South Asian economy: Benazir's assassination impact

Generally, I am very much indifferent to what is happening in the neighboring countries of India. One of the main reason behind this can be I am not a fan of cricket and I do not follow its news either. But the assassination of Mrs Benazir Bhutto has made me thought about neighbors of India and economy of south Asia. For the last couple of years most of the countries in this region have enjoying good economic growth. Most of this growth is because of the increase in outsourcing to these countries from western countries. Suddenly if we see most of the countries in this region are also facing severe political unrest. from economical point of view most of the countries are too small to have any global impact. Indian and Pakistan are two of the major power in this region and Pakistan is playing and important role as close ally of USA in this region. Pakistan also has one of the largest and most powerful army in this region that is interest for the world. Though Pakistan has a long history of having military rule but this time situation seems quite different. Mr. Mussaraf seems to become the only remaining choice for the people of the country. After Mrs Bhutto, there is no consensus on the future leader for the party. There are some names coming up for discussion but none of them has as strong mass appeal as Mrs Bhutto had. Well, what happens to PPP party and politics is internal matter of the Pakistan but this incidence has created a situation of unrest in the region. This unrest is not good for the growing economy of the region. Perhaps for the first time in the history of Pakistan, it was having growth year after year. But this situation is not good for Indian economy either. It is not good to have military ruler in the neighboring country and particularly when the countries are arc rivals. Though Indian economy is self-sufficient in many sense but the kind of growth it is obeserbing for last 4-5 years can not be achieved solely by internal growth. India should try to do whatever it can do diplomatically to bring democracy back in Pakistan as soon as possible. Though India is known for its wait-and-watch policy rather than doing anything. It did not do much in case of Berma recently too. Though India has central government with the support of left parties but there is not much political unrest. Another political party, BJP, is gaining support in regional elections in India that is good sign for business community. This party had done some good work for the economic growth that we are seeing now. Investors should not much worry about investing in India as fundamentals are still strong in indian companies and vast pool of young talent is there to drive the growth for many years to come. Happy investing in South Asia!

True value of the product

Today I was out to work in a crowded football stadium. I was operating one till (counter) in the busy day where thousands of football fan were pouring in. After working for few hours when I was coming back to my residence I thought to spent some time in the market to watch the customers doing boxing day shopping. To my disappointment it was not a very exciting day, customers were not too excited about the discount and most of the people in the market were there to spend some time because they were getting bore at home. I found one bench in the market and sit there for more than a hour. I was watching two guys and one girl trying to sell something to clean nails. of course no one was coming to their shop and they were trying to stop every passer by saying "May I ask you a question? May I see your nails? Sir, Madam". I was thinking to go ahead and talk to them what exactly they were trying to sell. Fortunately I did not have to venture there, a lady came and she stayed there to listen about their product. Honestly, I did not find (by listening their conversation from distance) anything that could have attracted me to visit their shop. And I realized they don't have anything that customers can find any value with. They had a product but it was difficult to recognize the value of the product for the customers. Even these young guys (and girl too) had no idea about how they can market their product. I was thinking is it enough to manufacture a product and put in the market. I know there are lots of products for the nail care in the market and they sell for good price too. Product these guys were selling might also be good (I am not an expert in this nail-related stuff so I might not have picked the value) but no one was interested in listening them was really surprising. I feel this was because they had chosen wrong place to promote the product. I think time was also not good for this kind of things. In a busy shopping mall, very few people will be interested in listening to any new product. and rarely anyone would like to spent one hours to see what they can do with their nails. Most of the passerby were in the market to find something good in the sale and there are so many shops to roam around and too many things in the mind to buy (if they are on sale). Time of this Christmas sale was also not good to be in the market. I think people are ready to spend some time on new experiences when they are relaxed.
I like what Mr. Warren Buffet says about product. Any product that customers like is a good product. When customers can recognized themselves and can identify the value without much marketing/advertising, product will have huge success. That we can see in the case of Disney worlds, Disney Movies, customers love Disney all over world and they are sure of good value so they are willing to pay even a premium on this. Compare it with McDonalds. Perhaps all of us dislike it. We go there because it cheap but we dislike it. He argues it is not good for the long life of any product.
I want to say in the end that if true value (taking care of "place" and "time") of a product is recognized and communicated to customers it can be a big success otherwise no one stops to buy whatever efforts are made. Happy Marketing!

2007: A long year with lots of challenges

We are anxiously waiting to end this long year that had been quite challenging for the business leaders of the world. I say it long year because there were so many challenges during this year that everyone wants this to end. There were not many serious problem in the world politics so it was good for the business but there were continuous tension between United States of America and Iran and it was one of the reason for high fuel prices. Though the main reason for the high fuel prices was high consumption was some of the developing economies. At this time of point OPEC countries are also worried about the rising fuel prices but they are reluctant to increase the output or to start new facilities. Perhaps they want to avoid the repeat of the 80s when over production caused steep downfall in the oil prices. Input cost for most of the manufacturing, service industry has gone up as well but somehow overall economy is doing well.
One of the major problem of this year has been subprime lending and it caused most of biggest investment to write down billions of dollars in last few months. CEOs, chairmen and top management at many of these investment banks (Meryl Lynch, Citibank etc) lost their jobs and new management is facing horrendous task of resolving these problems. it is not easy task and lost of money will be lost because of this subprime lending. Only Goldman Sachs seems to be a clear winner in this time of extreme turmoil. Federal bank is trying to help these banks by providing loan (through auction) without creating excessive liquidity in the market. Recently Singapore's fund have also come forward to help Merill Lynch. These major will help these investments in short term but they need to do a lot more to clear bad debts, increase profitability and performance. Not a good year for these investment bankers.
For some of the major technology companies, Google and Apple, this year has been fantastic. They have launch new product and customers are accepting them willingly with open arms. Apple has entered a domain of mobile with the launch of iPhone this year. It has also become popular as other products of Apple. Though price tag may be an issue for further growth but Steve Jobs has learn the art of making money. They will reduce the price later on as they did in case of Apple iPod. on youtube, Google has recently made a strategic alliance with the Queen Elizabeth II, http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel. this channel may not bring anything in terms of revenue for the Google but it will make surely make too popular online (it is already popular though) but the traffic will drastically increase and in future many more rich and famous people choose the same way to go online through youtube. A wonderful move! Microsoft has no major good news this year. Vista is not being accepted by many as MS might have hoped. Many of the copies of Vista will be sold because it is pre-installed on many notebooks and PCs. People are not finding it as user friendly as it was believed to be. there are lots of hardware and software integration/upgrade requirements and these are not very good for average user. there are so many version of MS office and all of them are not compatible with each other that is a problem for Microsoft. I think it has created so many different versions and probably it is danger of losing to itself. Recently it also lost EU competition case. Now it will not be in strong position in future when more and more anti-competition law suites will be filed against it. And Bill Gates wants to retire from Microsoft soon.
These are some of the thoughts come to my mind in this morning. I have already talked about growth in SE Asia in my other blogs. Wish you all a Marry Christmas and a very happy new year.

Merger and Acquisition

M&A is one of the biggest activity in the corporate world. It takes lots of time and interest of the senior management in the industry, banks, lawyers, accountants etc. M&A is important for many reasons. One of the reason behind this is the growth of the acquirer company inorganically. companies can grow rapidly using this approach. though it has its problem too. It brings different operation processes, accounting practices and corporate cultures together. Solving these problem is not easy and if proper planning is not done before the M&A, it can hurt the combined entity severely. A lot of academic research has been done (and it is still and ongoing topic for researchers) to identify the benefits of the M&A but it is difficult to estimate the real benefits. Some of the researcher have tried to calculate average gain for many mergers over a period of years. This does not seems to be in efficient way. There are a few other researchers who have tried to follow a few mergers from their first public announcement to the completion. though the later gives an tool to understand the merger activity closely but it can not be generalized. one of the biggest problem in evaluating the gain/loss of the merger is the existence of target company is lost in most of the cases. so it is very difficult to find what is happening to the target or acquirer company as individual. one can not say the growth or slowdown after the merger is because of the merger activity or some other reasons. Other problem is the change in the accounting practices. It makes lots of difference in the valuation of the business and sometime it can be too big. when the accounting practices changed in USA, AOL had to show loss of $54 billions as a loss of goodwill in TimeWarner merger case. sometime because of the competition policy, some of the divisions of the target company needs to be divest so target company does not remain what it was acquired originally. sometime management also plays the finger-pointing game inside the company after acquiring a new company. they tend to put higher overheard and administrative cost because of the merger of the target company since there is no mechanism to find out the real data, success/failure of the merger can not be evaluated easily based on the annual reports. many other factors need to be taken into account. Many a time there are some of the hidden agenda of the management behind the merger activity. management buy target company to strip it of good assets and then sell the bad assets after a few years and in turn making their company stronger. in this case there is no way merger can be evaluated. Despite all these problems, careful scrutinizing the annual reports and press release etc gives an overall idea about the success of the merger.
Mergers are not always good for the shareholders of the acquirer company because most of the time target company share prices go up because of the competitive bidding my multiple companies and legal, consultancy cost also goes up in many of the cases.
My experience of dealing with post merger activity has been a big learning about how the management work and react to these activities.

Customer service and my experience

In any business one of the most of important aspect to stay competitive and for long time is the customer service. Yes, every marketing book will tell this. If we dig a little with this is not only marketing books, but almost all the fields of management tell the same story. When we investigate supply chain, operations, strategy, human resource etc, all are talking about customer satisfaction. The type of customer may be different in every talk. It may be a B2B, B2C business. Human resource also talks about customers, for them customers are the prospective employees or current employees. Only difference is the nature of the customer. When there is so much talk customer then why business don’t understand customer service at all. I don’t really have time to explore many services but whatever I have experienced till not I have found that customer service is very low in UK business. I have many examples to prove my argument. I live in city centre and go to university by bus every morning. There is a schedule pasted on each bus stop but that is only for reference, rarely any bus turn up on time. It will be better if it is written on the schedule that bus will come after the time printed on the schedule. It is very bad experience when professors are strict about time. Other interesting place is the NHS. They have a wonderful system of appointment. You for anything, stand in the queue and get an appointment to see GP after one week, then there is another appointment for blood test or Xray after one or two weeks, then another appointment. One of my colleague was bleeding in the hand, he had to take appointment that was after one hour. He lost around half a litre blood. I booked a ticket on onerailway and now for cancelling the ticket I need to trust royal post. If the ticket is lost in the transit they will not refund. Shouldn’t the cancellation/refund we straight forward as the purchase of ticket is? But who cares customer has given money, we don’t want to return is the message from companies. There are many other examples but these might have given a fair idea of poor customer service.Question that comes to mind is why it so? Why companies don’t bother about customers? One of the reason I see is the monopoly. It is strange to say monopoly here but it is true. Most of the business are heavily regulated by government. Entry is not easy or very expensive. Generally there is only bus operator in one city, even if more operators are their route will be divided so there is no completion. Same things happen in case of rail travel. There are so many rail companies (I think around 26 in total) operating independently in UK and they have little interest in sharing information or network. These companies share network just because they have to. But there are so many restriction on ticket that a customer is forced to take either high price ticket or odd timing or same network trains even if they have poor service. Supposedly private companies should serve better than public companies but sadly some of the neighbour socialist countries have much better services (fast euro trains and on time departure) without having much competition from private players. Just having private players does not help customer, there are many other factors that need to taken into consideration. One of the solution is to have more competition and watch the formation of cartels. As in case of mobile operators. Most of the mobile operators have almost same plans without much distinction. They have a implicit policy to charge £10 per month for very little talk time. They encourage customers to spend more than £15 per month. PS: All these are my personal opinions of experiences I have till now. I may be unlucky to find rare bad experiences.

Economic boom when oil prices are rising

One of the mostly quoted topic in news papers for last one year has been high price of oil. There has been speculation about different price barrier at different time. At point everyone was talking that $60 per barrel is the limit then $90 came and not it is near $100 per barrel. As the demand in winter in USA will increase it might further go up. There were request from many oil consuming countries to OPEC last month to increase the oil production, these were rejected. Over this period of high oil prices, there has been a period of economic boom (particularly in south-east Asia and middle east). This is very different from the last time when the oil price went up in 70s. This time it seems that economy does not care much about the oil prices. Though the input cost for raw material and energy is increasing everyday but companies are generating heavy profit every quarter. In fact economic boom has gone to an extent when companies are actively seeking in very large sized merger and acquisition. Though economist will try to give many answers to this. I have my views. One of the major force behind these, as I understand, is the globalization. This has changed the whole business and economics environment. Now we source all the inputs for business where they are cheaper. We source money from where it is cheap, send manufacturing work where labour is cheap, send design and r&D work where educated labour is cheap. Combination of all this makes a balance. So today even if oil prices go up, other inputs can be found cheaper somewhere in the world and that helps in reducing in the overall cost. The other issue when the money goes to oil rich countries, they also invest it somewhere. One of the place to invest in the past was US treasury bonds for most of the countries. But now the situation is changing and countries are looking for other places to invest money and get higher returns. A large proportion of this money is going to south-east Asia. Oil rich countries are generally very much interested in investing real estate projects. Many of the big real estate project in countries like India, Singapore, Korea etc are being funded by these oil rich countries through foreign investment. to manage this huge amount of money, almost all the banks are opening branches in the middle east and managing money in the form of private equities. So in a sense, money that goes to oil rich countries is going back to the countries where money is needed more. When money is available in excess oil prices are not big concern. And top of all this, economy has gone to such an extent where the higher prices of inputs can be transferred to the consumers. Consumers demand high salary from their employers next year. No problem, it will be done. Everyone is playing with huge money. Though I don’t know it is sustainable growth or not. Neither do I know how big income gap it is creating between poor and rich. But in near future this economic growth doesn’t seems to stop. Recently USA has published a report saying that Iran has no more nuclear weapon program since 2003, it may ease tension and in turn oil prices. Effect of this economic boom is more visible in the share market of south east Asia. Petro China has become one of the largest oil company in the world (in terms of market capitalization). Though share market is a illusion and has gone to a level where it seems that most of the companies don’t have fair value. But I am hearing this for more than a year. I sold some shares last year and now I feel pity on me. Share prices have gone even higher where they were last year. Indian share market has risen almost 3 times in last 3 years. One might have made huge money if this was known, some of the shares are at 10 times of where they were 3 years back. Though share market is not a real indicator of economy, but to a large extent it tell the confidence of the investors in the economy and it can be inferred that this economic boom is there to stay.

Competition vs Collaboration

It is human nature to compete with everyone else wherever it get chance. It happens in university and also in work place. We tend to compete with our fellow mates for something or the other. Partly it is because the system is designed this way. We are used to implementing a structure where only a few goes upwards (further) in the hierarchy/position/recognition. In university only a few gets good grades and others average or poor. I think students who get poor grades are not really bad in studies but they get poor grades because university has to differentiate all student so that some can be promoted for next level. Dilemma is there are always fewer seats on the next level. It also happens in work place. Employees are continuously ranked (ranking system may differ in different organizations) so that when the time comes few of them can be promoted for next level. So in a way university teaches students about real life and make prepared to fight, compete to get those fewer places.

It does not mean that we are always competing with each other we also do collaboration with some of the mates and form teams to compete with other teams. We can argue that people form teams to compete with other teams and then take credits for individuals. In a sense it true. But sometimes even the competitors collaborated for each others’ benefits. For example automobile companies forms joint group to buy raw material (particularly coal). Sometimes competitors come together and don’t let the customers benefit from the competition. This is called forming cartels. And some of the regulators like CC (Competition Committee) try to break these cartels. It also happens in the university some of the students will form a group and learn from each other, help each other and perform better than the others .

I think one needs to learn (or master) how and when to compete and/or collaborate.

PS: I am not suggesting not to compete. I have been very competitive and had secured 438 position out of more than 120,000 participants for engineering degree on national level. one of the most competitive exam for engineering in the world.

Is the leadership always wrong when all of us equal in a group?

Most of us are working in small groups for some or the other course. If the group size is very small (2-3 members), I think there will not be much problem of coordination because everyone will member of the team will be aware of what other members are doing. In most of the circumstances this small group will be formed on the basis of personal likes and dislikes of the members.When the group size goes up then the problem of coordination arises. Many of the team members tarts having conflict about the time of meeting and requirements of each assignment. Even the meeting becomes chaotic. In such a scenario, it seems that the democracy does not work. solving each and every problem by vote is not a good idea. In such circumstances it is better to have someone (anonymously chosen or being rotated on weekly or month or task-based). Not just picking someone will help, team will have to give some authority to the chosen leader so that she/he can take decision on behalf of team. sometime all team members might not be agreed with the decision of the team leader but it is ok for better performance of the team. When we have a team leader, she/he can also keep the meetings in a very systemic way. And also every team member get chance to lead the team so no one is left out in showing his/her competency and also learn to lead the team. When we work in the team and not as a leader, we get a chance to learn to listen. listening and particularly active listening is very important for success in the team. Though I will write another separate blog for the active listen and its benefits. So it is for another time.What others think about this kind of leader lead team structures?

Educational experience

This is for the first time I am attending formal education in any western country. I studied in India before this and now I can understand the difference in the way lectures are delivered here. Our educational system is based on content, the more you study the better you are supposed to be. Most of the time understanding is very little of the subject and students have no interests whatsoever in the subject but have to go through the process. But here things are quite different, professors try to make concepts clear and try to keep the environment more friendly. Students are allowed to ask questions very frequently that was not the case in India. Students are not supposed to ask so many questions because there is too much to teach. I am not sure what method of teaching is good, perhaps I will know this by the time I will finish my degree.
Other noticeable difference is the stress on referencing. It is something very new to the classmates who have come from Asian countries. Some of the students are finding it very difficult to differentiate where to quote defence and where not. Still it is quite a mechanical process and not habitual. But this is a good practice in a way that due credit goes to the right person and reader knows what is original and what is not.

Story telling (an art for Leaders)

It is making a connection of the real life with some hypothetical scenario or other incidence somewhere. Most of the time consciously or unconsciously we are involved in creating and telling stories. Most of the time it is to influence other people about us. It is not important that it is delivered in verbal form, it can be visual as well. For example when we upload our pictures in Picasa/flicker online, we are telling a story to the world. We are trying to express our happiness, and letting others about a place we visited. In this digital world, this is becoming very common and easy way.Well, I am would like to concentrate my blog about verbal story. What are the purpose of story telling- To convey our ideas to others in a easy way- To influence others with our ideas-Motivate (demotivated) other people to perform (depending on our hidden agenda)This is one of the biggest art (yes this is an art) that every manager should master. As many researches in the past have proved that more than 80% time of the managers go in communicating with someone. They are telling stories to someone all the time. sometime they are telling stories to subordinates about high performance, other time telling to customers about good quality etc of the service/product. It helps a lot. For example, a manager goes and tells to a subordinate that there was another guy in the organization who worked very hard and company gave him one month holiday package in Havana. it might be true and not, but the guy will be motivated to work hard. (provided he is interested in tourism). In my professional life, I have been doing this for many years. Some time, a manager needs to tell the benefits of a product/service company is working on. But telling any story does not work. story should be relevant, audience should believe it is genuine. If audience does not trust then the story will not be able to perform its purpose. One should also understand, this is not about telling lie or making false claims, but talking about perception, creating perception in the mind of the audience. Movie makers are generally good story teller. they tell some story to mass audience. This is also true in case of university life, we are telling stories to someone all the time. We are talking about our life, assignment, library etc. We talk about food, friends and work. Try to convince flatmates to go for movie because we like Disney world’s movie. :) We all know how to make stories, difference is some people know how to convey stories in a better way.
I think Tony Blair is a good story teller. Do other people also tell stories or it is me who think this way?

India : country of poor and cows

I am living in europe for more than a year now and it is has been a topic of talk many a time how india is about. Unfortunately for the western media india is a country
that has cows on the streets,
where most of the population is beggar and no rich,
of hindu fundamentalist where it is difficult to live for people of any religion but hindu,
where all people go to temple everyday,
streets are full of dirt ant traffic is chaotic,
where people don't know how to eat and eat with fingers, no spoons, knife and fork, so unhygienic I have seen many times on television channels in europe (including RAI and TF) when they will go to a very small village and will show caste system, dirty house and poor people etc, etc. It is the same with magazines in western world. No one ever question if it is all about india. I will discuss all the topic one after another will try to show that it is not the everything that is india about. There is another face of India too that is missing from the all this discussion and no media will show this because then they will not get money for what they will write or write.Cows on Streets I can not deny that it is a fact that there are cows on the many streets. But there are two point to discuss about this. First is, why they are there and second is which country doesn't has animals on the streets. Answer to first question is there, it is very difficult situation that cows can not be killed in india because of religious region. There are some very small regions in India where people eat beef, but that is a exception and rule. And the percentage of people who eat beef will be less than 0.1% (one out of a thousands) or even a less. So if a cow become old, non productive or their is no owner what to do with the cow, they come on streets. But it is not that there 100 of cows on every street. There are some cows somewhere, but not everywhere. Second answer is this really so bad to have cow on the street that the media should make this an issue and talk about this so much. It is a well known fact that France has more dogs than the population if France. Who does not see the dogs on every street of France. Is there any criteria that can prove that dog is better than a cow. so if there is a dog that is not an issue but we can not see a cow on street. In any sense cow is much better than a dog. cos gives milk for at least 15 yrs, give calves those are used to pull bullock cart in Indian villages and here used for beaf. Its dung is used as natural fertilizer. What does a dog give??? In the old time it could have been said that a dog is useful for security but in a developed country like France where every house has latest security system, I don't see dog is used for this purpose. Dog is allowed in the airplane, train and in every official or unofficial place, but why not a cow?Financial condition of people India is a poor country of rich people. It seems a joke but it is true. India (that is the government) is poor because people of India do not pay due taxes. But it does not mean that people are poor or beggar. India has more people with one crore (10 millions in hindi) rupees than the population of any country of europe. But one may think that it is rupee and west has euro or dollars. Even after conversion and taking into account the purchasing power, 10 million rupees is equivalent to 1 million euro in Europe. In a city like like Delhi, Bombay (now Mumbai), Banglore, Hydrabad and many other, cost of a small house is more than a millions rupees (equivalent to 100 thousands of euro). There are tens of thousands of people in each big city who owns bigger houses than this. Most of the people owns houses because concept of taking loan from Banks for house is new and still not very popular. So it is not like here where most of the people are on loan of 15 or 20 years of bank loan. But this is only a part of story, there are many poor people too. Many people have to live in slums and this the part of India that is shown by western media. But if someone is afraid of beggars that is not true. Every country has beggars. In a small city like Nancy (where i am living), there are at least 20 beggars. They are everywhere, outside every super market there is at least one beggar. There are some outside post office or any possible place where they believe people get cents in return and they may get these cents, beggars are available. Population of Nancy is around 100 thousands only and has 20 beggars. It means on an average 200 beggars on every million of population. But i am sure number of beggars in Paris is more than this. Population of India is more than 1100 millions, so even by the standards of France, India can have more than 200 thousands of beggars and still no one should raise question. But unfortunately it is not true. Media will show that there are only beggars.Hindu Fundamentalist If a small incidence will happen in a big country like India that will become an issue for all world. If a muslim will hurt somewhere for any reason, it will case of no freedom to muslims for everyone outside India. Western media does not tell that India is the home of second largest population of muslims in the world. They have freedom to do whatever they want. They have special constitution rights. (For example they are allowed to carry on their shariyat rules). Which country in the world give separate rights to citizens based on their religion? President of India is Muslim. Will anybody ever imagine that the President of Arab other than a muslim and President of America other than a christian. Pakistan cry about Kashmir and everyone in western world know about Kashmir. But people of Kashmir are living better life than any muslim in Pakistan. People of Kashmir, mostly muslims, are not killed by Indian Army but by militants who say they are followers of Allah. I don't know where Quran says that kill the other people (and specially muslims). There are not only muslims, there are also christian, parsis, jews, Buddhist and many other religions. And they have significant presence and full freedom. All people live in harmony and together in spite of the some small incidences here and there once in a while. People of one religion to support the people of other religion if there is any communal fight. Eating with Hand Very few people use knife or fork in India. But many people use spoon. Before eating people wash their hand. People try to have hygienic food in a different way than west, but it is does not mean it is non-hygienic. I have seen people here, they put bread (Pain in french) anywhere on the table. who secure that the table is perfactly clean?Traffic No doubt, traffic is not very much organised.Temples Very few people visit tempe everyday. some visit once in a week. But many hindu people worship everyday in home and muslims go to mosque once in a day or on friday (jumma in urdu). But it is not bad, it is good for keeping spiritual health of people in good condition.After saying all this i will just say that everything is not perfact, but everything is not so bad as is shown by western media. There are bad things but there also good things. things are different from west, but that does not make it bad. Media should show both parts and let the people decide it is good, bad or affordable.date : 24th July, 2004.

Affordable mobile phone

In the 21st century, communication has become an integral part of people's life in some part of the world. on the other hand there are some parts who does not have even basic telephone. India is a good example for this poor telecome infrastructure. It is astonishing to see that a country whose scientist has demonstrated wireless transmission of radio waves (ironically Marconi got Nobel Prize for the same work) in 1895 in Calcutta, India, does not have even a single telephone per household, forget about per person. This time india has arround 25 million phones out of a population of more than 1000 millions and more than 180 million houses. On other hand there are countries like Italy that has one mobile phone per person.This shows there is some serious problem. Either people of india dont like to communicate or they dont feel comfortable with the idea of having mobile phone. In any case it can not be the first thing. Everyone likes to communicate as often as possible to his/her dear ones. What i understand with my practicle experience is that there is no mobile phone and service provider that is affordable to big population living in india.When we look into developed countries, we find that almost everyone who owns a mobile phone spends at least 30 dollors per month. But 30 dollors per month is a very small fraction of the monthly salary people get in developed countries. It is just 2 or 3 percent of the salary. So nobody minds to spend this much money. When we look into india, people living in village earn someting like 20-30 dollors per months. I am sure these people can spend even 5 percent of their monthy salary on communication, that is obviously higher than their counterparts living in the developed world. This amount comes out to be arround $1 per month. But unfortunately no one is providing so cheap (afordable) service in India. There are no fixed telephone lines in small villages and now it is impossible to imagine that some company or government is going to put costly copper wires or even fiber optics to provide this cheap service.So what should be done with this arround 20% population of the world? It is sure there salaries are not going to be higher in near future, so should be forget them and continue to work for the worlds that has power to buy costly things. Answer is NO. But it is not possible with this conventional means. There are some research labs those are working to provide cheap and affordable mobile telephony.But even in this case they are copying and trying to modify the idea of having mobile phone from developed world. I think that this mobile phone is not the solution for this problem. There has to be something else that i can not say how it will look and work, but definitely it is not this mobile phone that will work. How can it be imagined that people earning 20-30 dollors per month can buy a mobile phone for 70-80 dollors? This is the first cost that is too big and after that service provider charge per month.There are almost all the big multinational telecome companies operating in India. But no one ever think that they are not providing afordable mobile phone. The problem comes from the basic management structure they have. These companies operate in India and hire local people for their management, but unfortunately they miss one thing here. They always hire the best people, graduated from good universities, who speak fluent english and local languages. None of the company understand that these good people are from that section of Indian society that is very rich. These rich people have millions and billions of rupeese in their bank balance. These best educated managers and executives think the same way as these multinational companies think. These small fraction of indian society are those whose family income is a few hundred thousand dollors per year. They will never suggest that a mobile phone of 70-80 euro is costly because for them it is very cheap. All these multinational companies are pushing new products and with new generation technologies. They provide 5 games in the mobile phone, reminder, and many other functionalities, but unfortunately they dont know that noone ever uses them. People dont use because of two reasons, first they are not interested and second they dont know how to use. Is there any point of providing such functionalities that no one ever use and then charging them for these useless services and making product costly?Here i have suggested some solution for making mobile phone cheap by not providing services, people dont use. There are many other solutions to make it even cheaper, these solutions will change the mobile telephony. But ofcourse people need to think in this direction. I have many other ideas, but those can be discussed face to face only because those are very unconventional solutions and none can understand just by reading.

last updated: 29th jan, 2004

Indian Call centers : Why is the problem in quality

Well, there is election year in US and everyone wants to get benefit of current hype about the white coller jobs shift to low-cost countries (india china and other asian countries). People are talking of big and small significant or not. BPO jobs are the one getting more light in the media. Call center jobs are being hit hardest. It is the age of information and globalisation, Companies are investing where they are seeing more returns for low investments. But some people who are affected by this new trend of job shift or new job creation in the low-cost countries, give many reasons why these jobs should not be created in foreign land. One of the major reason that is again and again pointed out is accent problem and non-efficient staff in handlling queries of cutomers. Some of the major companies (like dell) have completely withdrawn there operations from india or have limited their operations.Answer to this question, the complaints about quality and efficiency are not very easy to answer. It is the same media which on some other platform will say that india has second largest population of english speaking people in the world. So we should not go blindly with media reports and try to find the real problem and its solution.One has to be agree about the fact that call center job is very much different than the software development job. In software developemnt there is rarely any interaction with the costumer of each and every programmer working in banglore, hydrabad or gurgaon. It is very selective, generally management guys, who interact with the costumer. Even these managament guys do not interact with the consumer, it is the job of local sales-paerson who interact with the local person. So in software developement there is rarely any chance of problem in accent or anything else.When comes the job of call center, each person working in the call center has to attend and reply calls from customer. These young guys and girls working in these call centers are probably doing their first job of any kind. These executives are taught about the the technical things of handling softwares they use to reply. But using software is not the only thing they are taught, they have extensive lectures and labs, where they are taught about cultural difference. From my personal experience i know it is not easy for an english speaking person to understand other person of other country. In case of call centers in india, one solution they try to apply is by changing names and teaching to change the accent. For example anil may become andy and maneka may become monica. Well in my opinion there is no need to change names of the people. it does not serve much purpose. In my opinion instead of changing names these peoples can use just the initials to make life simple for the costumers, if it is the purpose.These executives are repeatedly shown some classics movies about accent and made to learn and speak in that perticular accent. In my opinion here all the problems come. They try to spean in an accent that is not native to them and dont have very long practice to speak in this new accent and they dont learn to speak with the slow speed of western world. It is well known fact indian english speaker speaks arround 140-150 words per minute while their counter parts, native english speakers, speak only 70-80 words per minute. So they are speaking a foreign language with almost at double speed.

last changed : 14th feb, 2004