feb 26th Updates
Quotable Quotes
I was irritated by whatever was written about me in the media in the last couple of years- I need to be treated as a player and that is every player's right.-- Sourav ganguly
I have kept my word-- Pervez Mushraff - after announcement of the Pakistan General election results
Akshay Kumar and John Abraham are attached- And that creates more of an embarrassment to them than me. Come to think of it, where are the eligible single guys in our industry ? I will have to look elsewhere - vidya Balan Actor ( any one interested ? )
I will talk to LTTE only if they give up their weapons. They can't have their cake and eat it too -- Mahindra Rajapaksa - Sri Lankan President
Snippets
Orissa
All creepy things, from worms to cockroaches, have been found in soft drink bottles. But what Bimbadhar nayak , a resident of narada Bazaar near Bhubaneswar , discovered in a soft drink bottle was far more revolting- While enjoying the beverage he nearly swallowed the rotten remains of a human finger with the nail on it. Shaken, Nayak alerted the police and plans to move the consumer court
Punjab
Aditya Romeo Dev is not a philander bit arguably the shortest body builder in the country at 2 feet 9 inches. His vital statistics - Chest 20 inches , biceps 6.5 inches and thighs : 8 inches. Hundreds of people gather every day in Phagwara to watch this 19year old. Who has been toning his body for the last two years-- Some body builder indeed.
Anand Mahindra's speech at Nasscom Leadership Summit on February 13 th , 2008 - a must read!!
Nasscom Leadership Summit has always been a place for goodstory-telling and provocative thoughts. This year, the spark came not
from a software veteran or a BPO moghul, but a captain of an oldconomy industry. Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and managing director
of Mahindra & Mahindra drew from mythology to call for game-changinginnovation from the IT industry.
One of the tasks we at the Mahindra Group have set ourselves is to
aspire to be recognized as the most customer-centric organization in
India, and why not, in the World!
In order to walk the talk, every time I'm asked to speak at a
conference, I have made it a default option to ask what the
audience--my customers--might expect of me.
And so I found myself wondering what this conclave of IT wizards
expects from a predominantly right-brained character like myself. You
certainly haven't called me here to deliver a sermon on technology.
And I wouldn't even risk doing that with Nandan (Nilekani) and Kiran
(Karnik) sharing the dais!
Of course, I might have been able to do that by getting one of my IT
colleagues to write this speech, but then it would have been
comprehensible to you, but incomprehensible to me!
And although the title of this session is 'Building a Knowledge
Economy for Growth', I believe that a) All of you out there have
helped build the foundations of a knowledge economy, so again, you
don't need me to pontificate to you about that and b) I think there
are some urgent pressures and imperatives the industry has to deal
with at this point.
So, I'm going to talk about something completely different: I will
talk about the Trimurti.
Most of the Indians in this audience will know the Trimurti – the
trinity in Indian mythology of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the
sustainer and Shiva the destroyer. There is a wonderful depiction of
this in stone, just ten kilometers across the bay, at Elephanta. Both
as a businessman, and as someone who tends to see life in visual
images, the Trimurti reminds me of India's IT industry. Think of it.
You people have gone through a stage, where like Brahma, you created
something out of nothing. You created a new and global industry. You
created a service sector that is today, a major pillar of our GDP. But
most importantly, you created a perception of a new India, both in the
world and in Indian hearts and minds.
CK Prahalad once told me that in universities in America today, there
are almost unfairly high expectations from Indian students, because
there is a huge perception that all Indian students are brilliant,
outstanding. You created that perception. And within India, what you
created was self-belief. You showed us what Indians could do, and now
the rest of India believes that Indians can do anything. Brahma
created a physical landscape; you sowed the seeds of a new mental and
psychological landscape. In that sense, you are truly the Brahmas of
the age of liberalisation.
But creation is only the first phase. You then have to move on to the
next phase of sustaining that creation - to the realm of Vishnu the
preserver. Creation is a one-time affair. Sustaining that creation is
obviously a longer haul, subject to many attacks and crises. Perhaps
that is why Vishnu comes not in one, but in ten incarnations.
Every time there is a new danger, he changes his avatar to a form best
suited to meet that danger. At various times he has come as a fish, as
a tortoise, as a dwarf. But his most interesting avatar came when he
had to fight the demon Hiranyakashyap. Hiranyakashyap was a bad guy,
who had obtained an amazing boon from the gods. Neither man nor beast
could kill him; he could not be killed by daylight or at nighttime,
within his home or outside it, on the ground or in the sky. All this
made him pretty invincible – he went on a rampage, and only Vishnu
could tackle him
The IT industry today faces challenges every bit as complex as those
Hiranyakashyap posed for Vishnu. It is hit by a macroeconomic tsunami
of adverse currency changes, rapidly escalating costs in both salaries
and infrastructure and inadequate talent pools below the tier 1 and 2
institutions.
At the Company level, firms are begin to feel the penalties of poor
differentiation and lack of focus (trying to be all things to all
people); and an over-emphasis on high volumes and price competition.
Suddenly, the industry seems to have fallen off its pedestal; You are
facing your very own Hiranyakashyap.
It's interesting to see how Vishnu dealt with him. How do you destroy
someone who can't be killed by man or beast, inside or outside, by day
or night etc etc. The demon pretty much had all bases covered. So
Vishnu took on the Narasimha avatar to bypass the boon. Narasimha was
a hybrid creature, half man half lion, and therefore neither man nor
beast.
He killed Hiranyakashyap at twilight, which is neither day nor night.
He killed him in the courtyard, which is neither inside a house nor
outside it. And he killed the demon by placing him across his knee and
tearing him apart, thus circumventing the terms of the boon that he
could not be killed either on the ground or in the sky. Now that's
what I call an innovative algorithm!
So what are the lessons for the IT industry in this story? Well, the
first thing Vishnu did was to reinvent himself. It was not the gentle
and contemplative Vishnu who fought Hiranyakashyap – it was the
fearsome Narasimha avatar. Vishnu reinvented himself to suit the
circumstances. The circumstances have changed drastically. Reinvent
yourselves.
Do I have all the answers on the modes of re-invention? No, obviously
not, otherwise I'd be out there filing patents, although I can suggest
two broad approaches.
First, why don't we design business models that challenge traditional
industry approaches and then transform our organizations, people and
processes to execute. If we simply keep knocking on the doors of
clients with our traditional offshoring options, we'll meet the fate
of hearing aid salespersons: our best customers won't hear the
doobell!
For example, software-on-demand and open source models changed the
rules of the software game. Can we not try to change the rules of the
game this time around? Why didn't we invent Zoom technology or
Virtualisation? Thus far, India's brand of innovation has been
identified with the IT industry, but is it truly innovative. Is it
really game changing? Ironically, you can now look to the old
smokestack industries for inspiration.
A few weeks ago, an Indian car company made a game-changing move.
Maybe the Nano will ultimately not retail for a hundred thousand
rupees. Maybe it won't have great margins, or replace as many
motorcycles as it would like to, but it was a game changing move; it
fired a shot that was heard around the world. Can the IT world make
any such claim?
There was an old saying, apparently adopted by the IT industry, that
the secret of success is to jump every time opportunity knocks. And
how do you know when opportunity knocks? You don't, you just keep
jumping!
So when are we going to stop simply jumping every time a client seems
to sneeze, and actually create products and IP that become their own
opportunities?
Let's look at new areas where India may have natural advantage. I
remember C.K Prahlad telling us that we didn't realize how important
it was to leverage emerging innovation ecosystems in our country. He
gave us the example of how, due to a fortunate coincidence, India's IT
and automotive industries were situated in roughly the same geographic
clusters. So why wasn't, according to Michael Porter's competitive
theories, a world beating automotive telematics industry taking shape
here.
Why aren't IT companies using the massive potential of India's soft
power, the film and TV business to exploit technological dominance of
what Telco's call the 'last mile' but is actually the 'first mile' in
the brave new interactive world?
Secondly, why don't we try to focus on a vertical industry (e.g.,
telecom) or horizontal domain (e.g., supply chain management)
selecting the key dimensions of competitive differentiation – product
vs. service, breadth vs. depth, speed of delivery, customer service
responsiveness, fixed or outcome-based pricing, proprietary technology
or intellectual property, and so on.
And let's be prepared to make hard decisions along the way – change
people who don't fit, walk away from businesses that doesn't fit.
It's essential, while attempting this, however, to recognize that
focus, differentiation and brand building require time and investment.
Selling value or doing business differently than the norm tends to
elongate sales cycles, which tends to put pressure on cash flow and we
need to resist the temptation to broaden our offerings or slash prices
just to win the business and keep people busy.
Along with re-invention, during the course of reinventing himself,
Vishnu figured out the loopholes in the boon, and regrouped his
physical and mental aspects to take advantage of these loopholes.
That's something the IT industry can do as well. Its often been
pointed out that in the Chinese word for crisis is also the Chinese
word for opportunity I love that mindset. I truly believe that the
adverse rate of the dollar can be viewed as the glass half empty or
the glass half full. Sure it affects margins. But it's also a chance
to take advantage of the loophole and buy yourselves what you don't
have, so that you can regroup your structure to meet the challenge.
To me the fact that our currency is more valuable and our price
earnings ratios are still higher than average, means that we can
acquire the front-ends and the large IT businesses that we never
thought we could before. And the bigger the better. If people are
egging us on to leapfrog, then they should also cheer as you bid for
companies that seem bigger fish than you. It's happening all the time
today in the manufacturing sector—Tata Corus being the stellar
example—and we at Mahindra, while starting from scratch, have
inorganically compiled together a portfolio of acquisitions that make
us the fourth largest steel forging company in the world today.
This is not without historical precedent. If you look at Japan and
South Korea, both of them went through a phase of enduring the worlds'
skepticism, then painstakingly building strong and competent domestic
businesses, and then on the back of global liquidity support and
strong price earnings ratios, compressing time by acquiring global
firms and their customer credibility.
In effect, by acquiring the strengths and skill sets you need, you
will regroup your profile and create a new entity, which can vanquish
your challenges as effectively as Vishnu vanquished Hiranyakashyap.
And finally, while reinventing yourselves, you will have to bring in
some of the aspects of the third element of the Trimurti – that of
Shiva the destroyer.
Destroy for example the premise that cost arbitrage is the way to go.
Recognize that the low cost, high volume offshore outsourcing battle
has already been fought and won. Often, when strategic frames grow
rigid, companies, like countries, tend to keep fighting the LAST war.
If you are not already on the winners list, you need to think of other
ways to compete on value and differentiation, rather than price and
scale.
Destroy the premise that success comes only from size, and desist from
comparisons with other Indian companies. There are still many IT
companies in India who define success as "we want to be one of the top
ten Indian IT companies". Why not, for example, "we want to be the
world's #1 banking back office solutions provider"?
And lastly, perhaps the time has come to destroy the notion that the
world may be your oyster but India is not. There is a huge domestic
market in middle class and corporate India that has not been plumbed.
Even selling to the bottom of the pyramid is profitable today. But it
needs a creative destruction of the current mindset and a re-think on
many of the assumptions we hold dear.
So, in conclusion, perhaps there really isn't that much distance
between avatars in the mythological sense and avatars in the
technology sense. Perhaps they are both symbolic expressions of the
same reality. In their different ways, they both underline the same
message – that it is necessary in any situation to reinvent, regroup
and re-think our way out of whatever challenges confront us.
I'd like to close with one of my favourite quotes—such a favourite,
that I can't even remember where I first read it:
My father thought the world would be same;
My children, however, wake up EVERY day thinking the world will be different.
Let's begin emulating our children. Time to wake up and make the world different
I was irritated by whatever was written about me in the media in the last couple of years- I need to be treated as a player and that is every player's right.-- Sourav ganguly
I have kept my word-- Pervez Mushraff - after announcement of the Pakistan General election results
Akshay Kumar and John Abraham are attached- And that creates more of an embarrassment to them than me. Come to think of it, where are the eligible single guys in our industry ? I will have to look elsewhere - vidya Balan Actor ( any one interested ? )
I will talk to LTTE only if they give up their weapons. They can't have their cake and eat it too -- Mahindra Rajapaksa - Sri Lankan President
Snippets
Orissa
All creepy things, from worms to cockroaches, have been found in soft drink bottles. But what Bimbadhar nayak , a resident of narada Bazaar near Bhubaneswar , discovered in a soft drink bottle was far more revolting- While enjoying the beverage he nearly swallowed the rotten remains of a human finger with the nail on it. Shaken, Nayak alerted the police and plans to move the consumer court
Punjab
Aditya Romeo Dev is not a philander bit arguably the shortest body builder in the country at 2 feet 9 inches. His vital statistics - Chest 20 inches , biceps 6.5 inches and thighs : 8 inches. Hundreds of people gather every day in Phagwara to watch this 19year old. Who has been toning his body for the last two years-- Some body builder indeed.
Anand Mahindra's speech at Nasscom Leadership Summit on February 13 th , 2008 - a must read!!
Nasscom Leadership Summit has always been a place for goodstory-telling and provocative thoughts. This year, the spark came not
from a software veteran or a BPO moghul, but a captain of an oldconomy industry. Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and managing director
of Mahindra & Mahindra drew from mythology to call for game-changinginnovation from the IT industry.
One of the tasks we at the Mahindra Group have set ourselves is to
aspire to be recognized as the most customer-centric organization in
India, and why not, in the World!
In order to walk the talk, every time I'm asked to speak at a
conference, I have made it a default option to ask what the
audience--my customers--might expect of me.
And so I found myself wondering what this conclave of IT wizards
expects from a predominantly right-brained character like myself. You
certainly haven't called me here to deliver a sermon on technology.
And I wouldn't even risk doing that with Nandan (Nilekani) and Kiran
(Karnik) sharing the dais!
Of course, I might have been able to do that by getting one of my IT
colleagues to write this speech, but then it would have been
comprehensible to you, but incomprehensible to me!
And although the title of this session is 'Building a Knowledge
Economy for Growth', I believe that a) All of you out there have
helped build the foundations of a knowledge economy, so again, you
don't need me to pontificate to you about that and b) I think there
are some urgent pressures and imperatives the industry has to deal
with at this point.
So, I'm going to talk about something completely different: I will
talk about the Trimurti.
Most of the Indians in this audience will know the Trimurti – the
trinity in Indian mythology of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the
sustainer and Shiva the destroyer. There is a wonderful depiction of
this in stone, just ten kilometers across the bay, at Elephanta. Both
as a businessman, and as someone who tends to see life in visual
images, the Trimurti reminds me of India's IT industry. Think of it.
You people have gone through a stage, where like Brahma, you created
something out of nothing. You created a new and global industry. You
created a service sector that is today, a major pillar of our GDP. But
most importantly, you created a perception of a new India, both in the
world and in Indian hearts and minds.
CK Prahalad once told me that in universities in America today, there
are almost unfairly high expectations from Indian students, because
there is a huge perception that all Indian students are brilliant,
outstanding. You created that perception. And within India, what you
created was self-belief. You showed us what Indians could do, and now
the rest of India believes that Indians can do anything. Brahma
created a physical landscape; you sowed the seeds of a new mental and
psychological landscape. In that sense, you are truly the Brahmas of
the age of liberalisation.
But creation is only the first phase. You then have to move on to the
next phase of sustaining that creation - to the realm of Vishnu the
preserver. Creation is a one-time affair. Sustaining that creation is
obviously a longer haul, subject to many attacks and crises. Perhaps
that is why Vishnu comes not in one, but in ten incarnations.
Every time there is a new danger, he changes his avatar to a form best
suited to meet that danger. At various times he has come as a fish, as
a tortoise, as a dwarf. But his most interesting avatar came when he
had to fight the demon Hiranyakashyap. Hiranyakashyap was a bad guy,
who had obtained an amazing boon from the gods. Neither man nor beast
could kill him; he could not be killed by daylight or at nighttime,
within his home or outside it, on the ground or in the sky. All this
made him pretty invincible – he went on a rampage, and only Vishnu
could tackle him
The IT industry today faces challenges every bit as complex as those
Hiranyakashyap posed for Vishnu. It is hit by a macroeconomic tsunami
of adverse currency changes, rapidly escalating costs in both salaries
and infrastructure and inadequate talent pools below the tier 1 and 2
institutions.
At the Company level, firms are begin to feel the penalties of poor
differentiation and lack of focus (trying to be all things to all
people); and an over-emphasis on high volumes and price competition.
Suddenly, the industry seems to have fallen off its pedestal; You are
facing your very own Hiranyakashyap.
It's interesting to see how Vishnu dealt with him. How do you destroy
someone who can't be killed by man or beast, inside or outside, by day
or night etc etc. The demon pretty much had all bases covered. So
Vishnu took on the Narasimha avatar to bypass the boon. Narasimha was
a hybrid creature, half man half lion, and therefore neither man nor
beast.
He killed Hiranyakashyap at twilight, which is neither day nor night.
He killed him in the courtyard, which is neither inside a house nor
outside it. And he killed the demon by placing him across his knee and
tearing him apart, thus circumventing the terms of the boon that he
could not be killed either on the ground or in the sky. Now that's
what I call an innovative algorithm!
So what are the lessons for the IT industry in this story? Well, the
first thing Vishnu did was to reinvent himself. It was not the gentle
and contemplative Vishnu who fought Hiranyakashyap – it was the
fearsome Narasimha avatar. Vishnu reinvented himself to suit the
circumstances. The circumstances have changed drastically. Reinvent
yourselves.
Do I have all the answers on the modes of re-invention? No, obviously
not, otherwise I'd be out there filing patents, although I can suggest
two broad approaches.
First, why don't we design business models that challenge traditional
industry approaches and then transform our organizations, people and
processes to execute. If we simply keep knocking on the doors of
clients with our traditional offshoring options, we'll meet the fate
of hearing aid salespersons: our best customers won't hear the
doobell!
For example, software-on-demand and open source models changed the
rules of the software game. Can we not try to change the rules of the
game this time around? Why didn't we invent Zoom technology or
Virtualisation? Thus far, India's brand of innovation has been
identified with the IT industry, but is it truly innovative. Is it
really game changing? Ironically, you can now look to the old
smokestack industries for inspiration.
A few weeks ago, an Indian car company made a game-changing move.
Maybe the Nano will ultimately not retail for a hundred thousand
rupees. Maybe it won't have great margins, or replace as many
motorcycles as it would like to, but it was a game changing move; it
fired a shot that was heard around the world. Can the IT world make
any such claim?
There was an old saying, apparently adopted by the IT industry, that
the secret of success is to jump every time opportunity knocks. And
how do you know when opportunity knocks? You don't, you just keep
jumping!
So when are we going to stop simply jumping every time a client seems
to sneeze, and actually create products and IP that become their own
opportunities?
Let's look at new areas where India may have natural advantage. I
remember C.K Prahlad telling us that we didn't realize how important
it was to leverage emerging innovation ecosystems in our country. He
gave us the example of how, due to a fortunate coincidence, India's IT
and automotive industries were situated in roughly the same geographic
clusters. So why wasn't, according to Michael Porter's competitive
theories, a world beating automotive telematics industry taking shape
here.
Why aren't IT companies using the massive potential of India's soft
power, the film and TV business to exploit technological dominance of
what Telco's call the 'last mile' but is actually the 'first mile' in
the brave new interactive world?
Secondly, why don't we try to focus on a vertical industry (e.g.,
telecom) or horizontal domain (e.g., supply chain management)
selecting the key dimensions of competitive differentiation – product
vs. service, breadth vs. depth, speed of delivery, customer service
responsiveness, fixed or outcome-based pricing, proprietary technology
or intellectual property, and so on.
And let's be prepared to make hard decisions along the way – change
people who don't fit, walk away from businesses that doesn't fit.
It's essential, while attempting this, however, to recognize that
focus, differentiation and brand building require time and investment.
Selling value or doing business differently than the norm tends to
elongate sales cycles, which tends to put pressure on cash flow and we
need to resist the temptation to broaden our offerings or slash prices
just to win the business and keep people busy.
Along with re-invention, during the course of reinventing himself,
Vishnu figured out the loopholes in the boon, and regrouped his
physical and mental aspects to take advantage of these loopholes.
That's something the IT industry can do as well. Its often been
pointed out that in the Chinese word for crisis is also the Chinese
word for opportunity I love that mindset. I truly believe that the
adverse rate of the dollar can be viewed as the glass half empty or
the glass half full. Sure it affects margins. But it's also a chance
to take advantage of the loophole and buy yourselves what you don't
have, so that you can regroup your structure to meet the challenge.
To me the fact that our currency is more valuable and our price
earnings ratios are still higher than average, means that we can
acquire the front-ends and the large IT businesses that we never
thought we could before. And the bigger the better. If people are
egging us on to leapfrog, then they should also cheer as you bid for
companies that seem bigger fish than you. It's happening all the time
today in the manufacturing sector—Tata Corus being the stellar
example—and we at Mahindra, while starting from scratch, have
inorganically compiled together a portfolio of acquisitions that make
us the fourth largest steel forging company in the world today.
This is not without historical precedent. If you look at Japan and
South Korea, both of them went through a phase of enduring the worlds'
skepticism, then painstakingly building strong and competent domestic
businesses, and then on the back of global liquidity support and
strong price earnings ratios, compressing time by acquiring global
firms and their customer credibility.
In effect, by acquiring the strengths and skill sets you need, you
will regroup your profile and create a new entity, which can vanquish
your challenges as effectively as Vishnu vanquished Hiranyakashyap.
And finally, while reinventing yourselves, you will have to bring in
some of the aspects of the third element of the Trimurti – that of
Shiva the destroyer.
Destroy for example the premise that cost arbitrage is the way to go.
Recognize that the low cost, high volume offshore outsourcing battle
has already been fought and won. Often, when strategic frames grow
rigid, companies, like countries, tend to keep fighting the LAST war.
If you are not already on the winners list, you need to think of other
ways to compete on value and differentiation, rather than price and
scale.
Destroy the premise that success comes only from size, and desist from
comparisons with other Indian companies. There are still many IT
companies in India who define success as "we want to be one of the top
ten Indian IT companies". Why not, for example, "we want to be the
world's #1 banking back office solutions provider"?
And lastly, perhaps the time has come to destroy the notion that the
world may be your oyster but India is not. There is a huge domestic
market in middle class and corporate India that has not been plumbed.
Even selling to the bottom of the pyramid is profitable today. But it
needs a creative destruction of the current mindset and a re-think on
many of the assumptions we hold dear.
So, in conclusion, perhaps there really isn't that much distance
between avatars in the mythological sense and avatars in the
technology sense. Perhaps they are both symbolic expressions of the
same reality. In their different ways, they both underline the same
message – that it is necessary in any situation to reinvent, regroup
and re-think our way out of whatever challenges confront us.
I'd like to close with one of my favourite quotes—such a favourite,
that I can't even remember where I first read it:
My father thought the world would be same;
My children, however, wake up EVERY day thinking the world will be different.
Let's begin emulating our children. Time to wake up and make the world different
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