Month: November 2008

I wrote this series in February 2007, when our MyToday SMS services were blocked by operators in India. November has been one of those months where the financial gloom has been compounded by the developments this week in Mumbai. At times like this, one has to think positive. This is what I wrote then:

When one is an entrepreneur, there is an implicit acceptance of the unknown. Bad Things will happen which can destroy a business. It could be a software failure. It could be a sudden exodus of key talent. It could a damaging story in the media. It could be a competitor launching a product or service that seems to be faster, better and cheaper. I have experienced all of the above. And lived through each of them and emerged stronger. What is needed is a firm belief that out of every Bad Thing there is another Good Thing waiting to be created. The Bad is obvious, the Good is not. The Bad is the present, the Good is the Future. It is not easy to think of the calmness of the sea when one is caught in a turbulent storm.

This weekend’s links:

• Our nightmare, our wake-up call: An editorial in The Indian Express by Shekhar Gupta
• Terror in Mumbai: An editorial in The Economist
• CounterterrorismBlog: has some interesting analysis on the Mumbai attacks
• Spend Imagination: by Steve Brotman
• Forbes’ Businessmen of the Year: Lenovo’s Yang Yuanqing and William Amelio

I spent Thursday at home watching the events unfolding on TV. Even now on Friday morning, security operations are still continuing at the two hotels (Taj and Trident-Oberoi), and Nariman House. The scale and audacity of the terrorism which has taken place is  slowly beginning to unfold. Few of us would have seen anything like this before in our life. A friend came by home yesterday — he was at the Trident when the firing started on Wednesday night, and was lucky to escape unhurt.

Everyone wants answers: Who are these terrorists?  How did they execute such an intricate plan? Did they have help from within? How come Indian intelligence had no clue about all this? 2008 has seen more than its fair share of attacks in different cities in India. There is a frustration setting in people that our political leadership has been extremely weak in dealing with the situation. A number of Mumbaikars spoke out on TV with a common refrain:”Enough is enough.”

Today, we will go back to work.  But this time around, we just cannot forget and move on.Ensuring safety for its citizens (and not just for themselves) is the government’s top priority. National security is now India’s #1 challenge. Over the past 4 years, India has lost more citizens to terrorism than any other country except Iraq. Even as we can blame “forces across the border”, we need to do a lot of introspection — what can each of us do to ensure a safe and secure future. We cannot live in a permanent state of fear and uncertainty. Suddenly, one gets a sense of what it must be to have lived in Beirut a couple decades ago or Baghdad until recently. This is not the Mumbai I grew up in and spent most of the first four decades of my life.

It is still hard to believe what has happened in the past 10 hours in Mumbai. South Mumbai (Nepean Sea Road/Kemp’s Corner) is where home has been for the past 34 years. And to see places so close and so known being attacked really makes one wonder if anything or anyone is safe in today’s world. The Taj and The Trident/Oberoi are Mumbai’s best-known hotels and to see them being shown live even now on TV as scenes of ongoing terrorist encouters is kind of eerie.

I was on a conference call with a couple people in the US last night when I heard two loud noises. I didn’t think twice about that then, but when I had just fallen asleep, my wife Bhavana woke me up saying there had been blasts and attacks in Mumbai — she had gotten our MyToday News SMS. It was around 11 pm. We switched on the TV and then watched the whole nightmare unfold for the next few hours.

Even today morning, it is not yet over. What is astonishing is the brazenness of it all. The proximity of what has happened and the familiarity of the places where the incidents is still hard to believe. For Mumbai – “the maximum city, the city that never sleeps” – this is a nightmare which will leave deep wounds for a long time to come.

Looks like this week is shaping up to be the week of blog posts about books!

A book recommended to me by Chetanbhai at our Book Club meeting last week was “Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently” by Gregory Berns. I bought a copy from Strand Book Stall over the weekend. I have read the first few chapters and it is quite fascinating. Highly recommended. Here is the Amazon page on the book.

An Iconoclast is someone who does things others say cannot be done. The book covers three aspects through a variety of examples — how iconoclasts perceive things differently, how they overcome the fear of failure, and how they are able to sell their ideas to others. I think we all need a little bit of that ‘iconoclast’ thinking in us — the book shows us how.

I recently re-started reading Fiction – of the thriller variety. (The book I am reading on my Kindle currently is “The Brass Verdict” by Michael Connelly.) It started with the numerous trips that I took this year. At some point, I guess I wanted something other to think about than just work! The Kindle played a big role in this since I now had books ‘on tap.’I think another contributory factor has been that Abhishek goes to sleep on most days before 8 pm (so that he wakes up on time for playschool the next morning), and I suddenly have plenty of time before I got to bed.

I have read 8 Fiction books this year. Some get read quite rapidly, while others get read a couple chapters on time — all depends on how interesting the book is and how much time I have. At any time, I keep a couple unread books on the Kindle.

What I now find fascinating is how the authors weave together the plot and script the entire story. I was telling a colleague at work the other day that we should think about our business the same way — think through the story and the endgame, and script a path to getting there. A good author does it in a way that is completely believable, tantalising the reader with what’s coming next, and yet springing theoccasional surprise. In business, too, we need to do something similar as we try and orchestrate events to favour the outcomes we want.

One of the meetings that I look forward every 2 months is that of our 3-person Book Club. We spend about 90 minutes discussing books or articles that we have read. Since all of us come from very different backgrounds and have very different reading habits, there is always a lot to learn from listening and sharing. There is no business discussion – because we have very little in common there. So, one can be very open in the talk.

In the 7+ years that we have been meeting, I have found my Book Club meetings to be rich in opening my mind to different mental models and streams of thinking which I would not have ordinarily gotten exposed to. (And I hope I have done the same to my two friends.)

I think all of us should create our own small ‘circles’ where the group meets and shares ideas or readings on different topics. I am sure you will find it stimulating.

I wrote this in Feb 2004, but many of the topics discussed pertaining to India’s development are still valid. I covered 7 topics: Education, Microfinance, Market Access, Information Access, ICT, Energy and Distribution Hubs. While a lot has happened in India in the past 4+ years, much more needs to be done. So, even as we ponder these difficult times, we must not lose sight of the big picture and the monumental task of ensuring India’s continuing development that lies ahead.

This weekend’s links:

• Blyk CEO Interview: Blyk is an MVNO with a very interesting model. Via mocoNews.
• Imagining India: Nandan Nilekani’s book which goes on sale on Monday
• Cloud Computing and SMBs: by Ed Sim
• Fifteen Year Cycle: by Matt McCall
• 10 Tips for Building a Profitable Business: by Ted Rheingold

One of the lines of thinking I have been exploring is that for mobile (specifically, SMS) advertising to be really big, it will be have to offer something more than what advertisers get on the Internet. This means, more measurability than what Search and Display advertising on the Internet provide. Which brings us to the questions: is this possible? If so, how can it be done?

An interesting aspect on the mobile is the availability of the mobile number. This is available for SMS interactions. (For the purpose of this discussion, I am considering non-operators. Mobile operators have plenty of profile and other information, and could presumably build significant mobile ad businesses, but for that they will need to start thinking beyond voice and new customer acquisition. I don’t see that happening in a focused manner for at least a couple years in India.)

So, the mobile number is available. How can this be the fulcrum around which a rich profile is built, and then that is used for targeted ads, where the result to conversion is tracked. On the Internet, this is being done via cookies. But the fact that one can link a mobile number to actions should help in more measurability.