Month: October 2011

I used to wonder what the 1970s and 1980s would have been like for many Indian businesses. India was then under the licence permit quota raj. The government had the power to make or break any  business. A single rule passed by a bureaucrat could hand over a market to a competitor – or if you were on the right side, give you the golden key to a world of profits. Business acumen was not enough.

It was a world that we had only heard about   when we were growing up – since people like us  were in school or college at that time. They were stories but we were not involved in them.

I returned to India after a short education/work stint in the US just as the Indian economy was opening up. Reforms were the buzz in the India of 1992. And for most of the two decades since then, many sectors in India have been opened  to entrepreneurs, especially in technology.

As an entrepreneur in the digital space, I thought that the licence raj was something  I would never ever experience. I was wrong.

Continued tomorrow.

Given my posts about conferences, here is what I had written a year ago:

This week’s links:

• Why Education startups don’t succeed: by Avichal Garg. “Most entrepreneurs in education build the wrong type of business, because entrepreneurs think of education as a quality problem. The average person thinks of it as a cost problem.”
• A Silicon Valley school that doesn’t compute: from NYTimes. “[The] 160 Waldorf schools in the country…subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.”
• The Global Innovation 1000: from strategy+business. “Booz & Company’s annual study shows that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.
• The hazards of confidence: by Daniel Kahneman. “Our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid.”
• Sharad Pawar Interview: from the Indian Express. A remarkably candid interview. “The government is taking on a massive burden. My estimate after handling the ministry for seven years is that the food subsidy will be around Rs 1.15-1.20 lakh crore and this will affect the overall economy. I am worried that the subsidy will almost be the same for fuel, around Rs 80,000 crore for fertilisers, and NREGA is another Rs 40,000 crore. If so much is spent on subsidies, what is left for development?”

En route to Ahmedabad, Atanu and I got talking to the person next to us. He was from one of the world’s largest multinationals. He narrated a story that is worth repeating.

His company wanted to invest $1 billion into setting up various manufacturing facilities in Karnataka. It took them many months to get the land. Even after the land was acquired, the politicians did not stop interfering and demanding bribes. Given that the company does not compromise on integrity, there was no way it could do the pay-offs. Their CEO then met with the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. Within four days, the land had been allotted. Even as the factories are coming up, the rail head has been built, the road has been constructed, and the link to the port will be established soon. He said this story was not unique — many other companies had faced similar challenges in other states, and then come to Gujarat to find a different world.

Leadership matters, and what India needs at this stage of our evolution is strong and decisive leadership. We need to keep this in mind when we vote next.

Atanu Dey and I were waiting at the depature gate at Mumbai airport for our flight to Ahmedabad. A lady with three young kids (including one in a stroller) was stopped and asked to go back  upstairs to the security check since one of her bags did not have the stamp. She said there is no way she could do this – with the kids in tow and all her bags. (She had just arrived from a long flight from Chicago. ) The airport authorities refused to budge. Atanu pointed out that the failure of the security folks to stamp her baggage tag was not her problem. The heartless people, who were of course just following the rules, refused to budge. There was commotion and an impasse.

The way the rules are made are quite silly. And people who follow these silly rules don’t even understand the logic and question what they are doing. And for anyone trying to suggest that the rules are faulty and need to be changed, we will have the bogey of national security be thrown. But the reality is that in no other airport in the world have I seen this stupid stamping system and then the stamps checked by 3-4 different people by the time one boards the airport. They only see the stamps, nothing else.

I tried to search for someone who had an extra baggage tag with the stamp that could be transferred to the lady’s bag! But given that most passengers had boarded, that was hard to come by. I finally decided to take the lady’s bag up to security check myself and have it stamped. (Luckily, there is no rule which says that the passenger must be present when the stamp is done.) Always a workaround.

As Atanu said afterwards, why is it that we don’t think about how to make things better? Out of that simple desire come the Steve Jobs of the world.

I chaired a panel on ‘Role of Digital Leaders and Bloggers in eGov 2.0’ at the ICEG and KSS conference in Ahmedabad last week. My presentation was brief, and we had an excellent interactive discussion between the panelists and the audience. This is what DailyBhaskar.com had to say about one of the points I made:

Rajesh Jain, one of the earliest Indian bloggers and a participant at the seminar said, “The government should be the servant and agent of the people. Its restrictive policies must be changed and those that are an infringement of privacy must be pushed back.”

His suggestion about ‘Open Data, Open Government’ was supported by author of ‘Transforming India,’ Atanu Dey and Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of medianama.com.

The speakers said that the government must be transparent and publish all its reports on the web for the people to refer.

My presentation:

Recently, Dr. Aniruddha Malpani asked me to MC a conference on Information Therapy. I haven’t MC-ed anything other than company meetings, so this was an interesting opportunity to do something different. Having attended many conferences, I have seen what can be done to make them more interesting. And of these, two of the most important are ensuring the conferences runs on time, and giving people an opportunity to voice their opinions through comments and questions. I decided to try both.

For ensuring the conference runs as per schedule, I set up a countdown timer (via a GiantTimer app on an iPad) right in front of the speakers. This way, they knew how much time they had left. When the limit was reached, the timer went beep-beep, and even the audience knew! This ensured near-perfect punctuality.

For feedback, I asked people to send SMSes to a number I had set up and linked to a page where they and I could see the questions coming in. After every speech, I made it a point to read the questions, and try and get answers. This real-time two-way interaction ensured an excitement and interest that was a novelty for people.

Dr. Malpani has more.

An announcement we made last week:

Digital real-time communications company Netcore Solutions today said that it has acquired Ravience, a Mumbai-based mobile marketing services provider, for an undisclosed sum. Ravience is focused on helping brands engage with their customers using its multi-modal response management suite ‘Responage’.

Since its incorporation in 2008, Ravience has achieved several customer wins at leading brands and digital agencies, helping Brand Managers in analysing and optimizing campaign responses generated through various mediums like Mobile Web, PC Web, SMS, Email and Voice.

The platform integrates various stages of digital campaigns – starting from media, visitor management, response management and finally lead management, thus filtering higher quality leads and identifying their sources.

Responage also allows rapid creation of mobile websites which are compatible across handsets, visitor analytics and validation of responses. Veerchand Bothra, founder of Ravience, said, “Usage of mobile-web is exploding with increasing penetration of smartphones, launch of 3G and aggressive pricing of data plans by mobile operators. Ravience’s platform helps enterprise customers convert clicks and responses into consumers on the mobile platform.”

This is Netcore’s second acquisition in 18 months after it acquired a majority interest in internet portal company, Greynium, which operates OneIndia, India’s largest collection of local language portals. Netcore’s Chief Executive Officer, Girish Nair, said. “Ravience complements Netcore’s offerings across SMS, Email and Web channels, and its closed loop digital campaign management platform. Upon integration, the Netcore-Ravience platform will be a unique end-to-end offering for enterprises to create, manage and enhance digital campaigns.”

Netcore Solutions is one of India’s largest digital real-time communications companies, with its email and SMS solutions being used by over 2,000 enterprises.

From a post a year ago:

This week’s links:

• How Fox News changed the face of journalism: from Washington Post. India needs its own Fox News. “Fox has become a very real force in America’s culture and politics. It has altered the national dialogue with its different sensibilities and given conservatives a platform.”
• Steve Jobs model for Education Reform: by Rupert Murdoch. “If we can engage a child’s imagination, there’s no limit to what he or she can learn. “
• Business in India: A special report in The Economist. “Indian businesses are rewriting the rules of capitalism in a distinctive and unexpected way.”
• Development and Governance: by Atanu Dey. “Good governance is about how government employees — from the minister on down to the clerk at the post office — consider to be their primary objective and function: to serve the citizens. Good governance is distinct from development. Development is about the infrastructure. Good governance precedes development, and is the more important bit.”
• Redistribution is not inclusive growth: by Arvind Panagariya. “[In India], We tell the marginalised to stay where they are. Indeed, we do everything to bolt them down to their rural location offering employment and free health and education if they would stay where they are.”