Jayakumar Balasubramanian

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

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...

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 chap...

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 consi...

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 acc...

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?

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.

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.