Books & Research Paper – Faculty & Alumni
“The hard part is putting one word after another.”
– Jo Linsdell
Karthik Shashidhar, PGP 2006, an independent quant, data science and business strategy consultant has very recently launched a book named– ‘Between the Buyer and the Seller’.
Why do startup platforms provide heavy incentives to their users? And why is it difficult to find the right date using dating apps? The answer to any of these questions rests with a mysterious entity, who quietly exists between the buyer and the seller. In this absorbing account, quant and management consultant Karthik Shashidhar uses concepts from economics and financial markets to explore this entity’s complex behaviour.
When asked about the brief overview of the book in terms of context and genre, Karthik replied,”Between the buyer and the seller is a book about markets and market design. I explore a variety of markets from everyday life and analyse why the markets are structured the way they are, and how they can be possibly designed in order to make it easier for both the buyer and the seller. So, for example, in one chapter (which you can read here: http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/SQmnAdsSW71Iu9M9qhKchP/Binders-full-of-women.html ) I explore why it is hard to find a date on Tinder and other dating apps. In another, I talk about how companies such as Uber or Ola have revolutionised the taxi business. Elsewhere I talk about flash sales (which are commonly used to sell phones in India) and correlate them with bond market liquidity. “
Reasons for which writing excites you:
I’ve been writing since 2004, when I was a first year PGP student at IIMB. I started writing a blog then which continues to this day. Then in 2013, I started writing a column for Mint. And now there’s the book. What excites me about writing is that it allows you to concisely convey a complex set of thoughts. Nobody can interrupt your flow of thought in the middle of a piece. You can construct long-winded and complicated threads of reasoning and still be able to convey it in a manner that the reader understands.
Few lines about your typical writing schedule:
When I wrote the manuscript of my book I was taking a break from my work as freelance management consultant. I was living in Barcelona then and most of my writing happened at this coffee shop. I had outlined the book and then divided it into a set of mini-chapters (that now appear as chapter sections in the book), and the target was to finish one section in a day. I would start in the morning with outlining thoughts, and just start writing. Any research or references required would be pulled during the course of the day. Most days I managed to hit the target.
Outside of the book, there is no real routine to my writing. Most of my writing is either for my blog or for the newspaper, and they’re fairly short-form. A blogpost takes about 20 minutes to write and I usually end up writing it in one burst. Articles for Mint take more effort – I need to frame a hypothesis, gather data, perform the analysis and the writing bit is only a summary there. Even there, though, once I’ve done the analysis, the writing takes place in one 20-30 minute burst.
Origin of your ideas:
They come from everywhere – you just need to keep your eyes and ears open to them. Most of my ideas pop up when I observe something and it reminds me of something completely different, and then I realise there is a logical connection between the two. So I’ve had ideas come to my head when sitting in the classroom, or at meetings at work. A number of my early blog posts sprung out of ideas I got by observing people at L-square parties at IIMB. I’ve even written a blog post while administering an exam when I was an adjunct faculty at IIMB.
Any author role models so far:
None
Tips/advice for aspiring writers:
Writing a book is nothing like writing a blog post or an article. A 50,000 word book is significantly more complex than 50 1000 word articles. You need to hold a thread of thought over long periods, retain a consistent voice through the book, and make sure that the manuscript is entirely consistent. And then there is the issue of motivation – you end up writing with little or no feedback, and that can sometimes affect you deeply and make you want to throw it all away. It takes tremendous discipline to stay on track and not give up on the book midway. What possibly helped me was that I’d allocated a 3-month block of my life to solely writing the book, when I was living in a new country and there was no option during that period to get back to “regular work”.
Blog post about the writing process.
Find the version of this eBook on Amazon.
Professor, Vivek Moorthy, Economics and Social Sciences, IIMB, has very recently launched a book named– ‘Applied Macroeconomics: Employment, Growth and Inflation’. At IIMB he teaches courses in macroeconomics and global financial markets.
Unlike traditional textbooks, this book develops a conceptual framework, historically and theoretically, for a growing economy. Based on simple models with numerical examples, it applies concepts from classical macroeconomics to interpret economic events and data in USA and India over several decades, and some other Asian economies also.
Find the version of this eBook on Amazon.
Professor U Dinesh Kumar, faculty and Chairperson, Decision Sciences and Information Systems area, IIMB, has very recently launched a book named– ‘Business Analytics – The Science of Data-Driven Decision Making’.
The book has 17 chapters and addresses all components of analytics such as descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics. The first few chapters are dedicated to foundations of business analytics. The content of the book starts with the foundations of data science and addresses all components of analytics, such as, descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics topics which are discussed using examples from several industries, as well as nine analytics case studies distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and used by several institutes across the world. The book is enriched with 10 years of teaching experience of the author at various programmes in IIM Bangalore and several training and consulting projects carried out by him.
Find the version of this eBook on Amazon.
Research Paper on “The potential of electricity imports to meet future electricity requirements in India” published in The Electricity Journal, 30 (2017) 71–84
Umesh Kumar Shukla, PGPPM 2009, India/ Syracuse University, USA has wide experience in different organizational environments viz. multi national, public sector undertaking, state government, central government, regulatory bodies. He is presently posted as Chief Adviser Cost, Tariff Commission, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India and also is a Research Scholar at IIT Delhi, India. He has authored numerous publications on electricity market in various international journals such as Energy Policy, Journal of Indian Business Research; a monograph and working paper published by IIM Bangalore; a book published by Lambert, Germany, Chapter in a book edited by Shri S.L. Rao, Ex-Chairman, CERC. He has also presented various research papers at national & international conferences.
Research paper-
As the resources of electricity generation in India are not sufficient; there is need to identify an alternate solution to bridge the gap between electricity demand and generation. This paper analyses the potential of electricity import from neighboring countries to meet the future electricity requirements of India. This paper studies the growth of electricity generation, consumption, cross border electricity trade and existing cross border transmission interconnections of India and neighboring countries. After assessing the future electricity generation potential, the paper work out, using the forecasting techniques, the projected electricity generation and demand of India and neighboring countries by 2050 to identify the possibility of India’s cross border electricity trade with its neighboring countries to identify the electricity import potential. The result shows that there is potential for electricity import from Bhutan, China, Myanmar, and Nepal and electricity import may be feasible from other Asian countries through CASA-1000, GMS and ASEAN grid. The study recommends to improve diplomatic relations; create transmission interconnections with Pakistan, China and Myanmar; harmonization of grid codes; and development of regulatory framework to harness the potential.
