Can we hold this band wagon???

Yesterday I was reading the book "Chindia" which talks about how countries like China & India are changing the face of this world. Suddenly some thoughts struck my mind - Why is India so special? Have we worked hard to achieve this GDP growth so far OR is this because of the natural advantage that we already have (vast english speaking population available at low cost). Is there any other nation preparing to take on India next decade? Do we know our strengths & do we have a vision? Or are we going to see a US like situation down the line?

Well, honestly I have no clue!!! Neither do I feel that we have worked hard (Unlike Japan) to reach this state. Most of our success so far are primarily because of the natural advantages that we have. But how sustainable those advantages are? Are we not sailing a boat without bothering about it's fuel capacity? If that is the case, the boat is definitely going to stop sooner or later. And you know how difficult it is to survive when your boat stops in the middle of a ocean!!!

I feel no strength is sustainable unless we work on it & make it better than yesterday. If you talk about players like Schumi, Fedrer & Tendulkar; these guys definitely had some natural advantage in the begining over their counterparts. But they were intelligent to understand that it's easy for counterparts to replicate their techniques  and come to their level sooner or later. So they never stopped working on their strengths & weaknesses. They got rid of all possible weaknesses to remain successful over decades or so. My point is: Even a genius has to work hard to sustain his success.

So lessons for India & we Indians would be - work hard on weaknesses, strive to make our strengths non-replicable & remain innovative to maintain a substantial lead over our immediate counterparts!!!

Health Insurance Reform - Quite a Good Idea

I briefly watched the speech by Barack Obama on Health Insurance Reform. I liked the fundamentals that he is trying to address here. The vision is quite clear - "Let no American broke just because (s)he is sick". Fundamentally I found it to be quite a noble thought, yet execution of such a reform would remain quite a tough task. As he rightly said, insurance companies play a foul game when it comes to paying the bills/reimbursements. They come up with reasons which are beyond comprehension at times. There is a tendency to delay payments. They instead look out for one small mistake on the part of the customer so that they can be denied the reimbursement. So in such a scenario, the ideal thing to do would be to introduce competition where the competitor would provide easy insurance options & easy norms so that people get "really benefited". And that's exactly what he is trying to do. He is creating an entity which will be called as a "Insurance exchange" where every individual/ small business firms can get health insurance at a competitive & affordable price. These are still only on papers. We need to wait & watch the real success of this!!! Who knows, this might become a key propaganda for politicians in next election in India as well....

What will you do if...

One fine morning, I took the news paper, sipping a cup of tea & a question cropped up in my mind: What would I do to keep myself busy if all my materialistic requirements being taken care of? Will I leave my job? Will I go for playing golf? Will I go and watch all Cricket matches across the world? Will I travel to all places? 

Well, it's a tough one. I wish I had a clear answer to this question. At least few things are clear - Every year I will go for 2/3 exotic vacations with my wife and spend good time there...I will probably join a Golf Academy...I will pursue playing Tennis more regularly, I will create a modernized sports academy to train kids for future olympics....

Let's see :) 

Consulting in Education Space

This idea came to me while reading the book "Imagining India" by Nandan Nilekani. I was shocked to find that only ~20% of all graduates who pass every year are employable. This essentially means there is a huge opportunity to develop the quality of education. 

In an idealistic world the idea should be to develop the qualiy bottom-up, ie start from school. But by looking at the current situation where India is treated as a young nation compared to the developed economy, we can't afford to let go the opportunities that are coming our way. We need to make more and more people employable. And it has to be imminent. This essentially means the immediate focus should be to develop the quality in Engineering/MBA space and then go top-down. We can't afford to wait till the time government do something. That will probably be a fatalistic approach. 

Well at this moment, we can't afford to have a static curriculum in our system. To keep in pace with current economy, the current curriculum has to be dynamic and more practical in nature. It requires somebody to continuously keep track of recent developments and ensure that the curriculum reflects those changes atleast on a yearly basis. Secondly there has to be more autonomy given to the colleges so that they can choose their curriculum. I am essentially indicating at the idea of setting up a consulting team for educational space who will guide the instituions to design better curriculum year after year.

I am looking for more ideas in this space so that we can take this figure of 20% to atleast 60% in next 3-4 years!!!

Aren't banks opportunistic

If you are going for a new housing loan, you will be charged ~8.5%. But existing housing loan customers continue to pay ~11%. 

I appreciate the fact that banks are trying best to boost the economy by giving housing loans at a cheaper rate. Currently people are holding back to their cash under market apprehension. This hurts the economy. Fundamentally banks are doing a good thing by providing opportunity for movement of cash within the market. I hope this works and make more people to buy houses and there by helping GDP growth. 

But!!! what about the current housing loan holders? Shouldn't bank do something to ensure even such a set of people need to be taken care by the system. If bank lowers the interest rate for existing customers, that will mean customers have more money to spend and hence will help to boost the economy by utilising that money in some other space. Banks will anyway increase the interest rate when economy bounces back. So then why not reduce the interest rate on existing loan!!!

AR Rahman - Redefining Globalization

Truly, AR Rahman proved: "if you have passion for something, it's worth dreaming the best!!!". I heard a lot about him from people. If a person can lock himself up in a room for days to come up with a staisfying score, his dedication is definitely laudable. And there is hardly any possibility of such dedication going waste. 

With Oscar, AR Rahman has redefined the term “Globalisation”, giving Indian Music Industry a much needed impetus. A truly global image is just few miles away for Indian Music Industry. It’s always seen that the 1^st step is usually the toughest one, after that things fall into place. I am quite sure that in no time, we will get to see more Indians winning Oscars and more Indians playing Music for International movies. But one thing will not change soon, ie, People like Rahman, Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar will remain as rare breeds for generations to come!!!

All my wishes with Rahman. I am sure Oscar is just a stepping stone for him to achieve more in future!!! Good luck to him!!! 

Parking - Do we need Government Regulation

Yesterday, on 14th Feb, I had been to Metropolitan Mall and figured out that they were charging Rs 100 for parking. I was taken by surprise, but then started thinking is it right to charge exorbitant price for parking? Aren't we taking too much advantage of "free market economy"?

Well I got the following definition about "free market economy" from Wikipedia:

"A free market is a market that is free of government intervention and regulation, besides the minimal function of maintaining the legal system and protecting property rights"

In a free market, the price is primarily determined by demand-supply equilibrium. In the above case, the supply of parking area is limited in a place like Gurgaon. We also have the problem of limited public transport within Gurgaon. This forces people to take their own vehicles and give whatever price charged at parking. In some cases, people take the risk of parking on “Non-Parking Zone”. Well, I won’t put the complete blame on those people. We need to analyze the alternative as well to ensure that neither the parking charges are high, nor people go against the law to park at Non-Parking Zone.

1st Question: Do we have enough public transport in Gurgaon? The answer is NO. 2nd Question: Do we have enough parking facility provided by Government? ( I am sure they are intelligent enough to understand the fact that in the absence of Public Transport, more no of personal vehicles will be on road) Again, the answer is NO. In such a situation, I am a little uncomfortable to apply the concept of Free Economy in the case of infrastructure which is mostly influenced by Government. I think in the above case, parking charges should come under Government Regulation in the absense of sufficient alternative infrastructure.


My 2 cents. I would appreciate your comments on it!!!

Is your job protected against recession?

The word recession is common place now. People getting laid off is catching an upward trend in India, thanks to the recent global meltdown. Though this presents a lot of uncertainties around one's career, yet it gives you an opportunity to sit back and evaluate areas where you think you can add better values than others.

In India, most people take a career by force, not by choice. And situations like this create an opportunity for people to sit back and evaluate their options. If you are a software engineer working on some very low level activity where you feel there is very little value addition for the end customer, then you have all reasons to get worried. You need to sit back and ask yourself: are you working on something which is considered valuable by your customer? Is it a high priority item for your customer? Is customer deriving advantage from your work? If answer is NO, then you better re-evaluate and change your focus area as soon as possible.

Just go by one principle: "If there is no taker for your product/service, there is something wrong with your job. And such inefficiencies will be dealt by your company during such bad times."

Not Just ROI, but A Quicker ROI – Enterprise Software

When bad time comes, every company goes into a “cost-cutting” mode to ensure a relatively better bottom-line. And I believe, from a strategy perspective, controlling bottom-line is a better & cost-effective strategy during such time than trying to pep-up top-line. Cutting costs, in other words, means improving operational efficiency. And Operational Efficiency means “doing things better in relatively lesser time”. And Enterprise Software enables to achieve such a goal in an organization. So companies should focus on investing in Enterprise Software to maintain the bottom-line. In the same time, the key challenge for such a company is to ensure a Quicker ROI so that they can stop bleeding in fastest possible time. Hence the focus of an Enterprise Software Company should be to ensure “Not just ROI, but A Quicker ROI”…. 

Consumer Sentiments during Economic Downturn

Economic Downturn has hit hard the consumer sentiments and consumer spending is substantially low at present. Let's try and understand; what is the effect of such a situation on the consumption of different types of products.

I divide the whole range of products into 3 categories; Essential Products, Luxury Products (Designed for high class people), Semi Luxury Products (Considered as luxury for middle class).

Essential Products like Food items are always critical for consumers. Unless the economy is like the one in 1930, it's difficult for such items to see a downward trend in their consumption.

Luxury Products like Mercedes cars which are primarily designed for high class & cash rich people, are unlikely to see a heavy downward trend since the economic downturn has very minimal effect on the pile of cash that these set of people are sitting on.

Semi Luxury Products like Nike shoes, Jewelry items; which are primarily considered as Luxury for Middle class people will see a heavy downward fall in the consumption pattern. A middle class person often goes to a Nike showroom when he/she has good amount of disposable income, doesn’t think much about value-for-money and emotionally attached with the brand. Then he/she doesn’t mind paying 100% extra on his/her shoes. During economic downturn, middle class often faces the maximum risk of loosing jobs. Mostly his source of income is through salary and his cash reserves are normally not good enough to sustain his family without a job for even 12 months. So it essentially for him to cut down on the fatty expenses (he will be happy not going to Nike showroom) and ensure his cash reserve increases so as to face the effect of bad time in near future.

My 2 cents on it!!!

A true Leader's best friend - Ethics

A leader’s role goes beyond just making money for his followers and company. A leader stands out as a role model for the followers. It’s critical for him to be aware of his own responsibilities and, more importantly ethical values. When it comes to ethical values, Narayan Murthy stands out as a true role model. He probably understands the importance of ethical values more than anybody else. And he being at the helm of Infosys, I am sure the company will never face a Satyam like situation. In my view, Satyam's failure is more of ethical in nature than anything else. 

I just want to close this with one simple remark: "For a leader, Doing what is Right is more important than showing what is Right." I know it is common sense, but often common sense is very uncommon!!!