The Written Path

Sinful bakes to end a year & start a new one!

2011-12-25T06:12:00.000-08:00

Ever been undecided about where to pick up a cake from, for a birthday or a party? This simple decision could just get a lot more confusing because of even more choice being available in a glutted market. In Mumbai, we have chains like Monginis, Birdys and standalone ones like Theobroma, Ovenfresh, Gaylord or La Patisserie - the Taj Cake shop - just to name a few, who bake drool-worthy cakes to suit every budget.

Now crowding this space are coffee bars like Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) and Barista. They have both decided to sell entire cakes rather than just slices of it. So, while a 1 kg Chocolate Fantasy or the scrumptious Chocolate Blackforest at CCD is priced at Rs 498 with taxes (and a Rs 50 rebate it was offering a while ago), it works out to Rs 448 only.

Barista has followed CCD by introducing a range of cakes for sale as well, with a pre-tax price of Rs 449, which when I enquired, will work out to over Rs 500, for a 1 kg cake. So, obviously CCD works out cheaper but at the moment, there are only three kinds of cakes you can order from them - Chocolate Fantasy, Choco Blackforest and Mystery Mousse.

Barista seems to have taken a jolt of their Lavazza espresso and woken up to see what more they can do, to keep caffeine-lovers coming back to their coffeeshops. Their eats still languish till the end of the day, while CCD's brownies, muffins and chicken sandwiches often is sold out. That's people's taste buds voting for where the foodstuff is better!

Barista has a tendency to do things by fits and starts, so there are times when they have introduced a really good pastry - and given us a taste of it - then they have inexplicably withdrawn it after a few months. You won't see the Coffee Almond pastry anymore - that's because it's now become a 1 kg cake, that you have to order, in order to enjoy it.

Similarly, there was a Chocolate Cheese Marbled cake pastry, which was the only thing I liked at Barista, apart from the Coffee Almond delicacy, and even this they have discontinued. They seem to like removing things from their menu, that I particularly like.

Cafe Coffee Day is far less annoying and their standards keep improving. Their staff are also far more interested in their customers being satisfied, with the quality of service provided, than is the case with Barista.

I've always been a CCD addict (and well, Moshe's!) and I'm looking forward to the new lounges that are being opened soon. The first one has just opened in Bangalore. I'm sure, the eats and the treats will be something to look forward to - along with me being able to 'craft their menu' as their website states. I think this means, a customised experience altogether.

Besides with names like Black Woods, Apple Paradiso, Sinner's Heaven and French Cheesecake for their desserts and Strawberry Fields, Caribbean Heaven and Choco Decks for their sundaes, they just can't miss.

The other cake shops all have their specials. So at Gaylord, I would recommend the Biscuit cake, which is such a deep, dark chocolate cake, that it takes time for people to recover from it! With the 'with-egg' one costing Rs 478 and an eggless one costing an odd Rs 501 - it is worth digging into.

Everything I've ever tried from the Taj cake shop has been amazing - their cakes and their Christmas puddings. But at Rs 750 a kg, they are worth the price but may not fit everyone's budget. Moshe's is another hi-end option to try, if you are in the mood to be a spendthrift for a special occasion. Their L'orange and Philadelphia Baked Cheesecake are finger-licking good. The cakes here are priced higher than at CCD, Barista, Gaylord, Birdys and Monginis but I've bought a three-dimensional 'Landscape' cake - complete with a house, flower garden and little toy cars on it - for Rs 1,500 - from Desserts R Us. It was for a special birthday.

Birdys and Ovenfresh are great as well. Ovenfresh bakes them fresh on-location and through the day and their Royal Mousse cake or their Fresh Fruit Overload sells like hot cakes..literally. Their 1 kg cakes are priced between Rs 310 to Rs 800 depending on what you buy. The Fruit Overload costs Rs 310 for a kg while the 'Desire', which has three layers of Belgian chocolate, white chocolate and dark chocolate with raspberry flavouring on top because of which it gets a scrumptious maroon colour, is priced at Rs 800 for a 1 kg cake.

This is the only place in Mumbai that I know of, which makes pastry like the Chocolate Cheesecake Brownie, which is a gooey generous layer of cheese within two thick layers of Belgium chocolate brownie. Got to try it to know what you are missing. Besides, Ovenfresh is also creative with the names of its pastries - like 'Mandarin', 'Charlotte', 'Banoffee' and 'Desire', which do fulfill desires!

Both Birdys and Monginis sell more affordable cakes. Here the house specialities - at Birdys is a Mango Torte priced at Rs 500 a kg. This is a scrumptious mango cake with chocolate layer dripping all over it. Their blueberry cheesecake is also worth a try. The only drawback is that, Birdys tends to stick to baking the same things forever.

In contrast, Monginis tries variations all the time, and they have cakes to suit all tastes and budgets. The interesting ones are a Caramel cake which has loads of fresh cream and caramel topping, priced at Rs 650 for a 1 kg cake. Another unique looking cake to show up at a party with, is the Blue Grape cake, which has blue grape pulp filling inside as well as a blue coloured syrup, as frosting, on top of the cake.

So go right ahead and try out some of these sinful delights. I think even the Gods envy us when we do.

(Pictures are from the brands' sites and from burrp.com)

CEOs need to innovate to survive: Report

2011-11-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey on innovation highlights the most common myths that hamper organisations and CEOs, from taking that leap of faith and trying out new ideas. The report 'Demystifying Innovation: Take down the barriers to New Growth' states that "43% of CEOs in the pharmaceuticals, and entertainment and media sectors, believe their greatest opportunities for growth this year lie in new products and services, against 29% of all CEOs (across sectors)."

But all of these bigshots know they can't go it alone because "a majority of entertainment and media CEOs (57%), for example, expect their company's innovations will be co-developed with outside partners. 41% of pharmaceuticals and life sciences CEOs expect the majority of their innovations will be developed in markets outside the country where they are based."

So though the survey does show that CEOs are aware that their organisations will have to innovate to survive, or they will get left behind in the rat race for marketshare and consumer mindspace, they still hesitate to take action. With almost a billion new consumers beginning to spend in the emerging economies of the world, the brands/organisations that don't adapt to these markets and their requirements will wither and die.

So CEOs need to be wary of the following misconceptions that the report points out, and take measures to overcome them.

Click on the images to enlarge it

The myths hampering innovative behaviour are:

1. Innovation can be delegated. Ans: No
2. Senior and mid-level managers are natural allies of innovation. Ans: No
3. Innovative talent works for the money. Ans: No
4. Innovation results from lucky accidents. Ans: Very rarely
5. The more open the innovation process, the less disciplined. Ans: No
6. Businesses know how much innovation they need. Ans: No
7. Innovation can't be measured. Ans: Yes, it can be.

The graphic below shows how you can keep track of your innovative team and their progress on that new big fat idea.

The report is a good read for all those who want to figure out ways to speed up the innovation mindset in their organisations, and to cut loose the deadwood who act like bottlenecks.

Tables are from the report. Read the report here: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/corporate-strategy-services/assets/ceosurvey-innovation.pdf

Decoding what makes some startups successful

2011-10-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to know how some startups thrive and become successful and others struggle along, even if they do have good products and/or ideas? A report called the Startup Genome has made an attempt to figure this out. They studied data gathered from 600 startups who chose to fill up their rather lengthy survey (I got to the 75% mark and lost my patience!).

Anyway, they have divided the startups (only internet-based ones) along a development timeline - ie. the stages that all startups have to go through to become a full-fledged profitable player in the market. These stages were: Discovery, Validation, Efficiency and Scale. The report states that by the time a startup moves from the Validation to the Efficiency stage, they should be aware of a single fact - whether 40% of their customers can live without them, and if the answer is 'No', then that is great news!

The report then goes on to divide startups based on the service they provide and the market segment they are targeting. Here they are:

The Automizer
Common characteristics: Self-service customer acquisition, consumer focused, product-centric, fast execution, often automate a manual process.
Examples: Google, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Slideshare, Mint, Groupon, Pandora, Kickstarter, Zynga, Playdom, Modcloth, Chegg, Powerset, Box.net, Basecamp, Hipmunk, OpenTable etc.

The Social Transformer
Common characteristics: Self service customer acquisition, critical mass, runaway user growth, winner take all markets, complex user experience, network effects, typically create new ways for people to interact.
Examples: Ebay, OkCupid, Skype, Airbnb, Craigslist, Etsy, IMVU, Flickr, LinkedIn, Yelp, Aardvark, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, Dailybooth, Mechanical Turk, MyYearbook, Prosper, Paypal, Quora, Hunch etc.

Click on the tables to view them better.

The Integrator
Common characteristics: Lead generation with inside sales reps, high certainty, product-centric, early monetization, SME focused, smaller markets, often take innovations from consumer internet and rebuild it for smaller enterprises.
Examples: PBworks, Uservoice, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Dimdim, HubSpot, Marketo Xignite, Zendesk, GetSatisfaction, Flowtown etc.

The Challenger
Common characteristics: Enterprise sales, high customer dependency, complex and rigid markets, repeatable sales process.
Examples: Oracle, Salesforce, MySQL, Redhat, Jive, Ariba, Rapleaf, Involver, BazaarVoice, Atlassian, BuddyMedia, Palantir, Netsuite, Passkey, WorkDay, Apptio,Zuora, Cloudera, Splunk, SuccessFactor, Yammer, Postini etc

Each of these types have their own challenges to overcome in each stage, as the table above shows, and the below table shows that once the startup reaches scale, some forms of revenue generation does not rake in as much money as it did earlier.

The report states, "Subscription and Transaction Fees are by far the most common type of revenue streams. It’s interesting to see what revenue streams startups think will work in stage 2 but have considerable drop off with startups that have actually made it to stage 4. Virtual Goods, Advertising and Data all have major drop offs."

After Page 30, the report has pie-charts which show answers graphically, to questions like these:
-Which experts (Paul Graham, Guy Kawasaki, Steve Blank, Eric Ries etc) were most looked up to.
-Did entrepreneurs start up ventures for money, self-growth or to change the world.
-Whether startups with mentors or without one, succeed in raising capital. The answer is obviously 'with mentors' but the numbers are there to back it up. (For answers to the first two questions, take a look at the report!). But the one main reason it gave, for so many startups failing was due to 'premature scaling'. So startups that did not do each stage properly, did many more 'pivots' (switches/turnarounds) and usually had to go back a step...to learn their lessons again.

The report is a good first attempt and the founders of the Startup Genome Project are looking to drill deeper into the statistics, and give more answers in their future reports.

Tables are taken from the report. Read the full report here:
http://xrl.us/bkqc2d

New waves of growth: Report

2011-10-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

An Accenture report highlights the key areas where growth will occur in the near future and how much it will improve the gross domestic product (GDP) of each economy. The report looked at four economies - the UK, US, Germany and India and pointed out how much each of them will stand to benefit if certain parameters were met to ensure this growth happened.

These are the future growth areas to concentrate on:
1. The silver economy
2. The resource economy
3. The multi-technology future
4. The emerging-markets surge

The western economies stand to gain a lot from harnessing the skills of their aging population, so that is one area that India can choose to ignore for the time being. But not for too long either because we will soon have the same problem of retired people who need to be looked after, and we don't have an extensive government funded social security net in place, to do it on our behalf. The three other countries mentioned in the study, do have their governments looking after the welfare of their elderly population.

So if and when India decided to harness this untapped manpower, the report suggests putting steps in place. Such as these:

• Widening the net by retaining older workers in the workforce.
• Ensuring future supply of “hands and minds”.
• Promoting the productive capacity of older workers.

The report further suggests how organisations can help with this.
• Age-proof your human capital by adapting the workplace environment.
• Recycle and diffuse the critical expertise of older workers.
• Develop your silver radar to capture marketshare.

When it comes to the resource economy and the jobs that can be created in this sector, these were the success-making conditions required on a government level.
• Building the skills needed for a green economy, such as technical, engineering and
“green collar” skills.
• Enabling complementary infrastructure to support new technologies and energy solutions.

Meanwhile, organisations needed to ensure the following:
• Develop new products and services to serve the resource economy.
• Integrate a carbon price into business units to identify carbon hotspots.
• Turn scarcity into abundance by transforming waste into assets.

India stands to add Rs 458 billion to the 2020 GDP, 0.3% above the current trajectory. This will add 8,21,000 jobs.

Similarly with technology being used more extensively and adopted in more sectors, India will add Rs 4 trillion to 2020 GDP, which is 2.8% above the current trajectory. This will add 10.8 million jobs. For this to happen, the report suggests:
• Honing digital literacy and skills through technology-enabled learning and tri-sector cooperation.
• Building the technological arteries by extending high-speed Internet access.
• Setting smart regulatory standards to spur adoption and investment in new technologies.

Meanwhile organisations can get started by:
• Embrace cloud computing for savings and flexibility.
• Use technology to pursue polycentric innovation.
• Create open innovation networks to harness the power of customers and stakeholders.

The last area where India stands to reap benefits is as an emerging market. India will see Rs 7 trillion added to its 2020 GDP - 4.9% above the current trajectory and it will add 28.2 million jobs. To get to these numbers, we will need to do the following:
• Build new bridges through trade liberalization, economic diplomacy, new
technologies and collaborative partners.
• Uncover and strengthen comparative advantage and unleashing domestic excellence on to world markets.

While organisations can start on the following to get the same results:
• Create geographic options for inputs and customer markets.
• Be authentically local to tailor marketing and innovation toward emerging markets.
• Design a flexible international operating model to benefit from scale and standardization.

So with this roadmap laid out for India, is someone out there going to pay heed to it?

Read the report in detail here: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture_Institute_High_Performance_New_Waves_of_Growth_Executive%20Summary.pdf

'Legal eagles need new skills to work in LPOs'

2011-09-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

Ganesh Natarajan has been instrumental in the growth of Mindcrest, a premier legal outsourcing company (LPO) based in India that provides services to firms in the US, Europe and Australia.

The genesis of this LPO was as a result of Natarajan spotting an opportunity in the nick of time. “I was a partner at a large law firm in Chicago doing international mergers and acquisitions work. In the course of my career, I saw many opportunities where lawyers in India could be leveraged to perform services to US and UK clients. That was the genesis of Mindcrest,” said the LPO’s co-founder, president and CEO.

Natarajan is a Bombay University alumni with a management degree from the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, and an MBA from Brigham Young University in Utah. He also has a Juris Doctor (JD) degree from Washington University in St Louis. He has been a consultant for several Fortune 500 companies over issues such as market-entry strategies, capital raising activities, joint venture arrangements, strategic alliances and various commercial arrangements, including mergers and acquisitions.

He has done all of this over 20 years, but explains that it’s not necessary for young lawyers to cut their teeth in a routine law firm or a corporate legal division to work at an LPO, or may be even start one. “There is no real need for a young lawyer to get experience with a legal firm or a corporation. Subject to their meeting our requirements, we will train them to be effective in their work. This means that a lawyer at an LPO has to develop the rigor to ask the right questions and demonstrate the initiative to understand and resolve issues from the client’s perspective,” he explained.

“They also need to embrace new skills, such as project management, teamwork and technology, and to improve existing skills such as written and oral communication, analytics and attention to detail,” he added.

Natarajan has also worked at the Indian division of McGuire Woods LLP, an international law firm. It was here that he met George Hefferan, and together they teamed up with Rohan Dalal and Teju Deshpande and founded Mindcrest.

On the current LPO scenario in India, he said: “In the wake of the global economic downturn the amount of legal work has significantly increased in several areas of the law. Yet, legal budgets remain frozen or have shrunk.”

“The trend that we observe is that buyers of legal services, whether corporations or law firms, are keen on forging strategic partnerships with LPO providers. Such partnerships typically contemplate engaging a single preferred provider for a variety of legal services that derive significant value with scale and over multi-year relationships. Also, there are numerous LPOs in India today but I expect the number to reduce in the wake of consolidations that might happen,” he said.

Though Natarajan does have all this varied experience, which has enabled him to become a visible figure in the international legal industry, he admits to not understanding new-fangled social media and crowdsourcing strategies, and he does not feel they are an important criteria to run an LPO. He creates brand awareness the slightly old-fashioned way — by addressing many industry forums, bar associations and lecturing at international law schools.

Natarajan and a couple of friends got together to start Mindcrest, but he says self motivation and a strong independent streak are big factors in getting started. Other requirements that come in handy are “common sense, a feel for people and the ability to convince others of your vision. Having domain knowledge of the law business was very helpful as well."

Written for India Syndicate

'Fortune 700 cos will need more financial planning services'

2011-09-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Milind Godbole, President, Asia Pacific, Aditya Birla Minacs Worldwide, opens up about the future of the financial accounting outsourcing (FAO) sector and his company’s expertise in the field.

What is the current market scenario for the FAO?
With regard to Fortune 700 companies, FAO has attained market maturity and has become a highly commoditized business. The key differentiating factors among service providers in this space is their existing capability, size of operations, ability to scale and reference-ability from current customers. However, mid-market customers continue to wait and watch and are yet to demystify the FAO value proposition. The competition in this space is limited due to various reasons; the service providers are trying to offer the traditional Accounts Payable (AP) outsourcing in a commoditized manner but are developing niche vertical specific FAO offerings which will redefine this space over next 24 months.

What are the services areas that you are expecting growth in FAO?
Financial Planning and Analysis services for the Fortune 700 will gather further momentum. Additionally large companies will look upon their BPO partner to provide an integrated Procure to Pay (P2P) service offering to infuse additional efficiency in the system. All FAO service areas in the mid-market space provide an excellent growth opportunity.

Industry specific bespoke solutions that address CFO painpoints or provide disruptive value proposition are poised for growth. Unique yet scalable solutions offerings focused on niche areas such as federal government contractors or restaurant and franchisee business accounting have immense growth opportunities.

What are the business drivers that are driving the growth in this segment? Financial Planning and Analysis: FAO’s focus so far has been on efficiency. In order to create self-differentiation service providers are keen on impacting customer effectiveness. FP&A allows service providers to deliver additional value as it impacts the balance-sheet of the customer.

Procure To Pay (P2P): FAO providers have the opportunity to mine their AP customers and offer a combination of efficiency and effectiveness in form of procurement. Transactional Procurement services integrated with AP help enable higher compliance and end customer/supplier satisfaction. Additionally since FAO providers have access to AP database they can maintain an evergreen spend cube which can enable ongoing spend analysis leading to spend reduction.

Mid-market offers a vast opportunity to service providers as this a segment which has a large size and is relatively new to FAO.

Bespoke solutions are innovative solutions being developed by service providers in order to create self differentiation in an otherwise commoditized market. Such solutions offer a great opportunity because as on date, such solutions aren’t being offered in the market place.

What are Minacs offerings and expertise in FAO?
- Purchase and accounts payable: including purchase order processing, vendor bill and employee claim booking, payment processing, reconciliation.

- Billing and accounts receivable: including sales order processing, invoice processing, remittance posting, debit/ credit note processing and reconciliation.

- General ledger accounting: including ledger scrutiny, accrual entries, schedule preparation, book closure and audit coordination, reconciliation.

- Fixed asset accounting: including capitalization, depreciation runs, fixed assets register maintenance.
- Taxation compliance
- Statutory internal MIS and audit
- Restaurant & Franchisee Business Accounting
- Real Estate Fund & Property Management Accounting

We also provide specialty FAO solutions such as US federal compliance, including government cost proposals, incurred cost submissions, Cost Accounting Standards (CAS), Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and Cost/ Schedule Summary Report (C/SSR).

What business value does your FAO service bring to your clients?
Since 1999 we have partnered with our mid-market & SMB clients in delivering higher-end, more complex, knowledge-intensive F&A processes. Besides supporting traditionally outsourced finance activities, we also provide services much higher up the “value chain” as a “complete package”.

Many of our clients outsource all of their finance activities below the CFO level to MinacsHence, our teams play a crucial role in supporting the more complex finance and controlling requirements of our clients – providing end to end services, such as information for internal auditors, in helping produce the statutory accounts, providing the necessary support and information for the year-end audit process, delivering the month end accounts and commentaries to show performance of the enterprise in key areas, and most critically, in providing the deep insight and analysis that organizations increasingly require in their complex operating environment to take key decisions.

Written for India Syndicate

Analytics & consulting services to boom

2011-08-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

There is a huge demand domestically for IT applications services as it is the backbone of delivery for any business, says Vertex India CEO Keshav Gaur.

“The right quality focus and access to global expertise aid companies align delivery and support IT solutions that help clients achieve high performance. In these fast-changing times, analytics and consulting services are also becoming essential to develop the predictive capabilities and to achieve operational excellence. These services are now gaining magnitude in utilities, telecom, financial services and the public sectors,” says Gaur.

Vertex is one of the many new-wave business process outsourcing (BPO) entities looking to make a mark in India since 2002, “when the Vertex Group acquired the UK contact centre operator 7C and the shareholding of 7C India”, he asserts.

With Vertex offering a bouquet of services, among them consulting, IT applications and analytics, they are seeing their business grow to a point where in September 2010 they signed a joint venture deal with Shell Transource.

“This joint venture creates one of India’s largest integrated end-to-end solution providers in the customer management outsourcing industry. Today, we have over 5,000 employees in India. We principally provide a range of voice and non-voice services and fulfillment solutions for international and domestic clients and a number of key support services to the Vertex business,” he explains.

With multi-lingual capabilities and in-depth understanding of rural markets and Tier II and Tier III cities, they have customers from over 350 locations in India, especially in these above-mentioned markets.

The joint venture has ensured that Vertex has “a broad client base across financial services (banking & insurance), public sector, aviation, BFSI, telecom, utilities, KPO and media sectors, and our sales pipeline is strong and continues to grow”, assures Gaur.

Vertex also has expertise in delivering advanced analytics and marketing research driven management consulting services to many companies in sectors like banking, telecom, FMCG, energy, transportation, retail, pharma, BPOs and others.

It also delivers IT-enabled business intelligence solutions using advanced state-of-the-art software tools such as SAS, WPS, R, Stata, Qlikview, Cognos, Informatica, and Business Object and applies advanced research methods and state-of-the-art models to meet clients’ strategic and operational decision needs.

What’s more, the organization is also building on its Decision Sciences capability in India. It is looking to leverage all of these business solutions in their portfolio, over a range of sectors - like retail, financial services, travel, utilities, media and telecom, public services and logistics and transportation.

When asked which of these sectors seem more promising to Vertex, Gaur said, "Our industry focus is utilities, public sector, financial services, telecommunications, media & entertainment and retail/distribution industries where we provide rewarding customer experiences and valuable client outcomes in the areas of Customer Management Outsourcing, IT Applications and Services, Consulting and Transformation and Decision Sciences. Sectors with maximum potential and immediate addressable opportunities are banking and insurance, telecom, retail, travel and the public sector."

With their core belief being that they are on the ‘same side of the table’, which means that they share risks and rewards, which in turn gives them a stake in helping their clients’ achieve success, they are well placed to understand their clients’ needs. This insight allows Vertex to shape the development of new strategies, techniques and technologies.

Written for India Syndicate

Antiques: Art & Science of shopping for Timeless Treasures

2011-07-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

This is why you should be spotting treasures from other people’s discarded items or having the good sense of collecting them in the first place. Some of them become valuable after a couple of years like rare stamps or first edition comics and books written by the great wordsmiths of our times or even an earlier era.

Here is what a website reported would have happened if you had held on to your first edition Superman comic - you would have made one million dollars today. (Read The-superman-asset-bubble-is-here.) Besides, it’s not only kids who love hanging on to comics, even older people have their quirks and obsessions. One such adult, who is a comic lover and collector, is actor Nicholas Cage. He auctioned off a portion of his collection – about 140 lots for $1.68 million. This might be small change for a Hollywood actor, but put yourself in his shoes – wouldn’t this kind of money mean something to you?

Meanwhile, auction house Christie's is auctioning of an original copy of American writer Edgar Allan Poe's ‘Tamerlane and Other Poems’. It was expected to fetch $500,000 to $700,000. What is surprising is not the amount of money it is expected to fetch but the actual condition of the book. It looks like something rescued from a trash can but that’s precisely the whole point of a seconds market or website – it’s supposed to help people discover hidden gems like this one.

One person who has actually found an alternative hobby while maintaining his model car collection, is now finding fame on the web because he’s done a brilliant job of showcasing his cars against a backdrop of a 1960s fictional town called Elgin Park that he has created. Yes, he’s made scale models of an entire town with such attention to detail that it looks like a real place. This model town flaunts his priced car collection to perfection. (Read about Michael Paul Smith here: Showcase Collectible Cars.)

If you are a Dan Brown fan, then you’ll know that the professorial hero of his three books (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol) – Robert Langdon - is never caught at the scene of his numerous adventures without his favourite Mickey Mouse collector’s edition watch. Another author named Clive Cussler, who writes such fast-paced thrillers, that his novels' protagonists make James Bond look like he should retire into the sunset gracefully - anyway, this writer is an avid collector of vintage cars and locomotives. Even his fictional alter ego - Dirk Pitt - displays the same taste.

In India as well, there are many vintage car lovers - some well known and the others not so much. They often flaunt their babies at car rallies across the country. But one man in India, has got vintage cars and an entire train parked in his garden, which he has painstakingly restored and now uses to entertain his guests in. (Read more about Tarun Thakral here - http://writtenpath.blogspot.com/2007/07/journey-of-lifetime.html)

Moving on to celebrities, Amitabh Bachchan has a fetish for pens and everyone is aware of Elizabeth Taylor’s love of jewellery. Marilyn Monroe loved Manolo Blahnik shoes. Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino’s movies drip blood and expletives but he’s not the one who collects knives (Angelina Jolie does that) – he collects staid board games. George Clooney collects motorcycles, Jamie Lee Curtis collects photographs, billionaire Malcolm Forbes collected Faberge eggs and toy soldiers, Freddie Mercury collected stamps, Demi Moore collects vintage clothing and dolls and Nicholas Cage also collects European sports cars along with comics. Johnny Depp’s collection ranges from the intellectual to natural - he collects both rare books and insects and even Dolly Parton collects rare butterflies. (For more details, read this: Famous Collectors & their Collections.)

All of these people can afford to indulge their tastes and pursue serious collecting as a hobby but that shouldn’t stop the rest of us to keep looking and cultivating an eye for fascinating, beautiful and tasteful things. Treasures can and are found in unexpected places – an old trunk in your grandparents home may have vintage clothes and dolls that you might be able to sell to Demi Moore some day! What’s more, collections are and can be started with what interests you – so people are collecting Disney memorabilia, Hot Wheels cars, Beanie babies, Barbie dolls and other items like these which you thought you had outgrown. You could possibly find such people online and swap your children or grandchildren’s toys with them.

Abroad, the collecting instinct is well entrenched and there are many stores that people-in-the-know visit to scout for the latest bargains. For instance, the next time you visit the UK, here is a list of great antiques stores, you could browse in: The 50 Best Antiques Shops in Britain. Some of the shops actually stock furniture, which look a lot like what we would find being neglected in our grandparents home in India.

So, once you realise the actual value, you could fly back and take care of it well, if you already own it, or offer to buy it from them before they unwittingly sell it to a neighbour or relatives. Another store in Britain called Deddington Antiques Centre lets you trade in your antiques for something else from their stock! That is such a fun way to keep people interested.

Abroad, collectors have many options as the art of collecting is well and truly alive, as it reflects well on their level of refinement, if they can flaunt beautiful things in their homes. You only have to look at that list of the best antiques stores given above, to see that some of those stores look like upscale country homes, that you would like to holiday in. The fact that those store owners can afford and maintain such properties mean that they are doing very well.

Collectibles come up for sale in odd places like garage sales, thrift stores apart from art and photography galleries and auctions. One such treasure up for sale at a photography gallery in Vienna is a 170-year old wooden sliding box camera, which was made in Paris in 1839 by Alphonse Giroux and designed by Jacques Daguerre – it also has Daguerre’s signature on it - thereby making it an authentic item. This vintage camera is up for sale at a starting price of Rs 1.25 crore – the price of a pricey apartment in Mumbai. In 2007, an ‘unbranded’ old camera was sold at the same venue, for Rs 3.59 crore. So the ‘signed’ model is expected to fetch a much higher price.

In India, at the moment, Saffronart is having an online auction of jewellery that you might want to take a look at. These are specially designed period pieces and they are expecting more than 700 people to flock in, like they did last time, to bid for them. Not everyone can begin hunting with the big game right away so begin small with websites like this one - www.seconddealnsteal.com - and you might in time, build a collection that could drive everyone else green with envy. Other options that you could try is, use a metal detector and comb beaches for coins, trinkets, souvenirs and relics on your next seaside vacation. You might just strike pay dirt.

In India, Christie’s website is a good place to start if you have the inclination to know what’s happening in the collecting business. They have sections like watches, prints, jewellery, glassware, photographs, furniture, porcelain, musical instruments, books and manuscripts, armour, lighting and a host of other things. Take a look at the list and also see how one can customise it to your wallet. Look for the ‘Create your Wishlist’ kind of element on the Christie’s site: http://www.christies.com/

On the other hand, if history and archaeology in particular, is of interest to you, then keep track of what’s happening in that field – sometimes treasures are recovered and not everything makes its way to the museums of a country. There have been cases where things have been smuggled away and, hidden yet again only to surface years later in some billionaire’s private collection. Ironically, sometimes such items that were acquired on the black market is auctioned off in a public manner. If you keep yourself updated on such matters, then some day, you might spot something that you know is valuable in an really unexpected place.

The best method is to keep your eyes open and train it to spot treasures. So begin a collection and try and spot your diamonds in other people’s coal bins!

I contacted Christie’s India Representative and Vice President, Menaka Kumari Shah and asked her a few questions on the art of collecting.

1. Have you had any private collections come up for auction in India?
A: Christie's does not hold auctions in India, but we do hold auctions of art from South Asia in New York, London and Hong Kong. Many international private collections are offered in a wide range of categories, for instance contemporary art (film director Michael Crichton's collection) or Impressionist/Modern art (the collection of Mrs Sidney Brody) etc.

2. How do you start the collecting habit? I mean apart from having the money to do it and the taste for say, collecting vintage wine bottles...how do you know what one is collecting will turn out to be valuable some day?
A: We suggest would-be collectors do their homework - study auction categories, auction results, visit galleries, museums, read journals etc. Auction houses - large and small - cover a myriad of categories, but it is up to the person on what is of interest to him/her. We always advice people to start collecting what they are passionate about.

3. Are there some categories that are going to be hot from a collectors viewpoint? How do these collections do as against other investments in terms of capital gain?
A: There is indeed a lot of cash looking for a home at the moment. Fear of inflation but also very low interest rates have driven many individuals to diversify their assets and acquire works of art.
·On Jewellery: High quality diamonds will get more and more difficult to locate due to the scarcity of rough material as will important rubies and natural pearls. The market will gain strength from a buyer's perspective due to the emergence of new markets in China, Russia and India and as seen through the ages, jewellery will continue to be an alternative form of investment when money fluctuates a lot. Buying activity will be governed by the exceptional demand for important diamonds, gemstones, and vintage jewels, which are keenly sought after by private clients and the trade who buy for stock and, on some occasions, on behalf of a client.
·On Wine: When considering a bottle to add to your collection, one must consider rarity, provenance, condition and its source of creation. Typically, the best-produced wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy are among the most exclusive in the world and among the most established fields for collection. Other important collectible areas in France include Champagne and Rhone wines. Beyond France, the wines from Spain, Italy, California and Australia regularly appear at auctions. We encourage buyers to bid on wine to enjoy them and not primarily to buy to invest. Although it is true that returns on some blue-chip wines over the past few years have been very positive, we encourage any buyer who is interested in wine investment to seek professional advice, and of course Christie's specialists are on hand to answer questions.
·On Art: Statistics track a fast growing segment of affluent Asians, including Indians. We can foresee this trend continuing to gain momentum over the next decade. I think that after houses, cars and education, people look to art as a celebration of their status and as an expression of pride in cultural heritage.

Collectors from this region have a wide range of tastes and collecting habits. Usually our specialists always advise our clients or would-be collectors to start with what they like or are passionate about - this should take precedent over pure investment value. Of course there have been many instances where art acquired many years back is now being sold many times its original price, as we can see from works by Indian artists such as Souza, Raza, Hussain, Kallat and others.

4. Who are the famous collectors in India and what do they collect? If you have an idea of how much their collection is valued at, then do add that information here even as an approx figure.
A: Christie's does not comment on clients.

Places to buy antiques in Mumbai

Philips Antiques
Indian Mercantile Mansion,
Opposite Regal Cinema,
Madame Cama Road,
Colaba – 400001
Mumbai
Tel no – 022 22885115
Site: http://www.phillipsantiques.com/

White Rose
F-72, Oberoi Towers,
Nariman Point - 400021
Mumbai
Tel no – 022 22025757

Natesan’s Antiquarts Pvt Ltd
Jehangir Art Gallery,
Kala Ghoda, MG Road,
Mumbai – 400023
Tel no – 022 22852700

E.A. Merchant
Hasham Building,
Mohammed Ali Road,
Mumbai – 400003
Tel no – 022 23424610

Chor Bazaar
Near Nal Bazaar,
Close to JJ Hospital,
Opposite Mirza Ghalib Market,
Mumbai - 400003

Outside Maharashtra, Jew Town in Kochi, Kerala and Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu are good places to shop for antiques.

Celeb Seconds: When Used Stuff is Valuable

2011-06-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

Want to know when the odds turn even with used seconds? When they belong to celebrities and the goodies are being auctioned off at twice or thrice their value, especially if the celebrity is dead. Recently, some old photographs of Marilyn Monroe surfaced and people (who can afford to buy it) went crazy bidding for it. This has been the case for every dead celebrity – and pretty soon you’ll see something belonging to Michael Jackson being sold at Christie’s or Sotheby – may be his mask or his trademark glove.

An Indian connection is that Mahatma Gandhi’s belongings were auctioned recently in New York - 248 art items, 2,947 letters, 1,583 pictures, 31 cartoons, 407 documents and 513 publications - and some of it was acquired by Vijay Mallya.

He also recently acquired Tipu Sultan’s sword, which was a very patriotic gesture on his part to keep some of India’s artifacts within the country itself, instead of it all being bought for some private collection abroad.

Abroad celebrity auctions are much more common and a huge industry. Some of the people are so celeb obsessed and who constantly monitor them via their blogs and the various social networking websites, are now hawking their discarded clothes, shoes, jewellery and other assorted items like autographed bottles of wine etc on websites.

Sometimes, movie stars and sports stars hawk off stuff to benefit their favourite charities or when there is a crisis of some sort on a national or international scale like hurricane relief or war relief work. Then they volunteer to give their time at shelters and man the helplines but this kind of stuff rarely brings the recipients of their charity anything more substantial than their good cheer and goodwill. They certainly won’t be auctioning of their used stuff at a time like this.

But stars have auctioned off more than old things that they have used. They have auctioned off kisses – George Clooney did this and Charlize Theron kissed a woman who bid the highest, for this privilege. Actor Will Ferrell auctioned off a role in a movie! In India, Sachin Tendulkar auctioned off a cricket bat for a charity called Apnalaya. When Michael Jackson came to India during his ‘Dangerous’ tour and stayed at the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai, he left behind a pillowcase on which he had scribbled a few lines and a lot of people were eager to get their hands on it.

Sometimes, things that are up for sale are just bizarre items, such as Scarlett Johansson’s used tissue! Why would even a wealthy lunatic be interested in something like this is beyond reasoning.

On the other hand, there are some celebrities whose worldly goods were auctioned off when they were alive and the proceeds were given to charity. Princess Diana gave away some of her gorgeous clothes at her elder son Prince William’s suggestion, when she was alive. I’ve read her butler Paul Burrell’s memoir ‘A Royal Duty’, where he claims that she wanted to sell her wedding dress as well but after her death, her brother Earl Charles Spencer has not honoured this wish. Instead, that famous gown is in a museum (dedicated to her) on their ancestral estate, Althorp. Since she’s buried there, the place gets a lot of tourist traffic who drop by to pay their homage to her, so Burrell alleged that the Earl has made money out of displaying it there. Anyway, such is the power of celebrity seconds!

In fact, her clothes (the ones that were not sold) have even travelled about as a moving exhibit around the US, where people have viewed them. A portion of the proceeds of the exhibit went directly to her foundation, which services the individual charities she worked for.

Other well known celebrities whose belongings were auctioned after their death were Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her first husband President John F. Kennedy. This couple's belongings have been put on sale by their daughter, Caroline, and even the most mundane things are grabbed by souvenir hunters for surreal prices. Read more details on the sale here - The Kennedy Tag Sale

In fact, anyone who watched ‘Seinfeld’, must have seen that episode where Elaine Benice goes to the auction and bids for Kennedy’s golf clubs on behalf of her boss…and pays twice the amount he actually suggests he wants to pay. What’s more, she leaves it in Jerry Seinfeld’s car, which in turn gets ‘stolen’ by his irate garage mechanic! You’ve got to see this episode if you haven’t but mainly because such an expensive old and used merchandise is taken around for a joyride – in this case literally.

Actress and diva Elizabeth Taylor is famous for her violet eyes, eight marriages and her fabulous jewellery collection, which she got from her husbands, especially Richard Burton. One pear shaped 68.09 carat Cartier diamond called the Burton-Taylor diamond was auctioned off by her, to help build a hospital in Botswana. After her death, she wants her remaining jewellery to be sold off to people, who will love it and care for it as much as she did.

Yet another category of celebrity is the one who may be facing a temporary financial crunch and wants to tide over it by selling jewellery. In this case, actress Ellen Barkin may have just been getting rid of some heavyweight baggage from a failed marriage to billionaire Ronald Perelman – he owns Revlon and Marvel Comics among other things. She sold over 100 pieces of jewellery he had gifted her when she was going through a messy divorce. She has been considered astute for doing this because she netted a nice sum of money (over and above her alimony or prenup) for all that blinky stuff, that she was probably anyway tired of flaunting, in the first place. Besides she can always buy herself new stuff.

Here is an excerpt about her jewellery from the prospectus put out by Christie’s:

Among the highlights are four “thread” rings set with magnificent diamonds. Leading this group is a ring set with an elegant elongated D color (the best), oval-cut diamond of 22.76 carats, within a pavé-set diamond two-tiered threadwork gallery (estimate: $800,000-1,200,000) and a thread ring set with a cushion-shaped fancy deep orangey-brown “apricot” diamond of 31.85 carats (estimate: $600,000-800,000).

A pair of oriental pearl and diamond ear pendants each suspending a drop-shaped natural pearl, capped with an antique Indian bead cluster, is an example of the jeweler’s taste for lavish and subtle detail (image left, estimate: $350,000-500,000).

Other highlights include a spectacular diamond “Gardenia” ring sculpted as a natural flower blossom, made of diamonds (estimate: $100,000-150,000), a pair of charming cushion-cut faint pink and D color Golconda diamond bangles of 5.15 and 4.46 carats, respectively (estimate: $350,000-500,000), and a colored diamond “bonnet” ring centering upon a pear-shaped brownish pink diamond of 2.94 carats (estimate: $70,000-100,000). Read more here: Celeb seconds: Ellen Barkin's bling & baubles.

Just judging from the ‘estimated’ price, one can imagine what the value of this collection must have been. So, who said seconds were boring? If you’ve got the money, then you can actually buy a piece of history and glamour. What’s more, such second hand items make for great deals for your descendants. They will be just sitting on a goldmine of sorts. Ofcourse, not everyone can buy such second hand products, but those who can afford it, should go out and find such deals.

Move over art and gold. Here is another great form of investment.

'Buyology' reveals all the tricks of the ad biz

2011-06-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

I have just read Martin Lindstrom's book 'Buyology' with a tagline that says 'How Everything we Believe about Why we Buy is Wrong'. The book is a fascinating read about how much our emotions are blackmailed and our intelligence is manipulated by 'subliminal messaging' and 'neuromarketing.' The book gives a wonderful peak at what canny advertisers do to lure us into spending more than we intend to.

It also has interesting research and mentions experiments that were conducted into what excites, motivates and hooks people into splurging. One such experiment involved 600 women, who were invited into a room. He hooked them up to monitors and then brought out a bunch of the famous blue colour Tiffany jewellery boxes. That's all it took for the women’s heart rates to immediately jump by 20%!

As an anti-climax, those boxes were all empty. But that didn’t matter because Tiffany’s has done such a great job of branding, that women immediately associate a Tiffany box with engagement, marriage and family.

This is true of all the major brands as well, which have word associations that go hand-in-hand with their products. For eg. Johnson & Johnson and Pampers will make people instantly think of happy new moms and their adorable plump babies.

This book is worth reading because it has been endorsed by another marketing guru, Paco Underhill, who admits to having "a fundamental distrust of the twentieth-century fascination with branding." He says, "I don't own shirts with alligators or polo players on them and I rip the labels off the outside of my jeans. In fact, I think companies should pay me for the privilege of putting their logo on my chest and not the other way around!"

Underhill goes on to praise this book because he knows Lindstrom is passionate about advertising being a "virtuous endeavor and not just a necessary evil." The one thing they both have in common is "the belief that the tools for understanding why we do what we do, whether it is in hotels, airports, or online, need to be reinvented. This book is about the new confluence of medical knowledge and technology and marketing, where we add the ability to scan the brain as a way of understanding brain stimulations", and how it makes us do things - like shop till we drop - without knowing why we are doing it.

Grab this book now and get enlightened.

A second hand home fits old is gold adage

2011-05-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

When you hear the words ‘second hand’, the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s been used and/or owned by someone else before, so how can I buy it? This is, however, not a consideration at all for many looking to buy a resale property rather than a brand new construction. Here the rules change when it comes to a second sale and many actually seek it. Sometimes old homes/properties have been given a new lease of life giving the concept of second hand a twist, when it comes to real estate.

A lot of old properties – palaces and havelis - have been restored around India and converted into hotels. The Neemrana Hotels Group has been at the forefront of this movement and have won awards and appreciation for restoring these defunct and in some cases, decrepit buildings to their former glory and also putting it to good use. The Taj Group and the Oberoi Group of hotels have also been putting the same principle to work for years now - of using princely properties to lure in business. These business houses have taken over larger properties while Neemrana has taken over the smaller ones.

In Kerala, the CGH Earth Group has restored old therawads or family homes for the enjoyment of the contemporary traveller. I’ve stayed at their properties called Coconut Lagoon as well as Brunton Boatyard and the experience was wonderful. They have plucked the essence of rural Kerala by recreating the cottages in the very manner of those you would see if you sail down the backwaters in a houseboat or in a hotel launch. The carved wood furniture and the Corinthian pillars with embellishment near the eaves and at the base, which have been picked up intact in some cases, from some home about to be torn down, and reused on their property.

All this was done with help from the local craftspeople who “were invited to restore the work of their forefathers and create an experience of ecological living that was shot through with the spirit of ancient Malabar”, as their website eloquently and aptly puts it.

Brunton Boatyard, another CGH property is actually a 750 year old boatyard, once owned by a Dutchman called Paul Brunton (hence the name) is located at a prime seafront location. This hotel also has kept a lot of the look-n-feel of a boatyard intact while managing to give visitors a five-star experience to savour.

But there are others who have used old-world homes as a showcase of our heritage - like DakshinaChitra. The concept for DakshinaChitra was created by the green-architect Laurie Baker. Deborah Thiagarajan who founded the Madras Craft Foundation which includes DakshinaChitra said, “The implementation was done by Laurie Baker in the beginning and then by his erstwhile student, Benny Kuriakose."

She adds, "The traditional buildings were constructed by teams of craftspeople from the region, from which they were procured. The costs are difficult to give but a ballpark figure for the entire center, all costs included, would be about Rs 5 - Rs 6 crore at the actual prices - from the days (when it was constructed) between 1991 -1999.”

Another really good example of a heritage property being acquired and used as a home is actor Shahrukh Khan’s sea-facing home, Mannat, which he has had to restore keeping in mind the fact that he has bought a piece of Mumbai’s brick and mortar history.

The actor has not done many interior modifications to the house because he can not tear down walls at will but the interiors - which consists large four-bedrooms - reflects the best that a lot of money can buy – Italian marble, Spanish furniture, the large bathrooms have jacuzzis installed et all. This reputedly cost him in the range of Rs 5-Rs 7.5 crore over and above the cost of acquiring the property. In 2007, this property was valued between Rs 70-Rs 100 crore, according to a real estate website www.indiaproperty.com.

Celina Jaitley is another star who has a quaint 150 years-old bungalow in Moira village in Goa called Casa de Francis Celina. Another celebrity who is said to have acquired a heritage property in Mumbai is cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. He’s only just acquired the property in 2009 and renovation work has yet to begin.

Some wealthy people who are not in the public eye have also restored crumbling old mansions set in their own gardens, which in itself is quite a luxury these days, where every available square feet of space is converted into parking space or space to be rented out for commercial business. So, some family friends of mine who have the Mercedes and Ford dealerships in Pune and the Porsche and Audi one in Mumbai (so can afford to) live in a heritage home in Pune, which once belonged to a Parsi family.

They took pains to rebuild this property keeping in mind the original architecture and décor of the house. So, even though all the art and showpieces that are so painstakingly bought and lovingly arranged around the home belongs to them - the façade, the intricate mosaic tiles, the plaster-of-paris false ceiling and the trellis-work windows have all been kept the same as the original. Everything obviously needed to be spruced up and that cost them quite a lot of pennies! In fact, their architect went to the original source for more of the mosaic tiles because many of them were cracked and chipped and had to be removed. He went all the way to Iran for this! Not surprising since Parsis originate from that country – from a location called Paras in southern Iran, so it’s possible that the original owners had quite a lot of stuff imported to build their home away from home.

Yet another decrepit property that I saw years ago in Pune called the Jeejeebhoy Mansion, was ripe for the picking because it was also a big old house set in a huge garden but I think, it might have been under dispute back then. Such properties are worth crores today and Parsis had the foresight to buy real estate in some plumb locations all across India at a time when such properties were neither valued or hoarded. In Mumbai, they have housing societies in places like Colaba, Dadar, Hughes Road etc which is today prime commercial and residential space with ease of access to schools, hospitals, shopping, recreation and the entertainment district.

Anyway, what real caught my eye when I went to look at the Jeejeebhoy property years ago was the beautiful replica of a Rodin sculpture in marble, of the ‘Wrestler’ also called 'Nude Balzac' because its muse was apparently the French writer Honore Balzac. (The Greeks have an assortment of such sculptures, but I'm assuming this is by Rodin because of it's similarity in form and grace to his more famous 'The Kiss' sculpture.) This abandoned sculpture reflected the despair, over the neglect of what at one time must have been a vibrant and wealthy home. The overgrown garden added to the Neverland-like atmosphere of the place.

It is true that the rest of us can’t hope to step into such expensive homes – heritage or not – but sometimes the saying ‘old is gold’ holds good. In this case, second hand is very uber cool.

QUESTION THE EXPERTS

Here are the most common questions on most people's mind regarding owning an old or heritage home. I asked architect Brinda Gaitonde, who conducts heritage walks around Mumbai with fellow architect Abha Bahl, to clarify these issues. She has experienced the thrill of restoring vintage homes and explains what goes into making them liveable again. To know more about the heritage walks, click here: http://www.bombayheritagewalks.com/index.php

1. Are old homes bought and restored frequently or is the cost so prohibitive that it's not feasible?
A: It is not common for old homes to be bought and restored frequently. Usually they are bought up to be redeveloped and not necessarily for restoration. Yes the actual cost might make it out of reach, plus the added cost of repairs, which most of these old houses need.

2. If done...how much does it cost to do such projects?
A: It varies on the condition of the house, the location etc.

3. How close to the original do you aim to keep the restoration keeping modern utilities etc in mind?
A: Restoring an old house to the original, contrary to popular belief, can offer a lot of flexibility for planning and incorporation of utlitilies. It would require adept organisation and understanding of the construction methodology of the property.

4. Have you had difficulty in sourcing any material to restore such properties?
A: Not really, there is no major difficulty in sourcing information. Sometimes we do run across some problems to source material such as for e.g. encaustic tiles, stained glass etc. But these can be incorporated within modern materials to give a period, and at the same time contemporary look.

5. Have you done any work like this and would you like to share some anecdotes.
A: When I worked with ANL Associates at Botawala building, one of the eight buildings at Horniman Circle (in Mumbai), we wanted to restore some of the replaced modern aluminum sliding windows back to the original. So at a general body meeting an old gentleman came up and said he had managed to salvage some window frames from demolished historic homes. Cannot forget the day that I went to his workshop to see these original frames as I was literally window-shopping! He had about 20 different kind!

Corp sites should aim for this honour list

2011-05-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to know which corporate websites make the cut? The main criteria is whether it sends across a positive message about the company through the design, construction, functionality built into it, or not. But it's also a lot about attracting the attention of investors, customers, the media and jobseekers - or else why put up a website in the first place?

Bowen Craggs, are UK-based web effectiveness experts - with a classy but a tad spare looking site of their own. They have compiled a list of 75 companies' sites that are worth looking at, from around the globe. Their initial parameter was just taking into consideration the market capitalisation of the firm but they have ranked these sites under other categories as well, such as: site construction, on whether it is serving the media, serving investors, serving jobseekers, serving society, serving customers etc.

For instance: The top sites that improved their construction were BP, Procter & Gamble, Sanofi-Aventis, Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, Intel, Novartis, WalMart Stores, British American Tobacco and GlaxoSmithKline. (See table below)

The Top 10 sites according to some of the Bowen Craggs metrics

Click on the image to enlarge it

On whether these sites have embraced social media in a big way, this is what the report said: "We classified 22 of the Index’s 75 sites as ‘social media friendly’. IT companies have a natural community of experts, so can easily exploit the social side –see Cisco’s Newsroom for how far that can go. Elsewhere, most companies limit themselves to displays of networking and bookmarking icons plus, perhaps, some Twitter feeds.

Deeper integration of site and social media is concentrated in careers, where Facebook’s demographic makes it a no-brainer. Otherwise, spot Siemens’ brave decision to show how many social media comments have been posted about its home page videos and Walmart Stores’ coverage of social media channels by its search engine. This last may be the most significant sign of all – let’s see if others follow."

So, does your business site send out the right message, and does it reflect well on your skills - social media and otherwise? The sad fact is that, the only Indian site to get on this list is Reliance Industries - and it is dragging along in the bottom five of the list, on all the criteria taken into consideration.

Besides Reliance Industries, there are any number of Indian corporates whose websites could do with a makeover. Read this report to begin to know how to do it right.

Click here for the entire list in detail: http://www.bowencraggs.com/ftindex/indices

Read the full report here: http://bowencraggs.com/downloads/ft/BC_FTIndex_2011_booklet.pdf

Corporate lobbying: To do or not to do?

2011-05-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Corporate lobbying has got so much face-time because of the Niira Radia tapes that people were talking about it on the street, along with the price of vegetables and the ‘Munni’ and ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ item numbers. For the people in the know, it always existed in the shadows, and was never really brought up for public scrutiny. That is the real difference this time around – i.e. the public has caught them at it.

Since the tapes were leaked and uploaded on Outlook’s site and portions of them were transcribed and published in both Outlook and Open magazines, the furore has been about the big names being bandied about, by a non-entity whom no one had heard of in the past. What was meant to be an investigation into her tax evasion affair has turned into a full-blown circus.

Radia calls and talks a lot – to a lot of people. I actually heard three of the tapes and didn’t have the curiosity to listen to the entire lot put up on Outlook’s site. The ones which I heard were – Vir Sanghvi calling her up and actually telling her of how he slanted the tone of one of his columns to suit her convenience.

The other is of Barkha Dutt talking to her about political give-n-take, which Dutt has gone on air at NDTV and defended furiously, by saying that it is part of journalism to follow up on tips but she acknowledged that in hindsight, she should have been more careful of dealing with Niira Radia. She did not answer Open editor, Manu Joseph’s question, to his satisfaction, over why NDTV had not reported the fact that a corporate lobbyist had so many of her fingers in so many pies. All Dutt had to say was that, it was a judgment call made by NDTV, not to do this aspect as a story by itself.

The third tape was of her talking to Ratan Tata, where she goes on and on, while he listens to her and asks her a question here or there. Honestly, everyone should hear this tape and not read it – you get the impression that she really is trying hard to impress and swing deals for her clients. So, why is any of this so surprising? Were we Indians, really so incredulous that we did not know that lobbying happens when huge amounts of money is involved, or favours are required to be done?

The big reason why people have objections to Niira Radia’s profession/tapes, is that the social media ecosphere just exploded over her phone conversations. But these are conversations that could be had by any two people discussing deals and current affairs of the day, with no repercussions, if the conversations were private and both parties are not making use of any information to further an agenda. That is precisely what Radia was doing – pursuing goals – but isn’t that precisely what she was hired to do by Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani?

Ironically, this woman has been brought down by hubris, even though she did do her corporate PR-lobbying job very well. She may have assumed that having access to all those big-shots would protect her, when she was evading tax payments, and that was her undoing.

In the process, she has taken everyone else down with her as well. Don’t blame lobbying, which is considered a legitimate way to do business these days in the US, where corporates lobby to put a favoured senator or judge in the right position of power.

Google, RIM and Microsoft, among others, have dedicated lobbyists who espouse their causes in Washington DC. Why else would Hillary Clinton try to sweet-talk to Saudi Arabia and the UAE on behalf of RIM, when these two countries were threatening to ban BlackBerry usage? It was hardly a matter of state, but it was a matter of business interests for sure. After all, politicians are meant to look out for the best interests of their citizens and their country’s corporate enterprises.

India’s first public taste of corporate lobbying has been unseemly to say the least, but now keeping things in some sort of perspective is important. These tapes have made everyone wary, with people like Deepak Parikh, chairman of HDFC, going on record to say that leaking of private conversations has hurt industry morale. Notice that he is not pointing fingers at any of the people involved or even the conversations per se, but just the fact that, one person’s tapped phone entrapped so many others needlessly.

Meanwhile, in a more proactive and sensible manner, Corporate Affairs minister, Salman Khurshid has said on the sidelines of a FICCI seminar ‘Corporate Sustainability and Driver of Innovation’, that the government is looking for a way to regulate corporate lobbying. This is the right way forward, since the cat is anyway out of the bag.

Written for The Viewspaper

E-waste: A problem that will haunt us in future

2011-04-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Where does your discarded music system, iPod, PC, laptop and other such gadgets and electronic white consumer goods end up, after it has ended its built-in lifespan? In a landfill. This is where the rag pickers and garbage sorters scavenge for those motherboards and other assorted components, for that little precious amount of gold that they can pry out of them. Since no one has kept accurate count, it is estimated that globally, eWaste amounts to 40 million tonnes annually.

That is a lot of waste to sift through for meagre quantities of gold and other valuable metals such as palladium, silver and copper. But to separate them from the junked heaps of metal is a cumbersome task at the best of times. In India, this is done in a crude manner – by either burning or leaching the component. Needless to say, that such an ad-hoc process leaves toxins behind in the environment, and noxious smoke comprising elements from harmful metals like cadmium, lead and mercury within human lungs.

In Japan, this process is done in a more clinical, safer and cost-effective manner and it is being called ‘urban mining’. This fancy term explains what Japan is trying to mine from eWaste – some of it that they actually import to meet recycling costs – rare earths or rare minerals, which they have been importing from China so far. Their recent political tussle with China and with China holding back rare earth exports, has made the Japanese realize their vulnerable position. So they have reopened mining plants for recycling purposes.

There is an imperative to get a National eWaste Strategy in place that works without fear or favour, for the good of the environment and the people involved in the recycling ecosphere. Such a policy needs to be put in place by the Ministry of Environment, which is seeing a proactive incumbent in the shape of Jairam Ramesh. This IIT-MIT educated minister is leading the charge and pulling up delinquent companies, like Vedanta. Putting together a hefty penalizing system, will help India Inc realize that their e-waste can not be left for other people and generations to pick up after them.

This can be done broadly with the relevant industry heads sitting down with a government authority, and hammering out the issues of legislation, studying data, skills and technology needed to dispose of this e-waste in a holistic and clean manner. The awareness campaigns need to reach down to the grassroot workers, who actually power most of this informal recycling industry in India. There are websites and NGOs like Greenpeace that bring up the problem of eWaste regularly through their ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’, which does a good job of castigating and praising the top global electronic brands, whose products end up as electronic waste.

In India, eWaste management is a nascent concern at best and if any move is being made to make this into a full-fledged, skillful, license-based activity, then it’s so far shrouded in secrecy. There are no programmes, except one-off initiatives such as an online eWaste Guide, which is an Indian-Swiss-German joint effort to tackle this problem. What words of wisdom from this Guide, has percolated down to the local junk-dealer, garbage sorter and indigenous recycler is debatable.

So, this is where electronic manufacturers should step in and start spreading the word through their own corporate communications team, advertising agencies and via tie-ups with retailers who stock their merchandise. Any steps taken should involve the man/woman-on-the-street who actually do the work of going door-to-door to pick up the used stuff. Incentives offered to them should look at what would really benefit them.

The urbanised population can look to alternatives like trading-in or selling stuff through seconds websites. The better the condition of the product, the better resale value it is likely to fetch, and this fact should act like an incentive to get retailers to encourage people to use such sites as well. The reason is simple – Old stuff out the door means people will go to the retailers to buy new stuff. This is the very rationale behind e-cycle – which is US retail chain Best Buy’s strategy. They look competent and eco-conscious while getting people to send in their old electronics…and hopefully buy that new iPad or iPhone 4 from them.

Electrolux has gone one step further and created a line of vacuum cleaners that have debris from the oceans incorporated into their product design, as a style statement. These vacuum cleaners are called ‘Vac from the Sea’, and they are such wonderful looking conversation pieces. What’s more, there is a customized one for each ocean and major seas!

India’s manufacturers and retailers need to play catch up – both, on the product innovation front and the recycling front – and taking things easy is not a luxury they can enjoy because climate change concerns are rapidly becoming an everyday talking point. What is a talking point today will soon become finger pointing tomorrow, and eWaste producers better have some answers, if not solutions, ready by then.

Written for The Viewspaper

Being happy trumps making money and babies!

2011-04-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

What are people looking for in their lives? Well, the short and sweet answer is happiness. This state of being has been long sought after, since the time human beings were able to sense, feel and think about things that earlier was considered beyond their abilities.

With increased abilities come doubts and more questions. Happiness is one subject that both men and women seek in equal measure but it was always assumed that men were happiest making money and women were happiest making babies. But this report done by Euro RSCG called 'Gender Shift: Are Women the New Men?' has stated that, "When we look at love and friendship combined, those selections tower over the percentages that chose the options of “freedom,” “money,” and “power.” That’s an important shift: It appears men and women are moving away from what have long been considered the coveted prizes at the end of the rat race – namely, money and power – in favor of love and friendship, which perhaps earlier generations took for granted."

This report is based on a survey done with 600 adults in China, France, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The sample in each market was made up of 500 millennials (aged 18 to 25) and 100 Gen Xers/baby boomers (aged 40 to 55), for a total of 3,000 respondents. (This report only covers responses from the west. India and China will be done in a separate report. I'll upload a link to that report as well at the end of this post, if I get my hands on it.)

Ironically, in a reversal of priorities, the millennials, who despite all the social networking are the ones who want love and friendship more than ever, which is something their mothers took for granted, as the very fabric of their life - not something to be yearned for. They were also less likely to feel the pinch of work, societal or cultural restrictions than their mothers' generation did. The result is that they are 'less' likely to take up causes as a group but protest loudly for themselves alone.

Both male and female millennials had one great fear - that of being alone. The report says, "By far the greatest fear afflicting both males and females is being alone. That fear trumped being sick, poor, homeless, unsuccessful, or bored." But these fears have always been there and now men have to really gear up to face a new reality - that women employees will be preferred in the future and men may not have jobs.

The report explains why: "In most of the Western world, the Great Recession has served to further exacerbate men’s decline. Of the 11 million U.S. jobs destroyed since December 2007, 66 percent were held by men. Moreover, men dominate just two of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most over the next decade. In all likelihood, a growing number of men will be obliged to stay at home and count on their wives to support them and their children.

To some extent, women have become the new men – and vice versa. In an article in The Atlantic entitled “The End of Men,” journalist Hanna Rosin reminds us that “man has been the dominant sex since the dawn of mankind,” before adding that “for the first time in human history, that is changing – and with shocking speed.” The primary reason? “The global economy is evolving in a way that is eroding the historical preference for male children, worldwide.

Rosin posits that women’s increased economic power has led many would-be parents to believe a daughter would have a better life than a son. When couples look at society, they see a virtuous circle for girls (more successful education, more stable employment, more opportunities, staying closer to parents/family), while, for boys, they see a vicious circle marked by lesser academic and career achievement, more drugs and/or alcoholism, and perhaps even criminal activity.

As a consequence, more parents, if allowed to choose the sex of their child, would choose a girl. This shift (in attitude) is now beginning in other rapidly industrializing countries, including China and India."

As a woman - I can only say that it's about time that this happened. But how are you men going to deal with this? The prefabricated existence that made you so happy - at a great cost to women sometimes - is about to unravel. So are you prepared for this tectonic change in the balance between the sexes, that will occur in the future? If your ego gets in the way of acceptance of this cultural shift, then happiness is not going to be available as and when you want it.

You have to anyway seek it within yourselves - and women can only help you with this fulfilling search, if you continue to be meaningful to us, in our lives.

PS: Graphics are taken from the report. To read the entire report, click here - http://www.prosumer-report.com/gender/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/GenderShift_Final.pdf

Causes celebres and celeb endorsers

2011-03-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

Celebrity is a double-edged sword. One becomes a household name because of fame and then your every word and action is up for public scrutiny. Well, there is a saying that, if you can’t take the heat, then you should step out of the kitchen. So, it must be assumed that celebrities can put up with the heat and the glare of the spotlight.

But what celebs say and do are two different things – as is with every one of us. We rarely follow up on our convictions if they prove to be too inconvenient, and celebs are no different. In fact, they have the advantage of using their celebrity factor to spread a good word, or endorse a product or even tout a social cause. Some of them do it with a genuineness of purpose, while others do it for the publicity. And this thin line is blurring fast. People like Angelina Jolie and Madonna even adopt babies from poor countries, and put their feelings and money, where their mouth is.

In India though, not all celebrities are like actress Asha Parekh who built a hospital for everyone’s benefit, or like Salman Khan who built an old age home. And except for Sushmita Sen and Raveena Tandon, no one has adopted kids. But a number of celebs in India and abroad have gone into the business of feeding us, by starting restaurants. Some of their ventures have gone bankrupt as well – like enterprises started by Amisha Patel and recently Eva Longoria. These endeavours are for-profit but what about the non-profit causes which need donations of money and time?

This is where celebs usually donate time. So we have Pamela Andersen, Aditi Gowitrikar, Celina Jaitley etc taking up a stance for PETA. We have Gwyneth Paltrow talking about veganism. A whole lot of them will sport red ribbons for World AIDS Day and pink ribbons to raise breast cancer awareness. This trend is only just beaten by all those LIVESTRONG rubber bracelets that all of us – mere public – get to buy, to feel we have done our bit for cancer. The only difference is, we put down cash for it, while most celebrities are looking for freebies in lieu of their time.

The irony is that whether Aamir Khan promotes tourism in India for the Tourism Board or Amitabh Bachchan does it for Gujarat, the fact is that they are urging and cajoling us to spend our hard-earned money. So, when causes are being espoused by celebs, I think it is fair to ask them how much of their money is invested in this charity/NGO? I see film stars who promote causes that closely gell with the plots of their films. Someone who does this really well is actor Aamir Khan. He talked on behalf of Kashmiri Pandits only around the release of ‘Fanaa’. A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by a Kashmiri Pandit activist and filmmaker Ashok Pandit, who actually asked the very valid question that where had Aamir Khan been all the while, when they were being displaced by militants.

He has been the more visible face of campaigns like Earth India, Teach India, Lead India and Incredible India, and more power to him for this, but staying out of politically and emotionally charged issues that you may have had personal opinions about but don’t really know much about, may be in his best interest. The reasons are simple – as a celebrity, his word may be taken as the gospel truth by many and then twisted out of context by others. This happens to Salman Khan a lot.

Salman Khan has started a ‘Being Human’ social cause, which seems to be a smart move for an actor always caught on the other end of the spectrum from the boringly proper Aamir Khan and the even more media savvy Shahrukh Khan.

While some actors do their bit, what have been our actresses up to? Well they seem to be lagging behind their male peers. A whole bunch of them – Sushmita Sen, Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Katrina Kaif, Kareena Kapoor, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee and Karisma Kapoor – walked the ramp to raise funds for the ‘Being Human’ cause. But on their own, they seem to do precious little. May be, they have written that anonymous donation cheque or two – as do the rest of us.

But except for Shilpa Shetty, who did an AIDS awareness campaign with Richard Gere and helped raise £63,000 for a London charity – the Silver Star Appeal – which runs mobile diabetes assessment units, there is a surprising lack of news on what causes and initiatives our Bollywood beauties stand up for.

The two exceptions are actress and model Gul Panag, and model and tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi’s ex-wife, Shwetha Jaishankar. Gul Panag, a former Miss India and an actress who is carving a niche for herself in off-beat films like Nandita Das, is the public face of a family foundation, which has been set up in honour of her grandfather Colonel Shamsher Singh. This foundation gives out micro-loans to people in rural India, to give them an economically sustainable livelihood. It also has programmes in the areas of gender equality, the environment, education and disaster management. Go here to learn more – http://www.colshamshersingh.org/

Shwetha Jaishankar has started an initiative called – A lot of Dreams- where anyone can go and bid for celebrity collectibles across categories like sports, literature and lifestyle and the proceeds go to NGOs like Deepam and the Association for India’s Development. Go here for more details – http://alotofdreams.com/

The above examples feel like fulfilling ways of giving back to society, rather than just walking the ramp for this or that designer, who just happen to have a tie-up with an NGO, like CRY, Shiksha, World Vision etc. This is what most of our actresses associate with – merging fashion with a needy cause. How enduring such a match is, is anyone’s guess. After all, I do remember getting Greenpeace videos in my e-mail starring Mini Mathur, Kunal Kapoor and Cyrus Broacha – all of them advising me to do my bit for global warming. I got their message but I want to know how they contribute beyond mouthing pithy warnings to the rest of us?

What is well known is the number of brands most of the celebs endorse. Now when the two merge conveniently – brands and causes – more of India’s heroines may rush to be noticed for their social work, even if it is just for publicity.

Written for The Viewspaper

A site that lets you test drive a dream job

2011-03-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

iReboot helps make your transition to a fresh start easy by connecting you with the right professionals and actualizing that dream occupation.

Did you have a dream that you tucked away in a closet? A very good poem by Langston Hughes called ‘A Dream Deferred’ is worth a read because it tells you that deferred dreams could rot, stink, fester and become a load. So, what if there is someone who lets you connect with your passion and convert it into a career? Such a person can be your mentor at work or a business personality who is your role model.

But now there is an enterprise called iReboot set up by Mukta Darera in April 2008, to allow people to get a feel of their dream job and drive away those Monday morning blues. iReboot enables those who have not yet discovered their passion to discover themselves. As for those who know what they would love to do but are not sure about how to take the first step, it helps them take a weekend test drive of the career with experienced professionals from the industry.

This career reorientation idea was a bootstrap venture started by Mukta to “enable people to explore their dream careers.” This software engineer, who worked at Intel before she started iReboot, explained that her desire to help other people achieve their dreams was what motivated her to start this venture. “I wanted to start a company to enable people to explore their dream careers. My initial market study showed that a majority of the Indian workforce was unhappy with their jobs. I envisioned a “reboot” process to support people in actualizing a dream job. I think somewhere it was my own experience and realization of unfulfilling jobs that I converted into a career opportunity,” she says. “I started iReboot from a shared living room. Two years down, I have three employees and 20 consultants who run 18 different reboot experiences that enable people to explore hobbies, career options and make career switches. It has been exhilarating and humbling.”

This ‘humbling’ rush began with an early set of experiences in doing her own thing. She created and sold a newsletter called ‘Pickwick Papers’ while still in school. She recalled, “We shut down in three months. Years later, just prior to iReboot, I started a walking tour company which also closed shop soon. So technically, iReboot is my third startup, but the first serious one.”

When some people get serious about their endeavors, it usually is good news for society as a whole because a life-changing process has been set in motion, or a marvelous invention is in the works that will help humankind as a whole. One individual’s ideas could revolutionize the lives of so many people. Think Alexander Fleming and penicillin, Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, Thomas Alva Edison and the light bulb, a not-as-famous Robert Gair and his production of cardboard boxes, which has made the lives of millions around the world easier.

Today, ventures with a social heart are called social enterprises, and iReboot fits the definition. Mukta explained how it works, “We cater to three segments: working professionals, students and corporates. iReboot lets you try your hand at what you have been dreaming about - whether it is being a wildlife photographer or a restaurant owner. My proudest moment was when I got an e-mail from one of my participants. He was from North India and had come to us when he was in class 9 and failing in most of his exams. His family recognized that he loved music and sent him to us, to see what he could do for the rest of his life. He underwent DJing sessions and today has a promising future. To make a difference in a person’s life by connecting him with his passion and helping him give it a fair chance - that is what we are all about.”

“We are venturing into the corporate segment to reboot employees in their workplaces. We have collaborated and created shared marketing models with other businesses, and have had over 1,000 participants ranging from fresh graduates to executives.” She acknowledges the challenges she faces to keep iReboot running, and that is getting the right people on board. She says, “On hindsight, I should have started on a larger scale and scaled up a little more.”

But at the end of the day, she’s thrilled to see her dream take shape and become a reality because as she puts it “the concept of iReboot was so abstract to begin with, and giving it form and shape has been an amazing journey.” A journey truly well begun.

Written for Accenture's microsite - Vaahini - a network that empowers women.

An intricate web: Live, Work, Spend online

2011-02-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

The world is increasingly shrinking because of the internet and its reach. More people are being caught in its web, and across all countries and demographics. As these two Pew Research Center's tables show that a lot of the generations are now online for more services than ever before.

There is even a lot of overlapping happening between what grandparents are browsing and what their grandchildren are doing online. Such is the power of the web. With a lot of our work being conducted via this medium, our shopping is also going online and ofcourse our personal life history is already being displayed on forums like Facebook, Orkut and Myspace anyway.

Whether it is about being in a well 'networked' organisation or networking well with your customers - it is all happening in real-time, and people/organisations who don't realise this are going to be left far behind.

A McKinsey report states that "our data show that fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways."

Even a Bazaarvoice report called 'Social Commerce Trends' says that companies should play three main roles to facilitate conversations, and use the feedback to improve on their products. Here are those three roles:
1. Be like a parent. Parents have commitment, perspective and give guidance. Try new things, learn, and realize that today is just one step in your evolution. Look at results as a moment in time. Focus on gathering data and content from your users.

2. Be a good host. Make it easy for your “guests” (consumers) to share their opinions and meet others like them. Keep them engaged, which will bring more people to the “party” (your site). When you facilitate conversations online, you’ll help people make good purchase decisions, creating an asset that builds over time. This is different than what most traditional marketing does; you’re engaging people to help themselves and others.

3. Be a prospector. Look for gold. Start with the basic, business-driving metrics such as number of site visits driven by user-generated content, sales conversion, and average order value. Then use customer participation to go beyond your site – ask for customer stories via Facebook, or put ratings information on in-store fact tags. Spread this content to shoppers wherever they are, to help them regardless of where and how they shop. This is where true transformation occurs – beyond the walls of your online community.

The report quotes Sameer Samat, Google's Product Management Director as saying "that brands should also experiment with mobile to let consumers search for and find specific information, whether they’re in a store or on the road. Google has seen an exponential jump in Google shopping queries from mobile devices."

Social media has made it possible for people to come closer to the brands that they care for - not only to the front-end salespeople but also the designers of products, who now often incorporate suggestions and feedback into their new range - like Best Buy and Dell does.

Google's finger is very much on the technology pulse and in most cases, it sets the trend of what's cool and what's not. Samat has said that the three industry trends that defines Google's strategy are: online-to-store shopping, mobile and social. So watch out for more exciting platforms and social tools that will come our way, to make working, spending and living our lives on the internet, more enticing.

For details, see the reports mentioned in the post:
1.http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Generations-2010.aspx
2.http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Strategic_Organization/The_rise_of_the_networked_enterprise_Web_20_finds_its_payday_2716
3.http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/research/social-commerce-trends-report-key-takeaways-2010-social-commerce-summit

When two attention seeking professions clash for publicity

2011-01-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

Aamir Khan has become proactive of late and has taken up the Narmada Bachao Andolan's, NBA, cause - thus taking away the limelight from Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar. It's great that the actor, who makes obscene amounts of money for the one film he does per year, has decided to speak up for the rights of people who stand to be harmed, in the name of progress and the country's development.

His previous movie 'Rang De Basanti', about a bunch of youngsters who take on a corrupt system and become martyrs to a cause was a resounding hit. This movie got the defence department's clearance as well as on Maneka Gandhi's insistence, some scenes where animals were used, were edited out. The buzz generated about the movie was enough to pique people's interest and it went on to become a success. It helped that the plot-line was fresh and not your average triangular melodrama, that Karan Johar specialises in.

Now, he's in the news for lending support to a good cause but the timing is perfect too. His new film 'Fanaa' has been released and this time, it's got him playing a terrorist, who has the time to sing songs to Kajol, in her comeback role. The result is that the BJP has banned the movie from being screened in Gujarat. That hasn't stopped some of the actor's fans from travelling over to Mumbai to see Fanaa.

Why are the political parties catering to the lowest common denominator? And if you don't support these bans, then why don't you come out and say so? President, UPCC of the Congress party, Salman Khurshid explains to CNBC-TV18. "The Prime Minister has said that there is no question of accepting what the National Students Union of India, NSUOI, of Gujarat may be saying, but if they are saying something, we will have to listen to them and find out why they are saying it."

But he adds, "The government has a right to ban especially if something comes from a community saying that this is challenging our fundamental belief. The government believes that this is something they should intervene in."

But if the minority community in question has not asked for a ban in a particular state, is it still alright for the state government to arbitrarily decide what's good or bad for people. This is what the Punjab state government has done. It has banned the Da Vinci Code there.

Khurshid says, "There is a difference between what happened in Gujarat and what has happened here. It is a decision taken after having considered what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do. Finally, it is the will of the leadership at the centre that will prevail and we should wait for that."

All the same, BJP youth morcha has pressurized cinema hall owners not to show Fanaa in Gujarat and are now now even threatening to seek a ban by cable operators and video libraries. Is this the correct step to take in a democracy?

BJP's former Narmada Development minister, Jaynarayan Vyas says, "It is too much to assign everything to the BJP yuva morcha. In the first instance, this is the decision taken by the video libraries association and they do not make decisions under pressure from anybody. It was wrong for both the political parties that they lend their name to this movement. This is not politicisation of the movement, it's anger that is being expressed by the people of Gujarat."

Apparently, Aamir Khan's comments on the NBA has come at a very critical juncture, just when the case was about to come up with the Supreme Court. So Vyas feels, that the people of Gujarat are frustrated at Khan because he has chosen to take sides. But that's just the point, isn't an actor entitled to his opinion about national issues? So, what has driven the BJP yuva morcha into such a frenzy and the national spokesperson Prakash Javdekar to ask for an apology?

Vyas explains that, it's not necessary that just because Aamir Khan is a celebrity, everything he says must be respected and that he can get away with anything that he is says. He says, "Have you or any of these gentleman who are so much up in arms for Aamir Khan, seen the plight of the people - ladies walking 10-12 kms in the summer heat for getting one-day's water supply. Have they seen the plight of the children, waiting in the sun for four hours to just get one bucket full of water?"

Nonetheless, democracy thrives on debate and dissent, so why is the BJP stifling it? Vyas explains, "I fully endorse your view that the democracy thrives on the differences of opinion. Let us understand, why we are so much over-focused on this fundamental right to freedom of expression. Why don't you want to consider the way Aamir Khan preferred to express himself, the time he selected for his expression and the forum he selected to do it?"

"In fact, he selected a path of activism. When you are becoming an activist and going and sitting on a dharna for a day with the NBA, you are taking the path of andolan (protest). Then you are paid back in the same manner."

There is another dimension to this argument that everyone is skirting but which may be uppermost in their minds is that, Aamir Khan could be targeted because he's Muslim. There is the case of Arundhati Roy who has made her opinions known, for much longer, about the NBA rehabilitation issue, but her books and articles are not banned and I can’t see the Gujarat government raising the same hue and cry. Is that because she's not a Muslim?

Editor of Outlook, Vinod Mehta says, "I do not want to comment on this aspect but I suppose you could argue it like that. So many people have criticized Narendra Modi, do they get banned? I would not be surprised if people draw this conclusion, that Aamir Khan is also been targeted not because of what he said about NBA, but he also added something after that - he criticized Narendra Modi's role during the riots. I see a combination of the two factors. And the last thing that I want to say is that, this campaign against Aamir Khan is not a campaign of the yuva morcha in Gujarat, it's Narendra Modi's campaign."

Even movie director, Mahesh Bhatt echoes this viewpoint and says, "First of all the government of Gujarat should not be confused with the people of Gujarat. The people of Gujarat consist a diverse number of people, with all kinds of attitudes and mindsets. So the government of Gujarat does not entirely represent for me, the people of Gujarat."

But Mahesh Bhatt is one of the few from the film industry, whose known to express his views fearlessly and articulately. The rest of Aamir Khan's colleagues and friends have kept silent, unless it means showing up for a photo opportunity. Why is this the case?

Bhatt refutes this and explains, "The fact is that the movie industry has rallied behind Aamir from day one, but unfortunately, the media chose to use his solitary force as a more attractive product to market. The truth is that, everyone as far I know, has pledged support in action. I have personally toiled with the idea of filing a public interest litigation, PIL, against the government, because that is something which will stop them in their tracks."

He also feels that the situation is being badly handled. He feels that instead of banning his movies, people in the know about these issues, should "convert Aamir Khan to your point of view instead of banning him. You have an opportunity here. Educate the people about your point of view. This is not how you go about conducting your affairs. You cannot gang up against somebody, who is perhaps ill-informed or not educated enough. This is a great opportunity for you to step in and use your might to inform them about the reality."

Written for moneycontrol in 2006 but still makes for a good read.

Indian Women get a raw deal in India Inc

2011-01-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

Want to know how many women occupy top positions in corporate India? According to a Catalyst report, 4.9% are board directors, 3%-6% are in senior management. This is out of the 22.6 % women who are employed by organizations. We make a grand total of 36% in the overall labour force. This is all set to change because India Inc. is expanding and looking to hire more women this year, especially in the retail, telecom, hospitality, banking, energy, outsourcing, and infrastructure sectors.

Among many reasons why there is this gender inequality, one of the main ones is that women are labeled as “less assertive,” “less competitive,” and “less aggressive” in meeting the demands of a business situation. This quote from the study resonates with me because a male colleague once said I was aggressive, and so I told him that when men are aggressive, they are considered ambitious and when women are aggressive, they are considered bitches! This very dichotomy has been highlighted in this report.

If you scan the statistics on Page 8 of the report, they are an eye-opener, as they clearly show that as women age, get married and have kids, they progressively drop out of the job market. Also, there are fewer women in the ranks, working in the 5-10 plus years timeline, while prior to that – women who had worked for less than 5 years ranked at 92.9% while men were at 86.1%. What’s more, 64.6% women had a masters degree as compared to 59.2% of men. The dropout rate is high despite the fact that more women leaders in India (51.2%) were likely to have prioritized work compared to their female counterparts in the United States (24.9%) and Europe (28.1%).

Women in India (along with those in the US and Europe) stated that these barriers hampered their career advancement:
•Lack of key relationships: not having a sponsor, mentor, or champion; being excluded from important networks of key decision-makers
•Not receiving tough, honest feedback on performance
•Not understanding the unspoken company politics well enough
•Not having access to important or special job assignments that are highly valued by higher level managers

What was surprising was that more single/widowed/married Indian women were working than was the case in the US and Europe, across the same parameters.

The report sums up the key issues really well. Here is part of it...“respondents
wished they had known that “just” working hard is not enough to succeed or that they had been more aware of organizational politics and about the advantages of self-promotion. Regardless of gender and ethnicity, unwritten rules play a major role in career advancement. Career strategies involving communication and feedback, performance, career planning, increasing visibility, and relationship building were particularly important to career advancement. The most effective strategies to learn the unwritten rules for advancement in the workplace were observation, seeking out mentors,and soliciting feedback.”

“Talented employees expect their work to add value to the business, and they will not work to the exclusion of the other priorities in their lives. They want to work smart and be recognized for their contributions.”

Read more from this report here - http://catalyst.org/file/408/leadership_gender_gap_in_india-final.pdf

Hot-n-Not Social Media and their Impact on Biz

2010-12-21T05:49:00.000-08:00

A Social Media Marketing report highlights the trends of 2010, and is based on survey responses elicited from 1898 respondents who covered the entire spectrum – from unemployed people to those who own their own business. Respondents were people who worked at large corporations, or those who were in B2Bs, as well as those who were trying to close leads with customers.

Almost 57% of survey participants were focused primarily on attracting businesses (B2B)and 43% primarily targeted consumers(B2C). Most survey participants (75.1%) were between the ages of 30 and 59 and 60% were female.

The hot area getting a lot of talk-time is mobile marketing but this report says that, currently, only the bigger businesses (60%) are primarily looking to leverage mobile apps. The biggest percentage (73%) were seeking to optimize their websites for mobile browsing. Around 59% wanted to use mobile apps to network with fans, 57% wanted to create custom apps and 52% were interested in mobile advertising. B2C companies were much more interested in interacting with mobile fans (65.4% of B2C versus 54.6% of B2B).

All in all, 75% of businesses claimed to be using mobile apps to interact with ‘fans’ but paradoxically, with only 18% saying they were interested in advertising to them.

On whether, firms were outsourcing their social marketing efforts – a huge 86% were not doing it. But among those who were, 25.7% of large businesses and 25% of mid-sized businesses are currently outsourcing, compared to only 10.6% of sole proprietors.

All of these business owners reported benefits like marketing costs had dropped significantly, especially for sole proprietors, 85% said more business was generated and 56% said it helped develop new partnerships.

Search engine rankings increased for 73% of the businesses polled – with more B2Bs connecting than B2C engagement. The majority of marketers (56%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and nearly one in three invest 11 or more hours weekly.

Here is what marketing personnel in most firms were looking at mastering on social networks.

-Tools marketers want to learn more about for those just getting started - For those just getting underway, understanding Twitter tops the list, followed by Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn. Though, in 2009, Facebook was in fourth place at 77% and blogs were in second place at 79%. This year, the order has reversed with Facebook at 87% and blogs at 70%.
-Tools marketers want to learn more about for those who've been using social media for a few months - Social bookmarking sites top the interest list for these professionals. Mastering Twitter also remains important for marketers who've been doing social media marketing for a few months.
-Tools marketers want to learn more about for those who've been using social media for years - These pros are most interested in understanding Twitter and Ning sites.
-Social bookmarking sites edged out Twitter – with 61% of people saying they wanted to know more about sites like Del.icio.us, which ironically despite a 5 million user base is going to be shut down by Yahoo, which acquired it in 2005, and then failed to properly optimize it.
-The report also states, small businesses owners were more interested in understanding social bookmarking sites than other groups. In addition, those over age 50 were much more interested in learning about Twitter than their younger marketing cohorts.
-Males were most interested in learning how to use Facebook and females were most interested in learning about social bookmarking.
-B2C most want to learn about Twitter. B2B are most interested in social bookmarking.

What’s really telling is that sites like Ning, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, MySpace have got reams of publicity but this survey shows that a huge 72% have no wish to utilize it. Only 11.1% of B2C businesses are planning on increasing their MySpace activities. Similarly, with Ning – a platform that allows people to create their very own social media network (as if we needed anymore of them!) – only 21% of the existing users plan to increase their involvement but 57% will not utilize it at all. Meanwhile, social news sites like Digg etc will 36% looking to increase usage as opposed to 38% who don’t want to use it at all. Around 39% of B2B plan on increasing their social news site use versus just
32.9% of B2C.

LinkedIn emerges as a clear frontrunner - with 67% planning increased use of this service and just 8% saying they won’t be using it at all. B2B are significantly more likely to plan on increasing their use of LinkedIn (72.1% of B2B versus 59.1% of B2C). There is more B2B participation here at 83%.Other winners are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

-Facebook – 76% said they would increase usage – out of which 80.1% of B2C plan on increasing their efforts. 85.4% of large businesses will also increase their Facebook activities. More B2C participation here at 92%. Those just starting to use social networks, want to begin with Facebook, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn.
-YouTube/Video - A significant 73% of marketers plan on increasing their YouTube and/or video marketing. B2C are more likely to employ video (75.6%) than B2B (70.8%). Those who've been using social media for years picked this as the top area in which they will be increasing their efforts, with 81% responding affirmatively. Marketers with less time to spare but who have been long-time users of social media, use YouTube (or other video services) more. Also 51.2% of all men compared to only 42.6% of women use videos.
-Twitter - 93% of marketers are using Twitter and 71% plan on increasing their use of the network to further their marketing objectives. 85% of large businesses will be increasing their Twitter activities. This medium is being used by 96% of long term users followed by Facebook.
-Blogs - 81% said blogging activity will be increased, 5% said they won’t do anything and only 1% said they will decrease this activity.

Overall, at least 67% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Beginners were there for 1 hour a week on an average, as compared to their more experienced counterparts, who are online for 10 hours a week. Also sole ownership enterprises used social media a lot more than big businesses and also saw substantial improvement in lead generation and creating a buzz.

These numbers are really interesting to note because it really shows that a huge chunk of people are just not that engaged with all these 'lesser' sites, that have cropped up and crowded mind-space so much. People would rather have fewer choices. Fewer and credible sites, that will be around, like the e-mail services each of us uses today, and which is the most vital social link connecting everyone, that was ever created.

The rest, with the exception of LinkedIn and Twitter, are looking to create utility value for their services, by adding frills and thrills. How long people choose to be dazzled, with even more flashy apps and tweaks built into some of these social mediums, is anyone's guess.

PS – If you want Qs like these answered: # How do I measure social media return on investment? # What are the social media marketing best practices? # How do I best manage my time with social media? # How do I reach my target markets with social media? # How do I generate traffic and leads using social media? and more - then download this great looking report for more details here - http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2010.pdf

Do your employees have a voice & feel valued?

2010-12-11T23:55:00.000-08:00

If you have ever felt disheartened because at work you have noticed that people don’t pull their weight and still the management seems to do nothing about it, then you shouldn’t be surprised at this Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report findings which states that "84% of survey respondents say that “disengaged employees” are one of the three biggest threats facing their business. Yet it appears that little is done to identify, support or even “weed out” unengaged staff. For example, only 12% of respondents report that their companies “regularly and often” tackle staff with “continually low engagement”. Even according to C-suite executives alone, engagement is discussed “occasionally”, “rarely” or “never” at board level in 43% of companies."

This and many other facts cropped up in a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in July-September 2010. The survey researched 331 senior level executives in Europe and the Middle East. Almost half (162) of executives surveyed were board level or C-suite; the rest were senior directors. They also surveyed 80 managers and other executives for a more detailed comparative analysis.

According to the report, respondents came from a wide range of functions, covering 19 industries. Over half (54%) worked in companies with annual global revenues below $1bn and 22% in companies above $10bn. In addition, in-depth interviews with 5 company executives, academics and consultants with expertise in the field was also done. So, what has been distilled from them has been summed up in this report.

Most of it is not earth shattering news anyway, as it is what has been suspected by people all along. Though, it is good to know that it’s all on paper now, thereby giving ‘suspicions’ and ‘assumptions’ some heft.

The fact that higher management does not seem to be so clued in on employee engagement is not surprising. The top-most layer seems to view the situation through "rose tinted glasses" even as compared to their immediate subordinates. The report states, "47% of C-suite executives believe that they themselves have determined levels of employee engagement, a view shared by only 16% of senior directors outside the C-suite. More than one in five in the C-suite believe that employees are “much more engaged” than those in rival firms, compared with only 7% of respondents outside the C-suite." What’s more, only 13% of these top honchos felt that the line manager was responsible for staff engagement.

Well, if that is the case, then why have these big bosses let unproductive employees clog the system, when the decision to axe them was entirely in their hands?

The irony is that, the ones who most seem disinterested are older employees who have worked at their jobs longer. Though this fact was noted by mid-level management, the higher ups tended to have a distorted view of this issue. According to this study, "only 27% of CEOs believe that this group presents the greatest challenge in raising engagement levels, as opposed to 57% of senior vice-presidents, heads of departments or business units. The C-suite is more likely than others to say that the under-25s represent the most problematic group of employees, in line with the current management orthodoxy surrounding Generation Y."

The report has people in the upper echelon thinking they are responsible for keeping employees engaged – even more than their human resources division. It’s this blinkered view of reality that is probably causing the problem in the first place. When you can’t spot the hard workers from the hardly working types, it does look like the big boss is actually endorsing this laidback attitude.

But this study also points out that "a number of high-profile workplace surveys play down the influence of senior managers on engagement, with grass-roots workers asserting that their relationship with their immediate supervisor is the key to how engaged they feel. The tendency of so many surveyed C-suite executives to sideline the role played by other functions in engagement may reflect a trend in management literature that trumpets the power of “leadership” over everyday people-management. “We have seen a reduction in management training and a growth in leadership training”, says Chris Bones, professor of creativity and leadership at Manchester Business School. “If you were being cynical, you could say that this is because training providers can charge twice as much by using the word ‘leadership’.”

The report states, "But even if “leadership” coaching and consulting costs more, it is always going to be less expensive and time-consuming to focus attention on getting a few people to act better, than to identify and invest in training an entire tier of middle managers. Well intended or otherwise, the research indicates that too many in the C-suite may be drawn to the “leadership” explanation for employee engagement. Its appeal is bolstered because such an approach involves lower expenditure and less hassle, while helping to maintain central control. ”

"When asked to name the main methods that senior management currently use to improve staff engagement, 65% of the non-C-suite respondents answered “company-wide communication (through email or group meetings) about strategy”, whereas only 26% replied with “ensuring that middle managers are capable of good people management”

Here are some of the other ways that C-suite people said they would deal with morale problems - 65% would send out e-mails around the company or hold meetings that explains strategy. 32% would institute training and learning programmes, 28% would send out motivational e-mails, 26% would go down to the ‘shop floor’ to be more visible, 26% would ensure that people management is taken care of by middle managers more efficiently, 23% would look to conveying company philosophy and culture (shouldn’t long-term employees be familiar with this?), 16% would put emphasis on internal promotions, 11% would assess their staff on targets achieved, 11% would advance junior staff over seniors, 10% would improve work conditions and 5% said they would try other strategies.

What is compelling is that board level staff (87%) seem to be aware of this problem and believes that “disengaged employees are one of the three biggest threats facing our business. Identifying, supporting, or even weeding out, disengaged staff might seem an obvious action point. However, only 9% of ‘Managers’, the group closest to the grass-roots of the company, agree that their companies regularly and often tackle staff with “continually low engagement.” One could argue that the organisation is simply not carrying out the instructions of senior leaders, except that only 14% of the C-suite themselves agree with this statement.”

The report also states, ”It is also striking that only 6% of the largest companies, with annual revenue in excess of US$5bn, ever take the harshest approach in tackling disengagement and “regularly and often weed out” disengaged staff, despite presumably tending to have the highest number of employees, and who can more easily get lost in the cracks of the largest organisations. Such ambivalence is consistent with the fact that almost one-half of the C-suite respondents (43%) say that employee engagement is “occasionally”, “rarely” or “never” discussed at board level. Outside the boardroom, 69% doubt that regular discussions on engagement take place at board level, and only 3% agree that it is “a consistent agenda point for all major meetings.” Thus, a substantial proportion of company boards do not discuss engagement regularly, and of those that do, many do not take decisions sufficiently meaningful at their meetings to attract the attention even of those immediately below them in the hierarchy.”

Also, 33% of the C-suite occupants tend to think of their ‘under 25’ employees as being difficult to motivate, whereas only 13% of line managers – who are the people in-the-know - feel the same.

This glaringly inequitable way of perceiving which person makes any contribution to a business, almost seems to endorse the slackers way of working and taking home a paycheque. What’s more, since the top management thinks they have all the solutions, they might think sacking non-performers is not required because a pep-up speech just might help…or even a guest appearance on the ‘shop floor’ might do the trick.

But in reality, this survey pointed out that 39% of managers felt that their motivational skills mattered the most, 38% credited a friendly workplace as being important, 36% said values from senior management mattered, 33% felt clear vision from the management team was important, 27% said the immediate line manager’s competence mattered, 24% said brand reputation of the company mattered, 20% said profitability counted, 19% said the line manager’s enthusiasm at work mattered, 16% said senior management’s charisma charmed and motivated employees, 13% felt personal interaction with the top people mattered, while 4% felt staff diversity was the key.

This report comes to the conclusion that “it would appear that sufficient understanding or action by corporate leaders is lacking. Indeed, many leaders may well be grossly overestimating their own influence on engagement vis-à-vis that of middle managers. It is one thing to identify disengagement as a serious commercial threat, but seemingly another to take the logical next step to tackle continually disengaged employees and their negative influence. Many, though certainly not all, top executives professing to worry about engagement don’t even see fit to discuss the issue in board meetings, a finding that prompts the question as to whether the C-suite genuinely believe the issue is as serious as they claim it to be.”

Damn shame really – many C-suites may have a serious disengagement problem within, itself!

Read the full report here - http://www.businessresearch.eiu.com/sites/businessresearch.eiu.com/files/LON%20-%20PL%20-%20Hay%20report_WEB.pdf

A Gift of Humour

2010-11-18T12:01:00.001-08:00

I gifted a friend this poem on his birthday. It's something that can be also shared with the world as well - so people can take it away with them and keep it on the tip of their tongue or at the back of their mind or in some dark corner of their soul, to be recalled, when they need it the most. Laughter revives me.

A gift is not asked for,
but it is understood.

A gift is not hoped for,
but receiving one still feels good.

A gift can be wishes, a souvenir or bling,
a poem, a song or a blessing.

I've chosen to give you the gift of laughter,
for this moment and ever after.

Cherish and add to this gift.
Use it everytime you need a lift.

There is nothing that laughter can't cure,
making you happy, restored and feeling pure.

A free gift with no peer and none that equals,
the power of humour and a few good chuckles.

Life comes alive with laughter.
It sees you through illness, pain and disaster.
Now and hereafter.

African land grabbed for agrofuels. Will India be next?

2010-11-07T11:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve just read a report by an NGO called ‘Friends of Europe’, which has looked into the problem of European and Chinese companies acquiring – legally or otherwise – huge tracts of land in many African countries to grow crops for agrofuels.

The report explains the term “agrofuels” as the liquid fuels derived from food and oil crops produced in large-scale plantation-style industrial production systems. These agrofuels are blended with petrol and diesel for use primarily as transport fuel. Biofuels on the other hand, refer to the small-scale use of local biomass for fuel.

These crops are being grown at the cost of food crops, which that continent needs because dying of starvation and hunger is still a horrible reality for them. Here are a few salient points from that report. For more details, click here - http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/FoEE_Africa_up_for_grabs_2010.pdf

- The agrofuel crops that these countries are increasingly growing are sugarcane, castor bean, castor, sugar beet, palm oil, jatropha, sweet sorghum (for ethanol) – all of this for fuels and food crops like maize are rotting or not being cultivated.

- The reason for this is the need for foreign investment and economic development is driving a number of African countries to welcome agrofuel developers onto their land. Most of these developers are European companies, looking to grow agrofuel crops to meet EU targets for agrofuel use in transport fuel.

- Concerns about energy supply appear to be a key driver behind the demand for agrofuel crops - with the EU aiming for 10 per cent of transport fuel to come from “renewable” sources by 2010.

- This demand for agrofuels threatens food supplies away from consumers in the case of crops such as cassava, peanuts, sweet sorghum and maize. A study for the World Bank found that crops being used for agrofuels was a major factor in the rising price of food. Non-edible agrofuel crops such as jatropha are competing directly with food crops for fertile land. The result threatens food supplies in poor communities and pushes up the cost of available food. Farmers who switch to agrofuel crops run the risk of being unable to feed their families.

- While foreign companies pay lip service to the need for “sustainable development”, agrofuel production and demand for land is resulting in the loss of pasture and forests, destroying natural habitat and probably causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

- Just as African economies have seen fossil fuels and other natural resources exploited for the benefit of other countries, there is a risk that agrofuels will be exported abroad with minimal benefit for local communities and national economies. Countries will be left with depleted soils, rivers that have been drained and forests that have been destroyed.

- Biofuels have been described as “one of the most thirsty products on the planet” because of the amount of water need to produce the fuel. To grow the soya needed to produce one litre of biodiesel requires 9,100 litres of water. A litre of bioethanol produced from corn takes 4,000 litres of water and a litre of bioethanol produced from sugarcane can also use as much as 4,000 litres of water.

- Researchers at Pennsylvania State University in US are looking at improved strains of jatropha, including GM jatropha and the Gates Foundation is also promoting biotech solutions for African agriculture. Shell is involved in research in GM cassava.

- A study by the United Nations Environment Programme warned of the risks to “high value natural ecosystems” of cropland expansion. It concluded that “Global resources do not allow simply shifting from fossil resources to biomass while maintaining the current patterns of consumption”

- Ironically, 15 African nations joined forces to set up what has been described as a “Green OPEC” and a number of national governments have also introduced domestic targets and strategies for agrofuel use at home. The hot targets are Angola, Congo, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana. Countries not specifically mentioned but known to be targets of land grabbers are Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Sudan.

This report defines the significance of land in Africa as “To the vast majority of societies in Africa land is regarded not simply as an economic or environmental asset, but as a social, cultural and ontological resource. Land remains an important factor in the construction of social identity, the organisation of religious life and the production and reproduction of culture. The link across generations is ultimately defined by the complement of land resources which families, lineages and communities share and control. Indeed land is fully embodied in the very spirituality of society.”

The emotional connect with land sounds exactly like how it is in India. So, do Indian farmers also need to be aware of any possibility of illicit/underhand land grabbing that could happen here? I think they do. Our government should work with them on this issue, if it ever cropped up – pun intended – rather than work against their interests.

The Great Job Hunt

2010-10-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

Since I dropped out of the job market in 2007 for health reasons and also because I wanted to do something of my own for a bit, I had been inundated with some great job offers and some not-so exciting ones. Three years later, I'm back in a full-time job but I've also had a fair share of experiences that I thought I should share.

They are meant to highlight hypocrisy, evasiveness and that slippery-floor feeling, where you can feel the person is doing a bad job of trying to pull the rug from under your feet and hopefully pull it over your eyes! Well, it didn't work with me and so I thought I should tell everyone else about it. We've all heard of job-seekers fudging resumes but job-givers are not beyond acting weird either. So here goes...

1. This is a website that used to take stories I had written for my ex-employer - moneycontrol - because we had a content sharing arrangement with them. The site is affiliated to the CII and showcases India in a positive light to foreign investors through articles and research powerpoints put up online. I got in touch with them to offer working part-time on their content. In my e-mail I mentioned I live in Mumbai and that I would like to work at their office here, if they had one. After two weeks of silence - a lot of people don't know the art of acknowledgement - I sent a reminder and then heard from someone there, who asked me if I was willing to come out to Gurgaon as they had a vacancy there, which I was not willing to do. She then told me she would discuss the matter with people at her end and then do a con-call with me to take this further. The con-call happened where she again asked me to come out to Gurgaon and when I said no yet again, she told me that she would send across some PPTs for me to edit, and see how I did it. She also left it to me to quote a figure, in terms of time spent on doing the PPTs. They were on the food processing industry in India and Assam. She sent it to me on Friday evening and I sent one back on Monday morning and the other bigger one back on Wednesday. After all this, she realised that she would not be able to make out where and if I had done any work on those PPTs and hence she didn't want to give me any more of them to do.

I e-mailed her back and pointed out to her that she should have thought about this 'before' sending me the PPTs in the first place. After all, she had discussed this move with her colleagues and then done a con-call with me..hadn't she? What followed were e-mails which were in typical cover-your-ass mode because how else can you back out of a situation where you want to get work done, but for peanuts or for free.

2. This little magazine was hiring a features editor and both - a headhunter and a friend got in touch with me about it. I decided to go ahead and pursue it and see what it was all about. I didn't hear from them for months and so I took to calling up and finding out what had happened. They hemmed and hawed and I was told the editor was never in. It's amazing how the magazine gets published every month without him. Anyway, when I was finally called in to meet him, he told me they had hired for the position already - this was in March this year - and that he was looking out for someone to help with any contract publishing projects they got. The fact is, this magazine does not do much of contract publishing and I was just shown a couple of tiny booklets put out for a pharmaceutical company every other month or so. I didn't think they had the means to hire me for insignificant amount of work that may or may not come in every month. I was right because after all the due process was done, I never heard from them except to tell me, I was not acceptable to them.

So, why call me in the first place for a position that was not there to begin with, and which does not justify hiring anyone? As of today, this magazine's masthead does not even have the name of the 'new' features editor they had told me they had hired. If anything, since this magazine has gone bankrupt in the US, the names on their masthead have dropped to just the bare minimum, so it's possible that even the position that had been advertised, has not been filled as a cost-cutting measure. What's more, the previous issues even had the ex-editor still on the masthead and possibly on the payroll, as a consultant. That's not the case anymore, as his name has been removed lately. With two editors around - it's no wonder the current incumbent never felt the need to be in his office much! In fact, when I was called over for my interview and I was doing my written test, he kept getting his Facebook profile updated by a staff member, with his latest holiday pictures.

3. This is a newspaper that had a vacancy which seemed like 2000 redux - meaning like the first job I had when I began working in 2000. So I turned down the job but asked if I could write for them. A senior editor talked to me and told me how things worked and what the deadlines were. All said and done, I finally asked her about payment and she said she needed to 'check' on that and would let me know. Well, for a major newspaper that claims to take freelance content, she didn't know how much they were paying their freelancers - or that's the impression she wanted me to get. So, I waited for a week to hear from her and sent her a reminder. Guess what..she's still checking up on this after all this time.

4. This is a brokerage firm's online magazine that is difficult to spot on their own site unless you know where to look. They got in touch with me to write for them. I was told by the editor that they did not give bylines but paid between Rs 2- Rs 4 per word, depending on the content and the seniority of the writer. I was told by her that quotes were sourced by them and I would have to give a written sample - this is after they had looked up this very blog and got in touch with me.

The sample was submitted on 'Power Trading in India' and the worldly wise editor saw two paragraphs on carbon emissions in the entire article, and said she couldn't accept it. Again, I emailed her gofer - the editor got this person to answer e-mails on her behalf and she edits a 27-30 pager PDF and not even an actual magazine - and told her that this was supposed to be a test to decide on future payments and was not to be published. Well, that girl had the decency to apologise for a very abrupt and in my opinion a non-transparent experience. That writeup I did for them has been posted by me on this blog, last month. Take a look and see if you don't find it worth reading, considering the topic is as exciting as watching paint dry.

Moral of the story - Willingness to work should not be confused as willing to be snubbed.

Power trading could energise investment options

2010-09-01T01:58:00.000-07:00

Power trading in India is a nascent industry and one with huge potential. Apart from Power Grid Corporation and PTC India which are public sector undertakings, there are private sector players ranging from the established Tata Power, JSW Energy and the new player Adani Group, also entering the market. Then there is the ‘alternative’ power generator like Suzlon, which is in the wind power generation business.

These companies’ stocks are traded because balance sheets reflect the profits made on selling electricity to layusers but what about the actual commodity that they sell? What’s the market for energy trading like? PTC India has already been selling surplus power to Bhutan and is looking to do business with Nepal as well soon, as transmission lines are being built and operationalised for the same.

But according to the power trading consultant Feedback Ventures’ website, the volume of exchanges in India that trade in power is low - at about 2.5% of the total energy generated. So, there are businesses - like the above-mentioned website – who are stepping into the breach and helping some big names setup trading desks and also put together a business plan and structure a transaction system into place.

Power Exchange India Ltd lets you list with them as a member to start trading on the NSE and the National Commodities & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX). Their membership list is not publicly available, so it is not clear how many institutional and retail investors are registered with them. Thought the site maintains watch by mentioning firms who are ‘inactive’ members.

Globally, all the environmentally-conscious economies are looking to tap and develop sources of power, that is about moving away from fossil fuels like coal and crude to cleaner power like wind, water, biomass and nuclear energy. Published sources state that in India, wind power is likely to hit 6,000 MW but it is below the actual target of 10,500 MW, that has been set by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy for 2012.

As of now, the only ‘energy’ that is being traded is carbon emissions and it is not something that most retail investors look to trade in or even understand. Since, the industry is a new one even globally, in India, even fewer people are in the business of carbon emission trading. In the US, despite the downturn, it is a $144 billion industry. So, saving on pollutant emitting carbon is making some firms rich despite what is actually happening to their economy at a macro level.

So, just what is carbon emission trading? This is buying and selling of carbon credits. ‘Credits’ being literally awarded by how much a company has saved the environment from being polluted by its own factories or plants. There is a limit specified by a central authority for each firm/business, beyond which they cannot pollute and if it does so, it has to buy ‘credits’ from less polluting businesses, or countries as the case may be. So polluters pay a penalty while the good guys get rewarded. This is incentive at its best because it is money gained for being the good, cost effective and cleanly efficient business at work.

At the moment, even nuclear power which is at the centre of so much policy debate in India and the US, provides only 2.83% of power generation from 17 operational nuclear plants across the country. All of this is under-utilisation of the installed capacity to actually generate 1,45,588 MW of power. What really comes out is a meagre 4,120 MW. Nonetheless, India is looking to push this target even further - to 20,000 MW by 2020 at a cost of Rs 80,000 crore.

So, with figures like these, it’s easy to see that when this sector really gets going, an entire new roller coaster of a ride is in store for people, who invest in power futures or trade in energy, like they trade in other natural resources like gold and commodities, at the moment.

A 250-years old legacy sails into the modern era

2010-08-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

They are heirs to a 250-years old legacy. The family started in shipbuilding and, one of the ships that they built has history written all over it because on this ship, the American national anthem was written and the Treaty of Nanking was signed. Since then, the Wadia family have diversified into various businesses. Today, they have got about four businesses, which are listed public companies and which are governed professionally, in terms of transparent corporate governance.

Nusli Wadia and Maureen Wadia's two sons are sure making them proud. Jeh Wadia's plunged into the airline industry with his GoAir and is looking to scale up operations. While Ness Wadia is looking to move the family business into uncharted waters - of retail and real estate. He assures that their plans in these areas would takeoff anytime soon and his objective "is to provide an international mix."

Ness Wadia told CNBC-TV18, "We want to give something different to the Indian consumer. Why does one person always need to be in the office building and why can't one enjoy other things? So we are sort of sensitizing businesses toward customers in small things, like providing a concierge service in a building. So any tenant can go there and get flowers, or dinner reservations etc, we'll provide that assistance. So, again it is moving forward into customization and ensuring that we enthuse and delight customers, which we believe has not happened in India and definitely not in Indian real estate or in Indian retail."

Jeh Wadia adds, "We started as management trainees in our businesses. So we started basically from a very young age. From there, we moved on to say that, maybe we should not be too hands-on - to be less operational driven and more financial driven. Hence the restructuring and the need to look at new sunrise businesses like real estate and retail and the airlines." So, 2004-05 has been when the media really got to know, that the Wadia boys are more than just goodlooking faces with money and a famous surname to their credit. But Jeh explains, "Those (earlier) businesses were not linked to a national presence. For example, GoAir requires a national presence, it needs to be splashed all over the place. So, that the company gets more visibility with people."

"Financially, we came up with the executive summary in 2001. I used to go to Chitrakoot every once in a while, using a private jet. Eventually the person I represent and who is my mentor, Shri Nanaji Deshmukh, said to me, "Don't you think you should come like the common man comes?" and I did go by train many times. I found out that basically going from one village to another - for example going from Bombay to Chitrakoot took 22 hours. This took a lot of our time. So, where is the easiest opportunity today - from putting capacity into connectivity? That is air travel. Is there demand? There are fifteen million people who go by train in a single day. In 2004-05, six-seven million people bought 17 million (GoAir) seats."

With Jeh Wadia looking to snap up and convert the price-sensitive railway travellers to using his airline, he's also looking to move on once a stable team is in place at GoAir. He's going to move into cargo, engineering and all other areas of the aviation industry.

So for these young 'uns, apart from having enterpreneurial blood running through their veins, were there other people, whom they looked up to? Ness Wadia says, "I have always been influenced by people. I believe people are the success to any endeavor. I struggled to find leaders I could look up to in today's world, who are ethical, who support teams and who build from the bottom up. JRD Tata was one good example. Today we have people like Narayan Murthy and Ratan Tata. But more Narayan Murthy because he says very clearly, that 'my goal is to ensure that I can help people to dream and then help them to cross that water'."

Ness's way of helping people achieve their goals and live their dreams may just revolutionise how work gets done in his offices. He explains, "In Bombay Dyeing, we have flexi-time. We did that because we wanted to provide freedom to people. My dream is to have a situation where I can empower people - they can work from where they want. Today we have laptops, connectivity and telephones. Why does a person need to come to an office?"

He adds, "We as managers and leaders are insecure and we want to see people. I do not subscribe to this. Every human being has similar aspirations, to spend time with their children and their family. In Bombay Dyeing, we are looking to start paternal leave. So we are changing with the times."

Written for www.moneycontrol.com

Runaway bull Spain kicks out favourites to win World Cup 2010

2010-07-11T14:15:00.000-07:00

The FIFA World Cup 2010 final playoff is over and done with in South Africa and, everyone knows Spain is the winner for the first time. But here is an interesting report that Kotak – the bank and mutual fund house – came out with. It’s an interesting 22 page read called ‘Gamechanger’. I think they have fun sometimes doing offbeat research on issues which don’t have anything to do with their core business, which is cool. They might have done this report over beer and chicken kebabs at a pub!

The report states that all the predicting was based on past performance and common sense and the probability that the same nimble footwork, will be displayed by most of the top teams like Brazil, Argentina, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, England and Portugal. But anyone who has seen the matches till the very end has seen almost all of these big names fall by the wayside with the exception of Spain. Holland came out of the mist and took on Spain in the final round.

To forecast the winners at each step, they have used and, I quote from their report -

Simulation-based model with Poisson probabilities

Our model calculates the probabilities of each team reaching different stages of the world cup. The results are derived by simulating the world cup games by assuming that goals scored by teams follow a Poisson distribution. The following steps are involved in developing the model:
Step 1: Identifying the top 16 teams. We identify the top 16 teams based on our subjective judgments, current ranking and forms.
Step 2: Building lambdas. For each pair of team in the top 16, we assume that the goals scored in a match up between the pair will follow Poisson distribution. The mean (henceforth addressed as lambda) of the Poisson distribution is a function of historical performance with higher weight to recent matches, FIFA ranking and current form (captured by Elo ranking).
Step 3: Simulation. Once we have lambdas for each possible combination, we run a simulation of the world cup post the league stage. For a draw, we assume that the team with better ranking has a higher chance of moving ahead.

We believe that by taking goal scored as our simulation variable, we are closer to the actual match scenario and capture both attacking and defensive strengths of a team (vis-à-vis taking a win-loss as our simulation variable).

The report gave Holland (Netherlands) 74% chance of reaching the quarter finals and a mediocre 22% chance of reaching the semi-finals and a low 17% chance of making it to the final round. Yet, look what happened. The favourite was Brazil, which was expected to make it all the way to the final day.

The other top teams considered to be good bets to make it to each successive round were in the following order.

Quarter final Grads – Portugal-82%, Brazil-77%, Holland-74%, USA-74%, Argentina-70%, Paraguay and England-68%, South Korea-33% and surprisingly Germany was at the bottom of this list at 32%. Spain, Italy and France were not even considered.

Semi-final Grads – Portugal-66%, Brazil-57%, Uruguay-40%, USA-37%, Holland-22%, Argentina-26%, Holland-22% and Germany-18%.

Final Grads – Brazil-38%, England-33%, Portugal-22%, Argentina-20%, Holland-17%, Germany-14%, Spain-12%, USA-11%.

The final winner was supposed to be Brazil at 27% followed by England at 14%, Holland at 12%, Portugal at 10% and both Argentina and Spain at 8%.

Anyone placing their bets based on these numbers should instead have just gone the Russian roulette route, or taken a chance with Paul - the Octopus - who got it right with plain old guesswork and probably what passes for his gut instinct. I know I have the benefit of hindsight, which is why the report makes for great reading.

The icing on this cake is that the finals was supposed to be played between two of these four teams – Brazil, Argentina, South Korea and Portugal.

Brazil and Argentina are previous champions, so they will always have a reputation to maintain and defend and Portugal has the flashy Christiano Ronaldo (though I prefer the tall, dark and handsome Luis Figo) but South Korea?

See the report here - http://www.kotak.com/kotak_gamechanger_crystalballkicking_FIFA_2010.pdf

Kamat brings home cooking to travellers

2010-07-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

It's a favourite snack point for many travellers and hurried city dwellers. When doing a roadtrip, a craving for warm food overtakes you. One will invariably, find a Udupi joint doing brisk business selling crispy medhu wadas, soft idlis and paper-thin dosas. These typical South Indian delicacies are now being eaten by millions across the country. They have been made popular because of their easy availability, even while on the move, and their served piping hot.

Despite its presence all over the country, there is no big hotel chain that has been set up by the most prominent name in this business - Kamat. The family has small establishments dotting cities across India but nothing remotely huge, like the Taj or Oberoi properties.

Chairman & Managing Director, Kamat Group, Vithal Kamat said, "Kamat (the restaurant) was started by my father Venkatesh Kamat. The first restaurant was 'Satkar' at Churchgate. When he started that, for 20-years, the 'Satkar' was the only restaurant. We joined him and after that we created a brand called Kamat. But six years back, there were family problems and the family divided and that's why we couldn't take this brand to its height."

"Otherwise, Kamat was known for idlis, vadas and dosas. So we created a new brand called 'Orchid', the environment-friendly hotel. If we would have prefixed or suffixed anything to 'Orchid' like Kamat, then people coming to the airport would have thought that this (hotel) would also be about idli, vada and dosa."

He continues, "There are 4-5 reasons for it (the business not going abroad), the dishes cannot be taken away with you. Secondly, it's very messy. That means with idli, you have to give sambar and chutney. And the third most important point is like dosa, it is an individual skill. It differs from place-to-place. Now sambar also differs from place-to-place. The burgers, which are made for hamburger, are common. The bread is also made in a factory. But in South Indian food, you cannot just assemble (the food). The Kamat brand was in Singapore and had gone overseas but the thing is that in between the family broke up and that is why it could not go overseas (and expand)."

Is there a string of Kamat restaurants in the offing, Kamat says, "Yes I'll have a chain called Vithal Kamat very soon. We are coming out with more than 50 hotels and this is going to be the Kamfotel - a comfortable Kamat hotel. Clean beds, clean kitchen, clean toilet and at an affordable price and that will have the Vithal Kamat brand." But will this mean the death knell of his unique selling proposition, USP, the affordable, fast and tasty almost-like-home cooked food.

Kamat replied, "Idli, vada, sambar is (available) at an affordable price, which is between Rs 12-Rs 15. The property prices are so high, it is becoming very difficult (to keep prices down). I read that the big chains are getting out of the mall because they can't afford it and the turnover is only during nine hours. If you take pizza, it can be eaten 15 hours later. There will be speciality restaurants serving idli, vada, dosa and that will cost a minimum of Rs 35-Rs 45. Earlier, because the property prices were low, these items were served between Rs 10-Rs 12. Also there is great skill required. I will find out a solution for that but the presentation has to be different."

South Indian delicacies continue to be most people's favourite foods, but it can be made over to the fact that most restaurants that serve these meals are South Indian establishments - from ownership to sometimes even the cook being from a part of India called Mangalore (where Udupi is the name of a place). So, is the magic in the recipes or in in the hands of a few?

Kamat said, " In this business, you require family and you require people to manage this because it is a day-to-day affair. If there is sibling jealously, if there is a family fight, nobody is prosperous. What you also require is, you should be able to tickle the tongue of the guest and it should be value for money. Business is not an individual's monopoly, anyone can be successful in the hotel industry."

To succeed, what really matter is that, "basically the South Indian restaurants must have a clean sitting area, clean kitchen and normally the guest should sit there for 10-15 minutes. If you make it too comfortable, then the guest also sits for a longer time and the equation changes, then it won't be a profitable venture anymore. So you have to give him comfort to eat for 15-minuts. Wherever you provide comfort at an affordable price, success is guaranteed. The lesson I have learnt is, keep your eyes and ears open always. Second, follow the success route of others and third speak less."

These kind of businesses tend to be exclusive family affairs. One of the things that one is used to see is that while visiting a restaurant, the owner or a family member is sitting at the entrance, at the cash counter. Is the culture of bringing in professionals from outside catching on? Kamat said, "Actually I am a free man because I use the three 'R' formula. The first 'R' is respect for self. The second 'R' is respect for others and the third 'R' is to create responsible people. We have managed to create responsible people. Each and every person is part of the 'Orchid' family and is responsible. Sitting on cash does not give me pride, making profit for the company and for the shareholder and for the staff gives me pride."

Does the Kamat name, which rings a bell with most Indians and is synonymous with the food it serves, have any copyright protection? He states, "In India, copyright protection is not observed. So the point is that you have to fight it, someone will add some suffix and prefix to the name Kamat. It is very difficult to control piracy in India."

Despite the success he has seen, there are a few regrets too. He said, "The biggest mistake that I did was 30 years ago. I should have joined an engineering course or I should have joined the hospitality college."

He, however, knows what makes restaurants in general, tick and what they lack. He elaborates, "First, the smile is missing in those restaurants. Why is mother's food the best? Because she puts love into it. The chef has all the ingredients, but a mother puts in love. The same way, if you love your business and you do it from the heart, you are bound to get success."

He admits keeping his staff happy which is also a reason for his being successful. He agrees, "I have made them (employees) responsible so they understand. Second, choose the right person for the job. Third, never pay them less. Pay them 5% more than the market and at same time, give them respect and admire them. Whenever you see a good thing, appreciate them because when you see a bad thing you reprimand them ten times! But if you see a good thing, please tell them that you have done a good job, and that is how you can create responsible people."

Written for moneycontrol

The Mirage that is the Modern Indian Woman

2010-06-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

Being a mother is possibly a wonderful experience. But why do so many educated women, in this day and age, make a career out of it, rather than put their education to better use? I have always wondered what would my grandmothers have done, had they been given an opportunity not to marry young but pursue an education and then a career of their choice? I don’t think it would have included having eight children each, at home, from the age of 14 onward. Would they have willingly looked after huge homes and in-laws and the unmarried siblings of their husbands as well as their own kids. Not to mention work on the family land.

Delving into their minds, which knew nothing better than what was ordained for them by their parents, is not easy. I know there must have been regrets and longing for some amount of freedom from the monotonous chores and the constant pregnancies. But did they both make their peace with their lot or did they do a wonderful job of hiding their discontentment? These questions will never be answered by them because after all this time, it wouldn’t matter at all. For better or worse – their life is over and lived the way it was set up for them.

Ironically, marriage and children are the very things that most modern 21st century women in India, are still going after. They do have careers but a lot of them throw that up to raise kids. This is what our grandmothers did because they had no other choice and they were hampered by lack of education. So, what have we educated women done that is so different from our semi-literate grandmothers?

Here is a list:
1. Had children later and fewer of them, yet we need more servants to run nuclear- family homes. We also have the aid of electronic appliances, which they didn’t have and yet we can’t seem to do as much work as they did.

2. Have more servants – sometimes one servant per family member – and still claim we can not have a career and kids at the same time and therefore, drop out of the job market entirely. I mean even women with MBAs don’t seem to find ideas to do something from home, apart from changing diapers and helping their children with their homework, when their slightly older.

3. Only some women have it all – career and marriage - and these women are really the exceptions and still not the norm. So, that’s how long the list is, of the difference that education has done to women’s lives. It has done wonders for women with drive, organizational skills, intelligence and some amount of ambition. For the rest, it’s really a case-study of how education was wasted on some women who wanted to do nothing more than what their grandmothers had done, for lack of a better choice.

The modern Indian woman, despite having a choice, some of them are content getting married in their early 20s and raising kids. True, family pressure begins to build up around the time that a woman graduates from college and everyone says that one should have children early and get that out of the way. But the fact is that, I’ve now seen enough women who’ve had their first child after 30. I also feel that by then they are emotionally and mentally mature and they have accomplished goals - apart from marriage and children – that they set out for themselves.

This is not to say that women in their 20s don’t have it all but most of them have willingly sacrificed their own aspirations because they chose to go with the flow. I do think this herd mentality does cause regrets later, in some of them. If there is some amount of envy at the freedom I enjoy and which so many of them have willingly given up for love, convenience or just sheer laziness, then it shows in the kind of advice I've got over the years. Some of these friends of mine told me 'why are you bothering to work, get married and let your husband look after you.' They are financially bound to their husbands and want the same thing for me. How wise is their attitude is doubtful.

Here is an anecdote - I once bought a diamond ring with my savings and flaunted it at an office Diwali party. A lot of my colleagues loved it and the next day, one of them had bought an almost identical pattern with bigger stones, at considerable expense...to her husband. She admitted this, so I'm not just assuming it. Besides, having known her for a while, I had seen how she never saved her money anyway and she actually told me that she earned to burn the money on herself. So, I’ve often wondered why they have opted for this botheration of kids and marriage early in life rather than later?

When marriage happens later, by then you’ve enjoyed a successful career and made money for the children you can still have. Why give into family pressure when you are supposed to know your mind and have the backbone to stand up for yourself? Isn’t that what education was supposed to have enabled? Thinking through the pros and cons of being married is still not something that 21st century women in India do a lot about. Honestly, they just find the right man and hitch on to him like a crutch. I know this sounds crazy but, I have seen enough women of my generation who have thrown their education away and they might as well have never bothered to get one.

After all, our grandmothers were denied an education because their fathers decided for them, that they were anyway going to be married off and, to make babies, cook, clean and pick up after their husbands, you didn’t need an education. They also wouldn’t be given control of any finances, even to run the household. But it’s not all that different for my generation either.

I know of many who have never worked for any decent length of time to have built up a bank balance. So, they don’t know anything much about investments or taxes either. Most of the time, they have not earned the money to buy any of the jewellery they wear at their own glitzy wedding receptions. It's all done for them by their parents. So, after an early marriage such educated women still run to their husbands for everything, as a result of not having some ‘mad money’ of their own. Hence, husbands oblige with the add-on credit card. Most husbands pay off car and home EMIs – not only because they earn more because their wives are not earning at all! So, how does being educated benefit, either the woman or the man, in such an antediluvian situation is a mystery.

The big difference now is that, fathers are paying for their daughters’ education and some of those daughters want their grandmothers’ job profile! What a waste – I know atleast one of my grandmothers who would have swapped places with these modern doormats in a jiffy. She would have taken that education bit between her teeth and galloped away with it, to pursue another life for herself. Marrying and having children wouldn't have been the sole purpose of her existence.

After all, education is like money - if it's not put to good use, then it's of no use.

Here are three women entrepreneurs - two of whom have also defied life's odds and done something with their lives, apart from marriage and motherhood.

1. Sarala Bastian - http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/sep/30/slide-show-1-how-with-just-rs-15000-she-turned-an-entrepreneur.htm

2. Patricia Narayan - http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/jun/08/slide-show-1-from-50-paise-to-rs-2-lakh-a-day-success-story.htm

3. Srividya Rabindranath - http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/feb/11/slide-show-1-she-became-an-entrepreneur-by-accident.htm

Nature's fury teaches Mumbai a lesson

2010-05-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Ever since the flood devastated Mumbai on July 26, the spotlight has been on the Mithi river. Well, this river has been systematically reduced to a stinking drain, thanks to politicians encouraging rampant encroachments along its way. Environmental experts and the government are unanimous on the sustained damage being done to the river as the cause of the July 26 floods.

Uncovered traced the path of this now infamous river - from its origin to where it finally meets the sea - every curve of the river was altered by greed and neglect over time. Mithi river consists 1,600 acres of water and the Vihar dam is the source. It flows South meandering its way to Powai, a Mumbai suburb. Another dam at Powai feeds into the river.

From here, the river begins its journey to the sea, which is 15 kilometres away and it is from there that it is relentlessy battered. The river passes a four kilometres stretch, where lakhs of illegal hutments and industries that have been dumping waste for decades. It then moves toward the airport to its final stretch at Bandra-Kurla complex where it was once at its widest. What finally opens out to the sea is a tiny drain. The mouth of the river was once 1,200 metres wide and is now shrunk to 300 metres.

But even as citizens of Mumbai have slowly recovered from the equivalent of the biblical flood, there are some who have lost their homes and loved ones. For them, all the buck passing between the BMC and the politicians has just added to their grief and devastation.

So as the relief work carries on, MLA Nassem Khan vehemently blames the Municipal Corporation. But this is his constituency, so the hundred odd lives drowned or buried under debris or the fifty thousand houses on the banks of the river that was washed away, were just a vote bank for him. These people were living in illegal encroachments and no one saw it fit to move them from there. The minister, predictably, refutes that he was under the influence of any politicking.

Nawab Mallik is responsible for the Kurla, Nehru Nagar constituency, which was one of the worst hit areas. This politician told CNBC-TV18, "No one paid heed to my warning and the BMC is responsible for the damage." Ironically, he should know. His area, Kurla, has numerous illegal industrial belts and illegal hutments by the riverside. So water up to 12 feet high got hemmed in and could not find its way to the river and it stayed there for days because the surrounding areas had been raised.

Mallik's constituency is right next to the airport. For the first time in its history, flights were halted for four days. The reason ran beneath the runway. The airport has been built on reclaimed land and the airport authorities have often sanctioned projects to lengthen runways.

But how does one alter the course of a river, which kept getting in the way? Airport officials permitted the use of embankments to divert the river's course. This was done thrice and the diversion caused the river to turn 90 degrees. Yet the airport's expansion plans are far from over. When contacted for explanations, airport authorities refused to comment.

It's not like the floods were not anticipated - letters of warning, reports by the pollution board - were all sent out but people who make decisions for Mumbai city refused to read them. These documents and reports clearly pointed out the danger and the state government and the every successive administration was warned on many occasions.

In fact, the Pollution Control Board asked for immediate action in 2003. Corporator of Vakola, George Abraham says, "I had asked the BMC to take immediate action." He wrote a letter as late as June 15, to clean the Mithi river or else Mumbai will flooded.

In May 2003, the Central and state pollution control board sent notices to the municipal commissioner and the state government. The notices categorically stated that the Mithi river had to be cleaned urgently. Numerous meetings took place and letters flew back and forth but nothing happened.

Kirit Somaiya, a former MP has been writing letters to all concerned authorities since 2001 and now, as a concerned citizen, he has filed a public interest litigation, PIL, with the Bombay High Court, over the failure of the state government to protect lives and property.

In 1992, the road to Vihar dam was closed to the public for 'security' reasons but behind the high walls, the Mithi is in for trouble and no one is talking. Ten years later, even in 2002, the road remained close to the public and now a reason has been discovered.

Tonnes of earth is being dumped every day there, which is burying a valley of trees right on the riverbanks. Behind the high walls, machines work for hours into the day because the road is being widened. No one knows for what reason, only that it passes by two seven-star hotels.

Naseem has lived by Powai lake all his life. He's a caretaker at the Angling Society. He was stuck for two nights at the dam on July 26. He explains what he has been observing for quite some time now, "The water level in the lake is rising steadily and there is dumping of waste happening there."

Conservationist Debbi Goenka adds, that the river is important for Mumbai but the siltation, concrete and water level is rising every year because of so many buidlings coming up haphazardly, around its vicinity.

Before it finally meets the sea, the Mithi used to be at its widest - that's till the majestic Bandra-Kurla complex, BKC, was built and the river was in the way and needed to be diverted yet again. The Secretary for special projects, Government of Maharashtra, Sanjay Ubale says that environmentalists were consulted before building the Bandra-Kurla complex.

Now, in a typical case of pointing fingers and doing what was needed to be done almost 10 years ago, committees are being formed to clean up the river. This in itself is an indirect admission of guilt about the disaster. But will the government be able to clean up its act before the next monsoon?

At every point, a force of nature has been battered and abused and it's only fitting that she would strike back with fury. So, when finally the rain poured down on the city, the river coughed it right back in Mumbai's face.

Written for www.moneycontrol.com

Plantation firms leave investors uprooted

2010-05-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

They promised to make your money grow faster than their trees. Investors put in Rs 15,000 crore into these plantation companies, only to see their money vanish along with these companies. This is a scam no one talks about any more. The trees don't exist, and perhaps they were never supposed to. Regulators have thrown up their hands but many cheated investors wait in hope, to get their money back.

One such innocent investor who was led astray by false promises was Chandrahas Tiwari. He was looking for a safe scheme to invest his retired sister’s savings. He was on the look out for a scheme that would give higher returns than banks and yet be safer than investing in the market. Then one morning, he saw the pamphlet in his newspaper, which was advertising Anubhav Plantations' scheme. The ad was enticing enough he recalled. He told CNBC-TV18, the ad said, "Put the money and they will double it in three years. They were also giving away 2 gram gold coins for people above 65 years."

The Chennai-based company owned 2,600 acres of land, on which teak plantations were to be cultivated. The saplings were already planted and insured. The deal was simple - invest money and own a part of the land. The money that Tiwari and other investors put in would be used to tend to the plantations. He immediately invested Rs 30,000 and waited for it to turn into Rs 60,000. He told CNBC-TV18, "He gave us post-dated cheques too." And then, one morning, he heard rumours that the company was going to shut operations. He did not want to take a chance with his savings. Immediately, he rushed to their office in the city to withdraw from the scheme but it was too late.

He recalled, "In the evening, I went to the office to tell them I want to withdraw from the scheme. They said come in the morning for your money." By the next morning, he says the office was shut. The operators had left town. Tiwari tried tracking the company for two years, till he finally gave up.

The reason behind Tiwari’s problems was a failed project in a small village in Chennai. On October 21, investors of Anubhav Plantations were asked to attend a meeting at the head office in Chennai. Thousands arrived in the hope of receiving repayments. When they arrived, the office was deserted and none of the officials were present. The crowd, then, went on a rampage. The owner C Natesan was arrested the same month in Chennai by the Tamil Nadu Crime Branch. In early May this year, liquidators asked investors to submit their claims. It's been seven long years since Natesan's arrest and there is still no sight of any cash showing up.

The modus operandi was simple. Newspaper and television advertisements promised the moon and returns that no other instrument could ever give you. You just had to buy a tree for Rs 500 and this would magically multiply to Rs 50,000 or even a lakh in a couple of decades.

It was just such a innovative campaign that caught the interest of Nirmal Punwani. So impressed was the 32-year-old with the whole idea that he invested in not one but three plantation schemes - Enbee, Parasrampuria and Okara.

He explained, "I saw their ads everywhere - on the television, in the newspapers. Even my insurance agent was recommending them to me. I that thought that by the time I get the returns I will be able to buy my own house." In one year, from 1996-97, Punwani invested Rs 2 lakhs in these schemes. The schemes offered him returns between 21%-27%, which was a massive amount, compared to the interest being offered by banks at that time, on long - term deposits.

His faith was reinforced when the companies gave him post-dated cheques for the interest along with the principal amount. Punwani’s dream of owning a house seemed so much easier now. He elaborated, "They gave me contracts on a stamp paper. Each contract made me an owner of a tiny plot of land. It seemed all so genuine. I never imagined eight years down the line, I would have to write that money off."

His cheques bounced one after the other. When Punwani contacted the companies, there was no response. The agent who had recommended the companies to him was untraceable. Finally, Punwani had to take a loan from a bank to help finance his house. Reports of default began to replace the ads that had once filled newspaper pages.

Meanwhile, as usual, it took a while for authorities to even figure out who should be regulating these companies. After the initial confusion between the Reserve Bank of India, RBI, the Department of Company Affairs and Sebi, a press release was issued by the government on November 18, 1997. Such schemes would then on be called Collective Investment Schemes falling under the Sebi Act, 1992. Just another instance, of shutting the door after the horse had bolted!

Even while regulators were setting up guidelines and researching these investment schemes, the post-dated cheques began to bounce. In January 1999, a committee was set up under the chairmanship of Dr S A Dave. The committee had representatives from the government ministries, regulatory bodies, consumer forums, professional bodies and the plantation industry.

The Dave Committee started analysing information submitted by these plantation companies and visited the plantation sights. It was found that a large amount of money was collected and most of them did not have any experience in agro-based activites. There was also high risk associated with these ventures due to the long gestation period that was involved. Thus, Sebi made it mandatory for all existing plantation schemes to get a credit rating from a rating agency.

When the plantation companies applied for ratings, there was a big shock in store for the investors. Almost all plantation companies got a high risk rating from the credit agencies. It also meant, that once the ratings were out, the companies would have to carry them in all their advertisements, which were aimed at mobilising funds.

Both Anubhav Plantations’ teak scheme and Enbee Plantations were assigned a Grade 5 or the lowest grade by Duff Care Rating, DCR, and CARE respectively. The ratings only confirmed the investors worst fears - they might never see their money again. Angry investors did everything from agitating in front of offices of these companies to filing petitions in courts. All through, the companies said that they ran genuine schemes and that each and every investor would be paid.

While investors were still trying to come to terms with the fact that these schemes were never going to give them what they promised, in November 1999, the Dave Committee drafted guidelines that were to regulate these companies. Today, there is not a single Collective Investment Scheme that is registered under Sebi. The units that small investors were given have never found their way to the stock exchanges.

On January 18, 2002, Sebi filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court, according to which 513 companies had failed to wind-up their schemes and repay investors. The high court passed an order to freeze the bank accounts of these companies and their directors. The order was circulated in all the leading newspapers and the RBI was ordered to circulate this order in all the banks.

Even after court orders being passed and the properties put under liquidation, investors still haven’t got their money back. So will they ever see any sight of their money? Former Executive Director at Sebi, Dharmishta Raval who headed the legal division and was also a member of the Dave Committee admitted, "It took Sebi 4-5 years to frame regulations for these Collective Investment Schemes and these regulations were not too stringent." He added, "Sebi went to court to freeze accounts of promoters of these schemes. Also, Rs 1,200 crore has been repayed to investors."

Primary Market expert Prithvi Haldia who has culled out enormous data on these plantation schemes remarked, "Sebi had stopped new plantation schemes from coming in."

But this is cold comfort for people whose money is still in some other grubby hands and not in their own. The lesson to be learnt from this story is, to not fall prey to promises that sound too good to be true. After all, you owe it to yourself to be sure when you part with your hard earned money.

Pictures are representative.

Written for www.moneycontrol.com

Source code theft may blight BPO bubble

2010-04-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

India is at present, a favoured haven for outsourcing. Whether it is data or software research, here brilliant minds come with a cheap price tag. This is where every foreign company wants to move its back office or its services end of their business to save on costs.

While everybody is celebrating India’s great outsourcing success, there is a darker side to this sunny, happy ever after picture. What do you do when the product you spent years and money researching on, is stolen and sold with effortless ease on the internet and having stolen your cyber - identity, the criminal roams free on the streets, while the law stands and gapes in amazement.

The Managing Director of Geometric Software Solutions, Manu Parpia said, "The source code is a readable blueprint copy of any software. Anyone who has access to the source code can alter the software dramatically and the dangers of it falling into the wrong hands are great."

A source code looks like a string of letters and numbers jumbled up. Get your hands on the code and you can easily make a lookalike copy of the Adobe Pagemaker software and print identity cards for high security firms. A source code holds the key to a product, that could give any software firm the upper hand in the market and change the security dynamics of a nation. Today, stealing these lines of code is also the latest buzzword in the world of computer crimes.

CNBC-TV18 reports on this darker side of the world of outsourcing. The seamier story of what sometimes occurs in swank looking buildings with their laptops and blinking monitors and as more and more international companies furiously outsource their core functions to India, along with critical products, India is also fast becoming a haven for source code theft.

In August 2002, a former employee of software firm Geometric Software Solutions Ltd, GSSL, was caught red-handed trying to sell a data source code. It was the property of GSSL’s American client Solidworks. The employee had demanded a price of $240,000 for the code. It was the first reported case of data source code theft in India.

During his tenure at GSSL, Ashok Mehta left to go home like his other colleagues. He was frisked by the security guards but no one noticed an innocent CD that he carried on his person. On that CD was the data source code, for a product that GSSL was developing for Solidworks. The product accounted for sales between $60 to $90 million.

Mehta left the company under mysterious circumstances but he was not finished yet. A a year later, in 2002, someone from India contacted a firm in the US, offering to sell the source code for a Solidwork product. With this, Mehta was back in business. The company got suspicious and informed Solidwork and GSSL. They got in touch with the Central Bureau of Investigation, CBI, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI.

In August of that year, Mehta set up a rendezvous for a buyer at a five star hotel in New Delhi. No sooner was the transaction through, that the CBI moved in and arrested Mehta for attempting to sell the code. The buyer was an FBI agent Nanette Day. He had offered to sell the code for $200,000 to Nanette Day.

However, it was not the price that had GSSL worried. Says Manu Parpia, "I cannot say exactly what it was worth, but the product was getting Solidworks sales of around $90million every year at that time."

While the CBI and the FBI celebrated, Solidworks had more worries on their mind. While a case had been filed, the trial was nowhere in sight. It was a long wait. One that lasted two entire years and in the meantime Mehta was out on bail. All Solidworks could do was pray that there were no more copies available for prospective buyers.

Meanwhile, GSSL is still recovering from an immediate loss in business and probably loss in prospective clientele. Parpia said, "There were many American firms who were in touch with GSSL but after the incident, they vanished. I don’t know if it was the incident that scared them away but they never came back to India for any projects. I think GSSL and India lost a lot of business.

Then two months later, in November, the biggest hit-of-them all occurred. Cisco, admitted that they were looking into a source code theft. A group called the Source Code Club, SCC, claimed they had the code and demanded a price of $240,000 for it.

A Cisco employee on the condition of anonymity said, "My friend used to find means of cheating company security systems. He used to use his bluetooth enabled devices to upload the source code files to the internet, and then sell it to other companies or pretend it was his own work and get better jobs with other companies."

Sources say the Cisco code has allegedly been stolen by former employees based in India. If that is confirmed, then this would go down as the third high profile source code theft in the country to have been reported in the last two years, all within a span of four months.

Sources told CNBC-TV18 that after initial investigations were through, the leads are now pointing towards India. How groups like the SCC get their hands on a data source code is not so easy to trace but there are employees who are on the constant lookout for a buyer.

A huge faction of the foreign media and many American firms are now branding India as every outsourcers nightmare, in terms of security and the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, IPR.

Some players feel it is too early to call the thefts in India, a rising trend. What is worrying however is the way the Indian judiciary has responded to such cases and that is what differentiates the US from India.

Parpia added, "The essential difference is in the enforceability. In the US, people are more relaxed because they know the law will take its course. But the judiciary in India works on a precedent and there are none right now. The outcome of the GSSL case will be of great importance to the IT industry in India, in that sense."

Another situation which came to light is of Sandeep Jolly, the owner of Jolly Technologies. He was operating from San Carlos in the US. Then in 2004, he decided to cash in on the hottest outsourcing destination - India. He began research and development for his products in Mumbai, from an apartment in Powai. His products included identity cards for security firms in the United States including the US army.

He hired a group of young enthusiastic software engineers and began operations in March 2004. A few months into the operations, Jolly’s executives say they noticed one of their recruits spending a lot of time on the internet. Taking precautions, he moved her to a different department but according to him, the damage had already been done. His investigations revealed that the employee had been uploading several source codes to an unknown e-mail account. Gathering further evidence, Jolly and his employees restored deleted files. He took these to the cyber crime department, but he says they took no interest.

Sandeep said, "They (the police) were not of too much assistance. They told us that property enforcement rights are not there in India and they cannot do too much about it." He adds that the links in the case are details of the files that were uplinked by the employee to various mail IDs. He approached Yahoo for the details but was asked to get a letter from the local police. Jolly claims this has not been done yet.

While the police refused to comment officially, sources in the cyber-crime wing told us that they did not believe the Jolly case was genuine. The company had not kept records of computers on which their employees were working and as a result it could not be ascertained if there was source code theft or not.

Jolly Technologies has sued the Mumbai Police. But the police have their own version of this case. They say that the employee alleges that Sandeep Jolly sexually harassed her and persistently asked her out to movies and dinner. Apparently it was not anything overt but but there was something happening here, which has led the police to believe that Sandeep was making a preemptive move.

In a recent hearing, the high court has asked the Mumbai Police to file an affidavit of what actions they have taken so far. Jolly fears it may be too late. The FBI officials say that since the matter has already been reported to the local police, it would not be proper for them to investigate. Jolly has pulled out of its operations in Mumbai.

Those directly affected by such thefts, say that many major firms in the US are watching these cases and will act depending on the outcome of the trial.

Vice President of Zinnov Technology, Vamsee Tirukalla said, "Every client meeting I go to, they ask me what has happened in the GSSL case. Every major player in the US wants to know what the outcome of the case will be and here in India the case has only just gone to trial. I guess in the US, when someone is arrested for a source code theft, the organization knows the law will take its course. However in India, people think they can steal a source code and get away with it."

Analysts however say that the benefits of outsourcing are too many, for an international company to pull out of India entirely.

Written for www.moneycontrol.com

Fun-n-Fab Reading is Here!

2010-03-25T15:02:00.001-07:00

Another fun-n-fab and informative Seconddealnsteal.com issue is here. This time, there is a 'Donate your Old Shoes and get a cash voucher of up to Rs 1,000' offer from Bigshoebazaar.com, which is working with an NGO called Goonj on this social initiative. This offer is on only till March 31. So, read the ezine for more details NOW.

Want to catch up on what you've missed? Read all the site's ezines here - http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/20182491-seconddealnsteal

Burnout: First sizzle and then fizzle out

2010-03-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

A great career and having achieved everything early in life is a sure sign of success but it may come at a very high price. Burnout is evident, when too much is done at a breakneck pace. Stories abound of players in their teens who shone and had a lot of promise and then fizzled out in their early twenties. Hot shot popstars, sportspersons and movie stars are more prone than most to this phenomenon

Former cricketer, Javagal Srinath agrees, "It (burnout) is a real issue, if you see the demands on players these days, as well as the length of the season, these two factors definitely contribute to burnouts. And burnouts is just not for everyone, it’s for the people who have really achieved and the overly dedicated people.

Managing Director & CEO, Deutsche Bank India, Gunit Chadha told CNBC-TV18, "Even though one would argue that the longevity in the corporate world, of an average life span is much longer than in the cricketing world. But increasingly, I think a combination of peer pressure, of the reward which goes with success, is making a lot of young talent actually burn themselves out by the time they enter the late 30s or early 40s. So I think it is a real phenomenon, which has started to emerge in India."

Burnout - the very term connotes an ending. It may be true in extreme cases but most people mistake a slump for a permanent fizzling out. Even though retiring from centrestage for players may be due to their physical condition, psychological condition or motivatio levels. Ironically, these are the same factors that also characterise people who have burned out. Srinath prefers to call certain temporary down periods as a "slump or staleness."

Both the physical and emotional aspects affect a person's preformance. Srinath explained, "If your mind is really stressed, then obviously it reflects in your body and if your body is really tired then it reflects in you mind. So I think both equally contribute to the staleness or burnouts that we are talking about."

In the corporate scene, there are certain people with extreme perfectionist tendencies who are at a high risk of fading away at a younger age. The employee who spends 70-hours a week in office and does not take any vacations or it may be a person who is really a perfectionist and hugely competitive and is struggling under a lot of peer pressure.

Chadha said, "I think it’s a convergence of the the two. The two prototypes really become one prototype - aggressive, competitive - who wants to put in those extra hours, wants to have excellence plus be a perfectionist."

He added, "One thing is that I lead by example - I take my 3-4 vacations a year! So that’s a good start. But on a more serious note - at Deutsche Bank for instance, we have Friday dress downs, which again inculcates a little amount of relaxation in the office. We recently had a Deutsche Bank cricket tournament where we invited Deutsche Bank teams from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Singapore to come down and spent three days in celebration."

"We do a lot of Deutsche Bank off-sides. So in various respects, we try to make employees have fun, build team work and not let people become the victims of their own success. So I think leadership in an organisation has a lot to play in this as well." However, Srinath reiterated that spotting this tendency to overdo things is half the problem solved and is a great preventive measure.

Chadha opined, "I think most of it is because of the pressure that you put on yourself. As you build longevity in your career, you start judging yourself in your own mirror, in your own soul, within ourselves rather than in the eyes of the beholder. I think when you reach that realization, I think you can cut back the pressure because then you are not doing it for public opinion, you are doing it for yourself."

Corporates are taking the issue of burnouts seriously. But with corporates tightening their belts, "people are moving from 40-50 hours work weeks to 72-80 hours work weeks. The pressure on individuals is growing and burnouts are starting to increase. I think it’s a very clear phenomena in this century," says Chadha. The flipside is that managements are also encouraging the habit of burning the midnight oil by rewarding such hardworking employees with bonuses and thus perpetuating the vicious circle.

Chadha explained, "Very often what happens is when employees burn out, people make wrong judgments and rather than remodify the situation, the employee probably leaves the company or takes VRS or does something to that effect and that’s what the competitive pressure of life makes you do."

"But I think as employers start respecting talent more and creating preventive conditions in organisations that are more amenable to employees ie. creates balance between work and family, I think the problem will correct itself. Companies' responses would get more preventive driven, but at the the same time I think the social stigma, which is associated with burnouts and losing jobs will come down. People will just accept it as reality."

Written eons ago for my former employer www.moneycontrol.com but it's still valid today.

Cut the crap

2010-03-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

Indians are travelling a lot these days, which is a good thing because travelling widens your horizons considerably. What I really enjoy hearing about is how amazed they all seem at the level of cleanliness and civic manners found there.

It’s such a pity that we need to go abroad to learn it ourselves. I have some questions to ask such globetrotters.

* Do you not know that defecating, urinating, spitting and worse in public is not exactly entertainment for others? These things are not done only by the lower class and illiterate people in India. A lot of educated people throw snack wrappers out of their cars or spit in public or get out of cars and water the plants, where they can find them!

* Do you know that your pampered pets called Frisky, Rhino, Cocoa etc are not allowed to poop in public? Since they don’t know that, you should be vigilant and pick up after them, the way you would be expected to do if you were walking your pet in New York, Sydney, London or Moscow. I’ve seen so many well-heeled pet owners – yes, the ones who look like they travel quite a bit – who look the other way while their pets are decorating places like Worli Seaface and Marine Drive. No wonder, pets are going to be banned from Marine Drive.

* You can bet some bleeding heart will object to this and it most likely will be a pet owner, who never picks up his/her doggy poo. Why should they? Aren’t they paying a poor BMC worker to do that?

Would they be using this line of argument with a US cop who would have fined them with a look of disgust on his face. The minute he said something like ‘Go back to India and do this because it’s not allowed here’, they would have gone crying to the media and claimed racial abuse. I, for one, would applaud the cop’s attitude. After all, he’s doing his job and maintaining law and order in his country, so obviously he’s not going to accept tourists and immigrants treating his country like a public toilet.

Foreign countries are clean and great places to visit because they are kept that way by their citizens. I don’t think they have started importing our poor BMC souls yet to clean up after them. We need to wake up and take responsibility for our (and our pets’) actions and not expect a ‘clean and green’ country to emerge like a miracle overnight. We need to make it happen.

The only constant thing is change and a drastic change in attitude would help. To start with, importing a desire to keep our country clean would be a great idea. Let’s live and learn the good stuff.

Written for www.dancewithshadows.com

100 best global brands: Indian brands absent

2010-02-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

BusinessWeek put out a list of the 100 Best Global brands in 2009, compiled by the consultancy Interbrand. Some brands have prospered amid the hard times — or at least held their own. Others have slipped a number of places. However, the magazine's website also issued a disclaimer that, "The brand valuations draw upon publicly available information, which has not been independently investigated by Interbrand. Valuations do not represent a guarantee of future performance of the brands or companies."

Overall clothing brands like Gucci, H&M and Zara have risen on this list and so have producers of perishable consumer goods like Kellog’s, McDonald’s, Marlboro, Pepsi, Budweiser, Heinz and Nescafe. Coca-Cola reigned supreme for two years in a row (2008 and 09) – that’s probably because it’s the one thing that most people consume without too much thought given to it. What’s a few liquid calories - it’s not like you have hogged a cholesterol filled meal at McDonald’s, right?

Some electronic manufacturers who did better than their peers are: Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Apple, Samsung, Philips and Canon. Tried and trusted Sony and branded-assembled PC-maker Dell dropped down this list.

The brands who retained their last time’s position were IBM, Nokia, Microsoft, GE and Coca-Cola. While two software manufacturers – IBM and Microsoft – stayed true to their brand perception, Intel and Oracle actually fell down this ladder while SAP climbed up this beanstalk.

Car brands BMW, Toyota and Mercedes also slid down the list but Honda raced ahead. Ford remained at starting position – at No.49.

Bankers like American Express, HSBC and Citibank all fell in this ranking possibly because of all the scandals that continue to keep emerging about how over-extended most banks are in the US and how non productive some of their assets have turned out to be. If after analysing all the data and having all the best brains at your disposal, one can still make goof ups of such gigantic proportions, then some solid, plain ole common sense is the much required commodity now – not some more fancy and abstruse hedge fund. The ones who maintained their position but really lower down the list were JP Morgan (at 37) and Goldman Sachs (at 38).

Online brands, Google and Amazon moved up but eBay stayed stagnant at No.46.

The luxury brands Ikea ranked higher but Louis Vuitton stayed put at No.16.

News service provider Thomson Reuters climbed up this list to 40 from 44, as did advisory firm Accenture to 45 from 47.

The children’s entertainment segment was represented by Disney which dropped to No.10 (from 9) and Nintendo which crawled up to No.39 (from 40). So, what’s happening here - kids were bored with saccharine sweet princesses and were more interested in animated machismo?

What this list also shows is that not a single Indian brand made the cut. Where are all those loudly advertised, publicity hogging 'brands' created by fashion designers, architecture and interior design firms or manufacturers of leather products and furniture and car designers. Our car manufacturers didn't make it either. The reason could be that Indian brands have less recall than the people behind it - very much to their brand's detriment.

India doesn't have any Frank Wright, Philippe Starck, Roberto Cavalli, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson - no one who is globally recognisable and synonymous with either a particular brand or India. So, it's high time, India's businesses let their brand do the talking for them. Make it more about the product and less about the personality...especially if the personality is not going to be à la Richard Branson.

Data: Interbrand, BusinessWeek. To view the table, click here: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/best_global_brands_2009/

Job hunting: What's the forecast?

2010-02-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

More than any other crises, the only one people truly care about is whether or not they have a job. Everything else looks tolerable when you have steady income coming in and shoring up your bank account. With the plethora of job websites up, there are a lot of resumes that can be scanned and there are apparently a number of jobs available as well. These jobs ofcourse don’t fit every experience profile but that’s where head-hunters are expected to do their matchmaking – fixing up the right people to the correct jobs on offer.

Naukri.com has been coming out with a monthly report of what’s on offer with regard to jobs, salary and increment expectations, which sectors are hot and which are not etc. The report is a nice glimpse at what’s going on in the jobs scenario, especially when the hearsay is that recruitment is stagnating or the jobs on offer are not quite in keeping with a person’s experience or expectations.

The former may be a myth but the latter is true. I’ve personally got offers from just about anyone and everyone who wants to do something or anything with writing and editing. There is no saying how long those firms have been around and how long are they likely to last, if you went to work for them. So, I’ve not been tempted to apply for most of those job-alerts I keep receiving from the website. There may be many like me out there – eminently employable but just not eager to grab drab offers.

May be that is the reason why the naukri.com report JobSpeak states that: “Hiring activity dipped across all experience bands in December ’09 owing to the end-of-year holiday season, with the maximum decline of 6.7% in the 4 to 7 years experience buckets.”

Graphic source: Naukri.com JobSpeak Report

As the pie chart (from the JobSpeak report) shows, the number of people who fall in the 4-7 years job experience category is the largest at 36% followed by 31% who are in the 0-3 years category of experience and 22% who fall somewhere between these two – in the 8-12 years experience category.

Here are some other points to ponder from the Naukri Hiring Outlook Survey 2010 that the site has e-mailed with their routine report. Since this is going to be subjective and the nature of the questions require people to ‘project’ a picture, let’s hope that in actuality, things develop along these lines.

Recruiters say that:
- 72.3% of recruiters say that new jobs will be created.
- 24.2% say that replacement hiring will continue.
- 1.2% believe that layoff will happen.
- 2.3% of the population believe that no jobs will be created.

There’s a slight goof up with this one in the report. I’ve corrected it here. Most hiring to take place in the 1-3 years experience bands. So, this is not good news for people with more experience who don't want to do BPO kind of jobs.
- Fresher's- 9%
- 1-3 years- 42.1%
- 4-8 years- 40%
- Above 8 years- 9%

Recruiters say that:
- 43.6% say increments will range between 5% to 10%
- 40.7% recruiters expect it to range between 10% to 20%
- 8.9% expect above 20% increments
- Only 6.7% expect it to be less than 5%

There’s more easy-to-understand information in this 10 page survey report. Read it here: http://w10.naukri.com/mailers/recruiter/Hiring_Surve/Hiring_Outlook_Survey_jan10.pdf?othersrcp=10385&wExp=N

Who created the most wealth in India?

2010-02-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

The global economy is dancing all over the scoreboard and the people who have to keep up with twinkle toes – stock brokers, bankers, economists, business-owners – all have their hands full. Everyone is coming out with a set of numbers and studying them for us - laypeople. Motilal Oswal has also done the same but they have come out with a wealth creation study which makes for interesting reading.

This report looks at the top 100 companies who have added atleast Rs 1 billion to their market capitalization over a period of 5 years – 2004-09 – that was reviewed. The report also aims to gauge by when India will hit the next trillion dollars (NTD) high note again after having done it for the first time in the financial year 2008. But the next NTD is predicted to be created a lot quicker – in the next 5-6 years - if India continues to grow nominally at 12%-15% per annum and at the current US$/INR rates.

In the run-up to this NTD era, the report sets down the criteria, by which Indian companies will be significantly adding to their bottomline as well as your portfolio, if you held on to or bought their stocks. These companies all enjoy three kinds of entry barriers and have great managers helming them:

1. Demand-side includes customer captivity due to a strongly differentiated product/brand, force of habit or high switching costs, including the difficulty of searching for substitutes. These brands enjoy strong distribution network. Demand-side entry barriers such as trusted brands are intangible and typically result in firms enjoying very high return on capital.

2. Supply-side entry barrier mainly arise from the company being the lowest
cost provider of goods/services in the category due to one or more of the following:
a. Patent protection for products and/or production processes; and
b. Privileged access to critical inputs (eg captive ore mines).

3. Economies of Scale

4. Great management

So, which companies made the grade based on the above selection process? Here they are:

- Hero Honda Motor because it’s a market leader.
- Maruti Suzuki because it has appropriate product mix with the widest distribution and service network.
- Mahindra & Mahindra because it’s a market leader in UVs and tractors with an excellent track record of innovations.
- BHEL because it enjoys near monopoly in thermal power plants.
- Larsen & Toubro because it’s the preferred engineering/construction company for complex projects.
- HDFC Bank (in private sector) because it’s a high brand equity with the most consistent performance track record.
- State Bank of India (public sector) because it’s the largest bank with the highest reach and which offers play on insurance as well.
- CRISIL because it is the No.1 in India and belongs to the group of global No.1, Standard & Poor.
- HDFC because it is the long-standing market leader with lowest processing costs.
- Dabur India because it enjoys strong positioning in the ayurveda / herbal products platform.
- Nestle India because it’s a near monopoly in instant noodles and infant nutrition.
- Mundra Port because it’s one of the largest ports on the Gujarat coas.
- Sun TV because it has dominant market share in South India.
- Pantaloon Retail because it is a market leader by far and enjoys significant early mover advantage.
- Bharti Airtel because it has the highest market share, lowest cost and is a well-recognized brand.

What also emerged in this study was that:
• Value migrates from basic spend to discretionary spend categories.
• Winner categories emerge when demand hits the J-curve – this means that when product prices match a large section of the customers’ affordability level.
• The categories which can become large in relation to the economy emerge winners.
• Consolidated categories will benefit more than fragmented ones.

Some 66 companies with entry barriers created Rs 8,314 billion between 2004-09. The remaining 34 companies with no or low entry barriers accounted for Rs 1,323 billion in the same timeframe.

Here are some of the other salient points:

• The sensex earning per share (EPS) will grow up to 29% in the early FY11. Beyond this period, it will revert to a median of 15%-20%.

• Interest rates may remain at the same level or may move higher.

• The highest wealth destroyer industries between 2004-09 were: Others – 24%, Oil & Gas – 17%, Banking & Finance – 16%, Auto – 13%, Pharma – 12%, IT – 11%, Metals – 6%.

• The highest wealth destroyer companies in the same time period (in the order mentioned) were: Ranbaxy, IOCL, Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, HPCL, Satyam Computer, Oriental Bank, Tata Steel, Reliance Infrastructure and MTNL.

• Wealth creating companies were mostly new-blood firms that were around less than 40 years. For eg. There were 60 companies that had been around for only 40 years and they had created wealth amounting to Rs 6,700 billion. While the older firms of 50 years and above (there were 40 of them) had created only Rs 2,917 billion between 2004-09.

• 30 public sector units (PSUs) at one time were contributing almost 50.6% of the wealth between 2000-05. After the phased out divestment process, 16 PSUs contributed 27% between 2004-09.

• The best performing PSU sectors were mining & metals (37%), engineering (25%) followed by oil & gas (23%).

• 43 MNCs created a high of 50% of the wealth in the country between 1994-99 and it dropped to 2% (by 8 companies) between 1999-2004. From 2004-09, around 23 companies made 14% of the wealth.

• The best performing MNC sectors were FMCG (63%), Engineering (13%) and Automobiles (10%).

• The private sector created 73% of the wealth – by 84 companies in 2004-09.

The Fastest Wealth Creators were: Unitech, Areva T&D, BF Utilities, Opto Circuits, NMDC, Shri City Union, United Spirits, Jindal Steel, Sterling International and Chettinad Cement.

The Biggest Wealth Creators were: Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, BHEL, NMDC, ONGC, ITC, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, SAIL and HDFC.

Consistent Wealth Creators - 2005 to 2009
Pharma
􀂄 Cipla (4)
􀂄 Dr Reddy's Lab (3)
􀂄 GSK Pharma (2)
􀂄 Piramal Health. (4)
􀂄 Ranbaxy Lab (4)
􀂄 Sun Pharma (2)
FMCG
􀂄 Asian Paints (3)
􀂄 ITC (5)
􀂄 Nestle India (1)
Others
􀂄 Hero Honda (5)
􀂄 HDFC (5)
􀂄 HDFC Bank (1)
IT
􀂄 Infosys (3)
􀂄 Wipro (3)
􀂄 Satyam (2)
Others
􀂄 Reliance Inds (2)
􀂄 Ambuja Cement (1)

Number in brackets shows how many times these companies appeared in the top 10 list.

For a more detailed study, take a look at the report here:
http://www.motilaloswal.com/MOSL/uploadedFiles/MOSL/Knowledge_Center/Wealth_Creation_Study/Download_Reports/14thWCS.pdf

Destination: Lush & Serene Kodaikanal

2010-01-01T05:58:00.000-08:00

Take a holiday and journey through lush Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu via this photo essay.

Click on the images to read the text.

Written for Jetwings.

How business ideas are born

2009-12-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

Making changes, as a precursor to moving on to better things is something that most evolving businesses should do intuitively. But waiting for the push comes to shove moment is not the right time to experiment with change but should rather come as a gradual phase and at a steady pace but these early signals should be picked up quickly.

Professor of marketing at Wharton School, Yoram Jerry Wind agrees, "You basically should have a system in place that allows you to continuously challenge your assumptions, challenge your mental models, look for early signals of change in the environment." He explained that's how Starbucks took off because some clever businessmen had the foresight to provide a service that was not there in the US.

Wind told CNBC-TV18, "Howard Schultz went on a trip to Italy and was sitting in a café and it suddenly dawned on him 'Why not create the American equivalent of the café' and that's what led to the creation of the Starbucks experience and the whole phenomenon of success of Starbucks."

He added, "You obviously need a visionary, a person with insight, instinct and the intuition, who says 'Wow this can be a great idea and push it'. At the same time you also want to have companies develop some processes and approaches that allows them to identify when their current model is no longer appropriate."

But all said and done, this kind of decision has to be informed and should not be made in haste. Wind elaborated, "First of all you mentioned competition and it is very important for us to realise that we have to look at competition from outside the industry. If we go back to the Starbucks example, then Maxwell House was a dominant brain at that time. They probably looked at other coffee manufacturers at that time. They never expected competition from a startup like Starbucks and look at the phenomenal success of Starbucks. So looking at the competition is definitely important but broaden your scope."

"There is no substitute for really understanding consumer behaviour. It's funny how consumers behave, even in small segments. That is where I mentioned the weak signals. Because if you look at the average or the big responses, you are missing the little trends and all new trends start with small things.

"In the US, we look at California. Californian consumers are different and very often they are indicative but you need to monitor this and not to discard this type of information. Then there are processes that you can use effectively to try to help you. For example, the process of trying to challenge your assumptions. Do something very simple, ask your manager to indicate what are the assumptions you make in your strategy and lets challenge each one of them."

Country manager, WPP, Ranjan Kapur gives by way of example what Unilever did when faced with competition from Nirma. He said, "I think Unilever has been reactive in the past. I mean what really happened was that they grew up in an era of shortages and brands are never built in era of shortages and their business model was really a distribution business model.

"When competition came up and the markets opened up and lots of people came in, I think they tried to expand their distribution, get into the rural market and cut costs. That was their model."

"It was only in 2001-02, I think, that they realised the power of branding. That's when they went into the power brand thing and in India I think they have 30 brands. And that's really - it was a reaction, the way they were chipped away by local players. I think they didn't even wake up the first time when the signal came from Nirma.

"Nirma produced the detergent in little pits and men and women used to sit there and stir the detergent with caustic soda. They put them in plastic bags, stapled them and sent it out.

"What he (Nirma) realised was that people were looking for cheap products rather than pay for packaging. Anyway, Nirma didn't distribute the product, distributors used to come to them. Nobody recognised that."

Apart from being able to spot the trends early on and challenging assumptions, there is another approach, what Wind calls a "kind of a very powerful approach called 'bring the radicals in'. A great example would be, if you think of IBM a few years back, the major threat for IBM was open source code and the initial reaction when you mentioned that to IBM was that they would immediately bring in all the lawyers and try to sue them. What the research group at IBM did was bring the major proponent of open source to talk with the research group. The result was that they (IBM) were able to change their mental models completely and they designed or brought open source and built over it proprietary products and services that they were selling. So bringing the radical in is a very powerful approach that one can use."

"Another process is a method called idealised design. Idealised design is a process started by Ross Ackoff. A process that primarily says that opposed to the tradition of planning that you have, is where we are now and where we want to go forth, it starts with a radical assumption, which says 'lets assume that our business was destroyed last night'. Now given everything we know today, no futuristic technology, but what we know today. How do we redesign this business without all the constraints and the typical baggage that most business have?"

Kapur explained, "I think if you look at it, there are many who sort of have ridden the wave. You take consumer durable companies, you take electronics. I think if you take MIRC electronics. Take ONIDA for example. All the Indian players were dying. That is the only Indian player which is still there in the top 3."

Moving with the times entails having to adopt new technology but doing it blindly without understanding how consumers are going to use the technology may be disastrous. As Wind puts it, "There is a danger of instead of technology helping to be on the leading edge, you could be on the bleeding edge, which is not good for the company in the long term."

The GEC story was a case in point. It is a very dramatic case of timing where it comes to swapping mental models. Wind agreed, "That is true. It is a great example. In 1996, George Simpson took over General Electric, UK, which is different from the US one. He inherited basically a very stodgy but a very profitable company. His predecessor Arnold Weinstock had a great management system, he ran about 180 companies based on a very strict ratios."

"He was in a less glamorous field. He was in power, he was in defense and electronics and Lord Simpson decided to bet the future on wireless technology and changed the name of the company to Marconi to try to indicate this.

He bet the whole farm on one major change and it did not work. The environment was against him, maybe it was the timing, but he basically went all out after a single vision and the results were disastrous.

And he did not have a portfolio of business protecting him in case the bet was not right, nor did he realise some of the early warning signals that were ready at that time with respect to this industry."

"The result was that a company having a share price of over 12 pounds went to 4 pence a few years later and from a huge cash surplus, when he took over to a huge debt. That is one of the sad stories in terms of an unsuccessful one and the lesson for companies is this - if you really have a bold new vision, first of all have enough safeguards around it and second, don't put all your eggs in one basket and experiment."

At the end of the day, though, it's not organisations but individuals who matter. Wind elaborated, "First of all you have to remember that corporations are made up of individuals and the reality is between 9 & 5 when you are a corporate person, you are still the same person before 9 and after 5, where now you are not a corporate person but an individual. So obviously we are dealing with individuals here. The idea is to try this type of collision and try to see how can we get a better balance between the two and how we can learn from one another."

Written for www.moneycontrol.com

Stylish & individualistic homes

2009-12-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

Homes are an extension of your personality - believe it or not - which is why people do chose the best possible decor, art, furniture for their homes. So, whatever is your poison, the idea is to do it with some kind of restraint and taste.

This can be tricky especially of you have decided on your home should sport the 'kitchsy' look. That's what restaurateur AD Singh and his wife Sabina Singh seem to have chosen for themselves. This couple have a extremely colourful gola-gaadi in their living which doubles up as a table. Well, they also have revamped an autorickshaw - dumped the front half and the wheels to double up as a loveseat!

Sabina Singh told CNBC-TV18, "Kitsch has to be transcended from the gaudy and basic to something made interesting. So, that has always been my endeavour." She's been inspired by the biggest, kitchsy industry of them all - Bollywood. She's got coasters with Hindi film posters imprinted on them. She's got film posters blown up and decorated with sequins, which she purchased from an arist called Baba Anand.

Their home also has a lot of religious art, which AD Singh confesses he's not a big fan of but all the same, he's got his favourites as well. One is an Imitiaz Dharker painting and another is a bust of Tenzing Norgay (the mountaineer who climbed Everest with Edmund Hillary, which was made by his grandfather.

What's more, the kitchsy look is getting expensive as everyone seems to have cottoned onto the trend. Well, Sabina Singh was among the first, so her instincts may just prove to be right and very lucrative as well.

Italian Inspiration
If homes are meant to make style statements, then the Consulate General of Italy in India, Giuseppe Zaccagnino's home certainly does. This man's walls are covered with art and of the really top class variety. He has been collecting art going back 50 years and in just his living room, he has over 300 paintings!

He says, "This (art of collecting) is acquired by feel. You can not mix up all kind of art becuae then it looks like a gallery. So, this (living) room and the corridor has a theme of Italian brigands. Italian brigands were a kind of social phenomenon in Southern Italy in the beginning of the 19th century. What you see in my home is the traditional Italian iconography - they look like romantic heroes who are goodlooking, wear good costumes - but in reality they were much uglier!"

His collection of paintings have found their way into a coffee-table book, which includes some of his earlier acquisitions as well. But he's been able to bring only a part of his collection to India because as a diplomat, he's keeps moving around and is only able to carry a bit of his collection around the world. But he confesses that he's looking for buyers because this hobby of his is turning out to be quite a burden!

He explains more about his paintings and says, "There were lady brigands who were tough and terrible. Then I have a Middle East collection which I developed when I was posted in Morocco."

His dining room is huge and Giuseppe has made the most of it because he's got even more paintings on the wall here as well. The theme here is 'Fortune Teller'. Then he even has a table made in Morocco, from just the root of a tree called tuya. This is where he has placed his collection of Fatima's hands, most of which were made by the Berbers, who are local Moroccon artisans. Some of these Berbers are Jewish (not all are Muslim) and so they incorporate Jewish symbols like the Star of David, in their work.

If that's not all, Giuseppe has a collection of porcelain, 1970s Italian furniture, and silverware, which includes statues of Lord Krishna and Goddess Saraswati (his favourite) which have been painted over with....nail polish! He's not letting us know all of his secrets because he does use nail polish along with some other things and as he puts it, he's becoming sophisticated about it. But yes, it looks great and what a nice idea!

The Consul General is a collector of everything else as well. He's got thousands of CDs (he's a fan of Indian music like sitar music and not necessarily Bollywood!). He's also got over 600 ties and as many suits! Now this is one man, who knows that quantity is fine, if you have an eye for quality.

Written for moneycontrol.com

Viva Vir Das!

2009-12-03T04:35:00.000-08:00

I saw the funniest standup English comedy show a few months ago and no..it was not a reality show on television. It was ‘Walking on Broken Das’ at the Nehru Centre, performed by Vir Das. He is India’s sole answer, at the moment, to Jay Leno and the whole gang which kept us entertained in ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’

It was rib-tickling, one hour of puns, sex jokes, funny characterisation and music. Oh..let me not forget the slides that were flaunted between acts to keep the audience warmed up and in good humour.

Vir Das is a talented performer and even his below-the-belt stuff was hilarious and not vulgar in the least. He’s giving breaks to a lot of new upcoming standup comedians – first in this show he’s introduced Saurabh Pant – but he’s also performing live at Blue Frog every third Sunday at 7.00 pm with a lot of the other upcoming talents.

Do check him out – You’ll be crying tears of joy and laughter. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

I remember watching him perform at CNBC-TV18, when I worked there. I loved the way he punned his own name – how Vir Das was mauled into ‘Weird Ass’ by the Americans because of their accent!! Keep stuff like this coming.

I do have a suggestion about where you could pick up some rich material for future shows. How about junk e-mails? As a woman, I get far too many on how to enlarge my penis! May be I should be getting an e-mail on how to acquire one in the first place!

Written for www.dancewithshadows.com

Shopping Catalogues: Just eyecandy?

2009-11-27T05:35:00.000-08:00

Shopping can be therapeutic for some. So if there is some way to do this not only at your leisure but also by just scanning some beautifully designed catalogues and ordering through the phone, then that’s even better…right? Keeping this in mind, Hypercity had introduced a catalogue called Argos, which had a range of products lined up. The catalogue was printed and designed well and after all the money invested in starting this initiative, it still went belly-up.

When I contacted Hypercity, they didn’t divulge anything about what had gone wrong but I heard talk about how they just weren’t able to manage inventory well at all. Besides this, the India Consumer Complaints Forum has a complaint listed on their website regarding the poor quality of their service.

When it had just started, yet another site had an overall good review of Argos but the reviewer questioned Hypercity’s decision to sell their catalogues instead of handing it out free of cost. So, are malls and stores (or anyone else) looking to bring in customers through shopping catalogues paying attention to these reviews? My guess is, they are looking at only what they want to see.

Giving away catalogues for people to browse through, which cost them money to print, will be a great gesture on their part, if they do it cleverly. For instance, they could allow people to scan catalogues at a separate counter, where they can be served coffee and can put up their feet and take a look at what’s in between the pages. They pay for the coffee but still can walk away without buying the catalogue and if they have seen anything they would like to order, they can do it right there, while paying their bill. All they have to do is make a note of the merchandise code and tell the cashier. They can pay for it there itself and walk home with a receipt with the product being delivered to their doorstep.

If this was allowed, then you don’t have to print so many catalogues and only send them out on request (and then charge for it, if possible). Another Indian shopping catalogue is Elvy - a lifestyle catalogue - based in Delhi. You have to e-mail them a request for their catalogue and then they send it to you. Their catalogue is of excellent quality and they have products priced from Rs 395 to Rs 89,995 across 11 categories.

They have done some catalogues for ICICI, Bombay City Guide, Citibank and American Express in the past. Currently, if you fly Jet Airways, you’ll find they have done the JetMall catalogue. A quick glance shows you that they do have some gorgeous filigree-work candle-holders and good quality leather products. Even the outdoor Cheers tub drinks stand looks like a good conversation piece. When contacted, the Elvy spokesperson wouldn’t reveal how much business they are getting via their catalogue.

The reality is that in India, catalogues are picked up and junked because people still like to do their shopping by touch and feel. On a certain level, there is also distrust that they will not get exactly what is shown in the catalogue. Besides this, there is also quality-of-service issues which Argos faced.

Another big brand which came to India 15 years ago and which was an established name abroad, was Otto Burlington. Any guesses what happened to them? These were people who claimed to have made money in the West but if Indians were not ready to shop through catalogues back then, when it was an exciting new concept, are they ready to do so now? I remember my parents poring over the Otto Burlington catalogue and then I got my chance and I suggested to them that we get a huge set of silver cutlery, which came in a velvet lined box. We ordered that and a curd-maker. The cutlery is still going strong and is still being used but the curd-maker was a damp squib. The end result was that my parents wrote off ever shopping from a catalogue and most other people do exactly this.

Other stores who put out brochures from time-to-time, especially during the festive season are Vijay Sales and Croma. But these two don’t seem to concentrate too much of their marketing effort into their catalogues and it shows. The catalogues are designed to be handed out with newspapers, which is smart of them. It’s also something that people may overlook completely if it falls down behind a sofa, while you are reading your newspaper. What’s more, these brochures are merely to catch the eye about what’s new in their stores, so you can step in and see the things for yourself. It’s not as much about sitting back and ordering your Plasma TV on the phone.

There is an ‘all or nothing’ approach to shopping via catalogues that somehow doesn’t exist with physically shopping for something. I think the reason is very simple. If you see and touch something and then buy it and if it turns out to be a bad decision or a faulty item, then you know the shop’s not going to turn you away when you show up for a replacement. With a shopping catalogue, no matter how much they reassure you, you always remember somebody else’s awful experience of having lost their money completely.

Another reason is an unspoken one. People feel like they have been made a fool of by unseen ‘fraudsters’ where shopping catalogues are concerned. Whereas with a shop, you can always go there and create a scene and demand a refund or a replacement.

Abroad, catalogues might be minting money because the trust factor is high which is not the case in India. Their services are much better and is not as much of a hassle as it is here. So, catalogues that absolutely ape the Western model, might just make it here. Winning over trust is the big deal and if that occurs, the rest will follow. When I wrote to Elvy asking them to share any customer testimonials with me, their representative Anuradha Mishra did not get back to me.

In the West, it’s not only malls which print catalogues. I have a beautiful Christmas catalogue showcasing the collections of 5-6 British museums in the most innovative manner, where they have very cleverly printed say, paintings by Monet onto playing cards or superimposed Van Gogh’s works onto vases or Cezanne’s paintings onto dividing panels that can make for such a stunning and at the same time practical piece of furniture.

When will our museums wake up to such incredible possibilities? Let’s get inspired by the good deeds of the West, especially when you can land up making so much money in the bargain!

PS - Since writing this article, I've received a brochure showcasing 25 historic stamps from the archives of the National Philatelic Museum, New Delhi. The London-based Hallmark Group and the Authority of India Post are issuing a limited edition of these stamps in a uniquely memorable manner. They are engraved on solid silver ingots which are the same size as the stamps and will be layered with 24 carat gold to create a wonderful collectors showpiece. Only 7,500 sets will be produced worldwide.

This glittering collection will be sent to buyers along with a velvet-lined lacquered wood case, a special edition of the book 'Enchanting India, an album of educational Fact Cards, a Jeweller's Cloth and Gloves and an official Certificate of Authenticity, signed by the Swiss manufacturer guaranteeing the purity of the gold.

Fittingly, since this is the first time something of this magnitude has been produced for India and in the honour of famous Indians and their achievements which these stamps epitomise - this collection is called 'The Pride of India Collection'. Each gold plated stamp costs Rs 6,700 inclusive of all duties and taxes.

Go online to order at www.prideofindiacollection.com or call 011-26207151/52/53 or 011-41207151/52/53

Smart Shoppers Write In...

2009-11-11T05:04:00.001-08:00

Click on the image to read the text

Shopping Etiquette: A Code of Conduct

2009-11-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

With so much shopping activity going on, there should be some kind of unspoken and unsaid but clearly understood Code of Conduct kind of thing in place for shoppers – especially the chronic and the cranky kind.

I mean who wants to grow old while waiting in a queue, for the people ahead of you to get done making their payment. It’s usually at this crucial moment that crisis hits and a lot of people realize that they don’t really have that much cash on them. So, then out comes the plastic. In one instance I know of (because I was right behind the woman), she was holding up a queue at the cashier's to argue with her husband because he had blocked her credit card. Well, this situation was humiliating for her and embarrassing for the rest of us who were forced to listen to the conversation.

Huzefa Tapia of Grids & Words Design, an advertising and event management firm says, “Talking of etiquette, some people really don't have it. They think that if they are carrying 4-5 pieces of plastic with them, they can hold anything up. The thing missing here is the common sense in them.”

He adds, “Well.. talking neutrally, one can make a mistake once about getting their credit card block limit wrong, but all the time... it seems weird. Yet, if you are a compulsive shopper, the smart thing is to carry cash on hand or very politely letting some stuff go and coming back another day for it. This surely will help you not create a scene at the cash counter, eventually helping the line to move faster.”

“Smart people also do not buy everything with one credit card. They would spread it out evenly with 2-3 cards depending on the buy. The simple conclusion is be smart and carry some on-hand cash.”

At yet another store, where I had stopped by their coffee shop for some downtime and good coffee, I found this woman shrieking for the manager because she had spotted a rat there. It’s not the kind of thing that anyone wants to see in any place that sells food but in this case, the staff were trying to keep her under control and pacify her but she worked herself up to such a pitch that she added to the headache I already had!

In this case, I don’t know what led to the matter to become such a big deal because I got there midway during her screaming session but I know that rats are not going to flee because they hear a woman yelling at the top of her voice!

True, the woman was calling attention to a serious hygiene deficiency but at what point, the discussion turned ugly is anyone’s guess. So, when the store management is trying to soothe ruffled feathers and say they will look into it and address the issue right away, they are in damage control mode and doing their best. How is humiliating the staff going to help?

What is one to do but be a mute spectator and enjoy the show? Or walk out because it’s just a waste of your time? I did the latter. Besides, I was there for the coffee and it didn’t seem to be the right place to have it just then!

Watch the video: What's new @ Seconddealnsteal.com here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTVC6zRQ8_Q

Since shopping is by nature such a communal and social activity, I think a shopping code of conduct has now become a necessity or else like road rage, we have already started to see many displays of shopping schizophrenia – where perfectly respectable and normally well mannered people behave like hooligans.

So here is my Top 10 Commandments list for shoppers and anyone reading this article can feel free to contribute as well.

1. Don’t hold up the line at the cash counter to argue with spouses over the cellphone about a blocked credit card. Use another card or pay cash and then discretely deal with your problem.
2. Don’t hold up the line to argue with staff about issues unrelated to your bill. I think there are enough people scattered around a store to give you a patient hearing if you have complaints about service, merchandise, store décor or whatever. The person to see should be the store manager.
3. Don’t stand over people while they are eating, so that they swallow their food in a hurry to make way for you. It’s impolite and if you wanted that table so badly, you should have got there earlier. This is especially for the people who throng food courts with a vengeance on weekends despite knowing that there is going to be a large crowd.
4. Don’t park your shopping bags in all the free chairs for miles around you in the lounge area of malls and also don't block an aisle with your shopping cart.
5. Don’t jump the queue at any cost. You are not that important - either to the store per se and certainly not to the people who were waiting there before you showed up.
6. Don’t indulge your kids’ bad manners at the expense of other shoppers. Putting your foot down and saying ‘no’ will make them value the money you are spending on them. If they refuse to behave, then next time please leave them at home, so the rest of us can have an enjoyable and peaceful shopping experience.
7. Don’t go berserk at a sale and grab things out of people’s hands and step on their toes while doing it. You are asking for a black eye or verbal abuse and you just might get it…free of cost!
8. Don’t shoplift. Celebrities with money do it …and get caught. They can manage to convert kleptomania into a PR spectacle but can you?
9. Don’t be rude to the elderly, the handicapped and obese people. It reflects on your upbringing when you snigger at them. Not everyone has the body type of an anorexic teenager…or wants to have one in the first place. Some women still do value their curves.
10. Don’t treat staff at the stores like they are your servants. They are there to help and guide and get paid to do it. They don’t get paid to take abuse and condescension. If you feel you are not getting their attention, then bring it up firmly and politely.

At the same time, if you feel that someone has made shopping a pleasant experience for you, then take that staff personnel’s name and give him/her some credit in the visitor’s book - if the store maintains one. You never know - you might be unknowingly responsible for that person getting a raise. But that person will remember you and give you a warmer reception the next time you visit the store.

Write in to me at promos@seconddealnsteal.com with your own stories or add more rules of conduct to this list. I'll post it here as well as on my ezine called 'Website for Seconds' on Zimbio.com. You can view that e-magazine here: http://www.zimbio.com/Website+for+seconds+in+India

Hot Deal on Branded Content CDs

2009-10-20T12:07:00.001-07:00

Here is the link to the seconddealnsteal.com e-magazine: http://www.zimbio.com/Website+for+seconds+in+India
Catch up on articles and offers on this e-zine. Here's an exclusive offer lined up for you: A selection of CDs on a range of subjects with branded content from National Geographic, Discovery, Reader Rabbit, Shemaroo and lots more is here for you. Click here http://xrl.us/brandedCDs for more product details. CD prices start at Rs 99. It's true....check it out!

This offer is valid till October 31 on single CD sales. This means that, if you want to buy only one CD, then this offer is valid till the end of this month. After October 31, only bulk orders -for events like birthday parties, corporate events, workshops, college & school renuions etc - will be entertained.

Discount the Talk

2009-10-11T21:45:00.001-07:00

Author: Manali Rohinesh

The pinnacle of the festival season – Diwali – is just a week away and there is a lot of discounts, exchange schemes out there trying to entice shoppers. It goes without saying that if they have managed to discount a washing machine (and pretty much everything else) for you, then the usual maximum retail price (MRP) is really about making money at a bigger margin, all at your expense.

The smart shoppers always come out in hordes around major festive seasons. In India, it roughly starts from the month of August and lasts until October. Abroad, the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping binges are when the major sales happen. This period should be labeled the smart shopping season.

Ever wondered though, how some retailers in India might be undercutting brands? Let’s take the example of clothing brands like Barbie and Lilliput, which have dedicated stores in upscale malls like Atria (in Mumbai) and possibly elsewhere in India. I’ve noticed that some large supermarkets and hypermarkets that retail these brands will offer a discount to coincide with the single format stores and actually plug their sales as if it were something unique.

Seen those advertisements enticing you with ‘Up to 50% off on Barbie clothing’? Well, around the same time, the brand itself is having an up to 75% sale at their in-house store. But in the shopping frenzy of buying everything from groceries, toiletries, stationery and food, people tend to do their clothes shopping in the very same place for convenience sake. So, the bigger sale discount offer on at the other branded store is hardly ever noticed.

I’ve actually visited a supermarket chain and a single format brand store in the same week, during a sale period and witnessed the stark difference. One is empty with sales staff trying to summon up enthusiasm to work through the day and the other is doing roaring business with people stepping on each other’s toes, trying to grab at stuff. Guess which is the successful one and which just got stiffed?

After observing this for a while, I’ve often wondered if I could walk into the supermarket and buy a pair of Barbie jeans for my neighbour’s cute little girl and ask them to give me the original brand discount of “up to 75%” and then tack on what they are offering of “up to 50%” and walk off with a whopping 125% discount on those jeans?

Realistically, depending on what I buy, let’s say I get 50% off from the brand (instead of the entire mythical 75%) and an additional say 30% off (instead of the entire 50% that’s being touted by the supermarket), then I still should get 80% off right? Well, it’s elementary math but not cool marketing from the supermarket management’s perspective and they never pass on this discount that the brand is anyway offering in the first place.

Otherwise, I would pick up those jeans, if priced at Rs 2,000 MRP prior to the sale, with the cool 80% off (if given) I would pay only Rs 400! Without this grand discount, at the supermarket chain, I’m paying (at 30% off) Rs 1,400. Meanwhile, I stand to pay less at the luxury store selling this brand exclusively during the sale period because it works out to Rs 1,000 at the 50% discounted rate value.

Not many people realize this and if they do, they are not questioning the wisdom of the great discount talk that is happening in these places. I wonder why? It’s your money and your right to ask pertinent and relevant questions, especially if your kids insist on using only branded merchandise. Without knowing it, you might be actually helping in undercutting the brand’s snob value, for the very things you buy with so much pride…and at such expense.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/clothing-articles/discount-the-talk-1324578.html

About the Author:

I own a website for second hand things in India called www.seconddealnsteal.com. It's an e-listing service for bargain deals. For more on me, Google me or my site and find out!

3Qs: Take the fun Survey

2009-10-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

This survey is about 'how people would like to use my site'. So let me hear your views loud and clear! Take it here: <http://xrl.us/seconddealnstealsurvey

How will it help you?

It will help me make www.seconddealnsteal.com that much more user friendly, keeping in mind your responses.

I will also be able to tailor deals and discounts with advertisers keeping your shopping interests and spending habits in mind.

A picture worth thousand words..

2009-09-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

To read the article built around this poignant picture of patriotism go to my site

http://www.seconddealnsteal.com/news.aspx

Making money the fun way on this Site

2009-09-04T06:46:00.000-07:00

Why is making money such a chore and usually such a bore? You spend the best years of your life chasing after it, so you might as well have fun doing it..right? Who said you can't have fun while making money? My site www.seconddealnsteal.com can be put to such great use to do just that.

Here are some ideas for you to explore:

$ Handicraft makers and small-scale manufacturers of organic products are welcome to use www.seconddealnsteal.com to find buyers for their wares.

$ Stay-at-home artists and hobbyists who want to make money from their hobby - log on to www.seconddealnsteal.com and display your stuff free of cost. Get buyers for your work by listing your art (there's a Artwork section) on the site.

$ Get a garage sale going on www.seconddealnsteal.com. Post an announcement - there's an element on the homepage to enable you to do that. List your things online and send out an e-mail to friends, neighbours, relatives (and enemies!) and tell them to spot any good deals. You might also want to keep the sale offline but just post an announcement on the site. Go right ahead!

$ Moving into a new home and want to buy new things? Sell the old stuff @ www.seconddealnsteal.com. Tell people of your sale on this site with just a link in an e-mail.

$ Newlyweds...want to get rid of glassware and crockery you don't like? Get online @ www.seconddealnsteal.com and hock it.

$ Tweens, if you've outgrown your Barbie, Fisher Price and Lego toys and they are in good condition, then sell it on www.seconddealnsteal.com. Make cash out of your kiddie stuff. Why wait for mum or dad to get generous and in the mood to give you your allowance. Use this site to make money.

$ Teens can sell their books, CDs and mobile phones if they are looking to upgrade. Don't get fleeced by the dirt-cheap prices offered by exchange schemes...instead use www.seconddealnsteal.com to connect with people who 'want' to buy your stuff.

This site can be used in customised ways. Send me a list of things you could and would like to do on my site and I'll post it here for others to read and follow in your cool footsteps!

You want to advertise your products and services to my users, then get in touch with me at manali@seconddealnsteal.com I'll do classy e-mailers and include a 30 seconds video as well that you could forward to your friends, family, customers and contacts.

I'm also on twitter: http://twitter.com/dealnsteal
You can also look me up on Linkedin as well: http://www.linkedin.com/in/seconddealnsteal

Won stuff from Khelo Jeeto Jiyo?

2009-09-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

If you are the lucky ones who have won stuff from Khelo Jeeto Jiyo - the latest game show on television hosted by Soha Ali Khan, then what do you do with all the old things in your home? Register on www.seconddealnsteal.com and sell it!

It's easy to use and you can send your ads to all your friends, neighbours, relatives (and enemies!) and tell them to spot any good deals. You can continue to spread the word about your own private sale hosted on this site by just sending out a link in an e-mail! Simple..isn't it?

Log on now to www.seconddealnsteal.com and also remember to sign up (it's the black colour box with the red text next to this post) for the newsletter for any hot deals and discounts that will come your way in the future.

How businesses will profit with www.seconddealnsteal.com

2009-08-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

What's seconddealnsteal.com all about?

If you have got merchandise/products to sell that are in good condition and don’t know where to go, then this is just the place for you. Log on, register and start selling like a pro – this is the exclusive eBay for second sellers and buyers looking for great deals. Spread the word about the super, good quality bargains available here!

'This site helps people shop more,' which it will do if people realise they can sell their old stuff on an easy-to-use and stylish looking website. Once your home is empty of your old but well-maintained things, then obviously people will get out to buy new things with money in their wallets as well! The site was set up so people could get rid of their old things in a hassle-free manner and not get fleeced for things that were well maintained but just a little used.

Please note that..www.seconddealnsteal.com is a LISTING SERVICE and the site does not act as a middleman and deal with (or ask for) your money at all. It empowers you with information about bargain deals and with appropriate articles. You then take it forward in any way you wish directly with the seller/buyer.

What does this site do for your business?
- Enable businesses to do more business. Thereby, it creates clientele looking and eager to buy new things...whether it is toys for their children, CDs for their parents, furniture, carpet, crockery or electronic appliances for their own homes.
- Helps businesses to sell off unsold inventory lying around their warehouse/showroom at a good price to my database of users.
- Good quality hand-me-downs will be valued. Whether it's a wooden rocking chair or a wooden rocking horse. You will get a great price for it if people know you have something to sell. My site helps match seller to buyer. It's the garage sale concept taken online for the first time in India. Do check out www.seconddealnsteal.com

What can I do for you?
My site can help with marketing your services and products. If you advertise with me, you get access to my database whom you can reach via e-mailers. I can also do videos of your products/services with pictures and text you provide - like the one above done for my site. You can offer discounts or vouchers that can be exchanged at your showrooms if you wish, or just tell them more about yourselves. If you helped tell people about my site at the right forums, then it would benefit both of us.

Do get in touch with me so we could work together - mutually profitably - at manali@seconddealnsteal.com

Promo: Diamonds at a Discount

2009-08-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

I am always looking to put together amazing deals for my site's users - like this one I did in June 2009. After all, good quality bargain deals is the motto of the site. So here is www.seconddealnsteal.com Specials!

Seconddealnsteal brings to you a range of branded diamond jewellery called Sparkles.

While remaining true to the website's motto of eliminating the middleman, you - the buyer - can select your jewellery from the enclosed catalogue and get in touch directly with the company representative - Hussein Pitalwalla at 9869504260.

What's more, he might have a discount in store for you!

So, just click, choose and call him now.

Send this offer to your friends and family as diamonds make for great gifts.

Thank you for taking an interest in my site. Please feel free to share any feedback.

Enjoy buying yourself some jewellery. I'll keep you posted on any new offers that may be of interest to you.

Manali Rohinesh
Owner & Creator
E-mail - manali@seconddealnsteal.com
On Twitter - @dealnsteal
www.seconddealnsteal.com

NB: DON'T MISS DEALS LIKE THE ONE ABOVE. REGISTER ON MY SITE AND SIGN UP FOR THE E-MAILERS AND THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF GOODIES COMING YOUR WAY.

A few who reached out to many

2009-08-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Making online buying and selling as common as talking on the phone or stepping out for groceries was something that Avnish Bajaj CEO of Baazee.com did well. His is a story dreams are made of. An Indian Institute of Technology-Harvard graduate with a stint at Goldman Sachs, a dotcom survivor with a $50 million deal under his belt. He is the man behind one of India's biggest online success stories -baazee.com.

The baazee.com story began in 2000, when Bajaj along with his Harvard mate Suvir Sujan set up India's largest online auction portal. Along the way they bought out competitor bidorbuyindia.com and in 2004 global giant eBay came calling.

But the dream run suddenly turned into a nightmare, when Bajaj found himself caught in the middle of the infamous MMS scandal and ended up in Tihar jail. The MMS clip brought notoriety to the site for allowing it to be put online for sale. But Bajaj had support coming from various quarters, including high profile Condoleezza Rice weighing in on his behalf. After all the noise and show, Bajaj was released on bail and is trying to move on and put this episode behind him.

Now, being part of the global Internet giant - ebay's family, baazee.com is being used as a platform to drive growth in a market with immense potential. With a subscriber base of 1 crore (10 million) users, baazee is betting on what it sees as the second Internet wave in the Indian market. With competitors jumping into the online auction space, this market leader is constantly innovating to stay ahead

He is a perfect power-dressing corporate honcho and that may give the impression that he doesn't seem the adventure sports type. But bungee jumping, scuba diving and river rafting are what he indulges in when he's not warming up with a good book, which is his first love. When he gets tired of driving baazee.com to greater heights, he hopes to move on to direct public policy.

Another career that's hot right now with a lot of outgoing, peppy youngsters who want to groove to good music at work and snap out some great lines over a microphone and get paid for it! Well, there VJs and DJs but RJs are having fun too.

Radio jockeys at 92.5 FM Tarana Raj Kapoor and Ashish Jagtiani have Mumbai eating out of their hands. Well not literally, but they are burning up Mumbai's airwaves and winning quite a fan base for themselves.

With completely contrasting styles, the one thing that Ashish and Tarana have in common is their ability to talk, unscripted, unrehearsed and unleashed on the city of Mumbai, every weekday morning.

It isn't only her voice that's her fortune. Tarana has an equally successful TV career in serials like Kasauti Zindagi Ki and Kabhi Haan, Kabhi Naa and also hosts live events and TV shows.

Ashish does more than mesmerise on air and also works in the family's machine tools business. The money he's making now with his two different careers is being used to fuel his other passion - to be a serious art collector.

Both are good friends even off air and one of their common interests is their love for reading. But while Tarana may pick up a Shashi Tharoor, Ashish would head towards the management books section. But that's just what makes for great chemistry on air.

Written for moneycontrol.com

A cartoon version of me!

2009-07-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

Beat the Recession with some Smart Shopping Do's

2009-07-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

Are you the kind who shops till you drop? Then this recent recession must have dampened your spirits quite a bit. But don't worry, hope is around the corner and the economy is picking up steam. Read on to find some practical do's and don'ts of spending.

Shopping is what fuels the economies of the world but the current recession is not a good time to be a spendthrift. So, what does one do? No...shoplifting is illegal:) Instead shop and spend wisely. Almost everyone has probably begun to carpool and learnt to take the bus instead of cabs but that’s not all. Spending on essentials is where the money is now disappearing and here’s how to do that smartly.

# Check soap packaging. A snazzier new package always means an additional Rs 3 – Rs 5 to your wallet. So if you buy a dozen of these soaps, one lands up paying anywhere between Rs 36 to Rs 60 more. All for the fact that Katrina Kaif might just be wearing a different coloured gown on the new soap wrapper! Take the slightly older stock if available. .after all, it isn’t a perishable item.

# Similarly with shampoos. Reach for the stock at the back of the shelf because often that is where the older stock gets pushed and which also has the lower price tag, A Dabur Black Olive Shine shampoo costs Rs 89 for a 200 ml bottle but there was a time when it did cost Rs 82 and that bottle might just be within your reach right now! Bend over and grab it. Chances are that it will be still within an expiry limit.

Even better, go for those dinky sachets. For an entire month, even if you need to wash your hair every day, at Rs 2 a sachet, even the best brands work out to a reasonable Rs 60 (30×2). At 5 ml a sachet…for 30 days, it still works out to 150 ml for Rs 60. Let’s take this math a little further: to make it an even 200 ml..another 10 sachets of 5 ml will cost Rs 20. So, add Rs 60 + Rs 20 = Rs 80. It still works out cheaper than Rs 89..doesn’t it?

Here again brands differ…most of them have introduced sachets ranging from 5 ml, 7.5 ml, 8 ml and 10 ml, so these work out as even more economical, at the usual price of Rs 2 a sachet.

Let’s do the math with Vivel. The 200 ml and 100 ml bottles and 8 ml sachets are priced at Rs 89, Rs 49 and Rs 2, respectively. So, for an entire month, 30 sachets works out to 240 ml at Rs 60 only.

# This is where a woman’s expenses just can not be cut back on. So, make the most of freebies. Kaya and VLCC are forever offering packages to make one look gorgeous. So, go for the free patch tests and sessions wherever possible. I went to two different Kaya clinics for their free underarm laser sessions. So, it saved my waxing bill by a bit for more than a month! I wish they start offering freebies for the legs as well!

# Food products also have variable price tags. Brands cost more while the lesser known variety can be just as good and cheaper as well. For instance: the Garden brand of chips may cost Rs 25 for 150-200 gms but a brand called Mari chips will sell its chips for Rs 32 for 250 gms. So, in this case paying a little extra works because do a little a math and see that for the same 250 gms of Garden chips, one would land up paying Rs 40 for it.

Here's another eg: Take another much consumed item like cheese and there are three major brands available - Amul, Britannia and now Govardhan (Go). These come in packets of 5 and 10 slices and Amul has introduced super saver packs of 20 slices (Rs 130) and mega saver packs of 50 slices (Rs 186).

Let's do the math now:

Brand Price
Amul (10 slices) Rs 73

Britannia (10 slices) Rs 88

Govardhan (12 slices)* Rs 100

*(This has been introduced in 1 packet with 6 slices costing Rs 50 as of now and for convenience I've added two packets and 12 slices to fit with the other two in this comparison).

Anyway, what looks cheaper is obviously Amul but for 10 slices it works out to Rs 7.30 per slice. So for two additional slices at Rs 7.30X2 is Rs 14.60 (round off to Rs 15). Keeping this logic in mind, you would land up paying Rs 88 (73+15). That's Britannia's current price point and it's really a good deal but the problem is Amul doesn't sell 6 slices in a pack anyway. So in this instance, it's really Go which is the wise choice.

The focus shouldn't be only on saving money, it should be on extracting maximum value out of it as well.

# Using pre-paid cards or even switching to a lower value plan will help with cellphone bills.

# Most petrol pumps have ATMs and some even have convenience stores attached to them. Do all your shopping and withdrawing of cash etc while getting your fuel tank filled. So, repeat trips in your car can be avoided.

# Some people actually go to buy vegetables and fruits later in the evening because they know that they will get them cheaper. The vendors are desperate to sell their remaining stock and are amenable to bargaining.

# Sign up to fun services like Mginger.com because for all the advertising SMSes you agree to receive, you get paid 35 paisa and over time, you could accumulate money without giving it too much thought or effort. What's more, you can actually redeem them for 10% off coupons on a variety of services - travel packages, discounts at restaurants, beauty salons, book and movie websites etc. I recently redeemed just 1 point out of my account and got 10% off at Kareem's at Carter Road, Bandra. So, when the bill came to around Rs 320, I paid only around Rs 285 for a meal for two. I didn't skimp on the meal either! I had their famous chicken biryani, shikampuri cutlets and a large Sprite. So, you can get quality and quantity for the right price, if you know how. So, hook up with me at http://mGinger.com/index.jsp?inviteId=april4 on Mginger and you could avail of their mcoupons as well.

With money being a metaphor for power and protection, it is important to know the power of a few rupees saved - or for that matter spent wisely. I live with this motto: If you don't put money to good use - then it's of no use. You can borrow it as well!

1991: When India made history

2009-06-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Born in the United Kingdom, growing up in Sudan, residing in Hong Kong and investing in India. His father was an Icelandic and probably the only one in Sudan, which must have made him stand out, quite a bit in the community! But what memories of Sudan that stick with Jon Thorn is the dire poverty and the famine, which left an indelible impression on him.

He went back to the UK, when he was around 9 years old and studied there. He got his doctorate from the London School of Economics. So, when he finally started working in the 1980s in the US, there were investing big-names like Michael Milken and Sir John Templeton gauging the global markets and investing in unknown markets and asset classes.

Managing Director & CIO of India Capital Fund, Jon Thorn told CNBC-TV18, "Mike Milken is somebody who invented a whole class of securities - junk bonds. He invented it as an investable class, and it's very rare - there were only 4 or 5 people in the century - who have truly claimed to invent a whole asset class."

Templeton saw potential in India but in the 1990s, it was undeserved as a lot needed to be done in the country to attract foreign investments. As Thorn describes it, it was more of an "intellectual conviction that there was potential and possibility. But none of is actuality yet."

"So in our view anyway, it could so easily have happened. So it was a very a tough decision - it was quite a difficult to sell. We had a lot of problems convincing people, that India had possibilities."

He's also had experience of writing for a food and beverage industry magazine, which also gave him a bird's eyeview of how managers managed and sold their products, and made money for their shareholders.

Thorn says that his convictions paid off and India is destined for greater things. So much so, that in 2005, his fund, India Capital Fund won the best 'Single Country Fund' award in 2005 from Asia Hedge.

His investment philosophy is "extraordinary change leads to extraordinary crises, which leads to extraordinary opportunity." And he was proved right, when in 1991, India's Reserve Bank of India ran out of gold and the World Bank came to the rescue on the condition that India liberalised its economy.

Thorn feels that when China and India decided to join the economy, that was a truly momentous moment in history, as opposed to the breakup of the Soviet Union or even the fall of the Berlin Wall.

He explains, "The thing about China is that they industrialised or re-industrialised I may say, much earlier than India. But more importantly, this has been a very single political structure to get things done and that makes things happen faster. I don't think one is certainly better than the other, but that's how it happened. The other thing is, investing capital in China has created the manufacturing base."

"In 2003, China was the largest single recipient of investment capital in the world -more than US - and there has not been any other country apart from the US since 1880 which has received so much investment capital. Now this fact alone, changes similar assumptions about what the future will be like for China and for India as well."

India being a democratic country, and with as many rules and regulations, beginning a new business or setting up a plant, was tough going for the foreigners, who came in during the first wave in 1991.

Thorn explains, "I personally always felt that the theoretical prospects were unbeatable for India. The labour force, the language, the sheer demographic profile being among the youngest population of the world, all these things I profoundly believed would pan out and would actually be successful in the end."

"But I believed that the timeframe would be much shorter but it extended. I won't say that we became desperate, but we did rather wonder and become a little impatient. I believed these things were fundamental and would ultimately come right."

Thorn says that his convictions paid off and India is destined for greater things. So much so, that in 2005, his fund, India Capital Fund won the best 'Single Country Fund' award in 2005 from Asia Hedge. But he believes more must be done on the privatisation front - to ensure that competition pushes GDP growth higher, thereby giving people higher standards of living.

Thorn concludes, "The government should govern and not manage the companies. I think it's very clear that when you get the government away from running economies, GDP increases. But it's a political decision for the citizens of India and the government of the day to make."

Written for moneycontrol.com

Selling India to foreign funds

2009-06-03T05:25:00.000-07:00

Chief Executive Officer, CEO and chief investment officer, Quantum Advisors, Ajit Dayal seems to have known what he wanted from life, very early on. Though, his father was a doctor and it was expected he would follow his footsteps, he chose to play the equities game because he didn't find the prospect of making house-calls at 3am in the morning very appealing! So he went off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to get an MBA degree.

He did have the option to work on Wall Street but gave that up to work in India. He sure has made the most of his time here. For instance, he's written the Quantum Year Book and some lighthearted stuff as well - well, like comic books on the stock exchange!

Pre-liberalisation market scenario
He felt there was excitement in the air, of working in a nascent market like India, which in 1984, had yet to see big-ticket players like Franklin Templeton and Alliance come in.

The person who gave him his first break was Ashok Birla. Dayal told CNBC-TV18, "I met him in 1984, and he took me on. He was setting up a company then, with SG Warburg called Mercury Asset Management. The fund was called Birla Mercury Funds and I was the director of the fund. Our role was to get money from non-resident Indians, NRIs, to invest in the Indian stock markets, to help the company develop.

"That was an idea, which was way ahead of its time, maybe 10 years ahead of its time because the first foreign funds actually were launched in India in 1993-94. That's when Franklin came down to India, Alliance came down to India."

But India wasn't ready for such radical business practices then. So, between 1985-89, Dayal did the rounds in New Delhi, meeting with the finance minister and other mandarins who could move the pace of the financial market reforms along.

But, at that point India was fighting shy of allowing foreign capital into the country because the real fear was that the Birlas were gearing up to take over companies and also because of the Swraj Paul episode in 1981.

Dayal recounted, "So people were scared of the foreign flows of money and here we were, trying to sell the idea that NRIs had a lot of capital and India as a country needed capital, there was a perfect match and the bridge for the two was the mutual fund route."

The irony was, that even as early as 1985, foreign funds were eager to come in despite the 40 per cent cap that was prevalent, for any fund launched by NRIs.

He wasn't successful in getting mindsets to change about foreign inflows but he did move to Unit Trust of India, briefly to help them raise money when they ventured into the US market.

He recalled, "I actually joined at the tail-end of the marketing exercise. I helped them to choose stocks for portfolios in India and then I left UTI and went back to the stock exchange, where I was a sub-broker on the floor of the exchange."

But research reports was what he really wanted to do. He admits, "The idea was to get information flowing, to as many people as you could about India and also to begin to let people know, 'what's a share, why should you buy shares', not because it was owned by the Tatas, Birlas or Ambanis but because there is a P/E ratio, price to cash-flow ratio, dividend yield and there is earning."

A time of change...
When the 1991 balance of payments crisis forced the then Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh to throw open the economy, he was ready with his homework. He explained, "That was a day that we were actually waiting for, we started the Quantum Year Book in January 1990 - a year and half before the rules were announced for foreigners to buy shares - so on July 2, 1991 when the rules were announced for foreigners to buy shares, we were just waiting. Every single foreign group came down to India and they met us and we finally did a joint venture with Jardine Fleming."

Working with Jardine Fleming "was fantastic in many ways because they helped me to make Quantum from a 12 person team of research analysts to Jardine Fleming Quantum Enterprise with 180 people, in the course of a year. It was a JV and when I first met with them, they asked me, 'what's your dream for India and what's it going to cost?' when I told them what I had dreamt up and said it would cost $3 million, they gave me a cheque with no questions asked."

This proved a boon for his team's research purposes because now he had access to data flow from across the world. He elaborated, "We could, sort of, position ACC and Ambuja with respect to Holcim of Switzerland and in relation to Lafarge of France. So the data-flows were great. It's not that we actually went and wrote research reports on those companies but we read a lot of stuff on these companies."

There was a lot of action happening on the stock market, around the time, he inked his deal with Jarding Fleming - it was witnessing the Harshad Mehta led spike, so he cautioned Jardine Fleming, telling them. "There will be a collapse but don't worry, the fundamentals of the economy are still solid and they believed it."

Selling India to foreign funds
After his Jardine Fleming stint, he became a local advisor to funds looking to come into India. One of them was a UK fund called Prolific Asset Management and the other one was the California-based Walden Group. He and the Walden Group established the second venture capital fund for India. It was around this time, he had the opportunity to meet his guru and someone who inspired him.

Sir John Templeton
He reminisced, "I met Tom Hansberger in July 1998. He's an absolute genius, he was the co-founder of Templeton, Galbraith, and Hansberger. The first thing Tom told me is that I am going to make you unlearn all the nonsense you have learnt and I am going to teach you real long-term investing and real long-term research and he just changed the time horizon - the way we look at companies, the way we studied managements, the way we look at anything in the market - is really born out of what is happening with, what Sir John (Templeton) and Tom had done in their own enterprise, right from 1979.

"I actually moved to Florida in 1998 and then I was shuttling between Florida and India for the last six years, but I had my team in India. So my team and I, would chose Indian stocks for the portfolios that we ran on Tom's behalf."

Tom Hansberger
"In fact, when I went to Hansberger, Tom liked my work a lot and he actually made me the deputy CIO of the company in March 2000 and I know that he was running a fund valued at about $5.4 billion, till I left last year. Included in that, was the fact that I ran a large fund for one of the largest money managements groups in the world called Vanguard International Value Fund."

Personal investment fundas
His personal investing philosophy is to look at long-term five-year plans and how the management plans to achieve it. He's also a stock picker and does not believe in playing by the index approach. He explained, "When I say value, it means that I must buy a stock which has got profit power or the EPS power more than the market at a P/E ratio, that is equal to the market."

His future goals include running money for large institutions and becoming a wealthy individual! He reiterated, "It is about getting long-term money into India. It's what I always wanted to do - to get equity capital from the hands of big institutions and big pensions in the US to India, not short-term momentum money."

There are some things he cautions about. He stresses on being disciplined about when you plan to get into the market and how long you plan to hold onto the stock. Otherwise, it just hints at the fact that you don't believe in the numbers yourself.

He elaborated, "We are value guys, so by definition we buy shares that no one else wants, and we tend to buy them when they are going down. So it's like catching a falling knife, which is always dangerous. And at the other end when shares go up, we are disciplined. We are not willing to pay what the growth momentum guys are willing to pay."

And what's his advice to upcoming market analysts? "I would tell them that irrespective of nationalities, you can find good and bad people anywhere in the world and don't get fooled by the fact that foreign money, per se, is sort of, angelic in nature because it's not", he concluded.

Written for moneycontrol.com

Trendy & earthy handicrafts for your home

2009-06-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Your home deserves the best and almost everyone does go around hunting for that perfect hand-knotted carpet, or intricately woven wall tapestries in vivid colours. Want wrought iron candle sconces or lovely Warli or Madhubani artwork - anything that shouts India and flaunts its rich heritage?

Then head to Nirmitee in Mumbai. Your search for that perfect artifact should end here. This store was set up in 1997 and products are sourced from all corners of the country, which find their way to this store and then into many of the superbly done up Mumbai homes.

Many artists get a chance to showcase their talent and in diverse mediums like wood, clay, metal and other materials here. One will find Odissi brass statues, copper handicrafts from Maharashtra, wrought iron statues from Madhya Pradesh and many other artifacts from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

You can browse and take your pick - so do leave home with plenty of time to kill - as you wouldn't want to rush this shopping experience. All of these handicrafts are lovingly created masterpieces - one gets a hint of tradition being maintained with a family working to keep their skills alive.

At the store, handicrafts are not priced beyond a maximum of Rs 25,000. Apart from metal work, there are palm leaf paintings, Warli art and Madhubani art. If art doesn't excite you, you could just buy the handcrafted chess pieces from Rajasthan - to get some practice for those boardroom battles.

Nirmitee
4/5 Khosravi Estate, SK Bole Road, Dadar (W)
Tel no: 24229139
Open: 11.00 am - 8.00 pm

Written for moneycontrol.com

Global Giants Wade Through Middle East Franchise Deals

2009-05-01T05:07:00.000-07:00

The Middle East is a cesspool of political turmoil and missed opportunities.

Every political manoeuvre is equalled by a reaction having huge economic repercussions. For instance: Oil-rich Iraq continues to have sanctions imposed 11 years after it invaded Kuwait. Formerly one of the more highly developed countries in the region, it is now dependent on economic handouts. But the obstacles apart, some Middle East countries have opened their markets to western transnationals. So how did these global giants adapt to the business climate and work around bureaucratic red-tape? The answer is they have involved local businesses - i.e., franchising.

Understanding the nuances is a different ball-game altogether.

Says Reema Ali, managing partner in a Washington DC firm Ali & Partners, which handles commercial law via affiliates around the Middle East: “A franchise deal in the Middle East is a marriage with very high alimony. If the franchiser and franchisee disagree, it is very difficult to come out of the relationship without having to pay compensation.”

But that doesn’t mean franchise operations are not opening in that region. According to Ms Ali, the most lucrative markets are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She adds, “For the franchiser, the overriding strategy is to build the cost of a potential disagreement into the business plan.” But she and other lawyers who handle franchise deals in the region suggest that some additional general legal strategies are beneficial.

Opening franchises in the Middle East have gained popularity because many Middle Easterners perceive this business as ‘prestigious and lucrative’ says John E Xefos, managing partner of the Baker & McKenzie office in Riyadh. “The franchisee, especially the smaller operator, has probably been hearing get-rich stories for years. He is primed for disappointment.” Many aspects of running a franchise operation in the Middle East is more difficult than in Europe or the US. For eg: more of the component product may need to be imported and - at least in Saudi Arabia construction costs could be higher.

Another setback that a franchisee overlooks is that the franchiser expects to pocket his royalty under any circumstances. Mr Xefos recommends “that the franchisee understand upfront that there are no guaranteed profits and the franchiser expects the royalty will be paid regardless of what happens to the bottomline.” This kind of disclosure tends to keep misunderstandings at bay. He also suggests that franchise agreements be adhered to because it is not possible to apply the franchise’ parent country’s laws in the Middle East. Problems too could arise if the franchiser comes out with a new logo or marketing campaign and expects his Middle East partners to tote the line. If they don’t, then shutting down the operations or removing the sign may not be an available option.

Among Middle Eastern jurisdiction, Israel is a case unto himself. Its legal system is similar to the United States and is based on British rather that French, Turkish and Islamic law.

Andrew P Loewinger of Buchanan Ingersoll in Washington DC says: “Israel does have antitrust laws, although my experience is they don’t create problems for franchisers.” He adds, “ There are no laws specifically circumscribing the franchise relationship, its pretty much contractual.”

But the biggest difference between Israel and many Arab countries is that Israel has no commercial agency laws. Mr Loewinger says,”The main purpose of these laws was to protect the agent through a compensation arrangement. If the agreement is terminated by the foreign party, the agent is entitled to some compensation by statute or regulation - that is separate form the contract.” The compensation varies from country to country. It could be more than a year’s net profit or payment for unused inventory. But in any form, it can have a major effect on the franchise deal and should be incorporated as cost of doing business.

Of course there are ways to sidestep this as well. Some franchisers don’t register the transaction. A relationship that is not registered is not enforceable. But more common is adding a “foreign choice-of-law “ clause. This means one could set up a franchise in Turkey and specify in the contract that New York law will apply. This is by no means fool-proof because “ for certain kinds of issues that come up, no matter what you say, Turkish law will apply.”

Mr Loewinger added, “There is a tendency in Middle Eastern countries for courts to either assume jurisdiction, or as a matter of policy not to recognise the awards of foreign bodies.” So to sort out problematic issues in such situations, agree to local arbitration but select an impartial arbitral authority and specify the arbitration venue in the initial agreement itself.

In countries such as Bahrain and the UAE, there is more willingness to accept and enforce foreign awards. But pushing the envelope too far may not be a good idea. So if the franchiser is US-based, then it might be better to specifically request a European arbitral authority, rather than a home-based one.

Written for The Financial Express

Shining Silver...and its many charms

2009-04-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

When image promotion is the name of the game, as it is evidently these days, silver is putting a high gloss on its aura, with a little bit of help from its producers.

According to silver producers, the white metal has something for everyone: jewellery for the wife, artefacts for the home, medical bandages for the kids and futuristically designed, germ resistant homes for the environment buff.

Your chemist around the corner may soon be selling silver coated, quick healing medical bandages imported from the US. Aiming to increase consumer use of these medical adhesives, the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) recently approved over-the-counter sales of silver based, antimicrobial bandages, manufactured by Westaim Biomedical Corp., which will be a lower dose version of the company’s successful ‘Acticoat’ burn and wound dressings.

Scott Gillis, president of Westaim Biomedical Corp., says: “Consumers will be able to use a lower dosage form of the same powerful technology employed in burn units to treat the most severe, life-threatening infections humans can face.”

Westaim’s clinical tests have shown that the proprietary silver coating has proved to be effective against more than 150 pathogens, including antibiotic resistant pathogens such as the methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and the vancomycin resistant Enterococcus (VRE).

Westaim is in talks with over-the-counter bandage producers and hopes to introduce the product in the market by 2003. “We believe there is a significant market opportunity for a proven antimicrobial consumer bandage,” adds Mr Gillis.

Well, that’s one use. Now for those who want to remove a permanent tattoo. The commonly used infra-red rays leave scars that may turn infectious. But silver enhanced bandages will promote healing and fend off infection after a tattoo has been removed.

Speaking last month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in Los Angeles, Dr Tolbert Wilkinson stated that a modified infrared coagulator—a device similar to a laser beam—is a cost effective way to permanently remove colour tattoos. Mr Wilkinson noted that this method was more affordable, but needed more intensive post-operative care. The use of an infra-red light source for tattoo removal has been in use since 1991, but it causes severe burns. By using lower settings in combination with the silver impregnated bandages, however, it produces excellent results. The silver ion bandages also help to shorten healing time and reduce the risk of blister breakage, infection and scarring.

Now for the germ resistant home, which uses silver in high contact areas. The plans for this home have earned designer David Martin an award from the American Institute of Architects for design excellence. “This ground breaking project sets the stage for the home of the future,” says Richard Wardrop, chairman and CEO of AK Steel, which will build the 11,000 square foot home, ‘Camino de Robles’ (‘Path of Oaks’) in California, in collaboration with upcoming biotech company AgION Technologies. The home will be an amalgamation of AK Steel’s carbon and stainless steel, coated with AgION’s proprietary silver based anti-bacteria compound.

AK Steel’s Mr Wardrop says: “The AK Steel concept home will be striking in appearance, while offering the benefits of steel construction. Using our steels coated with AgION’s antimicrobial compound, this project also introduces a new way to help combat germs on key surfaces in the home.”

The home’s skeletal framework will be constructed of steel, which should make it fire and earthquake proof. The silver embedded areas will include those that are considered “high touch”, such as handrails, faucets, kitchen areas and door knobs. The heating, ventilation and air-conditioning duct work will also be made of AgION-coated steel, as will some non-steel products, such as refrigerator trays and counter tops. This endeavour is part of a recent trend towards replacing wood with steel in home building because of environmental concerns.

Meanwhile, the Japanese, reeling under the burden of the recession and the shaky yen, are aiming to attract jewellery connoisseurs by producing ‘Art Clay Silver’. Aida Chemicals Industries of Japan plans to market its Art Clay Silver, which is already a rage with Japanese consumers, in the US soon.

Art Clay Silver is a pliable, liquid clay, which you can mould into jewellery of any kind and then fire in a kiln at a high temperature. Professional jewellery makers and skilled amateurs are already using this clay, but the company plans to broaden its appeal to end-consumers.

Company officials claim that intricate designs that would be difficult to make using traditional silver working techniques, are quite simple with Art Clay Silver. And the clay displays minimal shrinkage, so, Art Clay Silver retains the finer details of a design. Even rubber stamp impressions are retained after the firing.
The jewellery can then be given an “antique” finish with a dash of sulphur.

How’s that for a personal touch? So the next time you think of buying jewellery, try an Art Silver Clay kit from your friendly jeweller. Anything for exclusivity.

Written for The Financial Express