Rising from ashes- Indian Saga

A nation widely known for beaurocracy, illiteracy, poverty .. blah, blah, blah... Now, features on every nation's economic charter. People power? Oh yes.. indeed!
I remember few years back on a lazy lunch talk, i told a friend of mine that India has a future which is remarkable, because growth always has one, she smiled and said,"Gary, you are emotional about India, i dont wanna hit that soft corner. " I also laughed at that, but then i was talking data and facts there, so had little doubt in my mind.
Again in a discussion 3 years back over mergers and acquisitions, i told SK ( well, he is a M&A consultant today), what if one day a home based Indian company takes over a biggie. He turned and said, you dream big and i love that. :). I was like ok, i dont come from Mc Kinsey, so fine. Sitting neat in 2007, we have tatas, kingfishers and blah blah blah. Oh ok. I wasnt really emotional. I took a decision to stay back in India 2 years back for a reason. I dint want the spirit of fighting for life and struggle die in me. Its good and bad. Things are not so obvious for we Indians, so our brains are open to think. We dont really assume that being a pedestrian, people will give you way. We stand right infront of a moving car and find our way. Rather, its either ways i die, but if i dont try, i will stand on the other side of the road forever. :)
Wow, i love being Indian. Looked at the thought process. What a spirit to take risk. It can only come when you know, you have nothing to loose.
Here are some of the facts that people are trying to capture in numbers and pens-

• Over the next two decades, the country’s middle class will grow from about 5 percent of the population to more than 40 percent and create the world’s fifth-largest consumer market.
• In 1985 93 percent of the population lived on a household income of less than 90,000 rupees a year, or about a dollar per person per day; by 2005 that proportion had been cut nearly in half, to 54 percent. 431 million fewer Indians live in extreme poverty today than would have if poverty had remained stuck at the 1985 level. If India can achieve 7.3 percent annual growth over the next 20 years, 465 million more people will be spared a life of extreme deprivation.
• extreme rural poverty has declined from 94 percent in 1985 to 61 percent in 2005, and we project that it will drop to 26 percent by 2025. While the progress has been substantial—even historic—significant challenges remain.

Wow, i love numbers and all above that the fact, that we as Indians, never really though of these numbers. We simply fought a fight for survival. It brought lots of limelight to us, we are acknowledged, people want to study us. But we dont really care, for we are truly democratic, free will survivers, or rather winners of tomorrow. We will keep on making deals years on years. Our long lost brain drains serving people for dollars, will come back, not because we want them back, or we have changed the infrastructure or lifestyle for them, but just because they want to come back, because somehow this country can get them money and same non luxurious homely feeling which they did not relate to few years back. [ Pun intended]

Hail to Indians- for they know not what they cant do !!! [ Well, that stands for all kind of wrongs we are known for as well :)]

Strategy

Organizations are known to differentiate based on their strategy. Essentially all competitors build same product, set similar processes and target same customers. This is the initial growth stage. Everyone has a chance of survival, because market is too huge. As more and more players enter into market, their arises a need to DIFFERENTIATE- a word which has kept most of the top managers on toes for ages and years. Innovation is not a small game. While they say options are limitless, there is only so much that one can do in calculated manner. So, drives in the heroic word- Strategy. Often misused, but still widely used. :)
I was reading a nice speech given by one of the young budding manager on strategy for an IT company. It was simple and looked more operational to me, but linked straight to strategy which emerges from no where.
For years each business has run on some basic concepts-
a) Need for it to exist
b) People who can elaborate the need and setup a process to fulfill it
c) People who enable this process with labour and effort
d) A mechanism which takes this offering to the people who need
e) The consumer finally

Each business starts as innovation, everything that is repeated for more than a decade reduces to process and now? Since its a process, you know what fits where and you start playing with human intelligence. You want to put that into a database and process it. Amazingly, for years the human mental asset was considered to be intangible and difficult to capture commodity. But this is not the same today. BPO was someone intellectual asset, which was put on papers and followed by 200 people recruited. Maintenance in IT is another service which is going to follow similar trend in years to come.
So, here is a strategic shift. Lets talk of how it works in IT:
a) If someone can outsource to me, can i outsource to someone else? Hmm.. how about small tier2 cities? Small companies. Lesser salary, lesser brand name, so less expectation. Lets start a supply chain in IT. China, Malaysia, or may be even Ramnagar within India.
b) 200 people * 8 hours. Let me look at my human assets as products lying in warehouse. Some are lying in shelves unused for years, some products do not get to see shelves ever. How about managing this imbalance. Lets cann it productivity improvement. Utilization, may be.
c) Enough of big shops(read US, UK). Let me take my stuff to those small growing budding businesses. They might pay me lesser, but then my operations are normalized and even 10rs profit on 200 is ok for me. Lets have a wider portfolio for a better market tolerance.
d) My industry is people intensive. Decades of exposure has made work routine. Got to add value to work and give them something new to make them stick to me, or else they will break free. [ growing economy, u see:)]

Donno, if i talk absurd, but i have covered STRATEGY for next IT move. And i love the fact that this is moving manufacturing way. Does that essentially mean, all business are same?

Journey to the not so knowns- Part3

Village- HilleNijgal- 55 kms off Tumkur road. Better called Vishwa's village.

The journey started from Shopper Stop at Banerghatta Road. We all gathered to travel to a small village off Tumkur road. Vishwa had decided to show us his vilage. We were all excited. Started driving on the road, and met Vishwa near Majestic. We started following him on Tumkur Road. Dhaval took the driving seat and managed to get a dent on car almost right at the beggining of journey. :) After around 50 minutes of travel, we saw an indicator on Vishwa's bike for a left turn. The scanary around was beautiful. It was a big highway and there were small green hills around. After we took a left turn, we came across a railway crossing. We waited for around 10 minutes at the crossing only to discover the beauty of nature lying hidden behind. This was a small muddy track. We waded through it, to be received by host's family. This was the spot, we were supposed to have breakfast at. We were served with coconut chutney and rice made from a large round citrus fruit on a banana leaf. The food was yummy. We saw old way of heating water under a muddy chulha.
After having our breakfast we moved on for a trek through village farms. We started by peeping into an old house, houses which sheltered animals like sheep and cow, much to the thrill of 4 year old Muskaan.

We walked through farms to reach to capsicum farms, and custard apples. The farm looked beautiful with yellow and red capsicums, rice fields and also some typical masala plants that are out in sambhar. We proceeded to village school. There was a large ground and some classes in it. The place looked open and peaceful as it was holiday for kids. From there we trekked down to an ancient temple in village, it had a huge pillar at entry. We were huffing and puffing, thanks to the luxurious life we spend in cities, it was time to take some rest for us. The next trek started with water pool for cattles, coconult trees, sem fali plants and we saw some women picking these falis and pakaging them. We bought some of it and moved forth thorugh a thin lane towards a corn plantation. Vishwa plucked medium sized corns and offered them to us. They were sweet and tastier than any corn i had ever eaten. From there we climbed a semi tough terrain to reach to a small building on hill top. We rested there and drank coconut water.
Moving on to the village rain diety. This was a huge water reservoir right infront of rain diety temple. We rested in stony caves of that temple for sometime and started walking on stony elevated hillway towards the temple.
We climbed some 50 stairs to reach the village temple located at some good height. The village could be seen from there. We prayed to God and were all set for the rural lunch. The menu was Raagi ball, curry, green daal , salad and a sweet dish. We all were having Raagi ball for firt time, so was a relatively difficult thing to digest, but we managed. After having lunch and having strolled around the temple, we started descending to vilage again. This was a trek covered with Imli trees and natural tree webs, leading to village farms. Here came a tube well, everyone tried hands at putting their faces right infront of the water gushing out of the tube.
By this time, we were all tired, all set to reach back to pavillion. We visited lakshmi temple, rested for a while, got pictures clicked on a tractor and drove back to the city life.

Facts-
- Village is scenic and beautiful
- Main economy is based on agriculture, so people are cultured and united
- Scope for better education
- Village needs more source of income
- Caste system is prevalent

Infosys vs TCS vs Wipro

I came across a very interesting article in ET few days back. This was on divergent paths taken by Indian IT companies after years of competition. Somehow i always had a feeling that strategically these companies are differentating now, so it was great to see it coming in black and white from pen of Sudhir Apte. (Sr Analyst and Country Head, Forrester).
Here are some of the strengths of each of the organization as mentioned-
Wipro- R&D and Infrastructure Management are its core strengths. The org stands at a revenue of 3.45 Billion. It has set up a niche in six sigma conuslting in software. Good part is its approach to acquire domain specializing small companies which brings in more business expertise to it. Applying innovatin is its mantra and it is laying more and more stress on solutions. When it comes to technology and cost Wipro remains the first choice.
Infosys- This org has 30 offices worldwide and around 9 development centers in India. With a revenue of 3.1 billion, being the latest entrant in IT race, this organization has a lot to boast of in terms of its world calss infrastructure and process centric approach. Infy is clearly the first choice when it comes to quality and delivery. However, the organization today is focusing more on business centric approach, solutions and IP assets. The key mantra for most of the IT orgs would be non linear growth in times to come. This is clearly in competiiton of Accentures and IBMs of the world.
TCS- Established in 1968, Asia's largetst and India's number one IT organization. It indeed is best capable of handling large sized deals across globe, thanks to its global network delivery model. The organization boasts of technical efficiency and its global rollout delivery efficiency. Its customer portfolio is wide and is spread across regions. It believes in market penetration and wil bid low to get an entry into client side and expand reach there on. Iw ould say that i find the strategy of this organization very fool proff because its roots are strong. However, it fails to differentiate in terms of marketing.

Seeing that all 3 vendors no longer belong to same creed, IT consumers have a clear choice to make. The road ahead for all the three is strategically different and who wins and who looses is the game to watch.

These biggies remain to be hopes and support for atleast 3 lakh Indians directly and many other indirectly. Its good to know that strengths have now been recognized and ways parted to competed with a bigger world out there. Thats the beauty of business, there is thrill of doing something new every moment.