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The Third Cent

This is Dr. Karthikeyan Balakumar’s Newsletter, a digital newsletter in which I document what happened in class this week, the key learnings that we had, and the ideas that were worth pondering over.

Sales Forecasting - Some Thoughts and Ideas

Sales Forecasting - Some Thoughts and Ideas

Introduction A few years back, while I was still a PhD Student, something interesting happened. I met an MBA student who began arguing with a professor. This was not an unusual occurrence on campus. This particular conversation however, was different. They were debating about the validity and use of the

The 'Curious' Case of Amazon

The 'Curious' Case of Amazon

A Salesperson's Perspective Introduction Many of what Sun Tzu said is still relevant today in a variety of fields such as business, politics, and psychology. Clearly, his teachings are also relevant to the young and budding salespeople of tomorrow. Today, we shall start with one of his one

Sales - The road oft taken

Sales - The road oft taken

Jindi Enterprises – Finding a new Sales Manager I’m sure you’ve noticed. Almost every case that was used as a part of the Sales and Distribution Management course is under three years old. The decision to use recent cases was a conscious one. I anticipated that using such cases

boAt Lifestyle - To leapfrog or not to?

boAt Lifestyle - To leapfrog or not to?

Why physical retailing is here to stay Introduction For many decades Indian boys and girls were told the exact same thing, “Study hard, get into a good college, settle down in life”. The language used and tone may have varied from state to state, but the content has remained rather

Role of Technology in Marketing Research

Role of Technology in Marketing Research

Getting your own Jarvis Just last week I had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with some executives from an upcoming marketing tech company. In addition to discussion placements and summer internships, we also talked about other trending ideas in the field of marketing. Somehow, such discussions have increasingly

Experiments - Part 2

Experiments - Part 2

Introduction Remember the YouTube Short from the previous newsletter. Just in case you forgot, here’s the link. Please do watch it again. Now that you have watched it, let’s perform a little thought experiment. If we were to prove dinitrophenol (DNP) had deadly effects (including but not limited

Experiments - Part 1

Experiments - Part 1

What is an experiment? In simple terms, an experiment is “a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact.”. Human beings have been using experiments for a very, very long time. Remember Dexter’s Laboratory where Dexter, the wiz kid does crazy experiments?