The first(hand) experience of my first lecture at NITIE!!

I am writing this blog to share my experience, knowledge and insights about the first lecture of my subject, ‘Principles of Organizations and Management’ (POM) in PGDIM course at NITIE, Mumbai by Prof. T. Prasad. The purpose of these blogs is to share and spread the knowledge through my blogs.

It was 9.00 AM in the morning and as is the trend of all premiere B-Schools, I had already been told (rather cautioned) by one of my senior not to be late for any class. I reached in time, sat in the room and was waiting for my first class of post-graduation to start off. The time table said it was the lecture of ‘Principle of Organizations and Management’. A matured simple looking man entered the class. He placed his bag and umbrella (which is ubiquitous in Mumbai) on the table and started taking out something from his bag!
To my surprise, he took out few toys from the bag! He asked the students to rotate the toys in the classroom by throwing them over to each other randomly while he asked one student to adjust his mic.

The lecture begins….

Being the very first lecture of post-graduation, I was expecting that the professor would pour in loads of bookish knowledge and the lecture would be filled with jargons. But the very first 10 minutes of the lecture proved me wrong and I saw Prof. T. Prasad (a.k.a. Prof. Mandi) pouring in his words of wisdom in the simplest and most fundamental way. The learnings from the lecture were truly valuable. Let me try and summarize the learnings I took from those 2 hours…

Learning #1: Know your Cost and Understand your Value…

Prof. Mandi made it very clear in the very first 10 minutes to us that we are here for serious business and looking at the monetary aspects of our actions is one of the most critical aspect for us in life.

He asked us all to calculate the opportunity costs involved for each of us for these 2 years of our post-graduation. Opportunity cost is, basically, the value of the best alternative forgone in case of picking up one opportunity among many.

 Hence, the cost included not just our fees at NITIE but also the salary we would have got had we opted to continue/ start with our job as well as a rough estimate of our expenditures. It was an important way to make us realize that we have put an enormous amount at stake coming here for our studies and working hard to prove our worth is the only way ahead!

Learning #2: “Aaj ki roti aaj hi kamaana”

This is one of the lessons which seemed to be very close to Prof. Mandi’s ideologies.
The forthright lesson is that if you have the urge to spend and consume, then learn to earn your own subsistence daily. This not just simply motivates you to earn but force you to appreciate the necessity of the labour required to be put in on daily basis to cover up for our expenses.

Learning #3: “Either you are there on time or your chance is gone!”

The next important thing which we got to learn was that it is not sufficient just to be at the right place on the right time, but you need to be fully prepared as and when the opportunity knocks at your door.
Though, this wasn’t really something which we didn’t know. But sometimes, it’s very important that somebody help us bring out the thoughts hidden somewhere in the closets of our mind.

Learning #4: “Sochho Becho…Becho Seekho….Seekho Sochho”

Apart from the thought provoking meaning it holds, the statement became much more interesting when Prof. Mandi introduced this as a song to us!!
The lesson, basically explains that we all are involved in business, in one way or the other, if we look at the broad perspective of life. And hence we should keep the entrepreneur in us always alive.
Here came the roll of the toys which were flying all over the classroom from one hand to other till now!
Prof. Mandi asked two students to come in front of the class and gave the roll of salesman and customer to them. The salesman was supposed to sale the (scientific) toy to the customer using all the tacts he could think of.
Then interestingly, the roles were interchanged and we saw how the same person would react in the same situation as a buyer as well as a salesman.
The exercise was continued for a while and the observations gave us the lesson which is basically involved behind any business…
“You strategise, you sell…….as you sell you keep learning more about business and you improvise….and as you learn more you think of better ways….(and the cycle gets repeated)

The lecture went on in the same animated fashion and it gave us many subtle lessons.
Who would not love a lecture where we get to listen Pink Floyd and also sing along, with the professor’s consent.
Looking forward to more such fun filled and knowledgeable lectures!


Hope I was able to share the lessons I learnt with a similar enthusiasm as the professor. I’ll be coming up with more blogs covering the lessons as the course progress with the objective of sharing and spreading the wisdom through my blogs. Please comment and provide suggestions on how could the quality of blogs be improved.


Happy Reading!!