.......a journey called life

5 Balls

2010-01-18T20:24:00.002+08:00

To all you workaholics......Do you agree with this one?

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls— family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.

From: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson (Haven't read this book though...found it on the internet)

I know this is true but somehow, can not take it as a fact. It may become clearer with time but not yet....

Create Your Own “Extended Warranty Fund”

2010-01-18T13:47:00.002+08:00

Nice Article on www.fivecentnickel.com.

Some excerpt:

Instead of buying warranty after warranty, why not create an “extended warranty fund.” In other words, whenever a retailer offers you an extended warranty, simply transfer that amount of money into a dedicated savings account*.

If/when problems arise, you can simply pay for the repairs (or replacement) out of your warranty fund. And once the fund builds up to a sufficiently healthy size, you can back off on your contributions.

There are two main benefits to self-insuring in this way. First, you’ll get to earn interest on the money as it accrues. Second, you’ll be the one that gets to keep the cash when your stuff doesn’t break.

Sure, there are bound to be some instances in which you would’ve been better off with the extended warranty, but remember… These warranties are designed to be profitable. Thus, more often than not, you’ll come out ahead by skipping them entirely.

For Full Article, Click Here

Happy New Year MMX

2010-01-01T08:16:00.002+08:00

Happy New Year 2010 to all my readers (handful now!). In this new year, my blog will contain lots of book reviews, commentary on world events, random observations and of course, some chapters from the journey called life.......So, keep reading and be good!

Have Fun!!!

Image Source: http://rlv.zcache.com/happy_new_year_2010_mmx_rackcard-p2456858637901700442l5cl_400.jpg

Been quite a while

2009-12-12T10:13:00.004+08:00

I have told myself umpteen number of times to get back to writing but given the pressures, it just doesn't happen. There are so many things happening around me that writing always takes a back seat.

However, there is no excuse for not being prudent with your hobby. I realized and admit that I love to write and aspire to write a great book sometime in my lifetime. So, to do justice to that dream, I should not quit writing.

2009 was disastrous for my blog. This is my third post in 2009!!!

Anyway, I will try to be nicer in 2010.

Lot of things going around the world. Last week, Bajaj finally came out of the scooter business. "Buland Bharat ki Buland tasveer" is now humming the motorcycle tune. When they discontinued Chetak three years ago, that was a signal. Now, we have the signboard! I remember reading somewhere that during License Raj, there used to be an 18 months waiting time to get a Bajaj Scooter! Now, the wait is eternal!

In Copenhagen, everyone is waiting for the other one to take lead! Developing countries are blaming the developed world for not cutting emissions as signed in Kyoto Protocol. Developed world thinks that it's time for emerging countries to participate and show some respect to the mother earth! It's not that developing countries have not set a target for themselves, but these are not legally binding which makes the developed world nervous. Who's right? I have no idea! Negotiations are still under way!

Tiger woods is famous again, only this time, for wrong reasons!

Sachin was felicitated by Mukesh Ambani........Great Stuff!

Reliance Industries is planning to acquire a controlling stake in the Dutch Chemical Giant, LyondellBasell Industries thereby giving itself a ticket to Forbes 50!

So many things are happening around and I keep complaining that I don't know what to talk about....I am sure I will find something to comment about and you will find some time to visit my blog.....let's keep this going!

Godrej plans ultra-cheap refrigerators

2009-09-06T21:31:00.002+08:00

One of my colleagues forwarded me this article: Godrej plans ultra-cheap refrigerators

The article left me wondering if India needs a 6L refrigerator. And don't we already have such a product in the market (may be at a higher price point). More so, I was wondering where would this product fit in the price-performance graph?!

In the article, product was compared with Tata Nano the way it would re-establish entry point. I would further wait and watch if it really does that.

Tata Nano can fit 4 people and technically qualifies to be called a family car. As you move up the value chain in your choice of car, you get better performance, safety, style, etc but essentially all of them fit 4 people. That's what a family car is supposed to do.

In this case, I wonder which household, however small, needs a 6L refrigerator. I often observe people complaining about how small a 165L refrigerator is. Imagine keeping the leftover food from the dinner to save for the next lunch on a 6L fridge!

Anyway, this is what I feel about this so-called revolutionary product from Godrej. Let's wait and see if it really changes the market dynamics. I will be happy if I am wrong but I am afraid I won't be!

The Lexus and The Oilve Tree

2009-08-01T11:46:00.002+08:00

I first read the journalist-author Thomas Friedman 4 years back through his book "World is Flat". While I was reading that book, I knew that I do not have the background on which the author is basing his judgment on globalization. I inquired if he has written another book on the same topic so as to better understand where he is coming from.

That's how I was directed to this GREAT book: The Lexus and The Olive Tree.

This book is one of the most definitive books on globalization. Although written in 1999, it is a timeless book and the explanations and predictions makes perfect sense even now.

"The Lexus" symbolizes the "new" world with new power definition (read as end of cold war), electronic herds, super-empowered individuals, internet, connectivity etc and "The Olive Tree" symbolizes the nation-boundary, culture, religion, identity etc.

The author portrays the constant tension between the lexus and the olive tree and their never-ending attempts to overpower each other. The book has several high points and given that the author is a world traveler, he draws on his experiences in different parts of the world. He has a great observation power and many of his anecdotes are things which we experience everyday but never dwell enough on those incidents to make sense of them.

Picture this: "An Indian woman in traditional saree and heavily laden gold jewellery sitting in an international airport in the USA intently watching two almost-naked fighters wrestling each other on TV and at the same time, typing an SMS on her mobile phone. Next to her, her husband is busy on his laptop catching up on the news on a local indian newspaper website to know what is happening in his hometown." For most of us, this will not attract any attention but to the author, he sees events like this as an amalgamation of lexus and the olive tree.

Overall, I just loved the way the book has been written. Every page leaves you wanting for more and forces you to think hard.

A must read for anyone who wants to make sense of the world!

Obama's Victory Speech

2008-11-05T21:33:00.003+08:00

Just wanted to put this on my blog as I really liked this speech....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OBAMA: Hello, Chicago. If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain. Senator McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Governor Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton ... and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years ... the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady ... Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia ... I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us ...to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe ... the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best _ the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod ... who's been a partner with me every step of the way. To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics ... you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy ... who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

"I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime, two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

"Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!

OBAMA : There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years _ block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity. Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

For that's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons _ because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America _ the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE : Yes we can.

OBAMA: When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA : America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves _ if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Source: TIMES OF INDIA

It's so difficult to restart

2008-10-27T15:45:00.002+08:00

It's an idle afternoon on one of the lucky Mondays. It's a holiday on the occasion of Deepawali and I am getting bored here. Suddenly, I thought of my blog and came back to visit it after really long time and felt so nostalgic about it that I sat to write something....

Life was so different last year when I was in School and I had all the time in the world to blog. Even though I had so many assignments to prepare, presentations to make and classes to attend, I always used to get time for blogging.

Now, it's different. My mind is always occupied with something at work. Often times, these are topics on which I can not blog (or should not blog). I am attending some conference calls or replying to someone's email. People always reply back for you to reply again in such a short time (thanks to blackberry age!). You are caught in a perpetual cycle of mails, calls, and meetings.

But I see a lot of professionals who get time for blogging. What am I missing here? What am I not doing right? If I love to write, why am I not getting time to do so? or is it that I am getting time, but not setting the priorities right?

Well, all these questions needs some introspection and I will get back with answers. 2008 was too uneventful for my blog. Just 13 posts (including this one!).

Let's see how does 2009 (still 2 months to go) behave....I am sure I will go find a meaning for my blog in 2 months...Till then, please hang on!

Bankruptcy for an Investment Bank

2008-09-19T12:49:00.004+08:00

Ed Morrison, a professor and bankruptcy expert at Columbia Law School gives some wonderful analysis on how different Bankruptcy laws when it comes to Investment Bank. The article was written by Roger Parloff.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Enjoy Reading and enlighten yourself....

...and by the way, if you are yet to be educated on Subprime mortgage crisis...Read THIS

Sunk Cost !?

2008-08-05T13:01:00.000+08:00

What is sunk cost?

Wikipedia defnes sunk costs as the costs that have been incurred and which cannot be recovered to any significant degree.

I just had a first hand feeling of sunk cost when my 10+ hours of research on mobile phones went down the drain. I was told that I am eligible for a handset upgrade and I was given plethora of options to choose from. Having an analytical insect inside my vein, I took the job with all my diligence and spirit. Even going all the way to use a concept selection matrix (pugh matrix) to choose from the vital few to the one model. Finally, after spending several hours reading reviews on various website, I had a winner. My body and soul was all set to accept Nokia E66 as the next phone for them. They were just too eager to meet and the order was even placed to Singtel.

But then came the murphy!!! Hello, did you guys forget me..I mean altogether forgot who I am?? I do exist, you know!

"Mr, You don't qualify for a change of handset yet and I am afraid you will have to wait until your current contract expires next year in Feb."

So, what about all my hardwork? Well, that's what they call - sunk cost….!!!

Afterall, Moto Razr V3 is not a bad phone after all! Not for another 210 days, that is!!

Commencement and the journey ahead....

2008-07-08T23:43:00.003+08:00

Hey.....It's me again....

I am a full MBA now, technically!

We had our commencement (convocation) this morning and we are finally conferred the revered MBA degree. It was one class of an event and it was made as classy as it can possibly get. Not even in the movies, have I seen such a wonderful way to celebrate the achievement and excellence, so to speak.

We flew our mortar board cap and took numerous pictures. Will upload some of the pictures later.

I am missing the celebration dinner and compensating for it here at the lounge waiting for my flight to Shanghai which takes off in another hour or so.

Coming back to MBA, NUS had everything great about it for the last 2 years and the ceremony which officially marked the end of the journey was a befitting end to it. They say it's just the beginning. I hate to admit that they are right. As the guest of honor, Jim Rogers, rightly mentioned that the big bad world is waiting for us out there and we should not be too complacent to have achieved this feat called MBA. It might help you get the first job, or may be the second one. After that, you are on your own. Well, MBA already gave me more than 3 jobs and definitely, I am on my own now....Wish me luck!

GE is out of Kitchen.....

2008-05-18T15:50:00.004+08:00

GE finally decides to sell / spin off its appliance division as it faces pressures from the declining appliance market and unstable corporate performance. When I was a part of this business from 2002 to 2006, I often heard this rumor but it never came true. There was little or no reason for me to be afraid as my employer was not GE and I would have found another job at my employer's other divisions if this business was shut down. We often used to hear sentimental reasons for not selling off the appliance division. Because Edison invented electric bulb (now part of appliance division), GE was supposedly putting up with the bleeding division.

Analysts estimate sales in the appliance business, which posted revenue of $7 billion last year, are likely to decline between 10 percent and 12 percent this year. That stems from weak consumer spending and a drop in home improvement sales and residential construction (Source).

I was just wondering about the aftermath of this move. There are so many people dependent on that business and if it is sold to say, Whirlpool (which already bought Maytag in 2006 and terminated most of the employees) which is already running an exactly similar business, there will be so many people who will lose jobs (GE Appliance employs approximately 13000 people worldwide - Source) . A spinoff may be a better option for the appliance division as it will atleast keep the people intact but that seems very unlikely given the plight of the market. Who will buy an ailing appliance division?

GE appliance has a huge network of suppliers as any business with an annual revenue of $ 7 billion will obviously have. Now, with a company like Whirlpool buying GE Appliances, I bet they will kill more than half of the suppliers, if not all, because they must have loads of MBAs a dn supply chain evangelists thinking about strategic procurement and harnessing economies of scale out there! So much for these concepts!

Let's turn out focus to the outsourcing partners of GE Appliance (I was at one of them for 4 years). I don't know what would convince the new buyer of the company to continue with these partners. My guess is that all of the contracts will be terminated due to some clause mentioned in the 200 page contract which would probably read like this ... " In the event of company being sold out blah blah blah".... All said and done, nearly 500-1000 people will again look for jobs and realign their energies elsewhere.

Why am I counting all the effects of this move? Is it such a shocking news after all? Didn't I enjoy reading the book "Straight from the gut" by Jack Welch which was full of such stories? Isn't Jeff Immelt reacting to the recent share market disaster which GE displayed for the first time in recent history (Source)? All said and done, there is nothing wrong in what GE leadership is doing and it was destined to happen one day. My only concern is that this is the first time I am putting faces to a restructuring / sell off decision and I can see the effect much more clearly. I just hope that the entire episode is handled in a humane manner with mimimum losses to people I care for and I know personally.

This reminds me of the article written by Milton Friedman titled as The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits! Milton Friedman claims, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Looks like everyone believes in his logic these days! Certainly, the executives at GE certainly do!

Before I leave......

2008-04-25T20:22:00.006+08:00

I am sure everyone has a list of things to do before they leave this earth for "god-knows-where"! I have 2 passions in life (non academic and non work related) - Reading and Traveling (this one is new). I will speak of the former in this post as I have not really come up with a list of places I must see but I have come up with a list of books I must read. Or rather, I have come up with many lists!

Let's begin with an information overload!

Here are some of the great novels and work of fiction (whatever you choose to call it) of all times. I was digging up the most authentic list but looks like I do not have either the acumen nor the authority to find which one is THE MOST authentic. So, I settled with these four:

Time's List
Guardian's List
Modern Library's List
BBC's List

But then, I thought unless I resolve the issue that which one is most authentic, how do I know which one to follow? There is some ambiguity and inconsistency in these lists and I was really confused as to which one should I use for my reference. For example, Moden Library (Reader's List) has almost all of Ayn Rand's books in the list where as BBC doesn't even talk about her. The reverse is the case with Terry Pratchet! BBC has 15 of his novels in the top 200 lists where as Modern Library doesn't even mention it. Time and Guardian also doesn't think that Ayn Rand should be there....

So, which one do I use? I thought I will use my taste as a hint of which list suits me more. I am a die hard fan of Ayn Rand and only the Modern Library list has given full justice to her. Besides, I did a quick check if novels which I have read and feel that they should be a part of the lists are there or not? Novels like Catch 22, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, 1984 etc etc. Modern Library List scores full marks on this and I have my answer now. Hence, I will rather go with the modern library list.

But, Modern Library has missed some of my favorite books like "Love in the time of Cholera" and "All Quiet on the Western Front". So, I guess I will make a list of my own very soon and follow that. But it will be mostly derived from the Modern Library.

Basically, on my 60th Birthday, I should have a look at the list and proudly say to my grandchildren that I have read them all! That's the long term goal. Short term goal is to get my hands on the three books which are on my shelf - "Lord of the Rings", "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree"

My reading times will start again which was on halt for long - ever since I thought about taking GMAT in May 2005. Life never stopped after that and now since I am done with my MBA and back in the work force, I guess I should get back to this wonderful hobby of mine! Haven't read much since then!

Thou shalt not repeat the history!

2008-03-16T13:21:00.003+08:00

Once upon a time, there were two finalists in a competition and one of them was obviously not as good as the other. But guess, who finally won the competition? It was the bad guy! Nice Guys finish last, isn't it?

Yes, I am talking about SaReGaMaPa Challenge 2005 finalists - Vinit and Debojit! Debojit polled 27,757,733 votes against Vinit’s 27,298,268 votes to win the competition and went on to become a lost star! His home state - Assam took on to their ego to make Debojit a winner because he was humiliated more than once because of his poor singing skills and yet surviving the competition week after week. There was even discussions whether Debojit is emerging as India's voice or Assam's voice! In some of the weeks, as much as 82% of the votes were from Assam only. No wonder he emerged as a winner. Hats off to Vineet who gave him such a competition purely backed by his singing quality.

Now, Mr Gajjendra Singh is directing another show Voice of India (VOI) and he is no longer associated with SaReGaMaPa. So, all the charm has come with him to VOI. Looks like, he has learnt from his mistake and he has now added another twist to the selection process. 50% of the votes lies with the judge and the rest with public.

Flash ! Come to 2008! We have a similar situation and it's a Deja Vu for me and many other who watched the previous show! We have three finalists left now in the show - Aishwarya, Anwesha and Prakriti. Aishwarya and Anwesha are the stars and Prakriti is an average joe between them (and she is from Darjeeling - not too far from Assam). But it so happens that public voting is helping her to climb up the ladder week after week and she has finally managed to come to Top 3. She was even eliminated from the competition sometime back but got resurrected like a phoenix using wild card entry which was decided by 100% public voting.

This entire phenomenon must be troubling Gajjendra Singh and he is determined not to letthe history repeat itself. Judges have been instructed (I presume) to give Prakriti the last rank every week (every damn week) irrespective of what she sings because they know that she will survive through public voting. So, they are doing their best to throw her out. This week, when all the three finalists performed in Bhopal, judges took another stab at her when they felt that it is going a bit too far. They publicly criticized her voice quality and her merit to be in the Top 3. So much so that she cried on the stage.

Everyone must be feeling bad about her but I am not feeling all that bad about her. She should have been eliminated long back and the reason judges have to be so direct now is that public has taken her too far. I bet Gajjendra Singh will not let another Debojit win the competition. He is doing all he can, in his own right, to convince the public to vote for the "right" person. It's looking dirty on screen but it takes a person of his gut to do this kind of manipulation. I really commend him to do his best to let the best person win! I don't know if Assam and the north-east will again take it to their heart and vote for her like mad to make her another Debojit. I just pray it should not happen anymore!

If only we talked!

2008-03-12T20:58:00.003+08:00

This morning, I woke up to rescue my wife from a lizard which was too close to the cooking area. She had to prepare lunch for me before I leave for office. It was still 6 something and before I could understand anything, I was in business.

This guy is staring at me and I am trying to push him off so that he goes to a secluded area and survive but he was just not moving after all my hoo-haa-hee efforts. Finally, I had to go after him and in my effort to touch him using a mop and push him, he didn't survive. This event led me to think if I was really planning to kill him. The answer is an absolute "NO" if only we could talk. I could have told him that he is in a wrong place and he would have just changed his location. Happy Ending. But because we can't talk, he is assuming that I am determined to kill him and I am assuming that he just might hurt someone with whatever little poison he has, if he has any! In this confusion, we take a totally different path. He is trying to hide from me by getting into some remote corner where I can not reach (but still close to cooking area) and I am trying to get him out of that place and get him moving.

Isn't the same thing happening to us humans also! Even though we CAN talk, we don't do it quite often. We have our list of assumptions, predispositions and prejudices against others and we never walk that extra mile to sort things out. And because of this inability, or rather reluctance, to talk, we end up hurting each other. Take a look around you. You will find so many cases like that. The issue is that these assumptions take such a deep root in our minds that we often forget to challenge them. I guess, we should, at times!

So, the next time, you are out there to kill (hurt) someone, think again if this hatred is just an after-effect of your inability to converse with the other person? The answer will take some time to surface but it will eventually come up in an affirmative!

The Future of my BLog

2008-02-21T13:39:00.003+08:00

Many of you were complaining that my blog has become dull as new posts are not coming....Quite frankly, you are absolutely right. Even I have left visiting my blog. I do not do the layout fine tuning any more. I do not keep updating the menu items every now and then!

The main issue is that I am not deciding what to do with my life these days. It has become so darn fast that I am just watching it from a distance. The other issue is that I am running out of ideas and topics to scribble about. I have stopped reading & I have graduated. Now you must be wondering what does graduation has to do with blogging. In this respect, I'd say a full time student status gave me the required intellectual fuel to keep blogging. There were intellectual discussions everywhere and there were always more topics to write about than what I could possibly write. Now since I have started working, my intellectual juices are flowing towards solving problems I can not talk about.

But, does that mean that it's the end of my blog! A BIG NO! Do not write me off so soon. I am thinking over the definition my blog will take eventually. One thing I am sure of is that I want to read this blog with my grandchildrens! So, this will continue. The topics will change. The frequency will change. The temper will change but what will not change is the existence of my blog.

Please be patient with me! I will keep coming and I hope you will keep coming too.....

FT Rankings are out.......We are out too

2008-01-29T20:57:00.000+08:00

Did you see the FT Rankings for the best MBA schools...Well, they are out and you must see it....for several reasons....

Reason # 1: NUS Business School is not there in the ranking. Nowhere!! You know why? because our alumni were just too busy to fill the survey sent to them by FT and due to lack of data points, FT chose to ignore us. So far so good....What bothers me though is that this will project a VERY BAD impression on the rankings-crazy-applicant-pool out there. For those people who get fooled by the Rank 46 achieved by Nanyang Business School and choosing it over NUS, all the very best! I have nothing against any school but it is just too damn injustice to these folks whose sole criteria to choose a B school is global ranking

Reason #2: When I saw ISB at 20....I couldn't stop myself from checking the criteria for ranking. I mean it has never happened. FT reports weighted Salary as USD 169, 355 (which is the highest in the world..even higher than Wharton and Harvard)...anyway, I checked what exactly is "weighted salary". FT defines it as "The average alumni salary today with adjustment for salary variations between industry sectors. This figure includes data for the current year and the one or two preceding years where available". I went onto ISB website to check the data for the current and the two preceding years.

2007: Average International Salary: USD 135,000 / Average Indian Salary: INR 1,503,000
2006: Average International Salary: USD 120,700 / Average Indian Salary: INR 1,180,000
2005: Average International Salary: Did not report / Average Indian Salary: INR 10,01,000

For 2005, I am taking liberty of using the highest international salary figure (which was reported) as the average number...Seems liberal, right? So, that was USD 1,81,000

Now, one more piece of information is missing here...what percentage of the batch gets placed abroad and what percent in India. Shall we take 50-50? Seems reasonable? especially after the last assumption?

Now, I know of no methods of finding weighted average with the numbers I have up here which will lead me to what FT has...Even with all the salary hikes in the last two years ( as if it would help). Someone help me here! Oh, may be ISB didn't provide the names of people getting Indian salaries to FT...whatever!

Reason # 3: I didn't know Tepper is worse than Nanyang..Damn ! I wasted USD 200 in Tepper application and didn't even bother to apply for Nanyang. Same goes for Kelley, Krannert and Fisher...

There are so many reasons but I am particularly pissed off with Reason # 1.

To all you seniors, please don't spoil the school....Give it what it deserves..

Wah Taj!

2008-01-13T16:11:00.001+08:00

There was a long queue to get inside one of the most beautiful monument on the face of the earth. But it was worth the wait!

But after you have gone through the pain of waiting, what you see is absolutely stunning

The sheer size of the monument just awes you. Take a look at the size of the human being at the basement and you'd get an idea of the magnanimous structure. The structure represents the finest example of Mughal Empire and most beautiful creation by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (amongst Red Fort, Jama Masjid and sections of Lahore and Agra Forts).

But what am I driving at and why am I writing this post?

I am writing this post because I was so pissed off by the areas surrounding "The Taj" and the attitude of the policemen and the authorities on duty at "The Taj".

Infrastructure: Until we reached the Taj, it was difficult to imagine that such unkept roads are leading people to one of the wonders of the world. There is no bypass which can help the tourist avoid the congested city roads to reach Taj. It really tests your patience. And you sometimes wonder if all the pain is worth it!

Administration: The policemen are as rude as they can be. The administrators (in civil dress) are at the least, unhelpful. They have some weird rules of what is allowed and what is not! Basically, they are incompetent bunch of people entrusted with protecting the wonder of the world and they have no idea how to get this done in a systematic manner.

Anyway, I have no complaints since I got the final result but I couldn't agree more that the journey and the means of reaching the end could have been a far smoother one.

Vrindavan – Four in one!

2008-01-13T10:31:00.001+08:00

I am not a religious man. I am not an atheist either. In the extreme case of serenity provided by few places, I turn into a devotee. I remember Chinmaya Mandir at Begumpet (Hyderabad) gave me that feeling once. I believe in supernatural powers and there is some sense of higher power driving my actions and conscience. So far so good!

Let's turn our attention to Hindu Mythology for a while. According to old texts, there are 4 dhaams (Jagannath, Badrinath, Dwarka and Kedarnath) and taking a trip to all 4 of them provides a man with a chance to wash away all his sins. There is a fifth place which claims to have the 4 in 1 power of dhaams and you can do all that in just one shot – That's Vrindavan for you.

I am not here to debate on that. I am here to share my experience with a gang of thugs I came across in Lord Krishna's play garden i.e. Vrindavan. The whole place is a network of agents. As soon as you enter Vrindavan, there will be people waiting for you at the cross roads. If you do the inevitable mistake of asking one of them for direction, consider that person inside your car. There is no power which can stop that. We did the mistake of letting the window shield down. A 10 year old boy hooked on to it and dragged himself with our moving car for almost half a kilometer when he decided to yield to our curses. But the place is so darn complex that you HAVE to ask for directions. We chose a gentleman who offered his service for a small sum of Rs 30 to help us reach the "main" temple. But, that was only the tip of the iceberg. He surrendered us to a different guy who acted like a guide and showed us the place before letting us in the "main" temple. He claimed that there are more than 5000 temples in the city but only one temple accepts "puja" and gives you the "Prasad" (I seriously doubt that hypothesis but there was no time to validate that). That was the catch! As he showed us into the main temple, he recited 3 rules of the temple –

1) No one is allowed to throw money at the god. All donations are done in proper manner (Later we will discover the proper manner induces a lot of upswing in the donation amount).

2) You are not supposed to discuss how much to donate. It should come from within. Later, they would be the first one to break this rule.

3) You are supposed to distribute the "Prasad" when you go back to your home. This was done for 2 reasons. First, you should have a need for the "Prasad" which doesn't come free and second, you will act as publicity agents for the temple (That's what I am doing now).

We were guided to the "puja" place where a "pundit" was waiting for us. He told all the stories about Lord Krishna and the significance of the place and then went straight down to business. He opened his ledger and asked my dad how much he wants to donate. He gave 3 options…all the options were in thousands…my dad requested for a hundred type figure when that guy went sentimental and started giving the typical sales pitch. At that point, I had all my devotions go down the drain and I was feeling like being surrounded by salesmen who were trying to snatch my wallet. I hate sales pitch! That pundit had already done the segmentation as he was not considering our family as one. He considered all the married couples as one customer each and wanted similar donations from them as well. That included me! The way he was negotiating, I was feeling horrible. I went atheist all over again. I juts stopped short of being defiant and out of civic sense and in the name of god, we made the smallest donation he would accept to give us the smallest packet of "Prasad" he had. My dad gave 10 times what I gave and his packet of "Prasad" was nearly 10 times larger. Cause and effect!

After that moment, I was not paying attention to whatever that person was telling on our way back. He showed us some more places where we were supposed to bow down for the blessing of the god but there was no god there in my eyes. It was a place of thugs and I just let myself being robbed. There were no options of a secret donation as the art of salesmanship will not work in a secret setting.

I am sure that a hardcore believer would see them as agents of god who are collecting the extra money each one of us have to support the needy. I don't agree to that line of thinking. The way they were trying to extract the donations in the name of god was simply wrong and whatever I have written above is purely my interpretation of the scheme of things happening at Vrindavan on that particular day. I am pretty sure that day was not an exception but rather a norm. There are temples where donations are done in secrecy and there is no one to help you decide how much you should donate. This place just doesn't believe in that arrangement. That pundit was there to decide how much devotion you have for the lord and accordingly passes the verdict on how much you should donate.

No more Vrindavan for me! I had enough!

Lord Krishna, I still believe in you!

A trip down the memory lane…..

2008-01-13T10:10:00.001+08:00

What a wonderful trip it was…Absolutely amazing! In the last 40 days or so, we were all over India and save for couple of weeks of bad health, it was fun packed! If I get down to describing all my experiences in a single post, it would be boringly long. So, I would save the details for individual post (which would come very soon). After spending 3-4 days each at my home and my in-law's home, we went to Bangalore to meet my brother in law. It was a nice 4 day trip where we covered Mysore as well…Bangalore was mostly shopping trip whereas Mysore provided the scenic angle to the trip. Infosys was a treat indeed and Mysore Palace was an absolute delight. That was followed by our 10 day halt at my sister's and brother-in-law's place at New Delhi. While we were lazy owing to the cold weather, we did manage to see quite a bit of Delhi and around. On 30^th December, we also went to Agra (detailed post to follow) and on our way back, we caught a glimpse of Vrindavan (detailed post to follow). We traced our path back to Singapore in the last 10 days through in-law's, parents and then finally to Kolkata to catch the flight…..It was like a dream trip…Catching the flight to India seems like yesterday and it's already over…Tomorrow, I will start a new phase of my life as I re-enter the workforce (In macro-economic terms). On 14^th January, my employment pass takes precedence as I surrender my student pass. A time well spent during transition from student life to work life!

I am back......

2007-11-25T23:59:00.000+08:00

After a hibernation of almost 3 months, I am back. I realized that I should be blogging more often because I am losing my power to reason and think. So, what was I doing for all these days....too many things, actually!

First of all, I was completing my MBA and now I am just 2 exams shy of my MBA. At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to write 100 posts, get an internship, get a job etc etc (READ POST)....I was able to do everything except for the 100 post thingie...and now that I am going back to India, my hibernation would continue.

After coming back from India in January, I will be joining Emerson Process Management at Singapore.

Coming back to original question on the hibernation, let me see if I am able to recall what exactly did I do all these days...

1) I spent lots of time on Facebook (lots......) but I am still not convinced with the $ 15 billion valuation.
2) I worked on the IIT Kharagpur group on LinkedIn. We have 421 members now and the group is growing every day. For all you KGPians, if you haven't joined yet..please do so HERE
3) I got myself certified as a Black Belt from ASQ! Tough one month of preparation...
4) I spent some time at MBA lounge this year...Last semester after all!

I will try to be more regular from now on....at least, there will be no more 3 months hibernation....

Thanks to all the friends for coming here and keeping the hit count always above ground level. Keep coming. I will come back with more observations. But I doubt if I will be able to hit the 100 post mark!!!!

Assortment & Animosity

2007-09-04T01:40:00.000+08:00

The moment Apple I-Phone became news for industry insiders; executives at companies like Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG etc would have skipped a beat! And this would have resulted in another meeting with Board of Directors and getting a massive project approved. R&D would get pressure from all sides to come up with “Something” “ASAP”. I ask, why? When will this end? Nokia will come up with an E Model, Motorola will respond with Photo-Razor. This will lead to Samsung coming up with Sam-Phone and LG will launch its M-Series in response. Oh, Did I forget to mention the G Phones from Google. Imagine what it does to the supply chain and the consumers.

Retailers have to stock more phone hence run larger stores hence marking up higher
Consumers will be confused like hell when they would come to purchase a phone. They came to look for a phone which would help them call from Point A to Point B. Instead, they were confused amongst millions of Value Added Services and Peripheral Features to choose from! I pity on him! It has been proven by research that more variety leads to lower consumer purchase!
More Assortment leads to higher SKUs at the manufacturer and makes the distribution costlier.

But why are they doing it?

A new phone commands a higher price and hence higher profit because it’s essentially the same old phone from inside hence cost the same.
They feel that consumer will perceive their company to be innovative if they keep coming with new launches.
They keep vying for the growing market share and one way to go for it is to launch a model especially for them.

Can we stop this?

Not we but they can! They can stop fighting like dogs and let us live in peace. But then no one talks to each other and game theory has made things even more difficult! They act on cues and everyone is trying to find that one extra incentive to break the equilibrium. For gods’ sake, I don’t need 27 varieties of shampoo to choose from. Even though collusion is illegal but I guess collusion in this market is the need of the hour. Let them collude and let us live!

Best Practices for Power Point Presentation

2007-08-22T09:56:00.000+08:00

After making hundreds of presentations (some of them good, by my standards), I have come up with a to-do list of things and more importantly, an even longer not-to-do list of things.

However, it is always good to know what the experts have to say. Not that everyone who has a webpage built about making a good presentation is an expert though. Beware of internet avatars of powerpoint experts. Giving advice is plain simple. As Mary Schmich put it in the legendary song-speech Sunscreen:

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on this:

If you have ever worked in GE, chances are that you already have a good history of looking at good presentations (provided your managers and peers were using the GE Corporate guidelines on templates)

Anyway, Listen to these guys....and don't listen to anything else....

Guy Kawasaki (Video)

Garr Reynolds

and

Seth Godin

Possibicity

2007-08-18T19:33:00.000+08:00

If you have seen any of the gazillion things Singapore Government is doing for 42nd National Day, you Probably know what "Possibicity" is! This year, the theme of the national day is "City of Possibilities" or better known as "Possibicity".

Its a month long celebration with as much as 15 events to mark the 42nd Birthday of this nation. I had the privilege of being a part of one of the events yesterday (The Fireworks...Link for Pictures). Packed with a crowd of 27000 Singaporeans, the firework was just mesmerizing! I have seen one more firework in my life (Thunder Over Louisville). Even though the one in Louisville is at least 6 times larger than this (going by number of shells fired) and 30 times larger in terms of crowd, I liked the Singapore one quite a bit for several reasons. First, I was with my wife for this magnificent display. Second, the fireworks was done with Singapore skyline as a backdrop. Third, I was already impressed with the floating platform they have made for the National Day Celebration. Fourth, I am Singaporean lah! (well...kind of!)

It's just amazing what this small country has achieved in 41 years of independence. It has already expanded to 704 Sq Km (by the way, more than 20% of this is reclaimed from the sea). From a third world country to a first world in such a short time is a feat in itself. Besides, the continuous focus of the country to redefine itself in one way or the other is just amazing. From Logistics Hub to Gaming Resort to Night F1 Race to Finance Hub to whatever is next in line!

All the best Singapore! May you prove to be Possibicity for me as well !

India's "Diamond Jubilee + 1" Independence Day

2007-08-15T02:58:00.000+08:00

Enjoy the Indian National Anthem

Strategy & Society

2007-08-12T12:43:00.000+08:00

I have already read this article twice and an so fascinated that I couldn't help sharing it with you guys...Our MBA Club President Srikanth has put together some noble yet achievable thoughts in his latest post.

Read Here (Srikanth's Blog)

You must read both the articles he has posted in his blog. The one (The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits) by Milton Friedman and the other (Strategy & Society - The Link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility) by Porter and Kramer

Also read this article he mentions at the end of his post (Society Counts On Its MBAs) and see if it makes sense to you. For me, I guess it's exaggerating to a certain degee but indeed, a reality!!!

Photo Source: Nitesh Solanki's Flickr Album (Link) - My Friend, An Amazing Photographer and My Wingmate at IIT Kharagpur

From "The X Way" To "Confessions of Y"

2007-08-11T13:38:00.000+08:00

Around 3-4 years back, whenever I used to go to Odyssey or Walden (Bookshops) in Hyderabad, I used to find at least 10 books with the title "The X Way" with X being replaced by some company. I don't know who started the trend but as far as I remember, "Jack Welch and the GE Way" was the trend starter soon followed by

"The Mckinsey Way",
"Toyota Way",
"Warren Buffet Way",
"The Disney Way",
"The Apple Way",
"The Six Sigma Way",
"The SouthWest Airlines Way",
"The HP Way",
"The Wal*Mart Way",
"The Marine Corps Way",
"The Nordstrom Way",
"The Shackleton's Way",
"The Socrates' Way"

It appeared every company (and even Socrates) wanted to let everyone know what they are doing and the concept of competitive edge suddenly vanished. No one wanted to keep any secrets anymore. But when you read some of these books (I have read Six Sigma, GE, Wal*Mart, McKinsey & Toyota), They don't really tell you anything (with the possible exception of the Toyota Way and GE Way which were detailed description of the way Toyota and GE runs). This landslide of books was just another minting exercise by some of the executives of these companies.

Deja Vu!!!

I had a similar feeling yesterday when I went to this random book store in Orchard Road, Singapore. Only this time it was "Confessions of Y". After the success of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (even though its not first in the league of confessions), every Tom, Dick and Harry has some or the other confession to make. I hit upon the Confessions of Wall Stret Analyst who was more than eager to let us all know about the corruption going on in these analysis business. Then, there is this Confessions of a Street Addict (this one is older than the Hit Man confession) which gives you an insight into the author's career as a journalist, Wall Street pundit, Internet entrepreneur, and television commentator. You also get to see the Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Wall Street Shoeshine Boy, Shopaholic, Serial Killer, Good Christian Girl, Organized Homemaker blah blah blah blah. Just like 3-4 years back, companies were more than eager to trumpet their success stories, now these authors are bit by their conscience and suddenly everyone wants to confess. They are so filthy covered in guilt that they must confess.

I've got a confession to make as well. I will not read any more book with the title "The X Way" OR "Confessions of Y". Happy reading to all who choose to do so.

Double Standard?

2007-08-09T15:07:00.000+08:00

Read two pieces of news:

1) Yahoo denies family access to dead marine's e-mail

2) Yahoo faces scrutiny in China case

The first news happened almost 2.5 years back. This article caught my attention as I strongly opposed this move by Yahoo. I felt that yahoo was just acting too smart to get some media attention. They were just making a point on how much they value confidentiality.

But when it comes to diplomatic pressures and danger of getting banned from the country, all their principles disappear in thin air (Read News Article 2). The FT article further has a special paragraph which proves my point further ahead:

"In the 18 months since the committee hearing, three other instances have come to light in which Yahoo handed over information about suspected dissidents to Chinese authorities, all three of which pre-dated the Shi Tao case. The Dui Hua Foundation last week published a document showing Yahoo had handed over information about a user in 2002 over an investigation into “suspected inciting of subversion”. The user, Wang Xiaoning, was later sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment."

So, there practise Confidentiality selectively?!!

Photo Source: http://catchycolors.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html

Flywheel Concept

2007-08-08T20:41:00.000+08:00

If you guys have read the book "Good to Great", you probably know what I am talking about. Those who haven't must read it and those who don't have any intent of reading it in the near future, read my commentary on the book (LINK - Go to the last book review in the page, LINK 2).

Having sorted it out, let me come to the point. In the last week or so, I have got 2 compliments. One on this blog and the other on my LinkedIn Profile. Both the compliments were on similar lines - "How did you build it? It looks so complete". I am not taking pride in these compliments but I just thought I would try to decipher if there is any answer to such questions. Bottom line is that these things are built over time and small incremental improvements help you build it. Then I thought that Jim Collin's Flywheel Concept gives a better answer to this question.

He says that any phenomenal change in its final state looks like a flywheel going at a very fast speed. People stop to question what kind of effort would bring that flywheel to such impressive speed where things seem to be happening just by themselves. He further explains that such movements are brought by one step at a time.

Imagine a giant flywheel....

Case 1: You apply immense force to rotate it and it doesn't move but you persevere and you get it moving by an inch. You continue applying force to it and finally you make it complete a turn. Nobody notices but you know what you are up to. You continue applying force in the same direction until it attains a speed which people stop to notice. They believe that a massive restructuring program must have gone under to bring it to such speed. Take the case of Kimberly Clark under the leadership of Darwin Smith which took 25 years to turn the flywheel to a speed which was envied by the competitors

Case 2: You try very hard to rotate the flywheel but could not move it. You form a team to make it move and they succeed in moving it by one rotation. Then you shift your focus for some time and when you come back to check the flywheel, you the speed dying. You form another team to make it move again but in a different direction. You keep shifting direction as you dont quite know what you are doing. In the end, what you get is a slow moving flywheel alternating direction more often than not.

Need I say more?

NOTE: If you smell hubris by reading this post, please excuse me as I am a person full of humility and in this post, I have just tried to link the Flywheel Concept in a real life situation

Getting the Supply Chain Right for a HOT Product

2007-08-06T18:17:00.000+08:00

How many iPhones did apple sell in the first weekend? Around 700,000? (A Brief Detour on the confusion about this number between AT&T and Apple). Whatever the number is, it's some huge number which needs a robust supply chain to deliver!

Why in the earth am I picking on this topic suddenly?....Well, this morning, I was reading an academic paper by Narasimha B Kamath and Rahul Roy of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta on "Capacity Augmentation of a Supply Chain for a short lifecycle product". The authors took a system dynamics framework to drive their point home but to put it simply, the key highlights of the paper was to derive a framework based on which a company decides on the investment in capacity for an innovative product characterized by short product lifecycle and high demand uncertainty. If it is not done properly, either the product will not diffuse the way it was destined to or the manufacturer will be left with unused capacity.

While I was reading the paper, I got interested to understand the way Apple managed their Supply Chain for possibly the most hyped up launches in the history of personal communication device. New York Times reported (Link - Need Free Registration) that people lost money who bet on the fact that iPhones would go out of stock and they would get a chance to resell their phones at a premium. That’s why the iPhone is also a triumph of supply chain management, according to Michael Levi, director of solutions strategy, for i2 Technologies.

With Vertical integration making lesser sense with each passing day, controlling the entire supply chain is becoming increasingly difficult and there is a greater need to collaborate with your suppliers and partners. Imagine an iPhone! How many suppliers would be delivering the parts which go into an iPhone! I don't know the exact number but I would bet it'd be more than 100!

Modern Materials Handling prescribes three steps to make the supply chain work (Link)

Establish synchronization: Power of having a single source of information with seamless sharing of information with your suppliers and partners
Execute as efficiently as possible: Striking a balancing between going out as fast as possible to catch your competitors by surprise and soon followed by operational efficiency to survive in the days when the margins erode.
Use the supply chain to address problems: Remember the screen cracking issue with Nano? But more importantly, do you remember the way Apple handled the issue by using the very same supply chain which is used to deliver the product?

So, you know how to strike gold when you have a Hot Product in your armor! It's not just the product but the way you plan the delivery is also very important! Did I hear Supply Chain is so out of fashion? Just that people don't notice!!

Q1 Results Out

2007-07-30T19:47:00.000+08:00

Power of Internet never ceases to amaze me! I just happened to look at my Google analytics reports and could not understand some of the facts and figures it threw at me:

For sake of clarity, I just referred to Q1 Results, so to speak (1 April, 07 to 30 June, 07)

1062 Visitors came from 50 countries! 50 countries! Are you kidding me...Why in the world would people from 50 countries visit me...Well, I don't mean to say I am not okay with this fact. Its just that its overwhelming for me
Thankfully, Pareto was in action hence Singapore, US and India led the pack (32.77%, 31.73% and 16.10%, respectively)
Internet Explores beat Mozilla (67.98% vs 28.72%)
94.35% people had windows op system (2.92% used mac)
4.43% people still have 800X600 monitor (something not suited for my blog
The visits were in 22 languages
35% were returning visitors
Talking of Individual Cities, Singapore led the pack with 313 visitors alone, followed by a tie in Delhi and Chennai (28 Visitors each)
Traffic Sources: 19.68% were direct, 47.83% were referred and 32.2% were from directed from various searches

Remember my post on HP-Dell eyeing for the next big thing...Individual Data Management...Well, I don't know if HP and Dell are doing their homework but Google is so well suited to do it for me...

Book Review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2007-07-29T12:00:00.000+08:00

I have been trying to read a book for quite some time now but always, something happens which forces me to keep it back. The book is "Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman. Historical reasons have been exams, finding another interesting book on loan or buying another book. The book talks about the power of globalization and the wonderful things it is doing to the third world.

This time, the reason for not continuing with that book was me buying anther book on my trip to Borders. It was "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. A thought provoking book, to say the least. While it was an amazing read, it has also raised so many questions in my mind. This book indeed forces you to think quite hard.

To give a brief overview of the book, John Perkins claims he was an economic hit man (EHM) - a breed of professional who work for various corporations but serve the purpose of stretching the boundaries of global empire perpetrated by the US. These people are never on the government payroll. Nevertheless, they are working for the government interest. For example, these guys will go to a third world country, study the economic prospects of the country and propose lofty projection of economic trajectory of the country in the next 25-30 years. Now, in order to meet the projections, the country needs power plants, infrastructure, water treatment system, housing, banking system etc all of which need immense amount of capital outlay. At that point, the EHMs get the loan approved from World Bank, US AID, IMF, ADB etc. All this while, the intent was not to let the country develop but rather to give so much loan to the country that they have no choice but default on the payment. As this happens, the US government will start laying out the list of things they need in favor of allowing them to default on the loan.The list might include items like setting up military base, accessing the vast natural reserve of the country, get into some kind of free trade agreement, open the economy, political support in the UN etc. This list is far from exhaustive. Every country offers a unique advantage and terms vary based on that.

Mr Perkins, supposedly, had this itch to write a book as his conscience was not allowing him to continue doing this dirty work.I do not want to get into the debate whether he is morally just or not. I know a lot of people who repent their deeds later even though they were enjoying it while they were on it.

Rather, I would like to understand the factors behind what's going on around the world. I wrote a post sometime back saying that even though I don't want to work for a bank, I might end up working for one, indirectly. Reading this book only reinforces that belief. Also, now when I read the Friedman book "Lexus and the Olive Tree", I will be more informed of certain events and prejudices.

When I ask myself if I believe every word he has written in the book, I believe that I am skeptic of certain events as they have been dramatized too much (but these events made the book an interested read) but I can not question the phenomenon Mr Perkins has brought forward. Finer details are trivial but the message which this book conveys is crystal clear. The corporatocracy does exist and permeating through nations faster than you can imagine. An example near and dear to our heart is the liberalization policy which the Indian government (under late Mr P V Narasimha Rao) accepted under IMF pressures. Even though it turned out to be good for our country in terms of development but that was the ideal case I could imagine when the EHMs succeeded in twisting the arms of a country under the pressure of debt. Thanks to the indigenous Indian companies which stood the test of the time and fought fiercely against the competition from outside firms. I guess I will consider this as one of EHM's failure! Mr Perkin, do you agree?

Who is Harry Potter?

2007-07-24T20:47:00.000+08:00

That's the questions I so want to ask someone I can confide in. It just amazes me the way I was able to steer past this revolution for 10 years and 28 days! Never in my life have I touched a Harry Potter book (even though I would have read an average of 25-30 books per year all these years).

I owe this so called achievement to several reasons: First, I was not aware back in 1997 that there is something like Harry Potter. Next, I have this seemingly fierce hatred for magical stuffs. Next, I don't like movies which has children as lead artist. I just don't feel comfortable surrendering my 2-3 hours in the hands of children. Next, when I first heard about it, I heard it from so many sources at the same time that I developed a hatred towards it.

And today, when I was browsing through newspaper online, something caught my eyes: 11 million copies sold in three markets within 24 hours. Isn't that just crazy? and I have also heard that they have launched it in 88 countries! Some news reported that J K Rowling is apparently making 94 sterling pound for every word in the book. By some estimates, The "Harry Potter" magic has put her net worth above Queen Victoria! All these statistics will make you crazy. (Too many sources to quote...besides I don't even remember where did I see what?)

Well, all said and done, I have yet not changed my resolution to lay my hands on the potter books. In fact, only 2 weeks back, I have bought my shield for this Potter ammunition. I went to Borders and bought all the three copies of "The Lord of the Rings".

I got a hint from Mankiw's blog as to when would be the ideal time to break the Potter Resolution. I plan to recite all the 7 parts to my child! That's the master plan! Until then, you guys enjoy it. I will watch from the shore!

Colgate-Palmolive Interested in Unilever?

2007-07-22T01:10:00.000+08:00

Talk of anything like that and you hear different opinions...I got this news from someone and just went to Google to check what is this all about. Different Perspectives, varied facts and speculations have just confused me even more. From what I gather from this whole episode, it just doesn't make sense. I fail to understand the logic why would Unilever sell off its personal care business to a company like Colgate. I do not consider Colgate as a "General" FMCG company with whom I can attach anything. Colgate makes toothpaste. Toothpaste is made by Colgate. Period. Talking of "THE" Household FMCG, only P&G and Unilever fits that bill.

Have you seen at the brand portfolio of Colgate-Palmolive? You will hardly notice any name other than the ones which also appear in their company's name (what a coincidence). So, with 201 years of long history, I presume they are not even good at "Brand Creation". Take for example, India. In India, People refer to Colgate as Toothpaste. They are synonymous. It's dangerous for a brand when people start associating the entire category with the name of the brand. That's what has happened with Colgate (I have absolutely no idea how to solve this. However, I would blame the company for this for no fault of theirs).

Besides, lets talk of Size. How can Colgate possibly swallow Unilever's Personal Care? (forget about the whole Unilever). Or is it the other way round? It is highly unlikely for Colgate to acquire Unilever and if they do, they can not make it work. Some 70-80% (whatever that number is) of mergers and acquisitions fail. Well, this, if it happens, will sure be one of them and if at all, shares will move because of this deal, it will be that of P&G

Internship - Final Term Review Done !!!

2007-07-20T19:27:00.000+08:00

This morning, I was both excited and nervous. Excited because I was more than eager to show my work to the leadership team and nervous because......uhmmm..well, it was a review and wasn't I supposed to be nervous (a little bit of nervousness helps, by the way...makes you prepare better).

I went to the conference room at 8:15 AM and set up my laptop with the projector. There was no murphy. Even the printer was working this morning (may be because I took all the print outs needed last night :-)). Anyway, I quickly ran through my slides to check if everything was looking the way I want them to. Sharp at 8:25 AM, people started pouring in and my nervousness quotient had a momentary spike once again. I recollected my ideas and as they waited for the last guy to arrive, I was calmly waiting for the word "GO". At around 8:35, I heard those words and I dont remember what happened in the next hour and a half.

I distinctly remember the clapping and unless that is customary, it signals it was good. Next week, I will work on some post-review items and will bid adieu on Friday. It was a memorable experience with its own set of anxieties, excitements, frustrations and achievements. In retrospect, I know I loved it and would love to live it again!

My Final Term Review

2007-07-19T22:39:00.000+08:00

In 10 hours, I will be in a conference room presenting "my stuff"- something I was so passionately working for 3 months! Hope everything goes on fine..Wish me luck...Will check the comments section before going in at 8:15 AM (GMT +8)..Let's see how many wishes I get ;-)

Procter & Gamble / Unilever

2007-07-01T22:37:00.000+08:00

This is what my wife bought from India in the name of cosmetics...

Take a closer look...There are two factions..The left faction belongs to Unilever India (Erstwhile Hindustan Lever Limited - HLL) and the right faction belongs to us (P&G).. Well, she apparently forgot that I work with P&G :-)

Even though P&G is a much older and larger entity than Unilever (P&G-1837, Unilever-1884), when it comes to India - HLL is bigger and the photo shows it. Not long ! Enjoy the stay while we are catching up. Well, Let's look at their history and give P&G some credit for making life uncomfortable for Unilever India which was having a ball of a time there.

P&G India:

In October 1985, Richardson Hindustan Limited (RHL) became an affiliate of P&G and thus P&G India was formed. RHL is home to the mammoth brand Vicks (& Clearasil). 1989 saw the launch of Whisper followed by Ariel in 1991. By 1993, P&G increased its stake in P&G India to 100%. In the same year, the detergent business was divested to P&G Home Products Limited thereby leaving P&G Hygiene and Healthcare Limited (officially being called so from 1999). In the same year, Mediker was also divested to Marico Industries.P&G Home Products Limited started its jouney with Ariel in 1993. Subsequently, it entered the Hair Care Category by the launch of Pantene Pro-V in 1995. Head & Shoulders was launced in 1997. Tide came along in 2000. 2003 saw the launch of Pampers and Rejoice was launched in 2004.

Unilever India:

So, as we see, P&G India is a relatively new story if you compare it with Unilever India (having a long standing history since 1888). Lifebuoy came in 1895, for example :-) Even though Unilever was in India for long, it started operations only in 1931 when it set up its first Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Vanaspati Manufacturing Company, followed by Lever Brothers India Limited (1933) and United Traders Limited (1935). These three companies merged to form HLL in November 1956.If you see Unilever India's website, they boast of 35 Power Brands. Indeed, they are household names like Ponds, Lakme, Red Label, Surf Excel etc. Its interesting to see how they grew so large. Brooke Bond was present in India since 1900. Lipton since 1898, Ponds since 1947. Unilever acquired Brooke Bond in 1984, Lipton in 1972 and Ponds in 1986. TOMCO (with Brands like Magic, OK) merged with HLL in 1993. Lakme (which was set up in 1952 by Tata Group on the request of then Prime Minister Pt Jawaharlal Nehru) and HLL formed a 50:50 joint venture in 1995 and finally in 1998, Lakme sold its brands to HLL. In 1994, HLL formed a 50:50 joint venture with Kimberly Clark and started marketing Huggies and Kotex in India. Kissan was also bought from UB Group in 1993.

I also had a look at Unilever and P&G's financials for last 5 years at Reuters and I found some interesting observations:

1) P&G sales were at $ 40 billion as against Unilever's sales of $ 48.3 biliion in 2002
2) In 2006, P&G sales were at $ 68 billion as compared to $ 39.6 billion of Unilever.
3) Operating Income: Unilever moved from $ 5 billion to $ 5.4 billion, P&G moved from 6.6 to 13.2 (DOUBLED)
4) Normalized net profit to common shares (excluding exceptional items): Unilever moved from $ 1.9 billion to $ 2.9 billion; P&G moved from $ 5 billion to $ 8.7 billion

Last five years have been pretty bad for Unilever but I noticed something which sparks a light - Selling, General & Admin Expenses for Unilever has declined steadily from $ 18 billion to $ 13.9 billion from 2002-06 while for P&G, it has soared from $ 10.4 billion to $ 21.8 billion! I am not making any predictions here but sure enough, something is going on there. But being here at P&G, I can assure you that whatever is going out there, it will be fine as a lot is going on here as well :-)

My Final review is scheduled in 2 weeks and whether I become a full time pgite depends on how I fare! Pray for me!

RFID

2007-06-26T22:20:00.000+08:00

What is RFID? Let's ask the one who knows the most - Wikipedia!

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves. increases the speed and accuracy with which inventory can be tracked and managed thereby saving money for the business.

Over the last 6 months or so, I have been reading feeds from RFID Weblog religiously and was thinking about letting my blog readers know about the amazing stuffs they are doing with RFID. Every day when I check my Google Reader, it amazes me with yet another innovative usage of RFID. Besides, my infrequent google searches also gave me some unique usages of RFID. Not to mention, my interaction with students and professor in the MBA module "Managing Process Technology" was also a good source to disseminate and gather information. Here are some of the things which particularly caught my attention.

UK-based Edexcel examination board is implementing RFID for arresting incidents of cheating during exams and for this purpose RFID tags would be attached to GCSE and A-level exam papers. It would now become extremely difficult to tamper with the examination papers packets since the RFID tags attached will be able to detect whether some kind of tampering has been done with the packets or not. (Source)
A team of professor and students at UMASS Amherst have been working for developing an RFID system aimed at helping visually challenged people (Source)
RFID smart Refrigerator has got some brains and it is aware about what it holds and whether it's worth consuming or not and even informs about the depleting inventory (Source)
Media Cart Holdings has come up with a RFID shopping cart which informs users about the products as they go past them in the store (Source)

Apart from these, RFID Weblog published its Best of 2006 list. Here are the links..Worth a read!

Top 10 RFID Trends of 2006, Part 3

Top 10 RFID Trends of 2006, Part 2

Top 10 RFID Trends of 2006, Part 1

There are some more interesting usage of RFID in place:

In passport (Malaysia already has it) to record the travel history (time, date, and place) of entries and exits from the country

Singapore uses RFID in EZ Link Cards and Cash Cards, Even the Road Tax called ERP is orchestrated by RFID active tagging.

Animal Identification has been in use for quite some time now.

I was reading the Freakonomics Blog this evening and there is a Q&A with surgeon Atul Gawande posted here. The surgeon remarks, "to me the most depressing are the failures to consistently use discoveries we’ve already made — and leading my list are our failures to wash our hands consistently and prevent the rampant spread of hospital infections (which kill an estimated 90,000 Americans each year)".

Well, here is the solution:

CleanTech IC line of automated hand-washing systems are being unveiled by Resurgent Health and Medical which uses RFID tags and interrogators to keep a track on people washing their hands and the duration for which they wash them (Source)

The Machine That Owns The World

2007-06-24T12:27:00.000+08:00

On 25th April, I blogged about me quitting the field of finance once and for all (See here). In a dramatic turn of events yesterday, I ended up in one more Finance Elective. Reminds me of my conversation with one of the Executive MBA students couple of months back. On listening to my interest in working only for Consulting or companies serious at SCM (and in particular, listening to my hatred towards working for banks), he made a strong statement that Banks own the world. You never know which bank will buy out the company you are working for. It like the Big Brother of 1984. It's everywhere! It's always watching you... The extent of pervasiveness is hard to imagine. Take a look at your favorite company's balance sheet ( I presume its not Microsoft) and you would find out that they are literally owned by Banks.

Look around! What's happening....Cerberus Capital Management acquired Chrysler for $7.4 Billion. They are interested in buying Land Rover and Jaguar arms of Ford as well. Last year, around December, they got interested in the Semiconductor Industry and before anyone could notice, highly leveraged Buyouts ate Philips Semiconductor, Chip unit of Agilent Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor in $ 10b, $ 2.7 B and $17.6 B, respectively (Source).

Coming back to yesterday! I registered for this module called "Competitive Strategy for SME and Startup". Sounded fancy and this was one of the two classes being offered on Saturdays. The other was "Fund Management" and I had no intention of getting back to the world of finance (Read Again!). So, there I was! In the SME & Startup thingie! By nature, I am built for working in big organization and the irregularities and the chaos of a startup suffocates me. I took this class as I did not had any other option but first 15-20 minutes of class reinforced my belief that I am not made for this module. The entire module revolved around a Business Plan and I have no idea how to make one and neither do I have any intent in the near future. Besides, Summer term ends in a flash (6 Weeks) and making a business plan out of the thin air is not my cup of tea. So, I just leaked out of the class! Too rude but then I was wasting my time there considering the fact that I had no intention of continuing with that module.

After I came out of the lecture theatre, prudence got into me! I had to take one class in order to enable me to finish my MBA in December. ......You guessed it! Fund Management! In next 10 minutes, I found myself listening to the Fund Management Professor. I hate to admit that I loved the subject and to add to it, Professor was amazing. Apparently, he flies from San Francisco, where he operates his hedge fund, for this class every weekend and that gave me even more reasons to concentrate.

Even though I have no intention of working for a Bank post my MBA, I should be ready considering the debatable fact that they own the world! Its good to know some jargons after all....

Competing for the Future

2007-06-20T23:37:00.000+08:00

These days, I am reading the book "Competing for the Future" by Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad. The authors present a compelling case for breaking out of the day-to-day business and building competencies which would help companies survive in the long run (Forget Keynes for the moment :-) For the starters, Keynes said, "Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for in the long run, we are all dead). I am yet to finish the book and when I do, I will surely take some time out to share what I learnt. I am writing this blog because I found an amazing similarity in what authors were emphasizing and what Google is doing.

We all know that Google is great and has the coolest web applications. But does Google (or, for that matter, any other company in this world) has a stomach to come up with SO MANY innovative applications. Hamel & Prahlad say that very few company can create the future single handedly; most need a helping hand. For example, Motorola, IBM and Apple joined hands to create a semiconductor-based computer architecture. AT&T took equity stakes in a number of computer game makers to capitalize on the convergence between the videogame industry and the telecommunications industry. They also talk about creating a portfolio of competencies by forming alliances to compete in the future because competition in the future will not be inter-firm but inter-alliances.

When we think of Google, what come to our mind? Search Engine, Blogger, Groups, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Maps, internet advertising, web-based spreadsheet, doc etc.

Here are some of the shopping basket snapshot for Google at different point in time. It will give you an idea how they are creating a portfolio of competencies:

September 20, 2001: Acquired Deja's Usenet Archive - Now, this is called Google Groups

February 2003: Acquired Pyra Labs - Now, this is called Blogger

September 30, 2003: Acquited kaltix for their search engine technology

July 13, 2004: Acquired Picasa

October 27, 2004: Acquired KeyHole - Now, this is called Google Earth

4Q, 2004: Acquired Where2 - Now, this is Google Maps

2005: Acquired 2Web Technologies - Now, this is Google Spreadsheet

March 28, 2005: Acquired Urchin- Now, this is Google Analytics

March 9, 2006: Acquired Upstartle - Now, this is Google Doc

March 14, 2006: Acquired @Last Software - Now, this is called Google SketchUp

This month: Acquired Zenter - This will be the Google's Presentation Software

These were some of the highlights. Full list can be seen at WikiPedia (the above list has also been sourced from Wikipedia)

While I was reading the book, I wasn't getting a clear idea as to what the authors meant by portfolio of competencies but Google's example is like a textbook example of how to make one. Just Amazing!

Ethics, Morality and Truthfulness

2007-06-10T02:02:00.000+08:00

Its sad to know the recent Fuqua incident where the Fuqua Judicial Board ruled in late April that nine students should be expelled and 15 students receive a one-year suspension and a failing grade in the course. Nine others will receive a failing grade in the course and one student will receive a failing grade on an exam. (Source)

In my 14 years of at school, 4 years at college, 4 years at workplace and 1 year at Grad School, I have come to realize that such punishments are more of an exemplary nature than truly reflective of the deeds. While these exemplary punishments work as good disincentives for the coming generations as these stories are passed on as folklore, we must also be thoughtful towards the people who are paying price for that. I am not advocating immoral behavior and I absolutely detest people with any such intentions but wiping off their career in one stroke is not justified. I do not have an ingredient to suggest to the Fuqua Judicial Board but sure enough, they are knowledgeable enough to devise a way.

What is more discomforting to me is this report. If this is to be believed, people pleaded guilty simply because they didnt know what does pleading guilty means....They thought they are asked to apologize for whatever happened and they did, like every good citizen does....While it is hard to believe such an argument, it can not be ruled out. Under this scenario, do you think such bright people who had the calibre to make it to Fuqua should be used as an examples to set standards for the integrity of Fuqua? I, for one, believe this issue is blown out of proportion and has reached a stage where the authorities do not want to go back and restate their decision (just for the heck of consistency, I must add). And from my limited experience (as an observer) in such cases, I must also add that even though it is sad, reality is that the sentences will not be restated. I have seen it happen time and again. Though that is "the correct" thing to do for the university, it more comes to balancing "maintaing the honor code" vs "destroying people's career". I can not judge which one has more importance but go and ask people who are in that list and who did not do anything immoral. In every such incidence, there are few people who are just pulled in for no reasons. I am sure there will be some in this case as well. My best wishes to them to come out of this unharmed. For people who were really involved, all I can say is "You asked for it".

Eat the Rich

2007-06-03T01:13:00.000+08:00

It can't get funnier and more intellectual at the same time. This easily gets the title of the best book I've read this year (Yes......I am including the 7 Text books I read this semester and the 8th I am reading now). Besides, the author (P. J. O'Rourke), being a journalist, has an amazing ability to observe things. On his quest to find out why some places were rich and other places were poor, he decided to visit different economic systems: free markets, socialist and systems nobody could figure out. He visited economically successful societies: U.S., Sweden, Hong Kong; Economically unsuccessful societies: Albania, Cuba, Tanzania; and societies that hadn't decided whether to be successful or not: Russia and mainland China. The book was written almost 8 years back, hence not in sync with current economic scenario, yet the approach and observations are timeless.

The Book was first brought to my attention by none other than legendary Prof Mankiw. Well, as you'd have already guessed by now, he didn't tell me personally about it :-P. I picked it from his Summer Reading List (posted on his blog). I am done with 2 (Freakonomics being the second) and still gathering enough time and courage to pick the rest of the books on the list.

Coming back to the book I was talking about (Eat the Rich), what was most impressive was author's sense of humor while teaching some serious economics and trying to explain why things are as good or as bad as they are. Mid way his expedition, the author decides to go back to books on economic theory and even econ textbooks (Samuelson had his day!). What follows is a real treat for the readers of the book. The way he described what he was learning (not learning?) from the book and then paraphrasing the theories in his own style was just awesome. The high point of the book was the "Ten less basic principles of economics".

I usually read the book on the bus while going to office and I bet that a lot of people would have declared me insane if they noticed my not so infrequent giggling and smiling. With that much insanity at stake, this book is worth a read. For people at NUS, there is a copy at HSSML which is with me right now. You may want to reserve it before the person who read this blog post before you did :-).

Indian GDP Surges by 9.4%

2007-06-01T14:35:00.000+08:00

Thursday was a holiday here at Singapore (Vesak Day) and that was the opportunity for us mortals toggling between internship and classes to study for the upcoming mid semester examination for Macroeconomics. Most of the day, I was playing with terms like Production, Output, Income, interest rate, central bank, GDP, Consumption, investment, Savings, IS-LM Curve. When I woke up in the morning after getting barely 4 hours of sleep, I was full of the same things and I was wondering if this is how economists feel when they wake up everyday! Does Alan Greenspan suffer from this? Ben Bernanke?

I pulled myself out of macroeconomics and indulged in the morning chores. Somehow, I made myself board the bus in the next one hour or so. As I boarded the bus and grabbed a seat, I saw this person sitting right opposite my seat reading The Straits Times, a local newspaper. The page facing me had a column “India’s GDP grows at 9.4%, highest in 18 years”. I was super excited although I did not contribute much in the last fiscal. On second thought, it occurred to me that I, in fact, contributed a lot (in my capacity). I got married on 3rd July and the entire consumption (you know how elaborate Indian marriages are, right?) was substantial even though humble considering the trillion dollar Indian GDP (at current prices). The dress, the decoration, the food, the gifts and the-everything-attached-to-anything. I did not want to attach a number to my contribution and so, I quickly disposed of this number game. I came to the office and looked for the detailed news on Economic Times. As I started reading the article, it started to make so much sense suddenly. May be it was the macroeconomics fundamentals I built all of yesterday. Whatever it was, I certainly understood more than I could have, had I read the same article 2 days before.

You can read the article here: GO TO THE ARTICLE

Once you finish reading the article, you can see that there are terms which are used in abundance in such commentaries. I thought I would highlight the portions that makes more sense now…Here is the snapshot…(I have deleted the “English” and the one which are new enlightened words and phrases are in bold) (adapted from the same article obviously)

The Indian economy grew a whopping 9.4% in 2006-07, faster than the advance estimate of 9.2%, pushing the absolute size of the economy to Rs 40 lakh crore or $1 trillion, at current market prices. And savings and investment touched record levels, at 32.4% and 33.8% of GDP respectively.……………………………………….The minister emphasised the criticality of growth, saying “high growth generates its own momentum. With high growth comes high investment, which, in turn, reinforces growth itself.” Mr Chidambaram drew attention to the linkage between high growth and high prices, saying that “high growth leads to high demand which puts pressure on prices until supplies catch up.” ……………………..“Consumption and investments, both have driven growth………………………….. “The growth is mainly powered by the non-agricultural sectors such as manufacturing and services, especially telecom, trade and construction.” This also shows that monetary tightening measures taken by the RBI is yet to impact growth, he added…………………….Releasing the audited figures for fiscal and revenue deficit, the minister said while fiscal deficit was 3.5% of GDP, revenue deficit, as reported by the controller general of accounts, stood at 2%, better than the budget estimates of 2.1%.................Referring to the excessive foreign fund inflow on account of borrowings by Indian companies in the last fiscal, the minister said, “It reflects the ability of Indian industry to attract capital at very competitive rates. However, the other side is that it increases money supply and puts pressure on managing the supply. This involves a tight balancing act between the RBI and government. We’ve been fairly successful in balancing the need for capital and to maintain price stability. We need to continue to do the balancing act, we cannot turn away capital.”

I know there are people who already make sense of these things. Even I used to understand but once you read a textbook, you begin to appreciate things more, then some more! I quite like this new intellectual in me and I hope it continues to develop…All I can say now is that I am loving it!

Virtual Barbershop

2007-05-29T22:03:00.000+08:00

Must experience this......

....and keep your earphone handy.....don't hear this without the headphone...if you don't have it, loan it from a friend :-)

http://david-heron.me.uk/blog/2007/04/08/virtual-barbershop

...a weekend to remember

2007-05-20T19:06:00.000+08:00

I woke up this evening and the first thing which came to my mind was my backache. I felt as if I had a beautiful dream and I was kinda surprised that the pain carried through in the real life. What kind of dream gives you a backache and still is beautiful?....As I sat on my bed tryng to recall what exactly was the dream all about, I started recollecting it....

.......In the dream.....

...NUS Business School club representatives and council members have taken a day off from their busy schedules and arranged to meet at National Community Leadership Institute (NACLI). It is an overnight stay where several brainstorming sessions are planned for and the next morning is reserved for the teambuilding exercise under the guidance of a trainer. We all met at NACLI at around 6:30 PM on Saturday and checked into our rooms where we exchanged quick words with other people and then came to the meeting room. The brainstorming session, which touched up on various topics related to NUS Business School, started around 7:30 PM and we covered quite some ground before we split for dinner at around 9 PM.

We again came back and this time it was even better. Ideas were coming from all corners of the room and we were really getting somewhere. Time flew by....minutes of meeting were running through pages and before anyone could realize, it was 1 AM! We breathed with satisfaction and I could see so many "fountainheads" in the room. Considering that people had to wake up early in the morning, everyone decided to split for fetching some sleep. We (7 of us), however, continued the intellectual discussion back in our rooms and finally made a call to sleep at 3:30 AM!

People were in the Dining Hall for breakfast at around 9 AM and our day was started! Everyone was looking forward to what trainer had in her mind. We finally started our session at 10 AM and the first game to be played was a kind of race where there are two wooden plank on which we put our legs and hold the ropes attached with the planks. 12 of us were lined up on the plank in line and we had to walk together (remember an inverted centipede..with so many legs pointing up...each of us grabbing two legs and putting our feet on the body)..We had some real fun and we took 24 minutes to go back and forth in a basketball court! Later, when the trainer was debriefing us with what we did right and wrong, she told us about the NACLI record of some 2 minutes 28 seconds. The team got energized and decided to do it one more time. With some discussions, we went for it and completed it in 4 minutes 2o seconds. That is 81.94% drop in timing...amazing, isn't it? In the interest of time, we didn't make further attempts and moved on to the next game....

Then, we played "take-a-shot" where we had to shoot maximum number of basketball in the ring in 3 minutes (team of 5...2 shooters and 3 retrievers)...We had a nice perspiring time and at the end of it, people were sweating like pigs (do pigs sweat?..If not, replace pig with someone who does)...everyone had loads of fun...especially when the balls collided in the air or 2 retrievers throwing the ball to the same shooter at the same time :-)

Then, came the last one which was THE most complex thing and required hell lot of teamwork...They had a maze of small 9"X9" plates scattered in the ground and we, as a team, had to reach the number 30..starting at 1, going in order ....As you move to the next plate, the next person has to keep his/her foot on the plate. Basically, at no point, the plates should be empty and there were couple dozen more rules to make it as complex as possible. The contact should always be there with the previous and the next person. At one point, the entire chain was curled and people were moving in 3 D, giving way on the top of each other...It was a SALSA, in slow motion with 12 dancers making all kind of tricks. Whenever someone did a mistake, the game had to be repeated! Since the lunch was after this session, people had extra incentive to do this one right. After couple of resets, we finally did it in 25 minutes (?). It sounds a lot but you have to be there to know what I am talking about. She told that the last time someone finished this was in 40 minutes. So, you see, we had a record there :-)

All this while, I was holding on to the beautiful water bottle we were given at the beginning of the whole exercise. I picked up a black one and after every round of each game, I would run and look for my bottle for a gulp of water to revitalize me. We also had a bandana to wrap it up in our head and look like a real pro sportsman (cover from sun, actually)...

Then, we had a long debrief where we discussed various facets of teamwork and leadership and how we exhibited it in these games, It was a good link and I saw that the trainer knew what exactly she is asking us to do..It was not just for fun... It was a well designed game, if you will...

We then went for lunch and had a nice and warm conversation (with some legpulling going around :-) )....Then, we repacked our stuff and came back home with fond memories of NACLI and the overnight camp....I crashed on the bed as soon as I came home...

...........Out of dream............

I feel so good even though my back is hurting...I feel thirsty and go to my kitchen to get some water and there I see a black water bottle with NACLI written on it......

GPA...Couldn't care less!

2007-05-19T14:16:00.001+08:00

Come 26th May and 3 digits separated by a decimal would be awarded to you. These 3 digits would tell you to the accuracy up to second decimal on how much you studied last semester. It is amazing the way this instrument works, isn't it? We always thought that hard work is too subjective but GPA measurement machine tells you precisely how much of it you did last semester! Or does it tell you your worth? Or the luck you had? Well, whatever it tells, it is something which DOES affect people. I often hear people saying, "I don't care!", "Couldn't care less" etc etc. But the same people are seen puzzled looking at the three digits and sure enough, spend some time pondering over what went wrong. Such people will not agree with me that they are in any way affected by GPA and I totally understand their viewpoint. I understand them because I "was like that" during my undergrad years.

Honestly, in my undergrad years, I don't even remember when were the results declared and who got what grade in the class and what did I get, for that matter. All I remember were the 3 digits and I had no time in the world to put things in perspective. Things started surfacing when the companies started coming for placement and more so, 3 years later when I started applying to global B Schools for my MBA. I wasn't very happy for what I had on my transcript. Or may be, they were not happy with the first digit on the left and that made me unhappy.

Life was so different at IIT that I forgot the main reason I was there for and the pains I had taken to get in that place. Don't get an idea that I was a useless bum but now when I put things in perspective, all I feel is that I could have done far better and doing far better would have opened new doors for me which never opened up. Though it is believed that GPA in MBA schools really doesn't matter but that was precisely the same idea I had when I was roaming around in IITs. So, you never know when it hits you and I have come to understand that whether you know it or not, these three digits called GPA DOES affect you. It's always safe to have a good one under your belt. After all, take it from me, it will never harm you :-)

Why did Google buy Youtube?

2007-05-03T00:14:00.000+08:00

I know it's kind of old topic but there were so many reasons floating around the internet for the real reason Google spent $ 1.65 billion for the silly buyout. Some of the most prominent ones being : massive ad inventory, video is the next thing, power of community, user profiling, to negotiate with myspace, and all sort of things.

There was one more reason though which was known and discussed on the internet:

Viacom was planning to sue Youtube for copyright violation and Google knew that the result of the this lawsuit would determine the copyright laws in general which would affect Google as well. Google business model revolves around the “fair use” of third parties content. YouTube also bases part of its business model on the “fair use” of copyrighted material. Should YouTube lose its upcoming court cases its probable that Google would find itself on a weaker position in front of legal actions. Google, therefore, acquired YouTube to make sure that indirect legal decisions will not affect its own business. This was done to bring matters to its own hand rather than being a spectator to the entire proceedings.

Viacom, the parent company of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, filed the suit in March, alleging "massive copyright infringement" by online video-sharing site YouTube.

Yesterday, Forbes reports this:

Google Case Spells Windfall For Lawyers: Rainmakers at two prominent law firms brought in a hurricane on Monday, when their firms were hired to defend Google against a high-profile lawsuit from Viacom.........READ FULL STORY

So, the stage is set and it is no more a suspense why Google bought YouTube. As per Forbes article cited above, the case will almost certainly settle. But there is a slim chance that the companies may actually face off in court. And if that happens, the result will determine copyright law for years to come. Beyond the millions in advertising dollars at stake, the outcome of Viacom vs. Google could change the future of online video.

HP-Dell: Whither from here?

2007-05-01T19:32:00.000+08:00

Last week, I read a Mckinsey Quarterly article "Unbundling the Corporation". It talks about the competing commitments which three kinds of businesses : a customer relationship business, a product innovation business, and an infrastructure business generates. The role of a customer relationship business, for example, is to find customers and build relationships with them. The role of a product innovation business is to conceive of attractive new products and services and to figure out how best to bring them to market. The role of an infrastructure business is different again: to build and manage facilities for high-volume, repetitive operational tasks such as logistics and storage, manufacturing, and communications.

When the three businesses are bundled into a single corporation, their divergent economic and cultural imperatives inevitably conflict. Scope, speed, and scale can’t be optimized simultaneously; trade-offs must be made. Sooner or later, companies come up against a cold fact: the economics governing the three core processes conflict. Bundling them into a single corporation inevitably forces management to compromise the performance of each process in ways that no amount of reengineering can overcome.

This week, I read two things:

1) The email from Michael Dell and Executive Leadership Team to the Dell Employees: One part of the email especially caught my eyes: "Throughout our history, we have worked as a team - as One Dell - and we have made quality PCs affordable. Now Dell plans to make information technology affordable for millions of customers around the world. We will do this by simplifying IT where others perpetuate complexity and innovating beyond harware into solutions."

2) An FT Article, "Hewlett-Packard comes back fighting": "HP hopes to build on its position as a leading provider of the systems management software that helps optimize the performance of big corporate IT systems. Long an obscure technology confined to data centers, the need to manage and secure the flow of digital information all the way to an individual user's PC or BlackBerry is set to become a software market as important as the business applications market dominated by SAP and Oracle", Mr Hurd argues.

From what I understand from these two statements coming from none other than men on the top of Dell and HP, they are looking beyond hardware. What is puzzling though is which way are they headed. It is clear that such software businesses have huge economy of scope & scale and consolidation would leave only bigger fish intact. But if Mr Hurd is to be believed with his prediction, are HP and Dell preparing themselves for the new SAP-Oracle fight? Well, in that case, who will supply our computers? If they plan to do both this and that, what would happen to the unbundling efforts and need so well explained by the Mckinsey Quarterly article?

Blogger in Hindi ब्लॉगर अब हिंदी में

2007-04-27T12:14:00.000+08:00

I just noticed that I can blog in Hindi as well. This is just amazing. The first typewriter I laid my hands on was a Hindi Typewriter. I can still feel the force it required. On second thought, I would say that high force was intentional (may be a child lock :-)).

So, here I am - back to my mother tongue. When I was in school, I used to write quite many letters for my dad. People came to him for advice on their problems and my dad used to take care of their problems with the power of the pen. He used to escalate the matters to the relevant authorites. As it turned out, the letter was written by me, for at least half of the time. That was an amazing learning ground for me. Believe it or not, that was THE stepping stone of the writer in me. Over the years, the language and the topic changed but the writer in me prevailed. The letters I used to write for my dad used to be the on the societal agendas. That is why I am,till date, interested in these issues, I presume. I can not claim to remember each one of them but as far as my memory goes, they varied from "appealing to open a school in a village" to "probing into claims of the insurance" to "appealing to make road in a village" to what not! Since the letters were usually addressed to the top officials of the district administration, they were invariably written very formally. I remember complaining to my mom about the work we are loaded with and always wished my dad had a secretary but it was worth it after all! I smile at it now!

Let me finish by typing something in Hindi..This is one of the best campaigns I have seen. Am reproducing here:

पाठ ४

राम खीर खा।
सीता काम कर।

भुवन पाठशाला जा।
शिक्षक से पढ़।

गीता पानी ला।
पीताजी को खाना दे।

मदन, बगीचे में खेल।
मीना, माँ की मदद कर।

बर्षों से चली आ रही शिक्षा के इस पाठयक्रम को ध्यान से देखिए,

शायद कुछ बदलाव की जरूरत है।

नारी सम्मान को ठेश पहुचने वाली शिक्षा के विरोध में राजस्थान पत्रिका द्वारा जनहित में जारी।

Kiss of death

2007-04-25T10:56:00.001+08:00

Next Monday, I will blow the kiss of death onto the world of finance! Though I was never a finance guy, I had this curiosity to take a close look at it and then bid adieu. I (successfully) completed the Financial Management module last semester and went ahead taking Investment Analysis this semester (daring me!). What happened during the semester doesn't count as I was too busy to evaluate anything I was doing. Now, as I am settling down after the breakneck speed, I can see things more clearly. I had a look at next term's list of modules and had hard time finding 5 non-finance electives. Not that the curriculum doesn't have choice. It's just that I have lost interest in anything which has nothing to do with what I want to do in my life. People say, "Staying focused is good". I have to agree but being focused on something too narrow blinds you to the other facets. I am so full of my dreams of making it big in Supply Chain that I don't even read magazines which are un-related. Now, that's what I call obsession. And it's bad for a person who hasn't seen the world yet. Being obsessed is not bad, per se, but it should come after carefully evaluating your options. May be that's what I was doing when I opted to take the module "Investment Analysis" this semester. Well, in that case, I would say that I did evaluate it and I came to a decision. Next Monday, I will blow the kiss of death onto the world of finance!

Great Forecasts of the Past

2007-04-24T14:48:00.001+08:00

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
Everything that can be invented has been invented
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"I think there's a world market for about five computers."
- IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, president, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981

*Courtesy: Prof Stephen Lawrence

2 more to go

2007-04-24T02:00:00.001+08:00

Come Monday and I will be 11/17 MBA. But there are 2 more exams to go before I can get started with my internship. Last time I worked was 9^th June! (This statement is true to the best of my knowledge…I am sure some people are laughing as they read this…Well, to you guys, I did work on 9^th June). After taking a nice one year break, I am back to work, only this time as an intern. I am eagerly looking forward to it. After 2-3 years of brainwashing from Design to Supply Chain, Finally, World's second best Supply Chain Company as per AMR research gave me a chance to work with them. 7^th may is not far off anyway! That's when I begin workJ. I was also kind of remembering one of my posts on the NUS MBA BUZZ which I wrote last year. READ HERE

20 years from now...

2007-04-19T11:09:00.000+08:00

I would begin with a big assumption that in 20 years, the concept of cash does not exist and we use only plastic money. I guess we are not oblivious of the fact that plastic money is not anonymous. Every purchase we make can be traced.

Here is one weird thought which came to my mind last night at 4 (after studying economics for 8 hours, this is what happens to you !!! )

Suppose Banks collude with the consumer products companies to share our purchase data (say, for a modest fee). I go to Carrefour and buy a Crest Toothpaste (1oo grams). Now, P&G gets this information on their supercomputer (Mind you, they are getting millions of such information on
their supercomputer) and they collate this with other data such as:

- I have a family of 2 and as per my apartment check-in data, I do not have any guest at my house at this point in time. That makes the number of end-consumers as 2.
- Based on historical data, my family takes 34 days to consume this toothpaste tube.
- I never buy toothpaste in bulk and usually buy it when I need it. That way, consumption cycle would begin on day zero.
- They may also trace the RFID tag on the toothpaste tube which I am using NOW. The moment they see it in garbage can, they start the counter!
- Last toothpaste I bought was 33 days back!

When 25 days are over, I would start getting targeted ads on my emails and SMS to buy a new Crest Toothpaste. Worst case, if I go to Carrefour after 30 days or so from the initial purchase and buy Colgate this time, P&G gets after me! They would start sending gift coupons and special discounts etc so that they can get this ONE lost consumer back from the competitors.

Believe it or not, it is not so far-fetched. At this point, it may seem like a costly option but as technology becomes affordable, it may be possible after all to do such things on the aggregate. Taking a case of toothpaste may seem silly but consider the same with a car! There is so much
which can be done.

Anyway, that was my sweet little fantasy! Please leave comments if you happen to have a similar one on some other product or service. It would be fun to collate them and publish a book of sorts :-)

Will Thomas LaSorda save Chrysler?

2007-04-19T10:34:00.000+08:00

That the captain should be the last man to leave a sinking ship is probably the strongest and most honorable tradition of the sea.

Thomas LaSorda, Captain of the sinking Ship called Chrysler, which has been abandoned by its Parents DaimlerChrysler AG is doing all he can to save Chrysler despite the parents being in active discussion with potential buyers, including Canadian parts-maker Magna International and private equity funds Cerberus Capital Management, Blackstone Partners and Centerbridge Partners, all of which can be expected to make substantial changes if they take the wheel. Not to mention, Kirk Kerkorian has already offered $ 4.5 billion for the sinking ship.

As per Forbes Article, his vision is to transform the regional manufacturer of trucks, SUVs and minivans into a larger global player through a series of partnerships with companies like China’s Chery Automobile Co. The new business model, he says, will reduce vehicle development costs and allow Chrysler to expand internationally. Forbes further reports that LaSorda has already announced plans to cut $1.5 billion in material costs, reduce production capacity by 400,000 units and eliminate 13,000 hourly and salaried jobs at Chrysler, which lost $1.5 billion in 2006. His goal is to return to profitability by next year and achieve a modest 2.5% return on sales by 2009.

This bring back Lee Iacocca's memories! On September 7, 1979, Chrysler Corporation petitioned the United States government for US$1.5 billion in loan guarantees to avoid bankruptcy. At the same time, Lee Iacocca, a former Ford executive, was brought in to take the position of CEO. His style was more suited to handle the then pressure of Japanese competition and instilling pride in American Products.

What LaSorda is trying to do is to suit the problem which faces Chrysler now. The problem is with the gasoline guzzling products! To this effect, LaSorda’s strategy is twofold: reduce Chrysler’s dependence on gas-guzzling trucks by adding more fuel-efficient cars to its lineup, and use strategic partnerships to expand its presence beyond North America, where 90% of its vehicles are currently sold.

Jeffrey Schuster, head of global forecasting for J.D. Power and Associates, said LaSorda's skills at cutting material and manufacturing costs will be invaluable. "He's the right guy to take the Chrysler Group to the next generation," Schuster said. "He's a manufacturing man at the helm who understands the big issues." (Source)

I also believe that Chrysler's problems can be solved by an engineer and not a manager! And we have one, right at the top!

Whatever is in store for the fate of Chrysler, LaSorda is definitely not worried! As per Forbes, LaSorda says he can’t worry about whether his strategy, endorsed by DaimlerChrysler’s management board, will pass muster with one potential owner or another. So even as DaimlerChrysler moves to sell the company out from under him, LaSorda is pushing ahead with his transformation strategy.

Let's wait and see how this entire episode unfolds! Watch this space!

Who wants to be a millionaire?

2007-04-14T14:51:00.000+08:00

Graduate Business Conference

2007-04-14T12:41:00.000+08:00

Though I was not involved in GBC since 4 days back, yet last 4 days turned out to be a rehash of my days at IIT. For those who know me since then, they will not know what I am talking about. I was interested in any kind of event which would take me away from books. Out of 4 years of learning, 3 were out-of-class learning. Anyway, NUS was a different place for a different me. I used to see people working really hard for GBC preparation and I have immense respect for them. Somehow, I just couldn't convince myself to do all of that again. I had enough of it at IIT and I was really not in a mood to do injustice with academics (My big assumption: a person possessing a poor time management skills as I do will have difficulty balancing both extra-curricular activities and academics).

Coming back to GBC, I was involved in the development and execution of a strategy game for all the delegates of GBC. These delegates were the student leaders from the top business schools in the world and the game had to be intellectually stimulating and at the same time, fun to play! Sumit and I worked for last 3 days with the help of enthusiastic volunteers and I must confess that the game turned out to be amazing! But the kind of hard work which went behind the scene was unimaginable. All this while, I was thinking about my days at IIT when we used to spend countless weeks planning for some events. It was the same feeling yet again. Sleep at 4 and happily wakeup at 7 to run for some event. I just came back from the event after concluding the last round of the game and couldn't believe that I have to do so much in 2 days in order to survive my second semester here at NUS. Things have gone out of control in last 4 days. Well, even though I am swamped with work right now, I have no regrets that I was there doing something I always loved doing. As the Student Leadership Award Winner from CMU Tepper (forgot his name) rightly said yesterday night, " You strive to make the world a better place from what it was when you saw it". So, anything for making the "world" a better place. In this case, the world was quite small though.

I was also drawing a correlation between a strong alumni bond and these events while you are at school. Honestly speaking, I don't remember any lectures I was taught at IIT! All I remember is my friends and the small little things we did while at that place! And that makes IIT wonderful and that's what forces me to do something for my alma mater, whenever I can. I believe as NUS Business school will grow from strength to strength, involvement in such events will play a major role in our alumni network development, something which our school badly needs and luckily, recognizes the need for it and best of it, doing lot of things to develop on that front.

It's that time of the year again

2007-04-07T10:34:00.000+08:00

I know I have lots to do and by writing this post, I am inviting troubles for me. But I just can't believe that I have become so busy that I am not getting time to write here. Last couple of weeks were just amazing. Next couple of weeks are going to be even more amazing. Well, isn't it that time of the year again? I am getting so used to this April-November cycle that I would really miss it when I am out of college. I always have something to do...Even now, when I am blogging, I have at least 5 people in Singapore who are waiting for some deliveries from me. They will really be mad at me when they'd see this is how I am wasting time. But old habits die hard..Best of all, I don't want it to die...

We presented a book review on Wal-Mart in our corporate strategy class and this was the best team I have ever worked with. We had 30 minutes presentation to be completed in 15 minutes and people were speaking in a way I have never heard them speak. It gave new dimension to people. Nidhi Shah, for the first time, spoke only for 5 minutes. Srikanth was speaking at a speed of 5 words a second...Amar completed his part in 45 seconds flat and Tushar took a nice break from his contemplating style of speech. Can you imagine how I would have completed Wal-Mart's 45 years of history in 1:30 minutes? Sushant was also running like crazy with his industry analysis. Overall, we put up a good show. More than the end result, I liked the journey...

In the coming weeks, there is so much to do....Vamsi and Manu must be eagerly waiting for their leadership review from me....

Before I sign off, let me talk about the detour we took yesterday. I went out with my wife for dinner to Science Park Hub(Khalsaama)...On our way back, we saw a nice little road going inside the jungles. I had this itch to explore and I convinced Nidhi to give it a try. It was a park (Kent Ridge Park) and after 20 minutes of walking ( and stopping to read maps at every chance), to our astonishment, we reached Rangoli. Its amazing how this small place is laid out. It happens only in Singapore.....

3 more from the house of Google.....

2007-04-02T11:08:00.000+08:00

Google Paper:

Yet another innovation from Google. Now in Gmail, you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and they'll send it to you in the mail. Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. IT will take approx 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. You can make them print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.

Google Romance:

Google Inc. announced the launch of Google Romance™, a new product that offers users both a psychographic matchmaking service and all-expenses-paid dates for couples who agree to experience contextually relevant advertising throughout the course of their evening.

Google Copernicus Center:

Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen. By locating a research and technology center on the Moon, Google engineers will be able to experiment with an entirely different set of parameters. For example, imagine tapping unlimited solar energy to drive megawatt data centers and power innumerable arrays of massively parallel lava lamps, with ample no-cost cooling available to regulate the temperature of server farms sprawling over acres of land unblighted by sentient lifeforms or restrictive zoning ordinances.

James Womack PodCast

2007-03-29T21:05:00.000+08:00

I came across this podcast on the Lean Blog yesterday. Its been quite some time since it was recorded but anyway, the concepts are evergreen.

Listen To James Womack speaking on Lean in China.

Part 1

Part 2

Enjoy!! It last for almost 45 minutes but it's worth it!

What's happening at the World Cup - Last Part

2007-03-25T13:45:00.000+08:00

Gotta wait for 4 more years now .................................

Quiz Competition - The Winners

2007-03-24T16:06:00.000+08:00

Organized by Knowledge@NUS MBA, there was this general quiz competition yesterday! My day started by meeting with Professor for an hour or so and followed by a mammoth 5 hour session on Negotiation and Conflict Management Workshop organized by NUS MBA Consulting Club. By 4, I was already pretty much consumed but there was this one last thing for the day - the quiz competition. I guess there were 8 teams in total (Well, Rathin was there alone but was more than 6 mortals combined). There was an elimination round to make the competition manageable and we (Anshuman Kaushik, Yogesh and I) survived this round and made it to the actual competition. We managed to remain at 3rd from Top (2nd from bottom :-)) until round 3. Then comes round 4 (the last one) and one answer from Anshuman Kaushik changed everything forever. We took huge lead over others and the competition ended with "US" as winners.

It was amazing how we came victorious head-on with Stalwarts like Rathin and Kunal Mukherjee & Team. Shouvik, Priyanshu and Shreyansh were giving us a tough fight to retain the 3rd position, in the first three rounds, however !

All's well that end well ! Congratulation to my team and myself for winning the Inaugural General Quiz Competition organized by Knowledge@NUS MBA. Thanks to Prajit and Anupam Saha for being the men behind the event.

What's happening at the World Cup - Part 2

2007-03-20T16:31:00.000+08:00

2 days back, after the Bangladesh match, I expressed some discontent HERE. As I noted, the main reason for the frustration was that I was following a cricket match after so many years and what did I get...a shameful loss....
BUT......
What I saw yesterday compensated everything and much more....
Quoting Cricinfo...."India played virtually perfect cricket - the exact opposite of what they did against Bangladesh the other day - and blasted Bermuda out of the water at the Queen's Park Oval in Trinidad. A display of creative and powerful batting, where four of the big six fired India to 413, a record total in World Cups and the bowlers then did their job, bundling Bermuda out for 156, winning the game by 257 runs, the largest margin in terms of runs in all ODI cricket.......CLICK HERE FOR MORE......"
Not considering the opponent strength, we played superbly..I just hope that this victory builds enough tempo in the team to crush Lanka the same way :-)

Why NUS?

2007-03-18T23:38:00.000+08:00

I am surprised with the kind of questions I am getting from all corners regarding NUS Placements...Suddenly, placements have become so very important. I do not doubt the validity of question but I do not attest to the importance people put on it.

One of the perennial question - How is the placement scenario at NUS?

I say, "Wonderful!" Will you agree...you will ask hundreds of other people and will confuse yourself with nothing but garbage. Same goes with the question. "Was Gandhi great?"

Anyway, no more philosophy..I promise I will be as forthcoming and candid as possible.

Placement Cell of NUS: It is one of the thing NUS is focusing on these days. NUS is undergoing a massive transformation and like every great thing undergoing a dirty phase of transformation where people gets an impression that they are not adding any value, NUS placements are getting a mixed opinions from spectators.

People somehow think that unless companies come all the way to campus to hire you exclusively, you don't get the kick! For those people, I say, "NUS is not for you" Go somewhere else if you are looking for spoon feeding. Why do you think NUS has put a 2 year Work Ex requirement? We are not selecting babies for MBA. We are selecting grown ups who can go and toil in the field and make us proud. If your opinion differ from mine, I guessed so!

Companies have made attempts to come to the campus in the past and then the same students who were whining and bitching and moaning about "campus placements" suddenly doesn't find the job so exciting...They want to look out for more "sexy" offers! Well, that's what we are doing now. Besides, the batch size was a big deterrent and with the new batch coming in, sky is the limit. All that is required is belief in your potential!

Some Questions are also raised about the outgoing batch's placements? How does it matter? Making a wild assumption that it DOES matter, I am sure most of them were offered a role at some point or the other...Some settled...some looking for "sexier" offers...skewing the statistics...I maintain, how does it matter?

Extrapolating old statistics is just like trying to forecast tomorrow using yesterday's data. All I know is that for NUS in the next 5-10 year, next year is TOTALLY and RADICALLY different from last year and hence all attempts to extrapolate would fail miserably.

Let's Spend some time on Internships now...after all that is something which is of immediate concern...There are people who are not willing to do internship..there are people who are getting multiple offers, there are people who are not able to get anything yet but still looking....It ultimately boils down to YOU! Without taking names, I would like to add that there are some people who aren't focusing where they should! Everyone is admitted to NUS for some strength and if you would try to rediscover yourself in a different field, companies may not necessarily be willing to be a part of your rediscovery. The more you digress from your core, the more difficult it is going to be for you. This is a universal statement! The statistics on internship is impossible to get but my good old guess should work here. Just like length of skirt has a correlation (inverse!)with the economy, people's mood is a good proxy for their success in internship search. I would guess, more than half have a place to go! Half of the remaining ain't interested! Good luck to the rest...they are on it...

Oh yes, the location ! Singapore ! It is almost general knowledge now that it is a financial hub, supply chain hub, logistics hub et al. Don't forget that Singapore is a small hub...It's a small market...Virtually, all the companies in the world have an office here. Does it make more sexier for jobs? I don't think so.. Barring India and China, Singapore is just like any other market...If you have it in you, you'll get hired....It's not a dart game happening here where you might get lucky!

Disclaimer: Though I have tried to be equivocal, I might seem taking sides here and there. Don't blame me for that! It's just my poor grasp on the language. Any statistics present here are as good as your wildest guess. Don't hold me responsible if they are absolutely correct or the other way round.

What's happening at the World Cup

2007-03-18T11:39:00.000+08:00

Did you see the matches yesterday? I haven't seen cricket properly in 10 years now and my curiosity led me to the cricinfo website and I was more than shocked to see that Pakistan is out of the world cup and India was at the mercy of Bangladesh. Not that I am taking the credit away from the superb performance from Bangladesh and Ireland, I am just finding it hard to digest that these two countries which breathe cricket are finding it hard to survive the first round of competition....what a shame!

Back home, people are dreaming of India winning the world cup..and here they are...strugling to get past their pools...Had it not been for the much-hated Ganguly, I wonder we would have been beaten to death...Now I just hope they don't make matters worse by following the pakistan route....Pray for them!

Google Checkout

2007-03-17T02:04:00.000+08:00

Yet another idea....

Google Checkout™ -- a new service that makes online shopping faster, more convenient and more secure

Keep guessing what will be the next thing...by the way, talking of google, I came to know last week that these guys have quarter million servers around the world...Now, that is close to the number of employees GE has!

Amazing, isn't it?

Visit this link for more details :

Price Controls

2007-03-10T22:25:00.000+08:00

I am back after doing amazingly bad in my economics mid-semester exams. Last night, Manu showed us this video - an interview of Mr Kamal Nath, Commerce Minister (India) and Udayan Mukherjee, Executive Editor, CNBC TV18.

Here is the video:

And here is the excerpt:

After listening to this interview, I had some thoughts and questions. May be you can help me answer them.

1) We always assume that markets are perfect and let the supply demand schedule decide the price. What if, in the short run, cement companies are getting better prices outside India and there is not enough import to India? How does it affect the consumers? In that scenario, Is it justifiable for the government to curtail export?

2) How do you control Inflation? Is what Kamal Nath doing is justified? Is there a better way out?

Best Blog of the Day

2007-03-10T08:34:00.000+08:00

Couple of days back, I saw one Best Blog of the Day Badge in one of the blogs I was reading and sent in my nomination. This morning, as I wake up, I see a message from the website that my blog has won the Best Blog of the Day Award!Hurray!

You can not take KGP out of an IITian

2007-03-08T08:41:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Vikram for sending me this link. For all KGPians, the video is a must watch and let me know if it doesn't ring a bell. I was sweeped through times.

Top 10

2007-02-27T19:00:00.000+08:00

Finally, I made it to top 10 of google. After being pushed down to second page for quite long...a search of "anshuman" puts me at number 7!

To my new identity!

Update(1 May 2007): huh! I just checked again! I am OUT of it. My blog appears at number 14 though!

Is it always about profits?

2007-02-27T09:53:00.000+08:00

I am already feeling sad because of sudden demise of one of our close friends at IIT and to add to it, I read a case for this week's preparation.

It is about a pharma company ( as per their philosophy, they are dedicated to alleviating human suffering) which has discovered a possible treatment of a deadly disease which inflict millions in the third world countries. The manager has to make a call whether to pursue the research further or not given the limited profit potential of the medicine.

It sends me shivers that such decisions ARE being made everyday at some or the other company and more often than not, they are made against the common good. A corporation exist for its stakeholders and in the truest meaning of the term, every human being on the planet earth is a stakeholder. Shouldn't the company just go ahead with the project? Can't the manager bear the brunt of his shareholders for this 'one' decision (if the shareholders decide against this)...With incidents like Enrons happening where principal-agent problem surface at great heights, I guess this decision is just another principal-agent issue. The shareholder don't want you to do it (presumably) and you still do it.

If I am the manager faced with such a dilemma, I would take the brunt. Add my name to the list of Bernie Ebbers, Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay for frauding with shareholders money but if such a fraud could potentially save million, count me in! When in doubt, err on the side of philanthropy.

PS: I don't know what the manager in the case decided to do...will let you know as I know about it.

Kal ho na ho

2007-02-27T09:45:00.000+08:00

With all your magnificent planning for the future, how do you ensure that you would live to see all you craved for? We spend more than half of our lives planning for tomorrow? What if, we suddenly leave the earth. One of our close friend at IIT passed away last week. He was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. I am sure he had his dreams, he had his plans, he had his ducks in line... .but the foundation on which the castle was built is gone now....couple of years ago, one more batchmate at IIT passed away in a road accident. All these mishaps force me to question the way we live our lives. I, for one, plan a lot..sometime at the cost of today....May be people should live more in present...

Amit...May your soul rest in peace...We love you...

To all my engineer friends.....with love

2007-02-20T01:16:00.000+08:00

There is a life beyond assignments

2007-02-08T20:14:00.000+08:00

You know, there is an opportunity cost to everything, they say ! People take decisions at margin..always calculating marginal benefit vis-a-vis marginal cost. It's how you use your resource and capabilities is what determine your competitve positioning. Think beyond products when you think of competitve strategy. Using e-sourcing for direct material may not be a very bright idea. Deming's 10th point seems to contradicts Peter Drucker's MBO (Management by Objectives). Can we use appreciative inquiry when we are dealing with a radical change? Why should you buy that company when the DCF analysis shows you are paying just too much. Did you just say we have to submit both the case reports tomorrow morning? I just missed 2 deadlines on e financial career! Am I not supposed to concentrate on Supply Chain? whatever!

People wished me on my birthday? I didn't even had the courtesy to reply to anyone...I was never like this. My best friend got married and I haven't called yet and I don't have the guts to do so now! It's late, for gods sake! but isn't it getting late with each passing moment. I am losing my mind. I could have made so many good friends here at NUS but there is just no time to make a connection. The only place we connect is when there are employers imvolved! I bet MBA is getting to me! Someone rightly said. "People become victim of priorities". I am a living example for one and I bet there are 140 of them in my batch. The only reason people can't attend a meeting at 6 PM on a friday evening is because they have another meeting at the same time. No one says that he/she has to go to a pub at that time. It's not considered right! These are the unwritten rules. So be it! 10 months to go! Till then, I would request my old friends to hold on!

Harry Potter - Last part at last

2007-02-04T09:36:00.000+08:00

Last week, we had this discussion (rather heated) in the class on the success of Harry Potter vis-a-vis Lord of the Rings. Though the discussion was centered around strategy and whether the resources were used fully or not, yet some of us (Harry Potter Fans especially) were offended by the fact that Lord of the Rings made more money by investing ony 1/3 rd of what Harry Potter didthe money. So, we attributed this to the fact that all the variables are not captured and there are so many other things which goes to make a movie successful besides money out / money in ratio.

Anyway, I found this seventh and LAST book of Harry Potter Series scheduled to be released on July 21 this year. Thought you guys would like to have a look. Clicking on photo would take you to the amazon page.

They came, they saw, they left...

2007-02-03T12:58:00.000+08:00

We had MBA Career Connexions event at Swissotel Stamford and quite many recruiters turned up to mingle with the NUS Grads. Pretty well organized, the event did went off well. Amidst all the rush, some guys seemed to be happy. After all, it's not easy creating "an impression" when 10 others are waiting to do the same and 10 just left thinking they did it. Hoping that their name card would shine amongst the myriad others.Well, I must confess that NUS MBA is doing all the right things and may be we are not there yet but very soon, we will arrive !

It's that time of the year when anxiety has started building and it could be seen on people's faces. Everyone is trying real hard and career services is doing the best they can. People have all the tension in the world. Not only you are supposed to be WELL prepared for the class discussions, you better keep thinking what are you gonna do when the classes get over (I mean summers).

I would sign off now wishing all my batchmates best of luck in their hunt for internships. Wel, that includes me :-)

Reverse Auction or Keiretsu?

2007-01-30T01:13:00.000+08:00

Last month, I read two articles: One was on the resurgence of apple in 1997 and how a new suply chain guy from Compaq used the supplier relationship technique to achieve an inventory turnover of as high as 180. That means keeping 2 days of inventory ! Isn't it amazing? Heck, it is !

Second article was on how supplier relationship helped the world trade to recover very fast following 9/11. It was possible because of the goodwill established with suppliers and would not have been possible otherwise.

Added to these articles, I am a fan of keiretsu and always look for ways to know more and more about it.

But this evening, one of our guest lecturer presented the idea of reverse auction and how it has revolutionalized the e-procurement landscape. Using real-time bid to leverage on the information arbitrage, buyers are squeezing the suppliers to the last drop of blood and it so kills all my notions of supplier relationship. So, I got curious and confirmed certain aspects and it looks like both co-exist in the same world and it is like tension of the opposites. There are certain items which are not of strategic importance for the business and a supplier relationship, per se is not that much craved for while for the other items, supplier relationship is valued. So, it is a judgemental question rather than dviding the world into black and white.

It is good for me to challenge my predispositions I establish with my readings and the earlier this debate surfaces, the more perspective and knowledge I would be able to assimilate. Long way to go ....

Telecom Italia - Wonderful Ad

2007-01-26T12:14:00.000+08:00

It's wonderful to see the kind of respect Bapu (Gandhi) has all across the world. Watch Telecom Italia ad....

For English version:

CLICK HERE

I love statistics - Some funny quotes and jokes

2007-01-23T13:14:00.000+08:00

Well, I usually don't post jokes and forwards on my blog but sometimes, I have no option. I really want you guys to see this stuff.

Some Jokes, quotes and one-liners of statistics and statisticians:

Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average.
Statistically speaking, in China, even if you are a one in a million kind of guy, there are a thousand more just like you.
One out of every four people is suffering from some form of mental illness.Check three friends. If they're OK, then it's you.
It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.
If I put your feet in the boiling water and head in the freezer, on average, you'd be comfortable.
Three percent exceeds 2 percent by 50 percent, not by 1 percent. Edward Denison, 1960
"Give us a copper Guv," said the beggar to the Treasury statistician when he waylaid him in Parliament square. "I haven't eaten for three days.""Ah," said the statistician, "And how does that compare with the same period last year?" Russell Lewis
79.48% of all statistics are made up on the spot. John A. Paulos
I asked a statistician for her phone number... and she gave me an estimate.
Three professors (a physicist, a chemist, and a statistician) are called in to see their dean. Just as they arrive the dean is called out of his office, leaving the three professors there. The professors see with alarm that there is a fire in the wastebasket.
The physicist says, "I know what to do! We must cool down the materials until their temperature is lower than the ignition temperature and then the fire will go out."
The chemist says, "No! No! I know what to do! We must cut off the supply of oxygen so that the fire will go out due to lack of one of the reactants."
While the physicist and chemist debate what course to take, they both are alarmed to see the statistician running around the room starting other fires. They both scream, "What are you doing?"
To which the statistician replies, "Trying to get an adequate sample size."
Did you hear about the politician who promised that, if he was elected, he'd make certain that everybody would get an above average income?

My Favorite is:

In god we trust, all others must bring data ........Edward Deming

So you wanna be a consultant?

2007-01-23T11:04:00.000+08:00

Can an actuarial firm compete in the consulting space? Is it possible for a firm specializing in pension fund audits to extend its relationships with existing clients by offering consulting services? .............. Read Full Story

What drives our purchase decisions?

2007-01-20T21:56:00.000+08:00

Golden rule of economics :

People would make a purchase decision only when the marginal benefit exceeds (or equals) marginal cost and leaves them better off.

I was wondering how is it possible for a human mind to quickly calculate the marginal benefit and decide whether to shoot or not. For example, sometimes, I regret after having bought certain things. Where was my mind when I was buying that thing? Didn't I do the marginal calculations? Tough questions and everything revolves around the central assumption every economist makes : People are rational !

I found this article on NY Times which tries to answer these questions (Well, actually I saw it first on Prof Mankiw's Blog)

Change !

2007-01-18T19:49:00.000+08:00

"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change."
— Confucius

I certainly do not claim to be the wisest and I am confident I've met some people out there who are relatively stupid and hence, I decided to change.

The process, so to speak, is not as smooth as google would have loved it to make. I lost some of my cool gadgets while I was transitioning to the new blogger. Anyway, I would keep building my inventory as and when I get some time from the killing schedule I am maintaining these days.

Now, I notiecd these guys are not even using html. With my 1 year of blogging experience, I could somehow come to terms with html jargon. They seem to be using something called xml ( If I am sounding too naive, well, believe me, I am!). Anyway, I will figure it out. Sooner than later. Till then, enjoy the new blog!

India Poised

2007-01-18T10:24:00.000+08:00

To all my NUS friends, take a break from Strategy and the Supply-Demand Schedule and check out this stuff ... One of my friend forwarded me this video sometime back...Always wanted to put it up here but never got a chance to do so...

I feel so much more Indian after watching this....The video below is the Hindi and English version recited by Big B, respectively

_

For People who would like to hear a variant by Gulzar ...Here it is...

You may also like to visit their website. Its a great initiaitve by Times of India to have aroused the soft side of "India Shining" Story

and you always thought only humans speak?

2007-01-01T15:07:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year 2007

2007-01-01T12:46:00.000+08:00

First of all, a very very happy new year to all of you. Hope all of you had your share of resolutionalizing done last night and half of then would be difficult to remember when you wake up this morning ! By Singapore time, it's already noon and people are struggling to get off their bed by conquering their laziness and hangovers. Western friends are yet to experience the new year ! Well, I guess, EST would have had it aleady...PST would be three hours shy of it....
I did not take any major resolutions..continuing the tradition...I am yet to follow the 2002 resolutions...so, no need of a new list now...On a serious note, I did take couple of them....

-- Be a more active blogger. Make sure to jot down a thing or two every week without fail ! My target would be 100 posts this year.

-- Find myself a decent internship and job (hopefully)

These are the two things which are on top of the lists...Of course, there are other trivial ones like

-- Resist the temptation of having breakfast without brushing teeth

-- Prefer attending classes to sleeping

blah blah....the list is endless and you can very well judge the gravity of the matter.

Well, that would be all for today..Keep in touch and stay beautiful ! Be Good !

Start your year by listening to this amazing song (actually speaking, this song has become the guiding light of my life)...

ENJOY !

WalMart - Time to change?

2006-12-22T04:00:00.001+08:00

Nice Article by Jack Trout :-

Nothing has excited and riled up the advertising agency business as much as
Wal-Mart's recent firing of Julie Roehm and the agency she just hired.

It was all over the business press, but nothing captured it better than
the big headline in Advertising Age magazine that proclaimed: "Unruly Julie and
the Scandal That Rocked the Ad World."

Read Full Story

Exam Results - 9 days to go !

2006-12-18T23:39:00.000+08:00

I am nervous for the first time waiting for the result. Heck ! I should be...after reading this post

See for yourself. Go on. READ IT

Mulally targets Muda - The Way Forward !

2006-12-16T03:23:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the world of waste management. Muda, as it is called in Japan, is a key concept in Toyota Production System. New Ford Chief, Alan Mulally, finally discovers what Taiichi Ohno discovered 5 decades ago. Finally, the giant has woke up and flexing its muscles!

Read this article in the Forbes.

Mulally's "The Way Forward" plan has begun to unfold and we will have a lot to watch!

Necessary but not sufficient

2006-12-13T15:54:00.000+08:00

It was a wonderful week as I was totally immersed in Goldratt's book : "Necessary but not sufficient". Ever since I read "The goal" by this man, he never ceases to amaze me. Be it "The Critical Chain" or "It's not luck", each of his books has the same common sense and de-bottlenecking approach which you simply can not deny. What is even more amazing is the simplicity of his ideas and his ability to put things in a perspective so easy to understand. He frames the scenario in the perfect way.

The book revolves around BGSoft,an ERP provider which makes the translation from a software package provider to value provider. The switch was not discretionary but forced by the market conditions. After amazing success and unprecedented growth rates for last so many years, BGSoft faced danger of market saturation and started looking for ways to expand into other markets or grow into existing markets. In a turn of event, one of their clients involves them into their day-to-day operation and in the process, BGSoft learns ways to survive and lead. So much so that they teach their client certain things about their home turf.

While this is the problem on the surface, the story is based on the power of Theory of Constraint, Buffer Management and Drum-Buffer-Rope Techniques. How BGSoft integrates various facets of supply Chain into its ERP software to add value to the client and in turn, make themselves as a much more robust company. Also, the characters often think aloud in the book which helps your thinking process to develop.

An absolute heart-winner ! All Technically-bent-minded people must read this.

You may also find the links below to be relevant while you are on your journey to become a TOC expert:

and Last but not the least:

My Favorite

Even an MBA can do it !!!

2006-12-10T14:20:00.000+08:00

Take it easy...Just a little bit of fun: Standard disclaimers apply. This video may or may not represent my opinion about the values or arrogance level of an MBA. (Official Link)

My MBA Journey - Just another brick in the wall

2006-12-09T01:22:00.000+08:00

By now, I am sure all my regular readers would be aware that I am "enrolled" in the MBA Program at NUS, Singapore. Well, today was a special day in my MBA journey!

I finished my last examination of semester 1!

I am happy for the fact that I can afford to relax for a while and at the same time, I am sad as I have nothing to be stressed about! You accept it or not, we are so used to stress in our lives that we choke at the very thought of a free and relaxed state. At least, I do. I am at equilibrium when I am at chaos. The moment particles stop colliding with each other and everything comes to standstill, I feel choked.

Aarghh! I again started philosophizing on things I have so limited knowledge about! Back to my MBA journey! When I was coming back from the college yesterday, I was reflecting on the last 4 months and trying to figure out if I indeed learnt anything in these 4 busy months. I will turn a bit jargonful now, so , please bear with me! I made a mental list of things I learnt and could do now as a result of perspiring for 4 months!

- Analytics was something I knew already! Forecasting was a new concept and I learnt to do magic. You give me 3-4 data points and I can forecast for forever! Isn't it magic? Do not blame me if the forecasts don't turn out to be true. Blame the choice of method and ofcourse to the devils codenamed as MAE, RMSE and MAPE.

- Accounting taught me that I can find everything about a company's present state, where is it coming from, where is it going, how well is it doing, how efficiently is it using its assets and how well is it managing its liabilities. All of them just with an honest annual statement of the company. Isn't it amazing? I am proud of myself for being able to do that. Later, I read about so many accounting frauds in the recent past that sort-of-Calvin has gotten into me whenever I open any annual statement. I have become skeptic.

- Finance was the most wonderful thing which happened to me. Time Value of Money! It's as if you add another dimension to money-Time Value. It took me a week or so to realize that it's the same compound interest formula (formulated backwards) disguised into a world full of jargons. But I don't blame the textbook for that. I did learn a thing or two here and this course was an eye-opener! I really look forward to studying investment analysis next semester

- Marketing was something I would cherish forever. Why? Because it equipped me with Consultant's Power. Articulating a simple statement into a concept and sending 12 researchers to prove it from all corners. Wow ! Whenever I read marketing books, I used the power of paraphrasing to help me understand the basics and then reversed it by decorating the same with B-World Jargons. We did an amazing marketing plan for a bank. The plan was aimed at restructuring bank's marketing plan to re-enter into a particular banking area they are not so good at. It was street-smart idea when you lay it on paper. The entire concept could have been explained in a sentence or two. But, not so fast! We did prepare an "exhaustive marketing plan" which could convince anyone why we are saying what we are saying! Someone has rightly said: "Build a Better Mousetrap and the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door" doesn't happen! You need to tell the world what have you got! Marketing taught us the power and ways to do exactly that!

-Organizational Behavior was again helpful in structuring what we already knew into a better way by adding certain new things. Though a lot of people do not particularly enjoy humanities subjects, I like them a lot. That statement doesn't make me a humanities god and in all my powers, I could very well stink when the grades are out! But, that is a different matter! Let's not mix grades and learning, for a moment! That's a solace for people like us who are not particularly lucky when it comes to acing the exams!

So, that's five! These five devils kept me so busy for 4 months but in hindsight, it was a wonderful semester and I did learn a lot. Pardon my sarcasm when I describe certain things. That's the way I am coded! Right now, I am feeling learned, enlightened and knowledgeable! Look forward to having a blast next semester with Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Leadership, Strategic Procurement in Supply Chain Management, Investment Analysis, Managing Operations and Corporate Strategy! Don't count, that's seven. If I have enough courage by the start of next semester, I would continue with all 7 or drop it to 6 to make it more manageable for me! Wish me luck.

Who is better?

2006-12-07T13:36:00.000+08:00

Decide for yourself ???? I am confused

21st Century Business Leadership

2006-12-05T20:05:00.000+08:00

Everyone's talking about green and sustainability these days. Looks like profitability and "increasing shareholder values " have become things of past. Finally, the MNCs have realized that if they don't save the earth, they would have to look for a different planet. Not a very attractive proposition.

Have a look at the new definition of business leadership and a new direction MNCs are taking now:

Walmart-Sustainability

GE - Ecomagination

BP is one step ahead. Environment and Sustainability has become one of the prime drivers of the company. So much so that they take all the pain of making a sustainability report every year. It looks no less researched than their annual report. They have been doing this for 7 years now!

BP - Sustainability Report

It's heartening to see that these global citizens are walking that extra mile to make a difference.

Visibility in Supply Chain

2006-12-05T19:56:00.000+08:00

The CEO of Arena Solutions , Michael Topolovac, talks about the importance of visibility in Supply Chain and ends the note with a brief sales pitch about his company which does Product Life-Cycle Management.

This month will be Supply Chain and Economics Special. Expect lots of gyan (knowledge) here. So keep an eye and watch the space.

Yahoo Answers Google

2006-12-03T12:49:00.000+08:00

5 months back, I was surprised to see billboards in Hyderabad (India) for "Yahoo Answers". I was wondering if Dotcom has come back. Do they really have so much money that they have started offline advertising.

My post earlier last month "Google Google Little Star" writes all good things about Google. I was amazed to see that Gogle is setting its foot almost everywhere and that too in style with substance. Well, not this time.

This morning, I was looking for an answer and opened "Google Answers". This is what I found out

So, finally all those billboard advertisment has paid off. Or is there another underlying reason attached to it. From whatever I know about business, the reason why Google shut down the "answers" may be because:

Google Answer never became as popular as Yahoo Answers and with the launch of a similar service by Microsoft (Windows Live QnA), things became worse.
People are not willing to pay to get their answers online. Especially whne there are equally good services available for free
Google follows "GE's Policy" when it comes to running or closing a business. Quit if you are not number 1 or 2 in that business. Google Answers was around for 4 years now. Since it was a pet project of the founder Larry Page, Google waited for some time else it would have vanished long back.

Whatever the reason be, Yahoo has pulled victory in atleast this battle. There wil be so much to see in the years to come with the trio (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) fighting over things. (Operating system being one of them). People would surely be opening champagne at Yahoo Camp. But is it the end of the beginning? Is it not possible that the giant (read: Google) is planning for a MAJOR re-launch of its answer services. Well, time will unfold such questions but it will be worth a watch!

Walmart finally breaks in!

2006-12-02T22:51:00.000+08:00

The world's largest company, Wal-Mart has finally managed to bypass the Indian bureaucracy and other retailing giants like Tesco and Carrefour are likely to follow suit.

The giant has come in the disguise of Bharti. The retail shops will be owned by Bharti Enterprises under the Wal-Mart franchise. Bharti was also in talks with Tesco and Carrefour, according to London Times. Now, since Tesco has been apparently left alone by Bharti, it's time to wait and watch how it flexes its muscle. It is unlikely that TESCO would just let it go. I won't be surprised if a new name comes up in the coming months in the form of ITC, HLL or Pantaloon. Indian Retail Sector is too hot to avoid. Retailers are keen to enter the Indian market, which is growing at nearly 30 per cent a year, but are allowed only to run franchises or licenses, or operate on a cash-and-carry model, under restrictive rules on foreign investment. We are likely to see a major fight in the organized retail sector in the coming year with deep pockets players joining the foray. From what has been uncovered till date, Bharti, Reliance Industries, the Tata group and the Aditya Birla Group are in the race. Cigarette maker ITC Ltd. has also opened its first grocery stores and plans to add outlets quickly.

Though organized retail industry makes up only 3% of the $ 300 billion retail industry, this number is expected to grow 15-18 percent by 2011/12 (according to Reuters). The industry itself is forecast to grow to $427 billion in 2010 and $637 billion in 2015, according to consultancy Technopak Advisors.

What does it all mean to me? Well, I couldn't be happier. Right when the industry is ripe, I would be available to these lucky guys as their Supply Chain and Logistics Consultant. Till then, I must watch what they are upto and make my moves accordingly.

anshuman hemingway !

2006-12-02T19:00:00.000+08:00

This afternoon, this amazing feeling crept all over me - to take up writing as a career! I don't know what instigated these feelings but within a span of two hours, I already thought about two scripts I am gonna work on...

To my suceess !

an average joe manages to survive

2006-11-27T15:11:00.000+08:00

Right when I was making ambitious plan of studying Accounting, I hear a "ding" sound...you've got a mail...Marketing Results are out....Not that I was expecting to be an american idol of sorts...Just that I was hoping I would manage to secure my average joe position... But, not this time...I am a survivor...For starters, our gradings are done in this manner...top guy gets to be called "American Idol", followed by "apprentice", "average joe", "survivor" and finally "lost". Mathematically, my grade is justified as I read half the syllabus and considering 95% confidence interval, I was destined to be on either side of "average joe"...As luck stands, this time, it was on the lower side...never mind! Marketing is not my cup of tea..I better finish my MBA before nothing remains in my cup!

Courtesy and Singaporeans !

2006-11-26T05:26:00.000+08:00

Before I begin, take a look at two news clippings

The National Courtesy Campaign was launched on 1 June 1979 by Lee, Kuan Yew, the then Prime Minister of Singapore. The aim of the Campaign was to create a pleasant social environment with Singaporeans considerate to each other and thoughtful of each other's needs. (Reference:)
On 1 March 2001, the National Courtesy Campaign was officially subsumed under the Singapore Kindness Movement. Courtesy programmes previously run under the National Courtesy Campaign now continue to be run under the Singapore Kindness Movement. (Reference)

Well, my observations for last couple of month says that these campaigns have failed at the grass root level. Whenever there is a rush in the MRTs, lots of people don't get seat. As it turns out, I am always one of them! Why? Keep reading....

An old lady boards the train and with high hopes (she must also be aware that singaporeans have undergone courtesy campaign), she looks around so that someone gets up and provides her a place to sit. People don't even bother to look up. There is just no reaction from anyone. A School boy, a middle aged gentleman, a yound lady, a housewife....all alike...absolutely no reactions! Some of them even look up but then gaze at the horizon and continue what they were doing.

Initially, I used to get up so fast that I never got a chance to see what others would do if they are given a chance. So, now, I delay the process. Believe me, they are just indifferent. At least, I have never seen anyone getting up for an old person before I do(even though I have forced a delay!)

Then, I did some googling and found this rating by Reader's Digest:

The 3 experiments on courtesy involved Reader's Digest staff dropping papers, checking for people who open doors and finding out which cashiers say "Thank you" after a transaction. A point was given for each "success" and the average for each country placed it in the ranking with New York toping the list and Mumbai bottoming out at 35. (Reference)

So, with 2 campaigns and 95% literacy rate(Reference), Singaporeans have not learnt basic courtesy. The older people have learnt it though as they are at least courteous enough not to ask for seats. Someone might argue that it's because they have been through 2 campaigns. Well, in that case, it's time for another campaign if that's what works here. I have my own doubts though!

Uniquely Singapore

2006-11-23T14:23:00.000+08:00

Found this amazing video on YouTube on Singapore....

For all my friends and relatives back home....Enjoy!

Anshu

Is it good enough now?

2006-11-22T00:21:00.000+08:00

When I joined NUS this august, I was complaining that there ain't enough rigor..Classes were interspersed quite comfortably and people had all the reasons to be happy.....I remember asking one of my close friend who went to IIMC,"So, you must be visiting the city quite often?". The reply was," Calcutta was more approachable from Kharagpur than from IIMC, there is just no time". Anyway, coming back to NUS, people had time....So much so that they started visiting nearby countries...I was wondering if I read the right book before coming to business school. That guy "Peterson" was wrong (author of 'Snapshots from hell')...Or may be it was just a standford memoir which doesn't apply everywhere..Whatever the reason was, I was not happy. I had a different frame of what first few weeks at business school must be like but this place was different.

But, first impressions are not always right....

As the semester progressed and we started getting loaded in different ways. Some professors chose to call it "cases" while others named it "homework". Some preferred the name "assignments" while the rest called it a "project". The names were different but the purpose and end result were same. I started feeling the heat and before I could realize, I was burning into flames..My luxurious eight hour sleep got cut down to four, evening walks with my wife vanished, shopping trips got cancelled and my wife had to learn to go to the shopping center all alone. I wasn't feeling that good about it but I only asked for it. While I was stressed out with the load, I was enthralled by the learning I was getting. It was a mixed emotion and it took me back in time when I was preparing for JEE.

Now since most of the stuffs are over and we are left with couple of boring exams to waive the first semester an official good-bye, I am feeling good about it. A sense of accomplishment is there. Though there is nothing to rejuvenate for, yet, I am feeling elated.

It took me one semester to start loving this place. To realize and accept that I am not a Fisher guy..but now since the realization has come, I couldn't be happier...I look forward to a fantastic stay at this amazing place called NUS!