I am a bachelor and I am not a Terrorist

What has happened to our India...? Rather, what is happening to our India...? Whatever is happening around us is making us the witness knowingly or unknowingly... This suits you most if you are an IT professional... more if you have done an MBA and landed at a place most commonly referred to as STP/SEZ (See through people/ some economic zombie zone).   Places around these so called STP's are crowded with skyscrapers that are supposed to be residential complexes. I prefer to call them residential complexes for families, as most of these exhibit a board on the main gate saying   dogs are welcome... and you know who is not... (Bachelors). 

This started the day I woke up with a noisy bang on my apartment door. An appeasing Sunday morning, supposed to carry the hangover of last nights workouts, turned belligerent. The same neighbors who used to ask their children to shake hands with me and say 'Namaste', turned hostile to my being there. Not only me but all of those who hone the tag of being a bachelor were under   threat of being treated an outcast. So let us get back to the Sunday; 10 people aged between 35- eternity, standing at my apartment door. 

Before I tell you the story further, I have a few questions left unanswered… Let me try them with you… Why only some of the people are the torchbearers in our society..? Why are only a few who think that India is a land of culture (Culture definition not clear) and the culture needs to be preserved? Why isn’t technology an inherent part of this culture..? Why the same people, fighting for the so called culture are found to be the biggest deterrents to a nation’s development..? Why at an age of 27 I feel strangled at the hands of these naysayers to believe in my own culture..? Why do these people refer to us as being influenced by the western culture when their own lives have been impacted by the penetration of technology that took birth in the west? We want to develop at one hand, safeguard the culture and the economy on the other, but why do we want to carry over the burden of blindfolding beliefs that were never the part of our culture anyway…

So the Sunday morning with that bang on the door, I open it with about a handful of my friends lying on my apartment floor. Nearly 20 eyes were rolling on the outside to get a glimpse of what has happened on the inside overnight. To their surprise, every one of my friends were fast asleep not knowing the happenings on the outside. I am treated like a stranger and told that the “society” has forbidden bachelors to stay in the premises. But why..? Don’t I pay rents..? I didn’t go to anyone’s house and disturbed their sleep. This is rather a trend in all these zombie zones that the residential accommodation is offered to bachelors during the initial period and suddenly the welfare association decides to turn “family friendly”. So what am I supposed to do… get married… increase the rent… hunt for another house… but why…?? I leave the rest to you to decipher…

Is there something called Online Business??

If I get the Question Right (open to debate): We are trying to fit in Traditional Business sense to the contemporary business ways.

Recently I came across this argument ( in reference to Online Marketing Strategy); "Can we take our business online and make it an online business?"

To address such questions we first need to acknowledge the fact that there is nothing called online business, because online is what my business is. So I cannot just wake up one day and decide that I need to go online. (Like the way Barnes and Nobles failed in front of Amazon. com)

In context to the same paradigm we need to understand that not only the rules of doing businesses but the businesses themselves have evolved to very next level where our traditional principles are bound not to fit in.

So the question that we are asking is itself wrong. Social media is not killing traditional forms of doing businesses because we are trying to fit in the same background that we come with. Therefore I need to ask you a question now: Where is the marketing department of Google.com?? Being the topmost business online, they are not investing into marketing at all. So this brings us to another argument that in this new era, DEMAND AGGREGATES AROUND VALUE and not advertisements or attractiveness that we build around the brand.

So the biggest mistakes that any of the corporates would be doing today is trying to be a part of this Online Pie. The point is not that they can jump in anytime, but they will have to rediscover from scratch. Because business models have to differ in this new era and not every penny invested just on social media will give significant ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)

Online Marketing Strategy....The 'in' Class Experience

The Class started sharp at 9 AM on somewhat similar lines of digging deeper into our own ‘instincts’ and the comparison with mental analysis. The most exciting thing about today’s session was that we touched upon the topic of Marketing, not because we explicitly mentioned it in the class but the way we reached there and the significance of Fast company article exercise. At times the Destination seems important (and it has to be), at others the journey is beautiful. This journey that all of us experienced today is the one that I am going to write about.

So, with a rainy morning and chilly weather we tagged the Humans with “the only animals who transact in material medium”. The question being addressed is, “what will happen in the ecosystem if the Lion is asked to submit the dead Deer on the counter asking for a price in return?” Will the instincts to hunt be affected?

Then we considered leadership for a while: Do we become leaders to do good for ourselves or for the rest of the community? Is it necessary to elect a leader? Or the leader comes up naturally following the same theory of instinct that we have already spoken about in plenty.

200 years of Industrial revolution have given us a lot of hierarchies and planned assembly lines to match the same framework. Be it the educational system within which standardized produce is collected at the end of every 12 years of schooling or others. Here we spoke about the lack of customization that exists within this framework. The cobbler used to sew custom made shoes to each and every villager’s size before this era of mass production came in. Today we have to see our way through a standardized fit 5-6-7-8-9 or whatever size. So, is the industrialized economy good or bad for the consumers? And, the punch comes in with “customer is the king” and the parody is that we mention only those things overtly which are usually meant to conceal the true intent.

Size of business soon became proportional to the ability to broadcast (advertise). This broadcast that existed since long has been unidirectional and directed from one-to-many. The market is under the influence of those who can broadcast and broadcast well. But the means are changing with times. Google and Gmail have no clearly defined marketing departments. May be it’s the power of network that works here and the same power distributed across nodes that make them interact.

Finally, we considered metapolation over evolution and transition. The various industries that surround us today are in various stages of a straight line graph of increasing efficiency. But some of them have managed to transition from one phase to other with what we called a fundamental change; like the way people used to communicate using the postal services and telegraph have significantly changed to e-mails and mobile phones.

Then the same products that we get out of the industrial revolution can be summed up with these beautiful lines: (It's a song)

Once, long ago there was a time in what now seems a distant land

Each small boutique was precious and unique

'Cause every little thing was made by hand

Then there came a revolution

The progress of production was its aim

Now instead of one, there were many

And each costs just a penny

But every single one looks just the same

Now there's a Starbucks on every bloody corner

McDonald's on everybody's street

There's a White Castle, Wendy's and Walmart

And then it all repeats

If you're th kind that looks down on the masses

Even for you there's a feint

Get some New Rocks or a pair of Docs

Look just like those who ain't

Leading the way to a greener planet...!

Darwin's theory stands till date, from "survival of the fittest" to "surviving the apt way". Beyond doubt, Life certainly has origins from green pastures, and like always, we have the habit of grazing over all of it. Realizing this, we tend to forget this fact like any other. Every single day that I am spending on this planet has a meaning, a deeper virtue that needs to be unleashed by the time this journey ends. Eventually, life is made up of nothing else but “Time”. And time, what I find, is running out faster than expected. This is in context to the environment that surrounds me, and the wretched condition that prevails. Time is definitely scarce to entrust the ingenuity of the environment to the coming generation. I don’t mind if there is life that exists somewhere deeper in the universe, till I am not spoiling the terrain I am living on. Certain things have kept my morale up, while the others added to the misery. The question is “What can anyone do to save the planet?” and the answer lies within us. One step taken is half the battle won; this is what I did when I planted the first sapling on the Tree Plantation Day at Lavale, under the SIIB initiative of ‘Kshitij’- A Community Development Wing.

PS: The pic includes the first Banner that i designed myself...:)

Managing the social way!

Albert Einstein once said “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education”. “MBA”, the buzz word itself has a lot of things to learn from. Time management has certainly been one of them. But, managing time besides adhering to some social responsibilities is something that no other place could teach me. At SIIB, I am privileged to work with ‘Kshitij’ – the Community Development Initiative. Under this unit, I along with my colleagues, teach at a Govt. Senior Secondary School situated at Wakad, Pune. With this I wish to share my first hand experiences:

With the zephyr at its best and the monsoon rains at peak, my every interaction with the kids and the school authorities was distinctive. With every kid, I had more no. of eyes staring at me; no doubt inviolate and sacrosanct. Eyes filled with their own demands. Demands could be many; knowledge, inflated earning capacity, achievement, money and more…. These kids aren’t satisfied with what they have and what is being done to them in the school. What is it that’s keeping these kids immured in the school boundaries? Is it the societal statute? Or a dubious malediction brought out by their parents, who couldn’t get them to a high profile so called “Public School”? What is it exactly that satisfies human satiety? Are we really concerned about these kids and their future? Or simply blowing our own trumpet? I am sure these questions engender interest; irrespective of where you come from. If these questions help you realize that there is a wide of the mark, half my job is done.

On Interaction with the kids we have had our individual takeaways. But a question still went disturbing me throughout, “Is providing the right infrastructure for the schools the end of the road?” I have tried to gather the information to answer this question, but unfortunately in bits and pieces. The first thing that I observed was the system that prevails in India is unidirectional. The kids are shown the path and are required to follow the same stringent guidelines and deadlines. Provided the fact that everyone is unique and comes from different backgrounds, such a system is crippling. Secondly, there is no feedback mechanism designed, so that the students have a say in teaching methodology followed. Also, in my personal observation, there are no checks over what is being taught and discussed under these tarnished roofs.

The things could be made worse by simply sitting and watching. With a team of so many hard working souls, the best prerogative left with us was to take action. So the very first day we met the school authorities we had to set the goals fundamentally sound. Believe me; working with government machinery has its own limitations, though this is the best conduit to bring the flow of change that we have been longing for. And this is exactly the place where we have been making mistakes since independence. So, being the evangelists of change we proceeded with firm determination. We charted out a strict schedule to follow, a detailed session plan and the best co-curricular that could be added.

Recently, I was one of those chosen to meet Rahul Gandhi (MP-Ajmer constituency-NSUI meet, Pune, 7th Sept.). The same day someone asked Mr. Gandhi about what is to be done with Indian education system so that fruitful results can be expected. With all his charm and wit he replied “we have to focus on Education and not literacy alone”. Since then I kept this principle in mind. I believe, even if we can acknowledge the right problems at this stage then we can avoid much loss in terms of the coming generation, and much can be saved at hand.

The toddler in me..!

As Da Vinci rightly said "All our knowledge has origins in perceptions", today, I perceive myself of being able to express my thoughts through this surprisingly beautiful medium. And as the journey of thousand miles has to begin with a single step, now is the time for that baby step to demarcate the beginning.

It was just recently that i took part in National Competition for Management Students-2010, organised by All India Management Association, held at Mumbai. It has been an overwhelming experience of sorts, that i could see so many brains cracking their heads over the same topic i.e. "Managing Organizational and Developmental Challenges In India". Now that the very mention of India evokes strong compassion , believe me that identifying challenges that she is facing today has not been a cake walk either.

With this, let me include a small abstract of some of the internal challenges that we identified and most of which i covered in the presentation, the rest of the parts were taken care by my colleague and teammate.


The Internal Challenges:

Attrition: Since most of the economies are out of recession, companies are on a hiring spree. This creates troughs with strong negative pressure which attracts hard working employees from the other organizations of similar motives. With this revival in the job market, corporate India is all set to witness a significant jump in the attrition levels. Though this is especially true of the Aviation, IT and BPO, rest of the India Inc. will not be spared as a lot is determined in India by the “Band Wagon Effect”. To an extent that people are often teased by their own peers for staying with one company for more than 3 years.

Managing attrition is therefore a huge challenge that requires analyzing the reasons for which people leave especially those gathered from past exit interviews. Knowing these should help formulate an actionable strategy to minimize attrition.

Accelerating the growth momentum: To increase the growth momentum and become an industry leader, companies can use Inorganic growth strategy to acquire or be a partner in rivals’ businesses. M&A activities have become very prominent in the world post recession. Tremendous vertical growth opportunities are sought by the visionary organizations in the wake of the dark hours of recession. This comes with existence of the distressed organizations which came out with SOS signals. Thus it is a challenge for companies to perform well to avoid being taken over by a stronger competitor. To go for organic growth, companies need to do expansion of existing facilities or diversification of product or services they offer.

The Rural India and Challenges there:

India Certainly lives in her villages, as rightly said by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation. Though the state of affairs had been very different at that point of time, conditions have maintained status quo in terms of Development in the respective areas. We certainly cannot think of building a brand with pan India presence unless paying due credit to this sector of the economy.

The rural areas present significant opportunities in all sectors. The miraculous success story of India that has surprised the whole world is not driven by the entire population. A significant proportion of the population is still left to make an impact in the growth numbers that we have witnessed. The biggest challenge for India Inc. lies in realizing the necessity to include the entire population. This is the prima facie necessity for equitable distribution of both the resources and the fruits of the economy

With this we also came up with an amusing powerpoint presentation. I will try and upload the same as soon as possible.

I have uploaded my PPt to this link: http://www.slideshare.net/nkumar0605/siibindian-challenges?from=share_email