MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, United States of America and a Bachelor’s Degree holder in Electronics Engineering, Venkat Ramaswamy is widely recognized as one of India’s finest deal makers. Amongst his many responsibilities he also Co-Heads two of Edelweiss’ most strategic businesses – Wholesale Capital Markets and Wholesale Asset Management. 

After having worked in the Project Financing team of Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) Ltd., then India’s premier project finance institution and today its largest private sector bank, and as a fund manager with Spartek Fund – India’s first PE fund – Venkat co-founded Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd. 

Since then he has been one of the driving forces in transforming what was once India’s first new age boutique investment bank to a leading diversified financial conglomerate in a span of just a decade and a half. 

Himanshu Kaji - Executive Director and Group COO

A Chartered Accountant with a Post Graduate Diploma in Securities Law, Himanshu Kaji brings to the table his diverse experience of over two decades in the areas of business strategy, risk, regulatory frameworks, process re-engineering and technology strategy and implementation across the financial services space. 

Himanshu oversees Finance, Operations, Technology, Governance, Administration, Investor Relations and Compliance at the Edelweiss Group. In addition to this, he is also in charge of Corporate Planning, which looks at Strategy Development and Execution for the Group. 

My Take on Edelweiss

Edelweiss is a great place to be, especially for budding young bankers! With string values, amazing client relationship and a fantastic work culture, Edelweiss is personally MY dream company!

References-
1) Edelweiss- Wikipedia
2) edelweissfin.com
3) Indian Banking Sector- Wikipedia
4) Investment Banking in India- Wikipedia

I am Possible- Well and Truly!

Classes outside classroom has always remained a dream in our system of education, but Dr Mandi has his own ways of dealing with things. 

With Rain pouring down heavily on the lush green never ending finely dressed grass lawn outside, the toy puzzle was no less than creativity to teach budding managers like us, in the simplest possible way; how things can turn out to be once we step out in an organization. 

 Activity: A puzzle was given to us  where we were supposed to separate a ring from a complex toy shown to us. 

 At first glance the task seemed impossible. The ring looked inseperable from the toy.

But there was more to it!!!

The purpose of the task was not to take us back to our childhood days, but to give us a glance of the managerial concepts applicable in an organization.

                                               MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS

Tendency to go for shortcuts:By Early analysis of the problem at hand,many of us reached to the consensus that the only solution is to cut the rope. That would have destroyed the toy for ever. In Organizations also, there is always a possibility to go for shortcut solutions. But with the increasing pace of change in technology and larger world, the need of an hour is "Out of the Box" thinking. Our World is shrinking very fast in terms of Globalization, and technology is on a changing spree every second. Only the one with best and innovative solution carries on.

Creative Solution and Need For Vision: The Solution for the puzzle should be one which would not destroy the toy, and would also be easy enough for others to follow.People started with hit and trial solutions.Some went into greater depth and studied the toy from various angles.

"Bounded Rationality" is the message that he was conveying to us through our attempts so far.. We had limited knowledge but wanted to solve the puzzle. This is what we will do after our MBA isn't it? Only those who possess greater innovation and out of box thinking will succeed in the competitive corporate world.

Working with constraints: The puzzle was designed in such a way that only at one particular position, we were able to separate the ring from the toy(our task).No Hit and trial worked.

Looking at the problem from different angles: Not every problem can be solved by predefined logical procedures.The task at hand was peculiar and one of its kind.The Technical,Conceptual and human skills were at work.

The Challenge Of motivation: Motivation is a human phychological character which contributes to person’s degree of commitment.In our activity,only few people were struggling with the activity till the end and others lost hope. Our professor Dr. Mandi behaved as Theory X manager in the activity.He motivated people and influenced people throughout.

Finally it was not us, but a worker who came and solved the puzzle within no time. The Solution looked very simple. And thereafter everybody was able to solve the puzzle as the trick was known in open. In Real life scenarios also,Innovation dies very soon. We need to stay on our toes, or else others might stamp on ours.

The 3 Buddhist Monks

How to start, what to write is what i am wondering now, coz as always the revelation of insightful realization is difficult to be penned down. But still let me make an attempt.


In today's class we saw a short animated Chinese film on “Three Monks”.  Now surely you must be wondering what it has to do with organizational structure and behaviour. Just hold on to your eagerness for a little while and have a glimpse of the masterpiece "The three buddhist priests" by Shanghai animation film studio.

STORY IN BRIEF: 

A young monk lives a simple life in a temple on top of a hill. He has one daily task of hauling two buckets of water up the hill. He tries to share the job with another monk, but the carry pole is only long enough for one bucket. The arrival of a third monk prompts everyone to expect that someone else will take on the chore. Consequently, no one fetches water though everybody is thirsty. One night, a rat comes to scrounge and accidentally knocks the candle holder, leading to a devastating fire in the temple. The three monks finally unite together and make a concerted effort to put out the fire. Since then they understand the old saying "unity is strength" and begin to live a harmonious life. The temple never lacks water again 

LEARNINGS:

Here i would like to pick up certain instances from the film and talk about them:

1: Variety and differences: all the 3 monks were of different sizes, shapes, and nature. the same thing could be linked to organizations, where every employee is one of its kind, and the manager needs to manage them irrespective of the disparities.

2: Joint work: as soon as the second monk came to the temple, the 1st monk inherently partnered him for the work. this shows the positive trait of working in tandem that we all humans possess.

3: Team conflict: even though they started working together, but soon enough there was a conflict between the 2 regarding their work. thus this again brings us to the fact that humans have an innate tendency to undergo conflicts when asked to work in teams.

4: Solving conflict: conflicts will always be a part of our lives, but running away from them is not the solution. We should encourage conflicts to come up with better ways to deal with them. Thats what the monk did when he took a scale to find out the mid point of the stick.

5: Lack of accountability : with the entry of the 3rd monk all of them started to run away from their duties. this happened because there was no clear cut defined role for them. the same thing may happen in an organization which has many members but not well defined set of goals to keep them focussed.

6: Crisis breeds efficiency and effectiveness: when the fire happens and trouble looms, all the 3 monks starts to work in tandem. an effective team will take precautionary measures rather than work when things turn worse.

  7: Synergised work - efficient work: the last part shows the worker devising a strategy where each of them works equally to make the process efficient and reduce individual work to almost nil.

 - the solution is innovative

 - the solution is sympathetic with the changing team dynamics and size

 - the solution is a revolutionary one

 - the solutions envisions clearly defined roles for individual worker

 - the solution involves 'SYNERGY'

8: Productivity: the solution was a great step towards enhancing and improving the productivity of work by multifolds. With every new situation the productivity(o/p / i/p) increased exponentially leading to almost zero efforts from each of the workers in the final case with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. 

TAKE AWAY:  i am sure all your doubts have been cleared regarding how effectiveness of education can be improved by innovation. That's how our curriculum at NITIE goes, strongly handheld by our very own  Dr MANDI.

The Khan Academy

The Khan Academy

TRADITIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM

Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reforms promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs and self-expression. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student-centered and task-based approaches to learning. However, many parents and conservative citizens are concerned with the maintenance of objective educational standards based on testing, which favors a more traditional approach. This has hampered the overall development of the child.

 KHAN ACADEMY.....the revolutionizer

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,000 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics and microeconomics, and computer science.

Why Khan Academy is Theory Y model?

 In this theory, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties. According to them work is as natural as play. They possess the ability for creative problem solving, but their talents are underused in most organizations. Given the proper conditions, theory Y managers believe that employees will learn to seek out and accept responsibility and to exercise self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives to which they are committed.

Khan academy is an amazing organization serving to the needs of many. It has brought education to the doorsteps. Hats off to Salman khan….!!!

Dynamics of Team Work!

Today, I learnt about the dynamics involved in team work using an amazing activity!

CROSSING THE VALLEY

Who is involved in this task?
Three people are involved in this task.

What is this task all about?
The job for every 3 of them is to cross the valley safely. The distance between the cliffs is more than 1 step and less than 2 steps. Hence this will ensure that every person is in the air( in danger) once. The team has to make sure that they reach the other end safely.

What are the management lessons we learn from this activity?
A task which can check the amount of trust, team work and immediate communication is the VALLEY CROSSING


It is not that a particular person works for a longer time or has to work harder. All the three members have different responsibilities but the work is evenly distributed.

LEARNINGS FROM THE EXERCISE




1.      Trust-
This is again a very important factor. Whenever a manager assignes a task to his employees he definitely has a faith in them. This faith encourages the employees to work harder because it gives them a feeling of consideration. This particular thing is showcased very well in the above task. The person hanging in middle has to have complete faith in his teammates about their ability. Only then can a goal be achieved.

2.     Team work-


Teamwork is absolutely necessary while carrying out any task. It helps the manager and the organization as a whole to achieve targets. It cannot be possible for a single person to handle everything. It is the teams effort which matters in the long run. Also in the above task team effort was necessary to a large extent. Hence team work plays a pivotal role in management.

3.      Immediate communication-


Communication is important in an organization or else any activity for that matter. It helps to communicate your ideas. Communication in the above task was important so as to convey your position and feelings. Communication should not be delayed and must be at the right time. 

Ideas Are Transcendental

20th June 2012

Day Three- NITIE

This was my third day in National Institute of Industrial Engineering and 4 hour lecture in the course ‘Principles of Organization and Management’ was staring down on me. Like for everyone, this was a big turn off and we were all pretty much looking down on a long day.

“Another Brick in the Wall”

The series of events that took place in the class was a lot different than we all had imagined. Before us was Dr T.Prasad (a.k.a) Dr. Mandi, briskly strolling all over the class and keeping all of us engaged. Dr.Mandi was preaching his famous saying- “socho becho, becho seekho, seekho socho” and made all of us repeat the “mantra” many times.. Having not completely comprehended the mantra, at the same time sensing that there is a huge message behind it, I was all alive trying to understand Dr.Mandi in full. To drive home the point that there is little creativity left in the student community or for that matter, anywhere in the world, we were shown the inspiring “Another Brick in the Wall” album from Pink Floyd.

We Talk Business

Having played a small game of framing a magic square (3*3), we were shown various toys/ simple game

4	3	8
9	5	1
2	7	6

 models, created by students with (simple) science as the logic. The point driven home was, with a bit of creativity you can really go places! That’s what the makers of these toys have done. For example, what can a person do with the knowledge of the formula (a+b)^3 = a^3 + b^3 + 3ab(a + b), you can end of creating a toy which demonstrates the formula- now this is a product and the entire school going community is it’s market! The point was, when we face an huge challenge ahead of us, at the end of the challenge, we win it or not, we will definitely be enlightened, we will end up being a lot better person after the challenge (this I felt was very resembling to Steve Jobs’ famous Connect the Dots speech). It’s for us to plunge in the world of challenges and get ourselves enlightened, to reach a new level. At this point, I realized how I have left my potential untapped, for all this time. I felt, this is a free world and I could be going places with some creativity!!

Management Understood through (an amazing) game

In the afternoon session, we were talking about management as a concept. The management terminologies such as Vision and Mission of an organization, SMART Goals. We were discussing about what management is, when put into words. To understand the concepts which go into management, we played a wonderful game.

The game involved 3 people and it required building a cube tower. The 3 people concerned will be provided with the cubes and challenge is to build a cube tower as tall as one can. As simple as that? No, like in real world management scenarios, there were a couple of factors which might impede, stand as a block before our challenge. The catch was-

            1) only one person can access the cubes and he alone can build the cube tower.

            2) The one person who has access to the cubes will be blindfolded J

            3) The blindfolded person who has the authority to access the cubes can only use his left hand (the hand which he doesn’t use normally) to build the tower.

This person who is going has access to the cubes, in a management scenario represents a grassroot level employee. Someone who has not much idea about the bigger picture of the organization and will be doing the work the way his manager directs him to do.

Person No 2 in the game represents the middle level manager who directs the first one on how to do things and is supposed to have complete control over him. This person also reports to the senior management - the person number 3 in the game. Just like a senior manager, this person rarely comes into the picture of the task at hand (for the first 2 people of the game) and looks at the situation as a whole. All in all, this game was like a prototype of a real time management scenario!

The three people who won their places to play in this game (it was decided through auctioning!) did a commendable job and built 18 block tower (bettering the record achieved by our senior batch of 17 blocks). The tower was standing tall out there, epitomizing the lads’ splendid achievement!

The game turned out to be a great introduction to “The Principles of Management”!