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

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?

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

People are more mindful consumers now: Report

In an Euro RSCG report called ‘The New Consumers’, some interesting takeaways were that the economic downturn in the West, has made people more mindful consumers. They are “savvier, more empowered, and more demanding than of old, and they have a veritable laundry list of things they take into consideration when shopping. 

These days, they are paying attention to everything from the economic and social impacts of the products they buy to their safety, design, and provenance. They are more risk aware, so they feel the need to be more vigilant, but they are also more cognizant of their capacity to influence the world—for good or ill—with their consumption choices.” 

Here are some statistics from the report: 

-72% are shopping more carefully and mindfully than they used to. 

-69% claim to be smarter shoppers than they were a few years ago, while 63% say they are more demanding. 

-54% are paying more attention to the environmental and/or social impact of the products they buy. -62% do lots of consumer research online. 

-51% are more interested today in how and where products are made. 

-57% say it makes them feel good to support local producers, artisans, and manufacturers,and 45% say it’s important to them to buy locally produced goods. 

-43% pay more attention to the color, feel, and overall design of products than they used to. 

-64% say making environmentally friendly choices makes them feel good (versus only 30% who say the same about buying luxury items). 

-54% are making an effort to buy fewer disposable goods, and 72% feel good about reducing the amount of waste they create. 

-39% have started or thought about starting a home vegetable or fruit garden— a sign not only of their longing to reconnect with nature, but also of their desire for self-sufficiency and competence. 

-67% believe most people would be better off if they lived more simply. 

-46% wish their homes were less cluttered, and 50% have thrown out or thought about throwing out lots of stuff to declutter their lives and homes in recent years. 

There are lessons to be learnt here because we are fast moving into hyper-consumerism mode in India as well. So it is a good idea to not pick up other people's bad habits! 

For details click here: http://www.thenewconsumer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Prosumer_Report-_The_New_Consumer_lores.pdf

African land grabbed for agrofuels. Will India be next?

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

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

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.

At least One Indian Supermart Encourages Recycling

At least one Indian supermarket is thinking of all those juice cartons people buy from them, and what they could do with it, to keep our environment a little more clean and green.

In Mumbai, a supermarket called Sahakari Bhandar has an 'How to dispose Tetra Paks' initiative that encourages consumers to bring back their empty juice cartons and they are offering recycled gifts on the spot.

• For 5 cartons returned, you get a recycled pen.
  
  
• For 7 cartons returned, you get recycled tissues.
  
  
• For 12 cartons returned, you get a recycled notebook.
  
  
• Before chucking a carton into a bin - cut it open and wash it.

A pamphlet on recycling also educates consumers on disposing off these cartons in their dry trash bins and not a wet garbage bin because then ragpickers get a better price for it. 

Want to know what can be made out of your juice   carton? Check out this cool bookmark. It feels like   it is made out of expensive hand-made paper   instead of a used tetra pack.

A 250-years old legacy sails into the modern era

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

Kamat brings home cooking to travellers

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

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

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

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

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