e-business at XLRI

B-SCHOOL BEAT

A new XLRI Centre for e-business was inaugurated by Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro Corporation, on November 20.

The centre has been designed to educate new generation managers, consultants and entrepreneurs and to serve as a focal point of e-business activities in India. It will focus on providing research and practical solutions to issues related to the area of e-business; establishing innovative multidisciplinary and international curricula and programmes to train students, industrial and government leaders in the area; increasing awareness among small and medium-scale enterprises about the viability of e-business; and providing students with a functional experience of the latest in technology for integrating it into business operations.

Currently, Adrenalin, IBM, Microsoft Navison and Pramati have set up four centres of excellence under the e-business umbrella. The inaugural ceremony concluded with a panel discussion on "Ethics in business is an oxymoron"; industry participants included B Muthuraman of Tata Steel, Suhel Seth of Equus Red Cell and Tapan Mitra, former chairman of Haldia Petrochemicals.

Visitors at MDI

Gurgaon-based Management Develoment Institute (MDI) recently invited Helmut O Maucher, honorary chairman of Nestlé SA, and Carlo Donati, CMD of Nestlé India, to interact with the B-school's students. Apart from addressing the students in a session chaired by MDI Dean B S Sahay, Maucher and Donati took part in an interactive session with them and stressed the need to adopt a positive attitude to succeed in an economy that is based on globalisation.