Emergic: Rajesh Jain's Blog

From a series written six years ago: If there is one thing common to most of us, it is that we are part of a Company. Be it a startup or an established one, be it small or big, be it a local one or a global multinational, the Company is where we spend the [...]

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This week’s links: Mobile World Congress: A review by Strand Consulting. “We believe that 2010 most probably will be remembered for being one of the years with the least slide-ware and most focus on the world we live in and the market our customers are a part of.” strategy+business on Tatas: “As of 2010, Tata [...]

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So, today is another Budget Day in India. And in a few hours, we will probably be discussing how yet another opportunity to change India’s policy climate was missed. That’s really been the story for most of the Budgets that have presented. I hope I will be surprised, but the likelihood is very high that [...]

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I cannot overemphasise the importance for early-stage companies to create an Advisory Board. The founder and management team, more often than not, are very closely involved in the business on a day-to-day basis.  As such, they can do with inputs from an Advisory Board which meets once a quarter or so to review the business [...]

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A photo that says it all.

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On Sunday night, I went for my School Alumni Day to St. Xavier’s High School (near Metro, Mumbai). It was the first one I had ever attended since passing out 28 years ago. Thanks to the efforts of a few, about 50 of us ended up coming (out of a batch of 200). It was [...]

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There are three India-related books published recently which are good reading and which their own unique appeal: Arun Shourie’s “We must have no price” Jerry Rao’s “Notes from an Indian Conservative” Business Standard’s “India 2010″ Any other recommendations from what you have read recently?

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From a post written in 2004: Robert Hagstrom’s book Investing: The Last Liberal Art talks about the need for a latticework of mental models. It is inspired by Charlie Munger’s thinking that one needs to have a framework of the best ideas across multiple disciplines. This may seem contrarian to what we are always told [...]

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This week’s links: The Real-Time Revolution: by Joshua-Michele Ross in Forbes.  “Why the real-time Web makes business sense.” Raising money: by Joel Spolsky. When to go to VCs and when not to. A ‘Stop Doing’ List: by Jim Collins (from 2003), via Atanu.”Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone [...]

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If India’s mobile data (VAS) ecosystem has to grow, then there are two pre-requisites that need to happen: a guarantee of Net Neutrality, so that operators cannot arbitrarily block services they believe compete with them the operator’s billing platform as a service for a fee of 10% or so, a la Docomo’s i-mode in Japan [...]

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India’s challenges are monumental, but what we are all concerned is with the trivial. Open any newspaper or watch any of the TV news channels, and you will see the seemingly inane topics that are being highlighted and discussed. Sometimes, I wonder if we deserve any better. Like for the past two weeks, the Mumbai [...]

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Just when one thinks things cannot get any worse in India’s telecom sector, our government makes the unbelievable happen. We should have had 3G services in India 3-4 years ago. But we took a detour to giving more 2.5G licences since that could enrich the powers that make decisions by a few billion dollars. In [...]

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If you are in South Mumbai and love books, make it a point to visit the Strand Book Festival at Bajaj Bhavan at Nariman Point. It is on till Feb 28, from 10 am – 8 pm daily. As always, there is a fascinating collection of books. I spent almost two hours browsing through the [...]

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While I ended up doing many meetings through the time I stayed in Tokyo, not all meetings had the same level of usefulness. Over time, I have learnt not to worry about the success rate of meetings – new opportunities creation requires many meetings, and one should not aim for a 100% success ratio. As [...]

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This is a from a series written in August 2004: I realised that these two words capture the essence of the dream of every entrepreneur. So, I decided to dig deeper to understand about black swan events. This column shares my learning and discusses the possible opportunity for a black swan in the technology industry [...]

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This week’s links: The New Golden Age: from strategy+business. “Linchpins of the golden age will include the worldwide build-out of a new services-oriented infrastructure based on dig­ital technology and a general shift to cleaner energy and environmentally safer technologies.” The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps: by Jeremy Allaire. “Most of the [...]

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Continuing from yesterday’s lament about what’s wrong, a clue can be found in reading this 1993 paper from American Political Science Review by Mancur Olson entitled “Dictatorship, Democracy and Development.” The paper was recommended to me by Atanu. In his preamble, he explained: “A decent understanding of political economy is a good idea for someone [...]

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I have said it many times before, but it is something that bears repeating. Compare the road out of Mumbai airport with that of a Tokyo or Beijing. After multiple governments and efforts, we still haven’t managed to build even half a decent approach road, leave alone something that can be called an ‘expressway.’ The [...]

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The discipline and process-orientation of the Japanese is legendary. Things work like clockwork in the country. Much of it is built on a strong cultural foundation. We in India also have a rich culture, but we seem to be giving in short-shrift. In Japan, culture unites. In India, culture divides. In Japan, culture creates ties [...]

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During the visit, I decided to also explore the culture of Manga comics. I found a few in English and started reading them. The stories were amazingly engrossing. Thedrawings are black and white line art, and some of the comic books are also quite edgy. Seeing the craze for Manga made me think about Comics [...]

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