Month: October 2010

From a post a year ago:

There are three elements which I have found are particularly useful in the ideation process:

• Talking to people and listening carefully to the questions they ask
• Writing or doing a presentation – helps in structuring it
• Deep thinking for an extended period of time

Of these, the third is perhaps the hardest to do. There are so many things that need our attention – now! It is easy to lose oneself on answering emails, randomly surfing the web, or reading through Facebook status updates from dozens or even hundreds of friends. In other words, it is easy to get lost in the data streams that exist all around us. At times, it is very critical to step back and force a deep think – imagining what the future can be. That requires a few hours of uninterrupted thought — easier said than done.

One thing I have realised is that even not-so-good Ideas can be moulded over time with enough thought and interaction with others. One needs a base framework to begin with – and the courage to share half-baked thoughts with others! And then let things simmer fora while to make magic happen.

This week’s links:

• The incredible growth of the Internet since 2000: from Royal Pingdom.”There were only 361 million Internet users in 2000, in the entire world. For perspective, that’s barely two-thirds of the size of Facebook today.”
• Dawn of a new day: by Ray Ozzie. “The next five years will bring about yet another inflection point – a transformation that will once again yield unprecedented opportunities for [Microsoft] and our industry catalyzed by the huge & inevitable shift in apps & infrastructure that’s truly now just begun.
• The death of the traditional company: from Forbes. “Mobile devices, Internet-based software and social media are transforming the workplace.”
• What makes cities great: from strategy+business. “Charles Landry knows: Distinction, Variety, and Flow.”
• A father who failed: by Pritish Nandy. “Everything I taught my children has, in effect, handicapped them. It has made them inadequate to face the world they are in.” The article is not what you think it is about. Read it!
  

I was speaking to a friend who got into building a hotel. This was his first construction-linked project. When he started, he had estimated the cost project to take about 2.5 years and cost Rs X. It took him 4 years and cost him 2X. At every stage, he had to pay off people. Every permission, every slab cast had a price. Sometimes, the permission givers were not upfront in their demands, and these caused delays. My friend found only one honest person in the entire system through this period.

Even now, he has to keep cash (black money) readily available because many of these ‘inspectors’ come for routine visits and demand money. Pay up or else…! Even the garbage that needs to be picked up (for which we all pay our taxes) has been added to the list of payoffs.

My friend told me corruption is a common occurrence in every business that deals with the government. He said I was lucky that I was in a software-driven business.

As I said earlier, this is not the India that we set out to create in 1947. The problem is that the rot starts at the top.

We all groan about the high prices of real estate in India’s cities. Rates in South Mumbai have reached Rs 75-80,000 per sq ft ($1,800 per sq ft). Have we ever thought about why that is the case?

In urban areas, real estate is one of the biggest money generators for politicians. About 25-30% of the money needs to be made to politicians and the corporators, starting from the land, the construction contracts and then the various permissions. This is because some of the chief ministers also have to work on targets – sending money to their political masters in the capital.  (A few years ago, I had a story about how one CM candidate pipped the favourite by offering a higher minimum guarantee to Delhi.)

In resource-rich state, it is mining rights. In land-rich states, it is real estate cuts. And We, The People of India, pay the price everytime and everywhere.

This story is about how innovative our political parties are becoming when it comes to buying votes.

In the early days, voters would be paid an amount (say, Rs 500) to vote for a candidate./ The payment was made prior to voting.

Then, the payment was linked to outcome. 50% was paid prior to the vote, with the balance on success (i.e, if the candidate won).

All these payments were made in cash. Given the crores of voters who need to be paid, this entailed moving a lot of money. (Think: If you faced this problem as the boss of a political party in charge of payoffs, what would you do?)

The ingenious solution lay in eliminating cash payments entirely. Now, payments are made directly to a person’s mobile number — as a topup! All the party has to do is to send its bags of cash to the mobile company and provide it with a list of phone numbers to add the amount to.

This is how our ‘democracy’ is compromised.

A large company won a contract for a waste management project in a global tender. Everything clean so far. Then, it started. Party 1 called up for Rs 8 crore. Had to be paid. Party 2 called up for Rs 10 crore. Paid. Party 3 called up for Rs 7 crore. Paid.

Then, a senior leader from Party 3 called up for a central fund contribution of Rs 10 crore. Company refused to pay. Letter comes from a government ministry stalling the project. CEO of the company is verbally abused when he goes to meet the senior leader and told he has no other choice but to pay. After the payment is done, another letter comes clearing the project.

Even though one knows corruption is happening, when I heard this story first-hand from a friend, I was furious from the inside. But that fury is countered by frustration knowing we cannot do anything “the system.”

I was having a conversation late one night with a few friends and relatives, whom I was meeting after a long time. Inevitably, the topic shifted to politics. One topic that kept coming up was that of corruption – at the high levels and at the low levels. Its pervasiveness has now become so deep and wide that we accept it as part of the operating environment. We are no longer jolted out when we hear stories of corruption.

It was not like this once. It should not have been like this. It need not be like this for the future.

Before we get to that, I want to share some of the stories – big and small. For obvious reasons, I will not put the names – just how it operates. All political parties are guilty of this crime. And every person gets away with it.  Over time, the system is such that the honest people are almost weeded out of the system.

From a post I wrote a year ago:

Every company, however small, must develop a “numbers discipline” when it comes to revenues and costs. For much of my business life, this is not something I bothered to do – and so am assuming that there are plenty others like me! Hence there is a need to reinforce this point.

I used to think that (a) small companies could not estimate accurately about what numbers they do each month or quarter since business is generally unpredictable, and (b) it didn’t really matter whether we met whatever targets we set or not. I was wrong on both counts. And habits once formed become hard to change. Over time, missing numbers becomes an acceptable thing, and that culture then sets in – both on the sales front and on the expenses side.

This week’s links:

• Twitter and Facebook: Naval Ravikant and Adam Rifkin argue why Twitter is undervalued. “Twitter is in theory even better positioned than Facebook to capitalize on the social interest graph.”
• Gartner 2010 Hype Cycle: “Media tablets, private cloud computing, and 3D flat-panel TVs and displays are some of the technologies that have moved into the Peak of Inflated Expectations.”
• On Employee Stock Options: A primer by Fred Wilson.
• Improving Governance in India: by Sanjeev Sanyal. “We need a fundamental change in the way common citizens are informed about the laws, rules and regulations that they are expected to follow.”
• Debating Poverty: by Atanu Dey. “The government is the last agency to figure out what went wrong and why. And in the end, when they try to fix the problem, even if well-intentioned, they just make it a great deal worse.”

How can the Uns of India become United? And what can this unity do?

For this, I recommend reading these two posts by Atanu Dey:

• Part 1
• Part 2

As Atanu puts it: “It is possible that the 150 urban parliamentary constituencies of India have an aggregate of 20 million or so people who are sensible, educated, middle-class, urban voters. If they can be consolidated into a “vote bank” and persuaded to vote en bloc, it is possible that they can swing elections and be a force to contend with. The idea is to create a constituency which we call the “United Voters of India.””

Creating a better country is, quite literally, in our hands.