IIPM G.O.T.A. AUSTRALIA 2007
Experiences & Comments

• It was an astonishing & one of its kind experience in our life as a post graduate student and also as an Individual. We Thank IIPM for giving us such an wonderful opportunity to learn & interact with different people and all together people from a different country. This Trip really helped us to get an edge our other MBA Students all over the world regarding experience of International workings.Few of the Comments which we would give on our Personal Grounds & as IIPM Student’s:•Got to know about the different Marketing Mix & Financial Management system Globally & Local.Probably Best Orientation of different combination of Sports, Entertainment, Research & Development & also Business Development.

Insight into the working of Australia Federal Govt.

• Personal Experience of Indians while establishing their Companies in Australia gave as an overview of Australia in the Lights of Business & Behavior of People.

GOTA 2005

The Global Opportunities & Threat Analysis (GOTA) Program brings awareness of how a truly global economy works and also offers a different perspective to the participants making them receptive to entrepreneurial learning.

GOTA -2005 which was conducted in Switzerland involved visits to prestigious and world renowned institutions like the United Nations and Webster University and lectures by eminent professors and office bearers of these institutions.

‘Comparison of Global Economies’ involved comparing the emerging economies, namely India and China with the developed economies around the world in terms of Global Competitiveness and their performances on the basis of various economic parameters vis-à-vis the previous year.

The World Bank presentation involved a discussion of the basic functions of the bank and its affiliates such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). While the IBRD focuses on middle income and creditworthy poor countries in the world.  

The penultimate and the final presentation of the program were by Dr. Shishir Priyadarshan, who is India’s representative to the WTO. They involved a discussion of the WTO’s purpose being, dealing with the rules of trade between nations. WTO’s primary objective is to provide necessary support to producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers in conducting their business. The final presentation involved a discussion on the “Negotiations, implementation and development: the Doha agenda’.

The trip was not totally academically oriented and also involved a couple of days of sight seeing with visits to the popular tourists’ hot spots and major cities in Switzerland being:
Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, Bern, Lausanne, Interlaken, Jungfrau and Montreux among others.

GOTA 2006

The trip to Switzerland and Qatar as part of GOTA by the 103 students and 5 faculties from IIPM Hyderabad (in three batches), in early March 2006, was an wonderful experience.

The tour started with the first of the three batches, starting from Hyderabad on 2nd March 2006 and ended with the return of the third batch on 14th March 2006.  The lectures that were organized with renowned organizations where rich in terms of knowledge content and stimulated the thinking process of one and all.  Sessions from organizations included WTO, WIPO , Novartis, Michael Page, ITC, Webster University, etc. were organized in areas like International Trade, economics,  management, business and marketing.

The climate was severe cold with daytime temperatures hovering around 0 deg celcius to 5 deg celcius and dropping steeply to about -5 deg celcius in the night. The group stayed at International Youth Hostel in Zuerich, where they enjoyed the severe snowfall that occurred during the first week of March.

The trips to Lausanne, Luzern, Morges Berne, St. Prex, Rheinfalls and Mt. Titlis would be memorable for their charming natural beauty and adventurous attractions.

Mt. Titlis would be specially remembered for the cable cars, sloping rails, peaks where temperature drops to – 20 deg celcius. The boat ride to the French Coast off the Lake from Lausanne, the trips to the nostalgic flat of Albert Einstein at Berne and the carnivals of Zuerich would be everlasting in the memories of all. The old city in Lausanne brought back memories of Hollywood classics.

The students had a learning experience in immigration, food adjustment, crossing language and cultural barriers, weather extremities, etc. The icing in the cake was off course the wheels-off at Doha, State of Qatar. From an ice-cold nation of cultural openness and non-spicy diet-food; the group landed in a hot and dry, desert country with conservative Islamic culture and spicy Indian like delicious cuisine. The desert safari was a super hit with breathtaking rides over huge sand dunes in land cruisers. The camp dinner, volleyball and bonfire off the coast of the Arabian Gulf was a treat.