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Mumbai. This city has many names - Bombay, Mumbai, Financial Capital, Corporate Hub, Employment Mecca, etc... And, yet, it also houses Asia's largest slum. It is the most congested city in the world. Here, fresh air is a thing of the past. I am a Mumbaikar myself, so I should know.

But the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (or NITIE) in Mumbai tells a different story. Nestled amid 40 acres of lush green, perched atop a hill and flanked by the Vihar and Powai Lakes, NITIE encompasses all that is good about the city. This was my first and lasting impression as soon as I walked through those gates more than two months ago on a Friday - it was 19th June 2008 - my first day at this management school. And it was a memorable one, too.

We were first made to go through the formalities of document verification, submitting copies of mark-sheets and photographs. We were then given sets of stationery and told to report for lectures on Monday.

Next on the list was the allocation of hostel rooms. This was something new to me, as I had never stayed away from home. And I wouldn't have, had it not been mandatory. The rule seemed absurd at the time, but in the next few days, I would know how wrong I was.

I met my roommate - a real decent chap, had a look at my room (my home for the next year, at least), which was Wi-Fi connected, plus, it had a fantastic view. My initial anxiety of moving into a hostel faded away. It would soon be replaced by the enthusiasm and open-mindedness worthy of a regular management student.

The seniors - phenomenal guys that they are - had our week-end schedule down pat. We were just settling down, adjusting to our new environment, when we were summoned "for briefing". After a quick round of introductions, we were split into teams. Starting Friday through Sunday, we had several team events lined up, ranging from exciting treasure hunts to interesting quizzes to downright demanding case studies and market analyses (yes, before classes started). Those three action-packed days taught us, among other things, life-long lessons such as - How to make one day seem like a week; How to sleep at 2:00 am and be up at 7:00 am and still feel like you own the day; How to get to know more people meaningfully in three days than you did in half a year at engineering college?

We also got a leisurely tour of the campus, professional badminton courts, a club-room for indoor games, gymnasium, state-of-the-art auditorium and the library, which houses a whopping 140,000-strong collection of books, subscriptions to 14 newspapers and more than 200 magazines and journals. The highly prized computer centre at NITIE was also on the tour map. Fitted with the latest enterprise resource planning software (which run businesses) as well as SAP, it is one of the most well-equipped centres for supplier chain management information technology.

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* Contributed by -
Ken D Souza,
MBA, 1st Year,
NITIE, Mumbai.
Article posted on March 7, 2009.