>> strs = {'HA' 'KU' 'LA' 'MA' 'TATA'};
>> tic; ind=find(ismember(strs,'KU')); toc
Elapsed time is 0.001976 seconds.
>> tic; find(strcmp('KU', strs)); toc
Elapsed time is 0.000014 seconds.
SO, clearly strcmp('KU', strs)
takes much lesser time than ismember(strs,'KU')