Emergic

I am glad to be one of the contributors to NetChakra, a book by Madanmohan Rao and Osama Manzar on 15 years of the Indian Internet.The book was launched in Delhi on Friday night.

My contribution is “The IndiaWorld Story.” I have compiled writings from the time I was running IndiaWorld to tell the story of how we started in 1995 and grew the site over the years, to its eventual sale to Satyam Infoway for $115 million in November 1999. Instead of writing now about that period, I have taken columns from that to provide a better context. Our memories sometimes can play tricks and make history somewhat revisionist!

Tavleen Singh writes in Indian Express: “Those of our political leaders who have paid attention to the protests in Tahrir Square must be spending sleepless nights. Not because a floodgate of public rage is about to burst open in Delhi or Mumbai but because the reasons for the rage are so familiar to us who live in the proudly democratic republic of India. Allow me to list a few similarities. Open loot of public money. Political leaders who become fabulously rich while ordinary people remain horribly poor. Dynastic succession. In our case this idea has roots so deep and wide that there is almost not a single political party that is not a family business. Then, as in most despotic Arab countries, we have followed economic policies that have created a small super-rich elite while the majority of our people live on less than $2 a day. And, just like Egypt we have a huge population of young people most of whom will move to cities and towns in the next twenty years.”

Vinod Mehta asks in Outlook: “The injustices the protesters at Tahrir Square are raging about—corruption, no jobs, rising prices, appalling governance—are rampant in our blessed land. The tribal population of India, over three times the size of Egypt’s total population, lives daily with hardships ten times worse than those faced by the aam aadmi in Cairo…Supposing, 2,00,000 of our citizens march into Jantar Mantar demanding regime change or immediate redressal of their grievances, how will the Indian state respond?”

So, can an Egypt happen in India? My answer is No. We are a society that didn’t even throw out the colonialists. Why then should we bother about oppressors of our own ilk? Let British Raj 2.0 continue. Of course, we must vent feelings out once in a while, but other than that, we are happy to let the looting, scamming, divide-and-rule continue. Imperial rule is our tradition.

From a year ago:

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 and give critical feedback on the future plans. The semi-detached view can help in opening up new lines of thinking which the management team sometimes misses because of their proximity to the daily operations.

What is needed for this relationship to succeed is complete candour on both sides. If it can be made to work, the Advisory Board can be a tremendous advantage for the start-up.

This week’s links:

• How to find the Perfect Startup Job: by David Beisel. “As an employee joining then, you bear (nearly) all the risk as founders but an order of magnitude less compensation, recognition, and influence.”
• Strategic Bets: from strategy+business, by Ram Charan and Michael Sisk. “Sooner or later, most global business leaders will have to put their entire enterprise at risk. Here’s how to do it successfully.”
• Nokia CEO memo: One of the most candid assessments of a company by a CEO. “”We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning.”
• NYTimes on Narendra Modi: “Mr. Modi uses a chief executive style of managing the bureaucrats who work under him, according to associates and business executives in Gujarat. He gives promising people positions of responsibility, sets goals and expects people to meet them. Nonperformers are pushed aside.”
• Gurcharas Das on India’s politics: “No one reflects the spirit of a rapidly growing India. Nor is anyone thinking big—-and it’s criminal to think small in India. Until the second space is filled, our politics will not be whole.”
  

I thought we had outgrown such nonsense in India. When I came back from a recent international trip, the customs officer at the baggage screening machine wanted my bag to be opened because he said there were two computers. I said – I have a laptop, and an iPad. He said, the iPad thus becomes a second computer, and I’d have to pay duty on it.

There was no point arguing with the officers, since they don’t make the rules. I ended up paying Rs 4,000 as duty.

On the ride home, I couldn’t help thinking that there is no surprise that product innovation in India is stifled. With rules like these that constrain the purchase of the newest gadgets from abroad, what else can one expect?

As part of a Friends of BJP event in Mumbai, we had organised “Chanakya”, the play, by Manoj Joshi and his team. Was an amazing experience. It is probably my first play that I had been to in Mumbai. The last plays I had seen were a few in the US during my time there. A play is such a different experience from watching a movie – it just seems so much more immersive, especially if one is sitting in the front.

A week before the play, I picked up Ashwin Sanghi’s book “Chanakya’s Chant.”  It intersperses two eras – that of Chanakya 2300 years ago, and a modern-day Chanakya in a similar political context. Was a good read, only broken by the fact that 30 pages of the book were missing in the copy I had bought!

We  had our company picnic recently – to Silent Hill Resort on the National Highway no. 8, near Vaitarna River Bridge. The resort is very big, and has plenty of stuff to do on the open land that is there. That was a nice change from our last picnic to Alibagh a few years ago, where it was the beach and water, and more beach and more water!

I played cricket after many years, slept on a charpoy in the winter sun, played Dumb Charades, and generally hung out. A nice change from the regular work days!

It took about 2 hours to get there from South Mumbai, and 2.5 hours to get back.

Abhishek’s Sports Day was at University Stadium at Marine Lines. It brought back memories from my own Sports Days. Never the athletic kind, I was among those for whom the joy had to lie in participation.

The state of University Stadium is quite pathetic. The tracks and ground looked in good condition but the state of the stands was something else.  Sitting in the stands was like sitting next to a garbage dump and a urinal. I don’t remember it that way – but that was three decades ago. I am amazed that such a good resource can be neglected to such an extent.

Who is responsible for the maintenance of such public facilities?

Asking the right question can make all the difference.

It was the right question that led Atanu Dey to a different career. His question: “Why is India poor?” This is a question which can, I hope, one day transform a nation’s future.

I thought of this again when Bhavana (my wife), after walk/runn-ing the half Marathon, asked “Why do my feet hurt?” Coincidentally, I had got a book from a well-wisher “Born To Run” which had the author asking the same question. So, I started reading the book, embarking on a fascinating journey into the world of ultrarunning.

In work or in personal work, asking the right question can open new vistas. As long as we are not afraid to seek out the answers.

This is what I wrote a year ago:

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

Taken together, they can drive innovation like what has been in Japan and some other countries.  The first will open up the creation of new services, and the second 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.

But, who will bell the cat? What India needs is an equivalent of TRAI that focused on the needs and expectations of consumers. This innovation can drive the creation of dozens of startups which is what India needs. Unfortunately, I can’t see that happening anytime in the near future.