Emergic: Rajesh Jain’s Blog

My patience was wearing thin. As I looked around, I saw mothers with 6-month old babies sitting on the floor. After some time, I too squatted on the floor - during their 50-minute lunch break. After lunch, when the single processor situation did not change, I went to some of the staff and spoke sternly. A few others in the queue accompanied me. (All were of the opinion that this is the system and nothing can be done about it.)

I asked them why they could not put an additional 1-2 people to speed up the processing. The response: “We are short of staff. In the past few years, our staff has been transferred to Surat and Bangalore, and no new people have been hired.” After a few of us raised our voices (with me leading the way), they finally got one of them to also start processing the documents and the queue split into two.

It was 3:30 pm by the time my turn came. All documents were in order. And all I had to do now was to pay the processing fees.  It was then I was told that since I had not come on the specified date for Tatkal, I would have to go to the Old Passport Office and request for Tatkal there. Another wasted day loomed ahead. But we were not done for the day. I still had to pay the fees. Child’s play, right? We forget we are at the Passport office.

Continued tomorrow.

In the queue in front of me, there were about 50 people. There was one queue and one “document processor.” In Sholay dialogue style, “Hum Pachas The, aur Woh Sirf Ek.” Twenty minutes into the queue, I realised that the rate of clearing one person was about 6 minutes. Which means, I would be standing in the queue for the next 5 hours. (I was reminded by a fellow queuer that I also needed to factor in their 30-minutes-stretching-to-50-minutes lunch break.)

There were 10 chairs - for the first ten in the queue. The rest needed to stand in place. There were people in the queue coming a second and third time because some document was missing. All accepted the reality of the situation, meekly.  I got my documents checked by a person in one corner - he suggested adding a couple copies which I did. I had no intention of coming again.

The utter ridiculousness of the situation kept starting at me. In today’s day and age, to ask people to wait 5+ hours to submit papers for a passport is absolutely crazy. We have got all the technology in place, but we haven’t changed our people’s attitudes and processes. The same inefficiencies which were there a decade ago are still there. Because no one is thinking it from the citizen’s point of view. The influential get it done by agents; the aam aadmi stands in queue - quietly.

Continued tomorrow.

About a month ago, I went to the Passport office to get a new passport. My passport was actually valid for 4 more years.  When it was issued in 2004, I had asked for a Jumbo (64-page vs 32-page) booklet. They didn’t do that. As a result, all the pages were used up by the visas and immigration stamps. And since I had international travel coming up, I had to get a new one.

So, I went personally to the passport office one morning. First Big Mistake. I should have given it to an agent. But I was told that if I wanted to get it Tatkal (quick), I would have to go myself. The date I got from the Internet happened to be the day I was in Palitana, so I went immediately upon my return.  Considering that this is my 5th or 6th passport, one would have presumed that they would not need every conceivable documentation on earth. But they do.

Anyways, armed with the documentation, I arrived at 11:30 am. (I had sent an office person to queue up for me. He called when my turn came.) I was shocked by what I saw.

Continued tomorrow.

I will be in Washington this week attending the Gov 2.0 Summit. From the introduction:

Gov 2.0 Summit brings together innovators from government and the private sector to highlight technology and ideas that can be applied to the nation’s great challenges. In areas as diverse as education, health care, energy, jobs, and financial reform, there are unique opportunities to rethink how government agencies perform their mission and serve our citizens. Social media, cloud computing, web, and mobile technologies—all provide new capabilities that government agencies are beginning to harness to achieve demonstrably better results at lower cost.

While the conference is US-centric, I am sure there will be ideas for India also. Will share thoughts after the event in the coming weeks.

From a blog post a year ago:

Over the years, I have realised the importance of being able to tell a story of what one is doing in a manner that is simple and compact. It doesn’t always start that way. On my recent US trip, I had a slide deck talking about NetCore, what we want to do, and discussing the assets we have created to help us build the future faster. I worked a lot on the slide deck. It took about 5 versions to get it just right. Each version took about two hours to create on successive days. To tell a story that others can understand in 10 minutes took 10 hours of hard work.

…Telling a Story is a key attribute that every entrepreneur, manager and sales person needs. However good an idea, if it cannot be communicated well, then it has a lesser chance of succeeding. Passion combined with a Perfect Story can be a winning combination.

This week’s links:

• Are you a Coach or a Player: by Vineet Nayar. “A big mistake happening across corporates around the world. The CEO and managers refuse to give up control because they still think they are Maradonas.”
• The Third Replicator: by Susan Blackmore in the New York Times. “Imitation is not just some new minor ability. It changes everything. It enables a new kind of evolution.”
• ADB Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2010: “The special chapter “The Rise of Asia’s Middle Class” looks at the growth and impacts of the region’s rapidly expanding middle class, and resulting economic and policy implications.
• Contest of the Century: from The Economist.”As China and India rise in tandem, their relationship will shape world politics. Shame they do not get on better.”
• Distinguishing American and Indian democracy: by Atanu Dey. ” Indian democracy is about the citizens choosing who they will obey, while American democracy is about the people choosing who they will employ to carry out the wishes of the people. In the former case, it is servants choosing their masters, and in the latter case, masters choosing their servants.”

Through the trip, I couldn’t help thinking about the role of religion in our life. As my in-laws told stories from the origins of Jainism to Abhishek, I realised how little I knew about the founding principles and philosophy of my own religion. It is something that needs to be corrected.

Even in today’s modern times, a part of us is still rooted in our traditions. Temples have been a part of our lives through the centuries. If India has to change for the better, this change has to come from a better understanding of our own identity and culture. Somewhere through the generations, much of that has been blotted out.

Our past is what binds us into a unique national identity - one that has somehow gotten dissolved into sub-castes and communities. An understanding and recognition of India’s civilizational greatness is perhaps the missing glue that can bring us together for the future.

Palitana is a town of temples. The entire local economy is centred around the constant stream of pilgrims throughout the year. The new cars mingle freely with the horse carriages - it is a mirror of an India which exists in multiple decades simultaneously.

Part of the charm lay in the dharamshala  we stayed at. The facilities were excellent. Many Jain dharamshalas tend to compromise on the basic hygiene and facilities, but not this one. Abhishek and I got plenty of time together to play - Uno, a bit of Chess, and Name-Place-Animal-Thing. And he used the floor of our room to make his own bus depots, trains stations and airports with his toys.

There are few other places on Earth than can provide solitude and inspiration for less than Rs 500 a day. It will probably, as it was for Bhavana and her family in her childhood, become an annual pilgrimage destination for me, too.

Climbing down after spending 3-odd hours in the temples at the top was much easier. But one had to be quite careful to ensure one didn’t slip given the slightly wet ground. The excitement of reaching the foothills increased with each step down. The climb up had taken me an hour and 45 minutes, while the descent took about an hour.

Through the trek up and down, we are not supposed to consume any food or water. So, from 7 am to 2 pm, that meant no eating and drinking. No wonder then that the sugarcane juice we had once we had reached down tasted extra sweet!

The pain in the legs starts the next day. And it lasts a day or two. Obviously, my legs aren’t used to this kind of exercise! And after the trek, I was keen to do one more the next day. Luckily, my father-in-law dissuaded me from that.

We did the climb up to the temples on Sunday. The 3,200 steps seemed much tougher to climb than the last time I did them. I stopped many times en route, even though the common wisdom is that one should just continue. Bhavana made Abhishek walk-and-talk and set a fast pace, and they made it to the top faster than all of us.

The toughest part of the climb was from steps 1,000-2,000 - the middle path, as it were. The destination is still away, and one is tired from the first part of the climb. After that, it is a countdown to the top.

There was a slight drizzle as we did the climb. At the heights, the low clouds made it almost surreal. Inside the temples, there was no artificial light. The rituals being done now were probably exactly how they have been done for hundreds of years.

In a sense, not only is one climbing up, but one is also going back in time.

Like we had done two years ago, we went to Palitana in early August just before Abhishek’s school re-opened. Abhishek was the one who was keen to go, and my in-laws obliged him!

Palitana is one of the more well-known Jain temple sites. The main temples are situated on the Shatrunjay Hills. The climb is quite an arduous one (more on that later).

We took the overnight train (Bhavnagar Express) from Mumbai. We reached Songadh next morning on time at 10:30 am, and then took a 45-minute auto-ride to the dharamshala we were staying at. The monsoon season created the green and cool setting, which made it quite nice.

We spent the next two-and-a-half days there, a day longer than the previous visit. That made it a very relaxing visit. The dharamshala we were staying in was extremely comfortable. As I remarked to Bhavana, this is the kind of ‘vacation’ I would love to do - peace and quiet, away from Mumbai.

From a series I wrote a year ago on the challenges of being an entrepreneur:

For me, every year as an entrepreneur is one to be savoured because of the learnings.  Just because I did something right in the past does not guarantee success in the future. Building a business is hard. There are moments of joy - but there are many more moments of pain. However experienced one is, situations are different and have to be dealt with accordingly. More than anything, one has to be optimistic and keep the big picture in mind for what one wants to do. It is that vision of the future that keeps the enthusiasm and morale high even during difficult times. For me, the journey matters as much as reaching the destination.

This week’s links:

• Information Overload is Nothing New: by Peggy Noonan (WSJ). “Step back, or aside. Think what you think, not what they think. Everyone is trying to push. Don’t be pushed.”
• A Smartphone Retrospective: by Marco Arment. How the mobiles have evolved in just 3 years - in pictures.
• The Future of Internet Search: by Esther Dyson. “When people search, they aren’t just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action.”
• Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company: by Ben Horowitz. “If you want to do something that matters, then you are going to have to learn the black art of scaling a human organization.”
• PM and The Speech-Writer: by Chetan Bhagat. The state of our nation and our leader. “Talk about poverty, reducing it, of course. And education. And stuff like we won’t tolerate injustice and inequality. Oh, and use the word superpower a couple of times just don’t mention a specific issue or put a real opinion.”

To create a micropayments infrastructure, we need to build on what already exists. Mobile operators in India have created an amazing network of points of presence where one can buy airtime. They know how to handle cash that users pay. (Cash remains the preferred payment mechanism given the low penetration of credit, debit and cash cards in India.)

Today, mobile operators cannot use the cash balance that is there with them for purposes other than voice and data services. Besides, the high incidence of taxes (10% service tax and 15% spectrum and allied charges, for a total of about 23% on what the end users pay) makes it difficult to use the cash balance for real world transactions.

Suppose, we were to change this and allow the cash balance that operators have to be used for third-party non-voice services for a fee of say 10%. Credit card companies charge merchants about 2.5-3% for transactions. Operators could play a similar role for small transactions (say, under Rs 250 or Rs 500).

This would be a game-changer in India. Application and service providers could now create services and leverage the cash balance that users have for collecting their payments. Consumers already know how to refill their accounts with cash given the ubiquity of the mobile prepaid infrastructure.

If we can even imagine India’s top 20% (10 crore) mobile users spending Rs 50 a month on new services, it creates a new annual market of Rs 6,000 crore ($1.3+ billion).

More importantly, it will create interest in computers, software and the Internet amongst the youth, and out of that we could see the emergence of India’s Tencents and Googles.  A decade ago, many in India were fired up with the potential of the Internet only to be disappointed by the market. This time around, the potential of the market can delight many in India.

I have written on this topic earlier. I needed to write a brief note recently - so I took some of the earlier ideas, and updated them.

As voice becomes a commodity on mobile networks, the action is shifting to mobile data services. In this context, India’s user base is only second to China. This availability of a domestic market can help India become a large market for mobile data networks as networks become faster (3G and 4G), and as devices become cheaper and better. Since mobiles and data services are a global phenomenon, Indian companies can also emerge as global leaders by leveraging technology platforms, content and services they create for the large domestic market. India thus has a unique opportunity to create an industry in the next decade that can replicate the success of IT services in the past two decades.

To make this happen, there is need to encourage the creation of off-deck mobile data ecosystem. There are three pre-requisites that need to happen to drive this ecosystem:

• a guarantee of Net Neutrality, so that operators cannot arbitrarily block services they believe compete with them
• remove the WLL and spectrum charges of 13-15% that are levied for VAS, so that the cost of mobile data comes down
• the operator’s billing platform to be available as a service for a fee of 10% or so for micropayments, a la Docomo’s i-mode in Japan

Taken together, they can drive innovation like what has been in Japan and some other countries.  The first two will open up the creation of new services, and the third will give service providers a way to monetise by making available a micropayments infrastructure leveraging the cash balance that mobile users in India already have.

Continued tomorrow.

I had taken some photos on Aug 3 of the potholes on the road in the context of the Bandra Terminus story I had written yesterday.The pictures tell the story.

There is Shenzhen Train Station and then there is our very own Bandra Terminus. I happened to pass through both in the past month, and the experience is instructive for all who think India is on its way to becoming another China.

Shenzhen Station has a massive access area, no traffic jams due to taxis, direct linkage to the subway system, cleanliness and high-speed trains. Not to mention a road.

Bandra Terminus, which is becoming increasingly the point of arrival and departure for long-distance trains on the Western line, has none of the above. Case closed.

I want to dwell further on one aspect - the lack of a road to connect it to the rest of the city. There may have been a road once upon a time in Mumbai - right now there are only potholes. One has to drive on the road to see how bad the situation can actually be. Of course, this is a recurring situation since we citizens don’t hold our corporators and politicians to accountability, and keep voting them or slight variants back to office.

Excerpts from my interview in MobiGyaan about MyToday:

Why did Netcore introduced Premium (Paid) version of MyToday?

Our focus is on direct-to-consumer services. There is so much more which can be done with SMS. We want to create a publishing and micro-payments platform through MyToday that can spur innovation, create new monetisable moments for publishers and content providers, and present consumers with a much wider array of choice. Much like the AppStores have done.

What are the target number of subscribers you are aiming by the end of this year for MyToday Store?

This is a unique model and a first-of-its-kind service. We will take it month-by-month to see how it grows. The opportunity for such services is very large, but there are many things that need to fall in place for them to succeed. Our focus is on making that happen. If we can provide a very good experience for consumers with the content and the publishers via the platform, then we can create a positive feedback loop in the months to come.

From a post I wrote last August:

What kind of data services would the Data MVNO offer? Here are some starting examples:

• SMS subscriptions (push-based microcontent)
• Voice portals
• Content downloads (mobile games, apps, etc.)
• Video downloads / streaming
• mCommerce

What is common to all of these services is that consumers pay for each one of them. Offering them free in the hope of getting ads is not going to be a business - as has been seen in the Internet space in India, where the top home-grown portals are losing in excess of Rs 150 crore a year even after 14 years of the Internet in India.

There are three things which need to come together to offer such a service in India:

• Reach: distribution and relationships to reach the top 100 million target audience
• Cash Balance: enabling people to pay to create prepaid accounts independent of the mobile operator
• Open Publishing Platform: to allow content publishers and service providers to create content. This is similar in concept to the iPhone AppStore.

This week’s links:

• Why they were able to raise money: by Jason Baptiste. “These reasons are beyond the usual Brilliant team in a huge market with a killer product.”
• The importance of frugal engineering: from strategy+business. “Providing new goods and services to “bottom of the pyramid” customers requires a radical rethinking of product development.”
• Booking vs Revenues vs Collections: by Fred Wilson. A simple yet important topic that I have seen many entrepreneurs and managers get wrong. “Think of the bookings to billings to collections as the way revenues “flow” through the business.”
• Reclaiming the Imagination: by Timothy Williamson (NY Times). “Imagining turns out to be much more reality-directed than the stereotype implies.”
• How to win the Clash of Civilizations: by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “Huntington also said that a civilization-based world order is emerging in which states that share cultural affinities will cooperate with each other and group themselves around the leading states of their civilization.”