IIPM - Live: IIPM New Delhi

Showing posts with label IIPM New Delhi. Show all posts

Thursday, May 02, 2013

A weak power sector: What’s the cure?

Power blackouts that occurred recently have put the spotlight back on a troubled power sector. Grid failures, shortage of coal supply, financial losses, poor infrastructure & governance, and political finger-pointing are making matters worse

For some, it was their worst experience ever. For others, it was a repeat of the horror. We are referring to the blackouts that left over 680 million people in a state of darkness and despair for long hours together on July 30 & 31, 2012. But more than the unforgiving power cuts and crippled state of trains and metro rails that resulted from failure of three transmission grids in the country, it was the kind treatment offered to the one responsible for the disruption that embarrassed India, Sushil Kumar Shinde (the-then power minister), that made bigger headlines. Post the incidence, Moodbidri Veerappa Moily was made the power minister and Shinde was asked to take charge of a higher office in the government. [He is today the Union Home Minister.] When questioned over objections raised by critics on this move, Shinde clarified that he rated the performance of the power ministry under his tenure as nothing short of excellent. “I have briefed the Prime Minister’s Office... In USA, light does not come for four days. Here we got it in a matter of hours. People should appreciate how work is done at the grid,” was Shinde’s justification. [He was referring to a blackout in North America in 2003 that lasted 4 days.]

Starting 2.35 AM on July 30, the whole of North India experienced a power cut for 10 hours after the Northern Grid tripped. The next day saw a bigger outage hitting 19 States and two Union Territories when the Northern, Eastern and North-Eastern grids all went on the blink. An estimated 684 million people, or a-tenth of the world’s population, were left without power for up to 8 hours. Shinde was quick to blame States like UP, Punjab and Haryana for overdrawing power.

The event that lasted two days was just a bellyache – a symptom of the deep malaise that afflicts governance in the power sector in India.

On the face of it, many would assume that the power ministry has its task cut out for itself. But hasn’t it always been so? Are long power cuts new to India? Has the 100 million tonne gap between coal demand and supply just emerged? Are issues related to supply of coal and gas new? Or has the fact that over 400 million people still lack access to electricity just struck India?

The recent grid failures that won India international shame and exposed the lack of grid discipline in the Indian power sector, could act as a trigger to implement corrective measures to eradicate problems which the sector is reeling under. That would call for bold measures on the part of the new minister.

To begin with, he will have to put in place a system that ensures strict adherence to grid discipline (a present, violations due to overdrawing of power by various states are common). As per the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), it had issued four directives to States not adhering to their set limits of drawing power. But to no avail. The reason – political compulsion. Moily though, claims that the guilty will be brought to book. “There is a provision to imprison authorities or the state chief secretary for disobeying grid discipline. Perhaps we need to enforce that,” he said.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Innovation Ecosystems

Ron Adner, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Author of the new book The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation, writes on the role of innovation ecosystems

There is a blind spot that undermines great managers in great organisations even when they identify real customer needs, deliver great products, and beat their competition to market.

Philips Electronics fell victim to this blind spot when it spent a fortune to pioneer high-definition television (HDTV) sets in the mid-1980s. The company’s executives drove a development effort that succeeded in creating numerous breakthroughs in television technology, offering picture quality that customers loved and that the competition, at the time, could not match. Yet, despite sterling execution and rave reviews, Philips’s high-definition TV flopped. Even the most brilliant innovation cannot succeed when its value creation depends on other innovations – in this case the high-definition cameras and transmission standards necessary to make high-definition TV work – that fail to arrive on time. Philips was left with a $2.5 billion write-down and little to show for its pioneering efforts by the time HDTV finally took off 20 years later.

Sony suffered from a similar blind spot, winning a pyrrhic victory as it raced to bring its e-reader to market before its rivals, only to discover that even a great e-reader cannot succeed in a market where customers have no easy access to e-books. And Johnson Controls, which developed a new generation of electrical switches and sensors that could dramatically reduce energy waste in buildings and deliver substantial savings to occupants, discovered that unless and until architects, electricians, and a host of other actors adjusted their own routines and updated their own capabilities, the value of its innovations would never be realised.

In all these cases, smart companies and talented managers invested, implemented, and succeeded in bringing genuinely brilliant innovations to market. But after the innovations launched, they failed. The companies understood how their success depends on meeting the needs of their end customers, delivering great innovation, and beating the competition. But all three fell victim to the innovator’s blind spot: failing to see how their success also depended on partners who themselves would need to innovate and agree to adapt in order for their efforts to succeed.

Welcome to the world of innovation ecosystems – a world in which the success of a value proposition depends on creating an alignment of partners who must work together in order to transform a winning idea to a market success. A world in which failing to expand your focus to include your entire ecosystem will set you up for failure. Avoidable failure.

There is a growing trend to not go it alone. In a 2011 survey of senior executives by the Corporate Executive Board, 67% expected new partnerships, and 49% expected new business models, to be critical drivers of their growth in the upcoming five to ten years.

To be sure, great customer insight and execution remain vital. But they are only necessary – not sufficient – conditions for success. Rather, two distinct risks now take center stage:
? Co-innovation Risk: The extent to which

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

the success of your innovation depends on the successful commercialisation of other innovations.
? Adoption Chain Risk: The extent to which partners will need to adopt your innovation before end consumers have a chance to assess the full value proposition.

Read more.....

Reverse innovation

If you happen to be the CEO of an Indian corporation, you might do well to pick up this book in order to understand the opportunities that your country has created and how the very existence of your company threatens competition in resource rich nations. But make no mistake, this book is really meant for a very limited set of readers – individuals in leadership roles at MNCs based in the rich world. For a very long time now, the spectacular rise of third world nations has rendered a lot of ‘management terminologies’ almost obsolete. How do you explain the phenomenon of Western nations importing certain innovations from countries like India and China (megamarkets with microconsumers), when the Harvards & Apples of this world have taught the exact opposite for years altogether? To be true, economic turmoil coupled with weak demand in their home markets has compelled companies to increasingly shifting their focus to developing markets. But there is hardly any organisation, which can boast of a concrete game plan for growing in countries like Bangladesh, India and China. Most of them are in the ‘market share race’ when they should actually be front runners in the ‘market development race’. Dr. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Tremble, believe that there is a way they can do so. They call it Reverse Innovation. In fact, this concept might even become a source of competitive advantage for companies that can leverage it. Take Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) for instance. When the Indian automobile major arrived in US with its sturdy 35 horsepower tractors, Deere & Company (the dominant tractor brand) didn’t even feel mildly intimidated. After all, who would prefer a brand that sounded anything unlike America and sold low power red tractors. Instead of taking the competition head on, M&M decided to excel in a small agricultural niche. To offset the negativity that would be associated with a third world brand in those days, M&M forged relationships with small dealerships offering personalised services. The bet paid off. M&M grew by around 40% in US from 1999-2006 and is now the number one tractor maker globally (by units). This case (along with several others discussed in the book) in summary, represents Reverse Innovation.

Read more......

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Optimal Mix: Managing a portfolio of supply contracts

The oil and refinery business is complex. Sometimes, companies lose on profit margin and market share if they don’t have an idea of managing supply contracts. The right mix of long- and short-term contracts can lead to a bigger profit.

When an oil refining company spends billions of dollars to build or upgrade a refinery, one of its main concerns naturally is how to get a good return on such a massive investment. In particular, the company would like to make sure that it sells the refinery’s products – mostly gasoline – in markets that would maximise its profit. A guaranteed long-term contract to supply gasoline seems most desirable, but the company may also want the flexibility of pursuing higher profit margins offered by shorter term contracts.

This was the dilemma faced by BP, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, as it completed a multi-billion dollar upgrade of its Whiting refinery in Indiana that would increase the refinery’s production by 1.7 million gallons of gasoline and diesel a day. To help BP find the best way to sell the refinery’s output year after year, I along with Shanshan Wang, PhD ‘11, developed a model that would allow gasoline companies to optimally adjust their portfolio of supply contracts over time, in anticipation of changing market conditions. This model is discussed in our study titled “Contract Portfolio Optimisation for a Gasoline Supply Chain.” While the work is motivated by BP, it has broad application to gasoline suppliers across the industry, which generates around $300 billion in annual revenue in the United States.

Gasoline, which is produced by processing crude oil in a refinery, is marketed to three distinct channels. The first is the branded channel where gasoline with specialty additives is sold through stations that bear the name of a major supplier such as BP, and are owned by independent firms or so-called branded “jobbers.” A BP jobber is obligated to sell only BP gasoline and BP is obligated to supply all the gasoline that the stations need. The contract typically runs for 10 years but virtually lasts forever, since an industry law called the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act prohibits BP from terminating the contract.

Gasoline also can be sold as a generic commodity through the unbranded channel, such as gas stations at Costco, Walmart, and Safeway. These outlets will typically negotiate a price to buy a specific volume of gasoline from a supplier for one year.

The spot market is the third channel, and that is where the major suppliers, unbranded jobbers, and other distributors come together to buy and sell gasoline. Refiners can sell any leftover product to the spot market after satisfying their contract commitments.

The key to maximising profit is in choosing how much of the refinery’s output should be sold to each channel given the uncertainty in the price and demand for gasoline. If BP sells its gasoline through an inappropriate mix of channels, then it may either not sell out its capacity or end up selling at a much lower profit, By adjusting the share that each channel receives over time to reflect changing business conditions, as opposed to a strategy of simply fixing the shares, the company’s expected profit can increase by more than 40% under some scenarios.

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Friday, April 12, 2013

An Opportunity that Grabbed us

Benefits of Economy and a Quicker Passage to The Operating table have Made India one of The Front Runners in Medical Tourism. But Critical Failings, from The Government as well as The Private Sector, mean that India is Failing to Adequately tap The Opportunity

Since time immemorial, the mystical land of India has been enchanting foreigners from all over the world. Healing of the body, mind & spirit has been one of the country’s most compelling value propositions, one which even a young Steve Jobs couldn’t resist, many years ago. And as the costs of healthcare have soared, particularly in developing countries, India’s hospitals and physicians have made all possible efforts to become a destination for tourists who seek not just therapeutic solutions but a range of other treatments and sight seeing tours; adding to the “wellness” factor. Almost a decade has passed since medical tourism was originally envisioned as a major phenomenon in India.

A 2009 report by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) & McKinsey forecasts that medical tourism will generate $2.4 billion between 2009–2012 for India by attracting 1.1 million health tourists, up from 150,000 in 2002. India’s share in the global tourism industry is expected to rise to around 3% by 2013 (RNCOS report) with revenues of around $3 billion and a CAGR of 26% during 2011–2013.

There are over 3,371 hospitals and around 754,985 registered practitioners catering to the needs of traditional Indian healthcare. Indian hotels are also entering the wellness services market by collaborating with professional organisations in a range of wellness fields. According to the Ministry Of Tourism, as against an ordinary vacationer’s per-capita spend of $3,000 per visitor, the average medical tourist in India shells out more than $7,000 per visit. Traditionally patients from neighbouring SAARC countries and Middle East frequented hospitals in India. But patients from Africa and even Europe and US have started coming only in the last five years. Pricing is the clear advantage. The Planning Commission points out that India is far economical compared to peer countries. For example, heart bypass surgery costs $6,000 in India, $7,894 in Thailand, $10,417 in Singapore, $19,700 in Britain and $23,938 in the US.

India spends roughly 6% of GDP on healthcare and is expected to reach 8% by 2012. Private sector expenditure in healthcare is expected to reach $45 billion by 2012. But in comparison with America’s 15.3%, Switzerland’s 11.3% or France’s 11.1%, the country still falters when it comes to quality as well as quantity of medical facilities. B&E does a reality check to analyse whether the country has really lived up to the hype.

The flip side has majorly been the role of the government; or may we say, the lack of it. Although infrastructure spending for health care has intensified, only the private sector has flourished. Top Indian corporate hospitals like Apollo, Fortis, Wockhardt, Max and Manipal have stepped in to provide quality healthcare and technology. Nearly 75% of health care services and investments in India are provided by the private sector.

Read more...

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Reaching out for The Broadband Dream

Over a year has Passed by since The Broadband Spectrum auction, which raised hopes of bringing Internet to The Masses. What’s delaying The Launch of BWA services?

Can Internet penetration in India match the surge in the number of mobile phone subscribers? It’s a far-fetched thought at the moment. Today, every second person in the country owns a mobile phone. At last count, the number of wireless phone subscribers stood at 840 million and tele-density had crossed the 50% mark. According to Voice&Data, approximately 10 million mobile phones were sold in India every month in 2010, while at the same time, an average of 622,000 new users signed up each day to a mobile service; adding 227 million new mobile subscribers in 2010. In contrast, the total number of internet subscribers in India is just 18 million out of which those with a broadband connection make up a paltry 11 million, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. That’s 9 million less broadband connections than what was originally targeted by the government. India was supposed to double its rate of broadband reach to 2% – 20 million broadband connections – by 2010, but missed it by a long shot. In comparison, other Asian nations like China, South Korea and Japan have broadband penetration of 21%, 95% and 75% respectively. According to the latest figures from China’s Internet Network Information Center, the number of internet users in China rose to 457 million at the end of June, 2010, an increase of about 73 million over the past six months. The figures show that the number of broadband users reached 126 million while the internet penetration rate climbed to about 34%. On the other hand, in India, the rate of growth of Internet connections actually fell to just 4.4% during the December quarter, 2010, or 23% compared to the last three months of 2009.

A World Bank study shows that every increase of 10% in broadband penetration can lead to an increase in GDP growth by 1.4%, and can add more than 200 million jobs. Last year, the French government announced a budget of €2.8 billion for broadband penetration. In 2009, when the rest of the world was grappling with recession, the Australian government set aside a specific fund for broadband penetration.

Clearly, internet penetration is very important for the economic growth of a country. However, it has been more than a year since Broadband Wireless Access spectrum was auctioned in India, barely days after the controversial 3G spectrum sales. The BWA auction raised Rs.385.4 billion compared with Rs.677.2 billion for the 3G spectrum. But while 3G services were launched by private operators in December 2010, none of the private operators has rolled out BWA services. Only BSNL, which was given start-up spectrum much earlier than private operators, has launched BWA services in a few circles on WiMax technology.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Investors, Meet Alan. Alan, Meet The Investors. Now get along!

Alan Mulally, Ford’s turnaround guy won’t speculate about his own fate. The stock market will. This time, it is his China Strategy that has made them Unhappy. Has Mulally lost his Midas touch?

On a cold February morning of 2007, Mulally’s Falcon jet landed on the airstrip of a 330 acre auto-testing facility in East Haddam (Conn.), 720 miles due East of his office in Dearborn (MI). He was accompanied by two of Ford’s senior engineers. For Mulally, this was his first field trip to conduct a detailed trial of every Ford model on the market shelf. For 4 hours, he patiently listened to all the complaints made by third-party experts about his company’s vehicles. That the new Ford Edge SUV had no electronic opener and no handle on the rear making it impossible for five-footers to close the hatch was one. When questioned, his engineers exuded lumps of defensive excuses. First, their new boss gave them a piece of his mind. Then, he took out two pens and notepads from his satchel and followed it up with a command: “You know what? Just listen and take notes.” Mulally was prepared. He did not care about the humiliation his engineers suffered while standing amidst a gang of auto reviewers. He was least bothered about them being uncomfortable. What Ford needed then was correction of many mistakes, not cloaks that concealed the rust.

Every top executive in the automobile industry today, carries around with him a heavy backpack of tales. For Alan Mulally, much of what it holds is about resentment and confrontation. Be it insiders or outsiders, engineers or investors, he has waded through miles of objections and excuses to make Ford a profitable machine again.

What is widely known outside the walls of Ford’s offices is about Mulally being a Mr. Dear CEO. He never was. At 7 am every Thursday, Mulally meets 15 of his top executives in a windowless conference room, a floor below his 12th floor office in the company’s headquarters in Dearborn. It is called the Thunderbird Room. In these meetings, every reporting officer gets to know that Mulally has held his feet to the fire. He cares little about the displeasures earned in the path to progress. When in early 2009, Mulally decided to even consider postponing his plans to launch the new F-Series (because he wanted to clear out Ford’s inventory), he made many senior officials unhappy, including his global marketing chief James Farley.

He has also angered the markets in the past. It happened on November 29, 2006, when he pledged all of the company’s assets for $23.6 billion to US bankers in a packed hotel ballroom in New York. Ten trading sessions later, the stock was down 15.79% to $6.88 per share. During Q1, 2008, Mulally decided to show no loyalty to brands like Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover & Aston Martin. He sold them off. The silence in the ever-giggling investor category became more pronounced. One trading session after the JLR deal was announced on March 27, 2008, Ford’s stock fell 6.83% to $5.59. During the eight months that followed, Ford’s stock plummeted to a historical low of $1.26 (Nov 19, 2008). The company lost a further $14.8 billion in FY2008 (the highest in its 105 year history) and burned 61% of its cash reserves ($21.2 billion) that year alone. Mulally’s promises of a turnaround tale had started looking like scrap metal. But the unexpected happened and Ford was back on its feet as the #2 car seller in the large US and EU markets during 2009 and 2010 (a situation last seen in FY2000). Credit goes to Ford’s lower-priced, smaller vehicles (which makes up 48% of Ford’s global sales today). The company made $9.28 billion in net profits.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Monday, March 18, 2013

For Feeding Mouths Aplenty

While India continues to reel under The Effect of rising food Prices & Increasing hunger, The Proposed National Food Security Act can be a Panacea. But with a narrow minded Focus & Select targets, The Upcoming Legislation might end up Nowhere & can worsen The Delivery of food grains to The Hungry.

John Van Hengel, born 1923 in Waupan, Wisconsin, was an ordinary man with all vices and sins – as per America’s Second Harvest, a company founded by Hengel himself. He undertook various occupations; from being an ad man to a beer truck driver in Hollywood, married a model, divorced her and underwent spinal surgery post a deadly fight. It was while working at a soup kitchen post his surgery when he met this mother of 10 and her dying husband. She survived by rummaging in food bins and was desperate for a place to both deposit food and check it out – like a bank. Hengel, hooked to the idea, persuaded a grocery store manager to donate surplus food. From a defunct church bakery selling more than 250,000 pounds of food to 36 charities in its first year, America’s Second Harvest was born in 1976, the world’s first Food Bank Chain. For a country like the US with around 20 million people belonging to households suffering from ‘very low food security’ (households where at least one person remains hungry during a year), food banks have been a revolution. But for India, where ITC pioneer Sam Pitroda recently unveiled his ambitious food bank scheme, the 250 million plus hungry population might prove too Herculean a task. The only light at the tunnel end is the National Food Security Bill, touted to hit harder at hunger than NREGA did at poverty. But a clichéd narrow focus and lack of holistic research-backed provisions endanger the entire system of fighting hunger in India.

Despite numerous measures and programmes – Targeted PDS, Mid-Day Meal Scheme, National Food for Work Programme, Antyodaya Anna Yojna and Integrated Child Development Scheme – the number of undernourished people increased from about 210 million in 1990-92 to 252 million in 2005-06. India houses around half the world’s undernourished children. Also, there has been a general decline in per capita calorie consumption in recent decades. Grain mountains and hungry millions continue to coexist. According to the Global Hunger Index 2009, India is ranked 65 among 84 developing countries – worse than nearly 25 Sub-Saharan African countries and all of South Asia, except Bangladesh. The reason – all government schemes have been victims of narrow minded targets, rampant corruption and perpetual battles between central and state government owned entities.

The Targeted Public Distribution Scheme (TDPS) was introduced in 1997 as a revised version of PDS, allegedly serving only the urban poor and being a miserable failure to effectively serve the poorer sections of the population. But even this has slowly bled from the entangled web of poor targeting, high administrative costs, and low effectiveness of the programme. The NFSA, if enacted, mandates the provision of a minimum of 25 kg of rice or wheat to Below Poverty Line (BPL) families per month at Rs.3 per kg. The TDPS targeted same at Rs.4.15 per kg for wheat and Rs.5.65 per kg for rice. But as you go into the depth of the meaning behind each word, the proposed legislation faces sure shot stumbling blocks with the debate regarding the definition of hunger and hungry and the number of BPL families.

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

4Ps B&M Exclusive – India’s best Market Research Companies

Objective, accurate and actionable consumer intelligence means the force is with you, for it is widely regarded as the soul of business. But market research companies have to themselves evolve and be in ship shape with respect to the environment in order to stay relevant to their clients. B&E’s sister publication 4Ps B&M undertook a survey on India’s best market research companies, which provides an exclusive insight on the top research firms that make the cut. And surprisingly so, Nielsen isn’t one of them!

For every aspect of marketing we look at, market research is viewed as the logical starting point, and also the end game. Research gives you the input on how you develop your entire market action plan, and let you know about the outcome, thereby helping you plan for the next cycle.

On that very promise, market research has to be one of the most essential investments to make for an organisation. But do companies always understand and appreciate this fact in practice? Or do they believe more in the Jack Welch diktat of being ‘straight from the gut’? While it’s far from being a black and white debate, market research has been alluded to by many industry greats in the past, and not necessarily in the pleasant sense. Henry Ford once famously said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse!”

There were a number of beliefs that Henry Ford had that were relevant for his time, but aren’t relevant today. But there is one fact that would be hard to ignore even today. In short, though customers look for value maximisation always, it isn’t necessary that they know their value maximiser proposition themselves, despite getting smarter by the day. So can you rely on your own customer when you formulate your market research strategy? One can argue that if customer intelligence was the only criteria, a number of breakthrough innovations, like the iPod would never have come into being. In fact, Apple consistently abides by an aversion to market research to date, just like Infosys in India has an aversion to advertising. Steve Jobs once quoted to Fortune, “We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants.”

Read more.....

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Back to Being Human!

The actress who started the size-zero craze in Bollywood, has suddenly turned into a foodie. These days Kareena can’t stop raving about food. The actress is gaining weight for an upcoming movie and is really enjoying herself. She says that she can’t live without food even for a day and admits food is more important to her than even her would-be husband! Kareena loves cooking and given the chance would want to cook for Prez Obama! Now, that’s a new side of Kareena!

Read more.....

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

“Carrier believes in Sustainable Growth”

Gaurang Pandya, the newly appointed MD of Carrier India, reveals to B&E the strategies that have worked for them in India

B&E: You have been associated with Carrier for long now. How has been the journey so far?

Gaurang Pandya (GP): It’s has been wonderful. In fact, I have gained a lot when it comes to understand the international markets. I was in Singapore and US with Carrier on the financial and business side. I was also involved in lot of programmes in Asia Pacific region and have worked on areas like localisation, signing of JVs with partners apart from various distribution initiatives taken up by the company. The learnings from these experiences have been really helpful as one can now see these activities happening in India as well.

B&E: Carrier has always believed in maintaining a very low profile opposed to its competitors when it comes to promotions? What is the logic behind this strategy?

GP: As we are a part of the US-based United Technologies Corporation (UTC), therefore there are certain set of laws under which we are governed. For instance, it is the US law pertaining to defence, anti-trust regulation of India and anti-competition laws of US, et al, that applies to us. Thus, if you ask us our growth rate for the year we might answer the question in two ways. First, these rates are for internal usage, and second we don’t want to disclose it to the outside world.

Read more.....

Monday, March 04, 2013

CEO of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank in conversation with B&E’s

Managing Director and CEO of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank in conversation with B&E’s Avneesh Singh

B&E: Your bank is targetting business worth `26,000 crores in the present financial year? What will be the possible mix of deposits and advances?
GNR: We are looking at a target of `15,000 crores in deposits and `11,000 crores in advances.

B&E: You also have mentioned a target of `500 billion in assets by 2013. What would be your basic? What is your strategy to achieve this target?
GNR: Our strategy is manifold, the simplest one is to open more branches. We have 217 branches as of now and by the end of March 2011, we plan to take the number of branches to 250. Thereafter, in the next 2 to 3 years, we plan to take the number of branches to 500. We have a very aggressive expansion plan to take the staff strength from 2500 to 5000. All these will automatically put us into the bracket of `50,000 crores.

B&E: Many banks like Union Bank, Canara Bank and Andhra Bank have changed their logo as a branding exercise? Do you have any similar rebranding plans in the pipeline?
GNR: A changed logo and a re-branding exercise give added advantages of visibility because when you change your logo, you undertake a lot of publicity; and then people tend to give a lot of recall value to the bank. This is one thing that even we are thinking about; but it is only at a preliminary stage right now. At a right time, we shall also go for what you call brand building or re-branding but right now, it is too early to say anything about it. But re-branding is required and that is why a lot of banks have gone through the same. Once you have already spent 90 years with a particular logo, probably you need to make the society realise that the bank is also changing to show to the world that yes, we are also changing – this is clearly one physical appearance that makes the difference.

Read more.....

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

TOYOTA: PRODUCT RECALL

Toyota President Akio Toyoda’s apology was supposed to firefight the recall controversy – it made it worse! Welcome to the world of unintended consequences

The Japanese carmaker on the other end is very confident about a fast recovery and has forecasted a net profit of $892 million for the current fiscal. Apparently this seems to be a very bullish a forecast as compared with a loss of $2.2 billion previously foreseen, and an actual loss of $4.8 billion last year. The forecast also estimates a narrower operating loss of $2.2 billion, compared with a loss of $3.9 billion in the prior November outlook. But strangely, amidst all this, rather than being at the forefront of the public relations efforts of Toyota, Akio Toyoda is preferring to avoid being at the communications forefront, with his latest noncommittal approach to come to the US to attend a scheduled hearing of a Congressional panel on the recall issue – there are now reports of the possibilities of a subpoena against Toyoda being issued if he refuses to appear before the committee. A part of Toyoda’s lack of responsive behaviour is cultural too – Japanese CEOs are not generally groomed to be the spokespersons of their corporations. To that extent, post Akio Morita, it would be rare for the outside world to know of even one Japanese company’s CEO’s name. Toyoda has to realise that breaking these cultural paradigms, he has to single-handedly rebuild the trust of the Toyota brand. For each day of his failing to do this, Toyota loses millions. “Getting the company back on track is Toyoda’s biggest challenge now as the sales have already started showing a decline,” says San Oppenheim’s Christian Breitprescher to B&E (GM and Ford, for example, are offering discounts of up to $1,000 to Toyota owners trading in; a report from UBS suggests that the Japanese automaker is incurring a weekly loss of $155 million from the lost sales since announcing the recall). Toyoda’s has to be an all-guns-blazing firefighting effort, as nothing else will be able to reduce the debilitating fall in sales the company may suffer. Toyoda could well take a sneak look at Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer who is a delightful example of what all positive PR can achieve; and he isn’t even Japanese!

Read more.....

Monday, February 04, 2013

Water harvesting is the sole solution for this grave crisis

Water harvesting is the best way of tackling the drinking water crisis. We get sufficient water from rain, but we fail to replenish it. What is needed is good infrastructure and citizens’ resolve. So don’t let rain water go waste.

Experts estimate that rain falling on a house built in a 1,500 sq. feet area can generate enough water to serve a family of six. So collect it and preserve it. In towns where we have fewer open spaces we need boring wells to draw water from the earth’s surface. We can collect water by digging soak pits in our gardens and fields. These recharge the ground water and tube wells. We should also ensure a better garbage management system so that ecological balance is maintained and chemical wastes are deposited safely. Chhattisgarh leads India in water harvesting. Water management is an art and we should learn it. Thousands of litres of water are wasted every day because of overuse. To stop this misuse, we must use buckets in place of bath tubs. While brushing our teeth we must ensure that the tap is not open all the time. To wash our vehicle we must use wet cloth instead of bucketfuls of water. To preserve drinking water NGOs, industrialists and the youth should work together. If we don’t understand the importance of water then the crisis cannot be resolved. Bin pani sab sun (without water, there is nothing).

Water is a lifeline for people. And the crisis is felt mostly in summer. Drinking water has become scarce in big cities and rural India. In the hinterlands the situation is worse as villagers have to trudge miles to get drinking water. And in small towns there are many who wait for hours and hours for water tankers. Besides, there have been reports of water riots. All this has happened because we have failed to preserve rain water.

The crisis is further accentuated by depleting ground water levels. In many areas it has gone from 50 feet to 600 feet. Alarmed by the situation, water authorities are proposing a model legislation to prevent further erosion of the water table. The Central Groundwater Board carried out a survey and found that about 800 areas are in the danger zone. The water level has gone down drastically in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Andhra and Tamil Nadu.

Many areas of Haryana, including Narnaul, Samlakha, Karnal and Moga, Sangur, Maha Kalam, Ahmedgarh in Punjab, Surajgarh, Behror and Bhinmal in Rajasthan, Gandhinagar in Gujarat have seen depleted water levels. Water experts say in coastal areas of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu deep drilling of tube wells has led to saline water ingress from the sea destroying prime agricultural land. And sometimes this endangers the only available source of drinking water. In 43 blocks further extraction of ground water has been banned. Several states have been informed about the worsening situation. They have been told to adopt water harvesting as a means to tackle water crisis.

Read more.....