End of an Indian Scooter Era : Bajaj not to make scooters

One of the middle-class status symbols of India circa the 80s' is gone !.

I read the article that Bajaj is going to stop it's scooter production in favour of motorcycles with some bit of nostalgia and a lot of "OMG - I'm of a different generation" thoughts...

In the late 70's and the early 80's, the scooter was actually the middle class dream vehicle for the new family. In some ways, it was the urban "made it" symbol !

While I used to favour the "Lambretta" as it had a centered engine, as against the "Vespa" style of engine on the right. These used to be cult vehicles in college. Next, came the Vijay's and the like. However, my guess is that the Bajaj (esp the Chetak) was the mainstay in lots of families.

These were so sought after that you could easily make a killing in the allotment and transfer game. If I remember right, there used to be a USD only booking option also with some hugh sum that had to be paid as advance (does 10,000 sound right ?).

Truly an end of the era event.

Today, looking back, I'd love to buy off a "Lambretta" from the open market if someone has one for sale ?

Supreme Court asks of MontBlanc's Gandhiji Pen : Is it mightier ?

Read with glee the questioning by the chief justice and the other justices of MontBlanc's "Mahatma Gandhi" special pen today.

Quote from ET "Can Mahatma Gandhi be the poster boy for driving home the message that a super-expensive Mont Blanc “pen is mightier than the sword?” To this question of a PIL petitioner, the Supreme Court on Monday sought responses of the Centre and the retail outlet of the pen-maker in Delhi"


Way back in Oct (just past the Jayanti), I had made the following post

http://inatech.blogspot.com/2009/10/time-off-on-gandhi-jayanthi-is-it-right.html

and my anguish came from the fact that the company was peddling a USD 25000 pen in the name of the person who shunned ostentatious spend all his adult life !

Would love to hear what the response is ? How will they justify this ?

Bangalore's Street Art : New Impetus

Treading on the same path as my previous post - there is another welcome change in the street art scene in Bangalore. Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat (CKP as it is popularly known as) is now putting some art pieces ie. Metal murals etc on it's fence.

The art school used to be a great "poster" for the movie ads and now will show some real art.

Other than some street art in front of the ING building on Bangalore's MG road - there has been little movement on this front and CKP's new initiative is a welcome change.......

Let us hope that others take this up as a clarion call and get to more street art. This, IMHO, will help build Bangalore's character

The new street art in Bangalore : BBMP sponsored paintings on the roadside

There has been hectic activity by BBMP over the last month where there have been teams "painting" the walls across the city.

In a welcome move, BBMP seems to have sponsored a new form of street art that is a BIG welcome difference to the various "movie" posters that used to adorn these roadside wall-space.

The motif seems to be from a wide range of topics - eg. Animals (Elephants etc) in the region to the cultural / heritage sites (Halebid, Gol Gumbaz etc) and natural scenic sights (eg. Jog falls).

What I really liked with this is that for a lot of people (esp. Children) is that this provides a welcome diversion during the infamous traffic jams.

Maybe it is an intentional distraction ?

Catamaran : Not another Hotmail style rush ?

I read bemusedly this morning's news "flash" on Mrs. Sudha Murthy's Infy stock sale and announcement on it's intended deployment into Catamaran ventures.

I just hope that all the aspiring entrepreneurs (esp. in Bangalore / KA) etc do not think that these amounts of money is available for the "taking" ?

While I do know that there is a huge gap in the valuation expectation and actual reality when it comes to startup, am reminded of the time when Sabeer Bhatia made the millions on Hotmail. Almost overnight, I saw every Mani, Swamy and Shah walk around with a harebrained dot.com idea on their lips. Everyone seemed convinced that their idea was worth a few million at the very least........

I agree with the vast majority that in India, real "angel" and "seed" funding has been sparse, but, what it has also done is enhanced our ability to leverage "Jugaad".

People need to remember that a very small bank balance is a very high leverage on sales effort :-)

The announcement of Namma Bengaluru Awards

Just got a email in my inbox - calling for nominations ....
The list of people who are going to be judging is both impressive and looooong ? So, how are they going to rate the feedback ?
Am wondering if one person's feedback in a certain area would matter more than another - simply because that individual may know more about that area ?

Conceptually though, I think it is a very good start. Simply because it fills up a gap that I've often expressed in these blogs - ie. "Role models". We, in India certainly lack role models especially when it comes to public life ?

Will be interesting to go through the complete list of nominations though ?

Banning Small metalized plastic pouches : welcome measure !

I read this mornings news, a small piece stuck in one of the inner pages, that the Indian government is planning to ban all small "gutka" pouches with great satisfaction and a new set of expectation.

Some months ago, I spent time on a couple of postings related to this menace (and it is a big menace in India). The so-called "smart packaging" and "bite-sized" dosage revolution that is being discussed by the marketing folks so eloquently is growing to be a MAJOR ecological issue.

Any walk in the hinterland (not just the cities) will show tons of small "paan" and "gutka" packages lying all around. These are too small to be collected and deposited / segregated. They are collectively big enough to form a major portion of animal feed if we do not take care.

A few years ago, we'd have people commenting on the quantum of cigarette packs, gum wrappers etc. Today, all that is completely overshadowed by these "smart" packs.

It is time we shunned this "smart" pack .....

What should governments be involved in other than governance ?

For this post - am not writing a new set. This is a cross post from Sikshana.blogspot.com

There is growing concern about PPP model in the secondary education (proposed).
Please see this posting :

http://sikshana.blogspot.com/2009/10/ppp-in-secondary-education_11.html#links

My comments on the post being
_____________________________________________________________
Dear ESR,
Long ago (while I was still fresh out of Ayn Rand readings), I was asked what should the government be responsible for. This was for a debate. I still remember that after much thought I had come down to the crux of governance and social equality that would be covered by
a. Defense
b. Law & Order
c. Healthcare
d. Education till 10th

Over time, having seen the power of government sanctions (where LAND and Industry allocations / grants are made) and having read the farce of boards eg. WAKF etc, I've come to add another item to this list and that is "livelihood". My guess is that the NREGS is possibly a close example.

Why the background - IMHO the government has NO business running the road business ?

Your concern on secondary education is very valid and is something that we need to discourage actively !

We, as a nation, are only growing to address the growing rural-urban divide by taking schools / hospitals and livelihood to the rural areas and NOT by allocating "x" % of seats in urban schools to the BPL section ?

Let us see how we can bring this under the bigger "urban-rural" divide discussion as that may have better traction / purchase ?

Time off on Gandhi Jayanthi : Is it the right thing to do ?

I'm sure people all around have been exposed to this "timely" debate. I saw a twitter like snippet off Shashi Tharoor and a longer debate over the news hour.

I'm surprised at the level of hypocrisy in the debate .vs. actual demonstration of thought.


I heard Tushar Gandhi ask for social work to be given time off while picnic/ timeoff be marked as absent. I'd like to ask him a question :What would his inaugural attendance of the Mont Blanc pen "Gandhi special" be termed as ? Would that qualify as social work ?

For the un-initiated : there are 2 "luxury" brands who've released Mahatma Gandhi specials - one is LLADRO with their figurine. See picture below


and the other is the Pen from Mont Blanc - see picture below (Mr Tushar Gandhi releasing it)



Again for those who've not been watching the news. The Lladro figurine costs USD 700 while the limited edition pen costs USD 25000 ! (yes, that is right, there are 3 zeros at the end and it is in USD)

What a change from the edict of simple living and high thinking ?

Atleast, people like us (the Aam Janatha) do not preach on simple living as we do enjoy the occasional high living. I wish I could state the same for the thinking side too ;-) when I generalize ?

I: Post partition blues - Are we going to re-write history ?

First, I guess, my prediction on the new "hot" topic went down - damp squib....
It seems to have been overtaken by the BJP issue of the version on national identity, which made me think - what is the identity that we are talking about ?

Historically, I'm told that Md Ali Jinnah took the name "Pakistan" only because he thought Pt Nehru would choose "Bharat" as the name and not "India" ?

India - the name itself (I'm told) comes from variously, Sindhu (river) / Hindu (and therefore Indus). Interestingly, "India" finds no mention in any of Indian script / history and it has always been "Bharata varsha". The Indus meanwhile is out in current Pakistan. So much so, the Aryan heritage post the Mohenjadaro / Harappan settlements are also in current Pakistan ?

Time to think back to the only Emperor who was truly Indian - Ashoka or should I say "Devanampiya" ?

I'm sure that there are tons of "Dravidian" thinkers who'd state that even Ashoka has a "Aryan" heritage that could be foreign ? But, we need to stop at some point and stop re-inventing the history.

IMHO - Ashoka's "DHAMMA" is probably the closest we have to a truly secular, value based community and adoption should get closest to the proverbial "Rama Rajya" ?

The newsweek article : USA :Everyone is a Hindu now

I'm sure this one article is going to create a buzz - atleast in India !
The only reason it probably has not already created a buzz is that no-one in India today has time for anything in the papers except for H1N1 :-)


http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155 is something I'd like you to click on. This actually captures the spirit of Indian hinduism - very benign, follow what you may attitude to religion

I remember talking to people in the midwest of US (YES - in LDS land)
One of them commented about my whiteshirt stating that it reminds them of their preachers. I replied stating that in a way we have a lot more in common !.

Hindus have always believed in re-birth, in the concept that god speaks through humans, in the concept that every living / non-living thing in the world is a manifestation of god and also to NOT believe in all of the above is ALSO a hindu belief !

Let us see how the article gets accepted by the world - that will be a true reflection of the belief ?

Is a long life essential for developing an intelligent being ?

I was reading some material on sea creatures during the weekend and one of the things that struck me was that apparently Octopus is considered a very "intelligent" animal.
This, I found easy to relate to given the size of it's head / brain as a % of body mass. What surprised me was that for me- this was news.

I had heard how the "other" animals in the list eg. Dolphin, Whales etc were smart, but, for some reason Octopii were not in the same classification ? These were generally clumped under the squids etc and seen as best on french cuisine / calamari !

That got me thinking.....

Given that the normal life-span of an Octopus is only 3 years (yes, it is true), maybe, they never get enough time to make it to the intelligent list ? After all, human kids of that age have still had not "learnt" a lot of things ?

So, maybe, if we extended the life-span of a Octopus, we could teach it to sing & dance ?
Hmmm.....

Is "affordable housing" the new fad or the genuine article ?

Last week I was in UAE and contrasting their residential building market (esp. Dubai) now and a few months / quarters ago. Today, as against a building frenzy a year ago, the market seems downright down in the dumps. The talk of the town however, continues to be how "upscale" properties are now available at 60% of the earlier rate rather than how "affordable" housing has been !

Seeing the numerous ads in the local newspapers made me wonder if there is commercial merit ?

Let us face it, in terms of building affordable housing, the key cost factors of land, material and labour have NOT changed significantly except for land. Given that most of these builders probably have a land bank already and are not making "cash" payments today, what really has changed ?

Is it just that they are going to be using "cheaper" materials and giving up on higher margins ?

Dont' you think that there is some "herd" mentality going on esp. given that default and cost of money has probably gone up ?

If the builders were really looking at "affordable" housing, then, IMHO there should be a grounds up review of the market. Today, the housing market is mixed with 1/2 and 3 bedroom apartments that do not actually leverage the target model.

In my view, if a builder actually did a grounds up building to cater to "similar" target market and then worked on efficiency, there would be better throughput. As an example, I'm sure there is a market for bachelor "pads" with ample two-wheeler parking PLUS utility for single occupants. These utilities would range from food outlets to possible a video rental to a dhobi/laundry.

The ground floor would then generate enough "maintenance" funds and let the occupants in the higher floors (all single occupancy) to work out an efficient cost model ? Dont' you think ?

I'm sure we can think of similar setup for various target users ?

Google Sqared : Getting search to be multi-dimensional

I'm not sure if people have watched the announcement or realized the value / potential of Google's new release of search - Google squared. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this now has a few features that I've always wanted and had some individuals do a bit of development on the side to evaluate the APIs.

Here is a quick recap of the press release "Google Squared does not provide a list of links to Web pages, like with a traditional Google search, but presents information derived from a query in a spreadsheet-like grid called a "square." Users of google.com/squared can then build, modify and refine their "square" through further Web searches. Unlike a normal search engine

, Google Squared doesn't find webpages about your topic -- instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet"

The press release may sound confusing, however, here is an example that I ran. I did a google square on the word "coke" - which threw up a series of results in a grid - ie. rows + columns.

I then tweaked what I wanted to see in rows and what I wanted to see in columns.
Next, I added "Pepsi" to the sqare to generate a new set.

The kinds of things I added was "Started from" which told me when a particular product like Coke Cherry was launched. This still has a way to go - simply because you'll see that the "Sales" did not return anything significant.


Now - I'm sure someone is going to ask me about Microsoft Bing - Have I used it ?
NO, and I'll wait till the buzz dies down atleast .....

The 10K Marathon in Bangalore :Great participation

I've been off my blog for a couple of weeks - I guess it is the writer's block !.
Not that there has been a shortage of topics to comment upon - we've had the new government and Congress's landslide (of sorts) victory. Then, there has been the racial outrage in Australia not to mention the earlier SriLankan victory over the TTs......

More importantly, I guess, there was a certain level of weariness that had set in and I needed something that'd help me get over my writers' block. That boost came in yesterday with the Sunfeast 10 K run. The surprise at the participation as indeed pleasant.

It was wonderful to see so many people participating in the various "run" categories - I was running with my daughters and was in the Majaa run. We actually joined up the 10 K open category at it's finishing stage and then did the Majaa run.

There certainly was a lot of colour and gaiety. I understand the organizers lost count at the 23000 mark on participation and I was also witness to dozens of "un-registered" runners, in the race just for the fun of participation.

I saw whole groups of people - from NGOs, from Corporates, batchmates from a college etc, chatting and in a jovial mood that the run itself seemed a very pleasant and relaxed event. The camaraderie was certainly visible in all their faces.

The countdown on Indian Elections : high volume data processing

Starting very early tomorrow (May 16), India prepares to count the electoral votes post the elections. I'm sure enough has been said about the world's largest elections - however, am not sure if people have spared a thought on the sheer amount of data processing that is going to be used.

First is the result computation. The entire vote bank split on an average of 11 different ways (I'm told that the average number of candidates inclusive of the independents is 11)

Then, the psepologists that will get onto the TV and media. We are talking about 5-6 major media groups and about 50-60 regional groups, all slicing and dicing the numbers !

While elections probably started the computing revolution with the early counting machines, I think for sheer volume, this election is probably a record !

Tech Mahindra + Satyam : A tale of two...

As most people (atleast the IT folks in India) would know by now, Tech Mahindra has won the bid for Satyam. While, the current debate on valuation is expected to continue for a while, I thought, I'd just pen my own SWOT from a Tech Mahindra perspective.

Given that I own a few shares of Tech Mahindra (although NEVER did for Satyam), this may be seen as the "informed" view of an industry outsider ?

Strengths (read Advantages)
- TM has traditionally been in the telecom vertical and is perceived as a "vertical industry" player. This has meant that for a while, TM has been missing out on the broad "general business" areas of Retail, distribution, manufacturing, services etc. This would add considerable breadth
- Satyam supposedly has a fairly strong "fixed price" model (profitability unknown :-)) that should be good for TM
- Satyam's reach in both the middle east and AUS / NZ markets

Weakness (read Disadvantage)
- Management /Thought leadership : Especially in the areas of Packaged applications (SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics), Custom development (non-product) and managed services
- Culture : Not sure how they'd be able to reconcile the bottom load model of Satyam at cheaper rates to the vertical strength model that TM has
- Parity : This just has to do with employee status and relationship management ?

Opportunity
- The biggest opportunity for TM would be the opening of the horizontal "multinational" enterprise - ranging from Travel industry to retail to pharma/healthcare
- The opening of the COTS (read as ERP/ CRM) market

Threat
- Client / customer and account retention (and this one needs no elaboration)
- Cost advantage ? (esp. given that most of the contracts that Satyam needs to deliver on would be on a very aggressive P&L) and the market perception / environment

However, what is very clear is that this is probably the start of a clear sign of consolidation.

Electricity conservation : Smart Metering with Smart pricing ?

Today, I saw another article on smart metering in ET's online edition that prompts me to write out this post.

For most people in Bangalore, power cuts are a routine thing. Infact, a telling and poignant photo in the local newspapers a couple of weeks ago had school children protesting that the power cuts were impacting their studies / exam results !

On their part, the government is trying to "buy" power from neighboring states to make up the deficit. This, when, the power dept is running under deficit and is owed millions by other government departments themselves ! Anyway, that is a digression.

Coming to governance, I think the best way to regulate power usage is to come up with a time based power tariff. Reasoning is simple, we Indians love to save money and if it means we have to switch on our "boilers" / "storage water heaters" in the middle of the night - we will. There just has to be an incentive.

Some of you may remember that the explosion of telecom (not the current mobile one, but, the earlier STD / landline one) owed a lot to the then prevalent incentive ie. ALL calls made between 10 PM in the night to 6 AM in the morning would be at 50% discount.

I still remember the long queue that would develop at some phone booths 15 mins or sometimes even 30 mins before the 10 PM deadline.

We would still need to upgrade our meters by making it time aware. All I'm stating is that it is NOT necessary to make the meters internet / online, but, it is sufficient for us to be able to get the meter to count at different rates based on time. Maybe we can pass that information on the grid itself so that the meters reconfigure on their own based on demand ?

Another idea to work on in my free time (when it happens!)

The much talked about Spirit of Mumbai or Why do I like Mumbai ?

For a lot of parents who worry about their child going out of town for their job, my suggestion of " let the individual start their career with a job in Mumbai - it is the best thing that that can happen" raises a lot of eyebrows. There is however a reason for this. Infact, I was reminded of all these reasons encapsulated as the spirit of Mumbai last week when I was talking to a colleague that has prompted this post.

The first thing that Mumbai teaches is "value of money". Purists will argue that we should focus on the word "value", we should replace the word "of" with "for" etc. but, Mumbai actually, I believe teaches one the value "of" money.

This is clearly demonstrated by the concept of "Shared autos and Shared cabs". Brilliant !!
It is a pleasure to walk up to any of the shared cab areas outside a train station to get into a shared cab where you get to talk to and interact with strangers. The best thing in the model is that it is a perfect example of "win-win" positioning. The individual rider wins by having to pay less, the cab driver wins by collecting slightly more than a straight "share".

Then, there is the Equality of money that the local 1st class bogie teaches. I'm actually NOT being demeaning by marking the term 1st class !!!. While I do recognize that there is a daily struggle and the bulk of the people move in the local's second class bogies, there is something magical about the 1st class bogie and that is "Aspirations"

If you sit in one of these morning / evening commuter bogies, you will get to see people from all classes of the "working hierarchy" rub shoulders. There will be the senior managers in a public sector / a bank to the rank newbie (still wet / green behind the ears) working as a trainee in an MNC. ALL of them are very open and discuss their career aspirations and hopes candidly using the co-commuter as a bouncing board. It is simply amazing !

After you spend a few months in Mumbai, you get to appreciate the term "Jugaad". In Mumbai, people learn the "yes" attitude and it grows on you. While the same attitude almost borders on "chalta hai" in other northern cities, I believe Mumbai has always had a "Can Do" set that is quite distinctive.

These 3 examples / attitudes of Jugaad, Save while you can and hold high aspirations make Mumbai an unique experience.

Let me repeat, if you ever get a chance to spend a few months working in Mumbai - irrespective of all the other troubles / issues - please do grab it !

Emirates Terminal 3 in Dubai - being in the belly of a snake ?

Most of my transits in Dubai terminal 3 ever since it opened have been in the night where I've not had a chance to see it in its' full glory until this trip.

This time, I had a distinct feeling that I was getting into the belly of a giant desert SNAKE !

You see, the design (see above) has the distinct pattern of a desert Snake. Once you walk in, you need to traverse for a looong loonng time across the belly of this snake to get to immigration.

The planes on either side almost seem to be the equivalents of small ants / insects coming in to take a dig at this dead snake !

I think in this case, there was an attempt to force fit into the design as I see a clear issue with the loading of passenger traffic. All focus is on the center or this belly where the lounges + the shopping area is. This means the extremes of this snake has a LOT of free space with a vauge emptiness to it, while the middle is the swollen "hippo for breakfast" in this snake.

Satyam Fiasco : Meeting market expectations

Did not want to jump in and comment with all the noise. However, there seems to be a MAJOR point missing in all that I've read - MARKET EXPECTATIONS

If one reads Raju's letter carefully, there seems to be an invisible struggle within the "Mea Culpa" tone that is saying - I did what was expected of me by the market ? Is this true ?

I've sat through a number of earnings calls / shareholders meetings (Disclosure : I own shares in quite a few IT companies - but, never had SATYAM) where the analysts are always asking just a common set of questions. These being
- What has been your revenue growth and what will be your revenue growth ?
- What has been your margin % and growth ?

These questions themselves are fine - however, the expectation of benchmark is that revenue will grow at almost 100% Y-O-Y and margin will always be upwards of 40% !!

These are not sustainable in the long run and are unrealistic benchmarks.

As long as the expectations of analysts and market watchers are not "reasonable" expect the response to it to be correspondingly "un-reasonable"

The market has to realize that 30% revenue growth, 15-30 % margins are all "GOOD" and "REASONABLE" in a growth market and these are sustainable values that show good governance.

Is it the expectation / is it mandatory to have 40% + margins to tell the market that you have a well run company ?