Straight from the Gut

[Update] Launching: JWritings

2011-10-29T20:18:00.001+05:30

Hi Folks,

I have started writing blogs (again) by hosting my own web-site. Please point your bookmarks to http://www.jwritings.com

Thanks for all the support you have extended. Looking forward to interact more from JWritings.

Cheers,
Jayakumar

Piracy zindabad

2008-11-04T18:54:00.005+05:30

Its hardly few weeks since Aravind Adiga's novel 'The white tiger' won the man booker price. Starting this week I am getting emails from vendors like indiaplaza.in, Crossword etc. about the deals/discounts they are offering for the book. While I was pondering which deal to go with, got a huge shock when I went out for lunch today. The pirated version of the book is already available on roadside shops for 145 rupees (check photo below).

In countries like India, piracy spreads faster than the original version. When are we going to realize the importance buying original copies or start innovating around piracy?

Related article: Piracy = Opportunity

Tech entrepreneurship events in Bangalore

2008-11-01T00:55:00.002+05:30

The San-Francisco bay area of the US is popularly known as ‘Silicon Valley'. Its wealth generation story is well known, where it created umpteen numbers of billionaires over the past three decades. Companies started from the valley literally rewritten the technology entrepreneurship, thereby creating history. The amount of contributions by valley based technology entrepreneurs to the bigger world is unbelievable. Starting from Hewlett-Packard to latest Google every other company has changed the world to a larger extent. These valley based world class product companies, literally created the term Multi National Company (MNC), which is a house-hold name today. It was mainly due to the valley entrepreneurs and their ability to take risk, identifying the opportunity and tapping the correct market had made all the difference. Added to that, world class universities, access to venture capital and world class minds created the ideal ecosystem for entrepreneurship.

India is in the similar growth trajectory what US was in the 1960s and 1970s. It needs more and more technologists to take become entrepreneurs. As known to all of us, the first wave of tech entrepreneurship came in the form of software service companies like Infosys, Wipro and HCL. These companies showed that there is a country called India exist in the world map and high quality, low cost software can be delivered from there. The second wave of tech entrepreneurship is been emerging in the past four years, where young technologists primarily based out of Bangalore are joining the entrepreneurial bandwagon. Many of these emerging entrepreneurial ventures are mainly focusing on Mobility, Software as a service (Saas), Social networking, Web based services and education. With having more technology professionals than Silicon Valley, Bangalore is catching up well with entrepreneurship.

However the entrepreneurial system has got a long way to go in India. To start with these ventures would be limited by the size of the local market, which happens to be a huge challenge. Added to that access to venture capital, mature mentorship and incubation facilities are still growing up in a reasonable phase. This ecosystem plays a very critical part in nurturing ecosystem for entrepreneurship. Apart from the points mentioned above, there needs to be a set of forums where entrepreneurs, investors and technology enthusiasts can meet up and exchange their thoughts. This story talks about such entrepreneurial events and forums in Bangalore

Barcamp

Inspired by the popular ‘unconference’ concept, Barcamps are very informal, vibrant and contagious. Any individual can nominate to provide a talk about his interested topic. These ideas may or may not have any business aspects associated with it. In facts typical topics in Barcamp can be starting from IEEE specifications to Kama Sutra. This forum is conveived, moderated and run by volunteers without any financials associated with it. However many big corporatations, like Yahoo, Google, sponsor the event management expenses.
This event acts as a platform to bring the geek community in a common forum. In Bangalore it typically happens over a weekend in IIM-B. These sessions are organized under multiple tracks, where an individual can choose depending on his interest. There is no cost associated with attending the event and happens across multiple cities in India. If you are interested in latest technology happenings, review the latest gizmo in the town or interested in meeting some energetic individuals, Barcamp is the place to go.

Web link: http://www.barcampbangalore.org
Group’s link: bangalore_barcamp@yahoogroups.com

Mobile Mondays (MoMo)

The Mobile Mondays are typically are knowledge sharing sessions, focused mainly on mobile industry. Majority of discussions happens around the mobile Value Added Services (VAS), which are driven by individuals running entrepreneurial ventures to big corporations. Many mobile industry leaders like Nokia sponsor the event. This typically happens once in a month in one of the IT company premises in Bangalore, which keeps changing depending on the availability. This is an ideal forum to network with mobile industry folks and keep updated with happenings in the industry. This event is volunteer driven, with participation at free of cost. In order to keep up with the name, the discussions are organized on Mondays to break Monday blues. This is a worldwide forum, happens multiple cities in India.

Web link: http://www.momobangalore.org
Group’s link: momobangalore@yahoogroups.com

Proto

This Proto is a more mature forum with more focus on business, which operates out of IIT-Madras campus. This forum is primarily aimed at creating the startup ecosystem in India by bringing in entrepreneurs and investors in a common platform. This forum organizes road-shows in multiple cities, where entrepreneurial ventures can showcase its product or service to prospective investors. In order to participate in the forum, one has to pay a nominal amount and register their organization. This forum is operating in a non-profit mode, where the membership fee is spent towards organizing the events. The audience brings in good amount of experience in the technology business. Some companies got funded by participating in the forum.

Web link: http://www.proto.in
Group’s link: prototalk@googlegroups.com

Kickstart

Kick start is initiated by the spirit of MoMo and Barcamps, by having tie-up with IIM-Bangalore’s NSRCEL. This forum typically organizes Startup saturdays, where companies need to nominate themselves to present their plan to a set of panel. Not much information is available about the list of companies that got funded thro' this platform.

Web link: http://www.kickstart.in

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE): Bangalore chapter

This is the oldest forum created to promote entrepreneurship in India, started by Indian origin entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley. In order to participate, there is a paid membership. Very senior members from the industry offer mentorship under this umbrella to prospective entrepreneurs. For members, the TiE organizes regular sessions, where stalwarts share their experiences with entrepreneurship. Unlike Barcamps and MoMo, it is more Formal forum.

Web link: http://bangalore.tie.org/

India Layoffs

2008-10-16T15:14:00.003+05:30

The famous dialogue "welcome to the real world!" from the Movie Matrix hit my head yesterday. I was watching all major news channels covering news about Jet Airways laying off 800 employees on a single day. Clearly the global financial crisis has hit India, starting with Aviation Industry.

Going forward I see it affecting multiple industries, which would result in major job cuts, downsizing and salary cuts. For yuppy Indians, who earned five digit salaries from day one need to face the ugly face of capitalism in coming days. No amount of crying, cribbing, protesting or complaining to political party would help during turbulent times. This is not a typical governmental setup, but the reality -- let us face it! Only who has the capability to adapt will survive during difficult times. Its high time we say Good bye to double digit salary growths and frequent job hopping.

BOOK REVIEW : Games Indians Play (Guest post by Sai Madhav)

2008-10-10T17:50:00.003+05:30

This is a guest post by my friend Sai Madhav. I have been trying to pull him into blogging :)

Title: Games Indians Play review

Author: Raghunathan

Vocabulary of the book: Very good

I initially thought the book is about consumers–traders who try to maximize their rewards/returns in this pragmatic world. However, I realized soon, that the book is about social life in conjunction with psychology and philosophy.

Raghunathan believes that we, the Indians, need self-regulation in the fist-place rather than regulation by external factors (i.e. law/government). He proved that behavioral economics, Game theory etc are nothing but the phenomenon we encounter in our daily lives, from which we fail to grab positive results.One interesting aspect which the author highlights is, Intelligence is not about quick returns but maximizing rewards by sustaining relationships. His analogy between Gita and Game theory is commendable.

With the examples he quoted (about Indian politicians / executives / administrators / common people / legislators), one cannot deny the fact that we, ‘the Indians’ has to self-regulate and self-realize too!!

To mention few of them

- Overt lies by politicians , but people believe it every time

- Irregular Speed-breakers

- Crabs in the bucket attitude of Indians and Indian Government

- Circumventing law

- Traffic dead-lock at Railway crossings

- Ministers over-riding Judiciary (Supreme Court !!) orders

The excerpt that captivated my attention, in particular, is,

“Our corruption is so unique that we must be the only country in the world where even giving away money can involve graft!!Why else would we need to grease the palm of the officials in the land registration offices? “

The above fact is absolutely TRUE. The most intriguing part about land registration process in India is, despite multiple payments (the official and unofficial (understood!)), there is no stipulated rule that the same land WILL NOT be registered to others. Guess what!! Multiple claimants for the same land! Registration doesn’t verify Authenticity of documents!! I don’t understand the rationale behind the Registration process. One cannot rely on our Judiciary system either. It takes years together to solve a land dispute. Whom to blame!!! There are myriad instances in Bangalore, one being, 200 plots getting registered to nearly 2000 people.

To conclude, after reading this book, I cannot claim I am morally cleansed and enlightened, but definitely there is a paradigm shift in my thinking process!! I started self-regulating!! I hope this persists.

iPhone - Not India phone?

2008-10-09T11:28:00.001+05:30

It’s been a month since Apple's much hyped iPhone launched in India. In midst of huge expectations the product hit the market on Aug 22, with Airtel and Vodafone taking up the distributorship in India. In order to boost up the initial sales, both service provides kept their shop open throughout the night. More importantly India's 'tech' city Bangalore was all geared up to welcome this popular Gizmo, where many technologists lined up in the showroom to pickup their phone before their friends. The next day's local newspapers flashed pictures of proud iPhone owners from the city. The first say sales numbers were pretty good and everybody believed iPhone will take off in India in a big day, given its one billion population. Much against the expectations and media hype, the iPhone sales started taking nosedive in subsequent weeks and it has not even crossed 1500 handsets throughout India. It clearly proves that iPhone is a big failure out here.

According to Geoffrey Moore's technology adaptation life cycle model, every technology product takes its own cycle to create significant business proposition. To start with, the ‘Early adaptors’ (technology enthusiasts) would start evangelizing the product who contribute to 13.5% of the total customer base. In order to create a successful business, a technology product should capture the next major chunk called ‘Early majorities’, who constitute to 34% of the customers. Even though iPhone was able to initially attract certain technology enthusiasts (especially in a city like Bangalore), it has clearly not impressed Early Majorities. Given the fact that India is one of the hottest markets for mobile operators and handset manufactures, Apple clearly missed a huge opportunity by not understanding the psychology of Indian customers. This exclusive story talks about some of the major reasons for iPhone not able to take off in India.

Cost, Cost and Cost

The first shock for Indian customers came in the form of cost. Apple priced their 8 GB model for 31,000 rupees and 16 GB model for 36,100. Every Indian customer felt getting ripped off by hearing such an atrocious price, given competitive handset prices. Added to that, there are no well designed offerings around the product. It’s a well known fact that India is a land of EMIs and installments, where people even buy clothes on installment basis. Even for a city like Bangalore, which consists of knowledge workers having good amount of surplus income, the 31,000 pricing has made the phone simple unaffordable. Apple should have worked on innovative offering methods, where it could have planned on recovering the cost over a period, after catching the initial sales volume.

In developed countries like US, Apple has done proper home-work by offering the iPhone at $199 (works out around 8000 rupees) by tying up with telecom service providers. On the other hand, Per capita income of US is 10 times more than India, which demands much smarter pricing strategy. This clearly shows that there needs to similar but much better pricing strategy should have been planned for Indian markets. The cost factor is been a major factor for iPhone not taking off in India.

The 3G infrastructure

The second point is about the mobile infrastructure in India. One of the major attractions of iPhone is its ability to provide mobile broadband connectivity using 3G technology. Unfortunately in India the 3G spectrum is still under negotiation and none of the service providers are offering 3G services to the customers. The applications in iPhone (known as "Apps") become unusable with the existing low speed GPRS connectivity. Also every new iPhone has to have a brand new connection and number. For well networked professionals, it becomes very difficult to change their existing mobile numbers just to get the iPhone.

Mobile ecosystem in India

The third major point is the mobile ecosystem in India. The iPhone can be purchased only for post-paid connections, whereas more than 85% of the subscribers in India opt for pre-paid schemes. Even though about 9 million new mobile connections are added every month in India, still majority of them come under the pre-paid umbrella. Added to that, using mobile value added services has not yet caught up in India yet. Only now the mCommerce services are catching momentum and other "cool" iPhone apps would take a long-long time to catch up in India. The mobile phone is primarily seen as a device to communicate rather than accessing emails, playing network games or social networking.

Media hype

Before even the phone was launched, the India media had given too much hype for the iPhone. Many tech shows, pod casts, blogs and websites compared the $199 pricing in the US and believed that it would be offered for 8000-9000 rupee range in India. The Indian media failed to understand the mature mobile ecosystem in the US, where the service providers can afford to subsidize the handset to a larger extent and recover the cost over a period of time. In case of Indian service providers, their margins are very thin and they only make their profits due to the sheer volume of connections. They can't afford to subsidize the handset, which will eventually start eating their pockets. The whole pre-launch analysis set "too-much" of expectations from iPhone, which it clearly didn't live up to.

The lukewarm response for iPhone shows "How not to sell products in India?”. No matter how great a product or service is, it needs to be wrapped with innovative business model, especially for emerging countries like India. As per C.K.Prahlad's "Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" argument, the innovation needs to be even more profound for emerging geographies, in order to really leapfrog in terms of business proposition.

Consistently inconsistent - Auto rickshaw meters in Bangalore

2008-10-09T11:26:00.002+05:30

Inside Bangalore city, autos were supposed to be the best mode of transport in a cost-effective way. Compared to other metros like Chennai, Bangalore had a well regulated meter system in place, which was hassle free. Especially for IT employees, autos used to be used to be viable alternative to commute to workplace, back and forth. There were numerous folks who use autos to commute on a daily basis without any worries. In fact many of them preferred auto journeys, given the city traffic conditions. Added to that auto drivers were friendly and co-operative, thereby making the journey comfortable. Unfortunately over the past three to five years auto rickshaw journey has gone from pleasure to pain, and getting worse day by day. After traveling in an auto, individuals end up having head-ache, tension apart from emptying their pockets.

Based on our recent study, many of the city residents experienced set of different problems with auto-rickshaws. First problem is about getting an auto to reach the destination. Majority of the auto drivers are not ready to take in any passenger even though they run empty autos. Upon asking the place to reach, many of these drivers behave very rudely by not even responding back in a proper manner. Nowadays in order to get into an auto, one needs to spend at least 20 minutes, after asking for at least 4-5 autos that are not ready to picking them up. The reason these drivers will give for not taking in a passenger is very simple: "We will not get proper savari from the point we leave you". Given Bangalore's volume of working population and city's recent growth, its hard to believe that, these drivers will have any problems with getting passengers. However, this is the uniform response one gets by talking to any of the drivers on the way. Also one need to be happy if the driver responds properly even though he is not interested in picking up the passenger. Turning face on the other direction, murmuring in Kannada or giving a vague look are some of the behaviors exhibited by these auto-drivers, which makes an individual feel "Who is the customer? Who is going to pay whom?”

The problem gets even worse after boarding the auto. Majority of these autos don’t have proper meters and they jump like crazy. According to the latest official chart, seven rupees is charged per kilometer with minimum charge being fourteen rupees for first two kilometers. But one has to be lucky if the meter functions properly. Based on our observations for 11 kms, fare ranged anywhere between 80 to 120 rupees, whereas it is supposed to be 77 rupees. Even though meters are installed on autos they are not properly maintained. Some of them still have very old meter ,which just show up the fare information. Some show up kilometers traveled and fare and some are electronic. The latest electronic meters were supposed to be more reliable, but eventually end up showing incorrect numbers. To put in simple terms these meters behave consistently inconsistent. When auto drivers were asked more questions for the malfunctioning of the meter the response could be anything. Some accept it with a vague smile, some respond rudely, some even don't respond. Eventually the customer's heart beats faster every time they see the meter jumping in a disproportionate manner.

Here is another point that makes it even worse -- extra charges. Asking for extra charges over and above the tampered meters has become the norm these days. Some years back drivers used to ask for 50% extra, only after 10:00 PM in the night, which is no longer true. During peak hours, like 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM, asking extra has become a day-today affair. On rainy days it becomes hits the peak, where these drivers straightaway asking for an atrocious flat charge without even thinking twice. Also if the passenger is not aware of the route or new to the city, these drivers take the longer route instead of proper one. For busy working professionals finding auto, paying extra charge and reaching their workplace adds stress to their mind. Many solutions, like booking autos thro' SMS or phone were proposed, but nothing seems to work practically over a long period of time.

Which are the factors has made auto journey a pain? Is it increasing IT employees in the city? Is it increasing demand makes these drivers feel that they can demand any amount? Is the difference between haves and have-nots is increasing, which is making auto-drivers to find some way to make money from wealthy IT employees? What is the government is doing about it? There is definitely an optimization problem, waiting to be solved. At one end there is a huge need for autos and vast amount of people ready to pay proper fare. But where is the solution?

Book review: A search in secret India

2008-10-09T11:20:00.003+05:30

Author: Paul Brunton

Price: 450 INR

Understanding spiritual history of India is not all that easy. It traces back more than 3500 years in time and most of the contemporary interpretations exist in deteriorated form. The current state of affair is so pathetic -- sometimes makes one feel spirituality is worthless. At the same time, developing deeper connection with spirituality is very critical in order to achieve harmony within. Especially in the current materialistic environment, human beings have become more cynical, thereby closing all doors of self realization. In the current setup spirituality needs to be approached from a western, critical perspective where it can be learnt by applying logic. The book 'A search in secret India' is one such spiritual account written by a westerner with an analytical approach. For present day Indians it provides a simple, logical but very insightful journey into spirituality.

The book starts with the author Paul Brunton, a British embarks on a journey to India in 1930s. His interest was kindled by his Indian friend living in England, who provides him certain insights into simple living by embracing spirituality as a way of life. Upon driven by this spiritual quest he reaches Mumbai. This book covers his experiences and memoirs about India and his search for spiritual Guru. Even though this book comes under non-fiction category, Brunton's story telling style might make certain chapters boring. After landing in Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay), he first meets an magician from Egypt near the lodge he was put-up. The magician plays certain tricks thereby demonstrating his ability to make certain things vanish and come back again. This leaves Brunton with some amusement but he was not able to understand or feel anything spiritual about it.

Followed by Mumbai he continues to travel towards South. On his way he meets many holy men, some genuine and some are fake. He also sees people who can perform actions that can't be explained by physics, like turning a seed into a plant in a minute and people who are not affected by poison. Of the former he discovers to be a mere magical trick while the later remains unexplained, attributed to Yogic power. In Adayar, Chennai (erstwhile Madras state) he meets up with a young yogi, who was able to provide certain analytical perspective of Yoga. The ‘anchorite of the Adayar river’, what Brunton calls this young Yogi performs certain breathing practices, thereby he could demonstrate Brunton the ability to control heart beat, bring down the pulse, remain in solace for hours together. Then he goes on explaining the inner workings of Yoga, which starts from understanding inner meaning of breath. According to this Yogi, the life of human beings is not controlled by the years they live but the number of breaths one takes. Upon learning certain breathing techniques, explained in ancient Yogic texts, one can reduce the number of breaths compared with time, thereby increasing lifespan. Many of the mystic Yogis living in Himalayas are able to master this technique and live for many hundred years. The Yogi goes on saying that how important it is for human beings to repose and take control of their breath.

There is been quite some amount of research happening about certain species living in extremely cold continents like Antarctica and how they are able survive and live longer. The study showed that the fishes in Antarctica activate a seasonal switch in ecological strategy – going from one that maximizes feeding and growth in summer to another that minimizes the energetic cost of living during the long, Antarctic winter. The research demonstrates that at least some fish species can enter a dormant state, similar to hibernation that is not temperature driven and presumably provides seasonal energetic benefits. Scientists already know that Antarctic fish have very low metabolic rates and blood ‘antifreeze’ proteins that allow them to live in near-freezing waters. This study demonstrates that Antarctic fish - which already live in the ‘slow lane’ with extremely low rates of growth, metabolism and swimming activity - can in fact further depress these metabolic processes in winter. The Yogic methods place human beings into a similar hibernation state by controlling their breath.

With the help of Adayar yogi, Brunton comes across another sage near Chennai who never speaks. By locking himself into a small room the sage remains in 'Samadhi' (the ultimate state where a human being in completely connected with the bigger universe outside) for days together with hardly eating anything. His eyes remain frozen for hours together without even blinking, which leave Brunton with strange experience. After waiting for hours together, the sage comes to normal stage and communicates with others by writing. Followed by Chennai, Brunton travel further south and gets an opportunity to meet the spiritual guru Shankaracharya. Based on his instruction, he further goes to Thiruvannamalai, where he meets Ramana Maharishi. Initially the Maharishi hardly gives him an opportunity to meet and never talks. After many attempts he was able to interact with him. The Maharishi urges him to start connecting with the spiritual plane by asking the question "Who am I?" to himself. This leaves Brunton with surprise, happiness and fulfillment. In the later chapters he explains about some other magicians and prophets he had met in Southern India.

This book is a very good read for anybody, who wants to start understanding India in a deeper sense. It also helps the reader to start thinking about spirituality in a step by step manner.

Presentation on High performance entrepreneurship

2008-09-10T10:24:00.003+05:30

Got the link for this presentation from one of the blogs. Summarizes important aspects of entrepreneurship.

Landmark Forum - Part III

2008-09-06T20:05:00.003+05:30

Please read my previous posts about Landmark Forum (Part I and Part II) before reading this one.

In the past few weeks, I have been getting multiple comments for my posts about Landmark forum. Here is the summary of those comments:

The landmark forum provides spiritual dimension to an individual. It helps the attendees to lead a peaceful life with full of self-expression. Why are you commenting on it?
Today's world is filled with misery, where people are selling anything and everything. If we can tolerate a phone-call from a credit card salesperson, why not a spiritual/self development course like Landmark forum, Art-of-living etc?

I think the commentors didn't completely understand the point I was trying to convey. It is not my intention to criticize these organizations or courses and say they are of no use. My take is to learn, understand and internalize them and practice in real life. Also understand that 'transformation' is a journey, rather than an instant capsule to fix every other problem in life. Many problems in life are caused when individuals are not equipped with proper thought process to handle them. No doubt! These courses provide excellent tools but what is the use if an individual it not using them, but end up preaching it by becoming a salesperson? Here are the two classic examples I have recently come across.

Case 1: An ISKCON devotee

Recently I met a fresher, who just got into the IT industry after finishing his post graduation. Upon talking with him I learned that he is a devotee of ISKCON. We discussed many things about purpose of life, origin of birth and death, religion, philosophy, spirituality, spiritual practices, yoga and Indian way of living. We exchanged wonderful thoughts for close to two hours before the discussion took a different turn. This 23 year old all of a sudden started saying 'Krishna is the ultimate god and nothing is more superior to him'. He went on criticizing other Yogic methods and spiritual gurus by saying they have not come in a proper generation (in his words -- 'guru parampara') and don't have rights to teach spiritual practices to anyone. Followed by that, he started pitching about ISKCON and compelling me to come for weekly meetings etc.

Case 2: An Art of living devotee

In another occasion, I met colleague of mine in one of the company meetings. Some time back I got introduced to him in one of the art-of-living classes. He immediately started of saying ‘so-and-so’ new course is happening, which can transform my life completely. In spite of me not showing interest, he went on saying the glory of the course, how good the teacher is, how quickly one can bring change in his life etc.

This is exactly what I mean by salesman mentality. First of all I don't see how an individual organization is the superior than others. As mentioned in my previous post, I respect them for the reasons they are created. That doesn't mean that every other thing in the world is shit. Second, I am not sure how the so called 'transformation' can happen in few days or hours of attending a course, satsang or a bhajans. Every other spiritual method, ideology, socio-political movement has taken years to bring in changes.

Gandhi might have got his 'call' when he was thrown out of the train in Pietermaritzburg, but it took 22 years of belief, hard work, commitment, visionary leadership to make the civil rights movement in South Africa as a success. He never told his ideology is the best and started selling/forcing on others. Paramahamsa Yogananda, one of the great spiritual gurus took 17 years to attain transformation in his spiritual journey by meeting his guru Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. It took 35 years for Varghese Kurien to envision, think and build 'Amul -- the taste of India'. It took years for these great people to transform themselves and people around them.

According to me transformation is a journey when an individual embarks with a great vision. It is neither one-minute-magic nor selling an ideology. It is about understanding self, becoming a magnet and making others becoming followers. It is always good to take up a self-development course (like Landmark) or getting associated with an organization (Art-of-living, ISKCON etc...) but don't make is as a sales pitch or think only their ideology/organization is the best in the world.

Cinema and Politics in South India

2008-08-27T18:44:00.005+05:30

The association of cinema and politics has got a long history in Southern India. The political landscape of southern states (especially Tamilnadu and Andra Pradesh) has been significantly altered by actors turned politicians. The Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi joined the league yesterday by launching his political party 'Praja Rajyam' from Thirupathi. Almost all the major news channels covered the party launch. He literally swept the media by storm with attractive statements about various issues faced by people of Andra Pradesh. Nothing new -- yet another film star joining the party!

Cut to 1970s! The Tamilnadu state was primarily governed by Congress party, which was systematically toppled by the Dravidian moment. It was a significant change for the people of Tamil Nadu, which provided a platform for film stars enter into main stream politics. Primarily the Dravidian moment was launched by Periyar in 1925 to restore 'self respect' among lower caste, which formed the lower portion of the society. A powerful yet simple medium was required to reach these uneducated, rural and poor people to proliferate the Dravidian ideology. Initially it was people like Karunanithi, who fueled the Dravidian ideology by writing revolutionary thoughts in form of movie dialogues. Even today nobody can forget movies like 'parasakti' (first movie of the legend Sivaji Ganesan) which planted these thoughts among common people. However these dialogues always acted as a 'back-end' and needed a powerful front end to mobilize the mass.

That front-end came in the form of M G Ramachandran, who was popularly known as “MGR”. These “three letters" literally became a chanting mantra of every poor in Tamilnadu. After becoming a popular hero, he became the primary vehicle to promote Dravidian ideologies. It was sent to a common man in multiple forms including dialogues, songs, jokes packed with his own “MGR” style. He was the first person successfully tied the cinema with politics in a very significant way. In almost all movies he played role of "savior-of-poor", who helped them to fight against a Zameendhar for their basic rights, thereby raising their self esteem and self respect of the poor. During pre-independence times multiple forms of dramas (puppet-shows, street plays etc...) were used as a medium to communicate the need of independence. It was very critical because not everybody understood the deep ideologies of Gandhi and his Satyagraha. An illiterate farmer living in a village can connect to these dramas much better rather than listening to radio or reading a newspaper, which was too “high-fi" for these folks. They needed a very a simple form, which they can connect with and internalize the message.I call it as “version 1.0" of media playing significant role in altering the political landscape the country. Then the "version 2.0" came in form of the movies, to communicate the self-respect Dravidian ideology, mentioned above. Whatever may be the future, one cannot rule out the impact of these movies among people of Tamilnadu. It has caused such a deep impact that the Dravidian parties are ruling the state for the past 40 years. It was a well planned act by Dravidian politicians to reach out the people.

On the other side, not everybody really understood the real ideology behind the dialogues delivered by the hero (read it is MGR). They started seeing MGR as their "savior" who will lift them from the miserable life they was leading. He was admired as an undisputed super-hero. This image gave him the much required popularity, to mobilize the people, attract them and make them vote for his party. He was so powerful that, in spite of splitting from his parent party DMK, people voted for him just because it was “MGR's party”. He remained in power for 10 years (from 1977-1987) till he died. I can draw similar lines with N T Rama Rao (NTR), who was the popular "Krishna" among the people of Andra Pradesh. Upon moved by the question “Sir, we have treated you like a God but what have you done for us?" by one of the audience, he started his Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Similar to MGR, NTR was seen as their savior. The lord Krishna image gave him a huge leverage.

Now, why am I talking about MGR and NTR in 2008? The reason is simple -- Even today uneducated, rural, poor people see movie stars as their "saviors". It’s nothing but "version 3.0" of the South Indian cinema! If it was MGR and NTR in '70s and '80s it is Rajinikath, Vijayakanth, Chiranjeevi in 2008. Nothing else changed except time. The educated, urban, middle-class gets ruled out in this whole saga mainly because they won't vote. No amount of globalization, urbanization, economic policies, media, and Internet has changed the basic psyche.

If Rajinikath can become rich by selling milk in the movie ‘Annamalai’ people still believe that he can do the same in real life; If Vijayakanth fights and kills many militants in Kashmir (that’s what he does in most of his movies) people believe that he can provide solution to the long-debated Kashmir issue; If Chiranjeevi can play the role of a professor, who fights against corruption in the movie 'Tagore', people still believe that he can cleanup the whole political system; Even today people believe that cinema and real life are same. They are living in their own world, which is far different from what the media projects as "modern India".

I have high regard for Version 2.0 politicians of Tamilnadu, because they had a strong ideology behind them. Their moment was very powerful, mainly fight against societal backwardness. They played significant roles in various Dravidian parties apart from cinema. What do these 3.0 actors, turned politicians have done? Nothing! What ideology, policy or societal ground work they have done? Nothing! All they have done is very simple -- played modern day super hero roles and created a fan following.

The launch of 'Praja Rajyam' by Chiranjeevi and the support he received shows that the vote bank has not changed in the past 62 years of independence. Instead of taking individual responsibilities, everybody wants their "super-hero" to come the save their lives like he does in the movies. And the system we have built up is having such a fundamental flaw that it has still not provided the basic knowledge and education to an average citizen. Generations have changed, years have gone by -- but many of us still live in a "dream" world not even knowing the basic difference between cinema and reality. All we have is big dreams, but no actions!

BOOK REVIEW : Go Kiss the World

2008-08-23T20:22:00.005+05:30

Author : Subroto Bagchi

Price: 399 INR

Related posts:

Book review: High performance Entrepreneur

Book release: Go Kiss the world

The first book of Subroto 'The high performance entrepreneur' primarily depicted various aspects of Entrepreneurship. If the first book is all about 'work' the second one 'Go kiss the world' is all about 'life', thus completing the 'work-life' hemispheres. In the year 2006,Subroto delivered his famous speech to the students of IIM-Bangalore on the same title, where he shared some of his life lessons with management graduates. This book is an extension of that speech covering many aspects of his personal and professional life. This book has couldn't come at a better time where India is going through a huge transformation. Thanks to economic policies and availability of talent pool, the number of jobs for young professionals is growing at an exponential phase. Well paid global jobs are getting poured into the country in every industry including -- IT, ITES, Finance, Law, Services and Manufacturing. Its really amazing to see professionals walking with six figure monthly salaries, buying houses in their early twenties and getting global exposure. At the same time these young professionals (which includes me) need to learn and understand the importance of values and critical real life lessons. In this context, Bagchi shared some of his life lessons in the book, which turns out to be very for a young professionals who are ready to take on the world.

Initial chapters of the book talks about Subroto's family members and his early life. As his father's job had many transfers, he ends up spending time in many of the semi-urban/rural places of Orissa. He vividly shares about tiny but beautiful anecdotes of his early life and some of the lessons he learned from his parents and elder brother. As a town brought up, I was able to connect much better with them. After completing his graduation in political science, he started his career as a lower division clerk in the state government. He fondly recollects his first boss Khuntia babu, from whom he learned how to open a file. Upon not knowing where to go and what to do (typical issue faced by any person from town), he starts looking for a better job. After multiple rounds of interview he gets a job as a management trainee in DCM, which was a premium job during those days. After facing some adversities and internal politics, he quits the job and takes up an entry-level sales job with HCL by taking 40% pay cut. It was totally a different industry and job where the sales job teaches him hard realities of life. However HCL played a significant role in Subroto's life by providing an entry into 'less-known' IT industry.

After working for a few IT companies in sales and marketing function, he takes early plunge into entrepreneurship along with few few friends by starting up a company called Project.21 in early 1985. The objective of the company was to provide computer training to working professionals from many companies. Even though the company was able to generate cash in the initial days, it gets into problems from multiple angles. In fact this is what happens to many entrepreneurs when they don't have holistic understanding about building a business. After three years there, the company comes to a grinding halt after which he decides to get onto some job where he can expect some stability and a decent growth. The main turning point comes in the form of his job with Wipro, where he served for 10 years. As his initial job provided him shop-floor level experience, Subroto was able to clean up the sales function of Wipro and quickly raise in the corporate ladder. He explains some of the exceptional persons he met in Wipro and learnings from each one of them. The subsequent assignments in Wipro takes him to the US, where he builds an 'on-demand' R & D lab from the scratch.In pinacle of his career with Wipro, driven by internal "call" Subroto starts Mindtree along with his like-minded individuals. The subsequent chapters talks about how he and his team went on building Mindtree, providing leadership during adverse situations (during 2000/2001 downturn) and taking up the role of 'Gardener', inspired by servant-leadership.

The beauty of the book is not about knowing Subroto's life and his career growth. As mentioned in the prologue of the book, he used his life as a canvas to share his significant learnings with external world. As a young professionals many of us think that a job from a company X or salary of Y or position of Z will take where we want to go. In reality the success or happiness is not all about a job, position or money but the amount of learning and value system an individual carries along with him. That way the biggest reward in life is the journey itself. Without understanding this, many of us crib, worry and complain about many things in their jobs. How many of us in the IT industry even think that the salary we draw is at least 10 times more than what our parents earned even during as their last month salary before retirement? How many of us thank the veterans who built the IT industry in early 90s where the western world didn't even know where India existed in the world map? How many of us are able to see the difference between job and career? What is the amount of learning happens at the workplace, on a daily basis? How many days did we spend not complaining about our bosses, company or a colleague? It takes a big heart and humility to enjoy, learn and make a difference to the world we live in. As young professionals we need to learn a lot from veterans like Subroto and live a complete life.

In a way this book plays a significant role in planting thought process mentioned above.Instead preaching (which the young professionals hate anyway), Subroto used his life as an example and shared many things. In many places I felt a chord hitting my head heavily, thereby opening up many avenues to think. I would like to take a moment and thank Subroto for sharing his life lessons openly with the bigger world. I am sure it will make a difference to many people. I can proudly say I am one among them!

Live Green

2008-08-18T15:14:00.001+05:30

One of my colleagues prepared this slide set about Global warming. Any thoughts?
Live Green

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: environment green)

Hey Ram

2008-08-17T16:53:00.003+05:30

On Independence Day, one of the TV channels aired Kamal Haasan's ‘Hey Ram'. I have a long, transformational and emotional journey with that movie. Way back in 2000 I watched it during my college days along with one of my friends, upon his compulsion. I felt it was a total junk, where I commented that Kamal put together multiple documentaries to form of a movie. I hardly understood the movie and cursed my friend for wasting my time and money. After all, spending 14 rupees for a movie ticket along with 6 rupees for the transportation (share-auto) was a big deal in 2000.

Cut to Bangalore. It was the year 2005 (Oct 2nd, Gandhi Jayanthi to be precise) and the same movie was shown in Sony channel. I was alone at my home as my room-mate had gone to office to fix a customer facing issue. As no other movie was aired during the same time, I started watching the movie with more concentration. By 2005 I was mature enough to understand the world better and read few chapters from Gandhi's 'My experiments with truth'. I was able to connect to the movie much better this time and watched each and every scene with full attention. By the end it, the message of the movie hit me very hardly. I am not a very sentimental person, but tears started rolling out of my eyes without even me realizing it. Vow! What a wonderful movie about a great person.

For people who are not aware about Hey Ram here is a brief about the movie. It is basically a fictional story made by Kamal Hassan which revolves around India-Pakistan partition, violence that shook the country during partition, plot behind Gandhi’s assassination and raise of Hindutva ideology promoted by Veer Savarkar. Kamal plays the role of an Archeologist (Saket Ram Iyengar) who's Bengali wife Aparna (Rani Mukerjee) was raped and killed by their Muslim servant. Upon disappointment and anger, Saket starts killing every other Muslim in the neighborhood. In the bloody, violence hit Calcutta streets; he meets a Hindutva activitist Shriram Abhayankar (Atul Kulkarni) who plants Hindu fanatical thoughts in Saket's mind. Abhyankar also tells that Gandhi is the whole reason for Muslims getting undue advantage in a country, where Hindus form 85% of the population. Then the movie takes multiple turns where Abyankar and Saket were chosen to kill Gandhi. Due to an unexpected accident, Abyankar becomes bed ridden and Saket moves to Delhi to do the job. The main turning point happens in Delhi, where Saket meets his old Muslim friend Amjad Ali Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) in a communally tensed area. The series of incidents and Khan's death transforms Saket and confronts that blood-for-blood is an incorrect ideology. There on Saket becomes a Gandhi follower and lives reminder of his life by following Gandhi's principles. The last 45 minutes of the movie (transformation of Saket) is really a wonderful piece to watch.

Even after 62 years, many Indians feel that Gandhi's ideology and non-violent way of getting independence to India is incorrect. Many still believe that he played significant role in making Indians as cowards, by not making them fight against the British face to face. They also believe martyrs like Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekar Azad did the correct thing by killing some British folks. Especially after 'Rang De Basanti' these martyrs have become superstars among young Indians. While I am not discounting the sacrifice made by these great martyrs, I feel Gandhian way is the most appropriate way to get independence for India. Here are the some of the reasons.

First, India is the most diverse country in the world. There are multiple languages, customs, religions and rituals are followed in various parts of the country. It’s impossible to unite them in the name of language or religion (which was in case in other revolutions happened in the world) other than Nationality and non-violence. If not for that method, Gandhi would have failed to unite the whole country. Taking the rebellious path and shooting somebody would have resulted in short term benefits but it would not have resulted in a democratic India. Every other country which got independence with the help of the gun couldn't sustain them beyond certain point.

Second, India was ruled by a lot of kings in the past. The country was divided into many pieces during different rulers. The colonial approach of the British once again kept the country under their rule for more than 200 years. From there India matured into a powerful, vibrant, constitution based democracy today. According to me, this change is really huge which required a properly planned transition. If not for non-violent approach, it would not have been possible. During the same time, Pakistan took the dictatorship approach and everyone knows the pathetic political situation even today. Even a country based on Muslim religion couldn't sustain itself with dictatorship, let alone diversified country India. It would have been torn into pieces, which would have resulted in a civil war. Gandhi's non-violence sowed seeds for a mature approach.

Third, Gandhi's approach was inclusive. It included women, who were not accepted in the society for centuries together. By making them participate into nation's independent movement Gandhi, made them realize their self worth and esteem. Apart from women, he also brought the downtrodden Harijans, who were treated like animals by denying basic rights for thousands of years. If not for this inclusive approach, we would have still not given basic voting rights to women and continue ill-treating Harijans even today. I am not saying all the problems against women and Harijans are addressed, but Gandhi's thought process set stage for reforms and changes to be brought to address every other sectors of the society.

For me understanding Gandhi is a continuous journey. From debunking Hey Ram in 2000 to adoring the same in 2008, I have come a long way. Looking him and his ideologies at periphery might not make sense but deep thoughts do clear many things about him. It is his leadership and non-violent movement made India what it is today. Movies like Hey Ram play a significant role to pass on the message of Gandhi to future generations.

Infosys and TOI

2008-08-14T14:03:00.004+05:30

Not sure why every other news about Infosys covered by TOI. Some samples:

MTR won't cater to Infosys, Wipro anymore

Hardware, Software and Parenting

The first one talks about MTR pulling out of providing catering services at Infosys and Wipro. And I clearly remember another news in TOI (not able to get the link) when MTR was given the contract in Infosys. My question is simple -- whats the big deal? There are many other companies in Bangalore, where cateres change every now and then for many reasons. Does it worth publishing it? These things are not necessarily unique about Infosys.The second one is even funny. It talks about a intranet portal launched at Infosys for providing parental guidance to their employees. This also just another gimmick from TOI. Many of the MNCs operating in India have much advanced counseling and networking platforms regarding many life issues like stress management, maintaining work-life balance, parental issues etc. In fact my organization has appointed 1 to 1 help for providing such services.

I have high regard and respect for Infosys and Narayana Murthy for the work they have done so far. Every middle class educated Indian is proud of the achievements by Infosys. That doesn't mean that anything and everything they do should be glorified. What difference it is going to make if I get to know that MTR is not serving in their employee centeen? More than Infosys, it shows the cheap news that TOI is publishing to fill-up their business column by using tags like "Infosys, NRN".

In future I wont't be surprised if TOI has a news titled "Infosys provides computers to every employee" :-(

Long live TOI and their excellence in journalism.

Related link: In search of a good newspaper

Its not the critic who counts

2008-08-12T12:18:00.002+05:30

Came across this wonderful quote from Andy's blog. Its so true in Indian context, where there are more talkers (critic) than doers!

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt

"Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

On IRCTC

2008-08-04T17:36:00.002+05:30

Last week I was watching 'Innovation at work' program in CNBC-TV18, which covered some case studies done in India on the field of innovation. It was interesting to see IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd) as one of the cases, which showed how they built the online reservation system (http://irctc.co.in) as 'incremental' basis. Started off in the year 2000 with mailing the printed tickets (i-tickets) to customers, IRCTC has come a long way by offering multiple services like e-ticketing,package tours,budget cab booking and season tickets. Check out some their list of achievements here.

Yesterday I was traveling back from my native place to Bangalore in a newly introduced train. In order to confirm train timings I called 139,which turned out to be pleasant experience. There was a well designed IVR system and the support staff was providing a professional quality service in the local language. Upon digging more I learned that IRCTC has outsourced support functionality to a private firm.

Public sector firms have a long way to go, but it was nice to see professional service provided by them.

Related post: Indian Railways : The sleeping 'Giant' ?

IT returns filing

2008-07-31T16:41:00.004+05:30

This year's IT return filing process went like a breeze. The IT department has put up wonderful online FREE filing system, which worked perfectly. Promptly received ITR-V by email, in form of read only PDF document. In order to get it stamped, they opened up additional counters in Institute of Engineers building (opposite to Indian express, near Shivaji Nagar) exclusively for private companies (check the picture below). Ample amount of space,volunteers and guidance was available to help people, who are filing returns using printed forms. Within 5 minutes I was able to get the acknowledgment from the counter allocated for my organization.

In case you have done it yet (BTW, today is the last day for filing) here are the steps to file it online:

Open the site https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
Register for user (give the user id also as a PAN number).
You will receive the registration mail.
Login to the site with the credentials provided in the mail.
Go to downloads menu.
Download ITR1 from Downloads.
Fill out all the details in the ITR form.
Validate each page General1, General2, TDS (fill either 21 or 23)
Click on Generate XML
Check the summary and click on 'Save XML'(which will save in the same location where the excel was there).
Open the site, click 'Submit return'
Upload the file and click on Upload. (Don't select the check box here, as it requires the Java run time updated)
You will see a message that it is successfully submitted.. if not error then go to (g).
Go to my profile menu -> my returns.
Select '2008-2009' and click 'Submit'
Click on the link 'Click here' to get the submitted ITR form or they would have already sent the copy to you.

On private security agencies

2008-07-31T14:49:00.003+05:30

Following serial bomb blasts in Bangalore, security has become top concern for all IT companies. While its true that the blasts are not targeted on them, companies are not taking any chances. However all IT companies have private security agencies (on contract) to take care of the facility for 24 hours. I have my own questions about these agencies.

Who are they?

When many of the IT companies (especially MNCs) started their operations in India, they wanted to ensure their global security policy to be followed here as well. Sniffing this as an opportunity to make a business out of it, many people started jumping into security contract without having proper background information. Most of these agencies hire ex-army men (read it as retired army men) as their chief security personal and started providing services to companies. In order to meet a contract requirement of a company, they need to provide X number of people, which they were falling well short of. So these folks in turn go to rural or semi-urban areas (For example: places like Hosur, Dharmapuri etc.) of India and started bringing people who don't have any idea about what security profession is all about. These 'new hires' are provided a crash course (about their job), two uniforms, one pair of shoes and paid 3000 rupees are salary. They get food from the IT company they work for (left overs in the canteen) and get a chance to 'enjoy' amenities like mineral water, telephone, 24x7 supply of coffee/tea, air condition which they would have never imagined before. As this is primarily a labour market, attrition rates are very high. For example, in my apartment complex we have hired 3 contract security people I get to see a new face every month. Every time I need to use different language (Kannada/Tamil/Telugu/Hindi) for communication as they are from different states. In a way the security agency setup is similar to the way Indian IT services companies operate. Hire one high-caliber technical guy (ex-army men mentioned above),surround them with 10 freshers from any private engineering college and bill for 11 headcount to the client. Get money in dollars and pay peanuts to employees. Vow! As the nature of law goes, you get what you give to your customers.

Billing rates

Let me come to the billing now!

As mentioned in one of my posts, I am a member of apartment association,primarily handling the planning and budgeting. As of today we pay 24 rupees per hour as a contract amount to the security agency. Here is the simple math:

Billing amount per day/person = 576 (24 x 24)
Total billing amount/month = 17280 (576 x 30)
For 3 security people = 51840 (17280 x 3)

I am sure you will be surprised the amount of money spent on these agencies. They also have a separate billing rates for corporates which depends on the level, where ex-armymen will be billed at higher amount. The 17280 rupees per month is very high by any standards. Probably it is more than what an entry/fresher level software engineer takes home in many of the software service companies.

Is it really worth it?

The real problem is not with billing the amount, but the value they bring in. In fact, its true for any services business (be it with servant maids, car washing or writing quality software program). In my opinion -- its just not worth paying such a huge amount for these security people. Let me give some examples.

The office building (where I work from) it quite old and there was a fire breakout about 6 months back. It was caused due to the malfunctioning of transformer, which created smoke throughout the building. Power went off and electric circuits started burning in a few minutes. The fire alarm didn't blow and we all started running out of the building to save ourselves. Fortunately nothing happened to any employees. But the interesting site was to observe these security person's actions during the fire breakout. None of these junior security people know exactly knew how to operate the fire extinguisher (it took about 15 minutes) and they forgot to switch off the main power connection. Fire spread quite fast, damaging few equipments inside the building.
Sometimes I go to office very early (say 6:30 AM) after dropping my family members in railway station. Every time I see the security people sleeping peacefully in the sofa kept in the entrance of the building. The one who is sitting in the reception also almost in sleep with barely keeping his eyes opened. Without showing the ID card, I have entered the building without any issue.
In spite of keeping 3 security people and paying them 51840 rupees to the agency, my helmet was stolen. I forgot to lock as it was broken and left it on the bike seat itself. When I complained about this incident to their agency owner he promised of a reimbursement (in a casual manner), which has not reached me till today. Will he reimburse a life if it is lost due to their carelessness?

If they are not able to protect a helmet or put off a fire on time, how can we expect them to save lives? We cannot blame these guys because they are just making a living out of the job without knowing the real importance of their job. The real culprits are the agencies, who make tons of money by contracting them to IT companies, apartment complexes and shopping malls.

Verdict

I remember a quote my mother used to tell me when I was growing up -- "When you have anything in abundance you don't realize importance of it". Its so true with India. It has a billion population and we don't realize the importance of people's lives. Counteless number of people die every day, and nobody gives a damn about it. With recent bomb blasts in the country, every city needs even more strict vigillance and security intelligence. Unfortunately we can't expect it to be provided by these security agencies in the current situation. It is high time for corporates to wake up and cleanup the entire mess.

Piracy = Opportunity

2008-07-27T11:38:00.004+05:30

We all know how omnipresent piracy has become in India. For example, I came across the following advertisement (check out the picture below) board in Chennai for refilling inkjet cartridges and laserjet toners.

Even though refilling is not legally approved by printer manufactures, its an organized industry in India. Check out their website for more details and check out their interesting caption "Almighty gives only one life, but ASHCOM gives 6 lives", thereby saying that they can smartly refill the cartridge 6 times before getting rid of it forever. In a country where regulations doesn't exist or taken for granted, its impossible to expect people to buy cartridges/toners every time they run out of ink. The piracy is not restricted to cartridges alone. In Bangalore, everybody would have seen roadside bookshops having pirated copies of "best selling" books (recent addition: Go kiss the word by Bagchi) for 50-100 rupees.

And I don't need to talk about software. Almost all the people I have come across use pirated version of Windows Vista or XP, just after it gets released. No matter how much amount of Microsoft applies, Indians override it with even smarter ideas. Last week I was talking to one of my close acquaintances, who said his Windows XP was throwing up a warning message saying it is a pirated copy and asked him to install a original version. Many of his friends faced similar problems and they found a hack for fixing it.By pulling out a install file from original XP and placing it in a particular directory, the warning message can be put off. My close acquaintance sincerely got that file from one of his friends (note the point: when it comes to breaking the rules Indians help each other, not other way) and made XP as a 'original version'. Kudos to great Indian thinking!

For quite some time, I have been thinking of why we Indians are not giving due importance to original versions?. Is it because the way we are wired? Should the regulatory systems need to be blamed? Are we bad people? Not necessarily. The answer is simple -- we are not ready to pay for anything upfront if it is costing more than what an individual can afford. In a country with per capitia income is about 35,000 rupees, how can we expect anyone to pay 10% of it for purchasing original version of Windows XP or 1% for original version of a book? At the same time we cannot ask the educated knowledge workers to buy original version just because they have more disposable income. They constitute only 2% population, who also tend to go with the trend. Even if they buy original versions, it cannot be a viable business proportion for companies.

According to me, piracy is an opportunity. More piracy means people want a particular product desparetely. As they are not able to afford it, they take the piracy route. In order to address the problem we don't need better products but innovative business models. The focus should be given on how to make things easily affordable by taking the "micro-consumers --> micro-payments" model. For example, take Indian telecom service provides. They have pre-paid plans for as low as 30 rupees (micro-payment), which is working out very well for customers (micro-consumers). With the sheer scale in sales, service provides are getting their profits. In fact India is the fastest growing mobile market in the world. If the rate plans are in thousands, it would not have been successful.

A similar approach should be taken for other businesses (book publishing, selling software etc..) to make it sustainable. Piracy should be seen as an opportunity rather than a curse. I am sure there is a huge opportunity, yet to be tapped in many areas.

Bottom of the pyramid : Aravind eye clinic

2008-07-25T22:04:00.004+05:30

I was watching some videos about 'Bottom of the pyramid' idea by C.K.Prahlad. One of their case studies was about Aravind eye clinic, which was amazing. Check out the video to get a 'eye opening' business model.

Embedding 'word of mouth' marketing inside products

2008-07-25T21:47:00.002+05:30

One of my friends just got back from US and gave me a pack of stride chewing gum, which he bought there. More than the gum, their cover design fascinated me, because it embedded excellent word of mouth marketing messages (check out the pictures below).

Here are some of the interesting things I have learnt:

They have smartly used caption -- "The ridiculously long lasting gum",by mentioning "Good for you, bad for us".
Excellent sense of humor in their messages (even the cover cuttings include smile), while conveying the marketing message indirectly.
Asking customers to participate in conversation by logging new ideas into their website
Overall its a very interesting design, thus provides a reason for people to talk (crux of word-of-mouth marketing).
They have not spent anything extra to spread marketing message.

Embedding marketing messages along with a product is a great idea. Next time you buy a product (be it a chewing rum or gadget) watch out for its cover design, manuals, stickers and additional information they provide. It might convey a whole lot of marketing messages.

Check out this link to see more humorous stuff!

Serial blasts in Bangalore

2008-07-25T18:43:00.001+05:30

After finishing a casual phone call with my mother at 2:15 PM, I opened up NDTV's website to catch-up with afternoon news. I couldn't believe my eyes to see big,bold,black letters which read "FLASH : SERIAL BOMB BLASTS IN BANGALORE". By the time I informed my family about my safe state, panic has set inside the office. Almost everybody was on phone finding about their friends, spouce, children, parents and informing that they are safe. Upon reading the news further, I leant that all of them were low intensity blasts, primarily aimed to threaten people. Started off from office early (at 3:30) to avoid traffic jams caused due to panic. The traffic was normal and the city is very much functioning except the affected areas.

I have been living in this city for the past 7 years and it always provided me 'home-away-from-home' feeling. Without any question, I have developed a emotional bonding with this place and it feels really bad when terror has struck the city. Its not as bad as Mumbai blasts, but it had left panic in the mind of Bangaloreans for sure.

The 'Garden city' will no longer be the same.

The Art of listening

2008-07-23T10:53:00.001+05:30

Times of India do publish some good articles once in a while. I came across one this morning. Check out the article titled 'The Art of listening'.

This article couldn't have come in a better time as I am learning this wonderful and powerful skill in a slow but steady phase. Even though the article has used terms like 'manager' and 'leader' in multiple places, I feel its very important for every individual to to listen to others to have a better understanding about with their spouce, children, boss, business partners, investors, customers and perspective employee/employer. In fact, many problems in life can be easily solved by developing this skill. For the past few weeks I am applying this in my personal and professinal life. Trust me -- it has yielded excellent results so far. Don't think listening is 'just another management fad' and rule it out.

Here is another related article by Bala:

You heard me but can you listen?

Marketing : According to Dilbert

2008-07-17T12:30:00.003+05:30

Came across this interesting picture which reflects my current thinking.

May be Dilbert put is too bluntly calling Marketing as a 'fraud'. In reality (based my real time experience) it doesn't matter how great a particular product/service is. It is all about how well it can be marketed and sold to customers. Business/Entrepreneurship happens when the customer signs a cheque and nothing else is more important than that.

My dear idly Vada

2008-07-17T12:27:00.002+05:30

My better half is out of station and I am back to bachelor life for few days. Its been quite a while since I had breakfast in roadside Darshinis. This morning I stopped by one such Darshini to have idly-vada combo. Got a shock when the shopkeeper returned 3 rupee change in return for my 20 rupee. Man! A plate of idly vada costs 17 rupees, that too in a roadside Darshini?

I am still better off as the 2-3 rupee raise doesn't pinch my pocket much. But what about a daily wager who is earning 50-100 rupee a day? 12% inflation means he may end up eventually skipping a meal? Added to global oil price raise, the local inflation is hitting Indians big time. What happened to UPA's 'Aam Admi' promise?

In search of a good news paper

2008-07-16T22:49:00.000+05:30

I have been living in Bangalore for the past 7 years but not able to find a good daily newspaper of my taste. During my school and college days I used to read Hindu, because I had much more time with me even though Hindu's political viewpoints doens't match mine. After coming to Bangalore I was not able to continue with Hindu, mainly because it was looking as if I am reading Chennai edition. Their business section was totally hopeless -- primarily focussing on manufacturing/auto industries, which I don't have any idea. Added to that almost all the job ads,events and happenings were Tamilnadu and Chennai centric and very less about Karnataka and Bangalore.

In order to feel more connected I had to choose TOI, which turned out to be a total crap. Other than some of their supplimentaries (Times Wellness, Ascent and Education times) and Sunday columns by Sashi Taroor, I don't see anything useful about it. Their daily supplimentary 'Bangalore Times' carrys semi-nude pictures almost every day and other Bangalore specific initiatives (Bang-on-bangalore, Times-of-voice etc..) didn't create even a small change to the City. Nowadays I hardly spend 5 minutes just to browse thro front page and business sections.

Not sure about Deccan Herald and Vijay Times though!

Book release : New Age Of Innovation

2008-07-16T22:24:00.003+05:30

Last Friday there was a book release function held in Crossword Bangalore. Famous strategist and professor C.K.Prahlad and his colleague M.S.Krishnan launched the book and spoke about what new age of innovation is all about. For more details check out their website.

As businesses are growing globally, it becomes critical to provide a great 'experience' to each of their consumers. Every consumer is unique with their own choice and providing great experience comes with having proper offerings. This is what they call 'N = 1', where N denotes the unique customer experience. In order to provide a great experience, companies end up sourcing resources from multiple sources, which they call 'R = G'. Prof.CK quoted the famous example of Apple iTunes business model, built around their revolutionary product iPod. Every user of iPod has their own choice of music (Classical, Rock, Pop etc..) which is unique to him/her (N=1). In order to provide N = 1,Apple sources music contents (R) from many sources(G). The R = G phenomenon, is caused by connected global networks like integrated supply chain, social networking and on-demand applications.

After the brief introduction mentioned above, authors answered some of the questions asked by audience about US recession, cost effectiveness of Indian firms, innovation etc. Overall it was a well planned session (spanned for 45 minutes) with about 50 focused audience. (check out the picture below) I learned that there was a separate business session hosted in the evening, which I couldn't attend.

Got a copy of the book signed by the authors. Will read and post the review later. Anyways, many book review blog posts are pending, which includes:

Search in secret India by Paul Brunton
Satyagraha in South Africa by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Political history of Pakistan by Pa Raghavan (Tamil)
Go kiss the word by Subroto Bagchi
Business at the speed of light by Bill Gates
Astronaut Sunita Williams by Aadadhika Shama and S.Seshadri

Give me a missed call

2008-07-09T15:42:00.003+05:30

Found a very interesting sponsored 'no parking' board this afternoon.

It reads: 'just give a MISSED CALL to xxxxx and get information about Bangalore (picture below)' In their website the caption is mentioned as 'A new gateway to Bangalore just a missed call away' :)
This is a really cool marketing technique, which generates instant word-of-mouth.

The corporate lingo

2008-07-02T15:20:00.004+05:30

I live in a apartment complex, where most of them are working in the IT industry. We have formed a committee to take care of various aspects like resident grievances,moderating accounts, maintaining equipments, planning budgets and organizing events etc. We also appointed a operations manager to execute these activities in a planned manner. The committee has various positions (President, Vice-president, Secretary etc..) which in most of the cases held by folks who are in entry/middle level management positions in IT industry. These folks use 'corporate lingo' in every other opportunity they get. Recently I came across couple of interesting scenes.

Scene 1: Operations manager's resignation

Last Sunday Mr.President of the association called for an 'urgent' meeting to announce the resignation of the operations manager. Here is what he has to say:

"This is to inform you that our operations manager X has resigned from his current position. He got such a lucrative offer that its impossible for us to match it. Looking from his career prospective it is a good decision and he will grow well in his career by taking this decision. I have accepted his resignation and asked Jayakumar (me), Gupta and Krisha to work on the transition. The last working day of X will be July 5th 2008. Let us wish him all the best!"

I was stunned to hear such speech and thought "Am I sitting in company meeting or apartment
association meeting?". I know X (operation manager) personally and he is a 55 year old ex-central government employee. He opted voluntary retirement, took up the current operations job just to keep him occupied and make some decent money. What career aspirations or growth he can have at this age? Who can offer a high-growth career for him for looking after mundane things?

Scene 2: Discussions regarding rain water harvesting

Couple of months back we had another meeting to discuss the possibility of installing rain water harvesting system in the complex. During the same time we were purchasing water from tankers as our borewell levels has gone down significantly. Here is what Mr. Vice president has to say:

"How much we will be spending for installing the system? By installing this how many meters the ground water will come up? How much amount we can save by stopping external tankers? Can you provide me the overall Return-On-Investment (ROI)?"

This was a bumper to me! It was exactly sounding the way my project manager asks questions to engineers by keeping the commonsense in a corner. Doesn't he know that rain water harvesting is a community initiative? Even if he don't know can't he ask for more details? Why should he ask typical "manager" questions and quickly jump into ROI?

According to me 95% of things in life and work is all about applying commonsense. One need to understand 'what-to-apply-where' and 'one-size-doesn't fit-eveyone'.As I mentioned above Mr.President and Mr.Vice presidents are a mid level manager IT managers primarily doing people management. They got used to asking same set of questions in their workplace, which got
carried away to apartment association meetings as well. If at all they would have applied basic commonsense,those questions would not have come. As time progressed, the 'corporate lingo' got into their blood.

Will they ever learn the importance of commonsense?

Bill gates : End of an era

2008-06-28T12:16:00.002+05:30

Microsoft's chairman and founder Bill Gates retired from the company yesterday. The 52 year old will Gates spend major portion of his time for philanthropy along with his wife on their Melinda Gates foundation. With his major stake in Microsoft, Gates will serve as a non-executive chairman with one day a week spent for Microsoft. According to me this truly marks end of a great era with great achievements and contributions. As a Harvard dropout, Gates wore multiple hats as an Entrepreneur, Technologist, Strategist and a great business thinker. He also set a great example for thousands of young entrepreneurs throughout the world that an individual with his dream can significantly change the world around. Hats off to this great person!

My memory travels back to my hostel room, where we used to have intense debate about Microsoft and Bill Gates. Many of my friends used to argue that Gates has stolen the idea of Windows (from Apple), built software with loads of bugs, monopolized the software market etc. While those arguments cannot be completely ruled out, I like Bill Gates mainly because he is a great business man. Here are some of the reasons why I like him a lot.

To start with he spotted a great opportunity of PC revolution. He was able to envision the computing shifting from mainframes to personal computers. With the invention of micro-processors, Intel and Microsoft still continue to rule the PC market, what Andy Grove calls as 'Wintel' (Windows + Intel) phenomenon in his famous book 'Only the paranoid survive'. He was able to see what others were not able to in an era which was dominated by big players like IBM. Second, he built a great business model around the Windows operating system. By positioning Windows as a platform, he empowered many application developers to run their software on Windows platform. This literally made Windows as a "de-facto" standard in the application world. As engineers, we often think that a great technical idea is what it takes to build a great company. However in reality it is good business model wrapped with aggressive marketing strategies is what makes a successful company. Microsoft just did that! I personally know many of the startups failed mainly due to their inability to market and sell their products not because of their engineering ability to build great product. Third, he has set example that young passionate entrepreneurs can indeed make a difference to the world around. He continues to be a role model for many of the entrepreneurs across countries and industries. He build a 44 Billion dollar business from the scratch without any Venture funding or pre-defined ecosystem for PC. In fact Microsoft has build an ecosystem around its products.

However the future ride for Microsoft (minus Gates) will not be all that easy. It is facing multi faceted competition from Linux (in the enterprise server space), Google (in the internet and applications apace) and Apple (in the entertainment space) apart from other big players like IBM, Novell and Sun micro systems. According to 'Built to last' (more on this book later) authors visionary companies are all about having the adaptability to change and win the test of time. For example, Sony's first product was a wooden rice cooker but today they are into consumer electronics. Hewlett-Packard was an electronic instrument company but today they sell printers, PCs and servers. Only time will tell if Microsoft will be such a visionary company with next generation of products and leaders.

I remember watching the NDTV's Pranoy Roy interviewing Bill Gates (along with Narayana Murthy) in 2005. Here is an interesting question and Gate's answer to that:

Pranoy Roy: To get back to ESOPs and motivation. But before we get to ESOPs, you have achieved so much, you have changed the world. you have changed your life, how do you keep yourself motivated to work on and on and on?

Gates: I think there are several things. First of all is I love my work, i get to work with smart people, it is a field that constantly changing, every couple of years people say, you know, some new company is gonna put you out of business, and we get to show people "No, not this time".

How long they will be able to say "No,not this time" ?

BOOK REVIEW : The three mistakes of my life

2008-06-28T00:36:00.003+05:30

This is the third book by Chetan Bhagat.

I have never read fiction ever since the reading habit caught into me. Chetan's Five point someone (FPS) changed my habit by taking me back to my good old college days. With similar expectations I bought this book and I would say I am fairly happy with the book. The most interesting point about Chetan is the canvas he uses to paint the whole story. He used business, cricket and religion as a background in this book (similar to IIT in FPS).

The story starts with three friends Omi, Ishan and Govind belonging to lower middle class family in Ahmadabad. These folks are perceived as not-so-smart kind among the neighbourhood. With his passion towards building business Govind pulls in his buddies to start a shop, selling cricket accesories inside the temple's shopping complex owned by Omi's uncle. Ishaan (the local cricket buff) offers free coaching tips to customers, thereby creating a good reason for people to visit their shop. As the business grows they face multiple problems in form of Gujarat earth quake, Godra riots and local politics. Added to that author adds more spice by introducing the love story between Govind and Vidya (Ishaan's sister). As I am passionate about business, I just can't stop appreciating the Govind character. As every step he thinks like a typical businessman with a dream of building a big business. To start with, he "leverages" Ishaan's cricket expertise and Omi's contacts to setup the shop. Followed by that he creates a growth plan for the company by booking posh shop in forthcoming mall. In order to bring in more revenue he thinks of multiple product offerings thereby bringing in maths coaching and stationary selling into his shop.

The story then takes multiple turns with many events and characters. These folks find a 13 year old boy named Ali who is a naturally gifted cricket player. Ishan gives coaching for Ali to make him a national player. Luckily they get an opportunity to visit Australia and take part in cricket coaching camps for a week. Somehow the chapter about Australian visit doesn't fit well with the overall story and I found it boring to read thro' those chapters. Finally the story reaches the climax with post Godra riots, which affects these folks pretty badly. I don't want to write much details about it as it is not fair on my part.

Overall it is a pretty decent book for timepass.

Related post: Book review : Five point someone

A great customer experience

2008-06-27T23:52:00.002+05:30

The reason behind any successful company is very simple : customer satisfaction.

With global competition increasing day-by-day, companies are going beyond just satisfying customers. Companies are focusing to provide nice 'experience' to their customers by taking care of very small things. Recently I came across one such experience.

I have been using Airtel's mobile connection for the past five years. This Tuesday (24th June) marked one more year of my existence in the earth. I had some a query regarding this month's mobile bill and dialed 121 (Airtel's customer support) for clarifying it.Upon choosing the basic option "Information regarding your account", an automated message promptly said "Airtel family wishes you a very warm and happy birthday". It was a pleasant shock for me to hear that message just by choosing the basic option. Within seconds, the automated software could recognize my number, match with my date of birth and play appropriate voice message.

Such small things won't cost much but it left an ever lasting experience in me. Man! this company cares for their customers.

Do you have any such experiences?

Book release : 'Go kiss the world' by Subroto Bagchi

2008-06-13T11:42:00.003+05:30

Followed by his famous book 'The high performance Entrepreneur', Mindtree chief gardener Subroto Bagchi has released his second book titled 'Go kiss the world' yesterday. The book release function was held in Crossword book store in Brigade road and I was present there. Subroto formally released the book by handing over the first set of copies to Sudha Murthy, Girish Karnad and VG Siddhartha (see photographs below). Followed by the release, he read some chapters for the audience followed by a Q & A session.

The phrase 'Go kiss the world' was told to Subroto by his mother when she was in her deathbed. These simple yet powerful words have become the mantra for Subroto's life who has become a successful Entrepreneur, coming from a very humble background. In this book he has used his personal life as a canvas to provide some of the most imporant life lessons to budding young professionals. I have bought a copy for myself and skimmed thro' the first chapter yesterday. Found is pretty interesting. Will write the review once finish reading it. Followed by the book reading, Subroto answered some of the questions from audience. The questions ranged from attrition in IT company to building emotional infrastructure in organizations.

It was really a useful evening,worth spending time with such great people.

Reflections on Indian Premier League (IPL)

2008-06-09T17:05:00.002+05:30

I was supposed to post this entry last week. As I was not well, it got delayed by a week. Hope it is not too late to write about IPL.

The first edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) concluded last week with Rajastan Royals emerging as champions. The Royals played excellent cricket in each department as a team with very few super starts. Of course one cannot rule out the great leadership provided by Shane Warne to these young lads. In spite of having many of hard-hitting players like Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi, Herschell Gibbs the Hyderabad Deccan chargers finished last in the tally. This once again proves my belief that I don't need a team with super heroes to do great things. All I require is a committed set of young players, who can perform well as a team.

Ever since IPL was announced, it paved way for lot of media coverage and controversies around it. Many called it as a total money spinner with cricket given a backset and auctioning players was considered as if the player is selling himself to the sponsor. As many of the league teams were owned by Bollywood film stars and corporate tycoons, the initial hype was phenomenal. Given the concerns above, one should agree that IPL has been a very successful league ever conducted in Indian sporting history. I also strongly believe that IPL has brought some unique advantages to cricket and India. Here are some of the positives IPL has brought:

No state or region based teams

This is FIRST and BIGGEST shackle that IPL has broken. Even though teams were formed in on city basis, players came literally from anywhere and everywhere. For example: MS Dhoni from Bihar played for Chennai, Sreesanth from Kerala played for Punjab kings XI, Rohit Sharma from Mumbai played for Deccan Chargers Hyderabad. Of course one may argue that these players were taken in auction by respective league owners, but the diversified mix it created among players and states was really wonderful to see. For India it’s very critical to look at things beyond state. In my opinion IPL has played a significant role in breaking the state oriented mindset. People watched cricket with true spirit for the game forgetting state/regional feelings.

Entertainment and sports (Not sentiments and emotions)

For years together, Indians were getting too emotional behind two things: Cricket and Cinema. Stones were thrown; Effigies were burnt whenever a player didn't do well in a particular match or series. On the other hand players were given superior status when they played well and their form was good. Added to that, tensions used to run high whenever India Vs Pakistan matches were held (especially in Sharjah) with media quoting them as ‘Its more than cricket’. People were taking cricket far more seriously than it really deserves.

The maturity of an average Indian cricket fan is pretty low. I spent years thinking why Indians are not able to think cricket as a game and consider it as an entertainment. IPL has taken the first step towards installing maturing among cricket fanatics. Every team had players from various countries and states, which made people, push their sentiments down. In my opinion, it is a significant breakthrough to make Indians think cricket is just a game.

Shorter time duration

As cricket gained undue importance among Indians, they started wasting lot of time watching cricket matches. This might make cricket fans angry, but that’s reality. I have seen many instances where people bunked classes, stopped studying, took leave and sat in front of TV for days together to watch cricket matches. If I think practically, it has wasted a lot of productive hours of the whole country. The T20 matches and the IPL match timings (after 8 PM in the evening) made things much easier. People can catch up with matches after their work/class hours mainly during dinner time.

I have had similar experiences watching some of the NBA matches when I traveled abroad -- come back from work, watch a match and go to sleep. At the same time every match used to be extremely thrilling, which made them worth watching. I got the same experience with IPL matches as well.

New players, more options

The IPL has opened up a new channel for lot of young players to prove their talent. This tournament brought players like Swapnil Asnodkar, Yusuf Pathan, S Badrinath and Shaun Marsh into limelight thereby increasing their chance of getting selected in the national team. Apart from that, IPL also helped some of the out-of-form players like Suresh Raina, L Balaji, Shane Watson and Mohammed Kaif to prove their class once again to their selectors.

Even if a player is not making into the national team, he can play for IPL and make a living out of it. This might altogether change the way sports is perceived as a career in India. Many middle class parents might start allowing their sons to make cricket as a career.

Overall, IPL experience was really great!

Related article: Four cheers for IPL by Shashi Tharoor

The letter from Akhil Chandra Sen

2008-06-02T17:31:00.003+05:30

Check out my post on Toilets in Indian trains before reading this.

Yesterday I was in Bangalore railway station to receive my parents. As I was wandering in the waiting room, found the photograph (see the pic below) of the letter written by Akil Chandra Sen. Small initiative, big difference!

Bilingual Way

2008-06-01T15:15:00.002+05:30

This morning I was reading June edition of 'Business world' and found an interesting article titled 'Bilingual Way'.

The article talks about a survey conducted by National University of Education Planning and Administration. The survey shows that 74% increase in the number of enrollments from 5.47 million students in 2003-2004 to 9.51 million in 2005-2006 -- in upper-primary sections of English medium schools across India.

The article goes on saying that the results has come at the cost of regional languages like Marathi, Telugu and Kannada and suggests that its time we moved away from the 'either or' debate and lookat bilingualism as a real alternative for education.

The BW article has given statistical evidence, which is in sync my previous blog post.

Pseudo Indians

2008-05-31T23:37:00.003+05:30

Even today Indians are living a pseudo life!

Be it color of the skin or language, we tend to 'ape' whatever the westerners do. Let me give some examples:

Fair is beautiful

When it comes to beauty in a person, it is often equated with how fair his or her skin is. Yes! It is unfortunate but a reality. Check out this advertisement from fair and lovely site. A girl, who is a theatre artist gets no audience because she is not having a fair skin. By using fair and lovely cream, she gets fair skin in 8 weeks. Followed by that she becomes a great artist. What is the message conveyed? Be fair, Be beautiful and be famous. When parents are discussing possible proposals for their son/daughter, the color of the skin becomes one important parameter for shortlisting a person.

In case of a person not having a fair skin, it is described as 'weatish complexion but beautiful'. Apart from being beautiful, fair skin is considered as rich, superior, posh and civilized. On the other hand, if any person is not fair, he/she makes all the effort in to become fair and join the bandwagon. They visit beauty paurlors frequently and make facials, apply high quality soaps,herbs,creams regularly to make them look fair. Read our advertisements, TV programs, matrimonial sites and observe our discussions about beauty. Almost all times we equate beauty with having fair skin.

When any person (especially girls) not having a fair skin, they have difficult time in getting married. I have numerous examples many of my friends and their relatives who's marriage proposal got rejected just because they are not fair. We seem to have developed an aversion towards having weatish/black skin. Why do we think so? Why can't we accept the fact that various factors (like genes, food, climate etc) determine one person's skin color. Why do we always try and make attempt to be like 'somebody else'?

English is great

I have had horrible experience when it comes to language. We appreciate English and given elite status to it. Especially in cities like Bangalore, English has become the default language of communication even inside houses. Parents are happy to see their kid communicating in English fluently and take pride in declaring 'My child doesn't know to read or write Kannada'. I am taking example of Kannada, because I live in Bangalore. I am sure that applies to other cities and languages as well. I am a Tamilian and started conversation with one of my friends in Tamil when I met him in office cafeteria. He was so annoyed me talking in Tamil and kept on replying to my questions in english. I don't understand the logic behind people feeling 'inferior' to communicate in their own mother toungue, that too inside our own country.

Let me top it up with some more stuff! I have seen many NRIs and call center folks using the western 'accent' when talking to fellow Indians. No matter how many years one lived abroad or take trainings,the basic accent cannot change completely. But why try talking with western accent? That too against fellow Indians? What are they trying to show up? On the other hand people living in town send their kids to English medium schools and spoken english classes to make sure that they are not left behind. From the childhood they are taught that talking fluent English something they should practice for becoming 'great'.

According to me, English is just another language, but spoken widely in the world. Given India's diversity its impossible to have one language for communication.While our diversity has its own advantages, we can't design a system like China or Japan, where the local language is used for every other purpose. As a country India is getting its competitive advantage mainly because of its English speaking population. I am writing this blog in English and use it for all my official communications. I also believe that English should be taught from primary schools level to make children connected to the bigger world.

That doesn't mean that I should glorify it and feel inferior to talk my own language.I shouldn't hide the fact that I am a Tamilian, in fact I am extremely proud to be. If I am having a 'thick' accent (especially pronouncing words like temple, program) thats my nature. Let me accept the fact and carry on. Let us embrace multi lingual education and make things better. We should learn from countries like Singapore, who have successfully implemented it.

Great Indian 'Copy + Paste'

The amount of pride we take in copying western things is really awful. Let me start with a simple example. During her recent visit to Mumbai, my sister got me a night pant (see picture below) for 200 rupees. The brand name says 'Adidas'. But there is a small white label named 'poonam garments'. What does it imply? We will create Adidas from poonam garments? Don't the garment manufcturer don't even have basic sense before copying the global brand name and shamelessly placing his company name just next to it? Is he so smart to make a Adidas pant for 200 rupees?

Starting from the night pant, we copy anything and everything from the west.Piracy is omnipresent and we don't spare anything: Company brand names, books, TV reality shows, movies, dress materials, music, computer software, MP3 players. In fact one of my friend's blog post was copied (from blogspot) and published in suleka.com with minor word modifications.

Apart from copying from others, we feel happy and proud doing it.

Anything from foreign is great

For years together, Indians believe that anything from foreign country is great.

Whenever I travel abroad, I get multiple requests from friends and relatives to carry one of the items like digital camera, laptop, iPod etc when returning. The main reason for asking this is to own 'something from foreign country' and show off to others. Even small things like shampoo, soap, shoes, chocolate, pen, notebook bought from foreign country is perceived as great.

We give more value to a support engineer living in USA rather than a core R & D engineer scratching his head in India. Any software engineer is of some 'worth' provided he had spent couple of years outside India. Nobody bothers about what type of work one does and how much real value he adds to the overall system. Just because a person is a 'foreign return' he or she is great. I personally know some community, who go abroad so that they can demand more dowry.

Thanks to IT industry,many foreign nationals visit India on business. Even if an entry level engineer from USA visits their counter parts in India, he gets a royal treatment. I have seen ten people trying to help the 'foreign' engineer to fix his laptop power supply. The same courtesy, helping nature just flies off when it comes to fellow Indians. Nobody gives way for ambulances; Nobody stops even for a minute to help during a road accident;

Conclusion

In the past 1500 years, we have not done any great innovation except a very few. We are trying to find some of the above mentioned factors (like fair skin, English etc..) and derive glory out of it. This glory is short lived and not sustainable. Indians need to shrug such feelings and work towards creating something real, innovative and original.

As long as it is not happening, Indians will continue to live a 'pseudo' life.

Startup city event in Bangalore

2008-05-25T12:38:00.003+05:30

Yesterday I attended 'Startup city' event organized by SmartTechie magazine. More than 40 companies showcased their products and services in the event. There were many interesting keynote addresses and panel discussions held as a part for the event.

The event was kick started with inaugural keynote by Ashish Gupta from Helion Venture partners. He spoke about various stages/milestones of a startup and challenges at each phase. His venture capital firm has invested in many of the early stage entrepreneurial ventures. I have heard Ashish's pod cast some time back, but it was a good experience listening to him live. Followed by that there were some panel discussions with participants from companies like Microsoft, Sun, Amazon etc. I was not that interested in listening to them, primarily because they perspective changes (or rather looks out of phase) when big company's senior executives start talking about entrepreneurship.

The real cool thing was the product demos from many startup companies, who have built great technology products. Almost all of them have good product, have already raised capital (self/angel/VC funded) and gained initial traction with customers. I personally know the promoters of companies like Sloka Telecom and NGPay and it was nice meeting them, with their products in deployment stage.

It was 11:45 and I got back into the auditorium for the concluding keynote address by Rajendra K Mishra. He is an entrepreneur, turned activitist (by winning the Lead India campaign organized by Times of India). He is currently working on various private-public-partnerships and leading 'change India' campaign. He shared his entrepreneurial experiences in his keynote address, which was really scintillating. He started his first venture of selling imported American trailer houses to Japan. He came across crazy issues but successfully pulled it off. Followed by that venture, he built three ventures and made successful exits.

Then he started discussions about politics and the role of educated, urban Indians in that. He re-iterated that middle class Indians are the major culprits for the current state of affairs as majority of them won't vote. Added to that he explained some of the initiatives he has taken with politicians, bureaucrats, and corporates to make things better. If not for anything, he has got a great communication and convincing skills. With his clear headed thoughts, he will make a difference for sure.

Compared to other entrepreneurial/startup events, this was by-far a mature one I have seen. Loads of importance and discussions happened around raising capital, marketing strategies and acquiring initial set of customers rather than talking about "that great cool idea". I was also able to see and connect with folks from Open-coffee-club and Startup Saturday.

Last but not the least! The growth of event organizers (SmartTechie magazine) is been amazing. I have been associated with some of them from the time they launched their Bangalore edition in 2005. Initially started off with career workshops and tech career advising, the magazine has grown well over the years by covering various other aspects like entrepreneurship and professional networking. I had written couple of articles for them some time back. Hope will write some more in the near future.

It was a nice event packed with loads of energy, enthusiasm and passion. The first half of this Saturday was really worth spending out there.

My favorite WOMMA examples

2008-05-23T12:37:00.002+05:30

After reading Andy's word-of-mouth marketing (WOMMA) book, I was thinking my favorite WOMMA examples. Here is the list came right on top of my mind

Example	Word-of-mouth strategy
Bata chappals	Pricing their products with ‘95 paisa’. (Rupees 199.95, Rupees 99.95 etc...). It has created hell lot of talking among consumers and even today. If not anything Bata has provided an interesting reason for people to talk about them. Costs nothing!
Virgin Mobile	Increasing customer base is the top priority of Indian telecom service provides. Virgin mobile has come up with their new idea of ‘paying for incoming’. Nobody knows about the intricacies yet. But it has already generated enough word of mouth among people by making them curious. Check out more details here.
Gmail	When they started it, only gave accounts to power users with some specific number of invitations. It created curiosity among others to get a Gmail ID. Added to that, cool features like unlimited storage created excellent word-of-mouth. Most of my friends are using Gmail today and hotmail, rediff, Yahoo are totally out of fashion.
Landmark forum	This is the best WOMMA example I can ever think of. For the seminar series, they won’t do any advertisements, campaigns, posters etc. Every person who takes the course, in-turn becomes an ambassador thereby bringing more people for future seminar series. Check out this link to know more about the course.

What are your favorites?

Toilets in Indian trains

2008-05-16T16:21:00.002+05:30

Found this interesting information in Bangalore majestic station's waiting room:
Akhil Chandra Sen, a passenger wrote the following letter to Indian railways in the year 1909.

I am arriving by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much
swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance
that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with 'lotah'
in one hand and 'dhoti' in the next when I am fall over and expose all my
shocking to man and female women on platform. I am got leaved at Ahmedpur
station.
This too much bad, if passenger goes to make dung that dam guard
not wait train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honor to make big
fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report! to
papers.
During those days there were no toilet facility inside trains and the letter made railways introduce them. Many times think 'what difference it is going to make?' and start accepting problems. On the other hand, when issues are raised against concerned people, solutions will start emerging.

BOOK REVIEW: Word of mouth marketing

2008-05-12T21:26:00.003+05:30

Author: Andy Sernovitz

Price : 24.95 USD

How smart companies get people talking?

As an engineer it’s quite possible to think everything from a technological perspective. Most of technologists think what if they have some ‘cool’ product they can build a business around it. In reality only 15% of overall product cost is spent towards engineering the product. Remaining amount goes for marketing, sales and support functions. No matter how much ever better the product is (in terms of technology, cool features, price and performance), if it is not marketed properly it will be a failure. Most of the technology startups fail not because of their technical expertise, but mainly because of their inability to market and sell the product. In fact, marketing determines the success or failure of these ventures.

Coming to marketing, quite some numbers of methods were invented over the years. For a startup/entrepreneurial venture (which is of my interest), its hard to invest heavily on some of the methods (like advertisements, campaigns, celebrity endorsements etc...) as it will cost them dearly. So what is the cost effective, yet most powerful marketing strategy startups can afford? The answer is 'word-of-mouth marketing' (WOMMA). Especially if you are trying to sell a consumer product/service to retail customers, WOMMA is the way to go.

In his book author Andy Sernovitz, introduces to some of the easy, yet very powerful WOMMA techniques. To start with, he defines WOMMA as 'Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for that conversation to take place'. It’s all about making Consumer to Consumer (C-to-C) marketing happen. There is nothing more powerful than an existing consumer getting another customer. Added to that, it comes for FREE. In core WOMMA is all about building trust with existing consumers and getting more business with help of that.

To start with, it’s critical to understand the power of the end consumer of this era. Thanks to the invention of internet and mobile phones information flow has become seamless. More than a sales pitch, consumers will take their decision based on what their friends, family or some review site says. Just think of examples in your real life about how many times you have taken certain decision (like buying a mobile phone, car, laptop or even real estate) just because it was recommended by someone.

So, how to make the WOMMA happen? The author introduces to four basic rules of WOMMA which are: Be interesting, Make people happy, Earn trust and respect and Make it easy. Then he goes on explaining how to create each of the above mentioned things. Basically any consumer talks about a product/service to his friend/family members mainly because of three reasons:

They really like the product/service
They want to feel good
Feeling connected with that product/service.

At the same time not every consumer will feel the same way. The challenge lies in identifying and helping the consumers to spread the word. The author goes on saying that WOMMA has had a far greater impact on businesses than what we really think. In the next few chapters the author introduces some of the ideas to generate word of mouth. With a good product, great customer experience and consistently making them happy WOMMA can be multiplied in no time. But the end results are really stunning.

Then the author introduces five Ts of word of mouth marketing (Talkers, Topics, Tools, Taking part and Tracking) and goes on explaining about how to go about executing each of these Ts. In each chapters he gives some tips like maintaining a simple website, saying thank you to the consumer, writing blogs, participating in forums, consistent present in the internet, making the recommendation process easier, free samples, leveraging social networking sites, giving cost effective goodies etc. He also emphasizes how important not to do any sales pitch, which will bring down the impression of the company.

I heard from my MBA friends that marketing is a theory subject and people find it very dry. In this book author Andy has made all my perceptions wrong by providing easy step-by-step practical approach to WOMMA. In fact after reading this book, I have become a big fan of WOMMA and Andy. I am following his blogs regularly, where he provides very easy but powerful real life examples.

If you are involved in marketing job this book is a must read. For entrepreneurs, who are bootstrapping their business, this book is a real treasure.

Related links:

BOOK REVIEW : Marketing Mayajalam

BOOK REVIEW : Crossing the Chasm

My experiences with the chasm

No more Indian apples?

2008-05-10T21:32:00.003+05:30

How much globalization is good? Can we allow global players to come in essential areas like agriculture, food and fruits?

For quite some time I am not able to see Indian apples (especially himachal pradesh apples) in many of the retail shops like Reliance Fresh, More and Food world. Almost all apple shelves are occupied by Australian and Washington apples.

This news item claims that Washington apple is looking India as one of the potential markets. What will happen to Indian apple producers? Will they be able to compete with the global players or foreign companies will dominate the market?

Voted for the first time

2008-05-10T14:16:00.004+05:30

Karnataka state assembly polling was held today. I got an opportunity to vote for the first time. Fortunately the election commission announced that citizens can a use a list of identity proofs (apart from electoral ID cards) for voting. For the past two weeks I tried to get the electoral ID cards, but no success. Long queues, screwed up computer system, incorrect entry of my name in two different wards made my life miserable. In spite of spending more than 7 hours I was not able to get the card. Luckily, using the PAN card and voter's slip I was able to vote today (see picture below).

I have been staying out of my hometown for the past 10 years. Initial 4 years went for engineering education. After that I came to Bangalore and tried to get my name enrolled into the electoral list for quite some time. During last assembly election I was not able to get proper contact information and missed the chance. This time I made it a point to do it without fail. Fortunately things were much easier this time as I am staying in an apartment complex.

I was just thinking the power we have in a democratic setup. Every individual has got equal opportunity to choose their leaders and determine the fate of the country. Unfortunately educated people are not realizing it at all. They read Times-of-India, talk English, eat pizza, hang out in coffee-day, and crib about everything starting with bad roads. When it comes to voting they feel its waste of time. As of 11 AM, only 8% turnout happened in Bangalore urban.

Here is the live update from CNN-IBN's H R Venkatesh:

11 am: The Election Commission's statistics have come in for 9 am. Bangalore Urban has seen 8 per cent turnout, areas under the BBMP region have accounted for 10 per cent and Bangalore Rural has seen 15 per cent. Rural Karnataka has seen 20 per cent turnout. The signs are encouraging in rural areas, but pretty disappointing in urban Bangalore. Let's hope things pick up!

New Horizon Media raises second round of funding

2008-05-07T14:08:00.001+05:30

Chennai based New Horizon Media (NHM) has raised the second round of funding from Beacon India Private Equity Fund. I have been following NHM company for the past three years. They are mainly into regional language publishing. To start with they published few non-fiction books in Tamil and went on publishing in English, Children books and Malayalam. Check out more details from their website.

Coming to their books, I have read about 6 books published by NHM. Check out the book reviews of Marketing Mayajalam, Charlie Chaplin which are published them. Almost all the books are priced less then 100 rupees, which very much affordable for an average Indian consumer. Added to that paper quality, cover design and bigger fonts makes the reading as a pleasant experience. I have also listed to one of their audio books about 'Emotional Intelligence' and found it useful. Stay tuned for reviews of remaining 4 books.

Areas like book publishing is one of the fragmented areas in India today. By bringing in professional approach, NHM folks are able to attract venture capital for the first time in publishing. They have already built a great brand in Tamil publishing industry and I am sure they will go places.

I wish Mr.Badri and his team all the very best for touching 'New Horizons'.

My previous post about NHM: New Horizon Media - A 'positive' media company

Why Indian technology companies are not innovating?

2008-05-06T12:20:00.000+05:30

This is a million dollar question I have in my mind for a long time. We are good in enhancing, fixing, maintaining and supporting a product. Apart from that I haven't seen any great innovation happening in the technology space.

I expressed my frustration to one of my mentors and he replied 'Western companies don't want Indians to innovate. All they want is to get the work done at cheap cost by paying for engineering bodies'. He also added that the local management in majority of the MNCs are clueless about innovation, because they are not expected to do it. Whatever effort an individual makes at the bottom of the hierarchy will eventually end up in vain.

This morning I came across a very interesting quote from Atul Chitnis's blog, which made my day: Here it goes:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
--Upton Sinclair

Education and Entrepreneurship

2008-05-03T13:06:00.000+05:30

Last week Star Vijay (Tamil TV channel) organized a debate about the role of Education in Entrepreneurship. It was organized as a part of 'Neeya? Naana?' (You? or Me?) program. They have called for two groups for the debate. The first set was un-educated (hardly passed 10th class) and successful entrepreneurs. They have accumulated more than a crore wealth thro’ their business, starting from scratch. The second set was the educated, working, middle class people. Following are some of the interesting points from the discussion.

First, the un-educated folks have more appetite to take risk and start on their own. This is mainly because they start doing business as a survival, so there is less to loose. The educated folks get into the comfort zone quickly. This has made them risk-averse. In fact most of the successful entrepreneurs like Dhirubai Ambani, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Azim Premji don't even have college degree but were able to build business emphires. The combination of passion, vision and strategy has made them successful more than what formal could have thought them.

Having said that can we completely rule out the role of education for entrepreneur's success? No. On the other hand educated, professional people are very necessary to scale up the business. They bring in unique skills for business execution, which is very critical for the success of the venture. Many of the un-educated entrepreneurs in India fail here because they lack to see the importance of education. They remain small and medium size entrepreneurs (or even self employed status) rather than building next generation professional companies.

Second, the educated community gets into the 'comfort zone' very quickly due to the job they do. Big company, stable salary and 9-5 job schedule makes them averse to taking risks. As the time progresses, the notion of entrepreneurship diminishes. They end up working for a person or a firm almost all their work life. Also many of them end up doing a job which is totally not related to the education they had. In the debate, many of them accepted that they are not satisfied/fulfilled with the job they are doing.

Third, the un-educated entrepreneurs still have agony of not getting proper education. Most of them agreed that they have heavily invested in their children's education by sending them to good school and foreign universities. Also they expressed that they still feel that they might be cheated by the educated people in the business life.

Finally the debate concluded that each set (un-educated and educated) brought their own strengths. The former has passion, whereas the later had the skill to execute the passion. In a globalized world both are very important to build a successful venture. I am not able to get the complete video of the debate. For people who can understand Tamil, please check out the promo of the debate below.

It’s nice to see such mature debates happening in regional TV news channels. In a way Star Vijay has set a new trend among Tamil channels. Recently they have started a first ever talk-show named ‘ippadikku rose’, which is anchored by a transgender.

Related blog post:
Abundance mentality and Entrepreneurship

Customer un-friendly SMS

2008-05-03T05:52:00.000+05:30

I was trying to book a bus ticket thro’ redbus.in by logging in the travel details into their site. After few minutes got the following SMS:

We have received your request. We will call you if we can arrange a ticket for you. For an urgent requirement you can reach us at our call center.

I found this message very irritating due to two reasons. First, I don’t want to hear “ifs” and “buts” when I am approaching for a bus ticket. Second my travel requirement is urgent. In fact most of the cases it is and getting bus tickets (especially over the weekends) is pretty difficult. On top of all where is the call center number?

The mobile advertising or status messages should be short but convey proper information. Unlike the one mentioned above.

How logical we are?

2008-04-30T18:31:00.000+05:30

Its interesting to observe the way we Indians think!

We apply logic and build complex software. But forget to apply basic common sense in many aspects. Following are some simple examples from Bangalore:

Nobody talks about laying proper roads to Bangalore International airport before opening it. The airport construction is complete now. But it takes more time to reach the airport by road than the flying time to Chennai. Out of the blue another set of activists, workers, media talk about 'What to do with HAL airport?'.
The majority of the road traffic (during the office hours) is due to knowledge workers traveling to ITPL and electronic city. Yet the proposed metro rail route is not covering both the places.
Always IT employees complain about not getting autos to reach their homes. Auto drivers complain about not getting 'savari' all the times. More demand, more supply! But still there is a problem.
How come one third of cubbon road can be declared as 'auto lane', when autos are not contributing to 33% of traffic ?
When an American engineer visits Bangalore counterparts, 10 engineers will come forward to help him setup the laptop (without even asking). When the fellow Indian IT engineer asks for help,all of a sudden we become inflexible, rude and self-centered.
The road digging work never stops even in MG road. Multiple departments (Telephone, PWD, ISPs, BWSSB and now the great metro) will 'plan well' and 'dig sequentially'.

Do u have any more examples?

Landmark Forum - Part II

2008-04-25T17:56:00.000+05:30

I understood quite a lot of things by observing people who attend landmark forum. Primarily the educated, upper-middle class, urban population attend this and they don't have any clue of what life is all about. The materialistic life style has taken toll totally, which makes them live a miserable life with wrong perceptions, notions and beliefs. Suddenly they realize that the situation it out of control and start thinking about 'one-stop' solution for all their problems.

They look for one 'thread' on which they can hang on for rest of their life and forget their worries. The start identifying the thread by attending course like: Landmark forum, Art of living, Ramdev yoga and then getting associated with them. Other examples include: Kanchi ashram,ISKCON, Saibaba ashram, Aurobindo ahsram, Amritanandamayi etc. In a way all these organizations and courses teach almost the same universal values like: humility, responsibility, community service, treating everybody equal, selflessness, service etc.

In my point of view, its absolutely fine to learn any of these courses. But the problems starts when people go overboard and start indulging themselves. This indulgence turns into addiction after some time and they become mobile sales person for the organization they are associated with. They start forcing their friends, families and relatives to sign up and promise that all their problems will be solved in a jiffy. When such communities becomes bigger in size it results in scandals, murders and controversies.I don't want to take up any specific examples here as everyone of us has come across some or the other experiences.

Here are my conclusions:

No course, religion or ashram is bad. Everything is created with a good purpose of making things better for humans.
It is also OK to get associated with any of these 'threads' and learn their courses. But becoming sales person is really dangerous
No course can bring in 'transformation' overnight. It takes years of focus, commitment, dedication and perceverence to even get a feel of real self transformation. For normal human beings it is better to learn a course and start implementing the techniques in real lives.
Forcing others to take up any course or join a group is not correct.

Landmark forum – Part I

2008-04-24T17:10:00.005+05:30

It’s been 6 months since I attended Landmark Forum in Bangalore. For people who don't know what this is all about please check out this link. I have mixed opinions about the course. Let me share my first set of thoughts about this course.

Let me explain the course structure first. It’s basically a three day plus one evening course primarily focused on personal transformation. Each day starts about 9 AM in the morning (sharp) and goes on till 11 PM in the night, with grueling sessions. Each day has only very few break in between, that too at odd timings (11 AM, 3 PM and 7 PM). A well trained ‘forum leader' will be leading the course for about 400 participants. He has a pre-defined courseware and speaks non-stop for all the three days. These leaders are extremely smart people and ruthless in expressing their viewpoints. The landmark education forum has internal methods of identifying, coaching and grooming these leaders.

Coming to the course contents, it’s completely a westernized therapy session. They give a different perspective of life, more from the psychological point of view. The forum leader will encourage participants to come and share problems they face in relationships, career and life. He will listen to those problems and provides different perspective about solving those problems. In between these conversations the leader keeps on giving certain gyan about: parenting, purpose of life, holistic living, relationships, human behaviors etc. I found these sessions totally boring and couldn't get anything at all from them. I felt more annoyed when people cry in public about their personal problems and their inability to solve them. This is what happens on the first two days.

On the third day of the forum, I found pretty interesting things. The leader started discussion certain topics (question like ‘Who am I?’), which slowly dwells into a philosophy. When I questioned the leader about its interference with philosophy (especially Indian way of thinking), he totally diverted the discussion and forced me to sit down. He went on expressing some of the points in a very forceful manner in loud voice. Finally he ended up with some of the concepts from Zen Buddhism.

When such philosophical thoughts are conveyed in forceful manner (this is what I call western therapy), people feel all they have discovered something great. They feel they are free and get whatever they want. This is what defined as ‘transformation’ by the Landmark education people. Apart from that they give a whole new terminologies like ‘racket’, ‘break-through’, ‘possibility’, ‘break-down’, ‘interpretation’ etc. Thus the third day of the course comes to an end.

The evening session resumes after two days, where each participants are asked to bring at least three guests. These guests can be friends, family members or relatives. When the evening session stats, the nasty sales pitch of the Landmark forum takes the centre stage. The forum leader literally forces all the participants to take up the ‘advanced’ course. There are many so called ‘volunteers’ who do excellent job in brainwashing the guests to sign up for the ‘basic’ course. I took my wife and some close friends on the evening session but felt totally humiliated when they started the sales pitch. I didn’t expect this at all!

After the course (sales pitch session) gets over, the participants are asked to take up ‘Landmark forum in action’ lecture series. I was so pissed off with their evening session that I just stopped going in that direction. Also it’s quite interesting to see the way the course is marketed. People who are weak minded, immature or lived a miserable life in the past become ‘volunteers’ of this forum after achieving ‘transformation’. These volunteers become mobile marketing/sales people for the organization and they go ahead and force all of their friends and family members to take up the course. I do see some value of courses like this but can’t even think of becoming a sales person for them.

Let me write more about Landmark Forum in the next blog post!

Ergonomic laptop stand

2008-04-23T18:04:00.000+05:30

I was reading Andy's blog and found this interesting piece about Ergonomic laptop stand (Using 3-ring binder as laptop stand).It was very easy to try at my workplace and worked wonders. I am feeling extremely comfortable using my laptop and typing speed has increased to a greater extent. Check out the couple photographs below and its really worth trying!

Tail piece: I have read Andy's 'Word-of-mouth-marketing' (WOMMA) book recently and become a fan of it. Will write the book review very soon.

Interview with Ram Shriram

2008-04-23T11:26:00.001+05:30

So many things has happened in the last three months, when I was not blogging!

Last month, Ram Shriram (One of the early investors in Google) was in India and I had a chance to watch his interview in CNBC. It is probably one of the best TV interviews (in the similar lines of Dalai Lama, Azim Premji) I have ever seen. I was completely hooked up with each and every word Ram was speaking in rhythmic, soothing voice with clear thoughts. The text version of the interview is available here in the CNBC website.

Here is my favorite portion (especially the highlighted one) from the interview. Very simple statements but very realistic.

Q: How important is it for you to have an Aha moment every time you put your money into something?
A: It is important to realize not every investment will be a Google.

Q: It would be great if it turned out to be that way.
A: Yes. So, every ten years or so, you will see a Google size company emerge. But in general, it takes committed entrepreneurs, great teams that they build around themselves and then great execution with good monetization or business model around it. But the business model can come last. So, the first part of building that virtuous cycle is having happy users. From happy users come happy advertisers and from happy advertisers come revenue streams. Then, if you have good execution, there comes profit.

Q: And a happy investor?
A: Yes, that is Nirvana.

An Inconvenient Truth

2008-04-22T16:53:00.000+05:30

Barcamp Bangalore 6 : Summer edition

2008-04-22T16:42:00.000+05:30

Last weekend I attended the summer edition of Barcamp Bangalore. This is my first Barcamp and I found it very interesting!

To start with, its amazing to see the energy level of attendees. They were all highly pumped up and it was showing up with almost everyone I have met. Compared with a hierarchial corporate setup, it was organized as a completely an informal, flat and free-flowing setup. Every session was packed with very interesting questions, debates, critisicms and smart answers in eight different tracks.

I was mainly interested in the 'startups and demo' track and spend almost the whole day (saturday) there. I was able to see pretty good web 2.0 applications (Example: http://www.lifeblob.com) demonstrated for roping in the technology enthusiasts. There was an interesting session (according to me) hosted by Prof.Suresh from NSRCEL at IIM-B on the topic 'Startup pains'. He was asking the campers about the list of problems faced by aspiring Entrepreneurs and what bodies like NSRCEL can do about solving those issues more at the ecosystem level.

Thats it! People started throwing up statements like 'Not enough angels available', 'Inadequate support services (legal, financial etc..)', 'Coming up with operational agreement between co-founders' etc. I was silently sitting and listening to the discussions happening out there and wondering the maturity level of these entrepreneurs. In my opinion, these folks are still in the 'self-employed' mindset and not thinking about doing business in scale. All the points they put forward was from the same tone and nobody spoke about important aspects like: Difficulty in finding prospective customers (especially in the technology space), Developing cost effective marketing strategies, Limitations of domestic market, Hiring new employees in the overheated Indian job market, Lack of incubation centres. Also many of the folks were thinking from the bootstrapping perspective.Even though the number of entrepreneurs attended the camp was quite high, their understanding about the startup from the business perspective was very low.

Apart from that, there were many geeks roaming around with latest gadgets (like iPhone) wearing all viered t-shirts. Most any of them had Linux on their laptops and doing some or the other things during the sessions. I haven't got any opportunity to interact with any of the organizers/volunteers during the camp. I would extend thanks for all the effort they have put to make this happen. I would love to connect with some of these enthusiasts in the near future.

If not for anything, barcamps are worth attending for boosting the personal energy level.

Back to blogging

2008-04-21T21:43:00.000+05:30

I stopped writing blogs ever since the year 2008 has started. It was mainly due to some priority tasks (both personal and professional side) occupied my time.

Now its high time for me to get back to the habit of blogging! This break has given me more energy to venture deeper into the blogosphere.

Stay tuned.

Height of e-governance

2007-12-30T22:58:00.000+05:30

Last week I went to sub-registrar office in Chennai. I got a big shock when I saw the notice board. The e-mail ID of the sub-registrar was mentioned as: igregn.tn.nic.in (See the picture below)

This exactly shows how clueless our government systems are when it comes to deploying technology.

Long live India’s e-governance!

BOOK REVIEW: Games Indians play

2007-12-23T20:29:00.000+05:30

In 2002, I visited USA for the first time. During transit I spent some time in Singapore and Hong-Kong. I was totally shocked to see the great infrastructure, well defined rules, robust systems and responsible individuals. After I got back to India, I was frustrated and disgusted to see the Indian system. We Indians just don’t follow any rules; Even if we follow, it is short lived. Take example of Indian roads: We can’t lay good roads; Even if we lay, we will not maintain it; within months, the newly built road will have numerous potholes; Added to that we spit, throw garbage, urinate on it and make sure it is spoilt to the maximum. This phenomenon is very unique in the subcontinent. Take the well developed western world, Middle Eastern and south East Asian countries – they all well built and properly maintained.

After some more experiences, I learned that it all finally boils down to an individual’s behavior. Even though Indians are as smart as anyone else in the world, what makes us to behave the way we do? Why can’t we follow basic rules by taking responsibility? The same Indian follows rules, exhibits basic civic sense, and drives properly when they travel or migrate to other countries. This has got nothing to do with culture, tradition, education, rural-urban divide, globalization etc. It is just the way we are; what goes behind this ‘Indianness’ behavior?

On top of all, I had very interesting observations when I visited Singapore earlier this year. The whole of Singapore is clean and rule-bound. But there is an area called ‘Little India’ where things are totally out of control. I can just cross the road without even bothering for traffic signals, just like the way we do in India; The interior streets of Little India really stinks and I have seen people even spitting on roads in late nights. Some of my friends in Singapore told me that the government couldn’t impose the rule in Little India area in spite of consistent efforts. How can I explain this behavior? Wherever Indians are living in larger chunks and form a community, the system goes for a toss (Another example: Edison in New-Jersey area). Why on this planet we Indians are like this? If we can boast of having a great system for sanitation during Indus valley civilization times, why the system is in pandemonium now? While I can give a whole lot of philosophical explanation for this condition, it always great if somebody gives an analytical perspective of the situation. The book ‘Games Indians Play’ just does that and much more.

The Author Mr. Raghunathan (professor at IIM-A) came across very interesting observations when we was teaching ‘Game Theory’ for his B-school students. Basically Game Theory is a mathematical technique, used by economists in the behavioral context. Using some of the principles of Game theory (especially prisoner’s dilemma) author has tried to characterize the whole behavior of Indians. The author has mapped the game theory with practical situations, which gives great motivation for the reader. I was getting multiple feelings as I was progressing each chapter; Sometimes I felt like a student; Sometimes I broke into laughter; Sometimes sad; Sometimes guilty; At the end of the book the author leaves the reader with an urge to do something to make the system better by exhibiting default ‘co-operative’ behavior. In the last chapter he compares Game Theory with Bhagavad-Gita, which left some ever last lasting impact on me.

In conclusion, this book is a must read for every educated Indian. As an engineer I was able to appreciate the book better as it combines analytical and emotional aspects of Indian behavior. As India is becoming more important piece in the world map by growing economically, behavioral change is the need of the hour to sustain it. Books like ‘Games Indians play’ are very critical to sow seeds for the behavioral change. If not anything, at least the reader will think before throwing garbage or spitting on the roads.

Brilliant book!

IT.India part – II: Workplace diversity

2007-12-20T17:03:00.000+05:30

Before reading this post, please check out this link for my opinions about diversity.

Here is the latest buzzword among Indian MNCs -- ‘Workplace diversity’.

The amount of non-sense going behind this topic is pretty interesting. It also shows how, we Indians bow our heads and accept things without asking any questions. Whatever told by the parent organization in US/UK is taken as a ‘mantra’ and we end up implementing it without knowing head or tail of it. Especially the senior management of India based MNCs has no clue of the rationale behind many of such initiatives. The latest ‘workplace diversity’ campaign is a classic example.

According to ‘Wikipedia’ the diversity in workplace or business is defined as:

The "business case for diversity", theorizes that in a global marketplace, a company that employs a diverse workforce (both men and women, people of many generations, people from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds etc.) is better able to understand the demographics of the marketplace it serves and is thus better equipped to thrive in that marketplace than a company that has a more limited range of employee demographics. An additional corollary suggests that a company that supports the diversity of its workforce can also improve employee satisfaction and retention.

What does that mean? It’s very straight and simple. When hiring new employees organizations need to make sure that they hire people from diversified background. This really helps in business as different set of people bring strengths in different areas. For example: the diversified mutual funds have proven track record of giving consistent, better returns for a long period of time. This is mainly because it has stocks from various industries in various proportions. When one sector is not doing well another will balance it, which eventually keeps the ROI intact for the investors.

In western countries, organizations promote diversity by -- hiring more women candidates (gender diversity), physically disabled, African Americans, Asian Americans etc to have the proper balance in the workplace. Even in those developed countries (like US) they are very particular and make sure all sectors are represented properly. In the past, initiatives like ‘Affirmative action’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action) were taken to promote the workplace diversity at corporate level.

As we all know, US/UK based companies have started their offshore centers in countries like India to take the demographic advantage. Now these western organizations want to promote initiatives like ‘workplace diversity’ India. What is the result? The ‘workplace diversity’ is narrowly interpreted as ‘gender diversity’ and companies are hiring women candidates with special recruitment drives. Here is the pattern of advertisements I get to see in job portals and local news papers.

"SPECIAL DRIVE FOR WOMEN CANDIDATES at company XXX"
"Diversity initiative for women candidates at company XXX"

And one of the HR guys makes a generic statement like:

Hiring more women into the organization has brought in stability and
maturity within the organization. We find that women are also better at
multi-tasking and move more easily from one project to another.

I can agree on the advantages that gender diversity brings in; I am not agreeing the narrow interpretation these companies are doing a about diversity. When it comes to India, it is the country with diversity at its best. People are different in terms of food, culture, customs, caste, religions, regions etc and no-body need to do any diversity hiring in India as a special drive. When a team has ten people, they are naturally diversified given India’s nature. Given this Indian context I am not able to understand how hiring more women candidates will bring in strength to any organization? This might have worked well in the western world, but requires some amount of retrospection or customization when it comes to India.

The local management and HR folks in India need to evaluate such initiatives before implementing. This also shows how much un-aware the local folks are when anything new is asked to be driven. I have one simple word to tell them: ‘Grow-up!’

Billion beats

2007-11-21T14:13:00.000+05:30

Recently, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam has launched fortnightly e-newspaper 'Billion beats'. This is a welcome initiative as the internet medium is reaching every corner of India. Got a chance to read the first edition yesterday and it is very good.

Check out this link for the latest edition.

India - A 'garbage' land ?

2007-11-20T17:36:00.000+05:30

Recently came across couple of interesting experiences, which prompted me to write this post.

Scene 1: Bangalore Airport

I was waiting in a long queue for checking in and came across Cafe coffee day joint. This is supposedly an exclusive one inside the airport, where the coffee is priced higher than their outside joints. There was a dust-bin kept outside the shop and I was totally shocked to see the state (see the picture below).

This is the behavior of 'so-called' -- educated, elite, urban, upper-middle class people who are engineers, doctors, businessmen by profession. They can afford to pay 50 INR for a cup of coffee but can't think of disposing the used cup properly; They are representatives of new India and popularly known as 'Global Indians'; They visit multiple countries but just don't have basic civic sense when it comes to their own country; They make the westerners believe that the world is flat but still throw used coffee cups in a reckless, irresponsible way; They write software for Fortune 500 companies but can't even think of behaving properly;

Scene 2: The cafeteria at my workplace

I work for extended R & D arm of a global MNC and all the engineers sit in my floor work on next generation products. In the cafeteria the facility team kept three different bins (see the photo below) for disposing different kind of wastes -- tea-bags, organic and general waste. But still I haven't seen a single engineer placing right kind of garbage in appropriate bins. By end of the day, nobody can make out which bin is kept for what kind of garbage.

The idea of keeping different bins is to apply proper disposing methods. This is imposed by my organization worldwide to be a good corporate citizen by taking care of the overall environment. But still when it comes to India, everything goes for a toss due to the irresponsible behavior of these 'Global Indians'.

If the scene is pathetic in the so called 'Silicon Valley' of India (Bangalore), we don't have further discussions about the rest of India.

I now call India as 'garbage land' -- consisting of educated idiots!

BOOK REVIEW : Only the paranoid survive

2007-11-06T17:10:00.000+05:30

Author: Andrew S grove

Price: 600 INR

Andrew is one of the famous CEOs, who lead Intel into the path of microprocessors. In this book he shares his experiences, which can be applied to individuals’ career as well as organizations. Andy introduces a term called 'Strategic Inflection Points' (SIP), which has got equal probability to make or break any business. The businesses who adapt these SIPs (paranoids) will go successful, failing which will make them to shut the shop. He explains about how the businesses are affected by many factors which he calls as '10X' forces which primarily drive the organization beyond the SIP. These 10X force could be in the form of new technology, innovation, economic reforms, business model etc.

Throughout the book, Andy explains his SIP and 10X concepts with the PC business as an example. In 1970s the PC business was a 'vertical' one which was heavily dominated by companies like Digital Electronic Corporation (DEC). By 'vertical' he means that the hardware, OS, software, support will be provided by the PC manufacturer himself. Companies like DEC where pioneers of this vertical business model and no-one could even question their domination.

However the 10X came in form of two major innovations:

Micro-processors: This innovation brought the computing to become de-centralized and the power shifted from mainframes to Personal Computers (PC). The cost of computing came down tremendously and lot of component manufactures (like memory, keyboard, disks etc...) emerged in the eastern world (Singapore, Malaysia, Japan etc..) from nowhere. Fueled by system integrators (like Compaq) the computing industry was going through 10X amount of change.
Software revolution: The first innovation lead to the change in the way people perceive software. From the 'processor-tied’ approach the software became more of 'usage-tied' and Microsoft rode this wave big time. The perception of seeing software only as a 'freebie' with the hardware changed totally.

Now the only chance to stay in the business is to adapt to this change. Initially Intel was into memory chip manufacturing. When the 10X change happened in the computing industry, Andy made Intel to exit from the memory business and move to the microprocessor business. This caused what is popularly known as 'WINTEL’ phenomenon (Windows + Intel) and the rest is history.

After explaining this 10X, the author extends his discussion into people side. When such chance is going in the industry, its extremely challenging to change the mindset of the people and make them work in the new technology. This is mainly because people still 'perceive' that the old technology (say mainframes) will be alive and PC cannot change the world. Taking people through this change is very challenging for any leader and he calls such changes as 'death-valley'. He also talks about how important it is to listen to lower level employees, who he calls as 'Cassandra'. These Cassandra’s would bring informal but important information about the 10X well before it is understood by the top management.

I would rate this book as one of the classics which mixes Technology and Business very well. I would strongly recommend this book to anybody who is in the technology industry.

IT.India Part I : Offshore R & D

2007-11-06T13:07:00.000+05:30

For the past month or so the Indian rupee is getting stronger against the American dollar, which has come down to 39 INR compared to 45 INR. This is already bleeding Indian services companies and their Q3 numbers speaks for that. When the rupee was getting weaker these service companies used to make 4-5% of their margins just by keeping their money in dollars and converting them back during the results announcement. Nowadays Indian service companies are mulling multiple options to resolve this problem -- six day working week, reduced hike for employees, productivity improvement, moving to lower cost geographies (like China and eastern europe) etc. With STPI tax sops are getting withdrawn by 2009, Indian IT companies are having challenging times ahead.

Let me take the example of product R & D happening in Indian companies as an example. Of course value creation can be done at multiple levels apart from R & D as well. Majority of MNCs which are having their engineering centers in India are working in the 'Offshore R & D' or 'Engineering services' model. In this model, the offshore team owns majority piece of the SW that goes as a part of the product and take the complete 'delivery ownership' from India. This is slightly better than the 'pure-vanilla-service' model which Indian service companies (like Infosys, Wipro etc..) are offering majorly.

To understand this slightly better, let me take 'Core vs Context' framework introduced by Geoffrey Moore's latest book 'Dealing with darwin'. Let us understand the four quadrants with
some new definitions:

Core: Processes that enable and amplify your chosen vector of competitive differentiation
Context: All other processes

This Core and context can be again classified on 'Mission critical' and 'Non-Mission-Critical' which leads us with four quadrants. See the picture below to get a better idea:

Indian service companies, which are offering 'pure-vanilla-service' come under the bottom right side of this model, which is popularly known as 'outsourcing'. There is very little value addition can happen here as it falls under 'non-core' activity.

The offshore R & D organizations are operating under the top-right quadrant. This means the activity is 'mission-critical-but-non-core' portion. For example: if a company is working on a enterprise router, the offshore R & D team can work on adding new features, maintaining the existing code and do some level of program management. From the business point of view this is critical, because the product is generating revenue for the company at present. In a way this quadrant is higher in the product value chain, but still it is not coming under the 'core' portion of the company's strategy. Because the work the offshore entity doing is not providing any 'competitive differentiation' to the parent company. On the other hand, the parent companies will place all the resources into developing core portion of the product.

Sitting in places like India, contributing into the 'core' portion is extremely difficult. Following are the major challenges Indian companies are facing now:

The offshore team is totally un-aware of the customer needs. They are far away from the customers and most of the technology products won't get deployed in countries like India. I won't see this changing in the near future because these 'emerging markets' need to mature a lot before they start adapting any new technologies. Except for the areas mobility I don't see any technology has taken off in countries like India.

The local job market is over-heated where retaining talent has become uphill task. Engineers jump jobs every 1-2 years and its very hard to build the product building expertise with this mindset. I have personally seen engineers dedicating 30 years in a same product and understanding 'nuts-and-bolts' it. Its very very hard to such stuff here.

The offshore leadership team is primarily grown in the engineering domain and lack business acumen. For example a second level manager don't have much idea about the big picture of the overall product. They only possess expertise in areas like: resource management, delivery management and to certain extent program management.

Now, how does the future looks from here on?

At one end its hard to imagine any US/UK based company to offshore the 'core' work because it doesn't make business sense.On the other end the offshore entity can't do much because they don't know the customer. In a way the 'offshoring' is stuck in top right portion (quadrant-III) of the Geoffrey Moore model. In my perspective, it will continue to stay there for a long period
of time until the local market gains significance. The local market growth will mainly depend on multiple factors like: Good governance, robust infrastructure, litracy and technology awareness. I would say the 'india-offshore-story' has just begun and it is foolish to start celebrations at this point in time. These companies have got to cover much more distance before they really achieve 'value creation'.

BOOK REVIEW : Wise and Otherwise

2007-11-05T18:41:00.000+05:30

Author: Sudha Narayanamurthy

This book contains collection of short stories, which the author wrote in many newspapers and magazines. The author has traveled extensively to the rural parts of India where she met different type of people in India. She explains how people in rural India are having very high value system and leading a self-contained life. This book contains almost 50 small stories. Written in very simple English, this book explains the author’s experiences. Reading this book also gave me the background information of Infosys able to contribute to the society. Basically the author experienced everything, which made Infosys as a good corporate citizen.

However at some places, the author mixed too much of sentimental stuff which I didn't like it. Also at some places it became boring as it had similar kind of stories. I would strongly suggest to read this book if anyone is interested in doing charity in India.

BOOK REVIEW : Straight from the Gut

2007-11-05T18:34:00.000+05:30

Author : Jack Welch
Price: 750 INR

This is autobiography of Jack Welch one of the very well known CEOs of the world. Initially the author talks about how he became the CEO of General Electric (GE) and talks some thing about his personal things as well. Things like 'Fix,sell or close' policy, which he applied to each and every divisions of GE, 'Churning bottom 15% people' has became alltime favorite of the business world. One simple lesson, which at least I learned from this book, is neither the organization nor the technology, will give lifetime employment for anybody in any hi-tech industry. Only working in a focused way for the customer will give that.

I got impressed with this book so much that I gave the same name to my blog :)

BOOK REVIEW : Count your chickens before they hatch

2007-11-05T18:24:00.000+05:30

Author: Arindham Chaudhuri
Price: 200 INR

This is one of the best selling books in India. This book consists of two major sections. The first section is more of a ‘Self development’ stuff where the author talks about the ASK paradigm (Attitude, Skill and Knowledge) in order to raise any individual. The second sections talks about the theory ‘I’ management. The ‘I’ stand for ‘India Centric’ management. Particularly I liked the second section where the author mentions that the management policies in any country should be based on the social architecture. He compared the western and Japanese management and gives a proposal for India,which is quotes lots of examples from Mahabharata.

Tech/Biz Magazines

2007-11-05T17:31:00.000+05:30

Here is some of my favorite magazines!

These mags are targeted to a specific audience, providing vital information. I started liking these type of stuff as they are catering to my interests. They also give altogether a 'positive' outlook of India.

1. Dare (http://www.dare.co.in): This is published by cyber- media completely focused on Entrepreneurship. They started the print edition from Oct '07 and the website is yet to be populated. Got a chance to read their Nov '07 and found it very interesting. It covered various aspects of Entrepreneurship -- new business ideas, VC/private funding, value creation and guest columns by successful Entrepreneurs. I also learned that their advisory committee consists of stalwarts like C.K.Prahlad, N.R.Narayana Murthy, Kanwal Reiki etc. Welcome effort from cybermedia!

2. Smart techie (http://www.thesmarttechie.com): This is a technical career magazine launched from Bangalore, which is a sister concern of Silicon India. I found this magazine provides very deep insights into interesting work some of the Indian companies doing. Also comes with loads of career related articles. Considering the young nature of technology industry in India, this magazine is very vital to bring in the proper exposure.

3. Mint (http://livemint.com): Launched as JV between Hindustan times and WSJ, this provides crisp business update. I got a chance to read their print edition when I visited Delhi during May, but recently they launched in Bangalore too. But I subscribe to their RSS feeds, found it pretty good to read. In a way this magazine lives truly up to its name 'Mint' -- Just digest it.

4. Business Gyan (http://www.businessgyan.com): Excellent magazine published out of Bangalore targeting small and medium businesses. I have read printed edition (digest) as well as RSS feeds. The 'classifieds' section of their printed edition gives very useful information about all contact details (legal, real-estate, website building etc...), which are the first set of elements to build a business ground up.

BOOK REVIEW: Think and grow rich

2007-11-02T16:57:00.000+05:30

Author: Napolean Hill

Price: 150 INR

Its been long time since I stopped reading motivational or self-help books. I used to read them during my school days to 'pep-up' myself during examinations.Recently one of my mentors requested me to read this book 'Think and grow rich' by Napoleon Hill and found it different from typical motivational books. The Author Napoleon came up with this book based on his 25 years of experience in studying success philosophy, inspired by Dale Carnegie.

This book consists of thirteen principles for becoming 'rich'. The author describes 'rich' not only in terms of accumulating material wealth but also in-tangible wealth -- in terms of success, accomplishment, love, peace, courage, purpose, happiness and contribution. To be very honest, I found the initial chapters as boring and it was covering typical motivational topics -- imagination, auto-suggestion, having a purpose in life, daily to-do list etc.

The later chapters got much more interesting when the author started focusing on real life examples and some philosophical explanations. In the chapter on DECISION, the example of Richard Henry Lee and his famous proposal to congress on June 7, 1776: 'That these United Colonies are,and of right ought to be,free and independent States' was good. The story followed after this proposal was quite inspirational and makes is really interesting to read. Followed by that I liked chapter 10, which talks about 'power of master mind'. The author defines the term of 'master mind' as: 'Co-ordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose'. As the world is becoming more and more interdependent, it makes sense to collaborate with like-minded people to accomplish anything significant. In this chapter the author covers the power of coming together as each one in the team positively influence each other to achieve the common goal. Followed by that the author covers the 'infinite intelligence' which he defines it as: 'The source of knowledge experienced through creative imagination'.

The highlight of the book was chapter 13, THE BRAIN, which talks about the scientific aspects of human brain as follows:

'It has been determined that there are from 10,000,000,000 to 14,000,000,000 nerve cells in the human cerebral cortex and we know that these are arranged in a definite patterns. These arrangements are not haphazard. They are orderly. Recently developed methods of electro-physiology grow off action currents from precisely located cells or fibers with micro-electrodes amplify them with radio tubes and record potential differences to a millionth of a volt.

It is inconceivable that such a network of intricate machinery should be in existence of the sole purpose of carrying on the physical functions incidental to growth and maintainability of the physical body. It is not likely that the same system, which gives billions of brains cells that media for communication one with another, provides, also the means of communication with other intangible forces?'

This is one of the points where the author interfaces with the philosophy, from the motivational landscape. In my previous blog about 'personal experiences with yoga' I have experienced somewhat similar stuff the author is talking about.

Overall it pretty good motivational and philosophical book.

Yoga part II : Personal experiences

2007-11-02T14:26:00.000+05:30

Its been two years I have been practicing Yoga. Typically I spend about 45 minutes which includes about 20 asanas followed by some pranayama breathing techniques. In this post I am sharing some of my personal experiences.

Its completely 'Experiential'

The first point I learned about Yoga is -- its completely experiential. No matter how many books, articles, blogs anyone read, it just can't even come closer to the real experience one gets while performing Yoga. Its hard for anyone to believe this as we are more used the traditional way of learning (reading/writing/sharing). For example, if somebody some information about a book, I will at least get 20% of what he is trying to say. The 20% can be "quantified" because the knowledge a book provides itself finite. In case of yoga, the paradigm is totally different as the performer is connecting to infinite knowledge within himself. I know I am sounding abstract and confused -- thats what I call it 'experiential'.

Out of the body experience

When continuously performing yoga over a period, I feel 'out of body' experience for a brief period of time. During this short duration I experienced the following:

Breathing pattern comes into a particular rhythm
The body becomes extremely light and feel as if I am a thread
A very light amount of vibration/current throughout the body
I could see myself as an external person and watch myself

These experiences are very much 'personal'.I don't want to give a philosophical or scientific explanation at this point in time (more on this later).

Feeling the 'oneness'

In my engineering days I have learned about Finite Automaton (FA) as a part of the computational theory. Basically the FA is a state machine consists of a finite number of states. On a state when a particular symbol acts, it transitions to a different state. This finite automaton is the basic model for computers and the brain also works in a similar model. According to my perception, I imagine brain as a Finite automata with 10 to the power of 15 states. When any external evenets (stimuli) occur on the brain, it moves to a different state by reacting. By doing yoga, it prepares us to react 'better' to these stimulis. This better reaction is seen in the forms of reduced stress, better concentration a nd higher energy. When I am in that 'better' state, I feel complete 'oneness' with the environment.

Learnings do happen internally

It is general view that we can only learn/perceive things though our five sensual organs. As a yoga practitioner I can definitely say, learnings do happen internally apart from the sensual organs. When an individual is connecting to his inner self tremendous learnings happens. This is mainly because one connects with the infinite world of inner imagination which normally we don't get oppurtunity to explore. I work as a firmware development engineer and couple of times I found solutions during my yoga session. I could really see the exact line in my C code and where exactly it needs to be fixed. Its hard to believe but trust me -- it happens!

Randy Pausch's last lecture

2007-11-01T22:06:00.000+05:30

Want to get inspired? Watch the video of CMU professor Randy Pausch's last lecture below.

'Chak De India' and 'Corporate India'

2007-10-22T17:28:00.000+05:30

Here is couple of interesting links:

"Winning is everything"

"Chak De India enters management books"

Another movie has come to the lime-light of the corporate world - 'Chak De India'

In the movie, the hero (kabir khan) takes-up the herculian task of coaching women's hockey team and finally the team wins the women's world cup. Starting from building a team with complementory skills, the hero demonstrates elements like patriotism,leadership and personal experiences to make the movie interesting.In 2001 'Lagaan' created lot of exicement by taking up a similar story. These type of movies get huge popularity ranging from companies to b-schools. Even though these type of movies are really vital to have a 'positive' thinking going among Indians, they take us very far from the reality. Added to that the movie directors smartly add the required 'sentimental' elements to tap the average Indian fan and make the movie as a box-office hit.

These type of movies portray one 'super-hero', who turn things around for the team. After watching the movie, everybody gets inspired but expect that super-hero to come. Corporates try to gain some mileage out of such movies by making their team members to watch this movie and have some coffee-table discussions. They expect their team members to come more nuclear to perform better as a team. But where is the super-hero to unite them? Thats where the fun begins. End of the day nobody comes forward to take up the real 'responsibility' and these type of movies simply end up a formalities rather than accomplishing something concrete. No super-heros are made just by watching a two hour movie. It requires ample amount of effort added with commitment for a cause to make any signifcant impact. As long as corporates don't
understand this reality, these type of movies will simply be a time-pass formality.

"D.O" -- Two simple letters

2007-10-17T18:09:00.000+05:30

I really liked the caption of TOI's 'Lead-India' initiative: "D.O --Two simple letters"

Keeping my opinions apart, this is one of the very few initiatives which really emphasizes about 'doing' something rather than 'talking' about it. In my point of view doing is the only solution for all the problems India is facing today -- be it poverty, illetracy, pollution, politics or traffic problems. As 'Argumentative Indians' we tend to 'talk-talk-and-talk' about every other issue on the planet and do nothing about it. Every Indian is aware of all the problems surrounded by him. When it comes to taking concrete actions to attack the problem, we fail miscerably.

If I look back the post-independent history of India, there is very little that is 'done' compared with the amount of planning or talking.I can satisty myself by saying 'mera bharath mahan' and point out our achievements in certain areas. Is there an example in India where doing took more precedence than talking? where can I see a group of individuals delivered great things by working as a team, which had significant impact on the society?

Recently came across some photographs (see pictures below) which shows some of the 'from-the-scratch' pictures of Indian space program. These men really did something in the post-independent India by building something ground-up.

The pictures above speak two simple letters - "D.O"

Abundance mentality and Entrepreneurship

2007-08-11T17:20:00.000+05:30

Its time for a blog post on Entrepreneurship!

I was brought up in the north-west part of Tamilnadu, which happens to be the ‘textile-hub’ of south India. Most of the businesses are Small-And-Medium scale and are into producing textile products like cotton sarees, lungis, hankies and shirts. Also, there are numerous businesses in various aspects of the textile value chain -- dyeing, calendaring, bleaching, tailoring and printing. There are 24189 registered SSI units as on 31.12.2000 in the district besides 59 Large Scale Units. I have vivid memories of this business hub – dusty, vibrant and narrow streets, bullock carts carrying textile materials, chai and bhajji shops serving snacks, businessmen from the north and western part of India, daily wagers leaving their kids to nearby schools etc.

Most of these businesses are run by people who hardly have a university degree. Right from my school days I have always been spellbound by the entrepreneurial passion and hardworking nature of these people. These folks learn business from the streets and come up in a hard way. Compared to the high-tech entrepreneurial ventures, these businesses are extremely fragmented and commoditized. Due to high pressure and cut throat competition many of the firms have shutdown their business in the recent past. I personally know of friends, who have taken to a job as their family business is in vain. On the other side, the surviving businesses are operating on the same scale over decades. For quite sometime I was mulling over the reason for their ‘non-scalability’ and came up with some interesting observation:.

Most of these businesses are family owned businesses operating on ‘proprietorship’ model, where there is no concept of ‘equity shares’. All other people are hired as employees by paying salary and exploited to the maximum extent. Some of the high-performing smart employees are given more responsibility -– dealing with channel partners, getting new business, having a team built around them etc. These smart employees will slowly get contacts and open up their own shop in a matter of two to three years. The lower entry barriers added with strong channel relation built on the previous business helps these ‘recent-entrepreneurs’ to open up their shop in no time. They start competing with the ex-proprietor and the chain continues forever. Instead of increasing the pie, they cannibalize each others businesses.

The example I have mentioned above is a classic example for ‘conservative’ thinking instead of ‘abundant’ mentality. Any Entrepreneurial venture can scale up provided it has a core team working on a common vision with complementary skills. As the initial folks have totally different strengths, the business will start growing in multiple dimensions with each one of them leading in their area of expertise. When such people come together it is important to have properly defined profit sharing mechanism in terms of equity shares. This is one of the key factors to keep the core group as a ‘nuclear’ team and sow the seeds for long-term scalability. However this trait will not come easily to ‘normal’ people -- who want to have more power rather than profitability of the company. This is where the abundant mentality plays a major role as it has got to do with having a bigger heart. For example, having 80% stake in an Rs 10,000 profit is any day better than 2% stake in Rs 10,000 crore profits.

Most of the SMBs are not able to scale, mainly due to the ‘old-school’ conservative thinking. It is very critical to understand that the world is becoming more interdependent and knowledge oriented where looking for synergistic opportunities plays a vital role. Unless an Entrepreneur has the ‘new-school’ of thinking by shedding ego and craving for the power to control, the firm will not scale to a larger extent.

After all everybody understands the difference between water-gun and Niagara falls!

Why do I write blogs?

2007-08-06T18:19:00.000+05:30

There are ample reasons for anyone to flock into the blogsphere. Recently I came across some blogs with gobs and gobs of ‘negative’ contents focusing on 'controversial' topics. They quickly become popular as they get high hit-rate and copious comments. These blogs mainly express strong 'opinions' against some of the burning issues in the areas of religion, sex, creed, caste, racism, nationality, politics etc. Naturally they catch attention of readers -- as it has got to do with an individual’s emotions. Readers quickly tend to take stands and tempted to express their counter arguments.

According to me there are enough avenues to discuss about controversial topics as they are very well known. Especially in countries like India -- the media is given complete freedom to conduct debates, opinion polls, panel discussions to discuss flaming issues. Also at an individual level, most of these issues are 'no-control' problems and finding a solution is close to impossible. I am not against expressing an individual's opinions but it will not make any difference to anybody.

When I was thinking in these lines, I asked a question to myself: 'why do I write blogs?’. After contemplating for quiet some time, I came up with the following points:

I feel happy when I write.
Blogs provides a platform to share my knowledge with a bigger world.
I always wanted to write about 'positive' things to 'influence' rather than critiques. For example, blogs like 'Emergic' has influenced me to a larger extent.
Connect with like-minded people rather than the general mass.

Request: Can you please post your reasons for blogging?

BOOK REVIEW: The Argumentative Indian (Part – I)

2007-08-05T17:36:00.000+05:30

Author: Amartya Sen

Price: 690 INR

This classic book has been in my reading list for quiet some time now. I have finally started reading it, in a phased mode. Unlike my other book reviews, I am planning to write a series of reviews for this book. This is mainly because of the sheer density of the material that author Sen has presented in this book. At the outset this book illustrates a vivid perspective of the Indian mind.

To start with, Sen explains the ‘argumentative’ nature of India, for which it is very vital to understand contemporary India. The very nature of Indians is to get into arguments or lengthy dialogues whenever they get an opportunity. Ranging from weekly status meetings to the cauvery tribunal, I can quote numerous examples for this nature. This is due to ‘dialogue’ based approach existing in our culture for a very long time. For example, Arjuna, in Mahabharatha, gets profound doubts in the battlefield. In order to get clarifications he takes up the dialogue based approach with Krishna. The author also gives examples from ‘Brihadaranyaka Upanisad’ and ‘Kiratarjuniya’ to illustrate the argumentative nature of Indians. Allowing arguments makes lot of sense in today’s democratic India. As India is the biggest democracy in the world, providing freedom of expression by allowing arguments is a very crucial element to sustain it. In today’s globalized ‘flat world’ India scores against China mainly because of its vibrant democracy and expressive media.

Next, the author starts his viewpoints about secularism and diversity. Unlike any country India is much diversified -– in terms of language, food, culture, rituals and literature. The long history of heterodoxy of India is a basis for its diversified views, which is in alignment with scientific way of thinking. The more diversified any system becomes, it inherently becomes more resilient. I have written my viewpoints on ‘celebrating diversity’ as a separate article.

The political ideology of such a diversified country should be mainly driven in an inclusive way by collectively addressing consensus of all the people. Whichever king or government or dynasty failed to understand this important point has had a hard time ruling India and has eventually failed. Among the mughals, Akbar was the only king who understood this and created his own religion ‘Dhin-ilahi’. Apart from him Akbar, Ashoka was the other king to understand India in a detailed manner. In the contemporary India this concept has evolved as ‘secularism’. Even though other countries like France can claim that they are secular, it never allowed any religious symbols in the workplace. After independence the Indian constitution points to the importance of taking issues in an inclusive way for which the ‘secular’ viewpoint is very vital. In a way designing a political ideology for a country like India is extremely challenging. This is mainly because every other country in the world is uniform in someway or other.

On contrary to ‘secularism’ the ‘Hindutva’ ideology was created by Veer Savarkar. Fundamentally the Hindutva is based on two main points:

In India more than 80% of the population are Hindus. The political ideology should be based on this religion.
Tracing back in history (from Indus valley civilization) – Indians are primarily Hindus. So there is nothing wrong in looking at India as a ‘Hindu-rashtra’ or ‘Bharat-varsha’.

This Hindu political moment was fuelled by ‘Hindu-mahasabha’ and organizations like RSS, VHP, BJP and Shiv-sena are some of organizations spawned from this ideology. In this book Sen argues, looking at India with this myopic view will create religious fanaticism. He gives examples of Ayodhya and Gujarat riots when this Hindutva ideology got the political backup.

I am of the opinion that, religion cannot be ruled out of the political arena completely. Given India’s diversity there needs to be a common ‘bonding’ factor to bring people under one umbrella. Let me throw some of my questions:

If religion can act as that umbrella why can’t we accept it? If Sen can substantiate for secularism by taking riots as example, I can argue for ‘non-secularism’ with bomb blast examples.
If terrorism can be justified as a way to protect a religion, why can’t we justify ‘religion-based-governance’ for a better tomorrow?
If the so-called ‘open-society’ Americans cannot accept Bobby Jindal as Louisiana state governor without converting himself into Roman Catholic, how can only India accept every religion by giving all sort of freedom?
The real rural India is fragmented in all possible factors. What sort of progress the ‘secular’ governments in the past have brought so far? How much % of real ‘inclusive’ growth has taken place in the past 60 years?

End of the day there needs to be a law of the land and everyone should follow them. If that can be brought by using religion, I welcome that. At the same time I am not arguing for religious forces, which will vandalize the societal harmony. We are singing too much of this ‘secular’ song for the past 60 years, whereas India continue to be ‘pseudo-secular’ in reality.

Am I sounding like an ‘argumentative’ Indian now?

Related blogs:

New Blog on Tech trends, Impacts and Innovation

2007-08-05T15:08:00.000+05:30

Looking at my blogs in a critical mood a few days back, I was both happy and a little guilty. Happy for the fact that my blogs cover a variety of topics, but guilty for the fact that they do not provide much of my views on my love for technology. Wanting to keep pace with the happenings at the technology arena, I have started co-authoring an exclusive technical blog- 'tech trends, impacts and innovation', with some like minded people. It has proved to be an immense pleasure for me and has provided me with a sense of fulfillment to be a part of this blog space. It would be wonderful to hear your views about the blogs.

Long way to go

2007-08-05T14:56:00.000+05:30

No doubt! The 1991 economic reforms brought magnanimous changes to Indian economy. Indian companies are going ‘global’ by acquiring foreign firms, getting into joint ventures, reporting consistent profits and become much more professional. What about public sector organizations? By virtue they have long legacy by creating a good brand image among average middle class Indians. On the other side they are facing stiff competitions from their private counterparts and ‘somehow’ learning to think about customer satisfaction. Recently I came across a couple of interesting observations.

The first one was with getting landline and internet connectivity,when I moved to a new house. I chose BSNL without doing much research and initially got a good impression by looking into their website – well designed contents; downloadable application forms, electronic billing and payment facility, rate plan details etc. Added to that, I got the landline in a week’s time without any issues. But the real face of the public sector got exposed after some time:

The broadband internet connection was not given. When I called up all the support numbers provided in their website (except their toll free 1500), no-one answered the phone. Finally (after much frustration) I was able to get hold of one officer who routed me to another number. But again no response from the new number.
I opted for electronic clearance of my bills but it was not done. When I called up their billing department I got the answer saying it will be done from the following month. Finally it was never done.
In order to get the status of the internet I visited the BSNL office but got one uniform answer: ‘your connection is not yet approved’. It was as if I am at their mercy and they are doing a big favor by ‘approving’ my application. When I asked the ‘why’ and ‘when’ questions, nobody was able to give any answer.

As internet is a must have especially for me to surf endlessly , I decided to cancel my landline and application for a BSNL broadband and approached Airtel. The experience was totally different.

The connection was provided within 48 hours of submitting the application forms. The support engineers reached my home at 9 PM in the night and did the installation. They were totally professional -- explained the operational manual completely, installed all necessary software in my laptop, provided their mobile number for immediate support.
The next day I got a call from their support desk asking for the feedback about installation and support engineer. After a month they called me again and explained every minute details of the first bill.
The line maintenance is always done in early mornings (3 AM to 5 AM) and Airtel notifies its users of the same by sending an SMS well in advance. Even though there is very little probability of using the line during that time the user is not in for a rude shock while on the net at that time.

I am a more satisfied user by opting for Airtel!

Coming to statistics, India’s teledensity (number of landline telephones in use for every 100 individuals living within an area) is 19.26% as of May 2007. Given the one billion Indian population, this presents a mammoth opportunity for telecom companies as rural India is not connected, and needs reliable connectivity. The BSNL might have got the early mover advantage in landline (by having 78% of the market share) and but has already lost ground in mobility. As remaining 80% of population needs to be connected, public sector companies like BSNL need to become extremely competitive.

Now let me move out of telecom! I wanted to enable electronic clearance for BESCOM (Bangalore Electricity Supply Company) and checked my e-banking website. I got the following information, which shows the number of days required to enable this facility:

Organization	Number of days
BESCOM	65
BSNL	45
Airtel	2
Reliance	2

Here also public sector’s reality got exposed!

In summary words like -- competition, customer satisfaction, professionalism, reliable service, adopting technology is ‘new’ to these public sector organizations. They are used to operating in the old-economy style with bureaucratic mindset. Now all of a sudden they are asked to change their mindset and operate in globalized world. They are learning in their own phase, which may not be acceptable in today’s world. They have a long way to go to attain world class excellence and I hope will not be too late.

Tribute to a great man - A P J Abdul Kalam

2007-07-23T14:03:00.000+05:30

Tale of two Indias

2007-06-27T23:31:00.000+05:30

In order to attend a training program, I visited another facility of my company, which happens to be a building with seven floors. Also it is one of the well planned and truly upto the global standard, somewhat similar to Singapore technology parks. During the break time I opened up the curtains and observing the surrounding areas. This is basically a very well constructed technology park (called as Bagmane Tech Park in C.V.Raman Nagar, Bangalore) and houses about 7000-10000 technology professionals.It was looking really great from the seventh floor -- well designed parking lots with about 1000 cars , clean and green surroundings, regulated traffic etc.(See the picture below).

When I turned another 30 degrees to my right, I got a big shock. Just next to the technology park there is a slum followed by a dumping yard (See pictures below).

The experience was really an eye opener for me as it clearly depicted two Indias. If I can call the first case as the ‘developed India’, what name should I give for the second one? Should I feel happy or sad?

BOOK REVIEW: Give me back my guitar

2007-06-18T21:58:00.000+05:30

Author: Potharaju Ravindra

Price: 160 INR

About a year back I read the book ‘Success Vs Joy’ by Geeth Sethi. Two things stand out about this book; its simple language and the overwhelming effect it has on an individual’s thought process. Built along similar lines is the book ‘Give me back my guitar’. In this book author Ravi talks about mind control, inspiration and energy management. The joy of reading and re-reading such books is in the inspiration and support that they provide by telling you just three words: Follow your dream. And just as success vs. joy, give me back my guitar is also blessed with the use of simple and unambiguous language which makes it a pleasure to read.

The first thing about the book that interested me was the title itself -- What is this topic all about? Who is going to give the guitar to whom? But, when I started reading the book I found that the book is all the nursery parables that we have all read and enjoyed being modified to suit the present scenario. Sounds different? read on!

Basically the title is derived from the story The ant and grasshopper ,where the ant works all summer by gathering food and the grasshopper ‘wastes’ time by playing the guitar. When its winter the grasshopper struggles to find food and learns the importance of working hard. But when he tries to work hard like his ant friends, he gets frustrated. This is mainly because the grasshopper really enjoys playing his guitar. Now -- What if the grasshopper gets a chance to do the work he ‘enjoys’ as well as ‘earn’ his food? What about converting the ‘wastage of time’ (as perceived by others) to a revenue generating task? Sounds interesting? In fact this is the crux of the book. It re-iterates the importance of choosing joy compared to success. As a matter of fact the latter is the by-product of the former.

Apart from this, the book talks about five other popular parables with a modern moral- known fable- unknown interpretation. The author urges us to ‘Enjoy, Adopt and Practice’ the ancient Indian wisdom by reading this book. It appears that the intention of the author is not to motivate but to make the reader think on each of the messages conveyed. This is typically recommended for folks who are bored with the grueling corporate life style - those who in their rush do not have time to stop and smell the roses.

As the book is targeted for wide range of readers, the author has written the book in both conversational and message style. I am not sure how it will be taken, as this style may not be liked by everybody. Also there are some stories in the ‘Epilogue’ which it not related to the main topic. On the cosmetic side, the author has given three email IDs for communication which can be reduced to one.

In conclusion, if you want a book to kindle your thought process this is for you. For more details about the book visit: http://givemebackmyguitar.com/

100th blog post

2007-06-18T21:54:00.000+05:30

It’s been a year since I started blogging. When I started off, I didn’t have any clue of what blogging is all about and what I am going to write. The initial objective was to share my perspectives on certain topics to my friends circle and get their comments. But after a period of time I started writing in various topics, which helped me to connect with like-minded folks in the blogsphere. Google recognizes my blog pretty well and rated with page rank of two.

Nowadays blogging has become a ‘habit’ and its very much part of my life. I still have a long way to go, but happy to write this 100^th blog post.

BOOK REVIEW: A biography of Charlie Chaplin (Tamil)

2007-06-08T00:22:00.000+05:30

Author: N.Chokkan

Price: 80 INR

Whenever I see TV advertisements, short comedies or mimicry programs I cannot stop appreciating the creative thinking that goes behind the scenes. Over the years I am able to entertain my friends circle using my amateur imitation shows and I can very well understand the challenge to entertain people. Making others laugh is one of the toughest job and requires very high amount of creativity, timing and constantly coming up with innovative ideas. Added to that, the comedy artist needs to give a peak performance in a very short period of time, failing which will lead to negative impression among the audience. This book talks about one of the all time great comedian who entertained the whole world only with his actions (without words) using his amazing creativity. He is none other than Charlie Chaplin and this book talks about his life. Even though people know him only by comedy, his personal life is one of the standing examples for ‘rags-to-riches’ success stories.

Born in a very poor family, Charlie had no formal education and begged in London’s streets. He spent most of his childhood on the roadside, hardly ate three times a day but finally made a mark in the world history. He made history only by his sheer hard work, determination, hunger for success, commitment towards his profession and never ending passion for providing quality entertainment to the worldwide audience.

Shortly after Charlie’s birth his father deserts the family and the whole family responsibility falls under his mother’s shoulders. She was an amateur stage artist and hardly made a living by performing small roles. But she always used to tell Charlie that one day he will become a great artist and her son is the smartest kid. In spite of all odds, his mother planted sowed seeds of self-confidence in him. During one of the programs, Charlie’s mother gets throat problem on the stage and she was forced out of the stage by the audience. Now in order to save his mother’s skin, the young Charlie appears on the stage and starts entertaining the audiences in an effortless way. This way Charlie’s first stage performance gets on the way and there is no full stop for him after that.

After slowly getting popular among small plays, Charlie joined the ‘Karno’ troop as a theatre artist and slowly becomes popular in London. The urge to perform better forced him to constantly re-think and re-invent his acting. Finally it resulted as the ‘tramp’ character (most of them remember Charlie only because of this character) by which he became world famous. As his plays were more of a mime, it attracted audiences irrespective of the language. Till the end Charlie was very adamant and made only one feature film. After gaining popularity in London, Charlie moves to the United States in order to achieve more in his career. Initially he joined Keystone as a movie artist and slowly moved to Essnay and Edna. Every time he moved to get more autonomy in terms of movie direction and also made sure that his pocket is growing in size. After multiple job hops Charlie understood the pain of working for others (like any other professional) and co-founded his own production firm names ‘United Artists’ along with some of his co-actors. His vision was to provide quality entertainment to his worldwide audiences at any cost and finally lived up to it.

As Charlie comes from a very poor background, he always created characters belonging to downtrodden and labor class. This was mistakenly interpreted by CIA and the ‘communist’ tag was stamped on him. By that time the success of USSR and communalism has already caused huge amount of concern among Americans and Charlie became victim of this suspicion. After giving everything for America and Hollywood he was forced to move out of the country. This made him to move to Switzerland where he spent his final days and died in 1977.

This book is the first attempt to capture Charlie Chaplin story in Tamil and it is well written. The author has written the book in a conversational, story-telling type which makes this book an interesting read. In conclusion Charlie’s life is a standing example for commitment, self-belief, innovation and sheer hard work. Reading his biography is definitely an energy booster.

BOOK REVIEW: Silicon Valley Greats

2007-05-10T19:07:00.000+05:30

Author: SS Kshatriy

Price: 180 INR

ISBN: 81-259-1459-5

When I visited Silicon Valley in the year 2002, I was amused to see so many Indians out there. Not only Indians are one of the major immigrant communities in the San Francisco bay area (which consist of counties like San Jose, Santa Clara, Fremont, Sunnyvale etc.) they are also one of the most successful group when it comes to Entrepreneurship. I remember reading one of the WSJ articles where as much as 30% successful Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are from Indian origin.

Thanks to Nehru’s socialistic democracy, bulk of highly educated (mainly from IITs) engineers migrated to the US and made fortunes there. Right from 1970s these folks built tons of high-tech organizations and generated abundance of wealth, which built a very strong brand for India. Two decades later when Indian opened up the economy in 1991, it was ‘homecoming’ experience for these wealthy entrepreneurs as they acted as a bridge between India and USA.

In his book ‘Silicon Valley Greats’, author Kshatriy met some of these ‘rags–to-riches’ Entrepreneurs, compiled their profiles in a good way. Starting with K.B.Chandrasekhar (co-founder of Exodus communications), the author presents the profiles of B.V. Jagdeesh (co-founder of Exodus), Kanwal Reiki (founder of TiE), Sabeer Bhatia (hotmail) and also domestic Entrepreneurs like Pradeep Kar (founder of Microland), Narayana Murthy (Infosys). All these people come from a middle-class background and migrated to USA with some hundred dollars in their pocket. From there these folks rose to one of the world’s successful tech-entrepreneurs.

At an outset the author compiled their profiles to answer questions like: What made them successful Entrepreneurs? How did they build their companies? How did they raise money for their venture? What drives them to contribute back to India? What sort of donations they have made to Indian universities? How do they lead their personal lives? What sort of ‘Indianness’ do they have inside them? How did they create a global brand for themselves? While compiling their profiles, author included some of the small but interesting incidents in their lives which had a profound impact later. For example, Sabeer Bhatia has always had ‘another method’ for solving mathematical problems during his school days. This lateral thinking helped him to think the web based e-mail, which lead to the birth of hotmail.

However at some of the chapters I found pretty lengthy as it was getting too much into their family and background information. It could have been more concise and brief. Also the shape of the book was bit odd and bulky. The publisher (Vikas publishing) could have taken more care while designing. Especially for bedroom readers (like me) it’s pretty hard to hold it and read.

In conclusion, I found this book is a good read technology professionals who are aspiring Entrepreneurs. I very much plants ‘positive’ and ‘progressive’ thought process in that direction.

An article about ‘Yoga and Meditation’

2007-03-18T21:54:00.000+05:30

Very recently Mr. Bhattathiri left his article as a comment to one of my blogs. The article titled ‘American justice department upheld Indian yoga and meditation’ briefly talks about the background and scientific aspects of Yoga. As per his request I am publishing the article below. I am planning to write a separate article on yoga with more in-depth details. Stay tuned!

Let me bow to Indian Maharishi Patanjali with folded hands, who helped in removing the impurities of the mind through his writings on Yoga, impurities of speech through his writings on grammar, and impurities of body through his writings on Ayurveda.

The American justice dept have recently approved the power of yoga and meditation via a recent judgment in the American court. "Man Who Slapped Wife Sentenced to Yoga, its Anger Management, Says Judge." First there was house arrest. Now there's yoga. A judge ordered a man convicted of slapping his wife to take a yoga class as part of his one-year probation. "It's part of anger management," County Criminal Court at Law Judge Larry Standley said of the ancient Hindu philosophy of exercise and well-being. "For people who are into it, it really calms them down.” Standley, a former prosecutor, said the case of James Lee Cross was unique. Cross, a 53-year-old car salesman from Tomball, explained that his wife was struggling with a substance abuse problem and that he struck her on New Year's Eve during an argument about her drinking. "He was trying to get a hold of her because she has a problem," Standley said after the court hearing. "I thought this would help him realize that he only has control over himself." The sentence came as a surprise to Cross, which was told to enroll in a class and report back to Standley on his progress. "I'm not very familiar with it," Cross said of yoga. "From what I understand, it may help in a couple ways, not only as far as mentally settling, but maybe a little weight loss." Darla Magee, an instructor at Yoga Body Houston in River Oaks, said she would recommend that Cross take a basic yoga class emphasizing breathing and including a variety of postures -- forward bends, back bends and twists. "Yoga can help us to get rid of many emotional issues we might have," she said. "It's a spiritual cleanse." Prosecutor Lincoln Goodwin agreed to a sentence of probation without jail time because Cross had no significant criminal history.

Yoga which is one of the greatest Indian contributions to the world has got vast potential in all fields. In Tihar jail India Yoga is experimented among the inmates and found successful. Their criminal mentality is changed. This study aimed at investigating the effect of Vipassana Meditation (VM) on Quality of Life (QOL), Subjective Well-Being (SWB), and Criminal Propensity (CP) among inmates of Tihar Jail, Delhi. To this effect the following hypotheses were formulated:

There will be a significant positive effect of VM on the QOL of inmates of Tihar jail.
VM will have a positive and significant effect on SWB of inmates.
Criminal propensity (CP) of inmates will decrease significantly after attending the VM course.
There will be significant difference in SWB and CP of experimental (Vipassana) group and control (non-Vipassana) group.
Male and female inmates will differ significantly in SWB and CP, as a result of VM.

In the famous "Time" magazine the importance meditation and yoga, an ancient Indian system, is high-lighted that the ancient mind- and spirit-enhancing art is becoming increasingly popular and gaining medical legitimacy. It is a multi billion dollar business in US. In many Universities it is accepted as subject and included in the Syllabus. In the latest famous book "Inspire! What Great Leaders Do" written by Mr. Lance Secretan recently published by John Wiley and sons, the benefit of meditation is elaborately described for good corporate governance. By practicing transcendental meditation, or TM, many people have got relief from back pain, neck pain, and depression. The mind calms and quiets. What thoughts you have during meditation become clearer, more focused. Anger, anxiety and worries give way to a peace. In the world exorbitant medical expenses one can definitely make use of meditation. Maharshi Mahesh Yogi and Sri Ravi Shankar are popularizing this. The Iyengar Yoga institute in US is famous. In Bhagavad-Gita Lord Krishna has inspired Arjuna to rise from his depression by preaching Gita in the battlefield and to rise from the depression to do his duties. In Holy Gita we can see, being hidden by the cosmic overview of any institution beset with myriad problems, not the least of which is its lack of moral probity, there is a groundswell of educated people seeking answers to deeply personal but universally asked questions. Chie Executives taking lessons from yoga, meditation and learning how to deal with human resources equations in an enlightened manner. Individuals from every walk of life can get ideas of how to be better human beings, more balanced and less stressed out.

Medical studies continue to show regular meditation working magic in reducing blood pressure and stress-related illnesses, including heart disease. Brain images show that regular meditation helps calm the most active sensory-assaulted parts of the brain. The ancient Hindu sage Patanjali who had mastered the secrets of the human mind has written a book "Yoga sutra". In this book we can see how super powers can be achieved by meditation. It has both cosmic relevance and cosmic resonance. In spite of its universal appeal, for most people total control of mind remains an elusive goal and daunting task. From time immemorial, there have been many attempts throughout the world to unlock the mysteries of the mind and to achieve total control over it through a variety of techniques. One of the most powerful of these techniques is meditation. Many spiritual leaders, sages, saints, and holy people such as Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna, Madam Sarada Devi, and Swami Vivekananda have practiced this. One of the ways to control physiological reactions to psychological stimuli is meditation, Yoga, Zen Buddhism etc. The scientists take Transcendental Meditation (TM) as the uniform technique, and base their observations on the study of the subjects engaged in this form of meditation. In summing up the results the scientists have come to conclusion that the effect of meditation is a "wakeful, hypo-metabolic state".

They have found that:

Yogis could slow both heart rate and rate of respiration.
Yogis could slow the rate of metabolism as confirmed by decreased oxygen consumption and carbon-di-oxide output.
Electro-Encephalon-Gram (EEG - recording of brain activity) in Yogis showed changes of calmness in the form of "alpha rhythm" during both eyes closed and eyes open recordings.
Their skin resistance to electric stimulation was increased (indicating increased tolerance to external stimuli). Our usual 'defense-alarm' reaction to emotional and physical stress is in the form of "fright, flight, and fight" mediated through over-secretion of certain neuro-transmitters and neuro-modulators, namely adrenaline and dopamine by way of stimulation of sympathetic nervous system.

Under the influence of these chemicals and hormones, we reflexively become panicky or aggressive, our blood pressure rises. Thus stress and anxiety is the end result if we allow our natural age-old sympathetic reactions to act and to come to surface. We try to run away, become fearful, or fight the situation. But today these 'defense-alarm' reactions have no place in our lives. Rather, they should be replaced by more calm and serene reactions of equanimity and fearlessness. The need is to just 'face the brute, and it will go away'. Such desirable reactions of non-aggression and peaceful attitude are generated by Yoga and meditation. EEG Studies on Yogis and The Zen Meditations: Yogis practicing Raja-Yoga claim that during the state of Samadhi they are oblivious to the internal and external stimuli, and they enjoy a calm ecstasy during that state. A study was undertaken to record the electrical activity of their brain during this state by means of a regular and useful test known as electroencephalography EEG. Physiological and experimental studies have demonstrated that the basis of conscious state of brain, among other things, is due to activation of "reticular system" in the brain-stem in response to internal and external stimuli.

These stimuli bring about various changes during sleeping and wakeful states of the organism and these can be studied by EEG. The study was carried out on four subjects during the state of concentration and meditation. Effects of external stimuli, like a loud gong, strong light, thermal simulation, and vibrations were studied. The results were compiled and analyzed. It was observed that two Yogis could keep their hands immersed in extremely cold water for about 50 minutes (raised pain threshold). During state of meditation, all of them showed persistent "alpha activity" in their EEG with increased amplitude wave pattern, both during 'eyes closed' and 'eyes open' recording. It was observed that these alpha activities could not be blocked by various sensory stimuli during meditation. It was also observed that those, who had well-marked "alpha activity" in their resting EEG showed greater aptitude and zeal for maintaining the practice of Yoga. Similar observations and results were obtained when EEGs were recorded in persons adept in Zen Meditative technique.

India and the flat world

2007-03-14T14:18:00.000+05:30

In his bestselling book ‘The world is flat’, author Tom Friedman illustrates his ‘flat world’ concept. For people who have not read the book, let me give a quick background. The three billion people from India and China are much more empowered and connected today. It started when India opened up the economy and China signed the WTO agreement for open trade. Fuelled by these open trade policies, the ‘Outsourcing’ and ‘Off-shoring’ are the latest buzzwords for western world organizations for leveraging the eastern world. According to Friedman, this new worldwide phenomenon has leveled the competing field and the whole world has become flat. I really enjoyed reading the book mainly because the author extensively traveled to various geographical regions, met people, experienced the changes personally and came up with his conclusions.

Now, let me look from the reverse angle and ask some questions to myself:

Is the world really flat from India’s perspective?
Can I do the same things from Bangalore, what I would be doing from Santa Clara?
Does the word ‘Bangalored’ really threatening westerners?
Can India sustain this boom?
Are we prepared for the social consequences of capitalism?

As a technology professional, let me take example of Indian software industry and try to get answers. Before getting into answers, let us see the definition for Outsourcing from wikipedia. Please give more emphasis to the words underlined:

Outsourcing entered the business lexicon in the 1980s and often refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specializing in the management of that operation. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of worldwide labor, capital, technology and resources.

From the above definition it’s very clear that Indian companies will get to do only non-core activity. For software companies, most of the work will be in the areas of defect fixing, production support, software maintenance, software patches and working as an extended team. This is a great achievement in our history and loads of jobs got created because of outsourcing. The new ‘generation-Y’ Indians have more disposable income and purchasing power which leads to more business creation and wealth creation. The educated middle class is rising like big time and a new, vibrant, energetic and confident India is emerging. This ‘emergence’ is happening after eight hundred years of Indian history. The western companies are able to reduce the cost by handing over the work, thanks to India’s strong telecom backbone and English speaking population. It’s all a ‘Win-Win’ game. With this can I say the world has become flat from India’s perspective? Definitely NOT!

Even though the above mentioned advantages are very true, terms like product definition, understanding customer needs, customer interfacing, product marketing, technology evaluation and product ownership are still ‘unheard’ words in Indian software industry today. All we are good at is to hire bunch of fresh engineers from the college, train them, bill them, build process framework, commoditize engineers and manage attrition. What is the real ‘value addition’ happening here? According to me it is very minimal. We are currently enjoying the benefits of outsourcing mainly because of the lower wages in India which is catching up very fast. For example, today there is not much salary difference (based on my personal experience) between an engineer in Bangalore and Singapore. Then why should any firm outsource to India?

The Internet has played a significant part in making the world look ‘flat’ but lot of work needs to be done from India’s point of view. Following are three important points to consider:

The first need is to develop a domestic market for technology products and services, which demands ‘bottom of the pyramid’ innovations. The economic engine should fuel the domestic market creation and ultimately create an array of product making organizations from India. This is what the Asian tigers (Countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong-Kong) have successfully demonstrated in the past forty years.
India should become a manufacturing hub, mainly in semiconductors and automobile areas. This not only creates product building capability, also generates need for more software products. Of course, infrastructure is a major challenge in this case.
Industries should play significant role in forming relationship with academic institutions and do long-term strategic investments. This would create a competitive, industry ready workforce who can be deployed without much training. Missing on this would prove very costly in India, as it will create demand-supply problem.

I can keep adding to the list mentioned above, but they are major points to consider. As of today comparing Bangalore with Silicon Valley is nothing but a joke, where nobody in India talks about value creation. The world might look ‘flat’ from the westerner’s point of view, but India has to go a long way to really to make it a reality.

Multi-lingual education in Singapore

2007-03-08T20:42:00.000+05:30

I am currently in Singapore on an official visit and explored this country to certain extent. Even though English is spoken everywhere, they have given the much needed importance to three major local languages: Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. They have kept these official languages in best interest of all major sectors of the population. This is very well reflected in their education system. In their Primary School Leaving Examination (PLSS) they must choose their mother tongue along with English. Following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

In order to test the students' grasp of the language subjects, such as the English or mother tongue languages at the end of primary school, there are several separate examinations. As the student is usually required to take mother tongue and the English language, (with exceptions of exemption or additional languages), the average student repeats the following procedures twice. With each mother tongue subject there are two levels of examination, the standard and the higher mother tongue subject, which often depends on what age the language, was first introduced to the pupil. Whether a higher mother tongue subject is taken determines whether a student is in the EM1 (higher) stream or the EM2 stream (standard).

The format tends to vary by language, but each language examination usually has an oral examination, testing the students' proficiency to speak the language, a listening comprehension examination, testing the students' ability to comprehend spoken messages in daily situations, an examination to test composition and the student's proficiency in writing in various scenarios, and finally an examination testing written use of the language.

This is a classic example for giving importance to vernacular language along with English. Also this is in shark contrast with India, where any student can get away by not knowing to read or write their mother tongue. In my blog titled ‘education in local languages’, I stressed upon this point and Singapore is a standing example where the diversity is taken as an advantage. Apart from learning the language in schools, it is also widely used and practiced. In all public places and notice boards all four languages are used. I had been to an Indian restaurant, primarily run by Tamilians and I was so surprised to see Tamil in the bills.

Why am I stressing on this point? Why should we learn any of the ancient Indian language? What is the importance of that in today’s globalized world? The answer is very simple: identity and belongingness. Learning local language creates an identity for a person and makes them understand our ancient past. When it is not there, people tend to ape the other cultures without even making an attempt to learn what India is all about. This creates a basic disconnect with the roots of the system and finally makes them not to understand the fundamental problems like poverty, caste system and illiteracy.

We should learn from countries like Singapore and accept the fact that Indians should learn their mother tongue. This might seem very simple but it goes long way in empathetically creating a diversified society, where India’s core strength lies.

BOOK REVIEW: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

2007-03-08T20:16:00.000+05:30

Author: Richard Bach
ISBN: 0380012863

This is one of the ‘thin’ books I have read and the message conveyed is like a ‘capsule’. So just swallow it blindly! It is written in with simple but powerful words, which coveys a strong message: ‘Don’t keep doing mundane things and get frustrated with life! Passionately explore and learn to the fullest extent’. The author Richard Bach conveys this message thro’ a fictional story of a seagull named Jonathan. Looking more deeply, this book touches the basic philosophy of life. In a way this book is similar to another book ‘The Alchemist’ which I have read couple of years back.

Coming to the story, Jonathan belongs to a seagull family whose main activity is to scout for food and survive. He belongs to a flock of seagulls, which keep doing the same task and never thought about anything beyond that. They don’t understand the purpose of their life and the reason for their existence. Frustrated by this, Jonathan wants to explore his passion for flying at very high altitude in high speed. He keeps practicing this alone and the fellow gulls including his parents feel it is not worth doing it. ‘I don’t mind being bone and feathers, Mum. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know’. With this curiosity and the great joy of flying high, Jonathan keeps flying alone. Ultimately finds two other gulls like him in heaven.

These new gulls take him to a ‘higher plane of existence’, where he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him ‘a gull in a million’. Jonathan befriends the wisest gull in this new place, named Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the universe. The secret, Chiang says, is to ‘begin by knowing that you have already arrived’. After learning these new flying techniques, Jonathan feels the need for teaching it to other seagulls in the earth and comes back to earth.

Here is where the story makes a transition from inspiration to leadership. Jonathan selects a group of gulls, who are interested in flying and teaches them his techniques. Here the author indirectly conveys the essence of inspirational leadership. The simplest form of leadership is very simple and very hard to demonstrate: ‘leading by example’. Jonathan teaches the joy and excitement of high flying to some of his fellow gulls from the flock and helps them to realize the purpose of their life as well. He teaches them ‘The only true law is that which leads to freedom’. This is in consistent with Stephen Covey’s 8th habit: ‘Find your Voice & Inspire others to find Theirs’.

Overall it’s a very small and nicely written book. Truly inspirational!

Technorati tags:Inpiration,Jonathan Livingston Seagull,Leadership,Book review

BOOK REVIEW: No fullstops in India

2007-03-02T00:43:00.000+05:30

Author: Mark Tully

Price: 300 INR

When couple of my friends presented me this book as my birthday gift, I was not sure whether I will like such 'story telling' type of book. After reading pretty good number of non-fictional books, I opened this book with lot of suspicions, but it turned out to be one totally different. The author Mark Tully, conveyed his idea of India by writing ten simple, real but thought provoking stories who is the chief of the BBC bureau, New Delhi. He is an India born British, educated in England and currently living in India.

What is the topic 'No full stops in India' is all about? How do I interpret it? What is the meaning I get out of it? The answer is pretty complex and requires deep understanding about mother India. Compared to other countries, India has a long history behind and it is much more diversified than any other country in the planet. I keep telling my friends the following statement: 'If you travel for more than 100 kms in India you will see difference in terms of food, road signs, religious practices, customs, language and dialects. On contrary in the western world everything looks uniform and unified. The McDonald's fries in the NY city will taste the same in San Francisco'. This diversity is very unique to India and it has got its own advantages and disadvantages. Even though we are moving ahead as a country, there are still deep rooted issues like poverty, caste based discrimination, illiteracy, religious fundamentalism and cheap politics.

On the other side the educated, elite and urban living people of India behave as if these things do not exist and try to ignore them. For example, when Muslims in India refused to sing ‘vande matharam’, CNN-IBN was asking opinions from some of the college students from Bangalore. One of them was telling ‘Government should be working towards infrastructure development instead of debating about vande matharam’. I felt pity about that student about his ignorance. Without solving a fundamental problem like vande matharam, how can we expect to develop infrastructure? How can the society can march forward when the growth is not inclusive? This is exactly what Mark Tully is trying to convey through this book. In his own words he says ‘India's westernized,elite cut off from local traditions want to write a full stop in a land are there is no full stops’.

To support his point, the author has shared ten real time stories. These stories cover areas like child labour, dalits and their societal problems, Hindu-Muslim religious issues, communalism’s positive impacts in West Bengal, religious beliefs of Indians like sati, rural Indians and their habits, kumbh mela and naga sadhus, religion based politics, excellent work done by some of the NGOs at the grass root levels and the list goes on and on. In each story the author has presented both positive and negative points of certain habits, rituals, practices existing in India over thousands of years.

At times some of these stories get a little dull and boring when the author tries to explain every simple thing again and again. May be for a western reader this might look interesting but being an Indian I felt author elongated certain points repeatedly. Overall I would recommend this book for people who want to understand more about India and looking for 'story telling' type of book.

Following are some of the excerpts from the book, which I liked:

The impact of British and aping the west:

"To many Indians, the turn that the country (India) has taken after the fifties has been of great concern. This era is described as the era of the second colonization. A colonialism that colonizes the mind in addition to bodies. The West is now everywhere outside in structures, and in minds. The colonized Indian mind believes that all answers are from the West and acts accordingly. The priorities of the Indian society have been altered beyond recognition"

On Indianness:

"What is Indianness today? The basic thing in India today is mediocrity. It has never been so mediocre as it is today. I feel it is stifled by the mediocrity. All our genuine intellectuals live in the West. We need another infusion of the West here. The freshness has gone out of this country, because people stopped reading and thinking thirty years ago"

On closed economy:

"It saddens me to think of the progress made by Hong-Kong and Singapore and to compare them with Clive street (in Calcutta). But then India faced very different problems – particularly the problem of large scale poverty, and Nehru chose socialism and a protected economy to deal with that – so Calcutta's trading activities were inevitably curtailed"

Religious fundamentalism:

"The politicians and the press continue to blame the riots on religious fundamentalism. This may be convenient for the politicians and fashionable for the press, but according to the victims – who ought to know the best – its just not true. The victims of the riots doesn't even know that it is not the religion that divides them"

Technorati tags:India,No fullstops in India,Mark Tully,Book review

Vedic power generation

2007-02-12T17:22:00.000+05:30

In my blog titled ‘Am I proud to be an Indian?’ I briefly touched upon Indian’s glorious past and the abundant knowledge in Vedas and Upanishads. Having said that it is very difficult to interpret Vedas and understand the real meaning. This is mainly because the language of Sanskrit is much more complex than any other languages and each word conveys many meanings. But my simple question was ‘If we have so much of knowledge and intellectual wealth, why can’t we use them for welfare of human beings?’. To my surprise, recently I found one classic example for this. Before getting into the details let me give some background information.

One of my very close friends is working for an IT company in Bangalore and couple of months back they celebrated ‘technology day’ in their organization. They invited Mr. Satish Chandra (who has supposedly demonstrated power generation using Vedic methods) for a guest lecture. I also got to know from my friend that he has proved that the output energy generated is more than input energy. How come it is possible? All I know is output energy can be less than or equal to input energy and the efficiency of any system cannot be more than 100%. It was surprised and got curious to know more about that. Couple of weeks back we visited Mr. Sathish Chandra’s institute and got a chance to interact with him for four hours. He explained his work in detail and gave a demo of his power generation prototype. Boy! It was really awesome.

Basically the Vedas (which are written in Sanskrit) can be deciphered in three ways. They are Adhyatmika (for general public), Adidaivika (rahasya or secret) and Adibhouthika. The first two methods are already interpreted by many Sanskrit scholars but nobody has attempted the third method. Mr. Sathish Chandra has successfully interpreted them using the third method and using one of his interpretations he has come up with a prototype for electricity generation.

Now let us quickly revise the fundamentals of electricity generation. The fundamental law says, when a magnetic flux is cut by mechanical motion, electricity gets generated. If you take the example of simple dynamo, it will have two magnets (North and South) where the magnetic field is created. When a mechanical rotor is rotated in between the magnets the electricity gets generated. Since there would be some energy losses the efficiently is less than 100%.

Mr. Sathish Chandra has deciphered the ‘purusha-sooktha’ (which are part of Vedas) using the Adibhouthika method. It is very difficult to interpret in that method and he has done it by doing very deep meditation. Let me take an example and explain how it works. (Please not that I am not getting into word by word interpretation).

The first shlokha of purusha-sooktha reads as follows:

Sahasra sirsha purusha: | sahasraksha: sahasrapaa |
Sa bhUmim vishvato vRtvA | atyatishTad daSAngulam ||

If it is deciphered normally, we get the following meaning:

With Thousands of heads, Thousands of eyes, and Thousands of feet, he (the supreme god) moves, as all of creation verily is he uncountable. He is beyond the grasp of the hands of men.

Now let us see how Mr. Satish Chandra has deciphered:

Out of the ten directions, in 8 directions excluding earth and sky and by firmly installing 8 gadgets (alternators) on the circumference of a circle, which contains numerous positive and negative charges, such that each one will face their own charges i.e. positive to positive and negative to negative and by rotating a runner like earth in a cylindrical way (in the centre) in between them will generate energy.

Based on his interpretation, he has come up with a prototype (see the first picture below) where he has used four magnets (static alternators) and one motor (runner) in the centre. The common runner and the static alternators are mechanically isolated from each other and are magnetically coupled. Just by rotating the common runner all the static alternators generate power independently. The common runner may be rotated by means of a diesel engine or water turbine or steam turbine or an electrical motor. For the prototype model he has used a 126 Watts of motor. Using this he is able to drive power of 303 Watts power for 12 chimney bulbs and 8 tube-lights (See the second picture below).

I was really excited to see the bulbs glowing in the prototype model. Mr.Satish Chandra claims that using his model electricity can be generated at 50 paise per unit. He is been struggling to justify his idea to the scientist community of India. After struggling for more than twenty years in committed reading, deep meditation he was able to decipher the sukthas. Recently he got about 10 million dollar funding from Tesla University and he is planning to file a joint patent for his innovation and take it forward.

At the personal end Mr. Sathish Chandra holds a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Malnad engineering college and post graduation degree from IISc Bangalore. In the year 1981 he was posted in Orissa state electricity board, where he understood the need for generating low cost electricity for India. This passion drove him to read all ancient texts co-relate it with modern science and innovated this new method. He was also able to explain the ‘deepamalika raga’ using which tansen was able to lit lamps in during Akbar’s period. I was not able to understand much because he was using too many terminologies. He claims ‘On implementing this research work will not only sound an everlasting answer to the power crisis of the world but also spread the pride of Mother India to its Zenith’.

In the end my mind started asking more questions. How this prototype can be productized? Is it a scalable solution? What are the intricacies of using this in homes and rural areas? If the output is greater then input, whatever I studied in Science is wrong? If our Vedas are so superior in knowledge why no-one has ever made an attempt to interpret them in the past thousand years? I am sure that I will not get an answer in the near future but I would any day appreciate the passion of Mr.Satish Chandra and his persistent effort to do something for the country. Whatever may be the outcome, his in-depth knowledge, passion for India, humbleness and philanthropic thinking is really amazing!

Technorati tags:Vedic,Power generation,Technology,India,Purusha sooktha

Indian Railways – Automatic Ticket Kiosks

2007-01-28T20:59:00.000+05:30

It was 5:10 AM on 26^th January when I reached Bangalore railway station and I was supposed to travel by general compartment. The ticketing counters open by 5 AM, and there was a long 'hanuman tail' queue in almost all counters. I was cursing myself for getting late by 10 minutes (normally I go sharp 5 AM and stand in the as the first person in the queue) and thinking whether I will get a place to sit in the 6:30 AM train to Chennai. Also our Indian junta was giving me 'dhakka' from all directions :(

All of a sudden I discovered a ATM like machine with touchscreen saying 'Swipe your Credit/Debit card and get tickets to Chennai and Mysore' and I was taken by surprise. In the past I have done some case studies about photo kiosks and with lots of excitement, I approached the kiosk. It had a simple touchscreen which had four different combinations for Chennai and Mysore. I selected 'chennai' and 'super-fast' combination and swiped my debit card in slot provided in the right hand side. Thats it! After about 30 seconds the ticket was automatically printed in the left side slot. All of a sudden people saw me getting my tickets printed and I gave a small demo to some of them before rushing into my train to catch my seat in general compartment. The kiosk picture shown below.

This kiosk is been launched not more than three weeks back and the experience was simply awesome! It was promoted by Canara Bank in association with Indian Railways with a meager service charge of Rs.5. It saved time of so many people and eased the queue for so many people as most of them were traveling to Chennai or Mysore. Being an embedded systems engineer I cannot stop appreciating this and I saw technology really making a difference in India. But the unfortunate point is people were not aware of this kiosk until I started printing the tickets for the first time that day.

This kiosk should be launched for any station to any station along with a touch screen in local language. Today almost all the government employees, farmers and students have debit cards which would definitely help them to get tickets quickly. In my blog about Indian railways, I briefly touched about the potential of Indian railways and how technology need to play a major role in that. Also last week I came across the article where Indian railway is becoming net-savvy by giving WiFi connections in railways. After my kiosk experience I really get the 'aha' experience of technology.

Technorati tags:Indian Railways,Technology,Ticketing Kiosks