The way I see the world around me :)

My sons' sport meet

2008-02-10T19:44:00.000+05:30

It has been ages since I blogged , but yesterday's sports meet of my son school gave me the little nudge (rather inspiration ) to get back to blogging . My son goes to an IB school at Vashi about 9 kms from our home at Nerul. Yesterday was the annual sports day for the Sr KG section of the school. The theme of the event was the struggle and the not the victory that counts . The principal spoke about the theme eloquently and told all the parents not to be anxious about the performance of their wards . I understood the context well and told myself that I will hug my little baby and encourage him , whatever his performance maybe . True to the theme little Neelabjo finished last in the heats of all the 3 races that he participated (well almost , he beat one peer to the finishing line in the 25 mts run..) . I was never the sporting kind , and dont expect my son to be one either , however his performance left me a bit sad .....well I laughed it off with him ...but next year he has promised his dad that he will do a tad better ....I live in that hope ....

In search

2007-11-02T00:46:00.000+05:30

I sleep very well , but tonight is different I am restless ,staring out of the third floor of my modest home at the dark sky , i wonder what I am searching ...maybe

My:

Soul
Passion
Zest for life
Arrogance
Tenderness

This search continues , I thought I knew the answers to be reminded of my folly ......

Ganga Arti-Rajendra Prasad Ghat-Maha Dashami

2007-10-30T23:48:00.000+05:30

As I bid them farewell in Benares -Maha Dashami

2007-10-30T23:25:00.000+05:30

The Search.....

2007-10-27T11:49:00.000+05:30

The Search continues...

For life
For peace
For joy
For love
For meaning

At times I wonder , is it worth it at all , or its just that I complicate matters for myself , or is it a deep hurt....a feeling of being used by one and all ..........

Kashi Khanda

2007-10-27T00:37:00.000+05:30

The Trinity -Ganges , Shiva and Kashi stand mute spectators to a tradition forgotten by many , but not by the following people who are doing their bit to protect the traditions of the great Hindu faith and an amazing city :

The Young priests who every evening unfailingly do the Ganga Arti at Rajendra Prasad Ghat

The poor Bramhin who has devoted his life to the service of Shiva

The sentry in front of Vizzy's once palatial mansion , whose wrinkles tell us that he continues to fight the failed attempts of urbanization of the city

The gallis that are home to the Sastry's who came years ago from Andhra and lead by one Gopinath Sastry still run institutions which evangelise the scriptures

The beggar who dresses up like Shiva and chants "Bom Bhole" to attract the foreigners for alms

The generations of waiters at Baba Thandai who has been serving thandai and bhang for more than a century now

The children of the gallis , who have no place to play , so they make the ghats their playground and swim in the Ganges for entertainment

The sadhus at Dasasamedh , Ashi , Manikarnika et al , who smoke the ganja ......

Go visit Benares and experience your roots , I have done it , why dont you !!

Radical Islam now reflected in Sports

2007-10-03T20:32:00.000+05:30

I am a bit late writing this post , but nevertheless thought that the topic was too important to let it pass . All of us are well aware of the ridiculous comments that the losing Pakistani captain Shoaib Malik made in the post match press conference of the T20 finals at South Africa . His comments attracted some attention of the media , who in no uncertain terms denounced Malik's comments of support to the Pakistani side by all the Muslims of the world . His comments had some responses of sections of Indian Muslims who felt offended by Malik's remarks and for once seem to reject the concept of universal Islamic brotherhood . However Malik's comments need to be understood in a wider context . Today people like Malik unfortunately represent a larger radicalization of civic society in the sub-continent .

Pakistani society has undergone rapid Islamisation in recent years. Malik's comments were well thought through and was intended to assuage feelings of the ultra conservative galleries back home and telling them that though they had lost the finals, they were still good believing Muslims. The need for such public affirmation of faith is a trend which links to the rapid increase in the ranks of "24-hour Muslims" in Pakistan. I have been watching Pakistani cricket from the late seventees and never before has there been a need of players like Imran,Zaheer , Rameez etc to reiterate their religiosity because that constituency wasn't big enough then. Ultra conservative Muslims were still a insignificant portion of the civic society . Malik's comments prove that things have changed and changed very rapidly ......I am sure there has been a deep radicalization of Pakistani society for Malik to make the kind of comment that he did

The Islamization of the Pakistani team was lead by Inzamam ul Haque . Inzy made it a point to thank Allah after every match and his poor command of English was masqueraded by a few common sentences which he parroted out and which invariably used words like "Bismillah" , 'Insallah" and phrases like "By the grace of Almighty Allah..." and so on . Inzy was seen lead his men to great success (not on the playing field ..) to prayer meetings , ...this could have lead to the conversion of Yosuf Yohanna to Islam and the new look Mohd Yusuf sported a Maluvi beard to show his allegience to his newly adopted relegion. In Inzamam's team, where the captain was seen as a religious talisman, Shoaib Malik was part of the group which had joined the Tablighi Jamaat, a sect that preaches a bare-boned, conservative version of global Islam.

Sportsmen and cricket teams are resonable microcausms of the larger civic society and public affirmation of faith by the Pakistani team shows that ultra conservatives have taken over Pakistan . While this is indeed an internal issue , the implications on India which has more Muslims than Pakistan and also coupled by the fact that educated Indian Muslims are now participating in international terrorism (ex-Bangalore doctors case) is non trivial . Its high time that the UPA stop designing sop schemes to woo the Muslims anticipating a mid term poll and do some concerete work in defanging the threat of radical Islam in our own doorstep

Talent Management -Bollywood Style

2007-09-29T23:45:00.000+05:30

The HR guru's amongst my readers would agree that Talent Identification and Assessment are two critical pillars of Talent management . Simply put Talent Management facilities a process and culture which ensures that the best and brightest automatically bubble to the top . If we were to believe that an organization is a microcosm of a larger society then what we are witnessing today in most Indian organizations is also indeed true for Bollywood .

Many years ago Anu Kapoor ran a show called "Meri Awaaz Suno" - to me it was a Talent Management intervention .A little girl from Bhilai won the hearts and imagination of India. That little girl was Sunidhi Chauhan , the program was a process and a platform which allowed a top talent like her to get pan India exposure . Programs such as Meri Awaaz Suno heralded the beginning of Talent Management revolution in playback singing @ Bollywood . Along the journey were many such shows , and the latest one is the Sangeet Ka Vishwa Yudh . We are now in the final stages of the program with Amanat , Raja and Aneek . These three singing sensations have come a long way displacing people like Poonam Yadav, Sumdeha and my heartthrob Mouli. While all the singers were undoubtedly brilliant , but without a process like the Vishwa Yudh , these people would not have got an opportunity or an exposure that they well deserve . To put this in context , in the good old days at Bollywood incumbency was a big factor , Lata Mangeshkar remained the playback Queen for decades without any noticeable threat to her position . Was there a talent shortage in the country...???? , were there no Mouli's, Poonam's or Sumedha's during her time ....I don't think so , what was probably lacking was platforms like the ones that we are discussing . The power of these platforms are immense and the outcomes that they can create for an industry is what we are experiencing first hand now.

I would like to highlight two key learning's from Bollywood which could be of use to HR professionals who engage in the process of Talent Management .

Let the Soul of the Process Flourish

What happens in the name of Talent Management are generally elaborate paper exercises and assessments which kill the soul of the process . By killing the soul of the process I am hinting at the complex psychometric tools often used to identify talent (however valid the consultants who peddle them claim to be ) are fraught with errors and to put undue emphasis on the tools only is disastrous .

Use Professional Talent Spotters and Talent Managers

Spotting Talent is not necessarily a function of competency frameworks or psycometry . The Aussie Cricket Board has talent scouts who scan the country and select young players with promise. A similar process happens thought he regional and city rounds of these Bollywood programs . In India however I have not heard of Talent Scouts in organizations . An individuals potential is often assessed in the context of his current and future roles . While I do not have a conceptual quarrel with this process , however happens that the potential assessment is left a bit too late for any meaningful development to happen , which leads to a situation wherein either the top talent is frustrated and leaves the organization or even worse stays back and becomes a cynic. While timing of assessment is important , the other critical issues is that potential assessment happens in the context of a set of Role Based Competencies and rarely on well grounded Generic Competencies . The challenge is of course to maintain a balance between the competencies required to deliver the current role and or future roles as also the ability to manage organizations and add stakeholder value . Often the second objective take a backseat

To conclude , I believe that Indian organizations and HR processes should be capable of identifying the Poonam Yadav's , Sunidhi Chauhan's , Shreya Ghosal's and Mouli's of the world so that there is some real competition to incumbements like Lata or Asha . "Lata tai , Asha tai no disrespect meant ...you probably had it a bit easy , but Sunidhi will face far more competition as the Talent Processes of Bollywood and getting stronger and stronger ..."

Google vs. Microsoft: A Rivalry Is Created

2007-09-26T12:29:00.001+05:30

Microsoft must really hate Google. This has become an online rivalry…almost officially. Even though Google is ahead of the market in search and many other aspects of the world online (by far the worlds largest online company), well Microsoft is well…Microsoft…Windows…Bill Gates…

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Google Wants You To Share Stuff

2007-09-21T16:22:00.001+05:30

Google has entered the social bookmarking market with a new product called Shared Stuff.Shared Stuff is simple enough; users drag a “email/ share” button into their browser, and click it when they want to add pages to their Shared Stuff profile. Links can include an image, text extract, and/ or a user comment.

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Govinda Aala Re, Govinda Aala

2007-09-15T17:57:00.000+05:30

Coaching ......Child's play ...Isnt it

2007-09-10T19:44:00.000+05:30

Well the latest buzz word in the Indian HR scene is Executive Coaching . As far as Indian managers are concerned executive coaching is not a new concept . I have heard of managers who have had coaches at least five years ago . However , the concept of coaching as a business proposition is gaining rapid currency amongst us in the last year or so. I know of friends and colleagues who are already or aspire to be Executive Coaches . There are some who call themselves Performance coaches and some who just coach ...(performance or otherwise) . When I first heard of real coaches , I was much younger and I dismissed them as personal shrinks to some CEO or wannabe CEO...., but the trend is rapidly changing , almost everybody either wants to be a coach or be coached , which has created this demand for "Your Friendly Neighbourhood Coach" and their USP is ...I don't need to know anything about your business ,or your pressures , I can just coach ....fantastic isn't it . I witnessed a similar phenomena in the US in 2001 . I was looking for a Training Manager , and I had shortlisted some 40 people for a face to face discussion . At least 7 of them (who had no training experience before) told me , that " Of course I can train...., whats the big deal...." . Drawing parallels from the training example , of course any human being can coach anybody else , bring to bear life's perspectives and add value....does it not sound simple enough.

I am sure Marshal Goldsmith (the God of Executive Coaching ) would dismiss me as a cynic and a non believer of people process ...but my disconnect is for the following reasons :

a) To be able to coach others , the coach should not be insecure .....unfortunately most of the coaches that I know are really insecure ( my data is based on a minuscule set of the world of coaches and hence I am aware that I make a sweeping generalization here , but my world view is limited to my experiences ...sorry about that ) and for all the good reasons want to prove to their coachee how smart they are .....and their notion of adding value is to leave you with a feeling that I am actually better than you

b) Coaching as a service will be potent only when the coach is truly interested in the development of the coachee . The kind of money that a good coach commands in the US market ( I am told that a certain Indian CEO Coach charges USD 20K ) for a day' s session makes me feel that it is a very very good business , so to be honest , I also want to be a coach and start making that kind of money ,who cares if I am really interested in the development of my coachee. I can fake it , and if I am Indian , I can add some spiritual masala to a Westerner and help him in his self discovery...cool isn't it ....I like this guy Dr Deepak Chopra , heard him once ....man he was a good speaker ....did he add value ....certainly not !!!

c) I am fundamentally against this notion that a coach can be a person who has no clue of the context of the coachee . Most of my coach pals tell me that you have to be able to ask the right questions ...this paradigm beats the hell out of me ....how do I even ask reasonable questions (forget right ones) if I dont know business and its intricacies . Well a lot of our Indian coaches are probably not the best business managers who graduate into this profession for motives best known to them

I was talking to a friend about enabling people a couple of hrs before I penned down this post . And in my discussion with this person , I told her that the ability to enable people comes only when one is deeply connected at all levels with the individual and has mastered an unknown equation wherein he can reach the individual at the cognitive and affective level . By this notion , I cannot be and should not be a coach, I cannot engage with all and sundry at a level which is required to unlock people's potential . As I sign off , with deep regret , let me confess that I am very simple human being and can't be a Coach

The Journey

2007-09-09T12:16:00.001+05:30

The Journey has begun....to:

break away from my dogma's
trust and embrace love
get in touch with myself
experience my anger and anguish and deal with it
unlocking my potential
come closer with people who value me
be in peace with the inherent contradictions of life

This journey is to change my life , and make a difference......

Abandoned

2007-09-07T22:10:00.000+05:30

I have heard a very gripping tale of an individual who has been abandoned .....not abandoned in the physical sense of the term , but abandoned emotionally from the time he can remember

Abandoned by people whom he considered his loved ones
Abandoned by society , cheated and used (for as long as he can remember)

He is at a very critical phase of his life , he believes that being abandoned and remaining in the state is a permanent phenomena of his life , he has killed the child within him , the little things that would give him pleasure , over time he has learnt to cope with the feeling (of being abandoned), and build a wall around him , a wall which drives away true well wishers , ....he is incapable to deal with emotions like love and caring ......

What does he do ....

My advise to him is to give life another chance ,despite his experiences , try it out and get in touch with yourself my friend .....the way you lead your life is not worth it...I say this because I care

Tribute to Saurav Ganguly (DADA)

2007-09-07T21:52:00.001+05:30

My Id and My Super Ego

2007-09-05T23:45:00.000+05:30

This is my century post, had intended to make it special , but this is not one , it's more of ramblings of a wandering mind......

I have a few friends who majored on Psychology and from them , I have always tried to find the meaning and the differences of Id, Ego and the Super-Ego . A colleague of mine recently help me gain clarity on the same, I will not attempt to risk trying to define it in a blog post , however as I am evolving as a person ( we all do with passage of time .....nothing special about it ) , there are times where my Id takes over me , and the Ego facilitates the struggle between the Super-Ego and the Id , the interplay is fantastic and tumultuous.Today was a day of such a struggle , and have been torn in the process ......felt low and dejected by the world and the complex human processes that I have to deal with. What does it do to me .....how does it impact me ....I reckon it does not impact my beliefs about the world that I hold close to my heart and some that are close to my chest , however it does impact when relationships I value are confronted with the struggle .....unreasonable as it maybe ,it seems to be the truth at least for now...but not the only truth I suppose

Iraqi Women turning to Prostitution to feed their children

2007-08-19T13:28:00.000+05:30

Arwa Damon -CNN reports about Iraqi women turning to prostitution to save their children

Also go throught he interview of an Iraqi lady who describes the complusions that forced her to be a prostitiute

Noam Chomsky Talks about Democracy’s Invisible Line

2007-08-19T13:21:00.001+05:30

Chomsky: "The system of control in democratic societies is extremely effective. We do not notice the line any more than we notice the air we breathe. We sometimes even imagine we are seeing a lively debate. The system of control is much more powerful than in totalitarian systems."

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Gandhi-My Father -Film Review and More

2007-08-17T20:52:00.000+05:30

This is not a mere film review . I would like to forewarn the readers that this post of mine contains content which can potential hurt the sensitivities of large number of Indian's who worship Mohandas Gandhi . If you are a Gandhian , this post is blasphemy...so beware

I would like to begin by an interesting comment made by a representative of the South African Government on the occasion of Gandhi's farewell from South Africa , he said " Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would like to believe that he is a saint who has wandered into politics , ...on the contrary he is a politician who belives that he is a saint..." . This quote in many ways epitomises the diabolical side of Gandhi which has rarely been touched upon by historians and the media . I would like to share some of my perspectives on Gandhi , in the context of Indian independence and also share my thoughts on the movie. Since the trigger of this post was the movie, I would like to start with the movie first ........ The movie is ordinary in terms of cinematography and content , it did explore the tumultuous relationship between Hiralal (his son) and Gandhi , and the struggle that Hiralal had to go through being the son of a famous father ....."To people he was a father, To his son he was a father he never had".....Hiralal rebelled against his father principles , embraced Islam in protest , was a compulsive drinker and a cheat. Some of the scenes in the movie catch your attention , particularly Hiralal's relationship with Kasturba . From the perspective of content , the movie disappoints .

However what the movie brings to fore is the darker side of the man Gandhi , he is no saint.... , he is dogmatic about his views of what India should be or should not be . He aims for a secular , inclusive Indian society but in his own way responsible for the riots that happened in the Eastern part of this country . His need to pussyfoot Islamic fundamentalists , lead to abandoning the Hindu's of the country ....... his dogma did not let him recognize a simple fact that partition of India was inevitable and it would only be fair that India be partitioned on the grounds of religion so that a reasonable transfer of population and property would have possibly happened without the extent of bloodshed that the country witnessed . While Muslims could chose to stay back in Bengal , the Hindus of erstwhile East Bengal were thrown out of the country . I come from a family who has been a victim of the politics of religion of Mohandas and so were many other families who lived in refugee camps in Kolkata and Delhi . Mr Gandhi's ridiculous obsession for misplaced secularism ensured that Hindus like us were murdered and looted in East Bengal and Punjab and left our land and lived in penury for many decades in the shanties in West Bengal and Delhi. My grandmother would often narrate the stories of woe that she had faced when she had virtually walked barefoot with her children in the cover of darkness from Pabna to Kolkata . I am sure this is true for many Muslim families , but the point is ,if Gandhi had clarity like Jinnah , the transfer of population would have be far better than it was and the loss of property could have been minimised by enforcing a Transfer of Property legislation . Mr Gandhi , the apostle of peace am sure was too preoccupied in Sabarmati (in God knows what..) to be able to think about the sufferings of millions of families ...........surely the father had left his children to fend from themselves .......

The politics of Mohandas ensured that he sidelined people like Subhas Bose , Sadar Patel and propped Nehru . Nehru and his party contributed brilliantly to ensure that the politics of division be played subtly in public life and judiciary ...it continues even today unabated . It is Gandhi's legacy that promotes disruptive politics in the form of reservations in almost all walks of life ....and here we are as a nation still celebrating "Bapu" and condemning Nathuram Ghodse...

The Saint is dead and thank god for that , but his shadow remains ....... I would like to know if India would be better off without its father ...what do u think

Jai Hind

Cash-Movie Review

2007-08-12T13:15:00.000+05:30

I went to see "Cash" with my family yesterday . Over the last 6 months , thanks to my wife , I had developed some respect for Bollywood films ,........ but my experience with Cash has disillusioned me once again on the quality of content that Bollywood dishes out on the a not so discerning audience .

To me Cash is an example of great editing , cinematography and music , but lacks the most important criteria for a good film....a gripping story and an engrossing script .

Anubhav Sinha's caste includes a bunch of thieves like Karan ( Ajay Devgan) , Danny ( Zayed Khan ), Lucky (Ritesh Deshmukh), Pooja (Esha Deol) , who are aligned to a common motive of stealing priceless diamonds in South Africa. As one could imagine each of these thieves have their own speciality , like Danny can walk on water , Lucky is an ace skate border etc etc .

The movie has great music and some exotic women , I particularly liked the dances of Samita Shetty (playing Shanaya from the Indian High Commission), but beyond that there is nothing to write about .....

An entertainer if you can leave your brains at home , if you cant , its better you stay far away from the movie

The Royal Palace bangkok

2007-08-06T19:22:00.000+05:30

Here are some of the interesting stuff that my colleague clicked on the same visit

Streets Signs in Bangkok

2007-08-06T11:06:00.001+05:30

Some of my readers wanted a commentory on the nightlife of Bangkok , but I guess what I can offer to you are some interesting street signs of the city . Look at them carefully

Amchee Mumbai

2007-08-05T11:55:00.000+05:30

Streets of Varanasi

2007-08-05T11:49:00.000+05:30

Mystical Ghats of Varanasi

2007-08-05T11:42:00.001+05:30

Ganga Arti at Varanasi

2007-08-05T11:36:00.001+05:30

The Suvarnbhumi Airport -Bangkok

2007-07-23T22:03:00.000+05:30

Do these pictures look familiar ? . These are pictures taken from the departure terminal of the Suvarnabhumi International Airport Bangkok . For my international readers , these pictures depict the mythological tug-of war (Samudra Manthan-or the Great Churn ) between the Devas (gods) and the Asura's (demon's) . It was really heartening to see Thailand take great pains to protect their Hindu roots where a Hindu majority country like India has forgotten its culture ???

Amazing thailand -5 -Other Gorgeous Structures of the Palace Compound

2007-07-23T21:31:00.000+05:30

Amazing Thailand -4 -The Upper Terrace

2007-07-23T20:59:00.000+05:30

In the palace complex are four main monuments a reliquary in the shape of the golden chedi ;the Mondop , a repository for Buddhist sacred scriptures inscribed of palm leaves , contained within a beautiful mother of pearl inlaid cabinet . Scattered around the terrace are statues of elephants and mythical beings

Amazing Thailand - 3-The Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha

2007-07-23T20:53:00.000+05:30

The Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha is situated at the north of the royal residence , it si one of the most venerated sites in Thailand . The Emerald Buddha is enshirned on a golden traditional Thai-style throne made of gilded carved wood knows as a Busabok , in the ordination hall of the royal monastery . The Emerald Buddha is carved from a block of green jade and was first discoverd in 1434 in a stupa in Chang Rai .

Amazing thailand -2 -The Palace Gaurds

2007-07-23T20:47:00.000+05:30

May not be as well known as their peers in Buckingham Palace , but our boys are smart enough , had the pleasure of witnessing a change of the Palace Gaurds

Amazing Thailand 1 -The Grand Palace

2007-07-23T20:17:00.000+05:30

The last day of a recently concluded conference in Bangkok proved to be a very meaningful time in the Grand Palace complex . Accompanied by two like minded colleagues , I had an opportunity to explore the Grand Palace complex at Bangkok .

The Grand palace complex was established in 1782 and it houses the royal residence and throne halls . In addition to that it also houses a number of government offices an well as the renowned temple of the Emerald Buddha . The palace was build after the ascension of King Rama I . The palace complex is amazingly well maintained and the current ruler King Rama IX (Bhumibol Adulyadej) seems to take great interest in preserving this national heritage

Microsoft beware-Google docs and spreadsheets new and improved

2007-06-27T20:15:00.000+05:30

Google docs and spreadsheets is one killer application which will have significant impact on the proprietary software business of Microsoft . A freebie that comes with your Gmail account , Google docs and spreadsheets make document sharing easier and interactive . Though am not active user of Google docs , but I realised that Google has enhanced it's features recently (My personal Google doc screenshot attached) . The interface is much better with lot of additional functions thrown in , the details of which are available in the website . Its not long before Google docs would make a serious dent to the MS suite . Google is well and truly invading the underbelly of Microsoft .......it seems Google is to Microsoft what Microsoft was to IBM.

Google says Vista Search Changes not Enough

2007-06-25T22:34:00.001+05:30

We inspected Microsoft's joint filing and found that Microsoft is not going to allow a complete override of the default search service in all Explorer windows, and that the company also rejects Google's concerns about performance.

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Ruby Tuesday -On a Saturday

2007-06-25T20:27:00.000+05:30

A couple of weeks ago on a rainy Mumbai Saturday , we decided to venture out to the Fort area to show Neelabjo glimpses of the real Mumbai . I am a Navi Mumbaikar , and those familiar with the city will understand why I used the word "venture" out to the Fort area....for inhabitants of the satellite city of Navi Mumbai it indeed takes a lot of courage to step out of our cosy nest . Not getting into the deadly details of how our day went , I will take you to the most interesting part of the day ...our visit to Ruby Tuesday. Ruby Tuesday has a very special place in my heart ...it was my only source of sustenance for 3 months that I spend in North Plainfield a small town in New Jersy (circa 2002) . I was so fascinated with Ruby and its food that I virtually had every meal in Ruby’s. The chicken meals with liberal helping of mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables were my favorites. I knew Ruby Tuesdays had set up shop in India and had heard and seen the Ruby outlet in PVR Saket in New Delhi (this outlet disappointed me , because it did not have the Ruby decor and ambiance ..and the food was also somewhat Indianized...) . With a slight reservation, I decided to give Ruby Tuesday's -Fort a try . This outlet was an absolute pleasure, it had recreated the original Ruby experience, the sporting gear was displayed correctly , the waiters were dressed perfectly and the menu looked the same as the one that I would have savored in the US . We got down to ordering chicken dishes and yes it did have mashed potatoes -the signature of a proper Ruby meal. It was quite a good experience, but if there was something that I could not figure out was an interesting item called Service Charges in the bill , which was a certain portion of the bill amount ...an unusual thing as far as Indian restaurants are concerned ....the prices were exactly the Indian equivalent of the Dollar amounts, which the management of Ruby may want to consider for a downward revision . Overall a good ninety minutes spent .....

30 years of Lal Salaam in Bengal

2007-06-25T19:56:00.000+05:30

This month the CPI(M) lead Left Front Government finishes 3 decades of being in power in West Bengal , a feat which is perhaps unparalleled in the history of democracies across the world . The Left regime has undoubtedly had some very significant achievements which even a die hard critic of Communism like me would concede . The land redistribution ,agrarian reform are probably the greatest achievements in the last 30 years .However , here is what has not worked for them

a) Education

West Bengal would once take pride of its education infrastructure ...... the successive Left governments has ensured that education institutions are systemically destroyed all across the state . About a decade ago , I had the privilege of being a Visiting Faculty in the Universities of Burdwan and Midnapore and even in those times appointment to teaching position in colleges of these universities were based more on affiliation to the red flag than merit !!!

b) Erosion of meritocracy

The government has somewhat been able to sell the idea that the society/state owes its citizens a living , and hence has been able to create a class of babus who do not believe in hard work , they regale in their addas, pontificate about life , are found chatting in the street corner's of Kolkatta . These babus form the bulk walk of the CPI(M) cadre , a community which reflects the growing intellectual decadence of Bengal....The hard working and ambitious Bengali has long left Bengal and has found places like Bangalore , Mumbai or Delhi to be more hospitable to their ambitions

c) Industrial Unrest

Inspite and despite of Buddhadev's claims about industrialization , the last 3 decades has seen flight of all kinds of industries from Bengal. As a child , I have seen the thriving Hoogly belt which was host to companies like ICI , Dunlop's , Hind Motors, GKW , Metal Box etc ....all closed down or in marginal existence thanks to the belligerent CITU (the workers arm of the CPIM). I wish Buddha babu well in his efforts to get industry back to Bengal , but I think its an uphill task to undo the damage done by the Jyoti Basu's and Pramod Dasguptas of the world .

In conclusion

I can go on and on with this list ...but will leave it for some other day. All that I have written in this post is based on my personal experiences with the Left front from 1977 the year the front came to power (and we moved into Kolkata) till 1996 when I decided to leave the city ....probably never to come back again....at least till the "reds" are in power in my state . If God were to grant me one wish ...it would be "defeat the Left and lets have a progressive govt" ..Bengal needs it and Bengalis deserve it ...Amen

Microsoft altering the Vista !

2007-06-21T11:40:00.001+05:30

Another setback for Microsoft Corp ! , it has agreed to alter its Vista operating system after Google's Washington office successfully filed an antitrust complaint to the Justice Department and other government authorities asserting that Microsoft's new Vista operating system discriminates against Google software. Google complained that it was disadvantaged by how Microsoft designed features for conducting desktop searches. This judgement also signifies Google's growing clout in Washington . Jeff Bimbaum reports about Google's conscious efforts in lobbying . Google with its proven supremacy in the online search and advertisement business and now with its ability to swing antitrust motions against Microsoft ,is set to become another monopoly by itself !

10 Small Businesses Being Killed by Technology

2007-06-17T11:08:00.001+05:30

Technology isn't the savior for every business. Here's a list of 10 small businesses that have suffered because of technology, whether it's the Internet or in-house technology used by big store chains.

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Expert opinion on Blogs and Social Networking

2007-06-08T18:52:00.000+05:30

I am proud to present to you an exclusive interview with Charlene Li of Forrester research .In this interview Charlene talks about social networking , blogging and its implications on society . Charlene is a VP and Principal Analyst in Forrester Research . She is an avid blogger and researcher.

1.Myspace.com is a very popular site in the US , a lot of elections material and content is being routed through the website , and almost all the Presidential candidates have their profiles in Myspace. Going forward do you see websites such as these becoming more and more popular in creating and managing public opinion

These sites have always been about relationships, participation, and communication. Moreover, once something hits a chord with someone, they are more likely to tell their friends as well. So it’s natural that organizations that want to influence public opinion – politicians, marketers, religious groups, non-profits – would want to be there to influence individual opinion and engagement.

2.Blogging is becoming immensely popular and with the meteoric rise of Google Adsense , there is a lot of incentive for being able to provide breaking news . One such example of breaking news was reported by my friend Basab Pradhan in his blog this was about the delay of the launch of the iPhone , which was blogged and had an adverse effect on the Apple price . Blogger's as a community would like sensational news to reflected in the blog without necessarily being sure about the validity of the news , where according to you does the balance lie between posting sensational news and ensuring validity of the news before you post ?

Let’s take a look at the original breaking news “blogger” – Matt Drudge. Some people love him, others can’t stand him. You know when you read him that the “news” has to be read with a huge grain of salt, but that there’s some truth to what he’s saying.My favorite example of this recently was the Google and Salesforce.com pending “strategic”announcement – the speculation ranged all the way to one Google’s acquisition of Salesforce.com Or the supposed negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo! about a potential merger/acquisition.I don’t think it’s about the money only – it’s also about the notoriety of being first, being the most connected, and having the most cred that drives this. But I put a lot of trust in blog readers having some sense – they are able to figure out pretty quickly and with multiple posts, who the best bloggers are.I don’t think it’s about the money only – it’s also about the notoriety of being first, being the most connected, and having the most cred that drives this. But I put a lot of trust in blog readers having some sense – they are able to figure out pretty quickly and with multiple posts, who the best bloggers are.

3.A lot of companies do have corporate blogs , and some are in the verge of setting up blogs , how do companies who have blogs justify the business benefits of blogging.

The key benefit is buzz and brand awareness – blog are great at generating attention, links, and subsequently, search engine rankings. Others include lower costs to support customer service or sales. I have a long post about this at

http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/01/new_roi_of_blog.html.

4.Social networking sites creates a platform of sharing of ideas , views etc , people from different walks of life come and upload content , what could be the unintended consequences of social networking (example –there are many cases when photographs of people have been downloaded from orkut and have been morphed and displayed in pornographic websites) and how can these be mitigated

With social interactions also come social diseases, and the loss of control of your identity and image is one of them. The only way to mitigate this is to limit access to your information to the people that you trust, hence the popularity of private profiles on places like MySpace and Facebook.

The Chairman of GE speaks out

2007-06-08T11:46:00.001+05:30

Yesterday, NDTV aired an interesting interview with the Chairman and CEO of GE Global Jeff Immelt .The central theme of the interview was his view on India and its development process and how he sees GE contribute to the country in the long term. In this post I capture salient points of the interview which I believe would be of great interest to my readers

The development trajectory

Immelt believed that in the last twenty years the very nature of our democracy has changed . In the first forty years post independence the voters would tend to vote incumbents back to power 80% of the time , there was a premium for incumbency…..however in the last twenty years the trend has reversed when 80% of the incumbents get voted out in every Lok Sabha elections . This according to him is a distinct evidence of the growing maturity of the democracy. Additionally the head honcho of GE opined that our development agenda was based on the development at the Lowest Common Denominator, he believes that this paradigm is changing but would like to see it change faster. According to the GE boss while there has been growth and development in the last few years, its important for politicians to recognize that that infrastructure is the most important element of our development. The current state of our infrastructure is far from world class and according to him a greater degree of focus should be given to augmenting infrastructure across the length and breadth of the nation. Immelt believes that infrastructure is the key to our development and urged the decision makers of the country should spend a portion of its forex reserves to build infrastructure in the next 5-10 years. He was of the opinion that if the UPA government did nothing else but concentrate on infrastructure, it would have set a pace of development that would be a matter of envy for the western world.

India vs China

Immelt’s India visit was immediately preceded by his GE China and in that context he outlined the differences between the two nations

a) China operates as a centrally planned economy where 5 years plans are driven with rigor across the country , we are much more democratic and as a result at times , it far more difficult to implement a national agenda …a price that a democracy has to pay

b) China is good in its planning and execution of its economic reforms, while its weaknesses lie in the managerial pool and its financial systems. India on the contrary is just the reverse; it has an inefficient central system, but a great managerial talent pool and a robust financial system. The GE chairman complimented the nation on its ability manage the financial reform process far better than China

c) China has a far superior infrastructure than ours, its investment in infrastructure has been USD 80 billion which has aided its development processes.

GE and its plans in India

Immelt believes that GE is going is here for the long term and would participate in its development process as it has done in the last 100 years. He sees GE play a significant role in the infrastructure sector as and when the government wants to fast forward its plans there . GE would be particularly interested in participating in financing large projects. GE has a role to play in aviation and the engineering sectors as well and easily expects fresh investments of USD 2 billion within the next five years

In conclusion

Jeffery Immelt believes that our development story is incomplete and unsustainable without a more concentrated effort of infrastructure. In this interview, he harped on the theme of infrastructure almost throughout of the interview. If the CEO of GE feels so strongly about infrastructure I am sure that the PM and his team must consider putting it into the national priority list , and it would help if we stopped diverting our energy into issues like reservations and take a harder look at our infrastructure issues….Mr Singh are you listening !!

Google buys Feedburner to boost its ad network

2007-06-05T00:16:00.001+05:30

Washington Post reported Google's purchase of Feedburner recently . Founded in 2003 it is one of the leaders in the online publishing and advertising services space particularity for blogs and other news content . Feedburner enables a reader to get customized content and read it through user friendly interfaces like the Google Reader. In the last couple of years has volume of content delivered and read through RSS and Atom feeds has increased exponentially and by acquiring Feedburner , Google now has a vehicle of its own which can further consolidate its position in the advert market . The acquisition makes good strategic fit at a concept level , but the only hitch is one could use Feedburner and Google , independent of each other and derive value from it , going forward it would be interesting to see how Google integrates Feedburner into its suite of offerings and makes it a more compelling value proposition for the reader who is looking for customized content

Schedule Tribe Status for the Gujar's !!!

2007-06-04T16:47:00.000+05:30

I have been following the recent agitation of the Rajasthan Gujars for Schedule Tribe status . Lead by the Gurjar Mahasabha the agitation has already claimed fourteen lives in Dausa and has a potential to become full blown conflict . In this post I try and examine the rationale of their claims . To my reader I must confess that though I am not a professional historian ,I do have a sense of history and the caste system of India .

The SC/ST status is granted to group's of people who were considered outcastes in the 4 tiered Hindu caste system , and by virtue of being in the bottom of the social pyramid have been left out of any form of development generations. The reservation processes is an national intervention that aims at providing economic relief to these deprived communities . In this context it would be worthwhile to examine the veracity of the claims of the Gujar community for SC/ST status

History

According to historians the Gujars can be traced back to the Huna invasion of India , some historians beleive that the Gujars are possibly the descendants of Hepthalites (White Huns) . The Gujars are in large numbers in Pakistan as well (famous bowlers Shoaib Akthar and Mohd Asif) are Pakistani Gurjars....however trivia aside ....the ruling clans of Rajasthan like the Prathihara's , Paramara's ,Solanki's , Bhati's , Chauhans , are classified by many as Gujars . The Prathiharas were rulers of the large kingdoms in Northern India (6th to 11th century) and according to most scholars they were Rajputs . Similar controversies are there for the Paramara's , Bhati's and Chauhans , while one school of historians believe that they are Rajputs , there are many who argue that they are Gujars of Hepthalites descent . Whatever the case maybe the Gujars are classified into the Khastriya (warrior caste) category of the Hindu caste system .I can say with great degree of confidence and conviction that most Gurjar clans have been rulers and not serfs and therefore fair to assume that the Gujars have not been the bottom of the pyramid so far as the Hindu society is concerned .Additionally some Gujar groups like the Gaur Gujar's in Central India are classified as Brahmins -the highest caste in the chaturvarna (4 tier) Hindu caste classification .

Conclusion

My limited knowledge of the caste system of India , convinces me that the Gujars are not eligible for SC/ST status in any part of the country . There might be some confusion about some clans in Rajasthan (some people think they are Rajputs while others classify them as Gujar's) , but they are certainly not the bottom of the Hindu caste system . I am really curious to know the basis of their claim for ST status in Rajasthan........

Swimming Lessons

2007-06-03T13:57:00.000+05:30

In the last few months Neelabjo has taken a great fancy towards swimming and cricket. Though this is not a photo blog , but here is a post where a doting father takes his darling son out in a mini pool to teach him how to swim . Neelabjo can manage to keep afloat with some swimming aids , here he is learning the back- stroke with daddy ...

Park Belapur@ Navi Mumbai

2007-05-31T21:59:00.001+05:30

I came to Mumbai in June 2004 to work for the Aditya Birla Group . Prior to moving into Mumbai , I lived in a Mysore . Mysore has and very special place in our lives , our son Neelabjo was born there and the city was wonderful , calm , serene and away from the hustle and bustle of a metro. The city completely spoiled us and made us incapable of living in a big city. While I was contemplating the Aditya Birla offer , the thought that struck me and Sona was whether we could survive in the mad rush of Mumbai , soon to realized that I would be working for the Group's Corporate Learning Center based in Navi Mumbai . I made a short visit to Navi Mumbai and was impressed by the civic amenities , the roads and the green zones. I took up the job and decided to stay near my place of work , I started living next door to my office and in 2005 moved to my own place in a nodal town called Nerul 5 kms from work .

My upwardly mobile friends and acquaintances refer to Navi Mumbai as a "Gaon" (village) , the thoroughbred Mumbaikar looks at me quizzically , when I proclaim that I am a proud citizen of Navi Mumbai -to them Navi Mumbai is a remote outpost of humanity ....an abode for losers like me . Most of my Mumbaikar friends (some wannabes) live in extremely populous areas in the Western suburbs and enjoy that ....each to his own I guess

At times , I had felt a need for a good hotel or a disco and if I ever had a complaint against Navi Mumbai , it was that it did not have a classy joint to hang-out on weekends . Not any longer .....the Park Belapur is a wonderful solution to the only grudge that I had ....

The five-storey Park is metropolitan and modernist. The grounds are small - a stylish terrace with dip pool.It takes a fraction of a second, walking into the Park Belapur to register that the place is chic. Only later do you realize that it has seduced all five senses subtly . Tucked away from the main roads and a frontal view of hills , Park Belapur leaves you de-stressed the moment you walk in . I decided to celebrate my wedding anniversary in the Park , they have a very good buffet package. Knowing Renu Kakkar (VP- Communications and Technology) helped, Renu put a good word for me and family . The people in Park was amazing , Neelabjo loved the dip pool and like daddy wanted to drink Bacardi by the poolside (he settled for coke ...pic above) , he watched a kid movie in the makeshift theater and now he wants to go there every Sunday . Kanupriya and team sprung a good surprise for Sona and me , they had a cake , a huge card and a bouquet for my wife . The food was good , and am sure it will get better ...overally a world class experience in a "gaon"...I would urge all Mumbaikars to come by on their way to Lonavla and check Navi Mumbai and Park Belapur out ......

Read Google Offline !!- Google Gears

2007-05-31T20:51:00.000+05:30

While loading Google Reader tonight , I noticed that a link called "Offline New" (see screenshot above ...pointed arrow) , as I clicked on the icon , it discovered that Google has been working on new open source program called Google Gears which allows web applications to run offline . I can see myself using it when I travel to read my RSS feeds offline . The company believes that in the long-term, Google Gears can help the industry to move toward a single standard for offline capabilities that all developers can use. Google Gears is a fantastic idea which addresses a major user concern, the availability of data and applications when no Internet connection is available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux....keep going google ....

Enhancing Competitive Advantage when the going is good-Google Universal Search

2007-05-31T19:34:00.000+05:30

Yes , yet another post on Google ...however the context is slightly different . We all know the absolute supremacy of Google in the search business, 65% of the market share (its nearest rival Yahoo at 28%) , and its competitive posture threatening the very existence of the core business of Microsoft . From a strategy standpoint one would argue that Google's top management bandwidth would entirely be diverted to building the online advertisement business , so that it can gradually consolidate its current leadership position and gain a significant market share of an industry which is growing at a CAGR of 25% . Most companies don't revisit winning strategies when the going is so good (in cricket most captains don't like to change winning teams ..) . However Google has launched the "Google Universal Search" which is the largest revision of their search engine in the last 2-3 years . One understands that search is the core of the existence of Google and therefore revisions to the search process is part of their technology strategy , but there are only a few cases in business history where an organization pays so much attention to a service or product that is already far ahead of its competitors . That's what makes Google such a special company........

Additional Resources : Google universal search implications

Bheja Fry-Movie Review

2007-05-28T07:40:00.001+05:30

Bheja fry literally means the “racking brains” which aptly describes the state of arrogant businessman Ranjeet Thadani (Rajat Kapoor) when he met wannabe singer Bharat Bhusan (Vinay Pathak) .

Bheja Fry is a story of a group of high society men who organize talent dinners every Friday night. In these dinners, the rich men get idiots whose naiveté is in display , the group of men derive joy from the performances of these idiots and the best of the lot (most idiotic performer wins)

Bharat Bhusan is one such idiot who Ranjeet Thadani discovers and wants to bring to the Friday party . He invites Bharat to his house for a sampler of his talents and is adequately amused by his (Bharat’s) antics. Ranjeet’s wife Sheetal (Sharika) detest her husbands nasty ways of deriving fun and leaves the house in disgust and protest . Further to complicate matters Bhusan has to manage complicated human processes when a lot of unexpected guests drop by. The guest list included Ranjeet’s girlfriend (Bhairavi Goswami) , Sheetal’s former lover (Milind Soman ) ….and the drama that unfolds is fascinating and humorous .

Overall Bheja Fry does not impress by its technical finesse , the screenplay is reasonably shoddy and the work of all the actors is pretty pedestrian . The entire essence of the film lies in its well thought out script, this film is a great example of how a well conceived script and wittily penned dialogues can make an average film look good

For me , Bheja Fry belongs to Vinay Pathak (Bharat Bhusan) . In this film he emerges as one of the finest comic talents of the country . His demeanor , vocabulary, dialogue delivery and his goof ups make up for uninspiring performances of his co-actors . Overall an average "time pass" film

The battle for "Search" , Microsoft vs Google

2007-05-26T22:12:00.000+05:30

iTWire.com an online technology magazine reported in March 19, 2007 that Microsoft has decided to leverage its global base of Windows users and to give cash incentives to switch from Yahoo or Google search engines to Windows Live Search . These cash incentives are however not available to individual users , but to companies who have thousands of installed PC's . Microsoft’s new program is called “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search has already been rolled out . At the time of the launch of the scheme Microsoft had a minuscule 6% share of the search business wherein Google commanded more than 50% . Microsoft believes that the new scheme would make a big difference to its fortunes in the search business. However according to another report recent , Microsoft lost ground in the search business in April this year. Its market share slipped to 9% to 10.1% in the month of April (though it grew 4% approx in the first quarter of 2007) . Correspondingly Google witnessed a growth of 1.5% and Yahoo 1% . Google now commands almost 55% of the search business , clearly a leader ....... . As we know Google is continuing its onslaught on the Microsoft citadel with Writey and Spreadsheets growing in stature .It would be worthwhile to examine whether Microsoft's recent aggression in the online advertisement business and its focus on the Windows Live search engine is good enough to put brakes to the great Google story ....

The Battle for Online Advertising -Microsoft makes its first major move

2007-05-20T19:01:00.001+05:30

Since April this year I have been covering the battle for the Internet advertising market in this blog . I started the "Yahoo vs Google" section of this blog in April 11 with the Viacom -Yahoo deal , wherein Viacom chose Yahoo as its Internet advertising partner . Soon thereafter came the Google-DoubleClick deal which threatened to change the dynamics of the industry . This deal ensured that Google -a leader in the Internet search and text advert business build strategic capabilities in the graphic and banner advert segments. Yahoo responded soon enough through alliances with the McClathy newspaper group and acquisition of Right Media . While Yahoo and Google have been in the media for acquisitions and alliances for the a month and a half , Microsoft has not been sitting quite either . It was one of the participants in the DoubleClick sale process , and there has been talks of a Microsoft -Yahoo merger to try and halt Google's juggernaut .

The core objective of this frenzy has been to "build relationships (alliances) or invest in technology that can deliver the right advert to the right person at the right time across myriad online sites" . 18 May was another new height in this frenzy when Microsoft announced its intention to buy online advertising company aQuantive for a staggering USD 6.1 bn . This is the single largest Microsoft acqusition and signals its intent to build an Internet advertising business on its own . According to estimates the online advertising market in the USA is expected to be in the range of USD 29 -31 bn by 2010. The Microsoft -aQuantive acquisition is a deal which not only signifies Microsoft's serious intent to build its Internet advert business, but is also a very critical strategic move to protect its core software business . Google, the current leader in the online advert business is making inroads into traditional Microsoft territory by offering word processing and spreadsheets (Google spreadsheet, Writey) free . Therefore it is critical for Microsoft to de-risk its portfolio by getting into a new line of business and also protecting its tradional castle from the Google onslaught.

Keep watching , perhaps its time to start a separate section in this blog titled "Microsoft vs Google- The Clash of the Titans"......Yahoo has been left far behind.

Blogs Enhancing Customer Experience

2007-05-19T19:25:00.000+05:30

Yesterday , I had an opportunity to be part of a short lecture session delivered by Prof Venkat Ramaswamy co-author with the celebrated CK Prahlad of "Future of Competition " . I had met Venkat before and was fascinated with his concept of Experience Co-Creation . The central idea of Experience Co-Creation (as i understand it ) is :

1.Businesses build processes to service the customer better , ...however these processes often become so rigid that instead of serving the customer it becomes counter productive .

2. Customer engagement is important in all businesses , its important to recognize it and proactively engage the customer to create pragmatic processes which are contextual and customised .

3. Customer surveys generate a lot of data , but not necessarily insights , and therefore its imperative to build direct channels of communication with the customer

The theme of this post is based on point 3 above , and elaborates how blogging is a great medium of creating a channel of communication with the customer

Jeff Jarvis and the Dell Story

In early 2005 an irate Dell customer Jeff Jarvis resorted to blogging to tell the world about his harrowing experience with Dell .His quest to fix his US 1600 Dell machine , included countless unanswered e-mails and lengthy phone calls to the Dell helpline . An agitated Jarvis started his blog Buzz Machine in July 2005 to tell the world his story and build support for his cause against Dell. As you would expect a large and successful corporation like Dell would believe that this would be one of those freak cases which would they could get away by simply ignoring it . The blog stuck a chord with other Dell customers and according to Intelliseek by August 2005 his blog had approximately 10,000 daily visitors .Matt Gallaway documents the extent of blog bitching in his post after Jarvis complained about his Dell experience . He got a refund August 22 , but from then on Dell started in its journey of transformation using blogging as a tool .

The Dell Blog

Dell realised that for a custom build product , its important to have a structured channel of communication with its customer community and launched its own blog called Direct2Dell. The blog is a process where Dell understands its customers better and uses the data received from its customers to enhance the customer experience. It has appointed a Chief Blogger and has also invited Jeff Jarvis as part of their advisory committee.

The Take Away

Most organizations do customer surveys and brand studies and at the end of it all build processes to delight the customer . Unfortunately these processes become rigid over time and do not produce the desired results . Venkat talked about a very simple experience which many of us must have had with Jet Airways . Often when I take late night flights back to Mumbai , I prefer taking a close nap after dinner is served , its a personal preference ...However within approximately 5 minutes of dozing off , I am woken up by a air-hostess saying "Sir , tea or coffee..." and there goes my hope of a peaceful nap . Now if Jet was sensitive to the fact that some of its customers may not like to be disturbed in night flights , they could simply ask and leave the poor customer alone......but alas the in flight customer service process does not give that freedom to the crew.

As I mentioned earlier customer data often gets misrepresented in surveys , and surveys are not good to capture qualitative feedback......blogs are journals of real experiences of customers which are frank , forthright and direct. Blog entries are not like numbers which can be interpreted in multiple ways ....in most of the blogs you will find customers giving the company , pragmatic and easily implementable solutions ....so the company gets free consulting . In addition , the company creates an engagement process with the customer community which helps build brand loyalty and brings in more customers ........blogging makes great business sense .....India Inc are you hearing ...!!

Internet Captures 50% of Spare Time

2007-05-17T01:57:00.001+05:30

Broadband users spend almost half their spare time in a typical weekday online, according to Media-Screen's "NetpopPlay" report.

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Gains in US Education ??

2007-05-17T01:48:00.001+05:30

The US system of public education was founded with the twin goals of preparing each generation for the workplace and active citizenship . A report published today demonstrates that the system has lost sight of educating the citizen in favor of the worker.

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Rising Wages not the only threat to Indian offshoring economics

2007-05-16T17:34:00.001+05:30

The debate in the Indian IT off shoring world has been the impact of rising wages . This post debunks that argument and opines that the wage differentials are still high not to impair the competitiveness....so whats the real problem....read on .....

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Talent Trap -The Cost of India's Development

2007-05-16T16:01:00.001+05:30

This article describes how best of India's college grads are being attracted to KPO jobs and not pursuing higher education. As a consequence of this phenoumena the county is losing its talent pool to the KPO industry. To make matters worse the KPO industry is yet to develop good Talent Management practices and thereby these young kids do not have long term career prospects

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Spider-Man 3 Earns $622 Million In First 10 Days

2007-05-16T02:51:00.001+05:30

Spider-Man 3 took in another $60 million domestically (4,252 theaters), for a worldwide total of 145.5 million. That’s a lot of cash, not enough to break the record, but instead coming in at the fourth biggest biggest second weekend and fourth fastest movie to hit $200 million in the States.

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Yahoo Sued for defective Ad System

2007-05-16T02:46:00.001+05:30

A class action lawsuit has been launched against Yahoo claiming it mislead investors that its new ad system would make more money.

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Orgoo - The Web Email/IM Replacement

2007-05-16T02:42:00.001+05:30

If you are looking for a service-independent webmail/IM service, you’ll want to check this out.The key difference between Orgoo and the major Internet webmail services (Gmail, Yahoo, Live Hotmail, AOL) is that it also integrates instant messaging from all major providers.

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US Military blocks popular websites in war zones soldiers forced to cut ties from home

2007-05-15T21:24:00.000+05:30

On 5 April , I had written about the convergence of technology and politics and how websites like MySpace.com were being used as potent communication tools by the US Presidential poll candidates . At that time Myspace.com accounted for 37% of the Internet traffic of the US and more than 64.4 million unique American users . Since then Myspace.com has continued its consolidation as one of the premier social networking sites . While the context of my post of 5 April was Myspace.com as a channel for distribution of political content , it also fulfills a very important social connectivity need . Today , the Washington post reported about the ban of Myspace.com and 11 other such sites , by the US military in war zones . The American Defence establishment's rationale was to free up precious bandwidth in the battlefront for mission critical operations . One really cant fault the military rationale of this argument however it is also important to consider that networking sites provide a great medium for the war torn soldier to connect with friends and family . In its attempts to optimize bandwidth the US Army is perhaps insensitive to the affective needs of its soldiers ....is there a need to balance two conflicting needs ....bandwidth optimization and the social needs of the soldiers........... Hillary Clinton has more than 30,000 friends in Myspace , and am sure Uncle Sam's soldier is also entitled to remain connected with his friends ,a perk that he rightfully deserves for fighting mindless wars for Bush Jr !!

Life in a Metro-Film Review

2007-05-15T15:06:00.000+05:30

"Life in a metro” is a conglomerate film , it is an amalgamation of 4 distinct love stories put into one , integrated by love , lust , sensitivity and deceit which runs as common themes in all 4 sub-stories

Director Anurag Basu proves for the third time (after Murder and Gangster) that he's an extremely engaging storyteller. The complexities in relationships, the shortcuts one adopts in life to attain the goals and the decadence of ethics and values have been portrayed lucidly

In spite of the drama, the concept and the music, Metro falls short of being what I call a best selling movie (if there was a phrase like that) , thanks to the choice of Dharmendra and Nafisa Ali as one of the couples in the love quadrangle.

Neha (Kangana Ranaut) and Ranjeet (Kay Kay Menon)

Ranjeet is a typical upwardly mobile Mumbaikar who is in this unending quest for money and success .He has forgotten his loving wife Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) and has found solace and physical gratification in his colleague Neha .Neha uses Ranjeet to scale the corporate ladder in a very short time and, using his lust for her as a lever . The physicality of the relationship and the commercialization of values stand out as an important lesson for the viewers, and conclusively prove that success can be achieved through short cuts.

Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) and Akash (Shiney Ahuja)

Akash a struggling theatre actor, chances upon Shikha and they bond very soon. Shikha neglected by an indifferent husband Ranjeet and bogged down by the drudgery of household chores finds a soul mate in Akash . There love story is one of sensitivity, caring, mutual respect and understanding, and when Shikha almost crosses the limit, her values pull her back……..

Shruti (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Debu (Irrfan Khan)

Shruti, in her early 30s and still a virgin, she's desperate to get married. She is dreamy eyed about her RJ, Wishy K [Gautam Kapoor]. She meets Debu through a matrimonial site. Debu is a typical wannabe, unsophisticated, loud, vernacular male who is best described with his crassy jokes and lecherous glances …..Shruti hates Debu and as the drama unfolds gets to know him better and finally falls in love with him

Amol (Dharmendra) and Vaijanti (Nafisa Ali)

Frankly had it not been for Dharm paji , this film would have made it …… I fault Anurag for his choice of actors like Dharmendra for complex roles like these, after all the great Jat is not exactly cut out for sophisticated acting that the role demanded.

METRO is boosted with the brilliant performances of Shilpa, Kay Kay, Irrfan and Konkona vying for top honors. According to me this is the best of Shilpa that I have experienced. Kay Kay is exceptional. You hate him; detest his very sight, all thanks to a terrific portrayal. Konkona’s brilliance is never in doubt and Irrfan is the livewire of the movie. He appeals to a large spectrum of the audience and I could watch the film only for Irrfan.

Field Guide to the North American Bikini

2007-05-13T12:11:00.000+05:30

Blogger "The Bachelor Guy" has written an amazing post on the North American Bikini.

A well researched , well documented and very well presented piece of information .The summer is here ,and in some parts of India, gaudy bikini's are out ,they come in all shapes and sizes ....... unfortunately the Indian woman has not developed a taste for the bikini ........ for the Indian male , with an upwardly mobile girlfriend , here is your chance to impress her with your nuancical understanding of the bikini.....this is a classy piece of information will be of immense help to you ......the lucid narration of the different kinds of bikin's available can go a long way to develop a taste of these things. My favourites from are the polka dotted and the banded thong bikini (pics above) .Whats yours .......write in

BJP losing its ideological constituency as Maya sweeps UP

2007-05-12T12:12:00.000+05:30

As the 2007 UP election results poured , it was evident by the noon of 11 May that Ms Mayawati and her BSP were all set to form the government in Lucknow . I am not a Mayawati supporter and hence there was nothing much for me to feel chirpy about and more so with the BJP being decimated

I am a BJP supporter and I pride myself of being a member of what the party calls the core ideological constituency-“the upper caste, right wing, educated Hindu”. The reason of the party’s attractiveness during the mid eighties to the early nineties was the clearly defined and sharply distinct right wing, pro majority, anti-appeasement agenda. The politics of BJP is based on solid ideological moorings, and like the Left parties over the years build a support base and a dedicated cadre which would stand by it in good times and in bad . The Ram Janambhoomi agitation catapulted the BJP into a position of power in UP and subsequently to central politics. In this process , its ideological constituency expanded manifold from the traditional Chitpawan Brahmin RSS support base to the broader section of Hindu’s .Prominent leaders like Kalyan Singh ensured that the OBC’s were firmly behind the party . BJP managed to create a solid social base amongst Hindu’s of all castes and therefore the setting was perfect for it to consolidate its position and deliver a pan India agenda (both economic and political). However, the myopia of the party’s leadership coupled with the complex caste dynamics of Indian politics has reduced the party into a spent force in UP within a decade

In the following paragraphs, I attempt to analyze the steady decline of the BJP and to me the most critical reason for it is:

Mis-management of political growth and dilution of the core ideology

The party suddenly tasted power in 1989 after being a marginal political force for many years (remember 2 MP’s in the 1984 Lok Sabha ….Rajmata and Pramod Mahajan). The inability of the party to manage the growth through a structured process lead to opportunity seekers joining the party in hoards, while these elements were required for the party to scale up politically, it also started the process of dilution of its core ideology. People who could deliver results at any cost rose to positions of power within the party hierarchy and the flag bearers of its core ideology were gradually marginalized. People like K Govindacharya and Jay Dubashi were no longer relevant in the new scheme of things .The dilution of its ideology made short term growth easier, but had far reaching consequences which the party has not recognized till date ….

a) Its inability to deliver on the Hindutva agenda lead to an erosion of its support base , people who were attracted by its pro-majority stand were soon disillusioned . When I asked this question to a certain section of the leadership within the party , I was told that to remain in power one has to make compromises ……but the cost of the compromise was the steady decline of the support base ……alas the party think tank continues to think differently

b) The party with a difference suddenly looked no-different, it had the same political gene pool (read the Congress...) which was the malaise of our society, it was the same wine in a different bottle ….

c) The party used the same tactics to remain in power and often resorted to improper means to stay in power , it had lost its moral authority over its political rivals , a consequence of not sticking to its ideology

d) Elected representatives of the party were charged of cases of corruption, brand lotus had not been able to deliver a clean administration.

The BJP has faced the nadir of its political achievements in UP in the last 2 decades , lets try and understand what really happened and is BJP going the Congress way in the UP

The 2007 UP Elections and the decline of the BJP

This elections saw the worst ever performance since 1991 , the BJP managed to garner 50 seats (down by 43) since last time , with its vote share falling 4% which one would imagine was transferred to the BSP ( vote share increase by 7%). Initial analysis says that Mayawati was able to successfully create a grand caste alliance of Hindu’s, though its Sarva Samaj Abhiyan – an all inclusive caste coalition. Mayawati was able to sell the concept of an inclusive society "Sarva Samaj" as against her traditional vote bank the "Bhaujan Samaj" . The process of building this coalition started a couple of years ago with her deliberate strategy of wooing Brahmins and other upper caste Hindus, to the extent that she gave more than 100 tickets to Brahmin candidates .The BSP caste coalition was so compelling and well designed that the party was able to get solid electoral support from all the Hindu castes and the thereby completely erode the core constituency of the BJP. The BJP Chief Ministerial candidate Kalyan Singh - the iconic OBC warrior in the Ram Janambhoomi agitation was not able to stem the migration of OBC votes from the BJP to the BSP. East UP with a Brahmin population of 20% , an area which has been a traditional stronghold of the BJP has voted overwhelming for the BSP. Rohilkhand and the Doab (Muslim majority areas) which are traditional vote banks of the Samajwadi Party have seen a huge migration of votes towards the BSP, so its safe to assume that the Sarva Samaj Abhiyan also include Muslims …..making it a deadly combination

In Conclusion

Still pretty much a BJP supporter and hopefully one for many more years , I am pained with the developments in the party and I hope that the party will go back to the drawing board and build the cadre from ground zero , rather than being bothered about short term gains . Advanji /Rajnath ji are you listening …….??

President of India -Somnath Chatterjee !!!

2007-05-07T20:42:00.000+05:30

I have tried to steer away from politics in this blog (though I do have a strong views on the same )....barring some posts on reservations ...this blog has been apolitical. However when I came back from work today , an article in the Mumbai mirror provoked me to write this post .....which has political content and lashes out at Somnath Chatterje's candidature for the President of India .

The Context

In order to understand this post in its true spirit it is imperative for the reader to have a context of West Bengal and its polity. I was brought up in Kolkata ,.....we migrated to the city in 1977 and I lived there till 1995 . In these 18 long years , I have many experiences with the politics of the state -the good ones being :

caste free society

empowerment of villagers

the implementation of the land ceiling

However with this came trade union aggression , lock outs , strikes , depletion of employment opportunities ,scientific rigging , an aggressive and arrogant CPI(M) cadre etc . It did not take the Left many years to decimate the economic fabric of the state .When I qualified as a CA in 1995 , I found it very difficult to find a reasonable job in Kolkata and soon had to migrate out of the city.....today as an expat Bengali (Probasi Bangali) and with the current state of economic progress , I reckon the doors of the city are closed to me for ever ....

The CPI(M) and Somnath

Somnath Chatterjee, the MP from Bolpur was the Chairman of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) during the tenure of Jyoti Basu. I will never forget those days , when almost everyday, leading Kolkata based newspapers would carry stories of innumerable overseas trips that Mr Chatterjee made to promote FDI in West Bengal. His penchant for signing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU's), many of which never came to fruition earned him the nickname Mou-da. The industrial climate was so despondent that industries closed down ............Dunlop, ICI , Bharat Metal Box, Hind Motor ...could not withstand the rage of the communist labor unions . It would be fair to say that our Presidential candidate was a one of the key facilitators of this regressive process , West Bengal once a leading industrial state was converted seamlessly to an industrial waste land courtesy people like Jyoti Basu , Pramode Dasgupta and of course Mr Chatterjee included . It is ironical that the current Chief Minister says that the process of industrialization of the state is irreversible .......building a few shopping malls in Kolkata is not exactly industrialization.

Here is why according to me Somnath does not qualify for the job at Rastrapati Bhavan

a) He represents a political interest group which has always worked against the development of this nation , in the garb of inclusive development the Indian Left has been a show stopper to the nation's development and neither have they been able to deliver as is evident in West Bengal , a state that they have been in power for about 3 decades now .Can we have a President from a political party which is not exactly buoyant with the 8%+ growth that we hope to achieve as a nation

b) His track record as WBIDC Chief is appalling and if that man could replicate the same performance as a President , our national anthem can well be " God Save India" !!

c) His views on Judiciary ,post the Supreme Court's stay on the OBC reservation issue , mirror the myopia of his party's top boss Sitaram Yechury , the least said about it is better......It truly amazes me that a lawyer by profession, Somnath has not learnt to value the independence of the judiciary.

d) In 2005, our pompous Mr Chatterjee was caught in a controversy over his statement on the Supreme Court orders related to the vote of confidence in the Jharkhand Assembly. He accused the Supreme Court of encroaching on the rights of the legislature

e) On a lighter note , as a President he would only go down well only with a Bangladeshi audience (courtesy his English with a thick Bengali accent ..) , I fear that his global trips ,(given his love for international travel -as displayed during his stint in the WBIDC) would be great occasions to erode the growing brand India

In conclusion

Have there been Presidents who have been worse than Somnath -the answer is a resounding yes , but the larger question to ask "can we afford a person like Somnath as the Head of State at a juncture of our history when the nation is poised for unprecedented growth" ...definitely not ..what say you ?

Spiderman 3 -Movie Review

2007-05-06T17:01:00.000+05:30

I went to see Spiderman -3 , in the sparking new Palm Beach Galleria today morning . My five year old Neelabjo is a crazy Spiderman fan , we have DVD's of both the movies, innumerable CD's of the cartoon version and often watch them to kill boredom.

As one would expect , there are digital effects galore to remind us that Sony is a high-tech company and getting better in what it does everyday. The three hours was full of interesting digital effects particularly when the new villain the Sandman is transformed into a sandstorm and pulverizes half of Manhattan . Sandman provides more than a serious challenge to Spiderman and in course of the movie learns of a connection with the murder of his Uncle Ben with the Sandman . To make matters worse a mysterious black alien substance turns his Spiderman costume black . This black thing is an alien parasite which feeds on a host body and brings out the darker side of Spidey that nobody has seen before. The central theme of the movie is how Parker deals with the darker side of him when he was actually enjoying it and manages to overcome it .

However if I were to critique the movie , I would say the "evil" side of Spiderman is hopelessly mild mannered . The audience is exposed to a tableau of his Mr Hyde exploits. His hair droops over his eye , he flirts with the women in Queens and Manhattan , he is rude to his girl , dances like a Travolta in a night club before making an ass of himself ......not exactly a horrifying sneak preview into the nadir of the human soul . Spider manages the struggle with his evil self well and soon comes out of it and in the end copes with Sandman .......in the process he loses his childhood friend Harry Osborne.

In conclusion a well thought through story line , very well executed digital effects contribute to make it a great viewing experience .

To your dream destination with Katara Travels

2007-05-05T15:35:00.000+05:30

I wish to dedicate this post to all our elected representatives who are part of a newly discovered business -"Travel anywhere , anytime, without papers ..... for a premium" . Sadly this business has not received media attention in spite of being in operations for quite sometime . The post is titled "Katara Travels" in recognition of Shri Babubhai Katara -BJP MP (picture courtsey Vikram Nandwani), who was one of the first entrepreneurs in this sector to have been discovered by the national media . Other prominent competitors to Katara Travels are "Mayawati Darshan and Tours" -operated by Team BSP , and the recently discovered "Go Anywhere Destinations " lead by the TRS chief . I am hoping this sector has some more players like the "Milano Agenzia Di Corsa" blessed by the fist lady of Indian politics ......who will be discovered soon ....

Business Model

Pretty simple , pay a hefty sum of money anywhere between Rs 15- Rs 25 Lakhs and get dropped to the destination of your choice accompanied by a Member of Parliament of India ....can it ever be better.....and as expected , no papers required .....you will be travelling as his/her brother , sister , spouse etc (these guys have diplomatic immunity, by virtue of their status..)

Anyone interested ......contact the local travel agent in Punjab , Gujrat and Andhra ...that's where the services of these tour operators are presently concentrated....Happy Journey !!

One Laptop a Child (OLC) for USD 100 -India to do better

2007-05-05T11:26:00.000+05:30

In one of my earlier posts , I had talked about my bias about discovery based learning for school children . According to me the malaise of our education system is the overemphasis on rote learning to the extent that constructivist/discovery learning is completely ignored . However the question was how do we implement discovery learning across a country like ours . In another post I had also mentioned about technology based applications for learning and the presence of technology based classrooms in rural Karnataka , but it did not seem to be a scalable model . In the absence of a plan , I would assume that it would be interesting to implement the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project which is being led by Nicholas Negraponte of MIT Ad Labs .

The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a not for profit organization set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 "$100 laptop". The objectives of the OLPC is to facilitate learning in developing countries and to provide a children's machine at approximately USD 100 . Wikipedia has documented the details of the project including the hardware of the machine . As per plan the laptops will be sold to governments of developing countries and distributed through the respective ministries of education willing to adopt the policy of one laptop per child . At this point in time 13 countries (including Pakistan) have committed to the project in various ways , India does not feature in the list and the reason being that our HRD Ministry believes that it can manufacture the same laptop for US 10 . Considering the fact that as a nation our capabilities in computer hardware manufacture is quite limited , I fail to understand how the HRD Minstry is planning to execute the project at this price . According to me the OLPC is a great way to kick start the process of technology enabled education at a grass root level and hopefully the myopia of Arjun Singh will not come in the way of making use of global synergies (ie the OLPC laptops ..).... lets see when the USD 10 laptop of the Minstry of HRD takes off , if at all .....or is this another missed opportunity !!!

Breaking News - Microsoft pursuing Yahoo for merger

2007-05-04T20:36:00.000+05:30

New York Post and the WSJ.com reported today (4 May 2007) of a possible merger between Microsoft and Yahoo to combat the growing influence of Google . The rationale of the merger would be to compete with the scale and the search capabilities of Google and the failure of the Panama search engine ,which has widening the gap between Yahoo and Google and coupled with Google's plan to develop web based software which directly competes with Microsoft Office , makes it imperative for Microsoft to react now .

Charlene Li analyzes the possible implications of the merger and opines that while on paper there are synergies in the merger , but the combination (Microsoft+ Yahoo) may not be able to deliver the goods that are the strategic intent of such a combination

Google could be one of the bidders for Dow Jones

2007-05-03T18:37:00.000+05:30

Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion takeover bid of Dow Jones and Co has sparked of an auction for the 125 year old publisher . This first leg of the drama has been reported by Bloomberg

Michael Chren, managing director of Allegiant Asset Management Co. in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida quoted that other bidders would include General Electric (owner of the CNBC network) , Washington Post and even Google Inc .

Jon Murchinson, spokesman Google, declined to comment, Washington Post Chief Financial Officer John Morse wouldn't comment, while Jack Immelt of GE negated the news .

Google watchers , will keep you updated on this from Google's perspective.......

Khosla ka Ghosla-The Indian Middle Class Strikes back

2007-05-02T20:38:00.000+05:30

Readers of my blog and my close friends would find it surprising that I am writing a film review . People close to me know that I am not a film buff ......and my wife is quite an opposite , she loves Hindi films , is a die-hard Amitabh fan and I am exactly the opposite....(though I like to dance to the tunes of filmi music with pretty women...) Hindi films are at times the cause of matrimonial stress....but more on that some other day .

A couple of weeks ago my dear wife got me tickets for a film called "Kholsa ka Ghosla" ....and my first reaction was "Oh my God , not another one"....I was sure that this was one of the variants of "Mehne...XYZ...Kiya", while I have nothing against such kind of films but neither do they particularly excite me ....but I decided to go along to the theater with an open mind...as open as I could keep it ....... It was a three hour film and I must say it was an amazing experience . Kudos to Director Dibakar Banerjee, who in his first outing presented a social problem with a delectable blend of comedy.

As one would easily guess the setting of the film is in New Delhi (Khosla being a common Punjabi name).......it's about a middle class government employee who wants to build his dream house (ghosla) . He lifetime savings went into buying a piece of land for a princely sum of Rs 30 lakhs. The members of Mr Khosla's household view this piece of land acquisition through their own filters -his younger son is indifferent, he wants to go to the US and already has a job in NY , so he doesn't care for dad's ghosla , the elder good- for -nothing son is amused ...Ms Khosla supports her husband in his Taj Mahal dream .....and finally on one Sunday when the family goes to do the Bhumi Pujan...they realize that their plot has been captured by land shark Khurana (played by Bomman Irani). His dream shattered ,Mr Khosla ,goes to meet Khurana who demands a hefty ransom to release the plot that was rightfully his . Mr Khosla approaches the police , the local politician and an NGO , all of them have a standard response , "we will negotiate with Khurana and bring down the ransom amount , you pay us our fees..." in this day and age , you would expect the police and the politicians to do this to you , but not NGO's......... a dejected Khurana loses all hope of getting back his land.......while the drama of deceit was unfolding , there was a transformation happening parallely........Khosla's second son (the one who wanted to settle down in NY) was silently feeling his father's pain and was plotting to pay back Khurana....he and his friends duped Khurana to buy a plot of land which belonged to the fisheries department and with the proceeds of the sale to paid back Khurana his ransom and releasde his father's plot .

The issue of land grabbing and harassment is quite common in India . My father was harassed by local CPI(M) and Congress goons when we decided to build a house in Kolkata in 1986 , and a middle class family like ours had no recourse ....it's been two decades after that and still today the social evil not only exists but has been compounded , at least twenty years ago there were some checks and balances in society , there were avenues for the "aam admi" to be heard ....not any longer , the film brings out how the situation has become worse with the NGO's also doing their fair share to complicate matters ( I am not at all suggesting that all NGO's do it , but I am personally aware of many who claim to be NGO's but their objectives are not exactly what their MOA claim to be...).

This film shows the middle class how to survive , and if it means to pay back these corrupt elements in the same coin...so be it ....how long can we the Indian middle class be harassed by our polity , our police ...

This brilliant theme and the script was brought to life by versatile actors like Bomman Irani , Anupam Kher , others like Tara Sharma , Ravin Shorey and Parvin Dabas form a perfect caste for a near perfect film......

Google responds to Viacom's suit on YouTube

2007-05-01T17:47:00.000+05:30

Viacom in a suit filed in March 07, alleged that YouTube was guilty of building a library of copyrighted video clips without permission and thereby blatantly violating copyright norms . Google's response has relied heavily on the of the "safe harbor"provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. The New York Times quotes ...."Those provisions generally hold that Web sites’ owners are not liable for copyright material uploaded by others to their site as long as they promptly remove the material when asked to do so by the copyright owners "

The Technology section of the New York Times carried a detailed article on the subject

This article is an interesting read for Google watchers and a negative outcome of this suit may significantly alter the fortunes of YouTube and impact Google's overall strategy adversely. More updates soon......

Yahoo buys off Right Media for USD 680 million

2007-05-01T01:46:00.000+05:30

Yahoo announced in 30 April 2007 its decision to buy off the rest of Right Media Inc for USD 680 million (it had already bought 20% of the company in October 2006) . Right Media's business model is unique ..... for an advertiser the network facilitates buying media through a transparent process in an auction-based exchange. The model ensures that network barriers come down, giving the advertiser open access to the entire market of sellers and their inventory. Because the advertiser now manages all sellers in a common platform, it gives him a a clear sense of how his advert objectives have been served, where the best new users lie. Bidding for each impression based on the value it generates and therefore and advertiser never overpays .

This acquisition is a strategic move to bridge the gap between rival Google's pay-per-click advertisements that run alongside its search results and also the growing popularity of Google Adwords . It is interesting to note that Yahoo has been trying to migrate to a similar revenue model like Google for quite sometime now , Project Panama is also a step in this direction . However Project Panama has failed to deliver at least till now (as borne out by the Q-1 results of Yahoo) , therefore this acquisition could well be the last throw of the dice by Yahoo to get close to Google . It is also important to note that the Google -DoubleClick deal has been completed only recently and the impressive Q-1 results of Google do not include the financial impact of the deal . Google analysts say that post the deal , DoubleClick is working in creating an ad exchange (which is what Right Media also offers ...)

Financial Implications

At the time of acquisition ,Right Media had around 20,000 advertisers, publishers and networks to its online advertising exchange. In its advert network it has 1,000 customers on whose behalf it sells advertisements and its revenue is projected at USD 70 million this year and is expected to break even by the end of the year

Financially I don't think this acquisition is going to make a difference to Yahoo's results this year , because the deal is expected to be closed in Q-2 of this year . Analysts say that the valuation's are a bit pricey , however strategically the deal is expected to boost Yahoo's fortunes in the display advertisement business .

In conclusion

Considering the deal price and the fact that DoubleClick is creating an advertising exchange of its own , I am personally not hopefully that this acquisition would make a significant contribution in reducing the gap between Yahoo and Google in the display advertisement segment....however the Yahoo management is still bullish on Project Panama and what it can deliver .....so lets wait and watch ......

Probity in Public Life

2007-04-26T12:35:00.000+05:30

The lack of morality in public life is endemic to India and it cuts across political parties . The recent case of human trafficking conclusively is probably the nadir of probity in public life. Violation of a moral code of conduct is rampant before any large election in India and as expected the media reported cases of use of money and muscle power in the run up to the UP elections . However in spite of bringing all of these into the public eye , nothing much has been achieved , and hence it would be fair to conclude that the people are becoming indifferent to these issues , which raises a very important concern for all of us – “ Does apolitical public activism in India have a place in its democratic process” .

The reasons for indifference could be many, the ones that come to my mind are :

a) Where do I get data on where the money comes from and how is it used. It’s an impossible task to get it from the governments records
b) What can I do? , and more importantly how does it matter
c) Things cannot be changed , so why bother

These responses do not augur well for the democracy, and while I am sensitive to the fact that data is incredibly hard to get in India, but in this post, I am trying to build a case for apolitical public activism against issues of transparency and corruption in public life.

In this context it would be interesting to learn from US, which uses a combination of websites to bring in this transparency

a) Opensecrets.org – A comprehensive website which reports the where the money is coming from, where it goes to, who gets the money, there is data on each state as well

b) Maplight.org –This website provides the connection between money and politics in the state of California

c) Congresspedia- A citizen’s encyclopedia on the Congress which anyone can edit

These new tools provide unprecedented levels of transparency, and also expose patterns of influence that otherwise would have remained invisible.

Most of us are aware that the US model cannot be replicated in India in its totality , because of legislative issues which do not ensure that data regarding funding gets recorded in a structured manner and collated at a national level , hence we maybe far away from implementing something like Opensecrets.org at this point in time . However if the judiciary can embark on a well meaning judicial activism and take the first steps towards ensuring that there are processes wherein every political party discloses its cash receipts and payments and then the data gets uploaded in a website , we would have started in our journey towards transparency .This could be followed by a detailed statement of expenses of the MP’s funds ….over time it possible to get the data in a central website like Opensecrets.org and then let the citizens use the data to make more informed electoral choices …

Neelabjo and I -Our early experiences with the Flat World

2007-04-22T20:02:00.000+05:30

My son Neelabjo was born in March 2002..... he has been the center of my World , ever since .In this post , I trace back some early memories , in the context of the world that had since then started to become flat.

Ferrero Roche and Mysore

My brother in law , a PhD student in the University of Norte Dame , came down to meet his tiny nephew (31 December 2002) .We were based in Mysore , and for him it was a mini vacation in a city that he had not seen before. Like all US based NRI's , my bro in law (Raja) was carrying a consignment of chocolates (boxes of Ferrero Roche, Hersheys et al...) . My wife loves chocolates and she picked up more than a fair share of the booty. Just to give you a context , my in-laws are a large ( actually huge..) family spread across Uttar Pradesh , with a huge chunk residing in Varanasi , Raja had bought chocolates based on reasonable estimates of consumption (even for gluttons) ......but after the dent made by his beloved sister , his stock was in bad shape .....Raja stayed with us for three days , and on the second day (2 Jan 2003) tiny Neelabjo figured out a large shiny box ....and somehow picked it up and started walking . It was a box of Ferrero Roche chocolates -a jumbo pack ....little Neelabjo wanted it for himself ........he held it tight and even slept with it .....Raja was in a serious soup , what does he tell the innumerable aunts , and uncles ....who were waiting in Varanasi for chocolates from "Amreeka" a gift from their "Videshi Bhatija" . Well Raja was thinking of some creative excuses and planning to blame the customs officers for their greed etc etc ....he had mentally written the script which sounded reasonably convincing. That evening , I took him out to a supermarket (well not exactly one ,but a big utility store called Nilgiris..) , and i got busy buying grocery.Suddenly , I hear Raja's voice "Jamaibabu , peye gecchi " (Brother- in law , got it..!!!) for a moment i was stunned , what has Raja found ???......... , why was he so excited...the suspense was over in a second ..Raja had found a packet of Ferro Roche chocolates in Nilgiris Mysore at to top it up , at an Indian price . Raja took me to the confectionery section of the store which had all kinds of packs of Ferrero Roche chocolates .....Raja bought half the store to make up for the damage that his sister and nephew had done to his stock ....he left Mysore hoping that there was no Ferrero Roche outlet in Varansi , and later on he confirmed that there were none there , at least not till early 2003...... the world was beginning to get Flat

Golf Kits and Mumbai

In October 2003 , I visited Raja in South Bent , a University town 120 miles off Chicago . Raja was joined by his fiancee Supriya (now his wife) for the weekend. On one Saturday , Supriya took me shopping to a nearby WalMart store . I went to the toys section and picked up a golf kit for Neeelabjo for USD 25 . It was a pretty neat thing , and i liked it very much .....i thought that if Neelabjo takes to such fancy sports , it would help him to become a CEO ...(I am told most CEO's play golf )...so like a proud father of a future CEO , i took the golf kit back to Mysore ...and started giving Neelabjo golf lessons , he was big enough to walk unaided and I must confess that I was holding the golf club as a cricket bat ......We had a couple of golf sessions in the tiny play area of my apartment block . One day I was late from work and I saw something interesting , Neelabjo, his mom , a Coorgi kid and his mom were having a ball of a time playing a weird version of golf (but with two golf kits...) ....where did the next kit come from , surely this was not Ferro Roche that Raja could buy from Niligiris ...I went across to Mrs Carambaiah and asked her politely " has Mr Carambaiah been traveling lately ..", she said , "Yes , he had been to Mumbai and that's where he got the kit from ... and it cost him Rs 600.."

I lugged a golf kit across the Atlantic and thought that my son would be the sole proud owner of such a novel toy in all of India ....alas it was not to be in the Flat World ......

Jamaican Tiger

I am a slow learner , after the golf kit episode , I went to Jamaica for a consulting assignment . On my way back , I bought a Jamaican tiger ( a doll) for USD 30 . This was Feb 2004 , the same was available in Mysore for Rs 800...my plight with the Flat world continued

In conclusion

I love smoking , and i bought a lighter for 15 bucks a couple of weeks ago . I generally don't use a lighter , but i thought , why not buy those fancy ones....I used it for sometime and then it stopped working .....I went to the shopkeeper and complained to him and he without using the phrase , Flat World , said "China item sir , at China price, China quality.." , which essentially means enjoy it till it lasts .......I have stopped traveling abroad after I left Infosys which was three years ago and I am really happy that I am not buying stuff in US or Europe to find that the same stuff is sold in Mumbai or Bangalore for an India price ....Long live the Flat World ...

Yahoo vs Google - Yahoo earnings falls by 11%, Google expected to do well !!

2007-04-18T20:27:00.000+05:30

A regular reader of my blog would know that I have been tracking the Yahoo vs Google story since April 11 , it all started with the announcement of the Yahoo-Viacom deal ....and this is the fifth post on the subject in seven days . In my post of 11 April , I had asked some strategy questions and and possible options that Yahoo had to challenge Google's supremacy . Yahoo's top brass has been focuses this year on Project Panama which is a overhaul of the company’s search advertising system, which would be similar to Google Adwords and hopefully increase revenue and close the growing gap with Google . Project Panama is a strategy implementation project and the others elements of its strategy were the content partnerships with Viacom and the collaboration with McClathy group of newspapers . If one were to look at the Q-1 results Project Panama has not delivered (not at least for the time being ) the net income for the first quarter fell 11 percent from a year earlier, while revenue, was up 9 percent. The Yahoo top brass in their guidance have said that the positive effects of Project Panama on Yahoo’s bottom line would begin to be felt later this year as the system is rolled globally. Is Project Panama, unique ? is it a good enough competitor to Goggle Adwords , these are million dollar questions .

On the contrary analysts say Google will do well in Q-1 ,

It seems round one goes to Google.......

Update on 20th April , Google profits go up by 69%

Outsourcing slowdown-Point -Counterpoint

2007-04-18T19:47:00.000+05:30

Consulting firm TPI came out with an interesting set of statistics today ,that build on the outsourcing backlash theory. According to TPI the first quarter of 2007 has started with softening of IT outsourcing awards .

Contracts more than $ 50 million in the US has come down in number and value terms as compared to quarter one of 2006. The 27 contracts awarded in the Americas during the first quarter represented the lowest awards since 2001.According to TPI the trend in the Americas mirror a global slowdown . In this quarter 68 outsourcing contracts (more than USD 50 million) were awarded down from the 99 deal in quarter one of 2006.In addition to this the Total Contract Value (TCV) in this quarter was the lowest seen in any first quarter in the past five years , with the value of deals getting smaller in yearly USD terms . However the good news according to TPI is despite a slow start the overall projections of do show a modest growth in the annualized revenues for 2007 , as compared to the last year .

Implications for the Indian IT Industry

As I had reported earlier , the Indian IT industry is buoyant about its prospects and none of our leaders see outsourcing softening in the near term. However if the data that TPI presents is true , the implications on the industry , the stock market and the Indian economy is pretty severe and according to me they as follows :

a) Deals greater than USD 50 million are extremely important for the survival of the Indian IT sector ,the reason being , that these are multi year contracts and provide the stability and growth of the industry . One could infer that reduction in these deals would mean that organizations are engaging in shorter-term deals with smaller contract values because they want best-of-breed solutions,” and TPI Managing Director Peter Allen says.....“We are advising our clients to strive to align their sourcing needs with their business strategies and to consider the maturity of the service provider marketplace.” This is a pretty significant change in the customer mindset , implying :

1. Need to start ramping up best of breed solutions (an area which is probably the greatest weakness of our industry...) , we have focused on scale and cost for too long and if the sudden shift happens from scale to IP lead solutions it might affect our ability to deliver and consequently revenue streams .

2. Global Delivery is not about delivering from multiple Indian locations a point I made in my post of 9 April , time to market and providing efficiencies (other than cost arbitrage is also important ..) . Infosys recently announced its multi million dollar expansion plan in Mexico which is a step in the right direction , but is Infosys a rare exception in creating a truly global delivery model ??

b) The Indian stock market as we are aware has a high weightage of the IT sector , an under performing IT sector would be disastrous for the economy as a whole and the Resurgent India story can come to a grinding halt.

As an Indian I hope things would improve from the next quarter and the confidence of the Murthy's , and the Ramadorai's of the world is reflected in the next quarters results ....and Alan Binder is proven wrong ......watch this space ....I am going to track this story as well ........

US Slowdown- Part 2

2007-04-18T19:32:00.000+05:30

On 14 April , I had written about the possibilities of an outsourcing backlash , a point of view exposed by Alan Binder and Co and the same being negated by Friedman and the Indian IT services industry . Today Surya Surendran reports on the same issue in Moneycontrol . Surendran reports that the head honchos of the Indian IT services company think otherwise .His article mirrors the buoyancy of the Indian industry and the mood has been even more upbeat after HCL beat the markets expectations . I joined Infosys in the middle of 2001 and i remember that the market was very positive at that time and soon thereafter there was a great slump , we can simplistically attribute it to 9/11 , but am sure there were more factors to it.......are we reading some signals wrong .??.........

Online Advertising - Yahoo responds

2007-04-17T19:51:00.000+05:30

The battle for online advertising hotten's up every day . After Google's buy out of DoubleClick , its was interesting to see Yahoo respond today (17 April) with the announcement of its alliance with the McClatchy Newspaper chain and four other companies to its recently formed online ad-sharing network, this strength of the alliance includes 12 publishing companies, representing 264 U.S. newspapers, that are all set agreed to collaborate with Yahoo in selling advertisements and will feature Yahoo's search engine on their online editions, locking out Internet rival Google.

The recent war for online adverts started with the Viacom-Yahoo deal which I reported in 11 April , this was followed by the Google-DoubleClick deal on 15 April and the Microsoft anti trust motion against Google on 16 April . Within a week we have had 3 major deals and one anti-trust motion ...whoever though that the world was a dull place ....was WRONG.!!.... Frankly I was looking for a response from Yahoo particularily after the DoubleClick deal ...but was not anticipating it so fast ....seems like Yahoo has a well defined strategy to match Google blow by blow,..... which makes the story really fascinating . Now we have two sets of alliances (Google-DoubleClick combo vs Yahoo-Viacom-McClatchy) fighting for the USD 10 bn Internet advert market , I will definitely not hazard a guess on who will win eventually , but have a limited point to make ....the Google-DoubleClick deal gives Google a distinct advantage with introducing flash banner and video adverts while the Yahoo alliance is primarily strong in the text adverts arena ......whats next ....a billion dollar question ....whats Microsoft going to do ....is it going to push the anti-trust issue against Google to nullify the DoubleClick deal ....watch this space for more updates ......

Online Advertising -Miscrosoft responds to the Google -DoubleClick Deal

2007-04-16T20:42:00.000+05:30

Yesterday , I had reported about the Google-DoubleClick deal which was soon after the Viacom -Yahoo deal was sealed . Today Microsoft Corp has raised antitrust concerns...Brad Smith, General Counsel for Microsoft quoted in the Washington Post today .."By putting together a single company that will control virtually the entire market . . . Google will control the economic fuel of the Internet," .The response from Microsoft (... a losing participant in the DoubleClick bidding process) itself a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe is indeed ironical ...does Microsoft has different standards for itself and others ...!!!

The real issue however could be that the online internet advertising market is witnessing a healthy 17% growth , making it a USD 10 billion industry today .The deal is definitely going to provide more completion and make the Internet more vibrant and content rich

It is interested to note the comment of Jordan Rohan an analyst with RBC Capital Markets quoted to the New York Times ....“Keeping Microsoft away from DoubleClick is worth billions to Google, .....Yet again, Microsoft is on the sidelines and away from the action.”

So is Microsoft genuinely interested on issues of monopoly and anti-trust ? or has it been completely outmaneuvered by Google .....only time will tell....

Yahoo vs Google -Google buys DoubleClick

2007-04-15T15:21:00.000+05:30

On 11 April , I had written about the Viacom-Yahoo deal and how it could potentially impact the online advertisement market . In the post I had analysed (to a certain extent) the implications of the Viacom-Yahoo deal and how the twosome were poised to take on the Google ecosystem . While writing the post , I was not aware that the online advert scenario would change so fast with Google announcing the purchase of Double Click for a sum of USD 3.1 bn yesterday -14th April . DoubleClick is primarily engaged in the delivery of Internet advertising with the provision of mobile marketing activities.This acquisition is in line with Google's strategy to expand its foothold in online advertising ,and transforming Google from a search engine to an advertising powerhouse . This deal is an interesting twist in the battle between Yahoo and Google for supremacy in the online advertisement market . The Google buy out of Double Click would mean that users like you and me would get more advertising tailored to their online habits, especially if DoubleClick and Google combine some of their huge databases of information on Internet use to direct specific ads to different Web surfers’ tastes.

Google, traditionally , has made most of its money in the online basics: the text-based search engine and small text ads , DoubleClick’s core strength, by contrast, lies in flashy banner ads and, more recently, video ads that are more like high-end magazine or television ads. This synergy is expected to up the quality of advertising content that Google was known for and hopefully enhance revenues .

As expected the sale of DoubleClick involved a complex and long negotiation that included at one point Yahoo, AOL and, most prominently, Microsoft, which has been trying to position itself as an advertising rival to Google.

The New York Times reports "....The acquisition will also strengthen Google’s position with respect to Yahoo, its chief rival in Internet search and advertising and a leader in the sale of display ads...".

How is Yahoo going to respond to the new challenge.........whats Yahoo's next move...keep watching this space for updates .....

Outsouring Backlash- A Myth ? Friedman explains ...

2007-04-14T23:58:00.000+05:30

About 3 weeks ago , I had an e-mail exchange with a former colleague and CEO blogger Basab Pradhan on online tutions . The context of the e-mail discussion was my first post on online tutions titled "Extending the Offshore model-Tutorvista .Basab had written to me about the possibilities of an offshore backlash creeping back in the US lead by noted economists like Alan Blinder (former Clinton economic advisor ) ......the notion of the downturn brought me back to 2001 -02 when the IT industry in India was hit badly...is it going to happen again was the question that I asked myself...I read up press clippings and interviews of Nandan Nilekani and the top brass at Infy and they seemed to say it was "Business As Usual" .....were we missing something !! .....i searched the net for possible clues which would give me a better handle of the situation and in this quest I found an interesting interview of Thomas Friedman by Yale Global editor Nayan Chanda. Chanda expressed his concern about Alan Binder's comment in the WSJ saying that 40 million American jobs are going to be lost due to outsourcing.....

Friedman opined that Binder knows that jobs will become fungible and flow to the point where it can be delivered most efficiently....this is bound to happen in the flat world ...The key question is how does the US cope with the job loss ...the answer partly lies in the interview that Friedman has given to Chanda and more details would definitely be available in the third edition of Friedman's book ...

For the time being it does not seem that the backlash is something that Indian IT services is really concerned about , Nandan , NRN , Kris and Shibu seemed perfectly calm in the CNBC boardroom interviews after the quarterly results of Infy were declared yesterday....despite Friedman's theories , and the buoyant mood of the captains of the Indian IT industry...I sincerely hope that we are not missing something here ......

Welcome to blogosphere my darling

2007-04-14T00:17:00.000+05:30

Neelabjo, my 5 yr old darling , while watching an NDTV program on blogging tonight told me that he wanted to blog like daddy.......he said "baba ,we will have a blog together..." i was overwhelmed by his thought !!

It might take him at least another decade to blog ........but this post is dedicated to you my son ....a formal welcome to blogosphere...Neelabjo

Baba

Online Advertising -Yahoo vs Google

2007-04-11T15:57:00.000+05:30

Yahoo will be remembered as one of the first Internet success stories which pioneered the search engine and online advertising , however in the recent past it has been totally eclipsed by its younger and formidable rival -Google . To an average Internet user like me , Google is now part and parcel of my life , ....when Google introduced Gmail with features which was not available with Yahoo, I shut down my Yahoo account , and after buying off orkut and blogger , Google actually locked me in as a user . The relationship with Google became stronger with Google AdSense , Google Analytics (I track the page views on my blog through analytics ) , Picasa , Google Earth and Google Desktop . As a former Yahoo user (and I have been one for many years) , these integrated services made my shift to Google seamless (I use my Gmail Id to log into orkut, G-analytics , G-AdSense, Picasa etc...). As a reader ,you would now be wondering that this post is a small lecturette on Google strategy and how it overtook Yahoo .......that is not the intention.....I would like to draw the attention of the reader on the new twist to the Yahoo vs Google battle based on Viacom advert deal , concluded yesterday .

In financial terms Google has left Yahoo far behind by becoming the Internet's largest advertising network, Google last year earned $10.6 billion (Net Profit $3.1 bn), compared with Yahoo's $ 6.4 billion (Net Profit $ 751 million) the profitability of Google is at 29% and the same for Yahoo is 12% .... Google's market value is $145 billion, compared with Yahoo's $43 billion...... The gap seemed to be too large to be bridged ...... as you logged into Orkut.com , you would notice these small text adverts on the right of your screen , similarly for Gmail .The Google dominance over Yahoo on the Internet advert business seemed complete till yesterday when the Viacom deal was announced .Viacom said yesterday that it picked Yahoo as its online advertising partner in a multi-year deal that could help Yahoo become a more formidable challenger to Google . Viacom with its suite of websites (MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickeldeon.com ...) will provide a platform for the text adverts which Google dispalys through Gmail or an Orkut .

The deal seems formidable on paper and promises to help Yahoo to increase it's pie in the online advertising business , howver an the key question that comes to my mind is -

"How will it lock a user" to click on the advert only from Viacom's websites ?

In the case of Google , it provides an complete suite of services which are based on a single login , and therefore a typical user is locked into the world of Google . These dedicated users click on the small text adverts and with Google's alliances with MySpace and AOL makes it an interesting eco-system to combat ...and this raises the follow up question , which is :

Does the Viacom-Yahoo deal make the twosome an advertising ecosystem which has the scale and muscle to take on Google ?

I don't have the answers but hopefully somebody in Yahoo Inc does , it would be interesting to follow the Yahoo vs Google battle and the dynamics of the Internet advertising industry .

Blogging Facilitating democracy ??- Case # Pakistan

2007-04-10T18:30:00.000+05:30

The Washington Post carried an article on March 8 , 2006, titled Pakistan's Blog Blockade. The reason for the blanket ban on blogs was ,that a few of them displayed the infamous Danish cartoons of the prophet which many Muslims regard as blasphemous. Amongst the sites blocked were Blogger.com which hosted hundreds of Pakistani blogs. To me the blogosphere is similar to a virtual democratic institution, wherein common citizens can express their point of view on topics close to their heart... . I would like to believe that blogging is a process which strengthens civil society and enables healthy exchange of ideas (provided blogs are not used to generate a hate campaign or treason ...) , .....what I failed to understand was the rationale for a blanket ban on the basis of the fact that some blogs might have contained objectionable content .I had read about this in 2006 and was of the opinion that nothing much can be done in cultures where freedom of expression is not valued.....however today I read another article which makes me feel much better....the article is a discussion with Mohammad Khan a local blogger . The discussion with Khan revealed that its now possible to openly critique the government; take stances against religious fundamentalists....... apparently Pakistanis were allowed to surf the net freely till early 2001 ....that changed in April, 2003, when the Pakistan Telecommunication Company began restricting blasphemous websites at the ISP level...things may have changed for the better and as Khan narrates its a freer press now .

As Indians we have many complaints about our nation, complaints about its infrastructure , about its civil amenities , its politicians .....to the extent that we enjoy in bashing everything about India ....but after having read this blog post don't you think that we are blessed being Indians , at least nobody stops us from expressing anything in blogosphere ....and the next time when we complain about the lack of "blah...blah.." in India , think about the little mercies of our democracy ....and lets start to learn to value them

The Survival Mantra for Indian IT/ITES industry in the Flat World is Global Delivery and not delivering from India ??

2007-04-09T15:21:00.000+05:30

There might be many definitions of the Flat World, the one that I connect to most is “a flat world is a place, where goods and services are produced in location(s) where its cheapest and most efficient to produce and sold in locations which are most profitable…”. This definition would be the one that the Indian IT/ITES industry would be happiest about…after all we continue to be a low cost producer of IT and BPO services .

However there is a twist to the definition, ….as an Indian you might want to believe that offshoring to India will continue unabated because of the labor arbitrage.......unless we pay heed to the latest trends in the BPO sector . The research done by Sujay Chohan and Robert H Brown of Gartner opines that the distinction between onshore (services delivered in the country where the contract is signed) and offshore (services delivered from a country other than the country where the contract was signed) is increasingly becoming irrelevant as “offshore providers” move outside their home countries and set up global delivery centers and as “onshore providers” set up centers in low-wage countries. This trend is also driven by the need to outsource increasingly complex processes that are end to end, encompass several countries and touch the client's various locations. This would mean that the relevance of India as the best offshore location automatically comes down and the shift from offshoring to India to global delivery is distinct and is borne out by data. Indian service providers like Wipro , WNS, Infosys BPO(formerly Progeon) , HCL , TCS, Genepact, Hinduja -TMT and Transworks have acquired or set up delivery centers in several countries to serve their clients onshore and offshore . The Aditya Birla Group's take over of Minacs and consolidating its ITES business as a combination of Transworks-Minacs gives it an automatic global delivery footprint (Minacs had many non-US delivery locations)

According to Gartner by 2008, most successful BPO service producers will have service delivery centers (not just sales offices) in at least 3 countries

a)An onshore location (typically where the contract is signed)
b)An offshore location (country where the company is headquartered)
c)An additional delivery location independent of these two categories

Now that I have put the offshore versus Global delivery in some perspective, I would like to draw your attention to the parallels in the IT services space. Infosys takes pride in its Global Delivery Model (GDM) , which was for many years delivery out it's various Development centers in India , till it set up some small PDC’s (or Proximity Development Centers) in UK , New Jersey and Canada. This was pretty much the trend till 2004 (delivery primarily out of India , with a few PDC’s onshore ) ,but with the setting up of Infosys China which has a significant workforce is also a strong step in the direction of the “true GDM” . What is happening in the BPO space is also being replicated in the IT Services sector albeit a bit slow. Therefore it would be safe to say that the flat world is not a place where an Indian service provider can survive by delivering from offshore …it is time to go global ….. . The process of going global requires developing new mindsets and new skills …the automatic question is what are these? ….I did not have answers till I chanced upon a speech at IIM-B given by the leader whom I admire most ,Nandan Nilekani . In his speech at IIM-B,Nandan talks about the a new hybrid manager – the ‘Versatilist’.

I am not saying that this post is a wake up call for the Indian IT/ITES industry but I would like to leave my reader with a thought that global delivery is indeed a reality and it is imperative to look at it with a heightened sense of urgency and not be satisfied by servicing customers from Indian locations alone......

Interview with K Ganesh-CEO , Tutorvista-Extending the offshore services model

2007-04-05T15:44:00.000+05:30

On 27th March , I had written about Tutorvista and how it has extended the Offshore services business to education services . At the end of the post , i had promised an interview with K Ganesh -CEO and the conceptualizer of the education services business . Ganesh was travelling and in spite of his hectic schdule has given this interview exclusively for my blog .

Profile of K Ganesh

Ganesh is currently CEO and Founder of TutorVista (http://www.tutorvista.com/ ) – a new consumer Internet company in education services space that aims to bring twenty first century technology to education space by combining content, scientific pedagogy and on-line teaching.
He is in the panel of Venture Advisors of UTI Venture funds and a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

His last venture, CustomerAsset was started in mid 2000 to address the international Call Center / BPO Sector. In May 2002, ICICI (NYSE listed, India’s largest bank) acquired CustomerAsset for over $ 22 Mn Post the acquisition, Ganesh headed the Contact Center Business as President, ICICI OneSource handling over 4000 people and annual revenue of $ 30 Mn.The company now renamed FirstSource is publicy listed in India.

Apart from founding and successfully growing the three ventures, Ganesh has worked as CEO of Bharti British Telecom – a British Telecom JV in India and in HCL Ltd., where he held several key managerial positions.

Ganesh is a post-graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Question 1: When was TutorVista started? How did it come about?

It was started in July 2005. The service for US went live in November 2005 , for UK in July 2006.It came about when I was in US in early 2005 and realized that one of the top two topics of maximum concern to US citizens was - education and healthcare. Everyday I could see in media and newspapers education crisis was being discussed at length. The need for a solution to the education problem coupled with the fact that advancement in Internet , broadband penetration made it possible to offer mass market , affordable solution to solve the problem.
There is a full-blown education crisis in US as evidenced by declining test scores, low global rankings of US students in Math and Science, poor graduation rates, lack of basic reading and writing skills, and other well-reported problems. This situation has been reached because of a lack of opportunity for students to get personalized help at affordable rates and convenient place and time.Lack by parents and students, shortage of teachers especially in Math and Science, inadequate funding at school level, etc. The federal government has woken up and realized that US cannot remain competitive globally unless education is fixed; thus the billions being pumped into the NCLB program. Private individuals like Bill Gates, Fortune 500 companies and others are also actively trying to mitigate this situation.

The topic is such a hot one that George Bush in his last State of union address talked about it, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are spending huge resources in this area (latest Business Week cover story), Oprah Winfrey latest show was on education: all across various media – lots of articles about federal government funding for education, current crisis state of affairs in education…

Question-2 How did you ensure that the transfer of learning in an offshore model, is as effective as a face to face tutoring session

Right from Day 1, we hired a US expert who spent 6 months here in Bangalore, used lot of customer feedback, improved step by step. Lot of resources is available on Internet. Our President Dr.John Stuppy has over 15 years experience in US test prep and Tutoring field. He brings the domain experience and knowledge. Also unlike many other companies, we sue Voce over IP and not just text chat to make the experience a real one,

Question -3: From a learning pedagogy standpoint I would assume that yours would be different than the classical face to face approach, it would be great if you could elaborate on the differences

Actually main difference is in the US/UK and Indian system of education that makes the pedagogy different. In India we learn by rote, repetition while in US they learn more by example, experience. This is something we cover in the training with the Tutors who are all great but are used to the Indian system. For e.g. we start with a formula, define the formula, then the law or theorem and finally give examples. In US they will start with four examples or illustrations, warm up to the concept, then slowly introduce the principle and finally the formula.Face to face vs. online is also covered in detail in training – tutors are taught to use the power of technology, use animations, content, interactive to make the learning better

Question -4: How do you ensure that your tutors are fully aware of the requirements of the local school district and use appropriate teaching material during a session?

This is part of the training and certification we do.

Question -5: Your model seems to be an extension of the offshore model that the IT service industry in India has pioneered, however if there are some differences , would you like to highlight some of them

The business model at one level is similar but there are significant differences.

1. Unique example of creating an Internet company in education services space. The web has seen ecommerce, search, content and community sites but this is the one of the first services website where a valuable service (tutoring) is being done over the web.

2. TutorVista is the first B2C company focused on the US market from India. Till now, all successful business models were B2B companies from India focusing on US companies. We target the consumer directly; sell to them directly from India. Will this be the start of non-US companies using the web to sell to US consumers directly?

3. TutorVista is in the new wave of Web 2.0 leveraged start-up

So the fact that we use tutors working from home , can scale without having to build centers , bring people to one place makes scalability easier than T/ It services. But, compared to pure portal or content play scalability will be limited. But compared to IT/ITS/BPO etc this is far more scalable. For example when one of our students from US wanted to learn Chinese, we got him a tutor from Hong Kong within a week! We have tutors in 23 cities in India + a few in other countries

Question-6: Are there any US/UK government regulations that have an impact on your business and if so what are these regulations

No, there are no regulations. But for getting Government funded, supplemental tutoring contracts which are awarded through states – some state s have requirements like Tutors have to have a social security number, FBI background check etc which we cannot do. But this does not affect us since we do not go after Government funded market but focus on tutoring funded by the parent / student / school

Question -7 :What is the future of this industry? Any predictions on growth pattern?

The online education industry is huge. The size is over $ 16 billion. Of this we are addressing the supplemental education or assisted learning market which will be around $ 8 billion.
With advancement in Voice over Internet technology, higher broad band penetration, lowering of PC prices this is set to explode.

MySpace.com-Convergence of Technology and politics

2007-04-05T10:48:00.000+05:30

I had recently written about the use of social networking sites as a potent tool for political campaigns . In that post , I had opined that technology would change the process of political campaigns to a large extent and also had done some crystal ball gazing on its possible implications in the Indian context . While writing the post , I was not alive to the fact that I would have to continuously sharpen my point of view on the subject (in less than a week) , this post is an update to the original post on technology as a flattner in the political campaign process .

In this post I focus on MySpace.com which is one of the most widely used social networking sites in the US . MySpace has launched MySpace Impact, a site featuring MySpace pages for 2008 elections. Candidates like Senators Hillary Clinton of NY, Barack Obama of Illinois, Joe Biden of Delaware, John Edwards of North Carolina, Rudy Giuliani and MA Governor Mitt Romney all have pages in MySpace. Check out Barack Obama's MySpace profile and meet his 13,710 online friends , sample his campaign materials and YouTube vidoes...try it , its really amazing ....

If Obama's profile amazes you , check out Hillary Clinton with her 33,373 frineds and her campaign materials (T shirts , bags & stickers ..et al)

MySpace has 64.4 million unique visitors from the US and has the potential to play a major role in the presidential polls of 2008. MySpace users represent 37% of all Internet users in the US. In addition the site heavily attracts people in the ages 18-24, an age group which would hardly go to other political sites. In addition to this MySpace plans to hold a mock virtual elections .

Though the MySpace votes won't count for the official election, but results compiled from the social-networking site's millions of members would help the candidates to gauge their potential success in real voting booths next year. They also may provide a glimpse into overall public sentiment for the politicians.

The Indian context

Yesterday , I was watching an India TV pre-poll discussion which featured a prominent psephologist and Mr Amar Singh of the SP and Mr Arun Jaitley of BJP . The debate was around the pre-poll survey for the UP elections done by the IndiaTV team and the analysis of the same . Both the political leaders presented their points of view and were obviously defensive when the facilitator Rajat Sharma projected a dim future for both the parties in the forthcoming polls (based on the survey). In many such pre-poll survey discussions , I have heard politicans dismiss the methodology of the survey , the appropriateness of the sample size and the projections that the psephologists make based on a representative sample .Imagine if there was a MySpace.com option in India (and notwithstanding the fact that the electoral process in India is fundamentally different from the US) ,many of the complaints that the politicans have on the survey methodology can be eradicated and hopefully would a much better way to gauge the sentiment of the electorate .

I am sure one could argue that the PC and Internet penetration in India is too low to facilitate something like MySpace.com impacting the electoral process ...while there might be some truth in that argument ...but there is a work around for this as well. Yesterday I discovered that Orkut has a "Create Polls" option wherein community members and others can vote on a particular subject. A community member can create a poll say " Whats the prospect of the BJP in the forthcoming UP election" , and based on the responses , BJP can get a quick and dry dip stick survey on how it would be faring....and that too for free .....

Yet another example of the convergence of technology with the democratic process .....the world is really becoming Flat , isn't it !!

Flat World-It's unintended consequences

2007-04-04T14:38:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking and writing about the Flat World for almost three months now , profoundly influenced by Thomas Friedman’s work . However , we the Flat-world types need to also explore the unintended consequences of the Flat World which has been captured rather well by Shreyasi in her post . The instances like the North Korean interception , the Bali bombings rightly exemplify the geo-political consequences of the Flat World .

In addition to her article , a similar post by Pashos Mandravelis draws the connection between technology and terrorism . I was alive to the consequences of the Flat World , but after reading these two articles (by Pashos and Shreyasi) , my concern over the consequences of the Flat World has been heightened and my key concerns are as follows :

The people who bear the consequences of technology applications for terrorism are in most cases those who are in the bottom of the globalization food -chain - "The Common Man". Does the common man have a say on what technologies are dangerous and can he prevent these technologies reaching the terrorists - my suspicion is a big NO , technology is after all knowledge and knowledge cannot be stopped with wired fences ...so the common man has to suffer as new technologies and processes which are flattening the world also find some applications to spread terror and death ......

The developed nations are the early beneficiaries of the Flat World , and within the developed nations , the wealthy .......these are the people who put Podcasting to meaningful use , travel across the world and use google as an information mining tool et al ....but they are a very small fraction of humanity ...the question that I would leave you with is

If the Flat World does not lead to inclusive development ( I am sure it eventually will , but the process might just be too slow and the sharing of economic benefits maybe skewed disproportionately to the wealthy nations ...) , then why do we need a Flat World ...what good is it , if it cannot lead to common good for the greatest number .....??

Do write in , would love to hear from you

Reservations -The Real Debate

2007-03-31T15:41:00.000+05:30

The debate on the reservations for backward classes has suddenly been accentuated with the Supreme Court's stay order. The BJP blames the UPA Government for not having put the case to the judiciary well (an upper caste ,right wing party also wants the share of the OBC vote you see,…..) , the DMK is shocked - what happens to its Adi-Dravida vote bank , the CPI(M) expressed grief –after all it has been the messiah of the downtrodden in West Bengal …and by implementing its strategy of rampant industrial strikes has succesfully crippled the state to an extent that people who had decent jobs even a decade and half ago have become downtrodden , so that their supporter base continues to increase …..and finally Mr VP Singh’s comment “ all people issues are political…and therefore the reservation issue is bound to be politicized… is evidence enough that all the players in the political firmament of India want a share in the electoral pie of the reservation game .

The reservation process as Mr Arjun Singh would like us to believe is a surgical correction to bring the Other Backward Castes (OBC) into the limelight by providing opportunities for economic and educational growth…..to the extent of sacrificing meritocracy as a principle .

I would like to draw the attention of my reader on some fundamental issues of reservation as a social engineering process.

a) One cannot argue that some form of subsidy needs to be given to backward and poorer sections of society, so I agree that reservation in some form is probably not a bad thing.

b) Poverty in India is endemic ,and it's a flawed assumption to believe that if one is backward one has to be poor or vice -versa . I am not too sure if there is a direct correlation between poverty and being backward . The protagonists of the reservation process demand reservation based on this fundamentally flawed assumption......I have lived in Karnataka and some of my Vokaliga and Lingayat friends are extremely affluent in spite of being OBC’s , similarly in Maharastra -where I presently reside ,there are many examples of rich OBC’s. A supporter of the OBC reservation would like to dismiss this by saying that yes there is a creamy layer in the OBC’s and we can exclude them from the reservation process …however the implementation of reservation is incomplete if its restricted to the OBC’s alone …which raises the second question , what are the principles of reservation in our country ..!!!. I am tempted to believe that the design of the reservation program is not to empower people of weaker sections (both OBC’s and non-OBC’s) but a diabolical attempt to build a vote bank for political parties. Mr VP Singh- The Raja of Mandya (and now the Czar of Mandal…) when asked this question responded by saying “I agree , there must be 10% reservation for upper castes as well….” Thank you Mr Singh by being so considerate, but what is the basis of this 10% ….and obviously Mr Singh would have no rationale to offer..!!

The Role of Judiciary in the process

After the Parliament's approval of the OBC reservation, I had given up all hope of redressal and rationale in the system. I was extremely agitated that neither the media nor the public was asking the right questions of our elected representatives (though I admired the resistance that the Youth For Equality-YFE provided) . However my faith in Indian democracy has been rekindled after the Supreme Court’s interim order asking the UPA government to provide more data before the issue is closed once for all. The SC judgment opined that the last caste base census happened in 1931 and has requested the government to come back with more contemporary data with statistics that correlate poverty with caste backwardness. I am hopeful that there are enough checks and balances in our democracy which will ensure that the creative minds in the UPA government cannot conjure up data which proves that one is poor because he is backward by caste.

I have written about the implications of the reservations in a previous post which might be of interest to you as well

I continue to live in hope that good sense will prevail….are you as hopeful as I am?

Social Networking sites as a political campaign tool -Orkut

2007-03-31T10:56:00.000+05:30

I had recently written about the use of technology in the political process (YouTube as a tool for political campaigns) , and it's possible implications in the Indian context a decade from now. Building on the same theme is an article in the Washington Post (dt 30 March) which makes the pattern clearer . This article is about US Presidential candidate John Edwards using social networking sites as a campaign tool and also a distribution channel for campaign materials and content . He is on all the big ones: Flickr, YouTube, MySpace ,Facebook, et al, ...not including his own OneCorps which is supposed to have 20,000 members . In addition to this his own website has a blog feature, podcasts , RSS feeds etc etc . According to observers of the 2008 US Presidential polls , Sen. Barack Obama ,judging by the number of friends on MySpace or number of views of his YouTube videos, may be the most popular online candidate....interesting way of assessing electoral fortunes of candidates isn't it ?

In my previous post I had mentioned about the possible applications of the YouTube as a campaign tool in India about a decade from now.....in the light of the Washington post article and the state of Internet usage in India....I am tempted to beleive that social networking sites have a significant role to play in political campaigns in India as well.....

The number of people who are members of an Orkut community dedicated to one or more political parties is insignificant at this point in time , but nevertheless growing rapidly .All major national political parties and regional ones like DMK , BSP , SP , TDP , TMC, CPI(M) etc ...have a community in Orkut and the members range from hundreds to thousands . If one goes through the profile of the members of this community , its not necessarily the urban Indian youth . A quick glance of the membership profile of these communities would reveal that there is a fair percentage of people from the semi-urban and rural India . I randomly looked at the posts of the Samajwadi Party -orkut community and it was not surprising to see that community members are already using it as an election tool .

In addition to the Orkut communities dedicated to specific political parties , there are communities based on locations -for instance , there are communities dedicated to Navi Mumbai and also for Nerul ( a nodal town in Navi Mumbai ,where I presently reside..) , it will not be long before the local corporator starts using it to reach people in his constituency (Nerul has 2,000 members and Navi Mumbai has almost 7,000 members...and these numbers are growing rapidly) . Cynics will call it 'the spray and pray strategy..... try what you can.....see what sticks," . While at this point in time , given the numbers and the Internet penetration in our country it could be "spray and pray" , but I believe that with the rise of usage of social networking sites (across India) and the increase of bandwidth will make this a reasonably viable channel for electoral battles .......what do you think ?

Extending the offshore model - Tutorvista

2007-03-29T10:51:00.000+05:30

The financial viability of the Indian offshore model has been proved beyond doubt by the India IT services industry. However in-spite of the growth of the IT services business, it is important to extend the offshore model to other areas of professional services. In an earlier post I had indicated possible areas where the offshore model could be extended seamlessly, my favorite being learning management. I had discussed this idea with Basab Pradhan –CEO of Gridstone Research and a former colleague of mine from Infosys. Basab listened to my idea with great attention and opined that for an offshore service to be successful it’s important to ensure that the “degrees of freedom” for the client is minimized. He essentially meant that the customization requirements must be kept under control. According to him learning management runs a risk of high degree of customization of content (based on the clients ever changing needs…), which could probably make it difficult to build a scalable business model. Basab’s concept of “degrees of freedom” stayed with me and I started scanning the environment for possible ideas which could extend and or redefine the offshore model and its applications beyond IT services………… I found the application .....in the offshore tution model that Tutorvista has developed …….

TutorVista, is a Bangalore based online tuition's company , which aims to attract middle-class parents by providing online, one-on-one access to Indian tutors at rates far below those of conventional tutors in the US or UK . Tutorvista recruits Indian graduates and after an extensive training on the company’s technology and the accent neutralization assigns them students. Unlike learning management, wherein the content can be debated by the client and therefore is susceptible to multiple design iterations, an offering like online tuition's can be standardized if Tutorvista adheres to national and state standards and is fully cognizant of the requirements of the local school district or student's college. If tutors use the same textbooks and reference materials it ensures that the tutoring is relevant and useful. Tutorvista has signed up 950 students in the US and has recently tied up with publisher HarperCollins to provide the same service in the UK.
I have contacted K Ganesh the CEO of Tutorvista, and he has agreed to give me an exclusive interview on the business model, the value proposition and his vision for the company …..Keep an eye on my blog to learn more about Tutorvista and how it’s the next big thing out of India…….keep reading ….

Citigroup to move jobs to India- Time to rejoice ??

2007-03-27T18:46:00.000+05:30

The New York Times carried a report today (27 March 2007) about Citi's plans of a major financial restructuring effort . Approximately 26,000 jobs will be either cut or reassigned to manage its operating costs . A large part of the reassigned jobs are expected to come to India . Citi India already has a large presence with 22,000 people which is supposed to grow even further with this announcement .

Charles O. Prince III Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Citigroup quoted...“We will consolidate and simplify our back offices around the world,....Traditionally, India has been a beneficiary of that.”

Most of us will be elated with this announcement , more global jobs coming into India , more employment opportunities for us ....however I would present a slightly contrary point of view .

a) Moves like this have an impact on Brand India ( ....Back-office destination of the world ) ...more and more corporates look at India as a source of cheap labor (which at one level is good , but does not auger well for national competitiveness in the long run)....I am sure India is not interested to be merely a back office operations of entities that want to manage cost....and more so when we have such a vibrant talent pool

b) India gets prominence through announcements such as these , I would like to know the extent of international media coverage on the Tata-Corus or Hindalco-Novelis deals . .....both the stories were covered by the New York Times ....but in a very matter of fact announcements.

As a nation we have lot more to offer than back office outsourcing ...don't you think so ? , and are you still happy with this announcement ....do let me know

Flattening of Politics -YouTube

2007-03-24T15:52:00.000+05:30

Technology and the internet is changing the way knowledge and content are being created, shared and debated and also challenging the notion of "content is king" . Three companies that have done well during the post -bubble resurgence are Google , Apple and YouTube . None of them create content , they distribute it ......YouTube is one of the latest kids on the block which has created a huge market cap riding on the back of content created by others . Founded in Feb 2005 , YouTube is a popular free sharing video website which lets users upload, view, and share video clips .

Politics has recently found an application for the YouTube . Political candidates for the 2008 Presidential election have started using YouTube as a channel for advertising their candidacy. Voters can easily look up propaganda and make videos supporting or demoting presidential candidates of their own, specifically those for Obama and Hillary Clinton .

YouTube creates an avenue for easy distribution of campaign material , therefore changing the rules of the election game significantly. If you do a search on "political campaigns" in the YouTube website , the amount of available content is significant

I am hoping to see Indian political parties use this as a campaign tool within the next ten years (ten years because it will take that much time for a critical mass of internet penetration in our rural areas for it to be of use to the political parties ) . Hopefully if political content is shared seamlessly, the significant by-products of such a process are :

a) Politicians will be forced to promise what they can deliver

b) Responsibility and accountability in the campaign process (now the entire content will be available on the world wide web and hence the political parties cannot have selective amnesia)

c) Issues of national importance can be documented , archived and retrieved by a common voter , who can then use all this data to make an informed choice .

The YouTube has the potential to change the way political campaigns work and hopefully it will make a big difference to the political processes in our country........

Social Trap -The BPO Agent

2007-03-24T12:45:00.000+05:30

My post on the Talent Trap a week ago, has evoked some interesting responses , some of my friends recognized the implications, while some others felt that development is an individual issue and there are limitations to the extent that an employer can facilitate development .....I believe that the truth is somewhere in between , however the responses to my post has inspired me to look at another phenomenan which I would like to call the social trap . In this post , I would examine the dimensions of the social trap based on my personal experience with the call center industry .......

Circa 2005 , location Bangalore , venue- founder's day of a prominent call center company. I was the guest of the CEO and travelled all the way from Mumbai with an air of expectancy ....

The celebrations began with the ceremonial speech by the CEO , followed by honoring the exceptional employees of the year ...somewhat similar to the old economy .......but then it all started ........they called it a culture show ........I have seen cultural shows before but this was different ...the kids were attired in costume which were indeed global ( I hope you get what i actually mean!!) and were putting up a performance which was far beyond my imagination , in terms of choreography , professionalism etc etc ......I felt like a dinosaur and looked at my colleague and told him " P -this is indeed brilliant ....he responded saying -Welcome to the world of the BPO..." , i said to myself , I wished i worked in this sector ......however the real story unfolded a bit later ....

The Social Trap -Evidence 1

The show had some event managers who decided that they would randomly select some employees from the floor and engage with them on the dias .....a good idea if executed well....the first guy to come on the dias was a decent looking Kannada fellow and this is what happened thereafter .....

The Event Manager (E) - Hi , thanks for coming to the dias , whats your name ?

Respondent - Namez Jerry (he meant my names is..)..... I will refer to him as J from now on ...

Me- The fellow looks like Jawant Gowda , or Janardhana Murthy or J Karnard ....why does he call himself Jerry ....well it did not take time for me to realise that Call center agents have American names which helps them to be more acceptable to their customers . However , I tried hard to put myself in his situation and failed to understand why I would not call myself Niladri and automatically respond as Niel (even if i worked in the call center industry...) ...I told myself "this is a different generation so don't be judgmental ".....

What happened thereafter is even more shocking ......

E- So what did you do all day

J - I kinda , woke up in the morn and called up my gal ...and told her ,need some kinda time to shit .....and then take her out for a date .....then the unmentionables which i prefer not to document even in a harmless post like this ......the accent was perfect ...i had heard people speak like that in the Mid-west

Me- have I heard him right , did he say shit ? , was my automatic response ...of course he did , these people talk about morning chores in gay abandon in a public gathering ...!! . I decided to do some further investigation on the background of J , and as I would have expected , J comes from the outskirts of Bangalore , from a place called Maddur .

For those of us who are unaware of Maddur , it's a hamlet on the Bangalore -Mysore road and most of the villagers are probably agriculturists ...and J is probably the first generation that has ventured out to the city for easy cash ...thanks to the BPO industry

The more I thought about J the more i was perplexed , a part of me bowed down with reverence to the captains of the IT and IT enabled services for having provided employment to thousands of people like J , the other part of the me thought about the Social trap ....according to me you are in a social trap when " displacement without moderation happens from your roots and are transported to a make believe world , which is not yours and never will be.."

J was transported to a world , where he talks like an american , apes them in whatever he does , but at the end of the day retires to his small one room apartment in some non-descript ,pot-hole infested part of the city....he is trapped between two cultures and he is too young to realise it .......

Social Trap- Evidence 2

I like frequenting discotheques and in my younger days have been a reasonable party animal .....my haunt in Bangalore is a place called "Spin" . In this visit , I went to Spin with a couple of old friends of mine . Before we proceed any further, I would like to also tell you that I have a bad habit of observing people in public places like disco's ...and i have been doing this for years .... I find great pleasure in spotting the BTM 's (Behenjis Turned Modern ) in Delhi ..the Ghatis in Mumbai , etc etc ..... I was not hoping to see something like that in Bangalore ...but to my surprise , I say this young group of gals in their late teens and early twenties ...dressed in (not skimpy, but close enough) colorful attire coming in ......I asked my well informed friend...who are these people .....pat came the reply...BPO kids .....

I went closer to the group and observed them , the ladies were wearing contemporary fashion but in wierd color combo's , hair done up in geen and brown.....a fascinating variant of the BTM's .....they were calling themselves Steffi , Anna, Stacy......wow , I am sure their names are Saritha , Anitha , Sunitha , and after the voice and culture acclimatization program ....they have morphed into Steffi , Anna and Stacy......and have taken to smoking , drinking ....and who knows what else

I am not judgemental about personal preferences and habits , but the feeling i was left with was that these young people have gotten themselves wonderfully in the "social trap" and like J have no clue about its implications .

After a few years the attractiveness of the BPO industry will come down (it's already coming down with shrinking margins and commodatization) and as these young people grow old their salaries will not be enough to sustain a life style of a Steffi or a J ....once you have a bad habit , it stays with you for long ........and few years in the BPO , I am sure they will find it difficult to relate to their parents , their peers (who did not go to a BPO) , their cousins , etc ....and would definitely not migrate to the US ...so what's in store for these trapped people ? , where do they go from here now ....what suggestions do you have to give them....pls write it ...trust me this is serious.........

Going offshore -lessons for Indian IT services industry

2007-03-23T21:13:00.000+05:30

I accidentally came across a Gartner blogpost written by Partha Iyengar and Rolf Jester in 2004 which was interesting reading .... The blog is a summary of a management update which talks about 8 factors that companies need to keep in mind before before going offshore , however in the post the authors talk about Cost , IP protection and Cross cultural orientation (if you want to know about all the 8 factors , you will have to shell out approx USD 100 to Gartner .......) . These were true in 2004 , and its applicability is only going to increase as the outsourcing deals become larger in size and more complex to execute .

I thought that it might be worthwhile to examine these 3 broad elements and its possible implications on the IT services industry in India

Cost :The authors advise their clients to be acutely aware of the total cost of the move ,which is going beyond the labour arbitrage that Indian IT service companies provide. In spite and despite all our claims about moving up the value chain in terms of IT solutions and providing strategic sourcing options to the clients , the real value proposition of our industry is still cost arbitrage . The questions to ask is: With a rising wage bill how do we manage the cost attractiveness ???........I would believe that the answer lies in superior knowledge management processes . I am aware that Infosys has a strong enough KM initiative lead by my good friend Dr JK Suresh (JKS) , but i am not sure if the KM function measures its effectiveness in the context of overall cost management for the firm (to put it simplistically better knowledge capture would lead to the re-use of knowledge and hence improve per unit productivity thereby reducing costs...) ...I am no expert in the field , its a thought for the experts like JKS to ponder about ......

Intellectual Property : I would go beyond the author's concern for IP re-transfer and would say that as a country our sensitivity to IP issues is really low . I have seen proprietary manuals being photocopied and transfered to people and calling the methodologies as our own...does it sound familiar ....???. It's time we grew out of the copying syndrome and respect somebody else's work and give due credit to IP

Cross Cultural Orientation - I could probably write a thesis on the subject , but would stop at saying that cultural orientation is far beyond etiquette tips ...hope the Learning Manager in the Wipro's , Infy's and TCS 's of the world are listening .........

Value-Chain – Perspectives from a Co-Founder of a Technology Startup

2007-03-21T18:02:00.000+05:30

In this post , I interview Mr Neelesh Marik (Sr VP and Business Head of EMEA–Value Chain) with a hope to understand the business model , the value proposition and people issues that Value Chain faces in building up a solution which could radically change the use of information in managing businesses .

Business Background - Value Chain is in the business of providing IP based “Productized Solutions” wherein they hope to deliver the following:

a) Ability to handle and manage Information of multiple types and disparate sources
b) Ability to provide business process optimization across multiple units, and outside the enterprise, across the value chain
c) Ability to bring in people collaboration in exception and decision points seamlessly and in guaranteed manner

…..thereby enabling the client organization to get relevant information about its businesses and act on that information rapidly.

Value Chain works on a Intellectual Property (IP) centric model and unlike Indian IT service providers is not a labor intensive operation. It would be safe to assume that the issues of managing talent and performance are radically different from normal enterprises

Hi Neelesh –Thanks for participating in this interview, I have a few questions to ask of you on the business model and the related challenges of Performance and Talent , here they go:

Q1: Would like to know about your value proposition and how does the data-information aggregation lead to creation of business value for your clients. Probably you could explain it with an example from the publishing industry

Publishers can benefit in 2 ways by working with us:

a) Leveraging our data transformation and content monetization solutions to create, manage and distribute their intellectual property in a rapidly digitizing environment

b) Leveraging our business performance improvement solutions to improve KPIs in volatile and complex challenges such as production process synchronization, distribution channel management and sales process effectiveness

Q-2 : Your services do make a lot of sense on paper , but I would presume that it requires a lot of product evangelization amongst clients for them to understand the value proposition , how do you create traction for the solutions of Value-Chain (assuming that the sale is largely different than an IT services selling process)

We try to relate our solutions to real life problems in a specific industry value chain. Our solutions are about finding out the underlying drivers to business performance, how real time visibility to those root cause correlations can empower business users, and helping them model, automate, monitor and control the business processes to continuously improve operational performance. The principles are the same: but the trick is to find the relevant industry reference models that help client executives relate to those principles to their day-to-day lives.

So for a Production Controller in a publishing company the challenge is schedule adherence of the finished product and ancillary products through a complex network of internal and external stakeholders, each with their dependencies, constraints, and service levels.

For a hedge fund manager a key issue in quick testing of his proprietary investment hypothesis against historical market data, and real time deployment of that model in the marketplace through timely trades.

For an insurance underwriter the cornerstone of effectiveness is real time risk analysis based on the very latest ‘significant event’ and inputting that into rating and pricing strategies in a marketplace where regulatory and competitive rules are highly dynamic.

The three examples above may sound like completely different problems, but at the core is the ability (or inability) to track real time transactional information, sense ‘opportunity or threat’ patterns from the information flows, and respond quickly through automated workflows or manual interventions.

Q:3 – Your company is based on your ability to leverage the xml based IPR, that being the context how critical is innovation as a competency amongst your employees ?

That statement is not true. Xml transformation is just a means to an end – today largely leveraged for content digitization in the publishing industry.

Our core IP is as answered in the previous questions.

Q-4 – How do you reward innovation at an individual level, what are some of the metrics ? , Is your performance management system designed to identify innovators across your company – if so how ?

We have to yet evolve and formalize the above as we move forward– at this early stage we simply rely on more informal means of public and private acknowledgement.

Q-5 ; You have operations in India and how easy or difficult is it to hire the right talent from the Indian market , considering the fact that there might be very few people who have the skills sets that you could leverage

This is always a problem for any knowledge business. But it is less of a problem for us since our model is more IP centric. For the people intensive parts of our business, our tools/ IP help us in relative deskilling of the tasks and deliverables.

Q-6 : You don’t have an HR Head as of now , so how highly are your line managers engaged in HR processes and what has been your experience of running a people intensive industry without a full time HR Head

Since we are a small company we do not have the luxuries of too many elaborate support functions. Managing people, their aspirations, support needs, drive and productivity is something every line manager treats as one of their core responsibilities.

Technology enabled parenting (policing !!) –i-Kids Phone

2007-03-20T12:56:00.000+05:30

I am a father of a 5 year old , who uses Google (all by himself ) to view cartoon sites and download games ( I don’t know how long will his usage of Google be restricted to cartoon sites only…the very thought gives me sleepless nights !! ….)

I have been watching him grow very rapidly in confidence and cognitive abilities in the last one year, and has started to explore the world on his own in the last few months. The newly found confidence of my kid son and his need to explore the world on his own is the context of this post, you could call it the post of a paranoid parent ……….

Neelabjo (my son) has a full time governess to take care of him during the day, in spite of strict controls that have been put on him, he managed to hoodwink her and was able to unlock the doors of the house to go out to play soccer with kids almost double his age and size. I have been quite disturbed after this incident and have reprimanded the governess for failing in her duties,......since then I have been trying to look for a robust solution…..and incredibly enough found one while surfing the net…..The solution comes from Björn Steiger Stiftung Services, a German company ........written about by Annette Zimmermann, Research Analyst at Gartner.

Björn Steiger Stiftung, has introduced something special this Christmas for the German mobile market: the i-Kids phone featuring the so-called "Life Service Kids." This service is based on GPS technology that enables parents to locate their children over Internet or WAP service. In addition, parents can determine a "safe zone" for their offspring and will be notified via SMS should the child leave this pre-selected area. Björn Steiger Stiftung Services has exclusive rights to the device provided by Australian-based company mobiles2go throughout Germany. One of its most important security features is the "panic button." When this button is activated, the phone automatically dials the four predetermined numbers one after the other. If there is no answer, a connection is established to an emergency service center, or - and this is the light version of the service - the four contacts will be informed via SMS. The device is very basic and allows full cost control for the parent. The phone has no number keypad but comes with four buttons, which enables the child to speed-dial four numbers. Text messages can be received but not sent, let alone any other fun stuff such as music downloads and ring tones. While it is not certain which age bracket this phone is geared to, yet the features and the design suggest that this handset is targeted at a very young user group: 5- to 7-year-olds.

The rate at which technology devices are being adapted across multiple geographies is not funny and it may not be to long before parents like me in India have an option of i-Kid phone ......... call it policing , bad parenting …but I would welcome such a device to keep a tab on my son …..

Open Letter to the CEO of the Services Industry

2007-03-14T17:51:00.000+05:30

Dear Mr /Ms Chief Executive Officer,

Let me congratulate you on the growth figures that you have been achieving quarter after quarter, across the sector (be it financial services , IT Services , BPO , KPO…etc ) . I have been a bystander in your growth plans and have seen you treat me primarily as a recruitment engine or at best a person who can manage attrition .You have classified me as another support function ...(though not a part of your business think tank), you have made a choice to marginalize me in your strategy formulation and implementation processes, in many cases I have not found a position in your Board of Directors. I have seen myself as a victim of the situation and played a marginalized role that was carved out for me .

This letter is not a commentary on what has not happened, or could have happened and did not happen ...blah blah......but from now on, I want to take charge of the situation and make you sit up and take notice of what I have to offer. For a moment forget that I belong to a discipline called Human Resources, and reflect on what is the most important item of your operating expenses!!, even for me it’s a no-brainer , its people costs , isn’t it ?? (The wage bill, the cost of managing attrition, the cost of hiring all put together). So what do you want to do with this line item of your operating costs , don’t you want to derive maximum value out of it , don’t you want to ensure that these costs are under control , so that your bottom line does not get adversely impacted…..so will it be wrong to say that I, (your incompetent HR man ) actually manage your supply chain ….sounds silly doesn’t it …suspend your judgment for a while and read the following paragraph ...

Think of a classical supply chain – (even at the risk of oversimplification, a Supply Chain process would broadly constitute inbound and outbound logistics), what is a supply chain in your industry? – people of course. Like your peer in the manufacturing sector wouldn’t you like optimize your sourcing costs and also make your outbound logistics more efficient …I am sure you would agree emphatically …..In this context let me reposition myself as your Supply Chain Manager. I could play around with your hiring patterns to ensure that I get the work done at a lower price point (ex- For a KPO I can hire brilliant college grads at a cheaper rate and with some help of technology can ensure that they do the same work that those guys from the biz schools do, at a cheaper cost to you…sounds interesting?). I could align the rewards program and incentivize hi-performers differentially, thereby directly adding to your margins –the appraisal forms that you and your managers loathe is a business process tool to ensure that we reward the right people for the right behaviors (competencies), I could help your underperformers to be more productive, thereby reducing the cost of your “slow moving inventory”. I could ensure that the workforce is engaged by designing retention schemes so that “there is no loss in transit” of your goods …..I am sure you will find value in what I have to offer – would you please help me to help you!!

Lets meet and discuss in details the exciting possibilities that both of us can create

Yours truly,

The People Supply Chain Manager

Talent Trap-The Cost of Development ?

2007-03-13T14:38:00.002+05:30

Yesterday after work, I had logged into my system and had a G Talk conversation with a former colleague of mine (Mr J), who is a very senior manager in the manufacturing sector. He quit his job a couple of years ago and took up an international assignment. In the next paragraph, I am replaying the conversation without getting into the exchange of pleasantries and trivia which approximately took approximately five minutes
……
Mr J:……….. you know my nephew ….the young chap you met when you came to my home ……has decided not to pursue higher education

I was quite surprised , I had spend a couple of hours with this kid (J’s nephew…) and the entire conversation was about his studies and how he wants to set himself up for success by pursuing a good degree and thereafter an MBA from a top tier school …….

Me: What happened to him? …he was supposed to do a MBA …….why did he quit….

Mr J: God only knows, he has joined a KPO and is getting paid well…he tells me that’s where the future lies and not in traditional education …….. his peers from college have joined the same place …this company came to campus and …….that’s that

Me: You mean bright kids now opt for a career in KPO’s and then don’t want to pursue higher education …

After the conversation I called up some HR Managers and recruiters in the KPO business, and to my surprise they confirmed that they have started picking up smart college graduates to work for them as Junior Analysts , according to these people it made good sense to get the number crunching done by lower cost resources and hence this shift in the recruitment pattern . It sounded very logical to me, however I quizzed them on career management plans for these young people. As I would have expected , HR was too busy in hiring and on boarding them and had no time to think about career management….This was exactly the genesis of this post ….the unintended consequences of development.

As a country we are in the midst of a transformation ,shedding our image as a backward, centrally controlled economy to a nation with one of the best talent pools with a very favorable demographic profile (Nearly 60 per cent of our population between the ages 15-59, and more than half below the age of 25. In contrast, countries including the US, Europe, Japan and China have a more aged population with dependency ratios likely to increase over the same period) ……but are we slowly and surely getting caught into what I call a “talent trap”…..

The Talent Trap

The Talent Trap is a situation wherein the best of our college grads get attracted to KPO jobs and do not pursue higher education…which creates a fundamental void in the pipeline for managerial jobs. What could possibly happen in the next ten years, the attractiveness of the KPO industry as an employer would reduce (higher automation, process improvements, would gradually take away the knowledge component of these jobs and make it boring –like a BPO job) and therefore these bright kids of today (in absence of proper career planning by their employers …which I suspect is what is going to happen) will land themselves in a situation where their employability would reduce. As a consequence the nation would have lost a lot of bright young minds, and the young people would not have any meaningful careers to look forward to.

To put the talent trap phenomenan in context, I had posed this question to a global executive whom I met after three years in Mumbai this Sunday (11 March 2007). He recognized the issue and his response was that this happens in developed countries, there are lots of examples in the US where people choose not to go to Wharton or a Harvard and pursue a stress free career all their lives. I agree that this happens in the US, but the contexts are different:

a) India’s currency to development is its talent, and the right kind of talent doing the right kind of job. Which this essentially means is that the best of our brains should pursue higher education and contribute differentially than others in the process?,while I support the HR initiatives that NASSCOM is taking to improve the quality of the workforce for the classical BPO operations (NASSCOM Assessment of Competence (NAC),Certification Program for Frontline Management etc ..), these KPO hiring have a large impact on the competitiveness of the nation .

b) The context of US and India are a bit different. As a developed nation US can probably afford to have a percentage of its brightest college grads take up “easy” jobs, which is a choice that an informed individual is making in that county. However as far as India is concerned ,I am not too sure if the young kids are making an informed choice , they are attracted by the money , the fancy name that they work for , and the team parties that are thrown occasionally , for them it’s a good happening place to be…who cares for education anyways ….. are we converting the best talent into mediocre people by this process…!!!

c) It makes eminent sense for the businesses to hire such people (cost advantages …) in the short run, but it sucks away the cream of talent thereby depleting the managerial pipeline of the nation. I also recognize the fact that these venture funded KPO’s need to manage costs and show performance on a quarter on quarter basis , but in the long run it's going to land itself in a situation where it would have a workforce which is demotivated and expensive ( considering the hikes that are given in the sector..) hence the question that I would like to pose here is “does it really make business sense , in the long term to hire such resources ,though there are obvious gains in the short run…”

So where does all of this leave us , assuming that hiring bright minds for KPO jobs is a reality and the immediacy of financial pressures will make it difficult for the employers to recognize the long term ramifications of this hiring ….. the only solution lies in a structured process of Talent Development (not a fancy word , it's different from simply training ) , so that the careers and the abilities of these young people are not eroded over time ….what do you think ? , do write in …..